Islam’s advance and retreat defined Europe’s eastern and western borders

Evidence

In eastern as in southwestern Europe, a series of wars of reconquest finally ended what Russians called “the Tatar Yoke,” and recovered these lands for Christendom. Thus, at both its eastern and south­ western extremities, the limits and in a sense even the identity of Europe were established through first the advance, and then the retreat, of Islam. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 663

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the construction-of-Europe-as-against-Islam thesis central to Orientalist scholarship; a concrete mechanism passage for how a geographic identity got constituted through Muslim expansion and reconquest.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the claim that Europe’s identity was formed at both extremities by Islam suggests a comparative study of how Spanish and Russian ‘reconquest’ narratives each built frontiers against a shared Muslim other.