Medieval Muslims dismissed Europe as historically and intellectually insignificant

Evidence

In so far as there was a scholarly or scientific interest in the West, it was geographical. Muslim historians were not interested in the history of the outside world which, as they understood the value and purpose of history, lacked both value and purpose. Muslim theologians were little concerned with Christian doctrines—why after all should they be interested in an earlier and superseded form of God’s revelation? And for the few that were interested, better information was more easily accessible among the many Christian communities living in the lands of Islam. There was no interest in the sciences and arts of Europe. They knew there was nothing of the one; they assumed there was nothing of the other. Only the geographers show some interest in the West, and even that a limited one. One geographical writer even apologizes for devoting some attention to these remote and uninteresting places. His excuse is the need for completeness. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1060

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• SEED: Angle: the mirror-image of Orientalism — how a self-confident civilization’s ignorance of a rival signals its own assumed superiority, versus European curiosity about the East.
• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and to the asymmetry of knowledge exchange between civilizations; also echoes the book’s broader theme of self-assured societies misreading rivals.

Related

• Pre-modern Muslim scholars regarded Western history as lacking value and purpose (similarity 0.92)
• Medieval Islam’s worldview inverted onto its own periphery the Orientalist hierarchy (similarity 0.85)
• Pre-Islamic Mediterranean civilizations showed almost no interest in other peoples’ histories (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians viewed Islam only as a negative foil to Christianity (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Europeans could not distinguish the Qur’an from other Islamic books. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian critics of Islam lacked Arabic competence and historical perspective (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christians respected Islamic civilization even while they knew Muslims as others. (similarity 0.80)
• Muslims saw defeating Byzantium, not conquering Europe, as the real goal (similarity 0.80)
• The Encyclopaedia of Islam asked European questions, not Muslim ones, about Islam (similarity 0.80)
• Eighteenth-century Europeans ranked Islam as a civilization on par with Christendom (similarity 0.80)
• Islam’s self-perception of triumph mirrored Christian imperial self-regard (similarity 0.80)
• Islam regarded Asia and Africa as teachable converts unlike rival Christendom (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval crusade narratives paired Jews with Muslims, not with orientalism (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Western writers recognized little spiritual life in Islam. (similarity 0.79)
• No era since the Middle Ages has discussed Islam outside prejudice and politics (similarity 0.79)