The Mongols’ appearance transformed the Western world picture of Islam
Evidence
The event which did more than anything else to change the whole aspect of the Islamic problem came from a very unexpected quarter. It was the appearance of the Mongols on the scene of history. The effects of this on the outlook for Western Christendom were many and various. In the first place, and from the moment of their appearance, the Mongols greatly enlarged the geographical horizon and increased many times the number of people known to exist in the world. There is no reason to think that anyone of importance in the West between Bede and Peter the Venerable saw beyond Islam. — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 245
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the general literature on how external shocks reshape mental maps and world pictures — parallels work on the ‘discovery’ moments in geography and intellectual history. — connects to: The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today
Related
- The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today (similarity 0.81)
- Mongol contact revealed Christian-Islamic agreement and unknown eastern Christians (similarity 0.81)
- Westerners encounter Islam only through pre-framed political and media channels. (similarity 0.79)
- The Western canon of Islam was fixed by 1350 and endured for centuries. (similarity 0.79)
- Islam blocked the papacy’s hoped-for reunion with the Mongols (similarity 0.79)
- The Islamic philosophical influx radically transformed Western learning after 1230 (similarity 0.79)
- A Mongol-Christian military alliance against Islam was genuinely planned and nearly happened (similarity 0.78)
- Mid-fifteenth-century European thought on Islam surpassed all earlier and later centuries (similarity 0.78)
- Medieval Western fantasies about the Mongols proved astonishingly accurate (similarity 0.78)
- Islamization flowed from the cultural realm into social and political spheres. (similarity 0.78)