The Orient-Islam equation dates only from the late fourteenth century

Evidence

The imagined equation between the Orient and Islam appears only near the end of the fourteenth century. The “Saracens” were then all but expelled from Iberia and gone from Sicily. At the same time, a new Islamic power was dislodging Christians in the East. The Ottomans (referred to as “Turks” although they successfully assimilated members of many other ethnic groups) conquered parts of southeast Europe. When they conquered Constantinople in 1453 and made it their capital, they ended forever the long history of the Eastern (aka “Oriental”) Roman Empire. The conquest also put an end to any half-realistic plans for a Christian conquest of Jerusalem. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 108

Categorization

• XREF: Gives the historical date for when Said’s ‘imaginative geography’ of Orient=Islam crystallized — key for my Orientalism notes.