I was recently reading up on pseudo-Arabic and came across statements that made it seem to me that Europeans did not know much about the Middle East & the Islamic world during the Middle Ages.
Here are a few examples:
Prior to the 16th century, hardly any Europeans actually knew the language [Arabic].
The exact reason for the incorporation of pseudo-Kufic or pseudo-Arabic in Medieval or early Renaissance painting is unclear. It seems that Westerners mistakenly associated 13-14th century Middle-Eastern scripts as being identical with the scripts current during Jesus's time, and thus found natural to represent early Christians in association with them
Why were European artists so interested in Arabic? One possibility is that they mistakenly believed that Arabic was the language of early Christianity. Medieval Europeans were aware that Christianity and the Bible had come from the Middle East, but they were hazy on the details. The Knights Templar, for example, believed that the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was the Biblical Temple of Solomon, but, in fact, it had been built by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in the late 7th century CE.
Sources:
Beautiful Gibberish: Fake Arabic in Medieval and Renaissance Art - Encyclopædia Britannica
This all got me questioning the extent of knowledge that the Europeans would have had about the Islamic world. If the bible came from modern day Israel/Palestine, then how could the Europeans be so confused about Arabic, Jerusalem, Islam and the Dome of the Rock, as the above quote seems to imply?... Did they just stop exchanging information once Christianity reached Europe? ... This is even more confusing considering the fact that places like Spain and Venice traded extensively with the Muslims during the time; and the fact that the Knights Templar travelled across the Holy Land. Was there no cultural exchange due to trade, the Crusades and Islamic expansion into Spain?
I would also like to know if more was known before this time period, and whether the Middle East knew more about Europe as Europe knew about the Middle East.
Furthermore I would also like to know what were the differences in knowledge between Western Europe (Catholic) and Eastern Europe (Orthodox/Byzantium). I once had a history teacher tell me something along the lines of “The West lost a lot of knowledge meanwhile Byzantium remained civilised.” How true is that? Feel free to elaborate.
I know this may sound like an ignorant question; I drew conclusions based on a few sources, so feel free to correct me on anything here.
I have been reading a lot on the crusades lately, including works by British historians Riley-Smith ('The Crusades') and Runciman ('History of the Crusades') as well as Nikolas Jaspert. According to Jaspert, Europeans (i.e. Latins) knew almost nothing about the Dar Al'Islam, which is reciprocated by their muslim contemporaries; the entirety of their knowledge can be summarized by saying that they knew Islam and its followers existed, but other than that, their knowledge and interest was limited. However, this holds true only for the Holy Roman Empire, France and England until the start of the crusades in 1096.
Other kingdoms (e.g. Spain) and empires (e.g. Byzantium/Eastern Rome) lived in direct neighbourhood to islamic states. Byzantium lost most of its African (most importantly Africa Proconsularis and Aegyptus) and eastern provinces to the muslim expansion; it was only when the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor that Alexios I Komnenos called to Pope Urban II and western Europe for help.
As Byzantium had been an important place of trade ever since it was made the capital of the eastern half of the empire, it can be assumed that first traders from the Arabian peninsula and later on muslim traders regularly visited the city. Muslims were eventually granted their own quarters in Constantinople, the exact date I don't recall.
If you want to learn more about Byzantium I recommend reading Judith Herrin's 'Byzantium - The surprising Life of a medieval Empire', which was my introduction to byzantine studies.