The Kaʿba Orientations, Readings in Islam’s Ancient House

Abstract

attitudes. The most important turning point in this period is the Fourth Crusade and, even on this well-worn topic, Neocleous draws some important conclusions. Fourth Crusade watchers will be interested to note that this work advances the idea that the crusade’s diversion away from Alexandria and towards Constantinople was due in no small part to the agency of Boniface of Montferrat and Philip of Swabia (operating in close support to Alexius IV); an argument that has a great deal to recommend it. He also demonstrates that the sources for the crusade that were written by participants do notmanifest much anti-Greek religious enmity in their accounts of the campaign. Curiously, it is the non-participant authors based in Western Christendom who display a greater hostility. The events surrounding the conquest of Constantinople however reshaped this relationship, paving the way for more troubled times and steering a few Latin authors to claim that the Greeks should no longer be considered as co-religionists, or in some cases even as Christians. Even so, despite this rising friction, Neocleous observes that there were still many examples of collaboration between Greeks and Latins including many treaties and marriages in later years. Overall, this is a very strong piece of work that chimes well with several recent studies which, like Heretics, Schismatics or Catholics?, tend to break down the notion of entrenched rivalry between Latin and Greek communities. It likewise fits well with the findings advanced by art historians, specialists in material culture or economic historians whose studies tend to describe considerable freedom of movement – whether of ideas, items or individuals – across cultural boundaries in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Having said this, there are still some historians who characterise the relationship between Byzantium and ‘the west’ as being far more conflictual, even a form of ‘clash of civilizations’, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to the findings offered here. Likewise, although this work does briefly discuss Byzantine attitudes towards Latins, there is clearly more to be said on this subject and it is to be hoped that future studies will help to add more detail on this point. In particular more research on the Byzantine Church and its engagement with western Christendom, coupled with an examination of the extent to which ecclesiastical attitudes were representative of secular attitudes (whether elite or non-elite), would be very interesting. In this way, and taken overall,Heretics, Schismatics or Catholics? offers a bold but plausible interpretation of one of the most important relationships to shape the development of the Mediterranean world.