The Physiognomy of the Enemy: The Image of Saracens in Travel Literature

Abstract

Florentine writers of travel, on which is based this article, were no longer interested in writing about the Arabs as a people, charged with Christian symbols, but the Arabs became the subject of a new mode of observation. Something of the traditional theological device remained in the Florentine diaries but what interested travellers was the concrete observation made of the Eastern peoples grouped under the name of Saracens. The new approach, far from banishing symbolism from the representation of reality, stimulated its reinterpretation in the light of empirical observation. Field experiences were mingled with bookish knowledge; data collected first-hand was interwoven with the traditional repertoire of beliefs, producing an inseparable mixture. Given that the paradigm still remained that of St. Augustine, a great change had taken place: the Christian symbolism, in which the real city was that of God, passed to a civic symbolism whose point of reference was the city of men, shaped during the urban development that had changed the face of the West. The Augustinian background was always present, but was shifting its focus from being the city of God to the city built by Christians: the proximity to the city marked the degree of proximity to the human species. Only in the light of these considerations can one understand the full extent of the operation undertaken by Florentine diarists who described physically — but also socially — the populations of the Eastern Mediterranean.