On March 24, Michael Twomey (English; Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts), presented an invited lecture at Columbia University in New York to the combined programs of Religion and Writing and Medieval Studies. On March 24, Michael Twomey (English; Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts), presented an invited lecture at Columbia University in New York to the combined programs of Religion and Writing and Medieval Studies.
Titled “Peoples of the Book: Middle Eastern Ethnology in Western Medieval Encyclopedias,” the lecture explored the biased representation of the "Ishmaelites" (Arabs) in medieval encyclopedias, which were books created for the study of biblical geography, ethnology, botany, and zoology. These books circulated in large numbers throughout western Europe from the seventh through sixteenth centuries.
Connecting the genealogies in the biblical book of Genesis to apocalyptic prophecies about the rise of the "Ishmaelites" at the end of time, these encyclopedias reflected religious and ethnic misconceptions that continue into the present.
An abstract of the lecture is available at Columbia University's Religion and Writing website. The image above of a "T-O map" is from a 1472 printed edition of Isidore of Seville's Etymologies (636 CE), the earliest of the encyclopedias. It shows the three known continents, together with the name of the biblical person believed to have settled in each after Noah's Flood. Forming the "T" is the Mediterranean Sea. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20150327163340854