近二十年西方十字军东征研究的新动向

New Trends in Western Scholarship on the Crusades

在十字军东征期间西方基督徒与穆斯林的关系问题上,西方学界长期赞美十字军、贬抑穆斯林。然而,近二十年来,在全球史与记忆史的影响下,这种“对立”评价得到修正。西方学界在重新审视拉丁语史料的同时,借助阿拉伯语史料以及视觉、语言等新材料,证明穆斯林能够自觉认知欧洲的社会与文化,解构了穆斯林负面的“他者”形象,揭示了西方基督徒与穆斯林在社会和文化领域的频繁互动,由此“交流”与“适应”取代“对立”成为新的研究主题。在此过程中,学者们创造了“粗陋的宽容”这一新术语,引进文化学理论以及“文化适应”和“经济实用主义”等概念,十字军东征的研究出现新动向。它是当前西方学界反思欧洲中心论和重构十字军东征历史的重要体现。

Western scholarship on the crusades has traditionally focused on the conflicts between western Christians and Muslims,and Western scholars have tended to praise the crusaders and disparage the Muslims for a long period of time.With the rise of global history and memory studies,scholars,however,have by and large moved away from this simplistic account over the course of the last twentieth years,toward an acknowledgment of the communication and interactions between western Christians and Muslims,to varying degrees,in nearly all major dimensions of settlement life,from society to culture.This shift is based to a large degree upon the writings of medieval Muslim writers,as well as the reflections of medieval Latin writers.It adopts new evidence such as the ones from visual culture and linguistic materials.Recent studies carried out on these sources have specifically underlined that medieval Muslims were not just the negative “other” of Latin Europe,and they also had casted curious eyes and minds upon its society and culture.As such,scholars in the West have invented a new term “rough tolerance”,and introduced culture studies theories as well as adopted the concepts such as “acculturation” and “economic pragmatism,” which signal significant trends of change in Western historiography of the Crusades.Scholars are rethinking Eurocentrism to construct a new paradigm.