ABSTRACT
Medieval Muslim conquests of Christian territories, in the Middle East and Europe, and the centuries of rivalry that followed are mapped out panoramically in European vernacular national poetry, or poetry which came to be seen as national.1 The long violent history of Islam in Europe roused national identity in European territories that came under Muslim rule or were threatened as the ‘House of War’ by Islamic armies which fought for victory over Christianity as a religious duty.2 For example, there was the poetry of the French troubadour Marcabru (c. 1150), who sang of crusaders ‘cleansing’ the lands of the enemies of Christ (Rosenberg et al., 1998: 51-3); the early medieval French Chansons de Geste (‘Songs of Action’); the 12th century Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes; the anonymous Spanish epic The Cid (early 12th century); as well as the poetry of Judah Halevi (c. 1075-1141) and other Spanish Hebrew poets in the 11th-12th century.3 There was also Wolfram von Eschenbach’s early 13th century German adaptation of Arthurian legend Parzival, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) in England, Luis de Camões (1524?–1580) in Portugal, Pierre de Ronsard (1524?–1585) in France and Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) in Italy. In Eastern Europe, Ivan Gundulic (1588-1638) in Croatia, Nicholas Zrinyi (1616-1664) in Hungary, and Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) in Russia wrote epic poems, famous in their day, on Muslim invasions of Eastern Europe (16th-18th century).
