In Light of Another's Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages

211 Pages·2013·1.25 MB·English

by  Shirin A. Khanmohamadi

In Light of Another’s Word
THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES
ruth mazo karras, series editor
edward peters, founding editor
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
In Light of Another’s Word
european ethnography
in the middle ages
Shirin A. Khanmohamadi
university of pennsylvania press Philadelphia
this book is made possible by a collaborative grant
from the andrew w. mellon foundation.
© 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none
of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Khanmohamadi, Shirin A.
In light of another’s word : European ethnography in
the Middle Ages / Shirin A. Khanmohamadi. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The Middle Ages series)
ISBN 978-0-8122-4562-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ethnology—Europe—History—To 1500.
2. East and West—History—To 1500. 3. Travel,
Medieval—History—Sources. 4. Travelers’ writings,
European—History and criticism. 5. Authors,
Medieval—Attitudes. 6. Civilization, Medieval.
I. Title. II. Series: Middle Ages series.
GN308.3.E85K43 2014
305.80094—dc23
2013026522
In memory of my father,
Mehdi Khanmohamadi
(1937–2010)
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contents
Introduction 1
1. Conquest, Conversion, Crusade, Salvation: The Discourse
of Anthropology and Its Uses in the Medieval Period 11
2. Subjective Beginnings: Autoethnography
and the Partial Gazes of Gerald of Wales 37
3. Writing Ethnography “In the Eyes of the Other”:
William of Rubruck’s Mission to Mongolia 57
4. Casting a “Sideways Glance” at the Crusades: The Voice
of the Other in Joinville’s Vie de Saint Louis 88
5. Dis-Orienting the Self: The Uncanny
Travels of John Mandeville 113
Conclusion 145
Notes 149
Bibliography 181
Index 195
Acknowledgments 201
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Introduction
Et cum circumdarent nos homines et respicerent nos tamquam monstra,
maxime quia eramus nudis pedibus, et quererent si nos non indigeremus
pedibus nostris, quia supponebant quod statim amitteremus eos, ille
Hungarus reddidit eis rationem, narrans eis conditiones Ordinis nostri.
(People gathered round us, gazing at us as if we were freaks, especially in
view of our bare feet, and asked whether we had no use for our feet, since
they imagined that in no time we would lose them. And this the Hungarian
explained to them, telling them the rules of our Order.) (Itinerarium 28.4)
William of Rubruck writes these words upon his return to Acre after
a two-year mission to Mongolia from 1253 to 1255, as part of his
report to King Louis IX of France on the state of Mongolian society
and customs, one of the medieval period’s most vivid ethnographic
accounts. Here he is describing his immediate reception at the impe-
rial court of the great khan, Mangu, where locals not only surround
him and members of his Franciscan retinue, wondering at their dis-
play of bare feet in the subfreezing weather of Mongolian winter, but
stare at them as if they were some kind of monsters, tamquam mon-
stra. William is thus describing himself as he is seen in the gaze of
the other he has come to describe, a feat striking, even disorienting,
to modern and medieval audiences alike—the former who might not
expect to find a mode of postmodern, self-reflexive ethnography in a
medieval sampling of the genre, and the latter who might well turn to
ethnographic reports with an interest in hearing of the world’s exotic
and monstrous races, not to learn that they are themselves seen as
monstrous by diverse, little-known others. Surely William’s moment
of self-mirroring and even self-othering is exceptional and rare?
This book, on the contrary, tracks the persistent presence of such
moments of startling and uncomfortable self-reflexivity and self-
consciousness in some of Europe’s earliest and most celebrated ethno-
graphic descriptions—descriptions of observed manners and customs
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