Imágenes de Europa en textos árabes medievales/Images of Europe in Medieval Arabic Texts

Different kinds of Arabic textual sources, written during the Middle Ages, provide references about territories and peoples from Europe, using information transferred since Ancient times, combined with medieval data updated by travelers, geographers and chroniclers. It is a wide and intense subject, as it covers the news and images produced from interest earned between spaces contiguous, separated and at the same time connected by land and sea, external and internal, borders through contacts of all kinds that began directly with the Islamic expansion into Byzantium and up to West, from the 8th century. These images thus prepared in writing, since the 9th century, accumulated in visions and sensations of the Arabic-Islamic medieval world, due to the usual continuation of traditional memories, resorting to stereotypes about the other, fundamentally marked by prejudices and hostilities, and sometimes overcomed by close interests and commercial and cultural contacts.