According to Said, the study of Islam by Christians occurred in what historical period.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

This rigorous Christian picture of Islam was intensified in innumerable ways, including—during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance—a large variety of poetry, learned controversy, and popular superstition. By this time the Near Orient had been all but included in the common world-picture of Latin Christianity.... By the middle of the fifteenth century, as R. W. Southern has brilliantly shown, it became apparent to serious European thinkers “that something would have to be done about Islam,” which had turned the situation around somewhat by itself having militarily arrived in eastern Europe. Southern recounts a dramatic episode between 1450 and 1460 when four learned men, John of Segovia, Nicholas of Cusa, Jean Germain, and Aeneas Silvius (Pius II), attempted between them to deal with Islam through contraferentia, or “conference.” The idea was John of Segovia’s: it was to have been a staged conference with Islam with Christians attempting the wholesale conversion of Muslims.