2 - Wolfram von Eschenbach, Islam, and the Crusades

Summary

THE VIEW OF THE ORIENT that obtains in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Arthurian romance, Parzival, and in his final, unfinished epic, Willehalm, is unlikely to have stemmed from first-hand experience. While Wolfram had access to Arab learning, probably through the medium of Latin translations, there is no evidence that he ever went to Arab lands. Nevertheless, the Orient and oriental characters play a major role in both narratives, and there is a notable conformity of attitude between the two works, which points to a greater degree of compassion and understanding than might be expected at a time when the crusading ethos was prevalent. Wolfram's use of place-names and proper names that may or may not derive from the Arabic, and the problems of geography, have been tackled elsewhere. The aim of this chapter is to attempt an overview of Wolfram's portrayal of oriental characters and their religion, and the implications of this in the context of the politics of the early thirteenth century.

The first book of Wolfram's Parzival has no parallel in his main source, Chrétien de Troyes's Conte du Graal or Perceval. It sees Gahmuret, Parzival's father, setting off for adventures in the Orient. Gahmuret's goal is to serve “die hœhsten hant,” (13,13; “the Highest Hand on this earth”). He is told of the powerful “bâruc,” the caliph resident in Baldac (Baghdad), to whom two-thirds of the earth are subject, or even more.