Reception of Islamic Civilization in Latvia in the Context of Middle and Near East from the 18th to the Middle of the 20th Century
Reception of Islamic Civilization in Latvia in the Context of Middle and Near East from the 18th to the Middle of the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: With emergence of the modern Latvian nation Islamic civilisation was manifested in the Latvian literature and publications through a variety of extremely different interpretations originating from Orientalism influenced by the Enlightenment and Romanticism, narrow-minded missionarism of the Western church, national awakening sympathetic to the ‘Eastern lands’, socially oriented solidarity with peoples who had suffered colonialism and meta-human openness to different cultures, religions and traditions. The aim of the article is to touch upon these evaluations in the Latvian materials from the 18th Century to the Middle of the 20th Century through typical examples by disclosing their causes resulting both from the perception of the heritage of European intellectual history and from the transformation of the world outlook determined by the historical experience of Latvian intellectuals. Influence of Central European thinkers who wrote in German and Baltic Germans in this regard is no less important as the later contribution by Latvians who continued the centuries- long discourse of reception of Muslim countries, which started in Livonian times and lasted during existence of Baltic provinces in the Russian Empire, independent Latvia and the USSR.

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