[wideawake]

THE BYZANTINES WERE THE WEST.

[RightWhale]

The Byzantines probably seemed like the West to the Muslims, but they weren't the West. The Byzantines were Greek, the West the former Rome. The West consisted of a miserable, backward, disease-ridden, warring set of barbaric kingdoms until about the First, Frankish [Norman,] Crusade in 1099. Quite a fall from the glory of Rome.