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The portrayal of Islam in the “Historia Orientalis” by the historian Jacques de Vitry Jacques de Vitry (circa 1170-1240) was Bishop of Acre from 1216 to 1227 and in that capacity lived in the East. During this period he wrote the “Historia Orientalis” in which, among other things, he paints a picture of the people living in the area. Thus he devotes some time to Islam and to its founder in long passages that rely on highly polemical discourse – often completely misrepresentative and legendary – in the tradition of Byzantine theologians. Yet, from under these extremely virulent statements, an argument emerges that was fairly original for the beginning of the 13th Century. The Christian world’s lack of success after the failure of the last crusades leads the author to ponder the reasons for this impotence. Accordingly, he does not follow systematically the doctrinal arguments of many of his predecessors, but rather attempts to assess the situation in the Near East in the 1220s from a human and religious point of view. Implicitly this leads him to sketch the outline of a Near-Eastern identity entirely resistant to models imported from the West.