A forged disputation text went undetected as anti-Muslim propaganda for six centuries.

Evidence

To find such a text, of course, is a Dominican missionary’s dream. If a learned Jew and Muslim can through careful study come to realize the superiority of Christianity, there is hope for the Dominican missionary effort. … Such a find seemed too good to be true as indeed it was: it was a pious hoax that a learned Christian (probably Alfonso Buenhombre himself) foisted on his Latin readers, a hoax not brought to light until 1992. … Is this pious fraud meant to be a tool for Dominican missionaries in the line of action? Is it meant to cheer them on in their often daunting and thankless endeavor? Or is it a desperate attempt to justify Dominican mission to a skeptical audience of Parisian theologians? — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1276

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the genealogy thread: fabricated ‘insider’ texts used to justify mission/conversion — the same rhetorical economy seen in modern anti-Muslim ‘ex-Muslim testimony’ claims.
• QUESTION: Whether its audience was missionaries (encouragement) or Parisian theologians (justification) changes how we read the hoax’s function — worth chasing further.