A medieval pilgrim fabricated or garbled a description of the Muslim call to prayer

Evidence

The bare contrast between adhan and bells has been a commonplace of travellers’ reportage, but was rare in the Middle Ages. The anonymous English pilgrim said that ‘five or six fellows’ (ribaldi) made the call ‘to the three corners of the world, leaving out the east’; this was ‘in place of bells’. The adhan actually is made facing the Qiblah, that is, in the direction of Mecca, the mu’adhdhin turning left and right at the phrase ‘come to prayer’. The east would be omitted, therefore, only at a point east of Mecca. It is impossible that this author could have observed the adhan at such a point. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2323 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Bishop Arculf went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem around the year 700. Since he was possessed by the desire to walk and worship in the place where Christ had once walked, the Muslims (who had been in occupation of Jerusalem since 637) were all but invisible to him. He merely noted that in the Temple area, ‘the Saracens have now erected a square house of prayer, in a rough manner, by raising planks and beams upon some remains of old ruins, and it is said that it will hold about three thousand men’, before he went on to write about the Christian holy places. Similarly, the Venerable Bede in his History mentioned the attacks of Saracen pirates on the British Isles, without troubling to enquire as to their religion. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 51 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

First Martí concedes that in some things Muhammad was truthful: here he gives a (now-familiar) list of Koranic precepts that are in agreement with Christian doctrine: the unity of God, the Virgin birth, the praise of Jesus and the Gospel, and so on. “Yet many of his words were false”14: the Koran claims that the Virgin Mary was the sister of Aaron, that Jesus announced the arrival of Muhammad, and that Jesus was not really crucified. Here, too, under the rubric of Muhammad’s “lies,” Martí presents the Muslim paradise, full of the pleasures of eating and love-making, and contrasts it with the pure and austere heaven of Paul and the Gospels. Martí also gleans some sayings attributed to Muhammad in the Hadîth collections of al-Bukhâri and Muslim b. al-Hajjâj: that flies wings’ contain poison and that the day of judgement would come within one hundred years of Muhammad. The choice of passages clearly shows the polemical purpose; by pouncing on whatever he finds to be shocking or ridiculous, he can conclude, “all these things seem to be the words of a stupid man or a scoffer rather than a prophet or messenger of God.” (De seta, 32). The purpose is not to understand Islam but to vilify it. While this could no doubt evoke nods of approbation from fellow Dominican missionaries, it is hard to imagine Muslims being convinced through such an arbitrary and hostile selection of Hadîth passages. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1199 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A medieval pilgrim’s account of the adhan betrays it as invented — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2323; Medieval Christian polemicists deliberately cherry-picked Hadith for shock value rather than understanding — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1199; Early medieval pilgrims could walk through Muslim Jerusalem unseeing — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 51

Related

• A medieval pilgrim’s account of the adhan betrays it as invented (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval transcriptions of the adhan captured how it sounded to Christian ears (similarity 0.84)
• Early medieval pilgrims could walk through Muslim Jerusalem unseeing (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• A medieval pilgrim’s account of the adhan betrays it as invented #corroborates (0.92) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2323
• Medieval Christian polemicists deliberately cherry-picked Hadith for shock value rather than understanding #expands (0.72) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1199
• Early medieval pilgrims could walk through Muslim Jerusalem unseeing #corroborates (0.72) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 51