Anti-Islamic polemic drew on earlier Latin and Arabic sources rather than fresh observation

Evidence

Riccoldo returned to Italy around 1300, in order, it seems, to answer at the papal curia charges that he had recklessly classified certain Eastern Christian sects as heretical. It may be upon his return that he completed his Liber peregrinationis; he subsequently composed a polemical work against the Koran, the Contra legem Sarracenorum (Against the law of the Saracens), in which he makes use of earlier Latin and Arabic anti-Muslim polemics (in particular the twelfth-century Arabic Liber denudationis). His final work, the Libellus ad nationes orientales (Treatise on the oriental nations), describes the different Christian sects of the Orient; ironically, Riccoldo, who had lived for a dozen years in the East, here slavishly follows the classifications of Thomas Aquinas, who had never set foot in the East. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1238

Categorization

• XREF: Shows that even eyewitness missionaries recycled prior Latin/Arabic polemic rather than fresh observation — echoes the vault’s claims about discourse self-reproduction and Orientalist knowledge transmission.