Bede’s guide to the Holy Land barely shows the Arab conquest happening

Evidence

Once there, he was quite shocked to find the reality to be quite different from what he had been imagining. His was perhaps the same kind of disappointment that had compelled the Tirolean crèche maker Franz Pernlochner the Senior (1847–95) to construct his work without any reference to the Orient, after he had been to Jerusalem to seek models for his art. Čeloud, however, preferred to solve the cognitive dissonance between orientalist fantasy and a visitor’s reality in favor of the fantasy. He went on working as before, making orientalist references to the Doré tradition rather than to what he himself had seen. He grumbled, for example, that there were too many black sheep in Palestine, and decided to stick to making white ones. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 200 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Historians now recognize the Muslim conquests of the Sassanian Persian empire and of large swathes of the Roman (or Byzantine) empire as a fundamental watershed of world history. This was not clear to those who lived through the conquests, the largely Christian inhabitants of the Middle East. They had seen their share, after all, of conquerors, most recently in the back-and-forth struggles between Persian and Roman empires that had so weakened both. From Constantinople, the invasions must have seemed the latest of a series that had lasted several centuries: Rome had lost its western provinces to Germanic barbarians and had weathered the coordinated as- Early Eastern Christian Reactions to Islam • 41 sault of the Avars and the Sassanian Persians. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 290 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In a section devoted to the reign of the caliph Walîd I (705–15), the chronicler recounts the Muslim conquests in Asia Minor (Romania), India, and the Mediterranean islands. The conquest of Spain receives one sentence: “In the western regions the Kingdom of the Goths, for so long and so solidly established in Spain, was invaded by a general named Mûsâ, with his army, was conquered and made to pay tribute.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 471 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bede ignored Arab defeats of Byzantium until the conquests reached the west; Muslim conquests seemed unremarkable to contemporaries who had seen many — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 290; Some early Iberian chroniclers treated the Muslim conquest as unremarkable history — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 471 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Bede ignored Arab defeats of Byzantium until the conquests reached the west #responds-to (1.00)
• Muslim conquests seemed unremarkable to contemporaries who had seen many #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 290
• Some early Iberian chroniclers treated the Muslim conquest as unremarkable history #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 471
• Jerusalem’s Muslim conquest did not immediately define the Orient as Muslim #corroborates (1.00) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 101
• Orientalist artists often preferred inherited fantasy to firsthand observation of the actual Holy Land #complicates (1.00) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 200