Choosing unreliable legends was deliberate political historiography, not scholarly incompetence

Evidence

For Norman Daniel, the failure of medieval authors such as Alfonso and his team of scholars to stick with good, reliable, Arabic texts shows that they are unable to distinguish between reliable sources and unreliable ones. On the contrary, it shows a consummate historiographical skill: the ability to shape the past to fit a political agenda. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 970

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Challenges the modern reflex to read medieval credulity as ignorance; reframes deliberate polemic selection as skilled historiography — a dense point about how ‘reliability’ criteria are themselves ideological.