Christian depictions of Islam emerged from literary mythology, not lived contact

Evidence

In the early centuries of Islam, Christians were essentially writing in the dark; even during the Crusades, they were woefully ignorant of Islam. Anglo-Saxon perceptions of Islam “were formed in a Christian literary matrix, since most people had no chance to witness Islam for themselves or to hear a first-hand report—and even a pilgrim to Jerusalem such as Atculf or Willibald had been informed to some extent by the Christian literary corpus before arriving in Saracen territory.” Literary and artistic representations of Christian-Muslim encounters often reflect a reliance on mythology, as seen in the descriptions of the purple-skinned Saracens and Muslim dog-headed men that Christian soldiers encountered in battle. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 144

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core ‘fear without an object’ thesis — the image precedes reality, directly serving the reader’s guiding question #2. Connects to how Anglo-Saxon literary culture shaped perception before any Muslim contact. — connects to: The poisoned lamb story originates in Islamic sources, not Christian polemic
• SEED: Strong supporting evidence for an essay on how medieval Christians fabricated the Muslim monster from mythology alone, with zero firsthand testimony.