Christian taxonomy of the world frames later perceptions of Muslims

Evidence

Yet what impresses, throughout Isidore’s huge corpus of works (especially in his magnum opus, the Etymologies, or Origins), is a will to order the universe, to offer an organized, coherent summary of human knowledge. … In order to understand how medieval Christian writers perceived Muslims, the Christian views of history and religious deviancy epitomized in the works of Isidore must first be understood. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the vault’s genealogical claim (Anidjar/Aziz/Razack that Islam-West oppositions have deep Christian roots) by showing Isidore’s encyclopedic taxonomy as the conceptual frame through which the first Christian descriptions of Muslims were filtered.