Christian thought on Islam stagnated for four centuries after 1300

Evidence

Little truly new was written about Islam between 1300 and the Enlightenment. There were occasional exceptions, the best known being that of Juan de Segovia, whose grand project was a trilingual Koran: the Arab text alongside new translations into Latin and Spanish. Yet for the most part the humanists turned their back on Islam: Arab and Muslim culture were parts of the “Gothic” accretion that they wished to shed in order to return to a pure, antique wisdom. The old stereotypes of barbaric invaders, now couched in the vocabulary of humanism, flowed easily from their pens: gone was any sense that Islam could be a serious intellectual or theological adversary. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1357

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the broader thesis in Said’s Orientalism that Western Islamic studies were stagnant until the Enlightenment’s colonial turn. — connects to: False statements about Islam persisted for centuries because community good seemed to require them; The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today; Gibbon’s celebrated chapter on Islam broke no new ground