Crusade chroniclers depicted Muslims worshiping Muhammad as an idol

Evidence

A key scene in all the chronicles of the first Crusade, of course, is the siege of Jerusalem itself, in which several chroniclers describe a confrontation between Christ and Muhammad. When the Christians laid siege to Jerusalem, they made a penitential pilgrimage around the city, armed and barefoot. According to Tudebodus, when the Muslims of Jerusalem saw the procession, they brought onto the city wall an idol on a lance (or perhaps some sort of stick—asta is the Latin word), covered with a cloth. How the Christians knew this was “Machomet” is not explained. The crucifix, confronted with the idol of Machomet, began to bleed miraculously. Here the idol Machomet combats Christ on the crucifix, and the crucifix is destined to win. The Amiravissus (apparently the pagan ruler of Jerusalem) subsequently laments the imminent fall of his city and twice invokes Machomet and the other gods. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 641

Categorization

• XREF: The invented ‘idol of Muhammad’ motif recurs across Tolan’s account of medieval Christian imaginings of Islam; connects to how adversaries are fabricated rather than described. — connects to: The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda; The crudest Muslim-idol beliefs flourished among the illiterate
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: where did the concrete image of an idol Muhammad on a lance come from — an actual relic, misreading of a banner, or pure invention?