Crusade chroniclers framed Saracens as pagans whose defeat advanced Christian eschatology

Evidence

While few of the Latin chroniclers of the first Crusade imagine their Saracen enemies in quite as vivid and hostile terms, they do not present them in ways that contradict this image. The epic descriptions of battles against the Saracens demanded a vivid and colorful enemy, one against whom war was just and victory was glorious. Almost all these chroniclers describe them as pagans, and most of them present the crusaders’ victory as part of the age-old struggle with paganism, as part of the culminating events that would result in the eradication of paganism and—for some—the second coming of Christ. Their idols are at times called Jupiter, Apollo, or Mahomet; chroniclers of the first Crusade occasionally refer to their adversaries as Mahummicolae: “Muhammad-worshippers.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 606

Categorization

• XREF: Genealogical grounding for the Anidjar/Aziz claims in the vault about how medieval Christian polemic constructed Islam as pagan idolatry — the reduction of Islam to paganism is a trope origin this evidence anchors.