Earliest Christian accounts ignored Islam’s religious dimension entirely

Evidence

Hence it should not be surprising that the earliest Christian commentators on the Muslim conquests have little to say about Islam or its prophet. One searches in vain in these texts for the words “Muslim” or “Islam,” or indeed for any indication that the invaders have religious motives. The earliest Syriac texts, for example, speak of “kings” rather than caliphs, “Arabs” (Tayy) rather than Muslims. Muhammad is mentioned rarely, and primarily as a military and political—rather than a spiritual—leader. Several chroniclers supposed that the new Arab invaders must have been idolaters like the Arab tribesmen of an earlier era. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 293

Categorization

• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in how religious wars are retroactively framed — the contemporaries did not even register the invaders as Muslims.
• STORYSTEM: A narrative where a conqueror’s religion is invisible to the conquered — everyone interprets the invasion as one more dynastic war while the conqueror’s faith reshapes everything. The irony of chroniclers assuming idolatry.
• ADDENDUM: Complements ‘Grafting & Growth’ framing of how world-changing phenomena pass unremarked by their contemporaries — infrastructure and conquest alike are invisible to those living through them.