Even hostile observers testified to Muslims’ fervent regular prayer in the desert

Evidence

The anonymous English traveller said: “Wherever they are on the Earth, at certain hours of the day, with bended knee and prostrated to earth, they adore God devoutly.’ This note of the ubiquity of the prayer in Muslim lands recurs … In Lull’s romance, Blanquerna, the Pope’s Arabic secretary told him that, being a man of ‘heathen’ (i.e. Muslim) birth, he was familiar with the way at their sermons Muslims weep, because they ‘preach of devotion and of considerations upon the glory of Paradise and the pains of Hell …’ One critic would somewhat meanly admit only the semblance of devotion in a dervish who was ‘the most enthusiastic emulator of his ancestral traditions, adorned externally, indeed, and in a wonderful way, with the political virtues, very simple in appearance, very humbly dressed, modest in bearing, chary of speech; yet within he was empty’. This in the context may refer to the individual case; but more probably the vanity of all virtue outside the Church is implied. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1190 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

And what indeed shall I say of their prayer? So great is their scruple in prayer, and so great their devotion, that I was astonished when I saw it and proved it by experience. For three months and a half I travelled with and accompanied Muslim camel-men in the Arabian and Persian desert, nor once did the camel-men break up for any danger, without praying at the set hours both by day and by night, and especially morning and evening. They make the pretence of such devotion in prayer as to dismiss all other things entirely … — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1191 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even hostile medieval Christian observers wanted to replicate mosque worship practices; Medieval observers recorded Muslim reverent treatment of written God-names as striking practice; Even hostile medieval writers acknowledged Muhammad experienced something extraordinary (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• A medieval friar testified from direct experience to Muslims’ meticulous prayer devotion. #corroborates (0.95) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1191
• Even hostile medieval observers conceded Muslims’ genuine devotional sincerity. #corroborates (0.95) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1190
• Even hostile medieval Christian observers wanted to replicate mosque worship practices #expands (0.80)
• Medieval observers recorded Muslim reverent treatment of written God-names as striking practice #corroborates (0.75)
• Even hostile medieval writers acknowledged Muhammad experienced something extraordinary #corroborates (0.75)
• The desert environment was used to explain Muslim backwardness and villainy. #complicates (0.70) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 43