Even well-educated Byzantine intellectuals portrayed Islam as idolatry with hidden pagan gods

Evidence

Even Anna Comnena, the Byzantine princess whose Alexiad chronicles the reign of her father, the emperor Alexius Comnenus, purveys the same image of Saracens as idolaters. For Anna, the barbarians of Egypt and Libya “worship Mahumet with mystic rites” while the “Ishmaelites” worship Chobar, Astarte, and Ashtaoth. Anna, who is able to describe in detail the theological errors of Bogomils and other Christian heretics, and whose work bristles with citations of Homer and Thucydides, is completely in the dark about the religious beliefs and practices of the Turks. Even Byzantine writers (such as Georges the Monk and Nicetas of Byzantium) who knew more about Islam than Anna presented Muhammad’s monotheism as a veneer covering his true idolatry. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 651

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the long history of deliberate misrepresentations of Islam as paganism. — connects to: The crudest Muslim-idol beliefs flourished among the illiterate
• SEED: An essay angle: just how much misinformation can brilliant people hold about an enemy they fight? Anna Comnena as a case study in learned ignorance.