Franks who met Cordovan Christians firsthand still rendered Muslims as generic pagans

Evidence

Aimoin has nothing to say about Islam or about the particular crimes for which the martyrs were killed. This is all the more striking in that Usuard and Odilard went to Córdoba, met Eulogius, Saul, and others, and even read the Memoriale sanctorum. Yet on the few occasions Aimoin refers to Muslims it is as “Saracens,” “pagans,” or “ministers of the devil”: vituperative terms, indeed, but ones that draw no distinction between Roman pagans of old and Cordovan Muslims of his own day. Whatever the two may have learned about Islam on their trip to Córdoba he does not deem worth reporting. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 571

Categorization

• XREF: Supplies a medieval root for Anidjar/Aziz/Razack’s arguments about how Western discourse flattened Islam into generic error/paganism rather than engaging its particularity.
• ADDENDUM: Could underpin the moral-panics article: the Cordovan martyrs were a locally controversial, widely despised movement whose real character was erased once re-narrated for a distant audience.