Llull voiced crusade critique through a fictional Muslim sultan’s envoy

Evidence

In his novel Blaquerna, Llull has the sultan of Egypt send an envoy to Rome to lambast the Pope: the Christians, claims the sultan, must be the real followers of “Mafumet,” since they are trying to spread their religion by the sword. God does not wish the Christians to possess the Holy Land because they are unwilling to follow the example of the apostles. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1300

Categorization

• QUESTION: Did medieval Christian authors routinely use Muslim mouthpieces to voice internal religious critique? Worth tracing this rhetorical device.
• SEED: Angle: how fiction lets medieval theologians say what orthodoxy forbade them to say directly — the novel as a safe space for heresy-adjacent critique.