Medieval accounts may have fused Islamic feasts with solar pagan festivals like Nowruz

Evidence

These Spanish and Eastern Christians were hostile to Islam but relatively knowledgeable about it. Such is not the case with many medieval European writers, who (as I show in chapter 5) portray the Saracens as idolaters, praying and sacrificing to the statues of a colorful pantheon: Apollo, Tervagant, Jupiter, and especially Mahoumet (or various other garbled versions of the name Muhammad). Ecclesiastical writers schooled in the Latin classics had a vivid image of pagan worship, an image they transposed to create a portrait of the religious error of the “pagan” Saracens. The chroniclers of the first Crusade used this image to glorify and justify the crusaders’ exploits. Epic poets developed the same images in the Chansons de Geste; fourteenth-century dramatists worked them into their passion plays. For many medieval authors, the Saracens were pagan idolaters. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 69 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Medieval writers imagined Muslim worship by transposing Roman pagan imagery — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 69

Related

• Medieval writers imagined Muslim worship by transposing Roman pagan imagery (similarity 0.89)
• Medieval Christian writers invented Islam as pagan idolatry with a false god Mahoumet (similarity 0.83)
• Latins explained the Muslim Friday as the pagan day of Venus (similarity 0.82)
• Proximity to Islam led Christians to abandon the idolatrous image of Saracens (similarity 0.81)
• Even learned medieval polemicists had to correct the pagan view of Saracens. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval authors largely believed their own caricatures of Muslims as pagan idolaters (similarity 0.81)
• Latin Christendom’s first portraits of Islam reused the template of pagan idolatry. (similarity 0.80)
• Crusade chroniclers framed Saracens as pagans whose defeat advanced Christian eschatology (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval anti-Saracen imagery still persists in Spanish festivals of Moors and Christians (similarity 0.80)
• Crusade-era writers invented Saracen idolatry to justify their own violence (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christians portrayed Muslim Ka’ba worship as hidden pagan idolatry. (similarity 0.80)
• Crusaders justified conquest by recasting Muslims as pagan Roman idolaters (similarity 0.80)
• Casting Islam as revived paganism reframed crusade as continued Roman martyrdom struggle (similarity 0.78)
• Medieval polemic linked Muslim ablutions to the Venus cult (similarity 0.78)
• Crusade chroniclers cast Saracens as pagan Roman persecutors and blurred their ethnic identity (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Medieval writers imagined Muslim worship by transposing Roman pagan imagery #corroborates (0.82) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 69