Medieval accusations of Muslim homosexuality were hearsay, not eyewitness reports

Evidence

It is worthy of note that Tripoli praises Baybars for his freedom from this vice, and that many writers with personal knowledge of life in Islamic societies made no allegations of personal knowledge of the commission of homosexual acts, although they subscribed to the general opinion that Islam did tolerate or encourage them. Among these are Ricoldo, who made a number of personal observations of matters he thought important, and would certainly not have considered this matter unimportant; Tripoli himself; San Pedro; Ramén Martti; and even Fidenzio, whose reference to unmentionable crimes, so many and so great that it would be shameful to speak of them, has all the hall-marks of hearsay. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 799

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the reader’s thread — an early-medieval precedent for how Islam’s sexual deviance is asserted as ideologically necessary despite absent evidence, echoing Anidjar’s genealogical work and Aziz’s ‘Racial Muslim’ on how the stereotype outruns the evidence.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the author elsewhere analyze the rhetorical function of hearsay in these polemics — i.e., why every writer ‘subscribed to the general opinion’ yet none claimed personal knowledge?