Medieval Christian accounts idealized Muslim public gravity beyond reality

Evidence

The first is gravitas: the absence, said Ricoldo, of raised heads or waving arms, even among small boys, and of recrimination in public. He claimed ‘in many years’ in Baghdad never to have heard a profane song instead of religious ones. All this sounds exaggerated, presumably by the satiric intention, although based in truth. Even in Islam the gravitas of serious and religious men, like that of well-brought-up children, does not extend throughout the city. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1088

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how medieval observers constructed idealized portraits of other religions for edification — parallels their work on moral panics and cross-cultural representation.