Medieval Christian accounts of Islam’s origins recycled a few basic narrative permutations

Evidence

In all these stories there was almost every possible permutation of a few basic versions. The sudden success of heretical Christianity and Talmudic Judaism which such a picture supposed the rise of Islam to represent fitted conveniently the idea of a more or less Christian pre-Islamic Arabia, but it equally well suited that of an ignorant, undiscriminating and wholly obtuse heathenism. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 481

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism thesis about how Western scholarship recycles fixed narratives about the East. — connects to: By 1250 the unity-of-God doctrine was common Christian knowledge about Islam; A medieval Christian death story combined pig, Jew, and ascension motifs into one narrative; Medieval theologians classified Islam in multiple overlapping religious frameworks (+2 more)
• SEED: Angle: how even modern misinformation thrives on a tiny set of ‘basic versions’ re-permuted rather than invented fresh.