Medieval Christian rebuttals of Islam distorted sources even when better readings were available.

Evidence

Ricoldo treated the miracle of the divided moon, attributed by Muslims to Muhammad, with particular attention, as did also the reprobatio. The latter distinguished carefully between what the Qur’an says and what the Muslims assert; the tale was, of course, absurd: fabulose asserunt Saraceni … But the Qur’an says nothing of this tale in which Muhammad gives orders to the moon, the author warned his readers; it says only that the day is drawing near when the moon shall be divided, and this, to anyone who understands it correctly, means the Day of Judgement. … This was a fair and reasonable use of sources. Ricoldo, in the Itinerarium, began with assurance that masked inaccuracy. … In both accounts he blurred the distinction between the Islamic assertion and the Qur’anic denial, which, from the Christian point of view, is the only point of the story. Ricoldo’s statement owes its unfairness and obscurity to the Contrarietas; it comes in a chapter devoted to proving Islam to be ‘mendacissima’; Ricoldo was not the first or the last to do so, in good faith or ill, mendaciously. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 438

Categorization

• XREF: Shows a concrete early mechanism of the genealogical construction of ‘Islam’ as false religion that Anidjar and the existing vault thread trace into the present.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing whether this deliberate source-blurring pattern recurs in later Orientalist textual practice, forming a methodological continuity.