Medieval Christian writers mistook Islam’s qiblah as a sun-oriented choice to the south

Evidence

On a technical point, it was taken for granted that the Prophet had adopted the qiblah, the direction of the prayer, out of a contrary-minded attitude to the Christian and Jewish practices. … Higden said that the qiblah was chosen because ‘there is plenitude of light’ to the south, a remark that seems to be explained by Verona, who said that this was because God would judge in the south, and should be worshipped in the light of noon. This conflicts flatly with Islamic avoidance of apparent sun-worship at sunrise, noon and sunset; it is remarkable that there was general ignorance of this. The information that the giblah is south is, of course, itself wholly mistaken; the qiblah is Mecca, and south, therefore, only in Syria. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1195

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the medieval European misunderstanding of Islam scholarship—the broader theme of Orientalist projection this book apparently documents.
• SHARE: A very specific medieval-error tidbit someone deeply into the history of religious polemics or the reception of Islam in medieval Europe would savor.