Medieval Christians projected invented doctrines onto Shi’ism they barely knew

Evidence

William of Tyre described the foundation of the Fatimid dynasty, quoting the descent of Ubaydullah correctly, except for large omissions; and Vitry described its extinction. Neither knew much about the religious character of Shi’ism. William thought that al-Mahdi (as Ubaydullah’s title) meant complanans, the Leveller, ‘he who directed all things to quiet, and without trouble made the ways level for the people’. William and those who followed him quoted the idea that ‘Ali had been intended by God to receive the message which Gabriel by error gave to Muhammad; this is an extreme view which most Shi’ah of Ja’fari confession would repudiate to-day but which even in Ja’fari Shi’ism communicated itself to travellers in Persia of the seventeenth century. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1800

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the vault’s core claim that the Western image of Islam is a constructed projection: even earnest medieval chroniclers fabricated theologies (the Gabriel-by-error and Leveller misreadings) rather than learning actual doctrine.