Medieval Europeans imagined the East theologically before Muslim stereotypes emerged

Evidence

In the proto-orientalist imagination of the early Middle Ages, the Jew was imagined in terms of the oriental location of the Holy Land before the Muslim. The “East” was at the time constructed mythologically and theologically rather than ethnographically. It was the site of sacred biblical history, and also of apocalyptic events heralding the Second Coming and the Last Judgment. … The legend of Prester John, the hero who was to come from faraway East to revitalize Christian faith, illustrates the belief that the Orient continued, even after the death of Christ, to be imbued with a holiness that was capable of recharging a spiritually lax Christendom to its West (it also highlights the fact that the Christian presence in the Orient was part of Western Christendom’s image of the East). — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 100

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that the Orient was holy and could ‘recharge’ a lax Christendom subtly inverts the usual East-as-degenerate orientalism narrative, complicating any simple victimization story.
• XREF: connects to: Medieval Europeans modeled Muhammad’s Arabia on their own society