Medieval friars and Muslims sometimes met amicably when both avoided controversy

Evidence

(Itin. xxvii) refused to eat when food was prepared for them in the houses of Muslims in which they were guests, it is implied, not only that the Latins rejected overtures of friendship, but that their talk with Muslims was never acrimonious enough to cause bad feeling, as it certainly would have, if a fraction of the Disputatio had been repeated. The group of missionaries with Angelo da Spoleto (note 24 above) “discussed several matters of Scripture with the Caliph of the Muslims, who seemed to agree with the brethren in many things’. The Christians did not claim that this was a dispute. As far as the Muslims were concerned, the friars were working, with permission, for charitable objects. It is likely to have been an occasion when both sides wished to avoid controversy, and spoke of things they expected to agree about. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2134

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the vault’s picture of an absolute Christian-Muslim enmity as constitutive binary, since these encounters deliberately avoided acrimony.