Medieval scholars transmitted mangled Islamic names without any direct knowledge of Islam

Evidence

Paris, who had no direct knowledge of Islam, personally accepted this Apology version; at least, the form Nastoreus, which seems to derive from it (this is the name Nestor, in other versions Soszus; in the Arabic original Sergius the Nestorian), Paris personally wrote into the St Albans Chronicle that he had inherited. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1289

Categorization

• XREF: The distortion of names across textual chains connects to how knowledge about Islam gets degraded in transmission — resonant with the vault’s work on distorted constructions of Islam. — connects to: Self-styled anti-sharia experts lacked even basic knowledge of Islamic law — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 409