Medieval writers imagined Muslim worship by transposing Roman pagan imagery

Evidence

These Spanish and Eastern Christians were hostile to Islam but relatively knowledgeable about it. Such is not the case with many medieval European writers, who (as I show in chapter 5) portray the Saracens as idolaters, praying and sacrificing to the statues of a colorful pantheon: Apollo, Tervagant, Jupiter, and especially Mahoumet (or various other garbled versions of the name Muhammad). Ecclesiastical writers schooled in the Latin classics had a vivid image of pagan worship, an image they transposed to create a portrait of the religious error of the “pagan” Saracens. The chroniclers of the first Crusade used this image to glorify and justify the crusaders’ exploits. Epic poets developed the same images in the Chansons de Geste; fourteenth-century dramatists worked them into their passion plays. For many medieval authors, the Saracens were pagan idolaters. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 69

Categorization

• CANDY: The garbled pantheon of Apollo, Tervagant, and ‘Mahoumet’ as pagan idols is a delightful cocktail-party fact about medieval misperception.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ as another instance of medieval Christians constructing Islam through classical/greco-roman lenses.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 69
• XREF: connects to: Latins explained the Muslim Friday as the pagan day of Venus; Theory outweighed direct observation in medieval European writing about Islam — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1281; The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda (+2 more)