Missionary failure gave birth to the admirable-yet-unconvertible Muslim stereotype

Evidence

Though he frankly admires the Muslims’ learning, culture, piety, and hospitality, he shows little hope that they will convert peacefully. Their law will perish by the sword, but it seems unlikely that this will happen any time soon. In order to explain his own failures as a missionary (and the failures of others like him or better than him-for example, Dominic and Francis, whose missionary efforts he evokes in his Letters), he must blame the stubborn irrationality of the Saracens. Riccoldo profusely praises their learning and erudition, yet later claims they are prohibited from studying philosophy since the caliphs know it would disprove their 250 • Thirteenth-Century Dreams of Conquest and Conversion “irrational” religion. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1256

Categorization

• XREF: Genealogical root of the modern trope (as in Aziz vault material) of Muslims who are individually admirable but collectively impossible to persuade or assimilate — produced here by the missionary’s need to explain failed conversion efforts.
• SEED: Essay angle: how the defeated missionary’s psychology — admiration + despair producing a blame-framed Other — recurs in modern liberal accounts of Muslim inassimilability.