Nuns forced into concubinage were blamed for producing Muslim tyrants.

Evidence

Ricoldo was very conscious of the carrying away of the women and children as prisoners, of their selling dearly, of their being first triumphantly paraded through the cities of Islam, of the despatch of some as gifts to different kings; above all he thought of the fate of nuns, used as concubines, who became the mothers, as he several times insisted, of the worst Muslim tyrants. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 735

Categorization

• QUESTION: Ricoldo’s insistence that tyrants’ mothers were Christian nuns implies a bloodline theory of Muslim cruelty worth chasing — is this echoed in later polemics or chronicles?
• SHARE: Send to a medievalist friend: the rhetorical trope that the worst Muslim rulers were actually sons of enslaved Christian nuns is striking and specific.
• XREF: connects to: Ricoldo stressed that nuns enslaved as concubines mothered the worst Muslim tyrants