Spanish village festivals reenacted a medieval fiction of Muhammad as idol
Evidence
The idols of Mahomet live on into the twentieth century in the festivals of small towns in Spain, many of which involve annual ritual reenactments of the reconquest of the town from the Muslims. In a number of these fiestas of “Moors and Christians,” a squadron of local inhabitants dressed up as Moros take over a mock citadel and set up a “Mahoma”—a dressedup effigy meant to represent Muhammad—on the walls. In the mock siege that follows, the Christian troops take over the citadel and destroy the Mahoma. In some of the fiestas, the Mahoma, filled with fireworks, explodes in a spectacular (and somewhat dangerous) pyrotechnic finale. In the second half of the twentieth century, many of the towns, in a post-Vatican-II spirit of ecumenism, banished Mahoma from these festivities as an embarrassing travesty of Islam. Yet eight centuries after the Chanson de Roland describes the Saracens of Saragossa toppling the idol Mahomet into a ditch, eight centuries after Raoul de Caen imagines Tancred destroying a gilded idol of Muhammad in the temple of Solomon, Valencian villagers reenact this imaginary idol-destruction as a central part of their dramatization of the reconquista. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 724 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Spanish village festivals reenacted the destruction of Muhammad’s idol into the twentieth century; Spanish village festivals reenacted the fictional Mahomet idol until the twentieth century — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 724; Medieval romances treated the Qur’an as an idol alongside Muhammad — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 232 (+16 more)
Broader Connections
- Spanish village festivals reenacted the destruction of Muhammad’s idol into the twentieth century
#corroborates(1.00) - Spanish village festivals reenacted the fictional Mahomet idol until the twentieth century
#corroborates(1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 724 - Medieval Christian writers sometimes preserved authentic Islamic legends about Muhammad
#complicates(0.80) - The medieval Muslim-idol legend originated as Crusade war propaganda
#complicates(0.80) - Medieval Christians transmitted Muslim miracle narratives about Muhammad’s youth
#complicates(0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 508 - Crusade chroniclers depicted Muslims worshiping Muhammad as an idol
#complicates(0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 641 - Medieval writers identified Muhammad’s followers with the monstrous races
#complicates(0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 222 - Medieval Christians imagined Muhammad as a monstrous race-begotter with magical sexual powers
#complicates(0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 126 - Medieval crusade propaganda recycled hostile legends about Muhammad for effect
#complicates(0.80) - Medieval passion plays made Muhammad the god of Christ’s Jewish and Roman tormentors
#complicates(0.80) - Medieval sexual fantasies about Muhammad later transferred to all Muslim men
#complicates(0.80) - Medieval Christians found Muhammad’s stated pleasures profoundly scandalous
#complicates(0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 586 - A medieval chronicler invented a scene of Saint Isidore routing Muhammad from Spain
#complicates(0.80) - Medieval authors largely believed their own caricatures of Muslims as pagan idolaters
#complicates(0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 692 - Medieval writers depicted Muhammad as an animated idol that killed Christians on approach.
#complicates(0.80)