Studying how writers use their sources reveals attitudes more than the sources themselves

Evidence

I have excluded all consideration of mysticism and of that speculative theology which is on the borders of philosophy. I have not been concerned with such men as al-Ghazali or ibn al-‘Arabi. On the other hand, I have dealt with sources of information that I could identify and that were relevant to my purpose. I have indicated indebtedness by Latin authors to authentic Arab and Muslim documents, such as ibn Ishaq or al-Bukhari, wherever I could; and also to the less authoritative sources that I have mentioned above. This I have done in order to try to determine the attitude of a Latin writer to his material; but in doing so I have not attempted to write a literary history, nor have I given any account of the relationships between writers, except in instances where it illumines their treatment of their data to do so. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 81

Categorization

• SEED: A methodological principle applicable broadly: examining which authentic sources a discourse selects — and which it rejects — is the key diagnostic of attitude, a transferable method for studying how any ‘constitutive outside’ is constructed.