The idolatrous-Saracen image outlasted accurate textual knowledge about Islam

Evidence

The persistence of this image—across a wide variety of texts in numerous European languages—has surprised many modern critics and historians; it is all the more astonishing in that it persists in the face of more reliable information about Islam. A reader of William of Tyre’s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, for example, would learn that the Saracens revered Muhammad as a prophet and rejected worship of idols. Yet an illuminator of one of the manuscripts of a French translation of William’s text tells a different story. He portrays a group of Saracens worshiping a naked, shield-bearing idol in the temple of Jerusalem (see illustration). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 719

Categorization

• XREF: Shows image trumping information — parallels the vault’s theme of trope persistence independent of empirical contact; relevant to Islam-West opposition claims.
• SEED: Angle: ‘why images outlive accurate information’ — how polemical iconography overrode textual monotheism within a single manuscript.