Thirteenth-century chroniclers imagined Muslims, heretics, and traitors in a common anti-Christian alliance

Evidence

Indeed, Christian chroniclers beyond the Iberian peninsula perceived the armies of Almohad caliph al-Nasir as a menace to all Europe; for Cesarius of Heisterbach and for the anonymous author of the Annals of Cologne, the Cathar heretics called on the caliph to aid them against the forces of the Albigensian Crusade; for Matthew Paris, King John of England promised to convert to Islam in return for the caliph’s aid against the French. Writers of the twelfth century had painted Muhammad as a heresiarch, and in the thirteenth some imagine heretics, Muslims, and traitors teaming up into an anti-Christian alliance. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 947

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates the vault’s claim that the West constructed Islam as an internal enemy by conflation — foreshadowing how later Islamophobic discourse collapses political, religious, and national ‘enemies’ into one undifferentiated threat.
• ADDENDUM: Complements both the sacrifice/reconquest material and the genealogy of religious-outcast conflation that modern securitization of Islam reproduces.
• CANDY: England’s King John allegedly offered to convert to Islam for Almohad military aid is a delicious rumor to retell.