Western knowledge of Islam was long shaped by forged and pseudonymous polemics

Evidence

All these strands were brought together when the West began to form its own canon of what Islam is and what Muhammad had been. The most important sources of information reached Latin Europe by way of Spain. … The apparent polemic utility and the authenticity of the information of this work are so great that it was republished in the nineteenth century in London, for the use of Missions, and Muir himself shortly after brought out a summarised translation. Its reputation was not less in the Middle Ages, and it was translated by Peter of Toledo, as part of the Cluniac corpus of translations commissioned by Peter the Venerable, and very long extracts were given still wider publicity by their inclusion in Vincent de Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 66

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports Anidjar’s genealogy of how ‘the Jew’ and ‘the Arab/Muslim’ are produced as Christian Europe’s theological-constitutive others — the canon-defining text itself being pseudonymous is a striking instance.
• QUESTION: The claim that a forged, pseudonymous polemic was republished in 19th-century London ‘for the use of Missions’ — worth chasing the full citation trail of this work’s career as missionary ammunition.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘the forged canon’ — how a pseudonymous text became the authoritative Western source on Islam for nearly a millennium, from Cluniac corpus to Victorian missionary presses.