ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the popular image of Muslims and the Prophet of Islam among western audiences in twelfth-century crusade-related sources. ‘Popular’ here indicates both oral and written transmission, the basic assumption being that the texts under discussion were read aloud in public, as well as studied in the privacy of reading rooms. The primary sources under discussion consist of four eleventh-and twelfth-century Latin travesties of Machomet’s1 (Muhammad’s) life written in medieval France and Germany: Embricon of Mainz’s Vita Mahumeti, written by 1033, Guibert of Nogent’s description of the founder of Islam included in his Dei gesta per Francos from about 1108, Gautier of Compiègne’s Otia de Machomete from 1137-55 and Adelphus’s Vita Machometi of about 1150. These texts are compared with their contemporary crusader chronicles and scholarly works on Islam, as well as the descriptions of Saracens in the chansons de geste from c.1180 onward.2 In investigating the sources, it is necessary to consider two core issues. First, what kind of information do the texts relate to the Prophet Muhammad and Muslims? To what extent can this information be interpreted as conventional and common to a wider selection of sources? And are there any specific sets of details distinctive to the source or a limited group of sources?
