Though perhaps superfluous, it is briefly worth noting that both Christians and Muslims saw and disliked each other through distinctly ideological prisms. Like their Eastern coreligionists, many Spanish Christians believed that Muhammad was, to quote a seventh-century document, a “son of darkness.”39 “Inspired by a malign spirit, he invented an abominable sect consonant with carnal delights… of carnal men,” wrote another;40 Muslims “were ordered to rob, to make prisoner and to kill the adversaries of God [Allah] and their prophet, and to persecute and destroy them in every way.” Christians
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