Interpretatio iuxta traditionem: The Transmission of Latin Anti-Islamic Texts

Abstract

In medieval translations of the Qur’an and anti-Islamic treatises in Latin it is common to find passages with novel vocabulary or content that may have been perplexing to Western copyists. Some of these passages show how the copyists did not understand them correctly and that the texts were transmitted with clear copying errors. A large part of these copyists’ errors can perhaps be classified together under the same typology based on their Arab or Islamic origin. To what extent these errors in traditio affected the interpretation of certain passages of Islamic origin needs to be assessed.