If it were a question of the inhabitants of Central Africa, who were practically unknown until the explorations of Speke, Stanley, and Livingstone, we should not be surprised that even geographers should know next to nothing about them. But it seems difficult to explain the widespread ignorance which has everywhere obtained regarding a people who have played so important a rôle in history as the Moslems, and who during more than twelve centuries have been in constant relations with the Christian nations of Europe. But, although the contact between the East and the West has been uninterrupted since the time Moslemism essayed _To plant the Crescent o’er the Cross_, the misrepresentations of Mohammed and his followers have continued without intermission from the days of the Crusaders to the present time. And the strangest thing is that the most extravagant tales about Mohammedans and their religion were put in circulation when their originators must have known that they had no foundation in fact. Many of the stories--as false as they were ridiculous--that were long current respecting the Arabian Prophet and the religion which he founded were due to the _Trouvères_ and the _Troubadours_. A great majority of the _Chansons de Geste_ exhibit a pitiful ignorance of the tenets of the Saracens, and not a few of them contributed to give vogue to the most revolting fables respecting Mohammed and Islam. Although neither Leo the Isaurian nor Oliver Cromwell, both the sworn enemies of images, were more opposed to idolatry or to the worship of images than Mohammed, nevertheless, in _La Chanson de Roland_,[230] the Franks are represented under the walls of Saragossa as avenging their defeat at Roncesvelles by mutilating and destroying the idols of their enemies. In the _Chanson d’Antioche_--declared to be “a very beautiful _chanson_ which does not contain any fables but only the unadulterated truth”--the author, Richard le Pelerin, in the beginning of his poem, asks God to put to dire confusion the followers of Mohammed--especially those _Qui croient et adorent la figure Mahom._ In the _Roman de Beaudouin de Sebourc_, the author goes to still greater lengths. By a strange aberration he makes the idol of Mohammed the emblem of Islam, as the Cross is the emblem of Christianity. For, in this _chanson_ the Comtesse de Porthieu is represented as wishing to abjure her faith before the Sultan Saladin and expressing her readiness to adore the effigy of the Prophet: _Mahom voel aourer; aportez-le-moi-cha._ And Saladin, on his part, is pictured as ordering the idol to be brought for the adoration of the newly made convert to Mohammedanism: _Qu’ on aportast Mahom, et celle l’aoura._