Here are some excerpts form the book "Byzantium viewed by the Arabs", Harvard University Press, 2004.
Al-Jahiz was an Afro-Arab scholar from the 9th century AD.
There are a number of quotes from medieval Arabic and Islamic authors in the book, which I will cite progressively. If anybody has similar sources pertinent to the topic, please share them.
Various texts devoted passages to non-Arab peoples that tended to contain whole series of ethnic stereotypes. The Byzantines were, for instance, accused of miserliness. Al-Jahiz states that "the Rum are miserly, less than the Slavs but more than the Persians." This miserliness is not attributed to a fear of poverty but to habit or an innate flaw in character..........Particularly horrifying, in Arab eyes, was the Byzantine custom of castrating children, especially those destined to be consecrated to the service of the church. Al-Jahiz writes: "The Byzantines are the originators of this custom, which contradicts the spirit of kindness and mercy." The Rum, together with the Saqaliba [Slavs] are the only nations to practice castration, a most odious crime and a sign of their pitiless natures and corrupt hearts. The Byzantines are accused of mutilating innocent and defenseless children, and, still worse, of castrating their own children and selling them. Pg 121-122.
The entire period of Byzantium's Macedonian dynasty (r. A.D 867-1025) was a brilliant era in the political existence of the empire. It was now the turn of the Muslim lands to suffer repeated incursions, accompanied by the looting and devastation. Pg. 165
Under the direction of the Macedonian dynasty - and particularly in the course of the 10th century - the Byzantines took the offensive and effected substantial re-conquests of what had become Muslim territory. With the weakening of the central caliphate and the revival of Byzantium, Muslim hostility became patently obvious. Pg. 225
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