The aim of the article is to reconstruct the image of Muslims in Karaite and, in a broader sense, Jewish community by examining the anti-Christian polemic treatise composed in the 16th century by Issak Troki – one of the most specific sources that appeared in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). It is expected to develop a very limited research of the attitude of the society of the GDL to the Tatars and Islam, even when using Christian sources. One can assume that a unique type of coexistence in a multi-religious society was the reason to include Tatars into the Jewish–Christian polemics, to expand the range of questions usually raised in such polemics, and, finally, to create new theological discourses, which was not typical of other European regions. The broad context of religious polemics in the GDL allows to state that different attitudes were often based on a different interpretation of excerpts of the Holly Script, the discussion on the need of one or another religious ritual or the form of its performance. At the same time, Issak Troki was not interested in the everyday life of Tatars. In his polemics, a conceptual Tatar was acting (mostly like a theological prototype) as not related to the Tatar community in the GDL.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.