Claudius Salmasius  

"A second hypothesis, which was first suggested by Salmasius, and which has been followed out by Mr. T. Warton," ascribes to the Saracens the foundation of romantic fiction. It had at one time been a received opinion in Europe, that the wonders of Arabian imagination were first communicated to the western world by means of the crusades ; but Mr. Warton, while he argues that these expeditions tended greatly to propagate this mode of fabling, contends that these fictions were introduced at a much earlier period by the Arabians, who, in the beginning of the eighth century, settled in Spain."

--History of Fiction (1814) by John Colin Dunlop