A fabricated Christian polemic long served as Western Europe’s main source on Muhammad

Evidence

Al-Kindi’s Arabic was translated into Latin in the twelfth century in Toledo under the patronage of Peter of Cluny (see below). Versions of the Risala were frequently included in later compilations of anti-Muslim material, and for centuries in Western Europe al-Kindi’s rather inventive treatise was regarded as the major source on the life of the Prophet. Al-Kindi’s treatise offered the appearance of balance, as it mingled praise and blame of the Prophet (though much more blame than praise), and there was very little other material available in Latin against which it was possible to check the Risala’s fabrications and misunderstandings. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 55

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how misinformation becomes authoritative simply by being the only available source — the medieval precedent for modern epistemic monoculture.
• QUESTION: What specific fabrications in al-Kindi’s Risala were later debunked, and how long did they survive in European scholarship?

Related

• Medieval Christian readers preferred easily ridiculed Islamic legends over the faithful Qur’an translation. (similarity 0.82)
• Arabic texts were prized for polemic authenticity yet intellectually ignored by Latin Christians (similarity 0.81)
• The Risalah’s influence came from combining authenticity with polemical value (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval European misinformation about Islam came from polemical needs, not ignorance. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian polemicists recycled Arabic sources through layered Latin rewritings. (similarity 0.80)
• A single polemical source distorted Latin Europe’s entire picture of Muhammad (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christian thinkers could not conceive of non-Scriptural sources of truth (similarity 0.80)
• Polemical borrowing across Latin texts propagated deliberate misrepresentation of Islam (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Latin Christians distrusted Arabic Christian sources despite citing them as authoritative (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval polemicists used Muslim sources to validate anti-Muslim legends (similarity 0.79)
• Access to translated source texts did not guarantee accurate medieval portraits of Muhammad (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval readers preferred Muslim legendary material they could ridicule over the Quran itself (similarity 0.79)
• Western knowledge of Islam was long shaped by forged and pseudonymous polemics (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval anti-Islamic polemic could work from accurate hadith rather than fabricated detail (similarity 0.79)
• A converted Jew supplied the Latin West’s foundational anti-Islamic polemic (similarity 0.79)