Alfonsi’s smear biography framed Muhammad as a fraud ruling through violence and lust

Evidence

Closely following the Risâlat al-Kindî, Petrus recounts that Muhammad had first been an idolater and had enriched himself through trade and through his marriage with Khadîja. Wishing to rule over his tribe, he decided to pretend to be a prophet; he and his followers enriched themselves through war and pillage. Muhammad’s loss and injury at the battle of Uhud show that he was not a true prophet, for otherwise he would have foreseen and avoided them. The three signs of prophecy, Petrus says, are “probity of lifestyle, performance of miracles, absolute truth in everything he says.” Muhammad, for Petrus, fails on all three accounts. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 804

Categorization

• XREF: This is the medieval root of the trope (grounded in Aziz/Razack claims) that Muhammad-as-imposter and Islam-as-violent-fraud is a constructed genealogy, not a neutral description.
• SEED: The three ‘signs of prophecy’ test (lifestyle, miracles, truth) was the medieval epistemic frame later secularized — a possible essay angle on how criteria for judging a religion founder were weaponized.