Eighteenth-century European writers explained Muhammad’s rise through climate and circumstance rather than imposture.

Evidence

Savary’s ‘humanising’; chapter V, section 2, above, p. 142. A rather more pedestrian English writer may be compared to Savary for his general outlook: Nathan Alcock in his Rise of Mahomet accounted for on Natural and Civil Principles argues ‘from the nature of the climate, the character of the Arabians and neighbouring nations resulting from the climate, the particular circumstances of the times and the political institutions of the founder adapted to the climate and the times’. … The romanticising aspect of Savary’s work is reflected in form of caricature by Lancelin’s Histoire sécrette du Prophéte des Turcs, purporting to be translated from a manuscript in the possession of the Sharif of Mecca: it is an account of his ‘aventures galantes et merveilleuses’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2451

Categorization

• XREF: Climate-determinist explanations of historical figures echo Montesquieu’s environmental theory, a thread running through the same period’s political thought.