Gibbon’s Enlightenment account of Muhammad recycled medieval themes unchanged

Evidence

Something of the same is true also of our own Gibbon. Largely the architect of our modern historical perspectives, Gibbon derived his own from different sources, and his fiftieth chapter does not represent his most original thinking. We see displayed before us accurate and balanced statements, expressed with the familiar elegance, but not essentially new. The state of Arabia and the character of the Arabs, the contrivance, and the moral indulgence, of Muhammad: these are the old themes. … He omits nothing that the Middle - Ages asserted of Muhammad’s relations with women, and refuses to decide whether the Prophet should be described as enthustast or impostor. He does realise that the problem is complex, Muhammad’s character elusive. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1627

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s Islamophobia thread: the supposed rupture between mediaeval polemic and Enlightenment ‘objective’ study of Islam is largely illusory, corroborating Said-style critique of how ‘Islam’ is constructed.