Mediaeval Christians sided with Muhammad’s urban persecutors over his rural followers.

Evidence

There is something in this of the distrust felt by the citizen for the desert nomad, made to serve a polemic end. There was sympathy for the Meccans who persecuted their Prophet, for the merchants who disbelieved, and contempt for the foolish simplicity of the Medinans and the desert people, the rustics who believed. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 454

Categorization

• CANDY: The idea that Christian polemicists sympathized with the people who persecuted Muhammad — siding with the city skeptics against the credulous desert believers — is a compact, surprising fact that flips modern intuition.