Medieval Christian polemicists attacked Muhammad’s pagan youth as disqualifying prophecy

Evidence

The reprobatio stressed that Muhammad committed ‘the sin of idolatry’ until he was forty years old: the Qur’an ‘says that God found Muhammad in error - that is, in error about the laws of God — and directed him’; this seemed sufficiently important to seek corroboration in Bukhari. The Devil, said Ricoldo in his turn, chose for his purposes an idolator; Ricoldo thought it inconsistent to claim to be a great prophet, after spending a pagan youth. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 469

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader historiographical theme of how opponents weaponize a figure’s pre-conversion past — parallels the way Muhammad’s own tradition reads the pre-call period. — connects to: Ancient criteria of prophecy were applied selectively to predetermine Muhammad’s failure