Medieval Christian polemics ignored Muhammad’s victories and highlighted only his defeats

Evidence

Much of what was known derived from the Risalah. The attacks on the Medinan caravans, each in turn, and the assassinations of individual Jews, were described, and, wherever possible, the kingship and the prophethood were interrelated. For example, the disaster at Uhud was emphasised, and especially the wounds there suffered by the Prophet himself. Muhammad (these accounts sneered ), unlike the Jews of the Old Testament, experienced the usual ups and downs of warfare; he had no guard of angels, as he claimed he had. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 527

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader study of how medieval Christian polemics constructed their image of Islam — relates to Edward Said’s Orientalism and polemical distortion studies.