Medieval Christian scribes distorted the shahadah into polytheist-sounding forms

Evidence

Wherever it was possible to insinuate that those who reproached Christianity with a polytheist tendency were themselves inclined to the same crime, this was done. The very vague statement lent itself to this purpose. Acqui, for example, spoke of Muhammad’s being received by the Arabs guasz Deus.§ It is worth mentioning some obviously unintentional slips of the pen, as indicating, perhaps, what a copyist felt to be most natural: the climate of uninformed opinion. In a manuscript phrase of Pennis’, non est Deus nist Machometus is certainly not what the author intended; and similarly some manuscripts of Tripoli render the shahadah as non est Deus et Machometus nuncius eius. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1756

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s work on how Islam is constructed as a corrupted/debased other of Judeo-Christianity — here the corruption is textual, in Latin renderings of the shahadah.
• SHARE: A medievalist or Islamicate-literature reader would enjoy the manuscript slip where non est Deus nisi Machometus replaces the true shahadah.