Medieval Christian writers invented Muhammad’s death by swine to mark Islam unclean.

Evidence

A scoundrel and heresiarch deserves an ignominious death. Three of the four texts have Muhammad attacked and devoured by pigs: for Embrico, God strikes him dead first; for Adelphus, they attack him when he is out hunting; for Guibert: Since he often fell into a sudden epileptic fit, it happened once, while he was walking alone, that he suddenly fell into a fit; while he was writhing in this agony, he was devoured by pigs, so that nothing could be found but his heels. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 772

Categorization

• XREF: Swine as the unclean animal ties to a broader medieval rhetoric of impurity — connects to the vault’s mapping of how the West frames Islam via pollution/contamination tropes.