Medieval polemicists sexualized and demeaned Muhammad’s marriage to discredit him

Evidence

Muhammad’s marriage with Khadîja (though she remains unnamed) is maligned in all four of the texts as mismatched in age and social rank. For Guibert, the hermit arranges the marriage; Adelphus has Machomet marry the Queen of Babylon. Both Gautier and Embrico emphasize that Muhammad married his former employer’s wife. Gautier has Muhammad trick her into the marriage by proffering bogus dire predictions in order to dissuade her from marrying a young noble; Muhammad talks her into marrying him by speaking like a “a second Cicero” (l. 170); the marriage gives rise to lewd jokes: “She who used to be on top is now lying underneath” (l. 246). Embrico goes further and has the Magus and Mammutius (as he calls Muhammad), through magic, kill Mammutius’s former master before arranging the marriage with his widow. Three of the four texts make Muhammad an epileptic, following the lead of Theophanes, who claimed that Muhammad invented his visions of Gabriel to explain his epileptic fits. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 752

Categorization

• XREF: Early instance of the sexual-scandal portraiture of the Prophet that reappears across centuries and is a core genealogical trope related to vault claims about orientalizing Muslim sexuality (Anidjar/Aziz).
• ADDENDUM: The allegation that revelation was fabricated to excuse epilepsy prefigures the persistent modern ‘epilepsy as fraud’ smear against prophetic claims — a usable genealogical thread for the sacrifice/immodesty lineage work.
• SEED: Angle: tracing the ‘sexual depravity of the Prophet’ smear from these twelfth-century satires straight into contemporary anti-Muslim polemic — showing continuity of rhetorical form across nine centuries.