Medieval retellings frame Meccan pagans as prudent citizens defending civic order

Evidence

The ‘citizens’ took action when they heard that their ‘fellow citizens’ were being converted. They insisted that Muhammad should renounce his demon, lest it bring wars on the City; or else work miracles to prove himself, causing the mountains which circumscribed them so closely to recede: ‘thou dost well know that no other people possesses a more confined territory or a more arid land than we’. They were prepared to bribe him to be silent, with riches and power. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 459

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: The Meccans-as-rational-citizens framing parallels the author’s earlier emphasis on the Quraysh as pragmatic merchant oligarchs fearing civic disruption — contradicts the crude polemic elsewhere in the chapter.

Related

• Mecca’s merchant elite feared conversion would bring war to their city (similarity 0.84)