Medieval scholars fabricated that Muhammad’s sexual boast was in the Qur’an

Evidence

This is not a particularly authoritative translation, and may well be only a case of giving Muhammad all the attributes of a popular hero and pleasing his simpler followers; but it was cited by all the best-informed and most serious mediaeval writers, sometimes in a vaguer form which gives it a nastier sound, for example, ‘non erubuit ut diceret datum suis renibus a Deo, xu viros in coitu potentissimus fortitudine libidinis adaequare’. It soon came to be believed that this ‘boast’ was in the Qur’an: ‘ipse enim gloriatur in lege sua quod data sit sibi potestas in lumbis …’ said Humbert, completing the quotation in the usual form. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 556

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the vault’s claim that ‘Islam’ as constitutive outside is built on textual fabrication and misattribution — here a boast falsely placed in the Qur’an by serious medieval writers.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does the attribution drift — a hadith-like anecdote becomes ‘believed to be in the Qur’an’ — resemble modern selective quotation of Islamic sources by polemicists?