Medieval writers’ picture of pagan Arabia was largely historically plausible

Evidence

Thus, in the less fabulous writers a fairly consistent picture of ancient Arabia develops: wild, barbaric, a simple and illiterate population, unorganised, ungoverned, at least in Medina; exposed to outside influences from the East Roman Empire, but penetrated rather by refugees from ecclesiastical conflict than by orthodox missionaries. Such unofficial missions succeeded, not among the superior mercantile community of Mecca, but among the rustics of Medina whose Jewish neighbours had already influenced them. Muhammad was the natural product of this world, sometimes as himself one of the dupes, but usually as the prime deceiver. This is not a ridiculously unhistorical picture, as is, on the contrary, that which imagined any considerable acceptance of orthodox Christianity in the Arabia into which Muhammad was born. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 482

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

Related

• Medieval Europe’s portrait of Muhammad’s Arabia was largely accurate history (similarity 0.93)
• Reasonable medieval portraits of Arabia saw it as fringe, not orthodox Christian (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval Europeans modeled Muhammad’s Arabia on their own society (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval Christian chroniclers had confused accounts of pre-Islamic Arabia (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval Christian accounts of Islam’s origins recycled a few basic narrative permutations (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christian writers widely understood Muhammad as merely a prophet (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval writers knew Muslims viewed Muhammad as only a prophet (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval chivalric culture dehumanized Islam partly to evade its theological claims (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian writers distorted Islam where accuracy served polemic (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval critics treated pagan birth as discrediting prophecy, not enhancing it. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christians imagined Islam as apostasy from Christianity, not a pagan-native faith (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christians read Muhammad’s human fallibility itself as disproof of prophecy (similarity 0.80)
• Only well-read medieval Christians knew genuine Islamic legends (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval writers treated pagan origin as disqualifying, unlike modern esteem for converts (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christians viewed Islam only as a negative foil to Christianity (similarity 0.80)