Riccoldo’s ‘irrational Koran’ charge originated in Latin polemic and still echoes today

Evidence

As in his earlier work, he reproaches the Koran for being confusing, contradictory, unorganized, violent—in a word irrational. While Muslims claim that the beauty of the Koran’s Arabic proves its divine origins, Riccoldo affirms the contrary: the Koran is in verse, when everybody knows that God speaks to prophets clearly, in prose. He derides the Muslim legends of the Mi’râj. The real author of the Koran is the devil. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1264

Categorization

• XREF: Directly genealogical: the ‘Koran is irrational, violent, contradictory’ trope that dominates modern Islamophobia here has its explicit medieval source in Riccoldo — connects to the vault’s Anidjar/Aziz/Razack claims.
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion is striking: Muslims claim the Koran’s poetic beauty proves divinity; Riccoldo counters that God speaks in prose, so poetry proves demonic authorship. Whole epistemologies of textual authority collide in a single aesthetic judgment.