Ricoldo’s Qur’an quotations were borrowed from the Contrarietas, not the Arabic original.

Evidence

The chief reason why it is hard to believe that Ricoldo ever used the arguments in spoken debates is that they are inherently unlikely to impress; had he used them he would have been compelled to revise them; but as it is they represent literary sources unmodified. Monneret de Villard’s assertion ‘egli lavord sempre direttamente sul testo arabo’ (of the Qur’an) antedates Miss d’Alverny’s discovery that he took all these quotations over from the Contrarietas. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2133

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘small point’ about Ricoldo and his companions trails off mid-thought — worth chasing what that detail was.