The feudal West’s low-birth reproach against Muhammad was an unsupported inference from his poverty

Evidence

Muhammad’s personal origins as pauper et orphanus were thought to be important, like the paganism of his upbringing. It was known that the Qur’an itself associated his early poverty, orphanhood and idolatry. The feudal West, with its strong sense of the propriety of secular lordship, added the reproach of low birth. This idea was rather less common than those of poverty and orphanhood from which it is presumably the unjustified inference. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 483

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how feudal ideas of legitimate lordship shaped medieval perceptions of prophethood more broadly.