Twelfth-century biographies made Muhammad a magical fraudster beyond prior polemic

Evidence

These four hostile biographies of Muhammad are similar enough to warrant discussing together. None of them seems to be the source or archetype for the other three. They indeed base their image of Muhammad on earlier Eastern and Latin texts that portrayed him as a pseudoprophet and heresiarch. Yet they go much further than the earlier texts, making him into a colorful scoundrel who dupes the credulous Saracens through magic and fake miracles. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 741

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the deception and magic apparatus of the Muhammad-fraud trope crystallizing already here, feeding the ‘Islam spread by sword and deceit’ charge the vault maps forward.