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In contrast to the views of Muhammad in Islam, the Christian views on him stayed highly negative during the Middle Ages for over a millennium. [1] [2] [3] At this time, Christendom largely viewed Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad as a false prophet. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Various Western and Byzantine Christian thinkers [5] [6] [7] [9] considered Muhammad to be a perverted, [5] [7] deplorable man, [5] [7] a false prophet, [5] [6] [7] [8] and even the Antichrist, [5] [6] as he was frequently seen in Christendom as a heretic or possessed by demons. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Some of them, like Thomas Aquinas, criticized Muhammad's promises of carnal pleasure in the afterlife. [7]
With the Crusades of the High Middle Ages, and the wars against the Ottoman Empire during the Late Middle Ages, the Christian reception of Muhammad became more polemical, moving from the classification as a heretic to depiction of Muhammad as a servant of Satan or as the Antichrist, who will be eternally suffering tortures in Hell amongst the damned. [8] By the Late Middle Ages, Islam was more typically grouped with Paganism, and Muhammad was viewed as an idolater inspired by the Devil. [8] A more relaxed or benign view of Islam only developed in the modern period, after the Islamic empires ceased to be an acute military threat to Europe (see Orientalism).
The earliest written Christian knowledge of Muhammad stems from Byzantine sources, written shortly after Muhammad's death in 632 CE. In the anti-Jewish polemic the Teaching of Jacob , a dialogue between a recent Christian convert and several Jews, one participant writes that his brother "wrote to [him] saying that a deceiving prophet has appeared amidst the Saracens". Another participant in the Doctrina replies about Muhammad: "He is deceiving. For do prophets come with sword and chariot?, …[Y]ou will discover nothing true from the said prophet except human bloodshed". [10] Though Muhammad is never called by his name, [11] the author seems to know of his existence and represents both Jews and Christians as viewing him in a negative light. [12] Other contemporary sources, such as the writings of Sophronius of Jerusalem, do not characterize Saracens as having their own prophet or faith, only remarking that the Saracen attacks must be a punishment for Christian sins. [13]
Sebeos, a 7th-century Armenian bishop and historian, wrote shortly after the end of the first Arab civil war concerning Muhammad and his Farewell Sermon:
I shall discuss the line of the son of Abraham: not the one born of a free woman, but the one born of a serving maid, about whom the quotation from Scripture was fully and truthfully fulfilled: "His hands will be at everyone, and everyone will have their hands at him." [14] [15] ... In that period a certain one of them, a man of the sons of Ishmael named Muhammad, a merchant, became prominent. A sermon about the Way of Truth, supposedly at God's command, was revealed to them, and [Muhammad] taught them to recognize the God of Abraham, especially since he was informed and knowledgeable about Mosaic history. Because the command had come from On High, he ordered them all to assemble together and to unite in faith. Abandoning the reverence of vain things, they turned toward the living God, who had appeared to their father, Abraham. Muhammad legislated that they were not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsehoods, and not to commit adultery. He said: "God promised that country to Abraham and to his son after him, for eternity. And what had been promised was fulfilled during that time when [God] loved Israel. Now, however, you are the sons of Abraham, and God shall fulfill the promise made to Abraham and his son on you. Only love the God of Abraham, and go and take the country which God gave to your father, Abraham. No one can successfully resist you in war, since God is with you. [16]
Knowledge of Muhammad in Medieval Christendom became available after the early expansion of the Islamic religion in the Middle East and North Africa. [17] [18] In the 8th century John of Damascus, a Syrian monk, Christian theologian, and apologist that lived under the Umayyad Caliphate, reported in his heresiological treatise De Haeresibus ("Concerning Heresy") the Islamic denial of Jesus' crucifixion and his alleged substitution on the cross, attributing the origin of these doctrines to Muhammad himself: [19] : 106–107 [20] : 115–116
And the Jews, having themselves violated the Law, wanted to crucify him, but having arrested him they crucified his shadow. But Christ, it is said, was not crucified, nor did he die; for God took him up to himself because of his love for him. And he [Muhammad] says this, that when Christ went up to heaven God questioned him saying "O Jesus, did you say that 'I am Son of God, and God'?" And Jesus, they say, answered: "Be merciful to me, Lord; you know that I did not say so, nor will I boast that I am your servant; but men who have gone astray wrote that I said this and they said lies concerning me and they have been in error". And although there are included in this scripture many more absurdities worthy of laughter, he insists that this was brought down to him by God. [19] : 107 [20] : 115–116
Later, the Latin translation of De Haeresibus, where he explicitly used the phrase "false prophet" in referring to Muhammad, became known in the Christian West. [21] [22] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica , Christian knowledge of Muhammad's life "was nearly always used abusively". [1] Another influential source was the Epistolae Saraceni ("Letters of a Saracen") written by an Oriental Christian and translated into Latin from Arabic. [1] From the 9th century onwards, highly negative biographies of Muhammad were written in Latin. [1] The first two were produced in Spain, the Storia de Mahometh in the 8th or 9th century and the Tultusceptru in the 9th or 10th century. In the latter, Muhammad is presented as a young Christian monk duped by a demon into spreading a false religion. [23] Another Spaniard, Álvaro of Córdoba, proclaimed Muhammad to be the Antichrist in one of his works. [24] Christendom also gained some knowledge of Muhammad through the Mozarabs of Spain, such as the 9th-century Eulogius of Córdoba. [1]
In the 11th century Petrus Alphonsi, a Jew who had converted to Christianity, was another Mozarab source of information on Muhammad. [1] Later during the 12th century Peter the Venerable, who saw Muhammad as the precursor to the Antichrist and the successor of Arius, [24] ordered the translation of the Quran into Latin ( Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete ) and the collection of information on Muhammad so that Islamic teachings could be refuted by Christian scholars. [1]
Muhammad is characterized as "pseudo-prophet" in Byzantine and post-Byzantine religious and historic texts, as for example by Niketas Choniates (12th-13th c.). [26]
During the 13th century, European biographers completed their work on the life of Muhammad in a series of works by scholars such as Peter Pascual, Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, and Ramon Llull [1] in which Muhammad was depicted as an Antichrist while Islam was shown to be a Christian heresy. [1] The fact that Muhammad was unlettered, that he married a wealthy widow, that in his later life he had several wives, that he was involved in several wars, and that he died like an ordinary person in contrast to the Christian belief in the supernatural end of Jesus' earthly life were all arguments used to discredit Muhammad. [1]
Medieval scholars and churchmen held that Islam was the work of Muhammad who in turn was inspired by Satan. Kenneth Setton wrote that Muhammad was frequently calumniated and made a subject of legends taught by preachers as fact. [27] For example, in order to show that Muhammad was the anti-Christ, it was asserted that Muhammad died not in the year 632 but in the year 666 – the number of the beast – in another variation on the theme the number "666" was also used to represent the period of time Muslims would hold sway of the land. [24] A verbal expression of Christian contempt for Islam was expressed in turning his name from Muhammad to Mahound, the "devil incarnate". [28] Others usually confirmed to pious Christians that Muhammad had come to a bad end. [27] According to one version after falling into a drunken stupor he had been eaten by a herd of swine, and this was ascribed as the reason why Muslims proscribed consumption of alcohol and pork. [27] In another account of the alcohol ban, Muhammad learns about the Bible from a Jew and a heretical Arian monk. Muhammad and the monk get drunk and fall asleep. The Jew kills the monk with Muhammad's sword. He then blames Muhammad, who, believing he has committed the crime in a drunken rage, bans alcohol. [29]
Leggenda di Maometto is another example of such a story. In this version, as a child Muhammad was taught the black arts by a heretical Christian villain who escaped imprisonment by the Christian Church by fleeing to the Arabian Peninsula; as an adult he set up a false religion by selectively choosing and perverting texts from the Bible to create Islam. It also ascribed the Muslim holiday of Friday "dies Veneris" (day of Venus), as against the Jewish (Saturday) and the Christian (Sunday), to his followers' depravity as reflected in their multiplicity of wives. [27] A highly negative depiction of Muhammad as a heretic, false prophet, renegade cardinal or founder of a violent religion also found its way into many other works of European literature, such as the chansons de geste, William Langland's Piers Plowman , and John Lydgate's The Fall of the Princes. [1]
The thirteenth century Golden Legend , a best-seller in its day containing a collection of hagiographies, describes "Magometh, Mahumeth (Mahomet, Muhammad)" as "a false prophet and sorcerer", detailing his early life and travels as a merchant through his marriage to the widow, Khadija and goes on to suggest his "visions" came as a result of epileptic seizures and the interventions of a renegade Nestorian monk named Sergius. [30]
Medieval European literature often referred to Muslims as "infidels" or "pagans", in sobriquets such as the paynim foe. In the same vein, the definition of "Saracen" in Raymond of Penyafort's Summa de Poenitentia starts by describing the Muslims but ends by including every person who is neither a Christian nor a Jew.
These depictions such as those in The Song of Roland represent Muslims worshiping Muhammad (spelt e.g. 'Mahom' and 'Mahumet') as a god, and depict them worshiping various deities in the form of "idols", ranging from Apollyon to Lucifer, but ascribing to them a chief deity known as "Termagant". [24] [31]
Depictions of Muhammad in the form of picaresque novel began to appear from the 13th century onward, such as in Alexandre du Pont's Roman de Mahom, the translation of the Mi'raj, the Escala de Mahoma (“The Ladder of Muhammad”) by the court physician of Alfonso X of Castile and León and his son. [1]
In medieval romances such as the French Arthurian cycle, pagans such as the ancient Britons or the inhabitants of "Sarras" before the conversion of King Evelake, who presumably lived well before the birth of Muhammad, are often described as worshipping the same array of gods and as identical to the imagined (Termagant-worshipping) Muslims in every respect. A more positive interpretation appears in the 13th-century Estoire del Saint Grail, the first book in the vast Matter of Britain, the Lancelot-Grail. In describing the travels of Joseph of Arimathea, keeper of the Holy Grail, the author says that most residents of the Middle East were pagans until the coming of Muhammad, who is shown as a true prophet sent by God to bring Christianity to the region. This mission however failed when Muhammad's pride caused him to alter God's wishes, thereby deceiving his followers. Nevertheless, Muhammad's religion is portrayed as being greatly superior to paganism. [32]
In Inferno , the first part of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy , Muhammad is placed in Malebolge, the eighth circle of hell, designed for those who have committed fraud; specifically, he is placed in the ninth bolgia (ditch) among the sowers of discord and schism. Muhammad is portrayed as split in half, with his entrails hanging out, representing his status as a heresiarch (Inferno 28):
This graphic scene is frequently shown in illustrations of the Divine Comedy: Muhammad is represented in a 15th-century fresco Last Judgment by Giovanni da Modena and drawing on Dante, in the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna, [34] as well as in artwork by Salvador Dalí, Auguste Rodin, William Blake, and Gustave Doré. [35]
In his depiction of Muhammad, Dante draws inspiration from medieval Christian views and misconceptions on Muhammad. As stated by historian Karla Mallette, "medieval Christians viewed the historical Muḥammad as a frankly theatrical character." [36] One common allegation laid against Muhammad was that he was an impostor who, in order to satisfy his ambition and his lust, propagated religious teachings that he knew to be false. [37]
Cultural critic and author Edward Said wrote in Orientalism regarding Dante's depiction of Muhammad:
Empirical data about the Orient […] count for very little [i.e., in Dante's work]; what matters and is decisive is […] by no means confined to the professional scholar, but rather the common possession of all who have thought about the Orient in the West […]. What […] Dante tried to do in the Inferno , is […] to characterize the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience, manager, and actors are […] only for Europe. Hence the vacillation between the familiar and the alien; Mohammed is always the imposter (familiar, because he pretends to be like the Jesus we know) and always the Oriental (alien, because although he is in some ways "like" Jesus, he is after all not like him). [38]
Dante's representation of Muhammad Inferno 28 is generally interpreted as showing Dante’s disdain for Muslims. However, Dante's relation to Islam is more nuanced than what this canto would suggest. Dante lived during the eighth and ninth Crusades and would have been brought up around the idea that it is righteous to war against Muslims—namely, against the Hafsid dynasty, the Sunni Muslims who ruled the Medieval province Ifriqiya, an area on the northern coast of Africa. [39] It is not surprising that he would have been surrounded by anti-Islam rhetoric and have seen Muslims as the general enemy. For example, he shows his admiration for the crusaders when he writes about his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida in the heavens of Mars in Paradiso. [40] However, this narrative is complicated by Dante's intellectual admiration for some Muslims in Inferno 4, and specifically Averroes, Avicenna, and Saladin. [40]
The depiction of Islam in the Travels of Sir John Mandeville is also relatively positive, though with many inaccurate and mythical features. It is said that Muslims are easily converted to Christianity because their beliefs are already so similar in many ways, and that they believe that only the Christian revelation will last until the end of the world. The moral behaviour of Muslims at the time is shown as superior to that of Christians, and as a standing reproach to Christian society. [41]
When the Knights Templar were being tried for heresy reference was often made to their worship of a demon Baphomet, which was notable by implication for its similarity to the common rendition of Muhammad's name used by Christian writers of the time, Mahomet. [42] All these and other variations on the theme were all set in the "temper of the times" of what was seen as a Muslim-Christian conflict as Medieval Europe was building a concept of "the great enemy" in the wake of the quickfire success of the early Muslim conquests shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, as well as the lack of real information in the West of the mysterious East. [37]
In the Heldenbuch-Prosa, a prose preface to the manuscript Heldenbuch of Diebolt von Hanowe from 1480, the demon Machmet appears to the mother of the Germanic hero Dietrich and builds "Bern" (Verona) in three days.
Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets within Islam, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis for Islamic religious belief.
The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Saracen was a term used both in Greek and Latin writings between the 5th and 15th centuries to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Petraea and Arabia Deserta. The term's meaning evolved during its history of usage. During the Early Middle Ages, the term came to be associated with the tribes of Arabia.
Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.8 billion and 1.9 billion adherents, respectively. Both religions are considered as Abrahamic, and are monotheistic, originating in the Middle East.
Islamic studies refers to the academic study of Islam, which is analogous to related fields such as Jewish studies and Quranic studies. Islamic studies seeks to understand the past and the potential future of the Islamic world. In this multidisciplinary program, scholars from diverse areas participate and exchange ideas pertaining to the particular field of study.
Mohammedan is a term for a follower of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. It is used as both a noun and an adjective, meaning belonging or relating to, either Muhammad or the religion, doctrines, institutions and practices that he established. The word was formerly common in usage, but the terms Muslim and Islamic are more common today. Though sometimes used stylistically by some Muslims, a vast majority consider the term archaic or a misnomer.
In the Middle Ages, Termagant or Tervagant was the name given to a god which European Christians believed Muslims worshipped.
In religion, a false prophet is a person who falsely claims the gift of prophecy or divine inspiration, or to speak for God, or who makes such claims for evil ends. Often, someone who is considered a "true prophet" by some people is simultaneously considered a "false prophet" by others, even within the same religion as the "prophet" in question. In a wider sense, it is anyone who, without having it, claims a special connection to the deity and sets him or herself up as a source of spirituality, as an authority, preacher, or teacher. Analogously, the term is sometimes applied outside religion to describe someone who fervently promotes a theory that the speaker thinks is false.
Al-Masih ad-Dajjal, otherwise referred to simply as the Dajjal, is an evil figure in Islamic eschatology who will pretend to be the promised Messiah and later claim to be God, appearing before the Day of Judgment according to the Islamic eschatological narrative. The word Dajjal is not mentioned in the Quran, but he is mentioned and described in the Hadith. Corresponding to the Antichrist in Christianity, the Dajjal is said to emerge out in the East, although the specific location varies among the various sources.
The Teaching of Jacob has a controversial dating from the early 7th century to the late 8th century. It is a Greek Christian polemical tract supposedly set in Carthage in 634 but written in Palestine sometime between 634 and 640. It supposedly records a weeks-long discussion ending on July 13, 634, among Jews who have been forcibly baptized by order of the emperor. One of them, Jacob, has come to believe sincerely in Christianity; he instructs the rest about why they should also sincerely embrace their new faith. Halfway through, a Jewish merchant named Justus arrives and challenges Jacob to a debate. In the end, all of the participants are convinced to embrace Christianity, and Jacob and Justus return east. In addition to several partial Greek manuscripts, the text survives in Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic and Slavonic translations.
Mahound and Mahoun are variant forms of the name Muhammad, often found in medieval and later European literature. The name has been used in the past by Christian writers to vilify Muhammad. It was especially connected to the demonization of Muhammad as inspiring a false religion.
The first to criticize the Islamic prophet Muhammad were his non-Muslim Arab contemporaries, who decried him for preaching monotheism, and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, for what they claimed were unwarranted appropriation of Biblical narratives and figures and vituperation of the Jewish faith. For these reasons, medieval Jewish writers commonly referred to him by the derogatory nickname ha-Meshuggah.
The Islamic prophet Muhammad's views on Jews were formed through the contact he had with Jewish tribes living in and around Medina. His views on Jews include his theological teaching of them as People of the Book, his description of them as earlier receivers of Abrahamic revelation; and the failed political alliances between the Muslim and Jewish communities.
Riccoldo da Monte di Croce or Ricold of Monte Croce was an Italian Dominican friar, travel writer, missionary, and Christian apologist. He is most famous for his polemical works on Medieval Islam and the account of his missionary travels to Baghdad.
Very few texts in Judaism refer to or take note of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Those that do generally reject Muhammad's proclamation of receiving divine revelations from God and label him instead as a false prophet.
The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad in Islam has been a contentious issue. Oral and written descriptions of Muhammad are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions. The Quran does not explicitly or implicitly forbid images of Muhammad. The ahadith present an ambiguous picture, but there are a few that have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of human figures. It is agreed on all sides that there is no authentic visual tradition as to the appearance of Muhammad, although there are early legends of portraits of him, and written physical descriptions whose authenticity is often accepted.
Charles Upton is an American poet and esotericist.
Arguments that prophecies of Muhammad exist in the Bible have formed part of Islamic tradition since at least the mid-8th century, when the first extant arguments for the presence of predictions of Muhammad in the Bible were made by Ibn Ishaq in his Book of Military Expeditions. A number of Christians throughout history, such as John of Damascus and John Calvin, have interpreted Muhammad as being the Antichrist of the New Testament.
The first circle of hell is depicted in Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's journey through a vision of hell ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin. The first circle is Limbo, the space reserved for those souls who died before baptism and for those who hail from non-Christian cultures. They live eternally in a castle set on a verdant landscape, but forever removed from heaven.
The Book of Muḥammad's Ladder is a first-person account of the Islamic prophet Muḥammad's night journey (isrāʾ) and ascent to heaven (miʿrāj), translated into Latin and Old French from traditional Arabic materials. Although presented as Muḥammad's words and purportedly recorded by Muḥammad's cousin Ibn ʿAbbās, the work is in fact spurious and dates to the 13th century.
Criticism by Christians [...] was voiced soon after the advent of Islam starting with St. John of Damascus in the late seventh century, who wrote of "the false prophet", Muhammad. Rivalry, and often enmity, continued between the European Christian world and the Islamic world [...]. For Christian theologians, the "Other" was the infidel, the Muslim. [...] Theological disputes in Baghdad and Damascus, in the eighth to the tenth century, and in Andalusia up to the fourteenth century led Christian Orthodox and Byzantine theologians and rulers to continue seeing Islam as a threat. In the twelfth century, Peter the Venerable [...] who had the Koran translated into Latin, regarded Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad as a sexually self-indulgent and a murderer. [...] However, he called for the conversion, not the extermination, of Muslims. A century later, St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa contra Gentiles accused Muhammad of seducing people by promises of carnal pleasure, uttering truths mingled with many fables and announcing utterly false decisions that had no divine inspiration. Those who followed Muhammad were regarded by Aquinas as brutal, ignorant "beast-like men" and desert wanderers. Through them Muhammad, who asserted he was "sent in the power of arms", forced others to become followers by violence and armed power.— Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the Middle East and India (2009), p. 31, Cambridge University Press, New York, ISBN 978-0521767255.
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