‘Adiutores Mahumet compilauerunt Alchoran’: The Role of ‘the Jews’ in Understanding and Refuting the Qur'an and Islam at Cluny

Abstract

This paper investigates the reasons for the selection of the three texts that, in the Corpus islamolatinum, were meant to represent the foundational texts of Islam along with the Qur'an. Indeed, these texts do not play this momentous role in Islamic tradition. By analysing specific passages of Muḥammad's biography found in the polemical writings framing the core of the Corpus, and Peter's later works against Muslims and Jews, it will be argued that the three texts were chosen for their authors and contents: two of the three Jews who, according to the translation of the Risālat al-Kindī included in the Corpus, instructed Muḥammad in their apocryphal writings and edited the Qur'an; the acknowledgment of Muḥammad's prophetical status as due to Jewish messianism. Thus, the fabule Sarracenorum, as the three texts and the Qur'an are labelled in the oldest manuscript of the Corpus, turn out to be fabule Iudeorum, and Islam is presented as the product of Judaism. By contextualising this conclusion within the previous Cluniac reflection on the religious identity of Muslims, a possible identification of the concepteur of the Corpus islamolatinum will also be proposed.