Medieval Latin Biographies of the Prophet Muhammad (I)

From Anastasius the Librarian's Historia Ecclesiastica

As I discussed in my book Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s Minor Histories, there is an extensive corpus of medieval Latin literature about the life and career of the Prophet Muhammad, composed in both poetry and prose. The biographies vary widely in terms of how close they are to traditional Islamic source material. This news series of posts on my newsletter aims to present many of these biographies in translation with annotation in order to give readers a sense of their content, source material, and perceptions of Islam and Muhammad in medieval Latin writing.

The following biography is taken from the Historia Ecclesiastica (‘Ecclesiastical History’) by Anastasius, who served as a papal librarian in the late ninth century CE. His work made use of earlier Greek-language historical works.