The Storia de Mahometh (or Istoria de Mahomet) is a short anonymous polemical Latin biography of Muḥammad written from a Christian perspective, probably in al-Andalus between about 750 and 850. It contains the earliest known translation into Latin of any portion of the Qurʾān.
Date and authorship
The Storia is the earliest known biography of Muḥammad in Latin. It was certainly written before 850, since a copy was consulted in the monastery of Leyre by Eulogius of Córdoba on his visit to Navarre between 848 and 850. It might have been written before 762, since it refers to Damascus as the capital of the Muslims and in that year the Abbasids moved the capital to Baghdad. It also refers in its prologue to events recorded in the Chronicle of 754, which may indicate that it was written after that date. Its precise dating of events is found in no other sources than the Chronicle of 754 and the Chronicle of 741.
The Storia is most probably of Mozarabic origin, that is, written by Christians living under Islamic rule in Spain. References to building projects in Toledo and Andújar may suggest either of those two places, more likely the latter, as its place of origin. Since the internal evidence for a Spanish provenance is confined to the prologue, it is possible that only that part was composed there and that the main body of the text was written elsewhere. Its content suggests the use of Greek sources. Comparable material on Islam can be found in the writings of Theophanes the Confessor and John of Damascus. The text in its finished form appears to have been brought by Mozarabs to Asturias and thence to Navarre. The surviving textual tradition can be traced to the monasteries of Albelda and San Millán in the Rioja.
Textual history
The Storia exists in two recensions, a short one (A) and a long one (B). The short one is found in a letter from to Paul Albar, the sixth in the surviving collection of Paul's correspondence. It is known from a single manuscript, Archivo Catedralicio de Córdoba, n° 1. It is probably a shortened version of the long recension. Possibly, it is a short summary of a lost common source, such as a Greek tract from before 750. It is unknown where or how John came upon the text he summarized.
The long recension is preserved in four manuscripts and there is a printed edition based on a now lost fifth manuscript. It circulated independently, but is not preserved as an independent text. Every surviving copy is inserted into another work. It was first incorporated by Eulogius into his Liber apologeticus martyrum between 857 and 859. In 883 in Asturias, it was incorporated into the Prophetic Chronicle. The four surviving manuscripts are:
Codex Albeldensis (Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, MS d.I.2) of 975 Codex Aemilianensis (Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, MS d.I.1) of 992 or 994 Codex Rotensis (Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid, MS 78) of the early 11th century Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, MS 8831 of the late 12th century
The only known manuscript of Eulogius' Liber apologeticus was discovered in the 16th century by Pedro Ponce de León and used for the edition of Ambrosio de Morales in 1791–1792, but is now lost. There are two slightly different versions of the long recension. The texts in the Albeldensis and Aemilianensis codices are almost identical. MS 8831 is a Castilian copy of the Rotensis and Eulogius' version bears more similarity to this version as well.
The short recension, only about a paragraph in length, is entitled Adnotatio Mammetis Arabum principis, or "A note on Muḥammad, chief of the Arabs". The long recensin of the Storia is the longer of two Latin biographies of Muḥammad in the Codex Rotensis, the other being the Tultusceptru de libro domni Metobii. There it bears the title Storia de Mahometh (Story of Muḥammad). In the other three codices it is entitled Istoria de Mahomet (Story of Muḥammad). In his critical text, assigns it the title Notitia de Mahmeth pseudo propheta (Notice of Muḥammad the false prophet). Ann Christys uses the title Life of Muḥammad.
Synopsis
The Storia is a polemic, caustic in tone, that takes facts from the traditional biography of Muḥammad and reframes them as criticism of Islam.