Thus, writing around 650, John of Nikiû said that “Muslims”—the Copt is apparently one of the first non-Muslims to document that word—were not just “enemies of God” but adherents of “the detestable doctrine of the beast, that is, Mohammed.”18 The oldest parchment that alludes to a warlike prophet was written in 634, a mere two years after Muhammad’s death. It has a man asking a learned Jewish scribe what he knows about “the prophet who has appeared among the Saracens.”
