The Convergence of Judaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

5. Present at the Dawn of Islam: Polemic and Reality in the Medieval Story of Muhammad’s Jewish Companions

5 Present at the Dawn of Islam Polemic and Reality in the Medieval Story of Muhammad’s Jewish Companions Shimon Shtober In the year 1832, Abraham Geiger, a prominent member of the scientific movement known as Die Wissenschaft des Judentums, completed a dissertation entitled “Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen ?”(What did Muhammad obtain from Judaism?).1 In the coming years many scholarly studies have dealt with this question in detail. However, even now, over 175 years after Geiger introduced the question, no exhaustive work has been produced. I do not presume to have exhausted the subject, but I would like to explore the question of Jewish involvement in the creation of Islam from a different perspective. According to Muslim traditions, documented in the sīrah literature, some eminent Jewish leaders, living in the H ijāz, approached Muhammad , associated with him, and soon converted to his religion. This very early Islamic tradition was perpetuated by a similar series of legends, which proliferated in the Middle Ages and were widespread among Jews and Christians, especially in the Muslim East. The core of the legends, dealt with here, consists of the next motifs: (1) A group of eminent Jewish leaders/sages came to Muhammad and tested the credibility of his supposed heavenly mission; (2) soon they converted to Islam out of fear and constraint; (3) those “luminaries” were motivated by the desire to save their brethren from the evil that was awaiting them at the hands Polemic and Reality in the Medieval Story of Muhammad’s Jewish Companions r 65 of Muhammad;2 (4) However, Muhammad’s new Jewish companions enriched Islam, as they did collaborate with the Prophet in the composition of the Quran. This study explores the various versions of this medieval story, which occurs in many sorts of literary materials, such as apocalypses, chronicles, and historical tractates. Asserting that this type of legends is fraught with anti-Islamic polemic, I will try to unravel these implicit polemic intents. 1. The Encounters of Muhammad with Jews of the H ijāz A careful examination of the social environment in which Muhammad operated and of the cultural climate that prevailed in the Arabian Peninsula during the first third of the seventh century indicates that the prophet who brought the word of Islam to the Arabs had already had encounters with Jews in Mekka, his place of birth.3 Furthermore, from the time that he emigrated to Yathrib (later renamed Medina) in 622, these encounters intensified and turned into an open, lengthy, ongoing dialogue with the local Jews. This dialogue, which became increasingly harsh and hostile, extended over the next five years, until 627, the year that Muhammad landed the death blow to the last remaining Jewish tribe in Medina.4 The Quran contains only vague traces of these encounters between Muslims and Jews, which were fraught with violence on the part of the Muslims, but they were recorded in detail in the first comprehensive work on the history and deeds of Muhammad, al-Sīrah al-nabawiyyah. This biographical work, which is also named the Sīrah of Ibn-Ish āq, after its author , was put into writing already at the beginning of the second century of the Hijra.5 The different Muslim literary genres report in detail the tradition about individual Jews from the tribes and communities that lived in al-H ijāz who converted to Islam in the last decade of Muhammad’s life. They also provide an even broader description of the Jewish tribes of the Banū Qaynuqā῾, Nad īr, and Quray za and of the inhabitants of the desert oasis of Khaybar who clung to the beliefs of their ancestors. Their fate was a bitter one, and when they resolutely refused to adopt Muhammad’s new religion, they were exiled from the Arabian Peninsula, some to the north of the H ijāz and some in the direction of the Fertile Crescent. Members of the Quray za met an especially bitter fate, and many died a martyr’s death for their staunch refusal to convert to Islam.6 66 r Shimon Shtober 2. The Jewish Companions of Muhammad: ῾Abd Allāh ibn Salām, Prototype of a Leader It should be stressed once again that unlike most of their brethren, only a tiny minority of the members of the above-mentioned Jewish tribes associated with Muhammad and adopted the Islamic faith. As...