The Expression of Shiʻite-Jewish Sympathies in Islamic Communities: Early Islamic Sources on the Exilarchate

Regardless of their veracity, accounts in Islamic sources about the leader of the dhimmī Jewish community, known as the Exilarch (Ar. Raʾs al-Jālūt), reveal the thinking of Muslims with regard to Jewish minorities living in Islamic states, a culturally and socially significant point that constitutes the subject of the present study. They allow the reader to see that Muslims used to consider the Exilarch as a high, scientific-religious authority, as well as an office associated with mysteries and supernatural powers such as prophesying. The recurrent references to the predictions made by the Exilarch of the martyrdom of Ḥusayn b. ꜥAlī and Exilarch’s reprobation of the Muslims for murdering the Prophet’s grandson, as well as various accounts of the scientific exchanges with the Shiʻite Imams, show that not only was the Exilarch a preeminent scholar, but that there existed sympathy between early Shiʻite and Jewish communities as two minorities in a Muslim society.