RESOURCESRabbi Shim'fm b. Yo~ay), with seventh and eighth-century material,
pp. 162-98. There is an analysis of such literature by D. S. Russell,
The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (London, 1964).
More recently, see B. Lewis, "On That Day: A Jewish Apocalyptic
Poem on the Arab Conquests," in Melanges d'Islamologie (Festschrift
for A. Abel), ed. P. Salmon (Leiden, 1974), pp. 197-200.
I. FriedLlnder more or less disposed of the older "explanation" by
Graetz that the Messianic movements which arose among Jews after
the Muslim conquest were due to the deportation of anti-Talmudic
Jews from Arabia to Syria and Iraq in "The Jews of Arabia and the
Gaonate," JQR, n.s. 1 (1910-11): 249-52, in which he argued that
they were not anti-Talmudic and that they continued to live in Arabia.
His alternative explanation, that sectarian forms of Judaism which
emerged in the early Islamic period were shaped by ShI'i Muslim
"influences" in Iran, is presented in his "Jewish-Arabic Studies," pt.
1, JQR, n.s. 1 (1910-11): 183-215; pt. 2, JQR, n.s. 2 (1911-12):
481-516, and is based on a list of similarities which are somewhat
anachronous as far as the earliest Jewish Messianic movements are
concerned.
The main source for these early movements and sects is still the
KitCib al-anwCir wa-l-marCiqib of Ya'qiib al-Qirqisani, which was ed-
ited in five volumes by L. Nemoy (New York, 1936-43). An English
translation of the section pertaining to the movements in the seventh
and eighth centuries has been published by Nemoy in "AI Qirqisani's
Account of the Jewish Sects," HUCA 7 (1930): 317-97. Nemoy's
"Anan ben David: A Reappraisal of the Historical Data," in Semitic
Studies in Memory of Immanuel Loew (Budapest, 1947), pp. 239-49,
is an extremely skeptical piece of text criticism. See also A. Harkavy's
"Anan Ben David," JE, I: 553-56.
For an internalist explanation of the Karaite movement, see Z. Cahn's
Rise of the Karaite Sect: A New Light on the Halakah and Origin of
the Karaites (New York, ca. 1937). Otherwise there have been two
major issues regarding the emergence of the Karaite sect in the early
Islamic period. R. Mahler argued for socioeconomic conflicts among
Jews as the main cause of this movement in Karaimer, a yidische
geuleh-bavegung in Mitlalter (New York, 1947; Hebrew translation,
Merhavya, 1949). Nemoy offers a critique of Mahler and a review of
the issues in "Early Karaism (The Need for a New Approach)," JQR
40 (1949-50): 307-15. He also translated Karaite sources into English
in Karaite Anthology (New Haven, 1952). More recently the "Sad-