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

130 r Mark S. Wagner

the benefit of their continued existence. Therefore, the controversy pro-
vided an opportunity to those who wished to press for the destruction of
all of the synagogues in San ̔ā’. The controversy also spread to Manākhah,
a town in the Harāz Mountains with a significant Jewish population.
When the three Jewish plaintiffs challenged the change in prayer
rite at the Kuhlānī Synagogue, the matter went before the judge, Lutf b.
Muhammad al-Zubayrī (1875–1944). In al-Jamal’s work, The Synagogues
of San ̔ā’, the Capital of Yemen, al-Zubayrī is the principal villain—cor-
rupt, violent, an inveterate Jew-hater, and a lecher.^21 The Yemeni historian
Muhammad Zabārah describes al-Zubayrī as one who “leaned toward
Prophetic traditions and had a preference for revelatory evidence [i.e.,
Quran and Sunnah]” (kāna... mā ̔ilan ilā l-sunan al-nabawiyyah wa-
tarjīh al-dalīl).^22 Al-Zubayrī belonged to the branch of Zaydī jurispru-
dence that leaned toward Sunnī Traditionism. Though nominally Zaydī-
Shī ̔ī, these scholars stressed the authoritative status of canonical Sunnī
hadīth collections. Their belief in scriptural authority helps explain the
bifurcation of authority within the Yemeni judicial system between the
Zaydī imām on one side and Traditionist judges on the other that is on
display in the case of the Kuhlānī Synagogue.^23
Shortly after the controversy in the Kuhlānī Synagogue reached the
Muslim courts in May 1935, al-Zubayrī wrote a letter to Imām Yahyā.
He called for the destruction of the Kuhlānī Synagogue and explained
further:

[The objecting congregants] claimed that all of the Jews’ synagogues

are waq fs, knowing full well that an infidel may never establish a

waq f. They had the impudence to state this explicitly. Is this not

clear evidence of the mockery in their hearts for the Sharī ̔ah of

[the prophet] Muhammad b. ̔Abdallāh, may the prayers of God be

upon him?^24

Soon thereafter, Imām Yahyā summoned R. al-Jamal and R. ̔Amram
Qorah, representatives of each Jewish faction, and asked them to trans-
late Hebrew documents relating to the status of the synagogue in ques-
tion. Qorah translated the term heqdesh (pious endowment) into Arabic
as waq f, while al-Jamal produced the novel translation “public property”
(ibāhah). Imām Yahyā shouted, “What is this ibāhah, O Jamal? You will-
fully distort the correct translation of ‘heqdesh’!”^25 Al-Jamal responded: