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

The Case of the Kuhlānī Synagogue in San ̔ā’, 1933–1944 r 131

“God forbid that your servant should willfully distort anything. I merely
translated the essence ( ̔inyan) of the word heqdesh, which is ibāhah, so
that it might be of use to your Jewish subjects in this matter, for we do
not have a law of pious endowments (din heqdeshot) under the laws of
Muhammad.” Imām Yahyā was persuaded by this explanation. “You have
brought before us a word and its essence,” the imām said. “It is true that
̔Amram [Qorah] translated the word and al-Jamal translated its essence,
and it is correct that the essence is the principal thing.”^26
This incident caused a furor among some senior jurists. One of them,
Qādī Husayn al- ̔Amrī, the head of the High Council (al-majlis al- ̔ālī),
sought an audience with the imām. (Qādī al-‘Amrī’s son, ̔Abdallāh, was
the chief minister of Imām Yahyā’s government.) Qādī al-‘Amrī com-
plained that al-Jamal was trying to trick the Muslims and attack Islam.
According to al-Jamal, (who gives the text of this conversation in He-
brew), Imām Yahyā refined his ruling in the following reply:

He said that [Qādī al-‘Amrī] was correct that if the Jews come before

us with a claim of “pious endowment” it is incumbent upon us to

push aside and nullify the claim, but if they arrived arguing “public

property,” even though we know that among them it is a claim of

pious endowment [emphasis added], we must accept it, because it

is enough that they themselves know that there is no law of pious

endowments for synagogues among the laws of Islam.^27

According to al-Jamal’s account, the members of the judicial apparatus
were nearly unanimous in their objection to Imām Yahyā’s position. Many
of the most vociferous opponents of the imām’s ruling had studied the
religious sciences together, shared an orientation toward Sunnī Tradition-
ism, and were related to one another.^28 This shows a bifurcation within
the Islamic legal system in Yemen between the Zaydī imām, who had the
right as a mujtahid to issue binding rulings, and a Sunnī-inspired judicial
apparatus that had evolved to the point where it did not need an imām.^29
The pro-kabbalah faction that represented roughly two-thirds of the Jews
of San ̔ā’ and opposed the reformist Dor De ̔ah were aligned with Imām
Yahyā’s opponents in the judiciary.
It is worth noting that the controversy over the status of synagogues
had financial implications for those Muslims who argued that synagogues
were private property. When Imām Yahyā took San ̔ā’ from the Turks in