5
Present at the Dawn of Islam
Polemic and Reality in the Medieval Story
of Muhammad’s Jewish CompanionsShimon ShtoberIn the year 1832, Abraham Geiger, a prominent member of the scien-
tific movement known as Die Wissenschaft des Judentums, completed
a dissertation entitled “Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume auf-
genommen?”(What did Muhammad obtain from Judaism?).^1 In the com-
ing 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 ex-
hausted 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 Hijāz, approached Muham-
mad, 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 Jew-
ish 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