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

84 r Shimon Shtober

Qurayza, see M. J. Kister, Studies on the Emergence of Islam (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
1999), 75–98 (Hebrew).

5. Muhammad ibn Ishāq (85h./704–151h./768), a prominent Medinese traditionalist.
   His Sīra is usually referred to by the name of its compiler, Ibn Hishām. See Alfred Guil-
   laume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah (Oxford: Oxford
   University Press, 1955), xiii–xli.


6. See Wensinck, Mohammed en de Joden te Medina, 93–174; Yisrael Ben Ze’ev, The
   Jews in Arabia (Tel-Aviv: Mizpeh, 1931), 126–64 (Hebrew); Hayyim Ze’ev Hirschberg,
   Israel in Arabia: The History of the Jews in Himyar and the Hijāz from the Destruction of
   the Second Temple until the Crusades (Tel-Aviv, 1946), 141–49 (Hebrew).


7. Cf. Hirschberg, Israel in Arabia, 142–43, 301nn26–31.


8. ̔Abd Allāh ibn Salām (hereafter AiS) was presented in the medieval Jewish story as
   the leader of Muhammad’s Jewish companions. Muslim sources are replete with details
   about his life.


9. He is described as habr in Muhammad Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah al-nabawiyyah, 4
   vols., ed. Musā al-Saqā et al. (Beirut, 1410h./1990), 2:121. Ibn Ishāq intentionally en-
   hanced the status of other Jews who converted to Islam. For some characteristics of the
   religious life of the Jews in Arabia, see S. D. Goitein, “Who Were the Obvious Teachers of
   Muhammad?” Tarbiz 23 (1952): 146–59 (Hebrew), and Hirschberg, Israel in Arabia, 176,
   191–98.


10. Cf. Uri Rubin, “Hanīfiyya and Ka ̔ba: An Inquiry into the Arabian Background of
    dīn Ibrāhīm,” JSAI 13 (1990): 85–112, see 109; Michael Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans:
    Studies on Early Islamic Medina (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 53 and note 9 there.


11. The Apostle = Muhammad. “His time” = of appearance.


12. AiS was apparently pollinating his palm trees.


13. Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah al-nabawiyyah, 2:121–22. Since Wensinck was well aware of
    the fact that most Jews adamantly repudiated Muhammad and his religious message, he
    doubted the reliability of the report of AiS’s swift conversion. Goitein, on the other hand,
    assumed that AiS had already accepted Muhammad’s religious mission in some fashion
    while Muhammad was still in Mecca. S. D. Goitein, The Islam of Muhammed: How Did
    a New Religion Emerge in the Shade of Judaism? (Jerusalem: Akademon Press, 1966), 163
    (Hebrew).


14. His nostalgic attitude toward the knowledge of Jewish law is established in Mu-
    hammad b. ̔Amr al-Wāqidī, Kitāb al-Maghāzī, ed. Malcolm Jones (London: Oxford
    University Press, 1966), 40. As to his solidarity with Islam, see Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah
    al-nabawiyyah, 2:151, 156–58.


15. Al-Wāqidī, 1:372 (Nadīr); 2:509 (Qurayza).


16. Quran Sūra xxvi: 197 (The Poets). See Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted
    (London: John Allen and Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1955), 2:74.


17. Quran Sūra iii: 7 (The house of ̔Imrān). Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, 1:73.


18. In his commentary on the Quran, Baydāwī identified sixteen references to AiS. He
    presents AiS as the leader of the group of Jewish sages, using the wording “ ̔Abd allāh
    and his friends.” See Wilhelm Fell, Indices ad Beidhawii Commentarium in Coranum
    (Leipzig: F.C.W. Vogel, 1878), s.v. Abdullah ibn Sallām.