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

Polemic and Reality in the Medieval Story of Muhammad’s Jewish Companions r 87

47. See Shtober, Sefer Divrey Yosef by Yosef ben Yitzhak Sambari: Eleven Hundred
    Years of Jewish History under the Muslims (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1994), 13–73
    (Hebrew), for a detailed description of Sambari and his book.


48. Exodus 1:8; Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sota, 11a.


49. Buhayrān is the diminutive Arabic form of the name Bahīra.


50. Shtober, Sefer Divrey Yosef, 90–93.


51. See section 5: “Sa ̔adya Gaon Tells the Story,” near note 38 (cf. the list of the sages
    in the geniza text: “Ya ̔akov also named ̔Umar.”) and after note 46.


52. Shtober, Sefer Divrey Yosef, 93–94.


53. Cf. Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah al-nabawiyyah, 1:148, and Guillaume, Life of Muham-
    mad, 79–81.


54. Shtober, Sefer Divrey Yosef, 95.


55. A pun is intended in the Hebrew text “va-ashamam be-ro’sham” (their sin was
    their leader) instead of the scriptural phrase “va-asimem be-rāsheikhem” (I will put them
    as leaders). The latter is a quote from Deuteronomy 1:13. ̔Ōvadyah ben Shalom is a literal
    translation of the name ̔Abd Allāh ibn Salām. Cf. the beginnings of the list of the sages
    and appendix, nos. 2 and 3.


56. Shtober, Sefer Divrey Yosef, 95. The law of the divorced women: Quran 2:229–30.
    The interpolation of this law into the Quran was already ascribed to AiS by Al-Sama’ual
    al-Maghribī, a twelfth-century convert to Islam, in his polemic treatise, Ifhām al-Yahūd.
    See Al-Sama’ual b. ̔Abbas al-Maghribī, Ifhām al-Yahud, ed. Moshe Perlmann, Proceed-
    ings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 32 (1964): 57–59. Al-Maghribī’s Ifhām
    is one of the sources used by Sambari in his chronicle.


57. As to the Sīra, cf. section 3 above, near notes 23–24. On the hadīth literature, see Al-
    Bukhārī, (Al-Sahīh, 4:49), where he reports that AiS came to put riddles to Muhammad.


58. Cf. the version of the Geniza document in section 5 above, between notes 35–39,
    and in the appendix, nos. 2 and 3.


59. In Muslim sources beginning with the Quran, this allegation is defined as Tahrīf,
    i.e., (a blame of) distorting or corrupting the original biblical text.


60. Cf. the text in section 5, between notes 34–39 above. I have shown that some of
    the basic elements of this story are embedded in Muslim and Christian traditions of the
    second and third centuries after the Hijra.


61. Those versions of the story that I have already presented are not included in this
    appendix, except the saying of Al-Bukhārī mentioned in note 31.


62. Al-Bukhārī lived in the years 194h./810–256h./870. This citation of al-Bukhārī’s Al-
    Sahīh illustrates the inchoate features of this legend that appear in the hadīth literature.


63. According to J. Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” Hebrew Union
    College Annual 121, no. 13 (1937–38): 426, the time of the composition of Kissat ashāb
    Muhammad is the first half of the tenth century or possibly the preceding century. See
    also Baneth, “Ten Jewish Companions,” 114–16.


64. Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” 425, assumed that this Cambridge
    manuscript was written in the tenth century. Baneth, “Ten Jewish Companions,” 113,
    determined correctly that this manuscript is simply a Hebrew translation of Manuscript
    JTS ENA 2554, fol. 2.