Muhammad, the Qur'an and Islam
Notes:
[1] A Jewish king appears to have reigned in Yemen in the middle of the
5th century; and at the beginning of the 6th century Yemen was ruled by
the well-known Jewish leader Dhu Nuwas; see Andrae, Ursprung, pp. 9 f.
The probable presence and influence of Abyssinian Jews should also not be
overlooked, as even Ethiopian Christianity maintained many Jewish
characteristics, such as the observance of the Sabbath, the practice of
circumcision and the abstention from unclean meats; cf. The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. "Ethiopian Church," p. 474.
[2] Buhl, Muhammeds, pp. 18, 71.
[3] Guillaume, Islam, p. 12. For more information on Jewish trade in
Arabia, see Crone, Trade, pp. 140 f.
[4] See Jahiz in ECMD, pp. 702 f.
[5] Guillaume, with others before him, noted the lack of distinctly Jewish
names among the various lists given in Muslim sources on Jews in Arabia;
see Muhammad, p. 240, n. 2; Buhl, Muhammeds, pp. 18 f.
[6] Sahih Bukhari, vol. 8, pp. 529 f. The Jews may also have had copies of
the Psalms and some other books of the Old Testament, but, aside from the
narration of Jonah, neither the Qur'an, nor early Islamic tradition betray any
acquaintance with the books of the Prophets.
[7] See Geiger, WMJA and Ginzburg, Legends for Talmudic information
and legends which made their way into the Qur'an and Islamic hadith.
[8] Sahih Bukhari, vol. 6, p. 13. The best known early translation of the
Old Testament by Jewish scholarship dates from the 10th century; see
Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, p. 100.
[9] Practically the only traces which confirm the existence of these groups
in Arabia are the narrations about Zacharias, Mary and Jesus found in the