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Very few texts in Judaism refer to or take note of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Those that do generally reject Muhammad's proclamation of receiving divine revelations from God and label him instead as a false prophet.
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| Muhammad |
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Very few texts in Judaism refer to or take note of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Those that do generally reject Muhammad's proclamation of receiving divine revelations from God and label him instead as a false prophet.
In the Middle Ages, it was common for Jewish writers to describe Muhammad as ha-meshuggah ("the madman"), a term frequently used in the Bible for those who believe themselves to be prophets. [1] [2] [3]
Maimonides referred to Muhammad as a false prophet and an insane man. In his Epistle to Yemen he wrote "After [Jesus] arose the Madman who emulated his precursor [Jesus], since he paved the way for him. But he added the further objective of procuring rule and submission [talb al-mulk; pursuit of sovereignty] and he invented what was well known [Islam]." [4]
In his authoritative work of law, the Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Melakhim 11:10–12), Maimonides indicated that nevertheless Muhammad was part of God's plan of preparing the world for the coming of the Jewish Messiah: "All those words of Jesus of Nazareth and of this Ishmaelite [i.e., Muhammad] who arose after him are only to make straight the path for the messianic king and to prepare the whole world to serve the Lord together. As it is said: 'For then I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech so that all of them shall call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord' (Zephaniah 3:9)." [5]
Natan'el al-Fayyumi, a prominent 12th-century Yemenite rabbi and theologian, and the founder of what is sometimes called "Jewish Ismailism", wrote in his philosophical treatise Bustan al-Uqul ("Garden of the minds") that God sends prophets to establish religions for other nations, which do not have to conform to the precepts of the Jewish Torah. Nethanel explicitly considered Muhammad a true prophet, who was sent from Heaven with a particular message that applies to the Arabs, but not to the Jews. [6] [7] Al-Fayyumi's explicit acceptance of Muhammad's prophecy was rare and virtually unknown until recent times beyond his native Yemen. [8]
The apocalyptic Midrash The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai , compares Muhammad to the Jewish Messiah. According to this text, ascribed to the famous 1st-century sage and mystic Simeon bar Yochai, and apparently written at the beginning of the Muslim conquest or in the 8th century, [9] Muhammad's role as a prophet includes redeeming the Jews from the Christian ("Roman" or "Edomite") oppression and playing a positive role in the messianic process. [10]
One Yemenite Jewish document, found in the Cairo Genizah, suggests that many Jews had not only accepted Muhammad as a prophet, but had even desecrated Sabbath in order to join Muhammad in his struggle. However, some historians[ who? ] suggest that this document, called Dhimmat an-nabi Muhammad (Muhammad's Writ of Protection), has been fabricated by Yemenite Jews for the purpose of self-defence. [11]
A number of stories from the Islamic tradition about Muhammad entered mainstream Jewish thought incidentally, due to the great cultural convergence in Al-Andalus from the 9th to 12th centuries, known as the Golden Age of Iberian Jewry. For example, Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonne, one of the early Hasidic mystics, wrote that one pious man (hasid) taught that the internal struggle against the evil inclination is greater than external battle, quoting Bahya ibn Paquda's popular treatise Chovot HaLevavot. In the Judeo-Arabic original version of that book, Bahya Ibn Paquda refers to both external and internal battle as jihad and the "pious man" about whom the story is originally told is Muhammad, though the author does not mention his source by name. [12]
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of mashiach, messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a mashiach is a king or High Priest traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil.
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, c. 1050–1120, was a Jewish philosopher and rabbi who lived at Zaragoza, Al-Andalus. He was one of two people now known as Rabbeinu Behaye, the other being Bible commentator Bahya ben Asher.
Jewish philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern Haskalah and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves.
Islamic–Jewish relations comprise the human and diplomatic relations between Jewish people and Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and their surrounding regions. Jewish–Islamic relations may also refer to the shared and disputed ideals between Judaism and Islam, which began roughly in the 7th century CE with the origin and spread of Islam in the Arabian peninsula. The two religions share similar values, guidelines, and principles. Islam also incorporates Jewish history as a part of its own. Muslims regard the Children of Israel as an important religious concept in Islam. Moses, the most important prophet of Judaism, is also considered a prophet and messenger in Islam. Moses is mentioned in the Quran more than any other individual, and his life is narrated and recounted more than that of any other prophet. There are approximately 43 references to the Israelites in the Quran, and many in the Hadith. Later rabbinic authorities and Jewish scholars such as Maimonides discussed the relationship between Islam and Jewish law. Maimonides himself, it has been argued, was influenced by Islamic legal thought.
Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Teimanim, are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of the country's Jewish population immigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while smaller communities live in the United States and elsewhere. As of 2022, Levi Marhabi is the last Jew in Yemen.
The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
Adherents of Judaism do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah nor do they believe he was "the Son of God". In the Jewish perspective, it is believed that the way Christians see Jesus goes against monotheism, a belief in the absolute unity and singularity of God, which is central to Judaism; Judaism sees the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, which is forbidden. Therefore, considering Jesus divine, as “God the Son”, is forbidden. Judaism's rejection of Jesus as the Messiah is based on Jewish eschatology, which holds that the coming of the true Messiah will be associated with events that have not yet occurred, such as the rebuilding of The Temple, a Messianic Age of peace, and the ingathering of Jews to their homeland.
Messianism is the belief in the advent of a messiah who acts as the savior of a group of people. Messianism originated as a Zoroastrian religious belief and followed to Abrahamic religions, but other religions also have messianism-related concepts. Religions with a messiah concept include Judaism (Mashiach), Christianity (Christ), Islam, Druze faith, Zoroastrianism (Saoshyant), Buddhism (Maitreya), Taoism, and Bábism.
Judeo-Arabic dialects are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arab world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Iraqi Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud).
The Dardaim or Dor Daim, are adherents of the Dor Deah movement in Orthodox Judaism. That movement took its name in 1912 in Yemen under Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, and had its own network of synagogues and schools, although, in actuality, the movement existed long before that name had been coined for it. According to ethnographer and historian, Shelomo Dov Goitein, author and historiographer, Hayyim Habshush had been a member of this movement before it had been given the name Dor Deah, writing, “...He and his friends, partly under European influence, but driven mainly by developments among the Yemenite Jews themselves, formed a group who ardently opposed all those forces of mysticism, superstition and fatalism which were then so prevalent in the country and strove for exact knowledge and independent thought, and the application of both to life.” It was only some years later, when Rabbi Yihya Qafih became the headmaster of the new Jewish school in Sana'a built by the Ottoman Turks and where he wanted to introduce a new curriculum in the school whereby boys would also learn arithmetic and the rudiments of the Arabic and Turkish languages that Rabbi Yihya Yitzhak Halevi gave to Rabbi Qafih's movement the name Daradʻah, a word which is an Arabic broken plural made-up of the Hebrew words Dör Deʻoh, and which means "Generation of Knowledge."
The Epistle to Yemen or Yemen Letter was an important communication written by Maimonides and sent to the Yemenite Jews. The epistle was written in 1173/4. The letter was written in Arabic.
The Banu Qurayza were a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathrib. They were one of the three major Jewish tribes of the city, along with the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir. Jewish tribes reportedly arrived in Hijaz in the wake of the Jewish–Roman wars and introduced agriculture, putting them in a culturally, economically and politically dominant position. However, in the 5th century, the Banu Aws and the Banu Khazraj, two Arab tribes that had arrived from Yemen, gained dominance. When these two tribes became embroiled in conflict with each other, the Jewish tribes, now clients or allies of the Arabs, fought on different sides, the Qurayza siding with the Aws.
Jacob ben Nathanael ibn al-Fayyumi was a rosh yeshiva of the Yemenite Jews in the second half of the 12th century CE, son of the illustrious Rabbi, Nathanel al-Fayyumi. All that is known of him is that at the suggestion of Solomon ha-Kohen, a pupil of Maimonides, he wrote to the latter asking his advice in regard to a pseudo-Messiah who was leading the Jews of southern Arabia astray. From a passage in Maimonides' "Letter to the Wise Men of the Congregation of Marseilles", the date of Jacob's letter is fixed as 1172. In answer, Maimonides sent his Iggeret Teman or, as it is also called, Petah Tikva. Abraham Harkavy supposes that Jacob had knowledge of Saadia Gaon's Sefer ha-Galui. Jacob's father was known as a philosophical writer.
The Banu al-Harith is an Arabian tribe which once governed the cities of Najran, Taif, and Bisha, now located in southern Saudi Arabia.
Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (Arabic: كعب الأحبار, full name Abū Isḥāq Kaʿb ibn Maniʿ al-Ḥimyarī was a 7th-century Yemenite Jew from the Arab tribe of "Dhī Raʿīn" who converted to Islam. He was considered to be the earliest authority on Israʼiliyyat and South Arabian lore. According to Islamic tradition, he accompanied Umar in his trip from Medina to Jerusalem, and afterwards, became a supporter of Uthman. He died in Hims around 652-6AD.
It is believed that Jews began immigrating to the Arabian Peninsula in as early as the 6th century BCE, when the Babylonian conquest of Judah triggered a mass Jewish exodus from Judea in the Land of Israel. Over time and through successive exiles, the local Jewish tribes, who were concentrated in the Hejaz and partly in South Arabia, established themselves as one of the most prominent ethno-religious communities of pre-Islamic Arabia. Likewise, Judaism, which had been introduced as one of the few monotheistic religions in the region, stood as a deviation from the typical polytheistic practices of Arabian paganism. These Jewish tribes continued to have a presence in Arabia during the rise of Muhammad, who founded Islam in the 7th century CE. Muhammad's interaction with the Jewish community is documented to a considerable degree in Islamic literature, including in many ahadith. The Jewish tribes of the Hejaz are seen in Islam as having been the offspring of the Israelites/Hebrews Two of Muhammad's wives were Jewish: Safiyya bint Huyayy and Rayhanah bint Zayd, both of whom belonged to the Banu Nadir by birth, though Rayhanah's status as a wife instead of a concubine is disputed.
Jewish history in the territory of modern Saudi Arabia begins in classical antiquity.
Hoter ben Shlomo was a scholar and philosopher from Yemen who was heavily influenced by the earlier works of Natan'el al-Fayyumi, Maimonides, Saadia Gaon and al-Ghazali.
Natan'el al-Fayyumi, born about 1090 – died about 1165, of Yemen was the twelfth-century author of Bustan al-Uqul, a Jewish version of Ismaili Shi'i doctrines, and a complete imitation of Bahya ibn Paquda's book, Duties of the Heart, and which Al-Fayyumi composed, in his own words, to counter some of the basic principles and tenets of Judaism expressed by Ibn Paquda, writing in his 3rd chapter that God's unity is far greater than that described by Ibn Paquda. Like the Ismailis, Natan'el argued that God sent different prophets to the various nations of the world, containing legislations suited to the particular temperament of each individual nation. Each people should remain loyal to its own religion, because the universal teaching was adapted to the specific conditions and experiences of each community. Not all Jewish depictions of Muhammad were negative. Jews who lived in environments governed by Ismailis did not view them as enemies, and vice versa.