List of converts to Islam from Judaism

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This is a list of notable converts to Islam from Judaism.

• Abd Allah ibn Salam – 7th-century Companion of the Prophet from the Banu Qaynuqa of Yathrib (now Medina), one of the Jewish tribes of Arabia. ^[1]
• Safiyya bint Huyayy of the Banu Nadir, a widowed captive from the Jewish tribe of Yathrib and one of the wives of Muhammad ^[2]
• Ibn Malka al-Baghdadi: an influential 12th-century companion of Maimonides who was a physicist, philosopher, and scientist who wrote a critique of Aristotelianism and Aristotelian physics. ^[3]
• Ka'b al-Ahbar (Aqiva the Haber "Scholar"): 7th-century Yemenite Jew, considered to be the earliest authority on Isra'iliyyat and South Arabian lore. ^{[4] [5]}
• Al-Samawal al-Maghribi – 12th-century mathematician and medieval Islamic astronomer, son of the scholar and piyyut-writer Judah ibn Abbas. ^{[6] [7]}
• Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss: Viennese journalist, author, and translator who visited the Hijaz in the 1930s and became the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations. ^[8]
• Sultan Rafi Sharif Bey: 20th-century pioneer in the development of Islam in the United States, he was a member of Moorish Science Temple 13 and later an Ahmadi. ^[9]
• Youssef Darwish: labour lawyer and activist ^[10] who was one of the Karaite Jews who remained in British-influenced Egypt after the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948.
• Tali Fahima – Algerian Jewish left-wing activist citizen of Israel who was convicted of aiding Palestinian fedayeen by Israel for her work with the children of Jenin refugee camp in Palestine and her coresidence with Zakaria Zubeidi. Converted to Islam in Umm al-Fahm in June 2010. ^[11]
• Rayhana bint Zayd: a member of the Banu Nadir widowed and captured and subsequently a wife of Muhammad.
• Rashid al-Din Hamadani – 13th-century physician of the Ilkhanate. ^[12]
• Ya'qub ibn Killis – 10th-century Egyptian vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate. ^[13]
• Leila Mourad – Egyptian singer and actress of the 1940s and 1950s. Her father was a hazzan and she was of Syrian and Moroccan Jewish descent. ^[14]
• Lev Nussimbaum – 20th-century Ashkenazi writer, journalist and orientalist from Kyiv. ^[15]
• Jacob Querido – 17th-century successor of Sabbatai Zevi, the self-proclaimed Jewish Messiah. ^[16]
• Ibn Sahl of Seville – 13th-century Andalusian poet. ^[17]
• Harun ibn Musa – 8th-century scholar of Hadith and qira'at (Quranic recitation), and the first compiler of the different styles of qira'at. ^[18]
• Al-Ru'asi – 8th-century scholar of early Arabic grammar and the first grammarian of Kufa. ^[19]
• Sabbatai Zevi – 17th-century self-proclaimed Jewish Messiah who converted to Islam under threat of death from Ottoman Caliphate along with many of his followers, who are known as Sabbateans. ^[20]

See also

• Islamic–Jewish relations
• Dönmeh, followers of Sabbatai Zevi who converted with him

References

1. Muhammad ibn Ishaq. Sirat Rasul Allah. Translated by Guillaume, A. (1955). The Life of Muhammad, pp. 240–241. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Stowasser, Barbara. The Mothers of the Believers in the Hadith. The Muslim World, Volume 82, Issue 1-2: 1-36.
3. Shanker, Stuart; Marenbon, John; Parkinson, George Henry Radcliffe (1998). Routledge History of Philosophy. Vol. 3. New York: Routledge. p. 76. ISBN   0415053773.
4. Schmitz, M. (1974). "KaʿB al-Aḥbār,". Encyclopaedia of Islam . Vol. 4 (2nd ed.). Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 316–317. ISBN   9004057455.
5. Ṭabarī (4 November 1999). The History of Al-Tabari: The Sasanids, the Lakhmids, and Yemen. Vol. 5. SUNY Press. p. 146. ISBN   978-0-7914-4356-9.
6. "Jewish Encyclopedia". Jewish Encyclopedia. n.d. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
7. Gyug, Richard (2003). Medieval Cultures in Contact. New York: Fordham University Press. p. 123. ISBN   0823222128.
8. "Biography of Muhammad Asad". Thetruecall.com. 23 February 1992. Archived from the original on 6 June 2009. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
9. "TAPS" (PDF). The Kablegram. Staunton Military Academy Foundation. July 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 October 2007. Retrieved 6 February 2007.
10. "Youssef Darwish: The courage to go on". Al-Ahram Weekly . 2 December 2004. Archived from the original on 20 April 2009. Retrieved 29 March 2009.
11. Leftist Tali Fahima converts to Islam
12. "Encyclopædia Britannica, "Rashid ad-Din", 2007". Encyclopædia Britannica. n.d. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
13. Cohen, Mark R.; Somekh, Sasson (1990). "In the Court of Yaʿqūb Ibn Killis: A Fragment from the Cairo Genizah". Jewish Quarterly Review . 80 (3/4): 283–314. JSTOR   1454972.
14. "Leila Mourad, Egyptian Film Actress, 77". The New York Times. Reuters. 23 November 1995. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
15. Griffin, Miriam Tamara, ed. (2009). A companion to Julius Caesar . Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. p.  84. ISBN   140514923X.
16. "Querido, Jacob". JewishEncyclopedia.com. n.d. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
17. Wexler, Paul (1996). The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 84. ISBN   0791427951.
18. Ignác Goldziher, Schools of Koranic commentators, pg. 26. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006.
19. Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 5, pg. 174, fascicules 81–82. Eds. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, E. van Donzel, Bernard Lewis and Charles Pellat. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1980. ISBN   9789004060562
20. "SHABBETHAI ẒEBI B. MORDECAI - JewishEncyclopedia.com". www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 18 January 2023.