Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was born in the Arabian city of Mecca in 570. His first biographer, Ibn Ishak, wrote that at the time of Mohammed’s birth, a Jew from the Arabian oasis of Yathrib stood on the roof of a house and ‘called forth the Jewish people.’ When a crowd gathered around the man and asked him, ‘Woe to you. What is the matter?’ he told them: ‘This night the star has risen, under which the apostle is born.’1
The idea of an apostle was not new to Arabia. At the time of Mohammed’s birth, some of the Arab tribes living in and around the central oases of the Arabian Peninsula were monotheistic, as a result of both Jewish and Christian influence. Other Arab tribes worshipped multiple gods, such as the moon goddess al–Lat, the fertility goddess al’Uzza and the goddess of fate Manat. Mecca was the centre for this idolatry; once Mohammed had founded his monotheistic faith and made some forty converts, he encountered opposition from the merchants of Mecca, whose livelihood depended on the city’s pagan rites and sites.2
The merchants of Mecca plotted to kill Mohammed, and his own Quraysh tribe–which dominated Mecca–turned against him. In 622, Mohammed left the city and travelled with his followers–the Companions, or Believers–to Yathrib, where the local Arabs had been receptive to his monotheistic message because of their contact with Jews. In Yathrib, Mohammed raised the banner of his own religious beliefs. For this reason, Yathrib became known as Medina: Madinat al–Nabi, ‘the City of the Prophet.’3 Mohammed’s journey from Mecca to Medina was the hijra–a journey to escape danger–and marks the first year of the Islamic calendar.
For more than five hundred years before Mohammed’s journey to Medina, the Arab tribes of the Arabian Peninsula had known the Jews well. Throughout Arabia, Jews were respected for being skilled craftsmen, metal workers and jewellers, as well as for the quality of the dates grown on their plantations. A generation before Mohammed, one of the best–known poets of the peninsula was Samuel ben Adiya, a Jew known as the ‘King of Tayma,’ who wrote some of the finest heroic Arabic battle poetry.
As Mohammed was growing up, Jewish tribes were living in all the major Arabian towns, including Tayma, Medina and Khaibar. TwentyJewish tribes lived in the peninsula, three of them in Medina.4 In the words of the Jewish historian H.Z. Hirschberg, Jewish tribes had ‘lived for generations’ in the region where Mohammed began his preaching. Hirschberg points out that two of the leading Arab tribes at Medina, the Banu al–Aws and the Banu Khazraj, were at one time vassals of the Jewish tribes.5
Among the Jews of Medina were the Banu (or children of) Nadir, the Banu Qaynuqa and the Banu Qurayzah.6 The Nadir and Qaynuqa believed they were of Jewish priestly origin, the descendants of Aaron, although their origins are unclear. They were either descendants of exiles who fled Judaea after the revolt against Rome in 70 CE, or a pagan Arab tribe that had converted to Judaism several centuries before Mohammed, or a mixture of both exiles and converts. By the Seventh Century, the Nadir spoke a dialect of Arabic and had adopted Arabic names.
Settling in Medina, Mohammed preached his beliefs to all the local religious groups, including pagan Arab tribes like the Banu al–Aws and the Banu Khazraj. He told them that God was one and that he, Mohammed, was God’s Prophet. He rejected the already five–hundred–year–old Christian doctrine of the Trinity–the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost–stating that ‘Unbelievers are those who say, “Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary.” … Unbelievers are those who say, “Allah is one of three.” There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished.’7
In contrast, Mohammed’s preaching revealed that he believed in the same attributes of God as did the Jews. The one God–al–Ilah (Allah)–was the true God, the creator of the world, the God of justice and mercy, before whom every human being bore personal responsibility. Mohammed, like the Jews, also considered Abraham the founder of monotheism. He saw Moses as a predecessor; the Koran–the record of Mohammed’s teachings and the holy book of Islam–quoted Moses more than a hundred times.8
Mohammed even adopted the Jewish traditions of praying in the direction of Jerusalem, of common Friday midday worship in preparation for the Sabbath day, and of fasting on the tenth day of each new year. In the latter case, the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) provided the model for the Muslim fast of Ashura. The word Ashura is reminiscent of the Hebrew word asor–ten–and quite early on, Ashura was fixed on the tenth day of the Muslim calendar, following the Jewish example of observing Yom Kippur ten days after the Jewish New Year.9 Similarly, although Mohammed and his followers had prayed only twice a day in Mecca, they followed the Jewish example in Medina by introducing a third prayer at midday.10
Mohammed’s views on modesty, on charity, on communal self–help and on strict dietary laws–essential in a desert climate–were similar to Jewish practices.11 He adopted the Jewish ritual of circumcision, which for Jews represented the entry of every male child into the Covenant of Abraham. Because of these similarities in beliefs and lifestyle, Mohammed did not envisage a problem in winning over Jews to his prophetic vision. The word Islam is Arabic for ‘submission’–denoting the submission of the believer to God. The Jews had already submitted to one God. Muslim, the active participle of the word Islam, is a person who has submitted, as the Jews already had done.
In response to the rejection of Islam by many of Medina’s Arab tribes, Mohammed drew up a military pact to help win allies for his new faith. According to Muslim tradition the articles of the pact concerning Jews proposed a firm alliance: ‘Jews who follow us shall be given aid and equality; they shall not be oppressed, nor shall aid be given to others against them.’ The Jews were considered to be of ‘one community with the Believers (but they shall have their own religion as Believers have theirs). There shall be mutual aid between Jews and Believers, in the face of any who war against those who subscribe to this document, and mutual consultations and advice.’ Mutual aid would be given ‘by the Believers and Jews against any who attack Medina. If the Jews are called upon by the Believers to make peace, they must comply; and if the Believers are called upon by the Jews to make peace, they must agree, except in the case of a holy war.’12
Whatever the truth about this much–quoted pact, the Jewish tribes of Medina put up a strong resistance to Islam. One of Mohammed’s leading opponents, Ka’b ibn–Ashraf, a poet of mixed Arab–Jewish descent, embraced his mother’s Judaism and composed verses against Islam, encouraging Mohammed’s own Quraysh tribe to fight against him. Such opposition from the Jews grew further in 624, when Mohammed’s followers defeated a larger Quraysh force at the oasis of Wadi Badr, twenty miles south of Mecca. This was where caravans transporting goods from Gaza for Quraysh merchants made their final water stop before reaching Medina.
The battle at Badr prompted Ka’b to travel to Mecca and write even more verses against Islam, urging the Quraysh to avenge their dead. It also led the Jewish Qaynuqa tribe to join forces with the Arab Quraysh tribe. Mohammed decided to speak to the Jews face–to–face. Visiting them in their section of Medina, he urged the Jews to accept him as a Prophet–a messenger of God and a bearer of prophetic warnings within the Jewish tradition. The Koran mentions his efforts in Sura Five–one of its 114 suras, or chapters–which addresses the Jews directly: ‘People of the Book, there has come to you Our Messenger’–Mohammed–‘who makes things clear to you after a break in the succession of Prophets, lest you should say: “There has come to us no bearer of glad tidings and no warner.” Now there has come to you a bearer of glad tidings and a warner.’13
For the Jews of Medina, however, as for most Jews, the era of prophets, with their warnings, exhortations and visions, was long over. The last Hebrew prophet, Malachi, had died a thousand years earlier. According to Jewish tradition, the seal of prophecy was only to be renewed with the return of the Jews to Zion. ‘O Mohammed’–the Jews are reported to have told him–‘you seem to think that we are your people. Do not deceive yourself because you have encountered a people’–at Badr–‘who have no knowledge of war and got the better of them; for my God if we fight you, you will find that we are real men!’14
Internal Koranic evidence shows that the Jews of Medina were steeped in rabbinical tradition. While celebrating him as an unlearned person, the hadith acknowledges that Mohammed was confounded by the learned questions of these Jews. He is said to have answered them with the words, ‘You have concealed what you were ordered to make plain,’ thus rebuking the Jews for failing to share their religious revelation with him.15 The Koran presents Jews as having fallen into divine disfavour on account of their disobedience. It states that Jews have blasphemed twice in their history, the second time being when they told Mohammed, ‘We do believe in that which has been sent down to us.’ The Koran notes: ‘Thus they incurred wrath upon wrath, and for such disbelievers there is humiliating chastisement.’16
A few days after Mohammed was rebuffed by the Jews, there was an incident in the Qaynuqa market, where, according to Muslim tradition, a Jewish goldsmith was said to have played a trick on a Muslim woman by pinning the back of her skirt to her upper garments, so that when she stood up she exposed herself. Fighting broke out. A Jew and a Muslim were killed. Mohammed, in his official capacity as a judge of disputes, was called in to arbitrate. The Jews refused to accept his arbitration and barricaded themselves in their fortress. The Qaynuqa, hoping to rally Mohammed’s Arab opponents against him, called for support but found themselves alone, without allies.
Mohammed acted quickly, attacking the Qaynuqa stronghold, besieging it and demanding that the Jews surrender. This they did. It was Mohammed’s first victory over the Jews. A former Arab ally of the Jews, Abdallah ibn Ubayy, a member of the Khazraj tribe and a recent convert to Islam, interceded with Mohammed on the Jews’ behalf. The Prophet agreed to save their lives, but he insisted on expelling the Qaynuqa from Medina. While the two other Jewish tribes remained in the city, all the Qaynuqa lands and part of their possessions were taken by the Muslims. The Qaynuqa themselves took refuge with another Jewish tribe in the Wadi al–Qura.
In the face of such unexpected opposition, Mohammed redoubled his efforts to provide security for his new faith. He was distressed by the hostile verses of the poet Ka’b ibn–Ashraf, who, according to later Muslim tradition, had sought to inflame the NadirJewish tribe against Mohammed. Ka’b had earlier returned to Medina, where he continued to write inflammatory verses. On Mohammed’s orders he was assassinated there in 625. The NadirJewish leaders went to Mohammed to protest at the murder of one of their prominent men. Mohammed responded that although he allowed dissident thoughts and opinions, he would not allow seditious and treasonable action in violation of his pact with the Jews.
The Nadir were not intimidated. Later that year, under the leadership of Huyayy ibn Akhtab, they allied themselves with the Bedouin chief Abu Bara, another of Mohammed’s opponents. At the Battle of Uhud, sixty–five Muslims and twenty–two Meccans were killed. Shortly after the battle, Mohammed won Abu Bara’s allegiance, and in 626 he visited the Jewish Nadir to negotiate a truce with them. According to Muslim tradition, the Nadir were determined to avenge the death of Ka’b ibn–Ashraf, and they planned to kill Mohammed by dropping a heavy boulder onto his head from a rooftop. Mohammed was warned of their plan, however, and did not venture into the Nadir quarter.
The Nadir refused to negotiate with Mohammed, preferring to seek an alliance with his veteran opponent Ibn Ubayy. But when the Jews retreated to their fortress, Ibn Ubayy, who realised he had underestimated Mohammed’s strength after the Battle of Uhud, decided not to go to their aid. Mohammed then besieged the Nadir fortress and began cutting down their date palms, on which their livelihood depended. This occurred on the Sabbath, a day of piety and prayer on which the Jews–peace–loving artisans and agriculturalists–could not fight. For the Muslims, who ridiculed the institution of the Jewish Sabbath, this refusal to fight was a sign of weakness. The Jews begged Mohammed to spare their lives. He agreed, but on the condition that they, like the Qaynuqa before them, leave Medina at once. He allowed them to take only those goods that could be carried on their camels.
Some Nadir Jews took refuge a hundred miles northwest of Medina in the oasis of Khaibar, where a mainly Jewish community lived. Others continued northward for a further five hundred miles, travelling as far as Palestine–their Holy Land and the ancestral home from which they had come more than 1,600 years earlier.
The expulsion of the Nadir from Medina was Mohammed’s second victory against the Jews. Sura Fifty–Nine of the Koran is believed by many commentators to justify, and ascribe to Allah, the expulsion of the Nadir: ‘He it is who turned out the disbelievers from their homes at the time of the first banishment. You did not think that they would go forth and they thought that their fortresses would protect them against Allah. But Allah came upon them whence they did not expect and cast terror into their hearts….’ Had it not been ‘that Allah had decreed exile for them, He would surely have chastised them in this life also. In the Hereafter they will certainly undergo the chastisement of the Fire. That is because they opposed Allah and His Messenger; and who so opposes Allah will find that Allah is severe in retribution.’
Confronted with such an implacable enemy, the Nadir had no reason to resist further; Mohammed had deprived them of their livelihood. Jewish Biblical ethics forbid the cutting down of fruit trees even in wartime.17 Muslim tradition is emphatic in suggesting the contrary. Sura Fifty–Nine continues: ‘Whatever palm–trees you cut down or left them standing on their roots was by Allah’s command, that He might disgrace the transgressors. Whatever Allah has given to His Messenger as spoils from them, is of His grace. You urged neither horse nor camel for it; but Allah grants power to His Messengers over whomsoever He pleases.’18
The exiled Nadir Jews, led by Huyayy ibn Akhtab, were driven to seek out Abu Sufyan, a prominent member of Mohammed’s pagan Quraysh tribe. Abu Sufyan was then leading a Meccan alliance of Arab tribesmen who had also turned against Mohammed. A Koranic verse–‘whomever God has cursed you will find none to support him’19–is interpreted as referring to the conversation that occurred when Abu Sufyan asked the Jews their view on Mohammed’s religious claims. ‘You, O Jews,’ he said, ‘are the people of the first scripture and know the nature of our dispute with Mohammed. Is our religion better or is his?’ To this, the Jews replied that the pagan religion of the Quraysh was definitely better; Mohammed and his followers were outraged when they heard that Huyayy and his group had defended what to them was idol worship.20
Not long after Mohammed expelled the Nadir, he discovered another threat to Islam from a Jewish tribe of Medina. The head of Medina’s Qurayzah Jews, Ka’b ibn Asad, was pressed into joining the alliance of Mohammed’s enemies led by the pagan Arab Quraysh. The news reached Mohammed’s closest ally, Omar ibn al–Khattab–later the second Rashidun Caliph–who told his leader that the Jews were forming a Meccan alliance against him.21
Fearing that his men would be outnumbered by this alliance, Mohammed tried to sow dissent between the Qurayzah and his Arab adversaries. Within three weeks he was successful. The Jews, anticipating treachery by the Quraysh, took some of the tribe hostage to prevent it abandoning the alliance. But at this point, the soldiers of the Meccan alliance were finding it hard to feed their horses and camels. A fierce desert storm added to their distress. Abu Sufyan decided to disband the alliance altogether, addressing his troops with the defeatist words: ‘O Quraysh, we are not in a permanent camp; the horses and camels are dying; the Bani Qurayzah have broken their word to us and we have heard disquieting reports of them. You can see the violence of the wind, which leaves us neither cooking pots, nor fire, nor tents to count on. Be off, for I am going!’22
The Qurayzah were left to face Mohammed’s army alone, although the head of the exiled Nadir Jews, Huyayy ibn Akhtab, had travelled more than a hundred miles from Khaibar to join them. Accusing the Qurayzah of aiding his enemies, Mohammed sent his forces to surround and besiege the Jews. For twenty–five days the Jews held out. But as the siege continued, starvation loomed. Huyayy and Ka’b put three possibilities before their people. They could accept that by his extraordinary successes Mohammed was a true prophet, and convert to Islam. They could kill their own womenfolk and children and then attack the Muslim army; if they were killed they would not have to worry about a cruel fate for their dependents. Or they could try to trick Mohammed by attacking him on the Sabbath, when he would be taken unawares.
For religious and ethical reasons, the Jews found each of these possibilities unimaginable. Instead, they asked Mohammed if they could leave Medina on the same terms he had earlier granted the Nadir. They would allow the Muslims to confiscate their land and their property, but asked that each Jewish family take one camel–load of possessions with them. Mohammed refused. The Jewish fighters then offered to leave without any of their belongings, just with their families. Again Mohammed refused. He wanted them to surrender without any conditions, and to accept whatever he might decide for their fate. The Jews were left with no choice, and were taken prisoner.
In Medina, the men and women were separated and put into different courtyards, the men with their hands tied behind their backs. An Arab tribe, the Aws, with whom the Jews had earlier been allied, asked Mohammed for leniency towards the Jews. He declined their request and then appointed a leading member of the Aws tribe, Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, as an arbitrator. This was a subterfuge on the part of Mohammed, because he knew what Sa’d’s judgement would be. Sa’d had been wounded and humiliated in battle; his verdict was predictably severe. The Jewish men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the possessions of the Jews divided as spoils among the Muslims.
When he heard of Sa’d’s judgement, Mohammed exclaimed: ‘You have judged according to the very sentence of Allah above the Seven Heavens!’ Mohammed then gave orders for the judgement to be carried out.23 Henceforth, Muslims considered this judgement a divine revelation. The Koran states: ‘As for those who blaspheme, neither their wealth nor their progeny shall avail them one jot with God. These shall be fuel for the Fire.’24
On the following day, seven hundred Jewish men were taken to the market at Medina. Trenches were dug in the market square and the men, tied together in groups, were beheaded. Their headless bodies were then buried in the trenches while Mohammed watched. Only a few men were spared at the request of individual Muslims. One Jewish woman was among those executed; Aisha, Mohammed’s wife, was with her after hearing an unseen voice call out her name. ‘Good heavens,’ Aisha cried, ‘what is the matter?’ ‘I am to be killed,’ the woman replied. ‘What for?’ Aisha asked. ‘Because of something I did,’ the woman answered. During the siege she had dropped a heavy stone on one of the Muslims. Aisha commented: ‘She was taken away and beheaded.’25
After the Jewish men and this one Jewish woman had been killed, all Jewish males who had not yet reached puberty, and all the remaining women and girls, were sold into slavery. Some were given as gifts to Mohammed’s companions. The property of the Jews, including their weapons, was distributed among the conquerors. According to Mohammed’s biographer Ibn Ishak, Mohammed chose as his wife one of the Jewish women, Rayhana, whose husband had been among those executed. Thus ended Mohammed’s third victory over the Jews.26
The brutal removal of those whom Mohammed defeated became a model for future Muslim rulers. A leading Muslim jurist, Abu Yusuf (who died in 798, and who was an adviser to the Abbasid Caliph Harun al–Rashid) wrote in his commentaries on jihad–holy war–that whenever Muslims ‘besiege an enemy stronghold, establish a treaty with the besieged who agree to surrender on certain conditions that will be decided by a delegate, and this man decides that their soldiers are to be executed and their women and children taken prisoner, this decision is lawful.’ He went on to explain: ‘This was the decision of Sa’d ibn Mu’adh in connection with the Banu Qurayzah.’27
Abu Yusuf added that it was up to the Imam–the religious head of the community–to decide what treatment was to be meted out. ‘If the imam esteems that the execution of the fighting men and the enslavement of their women and children is better for Islam and its followers, then he will act thus, emulating the example of Sa’d ibn Mu’adh.’28
Three centuries later, another leading Muslim jurist, al–Mawardi, from Baghdad (who died in 1058), wrote of the slaughter of the Qurayzah that Mohammed ‘was not permitted’ to forgive in a case of God’s injunction; he could only forgive transgressions ‘in matters concerning his own person.’29 Indeed, for later Muslim scholars, the punishment of the Qurayzah Jews had not been decided by Mohammed’s personal wishes; it was Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, the arbitrator chosen by Mohammed, whose adjudication it had been that the Qurayzah men were put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and their possessions divided as spoils among the Muslims.
Following the defeat of the Qurayzah Jews in 628, Mohammed and his seven hundred followers reached an agreement with the Arab Quraysh tribe for a ten–year truce and the right to worship in what was then pagan–ruled Mecca, though only for three days over the following year. Thus freed from the enmity of the Quraysh, Mohammed was able to attack the largest of all the Jewish communities in the peninsula–and the Quraysh’s last potential Jewish ally against him. This was the Jewish community of Khaibar, a fertile oasis where Jews maintained a substantial irrigation system and lived off its produce.
Mohammed’s forces reached the oasis, unobserved, a few weeks later. Under cover of darkness, Mohammed first sent a ‘commando’ to assassinate the leaders of the Medinian Jews who had taken refuge there, and who were the most likely to oppose him. Then, in the morning, Mohammed’s forces attacked the Jewish farmers who came out of the city to work their fields. The Jews were carrying the spades and baskets of their trade; the Muslims were armed with swords. After burning down the Jews’ date palm groves–their main source of livelihood in Khaibar–Mohammed laid siege to the oasis. Then one by one, over the course of a month, each of the Jews’ seven separate compounds was forced to surrender.
With the conclusion of this battle, Mohammed dispelled any chance of a Jewish–Quraysh coalition against his forces. Under the terms of Khaibar’s surrender, some Jews were allowed to remain and to tend what remained of their date palms and gardens. They were also granted permission to continue practising their faith. But in return for their continued residence at Khaibar, the Jews had to give fifty per cent of their harvest to the Muslims. The land itself would henceforth belong to the Muslim community. Mohammed even selected another wife, Safiyya, a leading woman of the Khaibar Jews, from among the enslaved Jewish captives.
The consequences of the Khaibar battle were extremely far–reaching. Based on Mohammed’s actions there and at previous battles, Sura Fifty–Nine of the Koran states: ‘Whatever Allah has bestowed on His Messenger as spoils from the people of the townships is for Allah and for the Messenger and for the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, that it may not circulate only among those of you who are rich.’30 Islam demanded an equitable distribution of the spoils of conquest–but only among Muslims.
The terms imposed on Khaibar’s Jews set the precedent in Islamic case law (Sharia Law) for the subsequent treatment of all non–Muslims under Muslim rule. The relevant Sharia regulations aimed to keep non–Muslims, who are referred to as dhimmis, in a state of subjugation and fealty similar to the Khaibar Jews. Many millions of non–Muslims were to be affected by these rules in the coming centuries, as Mohammed’s followers continued building their empire across a vast geographic area.
For some Muslims who looked back on this episode, like Amrozi in Bali 1,375 years later, the Battle of Khaibar symbolised the defeat of their Jewish infidel enemies and the beginning of the sanctioned humiliation of Jews under the dhimma practice. For non–Muslims, Khaibar symbolised the onset of regularised discrimination that lasted for centuries.
A central, repressive aspect of the dhimmi condition, the jizya poll tax, was clearly understood by Muslim tradition to have begun with the Jews of Khaibar. The tax originated when the Jews were forced to hand over fifty per cent of their harvest. It was elaborated upon in the early Twelfth Century by Caliph al–Amir bi–Ahkam Illah of Egypt, who ruled from 1101 to 1130. The Caliph believed that the ‘prior degradation of the infidels before the life to come–where it is their lot, is considered an act of piety.’ Such degradation, which included the jizya poll tax, was ‘a divinely ordained obligation’ that was based on the words from the Koran: ‘until they pay the tax willingly and make their submission.’31
Caliph al–Amir described the jizya tax as a means of discrimination and humiliation, not merely a source of income. He insisted that his provincial governors ‘must not exempt from the jizya a single dhimmi, even if he be a distinguished member of his community; they must not, moreover, allow any of them to send the amount by a third party, even if the former is one of the personalities or leaders of their community.’ The payment of the tax by a Muslim on behalf of a dhimmi ‘will not be tolerated.’ It had to be ‘exacted from him directly in order to vilify and humiliate him, so that Islam and its people may be exalted and the race of infidels brought low. The jizya is to be imposed on all of them in full, without exception.’
The Jews of Khaibar were explicitly mentioned as the example to follow. Caliph al–Amir explained that the traditions were ‘in agreement’ that Mohammed had resolved to expel the Khaibaris ‘just as he had done’ to other Jewish tribes. But after the Khaibaris had conveyed to Mohammed that ‘they were the only ones who knew how to irrigate the palm groves properly and till the soil of the region, the Prophet let them remain as tenants; he accorded them half of the harvest, and this condition was expressly stipulated.’ The Caliph then quoted Mohammed: ‘We will allow you to remain in this land as long as it pleases us.’ Thus, al–Amir explained, Mohammed placed the Khaibari Jews ‘in a state of abasement; they remained in the land, working on these conditions; and they were neither given any privileges, nor distinction, that might exempt them from the jizya and make an exception between them and the other dhimmis.’32
In 629, Mohammed established his complete authority over the Jews of the central Arabian Peninsula. He began by laying siege to the Jewish villages of the Wadi al–Qura, in which the Qurayzah and other Jews had found refuge after leaving Medina. They resisted his attack for two days–and lost eleven of their own fighters–but eventually surrendered, accepting the terms that had earlier been imposed on the Jews of Khaibar.
Mohammed then concluded a treaty with a Jewish tribe in the Mu’ta oasis, allowing them to preserve their religion on payment of an annual jizya tax. In return Mohammed undertook to protect them from attacks by the marauding Bedouin tribes of the desert. He hoped thereby to obtain loyalty from Jews by allowing them protection under the dhimmi status. As a result, some of the Jews reduced to dhimmi status by his conquests were among the early converts to Islam.
Islam spread rapidly during Mohammed’s lifetime. In 630, eight years after he left Mecca with forty followers, Mohammed returned with ten thousand fighters and took the city without a battle. Mecca was henceforth the centre for worship of the one God of Islam. Rebuffed by the Jews, Mohammed decreed that the Muslim faithful no longer pray towards Jerusalem but towards Mecca. This ‘reversal of custom,’ writes one Christian scholar of Islam, Sir Percy Sykes, was ‘a politic stroke; for, although it laid Mohammed open to a charge of inconsistency, it must have gratified the people of Arabia by reserving to Mecca its pre–eminence in the ceremonial of the new faith.’33
When Mohammed died in 632, at the age of sixty–two, most of the Arabian Peninsula had been conquered for Islam. Muslim forces had already ventured outside of Arabia in 630 to conquer the Persian Gulf territory of Bahrain.34 Within a hundred and twenty years of Mohammed’s death the empire of Islam stretched as far west as the Atlantic coast of Spain and North Africa, as far east as the Oxus and Indus rivers, and as far south as the Gulf of Aden. Across this wide range of territories, Muslim rule brought with it dhimmi status for all Christians and Jews who refused to convert.35 The conquerors were Mohammed’s successors, the first of whom, Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s first father–in–law, styled his role ‘Caliph’–Khalifat Rasul Allah (‘Successor to the Messenger of God’).36
Mohammed’s successors were guided in their attitude to the Jews by the clear divisions their prophet had already drawn between Islam and Judaism. These included the Koran’s three specific curses against the Jews. The first curse recalled the Jews’ rebellion against Moses in the wilderness.37 The second curse was said to have been made both by King David and by Jesus against the Jews: ‘They disobeyed and were given to transgression. They did not try to restrain one another from the iniquity which they committed. Evil indeed was that which they used to do.’38 The third curse was for the Jews’ refusal to accept Mohammed’s teaching: ‘O ye who have been given the Book, believe in that which we have now sent down, fulfilling that which is with you, before we destroy your leaders and turn them on their backs or cast them aside as we cast aside the people of the Sabbath.’39
There is also a charge made against the Jews in the Koran, for which they are said to deserve punishment: ‘Their uttering against Mary a grievous calumny; and their saying: we did kill the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the messenger of Allah; whereas they slew him not, nor did they compass his death upon the Cross, but he was made to appear to them as one crucified to death …’40 Mohammed also asserted that the Jews had distorted their Bible in saying that Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac to God on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. In Islamic tradition it was not Isaac but Abraham’s other son, Ishmael–from whom the Arabs claimed descent–whom Abraham had offered to sacrifice to God. This had happened not in Jerusalem but on the Black Stone of Ka’bah in Mecca.
In distancing Islam from Judaism, Mohammed disregarded the three pilgrim festivals celebrated by the Jews: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Pentecost) and Succoth (the Festival of Booths). Taken together, these three festivals commemorated the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt and their journey through the Sinai desert to Canaan, the Promised Land. The term ‘pilgrim festival’ derived from pilgrimages that were made to the Temple of Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Romans. In place of these festivals, Mohammed gave the existing Arabian pilgrimage to Mecca an Islamic character: the hajj, which Muslims were–and still are–obliged to undertake at least once in their lives, however far from Mecca they might live.
Mohammed had not expected to be so emphatically rejected by the Jews of Medina. Why had they refused to countenance him as a Hebrew prophet? Why had they reneged on his pact with them to defend Medina ‘against all enemies’? Why had so few been willing to convert to Islam? Why had they joined forces against him, when they could have been his allies in a series of victorious battles?
Throughout the centuries to follow, Muslims had to decide in their relations with the Jews whether to see them as a cursed people, or as a people protected by Islam. Mohammed’s example gave them ample reason to take either view. Although he had protected Jews living under dhimmi status and granted them religious freedom, he had also subjugated them and punished them severely. His attitude also hardened towards the end of his life; his dying wish was that ‘two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs.’41 The Jews of Khaibar lost the right to cultivate their former lands in obedience to that very wish.
In the fourteen centuries since Mohammed’s death, Jews in Muslim lands have faced both cursing and protection. When cursed, they suffered; when protected, they flourished. The history of those years shows how intertwined that suffering and protection could be.
1 Ibn Ishak, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah,’ published as The Life of Mohammed, Apostle of Allah, Alfred Guillaume (translator), pages 17–18. Mohammed ibn Ishak ibn Yasar, a compiler of oral recollections about the Prophet Mohammed, was born in Medina in 704 and died in Baghdad in either 761 or 767. He wrote ‘Sirat Rasul Allah’ a century and a half after Mohammed’s birth.
2 Mecca’s pagan sites were dominated by the Ka’bah, a shrine housing the ‘great black meteor.’ According to Islamic tradition, following Mohammed’s return to Mecca in 630, Allah gave Adam a bright, pure white stone to bring to Earth from Paradise. This stone was called al–Hajar–ul–Aswad, ‘the Black Stone,’ and was also known as ‘the Happiest Stone’–because it alone had been chosen of all the stones in Paradise.
3 Also known as al–Madinah al–Munawwarah: ‘The enlightened city’ or ‘the radiant city.’
4 See Map 2, page 357.
5 H.Z. (J.W.) Hirschberg, ‘Arabia,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 3, columns 232–6.
6 The Jewish Qurayzah tribe is not to be confused with Mohammed’s Arab tribe, the Quraysh, who were then idol worshippers.
7 Koran 5:72–73.
8 In the Koran, verse 20 of Sura Five states: ‘Call to mind when Moses said to his people, “O my people, recall the favour that Allah bestowed upon you when he appointed Prophets among you and made you Kings, and gave you that which He had not given to any other of the peoples.”’ The Sura then quotes what it describes as the words of Moses: ‘“O my people, enter the Holy Land which Allah has ordained for you, and do not turn back, for in that case you will turn back losers.”’
9 For Shiite Muslims, the tenth day of Muharram carries a different meaning: according to Shiite tradition, Mohammed’s grandson Husayn and members of his entourage fell in battle on this day in the year 680. Ashura is thus a day of mourning for all Shiite Muslims.
10 Carl Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples, pages 21–2.
11 The Jewish and Muslim laws for slaughtering meat–kashrut and halal–are almost identical.
12 Ibn Ishak, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah,’ published as The Life of Mohammed, Apostle of Allah, Alfred Guillaume (translator), pages 76–7.
13 Koran 5:19, Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 102.
14 Ibn Ishak, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah,’ published as The Life of Mohammed, Apostle of Allah, Alfred Guillaume (translator), page 309.
15 Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, page 18.
16 Koran 2:92. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, pages 16–7. According to the Koran, the first instance of the Jews’ blasphemy occurred when Moses brought the Tablets of the Law–the Ten Commandments–down from Mount Sinai to find the Jews worshipping a golden calf: ‘Moses came to you with manifest signs, yet you took the calf for worship in his absence, because you were transgressors.’
17 ‘When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees therof by forcing an axe against them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life)….’ Deuteronomy 20:19.
18 Koran 59:6. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 555.
19 Koran 4:51. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 68.
20 M.J. de Goeje et al. (editors), Tabari’s History of the Prophets and Kings, first series, page 1464. Compiled in the Ninth Century.
21 The title ‘Caliph’ or deputy (Khalifa in Arabic) is a shortened form of ‘Caliph of God’ (Khalifat Allah). Following the Prophet Mohammed’s death in 632, ‘Caliph’ became the title of the ruler of the Muslim dynasties. The five Caliphates after Mohammed were the Rashidun (Medina, 632–661), whose conquests extended from Afghanistan to Tunisia; the Umayyad (Damascus, 661–750, and al–Andalus Cordova–756–1031); the Abbasid (Baghdad, 750–1258); the Fatimid (Cairo, 909–1171); and the Ottoman (Istanbul, 1517–1924). The Ottoman Caliphate was abolished by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) on 3 March 1924.
22 Ibn Ishak, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah,’ published as The Life of Mohammed, Alfred Guillaume (translator), page 460.
23 Ibn Ishak, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah,’ published as The Life of Mohammed, Alfred Guillaume (translator), page 464.
24 Koran 3:10. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 52.
25 Ibn Ishak, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah,’ published as The Life of Mohammed, Alfred Guillaume (translator), page 464–5.
26 This account of the defeat of the Qurayzah is taken from Muslim sources, published and annotated in Andrew G. Bostom (editor), The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non–Muslims, pages 17–19.
27 Jihad (struggle), from ‘striving in the way of Allah’ (al–jihadfi sabilAllah). A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid (plural mujahidun).
28 Abu Yusuf Ya’qub, Le Livre de l’impôt foncier. Translated in Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi, pages 171–2.
29 M.J. Kister, ‘The Massacre of Banu Qurayza: A Re–examination of a Tradition,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, issue 8, page 69.
30 Koran 59:7, Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 555. The word ‘townships’ is explained by some commentators as referring to the Jewish compounds at Khaibar. Khaibar itself is not mentioned in the Koran.
31 Koran 9:29, Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 176.
32 Ibn Naqqash (died 1362), quoted in Bat Ye’or, TheDhimmi, pages 188–9.
33 Lieutenant–Colonel P.M. Sykes, A History of Persia, Volume Two, page 15.
34 Arabic sources tell of a Jewish community in the capital, Hajar, that refused to accept conversion to Islam. Walter Joseph Fischel, ‘Bahrein,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 4, columns 101–2. Five centuries later, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela found five hundred Jews on the Persian Gulf island of Qais, and five thousand Jews in the town of al–Qatifa, on the Arabian side of the Gulf. A. Asher (editor and translator), The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, pages 137–8.
35 For the conquests of Islam by 750, and some of the towns within that area with large Jewish communities, see Map 1, page 356.
36 Many thought that Mohammed’s cousin and son–in–law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, one of the very first Muslims, had been designated the successor to Mohammed. But at thirty–three, Ali was thought by some to be too young. Shia Muslims believe that Ali and his descendants–the Imams–have special spiritual and political rule over the community, and that Ali was Mohammed’s rightful successor. Shiites reject the legitimacy of the first three Rashidun Caliphs. (The word rashidun means ‘rightly guided.’)
37 ‘Thus they were smitten with abasement and penury, and they incurred the wrath of Allah because they rejected the signs of Allah and would slay the prophets unjustly, and this had resulted from their persisting in rebellion and transgression.’ Koran 2:61. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 12.
38 Koran 5:82. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 111.
39 Koran 4:44–46. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, page 12.
40 Koran 4:156 and 157. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, pages 95–6.
41 ‘I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian peninsula Jazirat al–‘Arab) and will not leave any but Muslims.’ (Quoted in Sahih Muslim, a collection of traditions of the Prophet regarded as the second most trusted collection after Sahih al–Bukhari). The second Caliph, Omar, drove the Khaibari Jews out of Arabia altogether in 640. According to the Twelfth–Century Caliph al–Amir, he did so with the words, ‘If Allah prolongs my life, I shall certainly chase all Jews and Christians from Arabia and will leave only Muslims.’ Today there are no Jews living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (Edict of Caliph al–Amir bi Akham Allah, quoted by Ibn Naqqash [died 1362]: Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi, pages 188–9.)