Muhammad, The Jews and the Constitution of Medina

Muhammad, The Jews and the Constitution of Medina: Retrieving the historical Kernel
Pa u l L aw r e n c e R o s e Pennsylvania State University

Abstract
The Constitution of Medina (Kit a b) is perhaps the earliest surviving text of Islam that is accepted as authentic even by most revisionist historians. It embodies crucial material for the history of Muhammads relations with the Jews of Medina as well as for the historical emergence of Islam, but its meaning and significance are difficult to ascertain, and it has proven difficult to extract the substantial kernel of historical truth which is contained within it. This article proposes a new method of doing so based on the triangulation of the Sira narratives, the Qur#a n, and the Kit a b, in which the last may be used as a control on the other sources. The Kit a b itself is analyzed on the basis of R. B. Serjeant s critical dissection of the text into a series of component treaties concluded at various times with the Muslim, Jewish and Munafiq u n residents of Medina. The particular episode of the Jewish Qaynuqa# tribe and its Munafiq u n allies is investigated to demonstrate the potential of the method.

a. Problems of the Early Islamic Sources and a Suggested Solution One of the most curious aspects of the vigorous debate on the origins of Islam which has been going on between mainstream and revisionist historians in an acute form since the publication of Crone and Cook s Hagarism in 1977 is that so little attention has been paid to the quarrels between Muhammad and the Jews which are central to the history of early Islam.1

P . Crone and M. Cook , Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge, 1977, which emphasizes the fundamental impact of Judaism on early Islam. For comments on the place of the Jewish issue in Islamic mentality as well as the difficulties of interpretation, see J. Lassner, The Middle East Remembered. Forged Identities, Competing Narratives, Contested Spaces, Ann Arbor MI, 2000, pp. 26,
Der Islam Bd. 86, S. 129 Walter de Gruyter 2011 ISSN 0021-1818 DOI 10.1515/ISLAM.2011.012

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With a few exceptions, recent standard accounts of the strained relations between Muhammad and the three Jewish tribes of Medina have generally followed the earliest biographies of the Prophet, known as the Sira, which date from the mid-8th century.2 But the revisionist school has offered little in place of these conventional accounts and generally avoided any attempt to situate the Jewish issue in the framework of the thorough-going scepticism characteristic of their approach to the biography of the Prophet and the history of Islam in its first century.3 At present there seems to be an impasse between those historians of a sanguine disposition who optimistically believe that the Sira (the early biographical material on Muhammad) and the Qur#a n itself embody valid historical data that can be retrieved with comparative ease and those of a sceptical temperament who remain convinced that the the Sira, far from being a reliable and transparent historical source, is essentially a corpus of much later exegetical invented historical traditions intended to elucidate recondite allusions in the Qur#a n which is itself a document of questionable authentic historical (as opposed to religious) content. The current debates on these issues are of a difficult technical nature which renders them understandable only by specialists, but the fundamental issue is all too plain: To what extent is the Sira historically true?4 The tendency of most historians has

2759, 26791, 31840; J. Lassner and M. Bonner, Islam in the Middle Ages. The Origins and Shaping of Classical Islamic Civilization, Santa Barbara CA, 2010, pp. 367, 4976. I am most grateful to Patricia Crone for her generous critical comments on this essay, despite our fundamental difference of approach. For useful discussion of some issues I am indebted to my colleague Gonzalo Rubio. 2) For example, F. E Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, Albany NY, 1994, a generally judicious survey of the origins of Islam. 3) The only extensive revisionist attempt at reinterpreting the Jewish issue is M. Schller, Exegetisches Denken und Prophetenbiographie. Eine quellenkritische Analyse der Sira-berlieferung zu Muhammads Konflikt mit den Juden, Wiesbaden, 1998, which is unconvincing in several respects (see below). The revisionism of B. Ahmad , Muhammad and the Jews. A Re-Examination, New Delhi, 1978, is of a different type, being a traditionalist effort to evade the harshness of Muhammads attacks on the Jews. 4) Lucid guides to these issues are Lassner, The Middle East Remembered ; F. M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Princeton, 1998 (and idem, The Historical Context, in J. D. Mcauliffe, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Quran, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 2339); R. S. Humphries, Islamic History. A Framework for Inquiry, revised edition, Princeton, 1991, pp. 69103; J. P . Berkey, The Formation of Islam. Religion and Society in the Near East, 6001800, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 5575. H. Berg, The Development of

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been to follow the broad lines of the Sira. Thus, orthodox historians such as W. M. Watt and R.B. Serjeant have argued vigorously that the general picture of Muhammads life and the origins of Islam depicted there is largely true and, with some critical reservations, this line has been taken by many others.5 Apart from the vivid plausibility of the Sira and the historical traditions (had i th) relating to Muhammad, the acceptance has been faute de mieux: As F. E. Peters nicely puts it, using the Muslim sources is a calculated risk based on the plausibility and internal coherence of the material, or simply a counsel of despair: if the hadiths are rejected, there is nothing notably better to put in their place.6 The revisionist sceptical response to this position as far as concerns the Jews has been blunt. Thus, Patricia Crone declares: They [the storytellers] must also have invented something, possibly everything, about the position of the Jews; These stories [about the Ethiopians] are no different from those on Muhammads encounter with Jews and others They could be true. In fact, they are clearly not.7 For current revisionists, the Sira is not in the least historiExegesis in Early Islam. The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period, Richmond, 2000, and in his article Context: Muhammad, in A. Rippin , ed., The Blackwell Companion to the Quran, Oxford, 2006, pp.187204, offers interesting comments on the current state of the historiography. See also the recent objectively critical survey of 2008 by P . Crone, What Do We Actually Know about Mohammed?, available on the internet http://www.opendemocracy.net. 5) See the surveys by J. M. B. Jones, The Maghazi Literature, and M. J. Kister, The Sirah Literature, in A. F. L. Beeston et al., eds., Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 34451 and 35267 respectively; J. Horovitz , The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors (1927), rev. ed. with introduction by L. I. Conrad, Princeton, 2002. M. W. Watt , Muhammad at Medina, Oxford, 1956. 6) Peters, Muhammad, p. 265. 7) P . Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Princeton, 1987, pp. 2189, 222. The author is speaking here of the position of the Jews in Medina just before Muhammads arrival, but it is clear that the remark applies implicitly also to postHijra Medina. Professor Crone concedes these are indeed historical kernels of truth in the sources, but holds that they have been so corrupted and confused with exegetical material that the original elements can no longer be retrieved. Crone justifiably dismisses most orthodox biographies of Muhammad as arbitrary summaries of the Muslim tradition; even a more sanguine though critical historian such as H. Motzki , The Murder of Ibn Abi l-Huqayq: On the Origin and Reliability of Some Maghazi Reports, in idem, ed., The Biography of Muhammad. The Issue of the Sources, Leiden, 2000, pp. 170239, pp. 2323, notes that it is obvious that the biographies of the Prophet written by Western scholars do not give a historically reliable picture of his life.

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cal, but rather a species of tafs ir or exegesis of the Qur#a n which uses storytellers tales (qass) to supply the occasion and significance of the original qur#anic verses. Thus, the whole accepted version provided by the Sira is mainly a projection of 8th and 9th century religious and political realities back onto a quite alien early 7th century setting.8 Yet the matter does not appear to be as simple to most historians, who intuitively find the Sira and its related genre the Maghazi (which focuses on Muhammads politics and wars) to be congenial and attractive sources for their intrinsic historical-mindedness. The core of the Sira is the first and fullest biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq (d. 767) which is indeed a fascinating historical work in its own right, exhibiting a critically-minded approach in dealing with its sources that is far more sophisticated than that of medieval Christian chroniclers.9 Thus, Ibn Ishaq sometimes provides isna ds (chains of oral transmission with names) to justify his accounts of the Prophets deeds, but he is quite willing either to forgo the isna d altogether, or to give incomplete ones, rather than manufacture

8) Crone, Meccan Trade, pp. 21826; cf. the ensuing abrasive exchange on method between R. B. Serjeant , Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam: Misconceptions and Flawed Polemics, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110, 1990, 47286, and P . Crone, Serjeant and Meccan Trade, Arabica, 39, 1992, 21640. The sceptical view of the Sira as exegesis devoid of historical actuality was pressed by J. Wansbrough , The Sectarian Milieu. Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (1978), rev. by G. Hawting, Amherst NY, 2006, pp. 149. Recent treatments include the two highly sceptical works by Schller, Exegetisches Denken und Prophetenbiographie and U. Rubin , The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, Princeton, 1995; and the more restrained line of Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam. R. S. Faizer, Muhammad and the Medinan Jews: A Comparison of the Texts of Ibn Ishaqs Kitab Sirat Rasul Allah with al-Waqidis Kitab al-Maghazi, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28, 1996, 46389, sees the Sira more as literary genre than exegesis and argues on literary-critical grounds against its factuality. Idem, The Issue of Authenticity regarding the Traditions of al-Waqidi as Established in his Kitab al-Maghazi, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 58, 1999, 97106, criticizes Crones category of storytelling as too vague and points out the difference between qisas and the literary-historical genres of Sira and Maghazi. 9) A. Guillaume, ed., The Life of Muhammad. A Translation of Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah (1955), reissued Oxford, 2007. (Throughout this essay translations have been cited wherever possible for the benefit of readers without Arabic). B. Lewis, Islam in History, La Salle IL, 1993, pp. 1045, points out how early Islamic historians are closer to modern historians in their sophistication in contrast to the crudeness of medieval European chroniclers.

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them as the authors of legal and theological had i th were all too ready to do. Hence, a key point in favor of the Sira here is the widely admitted difference as to reliability between the historical had i th and their often forged legal and theological counterparts.10 Most importantly, the sceptics have not been able to come up with any convincing argument against the self-evident fact that Ibn Ishaq was working with a fairly solid framework of Muhammads career that clearly had been constructed and agreed by preceding generations of scholars on the basis of oral (and perhaps written) traditions whose authenticity was a matter of general knowledge.11 Ibn Ishaqs successor al-Waqidi (d. 823) was especially assiduous in seeking out at Medina oral and written traditions about Muhammad and in submitting them to highly critical evaluation that would eliminate the unreliable data. From this spectrum of sources al-Waqidi would skilfully synthesize a narrative that was almost positivistic and included for the first time proper datings for the events.12 Most importantly, historical
10) On the authenticity of the historical had i th as a separate Sira-linked genre from tafs ir (exegesis) see W. M. Watt , The Reliability of Ibn Ishaqs Sources, in his Early Islam. Collected Articles, Edinburgh, 1990, pp. 1323; idem, The . M. Holt , eds., Historians of the Materials Used by Ibn Ishaq, in B.Lewis and P Middle East, London, 1962, pp. 2334. A spirited defence of the historicity of these reports is in W. M. Watt s introduction to The History of al-Tabari. An Annotated Translation, Albany NY, 1988, VI, xvii-xxvi; cf. Berg, Development, pp. 10611, and Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins. pp. 145. Wansbrough and Crone, however, dismiss the content of these had i ths as mere exegesis and salvation-history and story-telling rather than history. 11) As argued persuasively by Watt , Reliability, pp. 146, 22. Professor Crone questions whether this was indeed a solid framework. 12) J. Wellhausen , Muhammed in Medina. Das ist Vakidis Kitab alMaghazi in verkrzter deutscher Wiedergabe, Berlin, 1882. (Standard Arabic edition: Muhammad b. Umar al-Waqidi, Kit a b al-Maghazi, ed. J. M. B. Jones, Oxford, 1966). Waqidis reliability (with some crucial exceptions) is defended by M. Lecker, Waqidis Account of the Status of the Jews of Medina: A Study of a Combined Report, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 54, 1995, 1532, while Faizer, The Issue of Authenticity, pp. 1025, points out the defects of Waqidis method relating to the genre of Maghazi (military biography) and regards the dates and other information as invention for the most part rather than history. So too Crone and other sceptics see the dates as spurious. Motzki , The Murder of Ibn l-Huqayq, pp. 2278, finds some confusion natural but accepts most of the dates as accurate. For problems of chronology, see J. M. B. Jones, The Chronology of the Maghazi A Textual Survey, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 19, 1957, 24580, which offers a reasoned listing. Watt , Reliability and Materials, argues that the Maghazimaterial much of it oral, much of it now lost supplied the basic framework for

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truth seems to speak out clearly in those passages in Ibn Ishaq and alWaqidi where Muhammad is depicted unfavorably or uncomprehendingly. Finally, it is difficult for most historians to resist the impression that despite these authors Muslim bias, they are attempting to be fair-minded and historical. All these traits can be seen in the descriptions of Muhammads relations with the Jews of Medina during his years there (622632), the crucial period of the formation of Islam. Yet an anti-Jewish bias is certainly operating. The sources as we have them (and it must be stressed that we do not have a shred of evidence from the Jewish side to control them) portray a Muhammad religiously and violently in conflict with the Jews of Medina because of their alleged campaign to vilify and humiliate him and extinguish Islam in spite of his initially benevolent overtures to them.13 This in turn calls for a degree of scepticism: Is it possible that this picture of an insistently oppositional Judaism is the product of a later 7th or 8th century tradition rather than a true depiction of Muhammads own attitudes and actions? Might Muhammad rather than the Jews have been the provoker? Might he have set out from the start to subdue them into subservience? Any account of the Medinan Jews behavior as it is depicted in the Qur#a n and the early Sira must be treated with some caution and not swallowed uncritically. Even so, much of it seems very plausible to a general historian of antisemitism. In the absence of concrete evidence to the contrary their conduct may be taken as in large part a reasonable response to the introduction of a confrontational new religious challenge. The Jewish reactions and the Jewish arguments against Muhammads revelations are consistent with Jewish thinking and behavior in the face of religious proselytizing in other contexts. And from the other side, the picture painted in the earliest Muslim sources of Muhammads angry and contemptuous, and ultimately murderous reactions to Jewish opposition is very convincing in terms of the emotionality of his own unique personality. Can one, then, go beyond what might be easily dismissed as historians intuition (or worse, desperation and alleged gullibility) and devise an objective method of controlling the Sira narratives and retrieving the historical core? The inspirer of the current school of scepticism, John Wansbrough , thought this a pointless exercise since he believed that no
Ibn Ishaqs properly historical narrative. In general see Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins; T. Khalidi , Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period, Cambridge, 1994; C. F. Robinson , Islamic Historiography, Cambridge 2003. 13) For the possible use of information from Jewish sources concealed in the Sira, see Lassner, Middle East Remembered, pp. 31840.

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chronology/ topography of revelation is even feasible and he complained of the arbitrary historical method which for a century has dominated the course of Islamic and particularly that of qur#anic studies.14 Even less doctrinaire historians have expressed similar misgivings, suggesting that even if there is a genuine core,no one has yet provided a method of extracting this core and that there is no fool-proof method for distinguishing what is true and what is false in the Sira.15 In the light of this scepticism, the issue now for any historian is whether the reality of early 7th century Islam and the Prophet can ever be reached or are the sources too encrusted with later accretions and distortions to be taken at their face value and the kernel of historical truth in them isolated and recovered? Recently new analytical techniques have been devised which offer a convincing methodology for evaluating the genuine historical content of the Sira that might enable for the first time the compilation of a critical biography of Muhammad. Applying a combined source-criticism and textual analysis method to the isna ds, Schoeler and Motzki have begun to reconstruct a minimalist archive of critically secure facts about Muhammad and the earliest years of Islam capable of resisting the scythe of revisionist scepticism. This method of saving the kernels is an on-going project of great promise, but it will leave the status of a great quantity of crucial data unresolved, neither proven nor disproven, and so produce only a certain biography that is very slim indeed.16 Is it possible to add to this biography a body of information regarding Muhammad and the Jews that, while it may not be proven absolutely authentic, at least may be allowed as reasonably substantiated?17
J. Wansbrough , Quranic Studies. Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, Oxford, 1977, p. 126. 15) J. Robson , Ibn Ishaqs Use of the Isna d, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 38, 1965, 44965, at p. 464. F. M. Donner, The Historical Context, in the Cambridge Companion to the Quran, p. 34. 16) For examples of the method see G. Schoeler, Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen berlieferung ber das Leben Mohammeds, Berlin, 1996; idem, Foundations for a New Biography of Muhammad: The Production and Evaluation of the Corpus of Traditions according to Urwah b. al-Zubayr, in H. Berg, Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, Leiden, 2003, pp. 2128; H. Motzki , The Question of the Authenticity of Muslim Traditions Reconsidered, ibidem, pp. 211257; idem, The Murder of Ibn Abi l-Huqayq, in The Biography of Muhammad. 17) Another interesting approach is M. Lecker, Muslims, Jews and Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina, Leiden, 1995, who uses topographical evidence to attempt a critical history of Muhammad that largely confirms the Sira.
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The method of doing so that is proposed here is threefold. In the first place, the earliest surviving document of Islam (apart putatively from the Qur#a n itself), namely, the composite treaties known as the Constitution of Medina (Kit a b) concluded between Muhammad and the Arab and Jewish tribes of Medina in the 620s, are used to control the accounts of Muhammad and the Jews in the Sira. The particular approach taken in this essay is to adopt the Constitution as a skeletal framework (as anatomized by Serjeant ) on to which the Siras data can be grafted so as to present a compatible integrated narrative.18 This neutralizes the a priori revisionist objection to the use of late sources, since leading historians of the school have conceded the early date of the Kit a b, even if failing to grant it the analysis it deserves.19 Wansbrough almost alone has tried to write off the Constitution as a literary device that proves the Sira is mere exegesis.20 On proceeding to test the passages in the Sira dealing with the Medinan Jewish opposition (see below), Wansbrough duly discovered what he called midrashic characteristics, that is, un-historical, exegetical, narrative elaborations.21 But this is a fallacious argument of a literary-critical type that looks for cases which seem fictional and then assumes that the whole Sira is similarly fictional. And it ignores the self-evident antiquity and historical character of the Kit a b, admitted by Crone and others, in the interest of a literary-critical argument of a speculative sort. The only scepticist attempt to follow up
The document is dissected into its component treaties in the pioneering investigation by R. B. Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tahr im of Yathrib: Analysis and Translation of the Documents Comprised in the so-called Constitution of Medina, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 41, 1978, 141 (reprinted in U. Rubin, ed., The Life of Muhammad, Aldershot, 1998, pp. 15192). Serjeants findings have for the most part not made their way into the general history of early Islam and the biography of Muhammad. M. Lecker, The Constitution of Medina. Muhammads First Legal Document, Princeton, 2004, for example, rejects them on largely a priori grounds. (For difficulties in Leckers approach, and for the Constitution itself, see below). 19) Cf. Crone and Cook , Hagarism, p. 7: This document is a patently anomalous and plausibly archaic remnant of the Islamic tradition. P . Crone, Slaves on Horses. The Evolution of the Islamic Polity, Cambridge, 1980, p. 7: It sticks out [in Ibn Ishaqs Sira] like a piece of solid rock in an accumulation of rubble. M. Cook , Muhammad, Oxford, 1983, p. 75: [It] could well be authentic in substance. Neither Crone nor Cook have attempted to analyze the Constitution. 20) Wansbrough , The Sectarian Milieu, pp.1222; 409; cf. idem, Quranic Studies, p. 126. The argument is somewhat circular. 21) Wansbrough , The Sectarian Milieu, pp. 3649.
18)

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this line is that of Schller whose re-writing of the whole history of Muhammads attacks on the Jewish tribes is deeply problematic. Thus, Schller has rejected the historical reality of the assault on the Qaynuqa , conflated the Nadir and Qurayza onslaughts, and thrown doubt on the identities and even existence of some of the Prophets leading Jewish opponents, notably Finhas, Abu Rafi and Sallam b. Mishkam.22 But again this test of the Sira as history which finds the narratives failing does not take the evident historical core of the Constitution of Medina into account.23 Secondly, the detailed dating of individual verses of the Qur#a n by R. Bell are used as a further control on the Sira.24 This is not as secure a control as the Constitution, for not only may objections be raised to Bells datings, but there is the revisionist view that the Qur#a n text itself is of a much later 7th century date than is commonly supposed (even if the irretrievable substance may be much erlier).25 Yet most historians find it difficult to credit that the mass of references to the Jews has been invented out of nothing. As to Bell s datings, they are the product of a long expert understanding of the Qur#a n and should be treated seriously despite their nesessarily speculative nature; in any case they are adopted here more for their illustrative rather than probative value. Besides, the fact that those

Schller, Exegetisches Denken, pp.23060 (Qaynuqa ), 256312 (Nadir and Qurayza), 2349, 2825, 33641 (the Jewish opponents). For a refutation of these radically sceptical claims, see Motzki , The Murder of Ibn Abi lHuqayq, pp. 2248. 23) Like Wansbrough, Schller, p. 9, proposes testing the argument. But his comments on the Constitution at pp. 133, 190204, 270, 276, are incidental. 24) R. Bell , The Quran. Translated, with a critical re-arrangement of the Surahs, Edinburgh, 1937. For the scholarly rationale of these datings, see R. Bell et al., A Commentary on the Quran, Manchester, 1991. For critical comments, see M. W. Watt , The Dating of the Quran: A Review of Richard Bells Theories, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1957, 4656. (reprinted in his Early Islam, pp. 2433); A. Rippin , Reading the Quran with Richard Bell, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 112, 1992, 63947. 25) Informative essays are in The Blackwell Companion to the Quran and The Cambridge Companion to the Quran, sceptical essays in Ibn Warr aq, ed., The Origins of the Koran. Classic Essays on Islams Holy Book, Amherst NY, 1998. Cf. Ibn Warray, Some Aspects of the History of Koranic Criticism 700 CE to 2005 CE, in his Virgins? What Virgins? and other Essays, Amherst NY, 2010, pp. 43120. Cf. M. Cook , The Koran. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2000; A. Neuwirth , Quran and History: A Disputed Relationship, Journal of Quranic Studies, 5, 2003, 118. Professor Crone is sceptical about Bells method since not only may some of the suras be more unitary than he assumed, but they may also include formulaic material that Muhammad was simply repeating.

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verses relating to the Jews are cryptic may make difficult to prove them to be referring to certain events does not disprove that they are original pronouncements by Muhammad on the Jewish tribes. Though some of the Qur#a ns allusions to the specific events of Muhammads life may conceivably have been of later origin, there has been no convincing argument indeed no argument at all, simply assertion that the passages relating to his attacks on the Jews of Medina are not his own utterances and that the Qur#a n cannot be used as a historical source in this respect.26 Of course, the Qur#a ns very nature as a compilation of religious visions render it dangerous to use as a straightforward historical source; but for all the obvious pitfalls, the sheer abundance of obvious references to events regarding the Jews suggest that it is worth attempting to unearth specific historical data from it. Thirdly, the three sources the Constitution, the Qur#a n and the Sira may be harmonized to provide a narrative of probabilistic truth based on the interlocking of the three controls.27 The power of this methodological integration of the sources lies in its mutually reinforcing triangular structure. While the Qur#a n and the Sira sides of the triangle may be less certain, the third side, the Constitution, has a strong certitude and allows us to set limits to the less known sides. Of course, knowledge is still lacking of other important data such as the angles, which include the Jewish view and other unknown information, but there is enough to deduce a reasonably substantiated picture of the triangle. The important point here is that the Sira and the Qur#a n contain enough potentially specific references to be linked, even if speculatively, to particular clauses of the Constititution

b. Muhammads Religious Antisemitism28: The Qur#an and Jewish Religious Opposition When Muhammad came to Medina in 622, the city was still a strongly Jewish one with perhaps its 3642,000 Jews numbering half the population.
As largely in Schller, Exegetisches Denken. I have used the two earliest extended Sira sources, Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi, almost exclusively here on the principle of Ockhams Razor. However, the occasional references to later collections may be excusable on the ground that such writers as al-Bukhar i, Ibn Sa d and al-Tabar i had access to the lost unabridged original of Ibn Ishaq which contained valuable source material that was omitted from Ibn Hishams recension and also to data from lost works by al-Waqidi. 28) I am fully aware of the historical problems involved in the use of the term antisemitism which I treat in a forthcoming large-scale work. Doubtful readers are welcome to accept it here merely as a term of convenience.
27) 26)

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The twenty or so Jewish tribes there had built up wealth and property and developed the date-agriculture of the oasis. Secure in their 59 or so forts (compared to the 13 Arab ones), the main Jewish tribes manufactured and owned a large quantity of arms.29 Muhammad thus encountered a tribally organized Jewish power far different from the individual Jews he had conversed with at Mecca. Not surprisingly, the gentile Muhammads revelation of his prophetic status to the Jews provoked their leaders and rabbis to scorn. This injurious rejection of Muhammad as prophet became the central element in his quarrel with the Jews who were repeatedly condemned in the Qur#a n as the mockers and killers of prophets, and as such the enemies of God.30 The charge that the Jews were a depraved and superseded people, addicted to usury, seems to have emerged as an antisemitic theme only subsequently.31 Muhammads attacks certainly lacked the demonizing tenet of Christian antisemitism, namely, that the Jews were the murderers of God Himself: For even though he believed the Jews had attempted to murder the prophet Jesus, Muhammads own refusal to admit Jesus as divinity precluded the idea of deicide (Qur#a n, IV , 157). The Jews, then, might be wicked, and might be enemies of God, but they were not the murderers of God as in Christianity. Yet though the deicide accusation may have been absent, the intense emotions of Christian antisemitism were not lacking. A bitter antisemitic emotion is evident in Muhammads rising invective against his stubborn Jewish opponents who refuse to acknowledge him as prophet and pervert his message. The progression from initial hope to disappointment that the Jews would welcome him is evident, for example, in two contiguous qur#anic verses. In an early Medinan verse, Muhammad wrote benevolently: Those who have believed, those who have Judaized whoever has believed in Allah and the Last Day, and has acted uprightly, have their reward with their Lord [Bell II, 59a; Flgel, II, 62]. But the second later version was hostile: Humiliation and poverty were stamped upon them, and they settled under anger from Allah; that was because

29) See G. D. Newby , A History of the Jews of Arabia from Ancient Times to their Eclipse under Islam, Columbia, SC, 1988. For the Jewish fortresses, F. Wstenfeld , ed., Al-Samhudi: Geschichte der Stadt Medina, Gttingen, 1860, pp. 2931. 30) II, 75; IV , 155; V , 70; XLV , 16, etc. References are to the Flgel numbering, though the quotations are from Bells version which has different numbers. 31) For example, IV , 161. Leaving aside the problem of the Qur#ans dating as a whole, as well as the dating of individual verses, it is not difficult to extract the lines of Muhammads structural antisemitism as well as his intensifying hostility to his Jewish contemporaries (as will be done in a separate work). Some of the verses in this section are treated without regard to date, where the argument is not affected.

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they had been disbelieving in the signs of Allah, and slaying the prophets unjustly [Bell II, 59b; Flgel II, 61]. The Jewish opposition is excoriated in many verses: And when they come to you, they say: We have believed, though they have entered in unbelief. Allah knoweth very well what they have been concealing. Many of them does one see vying in guilt and enmity surely evil is what they have been working. Why do the rabbis and scholars not restrain them We have cast enmity and hatred amongst them until the day of resurrection; every time they light a fire for war, Allah will put it out; they strive after corruption in the land [V , 6164]. It is hard to escape the conclusion that these Jewish opponents rightly or wrongly provoked Muhammad to his break with Judaism that occurred in early 624 (a year and a half after his arrival) when the direction of prayer was changed from Jerusalem to Mecca, the day of prayer from Saturday to Friday and so on.32 Ibn Ishaq gives many details of this Jewish opposition, including the names of 66 Jewish opponents.33 These included many prominent leaders of the powerful Nadir tribe, among them perhaps Muhammads greatest Jewish enemy, Huyayy b. Akhtab, whose daughter Safiyya (later Muhammads wife) recollected that when she was a child her father and uncle came home dejected from a meeting with the Prophet, her father exclaiming: By God, I shall be his enemy as long as I live!.34 Huyayy and his brother Abu Yasir were the most implacable enemies of the Arabs when God chose to send them an apostle from among themselves and they used to do all they could to turn men away from Islam. They sought to discredit Muhammad himself, as when they tried to trick him into restoring the qibla towards Jerusalem by promising to follow him if he did.35 Other Jewish chiefs, such as Sallam b. Mishkam of the Nadir and Ka b b. Asad of the Qurayza, on several
32) For his initial adoption of the Yom Kippur fast as the ashura and its replacement by Ramadan, as well as other interactions with Jewish religion, see A. Neuwirth , Meccan Texts Medinan Additions? Politics and the Re-reading of Liturgical Communications, in R. Arnzen and J. Thielmann , edd., Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea, Leuven, 2004, pp. 7194. 33) Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, pp. 23970. The lists of names have remained curiously un-analyzed in the secondary literature, though L.Caetani , Annali dellIslam, Milan, 190526, I, 4134, gives a breakdown by tribe. One point that has never been noted but that helps explain Muhammads attack on the Qaynuqa tribe is that groups prominence among his religious opponents. See below. ( Schller, Exegetisches Denken, pp. 2078, 23740, however, regards the names as largely invented). 34) Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, pp. 2412. 35) Ibn Ishaq, pp. 2589.

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occasions sought to seduce Muhammad from his religion or humiliate him in public by similar traps.36 Subsequently they were to pay with their lives for what Muhammad considered their later treachery.37 The religious disputes were certainly intense and emotional on both sides, especially as experienced by Muhammad who felt himself being subjected to Jewish ridicule both for his pretensions to prophecy and his ignorance of the Hebrew Scriptures. Once when Muhammad entered a Jewish school to try to convert them, the Jews there insulted him by asking: What is your religion, Muhammad? When he replied, The religion of Abraham, they mocked him: But Abraham was a Jew. On another occasion, the Jews agreed among themselves that they should affect to believe in what had been sent down to Muhammad and his companions at one time and deny it at another so as to confuse them, with the object of getting them to follow their example and give up his religion. One group of Jews sought to confuse Muhammad by asking him, Now, Muhammad, Allah created creation, but who created Allah?. This was enough to send the Prophet into a violent rage and only later did the angel Gabriel provide him with the right answer. Several instances of Jewish ridicule and attempted humiliation of Muhammad are recounted by Ibn Ishaq.38 The Nadir leaders in particular seem to have been active in perhaps five different rounds of this game. The Qur#a n records the blasphemous insults to which Muhammad believed himself to be subjected by the Jews.
Those who have disbelieved have said: This is nothing but a fraud which he has devised, and others have helped him with it; so they have arrived at wrong-doing and falsehood. They have said too: Old-world tales which he has written for himself! They are recited to him morning and evening. They say: What is there to this messenger who eats food and goes about the marketplaces? Why has not an angel been sent down to him to be with him as a warner? Why does not a fortune fall to him; or why has he not a garden from which to eat? The wrong-doers also say: You follow only a man who has been enchanted.39 Ibn Ishaq, p. 268. For their later fates see below. Schller, Exegetisches Denken, p.12, tries to dismiss the depiction of Muhammads Jewish opponents as an invented cadre of enemies playing the role of agents provocateurs similar to that of the falsified portrait of the Pharisees in the Gospels. However, the historical consciousness of the Sira depicting the Jews as practical opponents seems to be far more realistic than that of the essentially theologizing New Testament. 38) Ibn Ishaq, pp. 26070. 39) XXV , 48. Cf. XVI, 24, etc. for old world tales.
37) 36)

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For the infuriated Prophet such humiliating rejection demanded punishment. And when [the Jewish liar] gets to know something of Our signs, he takes them as a butt of ridicule for such is a punishment humiliating. Behind them is Gehenna (hell), nor will what they have amassed avail them anything [XLV , 89]. The bitterness of these arguments would certainly have fuelled Muslim religious antisemitism. Abu Umama As ad b. Zur ara, one of Muhammads most fervent followers and the first prayer-leader, was recollected by the moderate Abdallah b. Ubayy as a hater of the Jews.40 His early death in Muhammads first year at Mecca was occasion for the Jews to reject Muhammad as a prophet: Muhammad said, how unfortunate is the death of Abu Umama! The Jews and the Hypocrites are sure to say: If Muhammad were a prophet, his companion would not die.41 Worsening tensions were reflected in Muslim demands for conversion, especially after the victory at Badr in 624 when Muhammad felt elated by his divine mission.42 Jewish converts were few and the first and most prominent of them was Abdallah b. Salam, who was reprimanded by Huyayy b. Akhtab and a delegation of leading Jews that there is no prophecy among the Arabs your master is only a political leader.43 The general Jewish refusal to convert could only have inflamed Muhammads frustration and his missionizing soon acquired an undertone of violence. When Muhammads confidante Abu Bakr went into a Jewish academy and called upon the learned rabbi Finhas b. Azura of the Qaynuqa tribe to convert, Finhas ironically remarked that if Muhammads God were so great, He would not ask us to lend Him money as your master pretends a barbed reference to Muhammads demands for the Medinans to contribute to his war expenses and the upkeep of the Emigrants. This apparent blasphemy infuriated Abu Bakr who struck Finhas in the face, exclaiming, Were it not for the treaty between us, I would cut off your head, you enemy of Allah !. Finhass subsequent complaint, as an insulted ally, to Muhammad was unavailing. (Finhass taunting Muhammad on his claim to have written a holy book to replace the Torah would in any case not have predisposed the Prophet in his favor).44
al-Waqidi, p. 414. Ibn Ishaq, p. 235. 42) See Ibn Ishaq, pp. 260, 363. 43) Ibn Ishaq, p. 270. 44) Ibn Ishaq, pp. 2634. It is not clear if the taunting hat occurred at a prior or subsequent occasion to Finhass complaint (pp. 26970). See Quran, V , 64 for an allusion to this matter. Schller, Exegetisches Denken, pp. 2347, seems to see Fin41) 40)

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The issue of contributions for war and the Muslim Emigrants expenses helped to transform these religious quarrels into open political dissension as Huyayy b. Akhtab and other Jews urged Muhammads Medinan followers, the Ansa r, not to contribute to the public expenses. We fear [they said] that you will come to poverty, Dont be in a hurry to contribute, for you do not know the outcome.45 Muhammads response here was the quranic imprecation on those who are niggardly and urge the people to niggardliness, and conceal the bounty which Allah hath bestowed upon them, We have prepared for the unbelievers a punishment humiliating. And those who spend their wealth (yunfiq u na) .46 What this punishment for the unbelievers, the Hypocrites (Munafiq u n) and the Jews was to be was announced in a quranic verse of the period:
The recompense of those who make war on Allah and His messenger and exert themselves to cause corruption in the land is that they should be killed or crucified, or that their hand and feet on opposite sides should be cut off, or that they should be banished from the land; that is humiliation for them in this world, and in the hereafter is for them a mighty punishment [V , 33].

Muhammad was convinced that the Jews were out to get him by pretending to convert and seducing his Arab followers away from him. There are several quranic references to this effect uttered at a high emotional pitch. Thus, the fearful verse: When they meet those who have believed, they say, We have believed; but when they are alone with one another they say: Do ye tell them of what Allah hath revealed to you, that they [the Muslims] may dispute with you in the presence of your Lord? Have ye no sense?.47 Muhammad was finally incensed to violence by what he fancied as the Jewish pseudo-converts coming into his own mosque to ridicule him.
These are the names of the Jewish rabbis who took refuge in Islam along with the Muslims and hypocritically professed it They used to assemble in the mosque and listen to the stories of the Muslims and laugh and scoff at their

has as an unhistorical invention, whose figure and name are possibly taken over from Jewish tradition and adapted for the Sira. 45) Ibn Ishaq, p. 264. 46) IV , 3738. Quranic verses on the withholding of expenses include III: 180; XLVII, 38; LXIII, 7, etc. Some of these refer to the Munafiq u n (Muslim Hypocrites, mis-translated from the Arabic, see below) but in most of the references the Jews are targeted as culprits. For these contributions and the Munafiq u n, see below. 47) II, 76. Cf. III, 6973, 98100; IV , 46; V , 41.

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P . L. Rose religion One day the apostle saw them talking with lowered voice among themselves huddled together. He ordered that they should be ejected and they were put out with some violence.48

As it happens, the individuals identified by Ibn Ishaq with details of how each was ejected seem to have been Arab Hypocrites rather than the Jewish ones whom he names at the beginning of the passage. Evidently, the association between the Jews and the Hypocrites (Munafiq u n) was so close that it led to confusion of the main figures by Ibn Ishaqs time. Apart from their traditional alliances, the Jews and the Munafiq u n were united by a reluctance to pay contributions (nafaq) to support Muhammads domestic and military enterprises. This matter of nafaq indeed gave the Munafiq u n their name; the usual translation Hypocrites, derived from the Arabic undecided and indicating insincere Muslims, was the meaning projected onto the term only much later. For Muhammad, then, the Munafiq u n represented a political as well as a religious problem which led him to frame a strategic policy aimed at dividing the Jews from their Arab allies so as to render both groups powerless. As far as Muhammads religious antagonism to the Jews is concerned, then, the dating and content of the relevant qur#anic verses are consistent with the historical narrative provided by Ibn Ishaq. Whether this is merely an instance of the circularity or simple mirroring of the sources, or whether it is a matter of mutually reinforcing independent evidence, may now be resolved by interpreting both sources in the light of the political antagonisms embodied in our third source, the Constitution of Medina.

c. Muhammads Political Antisemitism: The Constitution of Medina and the Jewish Clients By the late 6th century Jewish predominance in Medina was waning. Despite their apparent strength as manifested in their forts, armaments and commercial power, Jews were slowly being displaced from areas of the city and its environs and their tribes were becoming subordinated to Arab tribes through a growing system of ally and client relationships. This was a symptom not only of Jewish decline but of the intense conflicts typical of Arab tribal society which generated an always urgent need for security pacts that overrode ethnic and tribal divisions and so produced an unstable network of Jewish-Arab alliances and clientages. In 617 the intense rivalry between the Arab Aws and Khazraj and their respective Jewish
48)

Ibn Ishaq, pp. 2467.

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allies culminated in the battle of Buath in which the various Jewish allies fought on opposite sides. It was this state of exhaustion which produced the invitation to Muhammad to come as an arbiter and peacemaker to Medina in 622.49 Once there Muhammad clearly began to see his task as uniting the warring Arab tribes in his new religion that would replace kinship as the main bond of Arab culture. This would be done with or without the participation of the Jews. Since the Jews, apart from a handful of them, refused to recognize Muhammad as the Prophet sent to redeem them, the easiest way to overcome Jewish tribal autonomy was by entangling them in a new net of Islamic alliances and Arab security pacts. The first step taken was a general security pact that Muhammad concluded in its initial form within five months of his arrival in 622; this was primarily between the rival Arab tribes but was quickly extended to cover their Jewish allies. Ibn Ishaq introduces this pact as a unitary treaty, the Constitution of Medina, reached primarily between the Jews and Muhammad, but this is doubly inaccurate since the text is obviously a composite of several treaties reached at different times, and the Jews are not the prime signatories.50

In general see A. J. Wensinck , Muhammad and the Jews of Medina (1908), transl. Freiburg, 1975. Watt , Muhammad at Medina, pp. 192220. Newby, History of the Jews of Arabia, pp. 8295. J. Bouman , Der Koran und die Juden. Die Geschichte einer Tragdie, Darmstadt, 1990. 50) Ibn Ishaq gives the continuous text in his Life of Muhammad, pp. 2313. An improved English translation with numbered articles is in Watt , Muhammad at Medina, pp. 2215, and a fundamentally re-edited one by Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, loc.cit. (given in shortened form in his chapter in Beeston , Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, pp.1349). Serjeant divides the Kit a b into eight Documents designated A to H. (See also his earlier, The Constitution of Medina, Islamic Quarterly, 8, 1964, 316). The detailed monograph by Lecker, The Constitution of Medina, which includes a new translation at pp. 329, provides much information but arbitrarily rejects Serjeants analysis. A revised version of Leckers translation is given in M. Lecker, Glimpses of Muhammads Medinan Decade, in J. E. Brockopp, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad, Cambridge, 2010, p. 6179, Appendix. An alternative translation is offered by F. M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam, Cambridge MA, 2010, pp. 22732. There is an extensive literature on the Constitution to which a useful introduction is Humphreys, Islamic History, pp. 928. Detailed treatments include Watt , Muhammad at Medina, pp. 22145; M. Gil , Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, Leiden, 2004, pp. 2145; U. Rubin , The Constitution of Medina: Some Notes, Studia Islamica, 62, 1985, 523 (an early sceptical account);Wensinck , Muhammad and the Jews of Medina,

49)

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Clearly mystified by the document and having no way of dissecting the text in its parts, Ibn Ishaq was trying to make historical sense of it by reading back Muhammads later attacks on the Jews as punishments for their breach of this single original treaty. That original core, however, probably followed directly on the Muslim alliance between the Muhajir u n (Meccans) and the Ansa r (Medinans) that was signed in the house of Anas.51 The foundation treaty concluded (clause A1) between the Mu#minun and the Muslimun that is, it will be argued, between the non-Muslims of Medina who wished to be faithful to the pact and the Muslims forms Serjeants Document A.52 The specific engagements of the non-Muslim Arabs not to act against the signatories (Document B) and of the treaty binding the Jews to the Arab tribes (Document C) were attached at the same time or very soon after.53 Precisely which Jews were involved in the Kit a b has long been a matter of debate. The main Jewish tribes are not named, but rather there is a series of references to Jews who were attached to the Medinan Arab tribes: The Jews of Banu Awf and so on. Does this mean that the independent Jewish tribes such as the Qurayza, the Nadir and the Qaynuqa , were not parties to the treaty? This is difficult to believe (though some authors do so argue).54 It makes much more sense to see the Jews as being bound up as

pp. 5171 (ibidem, pp. 12838 for a translation of J. Wellhausens 1908 analysis, Muhammads Constitution of Medina). 51) Ibn Sa d, Kit a b al-Tabaqa t al-Kab ir, transl., Karachi, 1967, I, i, 280. 52) Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, pp. 1523 (forming clauses 119 in Watts version, Muhammad at Medina, pp. 2213). 53) Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, pp. 238 (B = Watt, clauses 203; C = clauses 2433). 54) Rather implausibly Lecker argues in The Constitution of Medina, pp. 4, 4787, that the three main Jewish tribes were not party to the treaty since only the Banu Tha laba appear therein as a Jewish tribe. (Similarly Faizer, Muhammad and the Medinan Jews, 4667). Lecker, Glimpses of Muhammads Medinan Decade, p. 68, asserts that the only Jewish parties were small groups of obscure origin rather than the major tribes, which begs the question: Why bother dignifying these small groups with a formal treaty? See also M. Lecker, Did Muhammad Conclude Treaties with the Jewish Tribes Nadir, Qurayza and Qaynuqa?, Israel Oriental Studies, 17, 1997, 2936. On the other hand, Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, pp. 714, invokes the distinction in clause 1 between Muminun (Believers) and Muslimun (Muslims) to maintain an untenable hypothesis that the Believers are in fact the local monotheists who would include Jews (cf. P . Crones sharply critical review Among the Believers, www.tabletmag.com, 10 August 2010). My thesis is that the Muminun are in fact those non-Muslims who were

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clients of their Arab allies rather than as independent tribes. Thus, the Jews of Banu Awf doubtless referred to the Awf/Khazraj Jewish clients, the Qaynuqa , while the Jews of the Banu l-Aws meant the Aws clients, the Nadir and the Qurayza. But despite this legal clientization, Muhammads political position was still too insecure to demote the Jews further in these initial treaties. Thus, Muhammad was obliged to concede at this stage to the Jews full membership of the Umma of Medina, where Umma evidently designates the members of the security pact (am a n) covering the Muslim, Arab, and Jewish inhabitants of the city.55 To apply this term thus to include Jews would soon become unthinkable when Umma would come forever to refer exclusively to Muslims. Within a very few years, Muhammads theocratic conception of the Umma as a community only of Muslims had been finalized and Jews and other non-Muslims were to be admitted to co-existence only as subordinated and protected Dhimm is. That the first sections of the Constitution of Medina were originally a security pact for the mixed residents of the city is further borne out by the frequent mention of Mu#minu n in contexts where Mu#minu n cannot be identical with Muslimu n who are distinguished from one another. These Mu#minu n are not Muslim Believers as usually translated anachronistically by its later meaning, but rather those who are parties in a mutual security pact (from the Arabic root # m n), that is the faithful, the secured. They are the Arab tribes and individuals of Medina who had not yet converted to Islam but in virtue of their political alliance with Muhammad were admitted as part of the Umma of Medina along with their Jewish allies and clients.
party to the security pact (the faithful, the secured), the term acquiring its standard meaning of Believer/Muslim only later. Similarly, as Serjeant, p. 22, points out, Kafir in A5 does not have the now conventional meaning of infidel, but rather its original qur#anic (LX, 4) sense of the disowned (when Abraham renounces (kafarna) the idolaters, as the Qureish were disowned by Muhammad). 55) These remarks on Umma and Muminu n are derived in part from Serjeants analysis (pp. 124) and F. M. Denny, Ummah in the Constitution of Medina, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 36, 1977, 3947. The formula in Document B3a strongly suggests that the signatory Mumin who has affirmed what is on this sheet need not be a (Muslim) Believer (again confirming the view that the differentiating term Muminun in clause A1 refers to those who are faithful to the pact or whose security is guaranteed by the pact). As to umma, Lecker, The Constitution of Medina, pp. 35136, 143, needlessly attempts to read the phrase (p. 35, clause 28) umma ma a (forms a community with) as amana mina (secure from/by the Muminu n); but this is rendered unnecessary by the retention of the phrase umma wahida in his clause 2, at p. 32.

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The Constitution of Medina has been represented contradictorily both as an edict of toleration and the declaration of an antisemitic strategic policy. For example, the oft-quoted phrase, The Jews having their religion/ law (d in), and the Muslims having their religion/law, has been taken to be a benign equalizing of the two religious groups. However, if it is interpreted in the light of a similar phrase in the Qur#a n Ye [unbelievers] have your religion, and I [Allah] have mine [CIX, 6] then this optimistic note disappears and the Jews become inferior to the Muslims.56 Certainly the characterization of the Constitution as an expression of idealistic Muslim toleration of the Jews is misconceived as both the document itself and the political attacks on the Jews of Medina which followed in the next few years amply show.57 An objective reading demonstrates that the Constitution is not in the least concerned with liberal Western ideas of toleration, but rather with control: The Jews are bound tightly to their Arab allies, and they are strictly engaged to share in expenses and maintenance (nafaqa) for Muhammads campaigns. If they violate the treaty, they will be punished for their treachery. The toleration they receive here as members of the Umma (security confederation) of Medina is in fact a precursor to the subsequent repressive and controlled Dhimm i status that they found themselves in soon enough after Muhammads death. The only toleration they receive in both the Constitution and in the Dhimma and it is certainly an important one is the right to remain in their religion, albeit in straitened status. The antisemitic innocence of the Constitutions intent has been seriously doubted by later critics. Gil has gone so far as to argue that it was the conscious first step of a long-term antisemitic strategy of eliminating Jewish independence: [The Constitution] had an a priori view of the expulsion, the dispossession, and even the annihilation of the Jews of

56) Clause numbered C2a by Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, p. 27 (Watt, Muhammad at Medina, clause 25). As far as I know, this Qur#a n reference has not previously been cited in connection with the Constitution clause. 57) Typical of such apologetics is Ahmad , Muhammad and the Jews: [It was based] on a liberal conception of the rule of law with two simple principles: the safeguarding of individual rights by impartial juridical authority, and the principle of equality before the law (p. 38). Cf. Y. Friedmann , Tolerance and Coercion in Islam. Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition, Cambridge, 2003, p. 4: the patently false claim that medieval Islam was tolerant in the modern sense of the word; and, more polemically, R. Spencer, ed., The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims, Amherst NY, 2005, pp. 1356, 10714, 14757.

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Medina, at the very moment it was being written.58 This is perhaps imputing too much precise intent to Muhammads mind at the time of the original core of the treaty in 622, when he could not have foreseen exactly how affairs would unfold. Yet it is hard to disagree with the verdict of Wellhausen (himself not a friend of the Jews) that the document exhibited a certain mistrust of the Jews that was the seed of subsequent events for which Tradition has a simple explanation Every hostile act of Muhammad was precipitated by the Jews and justified by planned or accomplished treachery We, however, will find that it was Muhammad who committed the perfidy. He gladly used every chance to punish the Jews and to contrive to create reasons if there were none.59 Despite the Prophets prudential and expedient reasons for tolerating or admitting non-Muslim Arabs and Jews as Mu#minu n i.e. those protected as parties to the Umma, it is clear that this non-theocratic situation could only be a temporary arrangement that would hold until the political situation was resolved in Muhammads favor. For Muhammad the matter of the Jews status was an urgent one and essential for the emergence of his final theocratic system of Islam. It was to be settled decisively by the political conflict through which Muhammad subdued the Jews between 624 and 628 and whose stages are illustrated by the later security pacts which accreted to the original core of the Constitution.

d. Muhammads War Against the Jewish Tribes: The Qaynuqa and the Muna fiqu n Alliance The Qur#a n contains a number of dire threats against the Jews, many of which can be dated to the early Medinan years. Some have an air of general menace, while others seem more specific in presaging Muhammads determination to mount a vengeful campaign of cunning brutality against his Jewish opponents.60 Particularly interesting is an indignant veiled threat which , 36 was made concrete in verses added later. The original threat is in Bell , V [; Flgel, V , 32]: Our messengers have already come to them ([the Jews] with the Evidences, but even after that many of them are acting extravaGil, Jews in Islamic Countries, p. 41. Wellhausen , Muhammads Constitution of Medina, in Wensinck , Muhammad and the Jews of Medina, pp. 134, 1367. Watt interestingly discerns no particular hostility to the Jews here. 60) General in tone are XVI, 88, and XXII, 25; more specific perhaps, XVI, 4547; XVII, 48.
59) 58)

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gantly in the land. The verses added after Muhammads physical assaults on the Jews are graphic: The recompense of those who make war on Allah and His messenger and exert themselves to cause corruption in the land is that they should be killed or crucified, or that their hands and feet on opposite sides should be cut off, or that they should be banished from the land; that is humiliation for them in this world, and in the Hereafter is for them a mighty punishment. Except those who have repented before ye get them in , 378; Flgel V , 3334).61 your power ( Bell , V The first Jews to experience the earthly punishment were the Qaynuqa tribe and their case has many intriguing aspects which merit detailed analysis here for its historical circumstantiality.62 The assaults began when, following his unexpected victory against the Meccan polytheists at Badr in March 624, Muhammad decided to put an end to Jewish intransigence and mockery by making an example of the Qaynuqa who lived in the center of Medina. The month after Badr, probably buoyed by the fact that his first Jewish convert, Abdallah b. Salam the most learned of the Qaynuqa was an enthusiastic assistant in his conversion campaign,
Muhammad assembled the Qaynuqa in their market and addressed them as follows: O Jews, beware lest God bring upon you the vengeance he brought upon Quraysh [the Meccans] and become Muslims. You know that I am a prophet who has been sent you will find that in your Scriptures They replied, O Muhammad, you seem to think that we are your people. Do not deceive yourself because you encountered a people with no knowledge of war and got the better of them; for by God if we fight you, you will find that we are real men! The following verses [Bell III, 1011; Flgel , III, 1213] came down about them: Say to those who disbelieve: you will be vanquished and gathered to Hell, an evil resting place. You have already a sign in the two forces which met [at Badr] One force fought in the way of Allah, the other [were] disbelievers.63

Other verses written at this time [III, 1924] adverted to those Jews who had the temerity to argue over religion with Muhammad and
61) The context of these verses is the Biblical law of retaliation, which suggests they were connected with Muhammads revision of that law to which there it seems to be a reference in Document D4, a codicil to Document C. 62) I deal in detail with the other Jewish tribes elsewhere for reasons of space. 63) Ibn Ishaq, p. 363 (cf. p. 260, cited above). For Abdallah b. Salam, see Ibn Ishaq, pp. 2401, 262, 267. The article s.v. Qaynuqa by M. Schller in the Encyclopedia of the Quran, ed. J. D. McAuliffe, Leiden, 2004, suggests that the Qaynuqa affair is apocryphal and the result of exegetical confusion by Ibn Ishaq; see for details Schller, Exegetisches Denken, pp. 23060. This all seems unnecessarily sceptical.

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threatened: Verily those who disbelieve in the signs of Allah, and kill the prophets wrongfully, and kill those of the people who urge justice give them tidings of punishment painful. These rebuffs freed Muhammad to attack the Qaynuqa . Ibn Ishaq himself blames the Qaynuqa for being the first of the Jews to break their agreement with the apostle and go to war but this may be reading the pretexts of covenant-breaking used for the subsequent wars on the Nadir and Qurayza back onto this first onslaught.64 Importantly, however, there is Abu Bakrs reference to the treaty when he struck Finhas.65 Al-Waqidi and Ibn Hisham, unlike Ibn Ishaq, cite as the trigger the episode where a Muslim woman was publicly degraded in the Qaynuqa market and a murderous brawl ensued.66 But there was a plethora of factors which may have motivated the selection of the Qaynuqa for the first attack. First, there was the predominance of Qaynuqa among Muhammads religious opponents and their rejection of Muhammads conversionary sermon to them in their marketplace after Badr. Then, politically, there was their close alliance with those Arab leaders reluctant to grant their full loyalty to Muhammad, especially Abdallah b. Ubayy, hitherto the most powerful chieftain in Medina and now the leader of the Munafiq u n.67 It was becoming clear that this potentially dangerous Jewish-Arab front had to be broken. There was too the tempting fact that the Qaynuqa alliance was with Ubayys Khazraj tribe and that the Qaynuqa could thus expect no help from the Nadir and Qurayza who were allies of the rival Arab tribe, the Aws. Relations with the Qaynuqa were also exacerbated by daily contact with them since they were the only Jewish group in the center of the city and friction was frequent and bitter and apt to result in violence as the cases of the Qaynuqa rabbi Finhas and the Jews gathering in Muhammads mosque show. Two very practical factors should also be seriously be considered. The Qaynuqa were makers of arms and metal goods and their

64) Ibn Ishaq, p. 363. The covenant in question would have been Serjeants Document C. According to al-Waqidi, p. 92, the condemnation of covenant-breakers in the Qur#a n VIII, 5559, was provoked by the Qaynuqa s actions, though Bell attributes it possibly to the Qurayza (it could equally apply to the Nadir). 65) Ibn Ishaq, pp. 26970, quoted above. 66) This episode does not appear in Ibn Ishaq, but in Ibn Hishams notes to Ishaq ( Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, p. 751) and al-Waqidi (edited by Wellhausen, Muhammed in Medina, p. 92). There seems to be no good reason to doubt its veracity. The placing of the dispute in the Qaynuqa market is significant. 67) See M. Lecker, King Ibn Ubayy and the Qussas, in Berg, Method and Theory, pp. 2971.

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large storehouses of weapons and armor would prove most useful to Muhammads army if they could be seized. And Muhammad was keen at this time on establishing his own marketplace which was badly sited and would be better placed in the Qaynuqa central market.68 Finally, there is another intriguing though neglected context for the attack. A month after Badr Muhammads companion #Ali, who had won two camels as booty from the battle, arranged with the Qaynuqa for the animals to be used as carriers for the idhkir grass needed by their goldsmiths for their work with the object of earning a dowry for his marriage with the Prophets daughter Fatima. But while the camels were in the street awaiting their load, another prominent companion of the Prophet, his uncle Hamza, killed them for a feast. #Ali complained to Muhammad who came to investigate, only to find Hamza and his friends so drunk that Hamza even insulted the Prophet to his face with the contemptuous remark: What were you but my fathers slave?69 The Jews apparently witnessed this dangerous spectacle and probably took it as a further opportunity to ridicule the behavior of Muslims and the weakness of Muhammad. The incident depicts Muhammad in such an unfavorably weak light that it cannot have been invented by the later traditionists, but must have been irrefutably attested as true. The psychological insult to Muhammad was profound: one immediate result probably was the ban on wine, but it may also be that the crushing of the witnesses of his humiliation became an imperative for the prophets self-esteem as well as his political and religious standing. Given all these contexts, it would seem that Muhammads decision to move on the Qaynuqa was over-determined both practically and psychologically. Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi both relate the attack on the Qaynuqa , the latter in more detail.70 According to al-Waqidi the brawl over the dishon68) M. J. Kister, The Market of the Prophet, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 8, 1965, 2726. See also M. Lecker, On the Markets of Medina (Yathrib) in pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 8, 1986, 13347, reprinted in his Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia, Aldershot, 1998, article IX. 69) This strange incident is recounted in the authoritative 9th century collection of traditions of al-Bukhar i: Muhammad b. Isma il al-Bukhar i, Sahih al-Bukha r i (The Translation of the Meanings), ed. M. M. Khan , 4th edition, Beirut, 1985, III, Book 34 (Sales), verse 302, p. 171; IV , Book 53 (Booty), verse 324, pp. 2067; V , Book 57 (Companions), verse 340, pp. 2268. Al-Bukhar i claimed to be so critical as to have retained only 10,000 of 300,000 had i ths. Cf. Ibn Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad (Al-Sira al-Nabawwiya), transl. Reading, 19982000, II, 3667. 70) al-Waqidi, pp. 924; Ibn Ishaq, pp. 3634.

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ored Muslim woman in the marketplace provoked first a Muslim to kill the Jewish joker, then a crowd of Jews to kill the Muslim, whereupon the Qaynuqa withdrew to their strongholds. After 15 days of siege, the Jews surrendered on condition of losing their property but keeping their lives. However, when they were tied up by Muhammads officer al-Mundhir b. Qudama, the worst was expected and this led Abdallah b. Ubayy of the Munafiq u n to intervene forcefully on behalf of the Qaynuqa who were old allies of his Khazraj tribe.When Muhammad rejected his appeal and turned away from him, relates an astonished Ibn Ishaq,
Ubayy thrust his hand into the collar of the apostles robe [or his armor]: the apostle was so angry that his face became almost black. He said: Confound you, let me go. Ubayy answered: No, by God, I will not let you go until you deal kindly with my clients. Four hundred men without mail and three hundred mailed protected me from all mine enemies; would you cut them down in one morning. By God, I am a man who fears that circumstances may change. The apostle said: You can have them.

This rough encounter was a rare example of Muhammad backing down and indicates his awareness of the danger of his situation. (Again, as with the Hamza incident, such a damaging humiliation of Muhammad simply could not have been invented by later traditions and must be taken as historically true). Fortunately, however, another Khazraj chieftain Ubada al-Samit, who had the same alliance with the Jews went to the apostle and renounced all responsibility for them, saying I take God and His apostle and the believers as my friends, and I renounce my agreement and friendship with these unbelievers. With this crucial defection, the Qaynuqa Jews fate was sealed; even if they could not be executed, they could be expelled from Medina. Ubayy desperately tried to avert this and came with several of his Jewish allies to Muhammads house, but the guard there struck him in the face so hard that he was rammed into the wall and bled, so that the Jews panicked exclaiming, Abdallah, where your face is repudiated, ours cannot hope to be greeted otherwise. Ubayy tried in vain to reassure them, but it was now futile. They were driven out of their quarter and all their property confiscated by Muhammad b. Maslama who was to become Muhammads hatchet-man for dealing with the Jews. The expulsion of the Jews from the city was entrusted to their former Khazraj ally Ubada al-Samit, who after a three day grace period, drove them to the Wadi Qur a Oasis, where they stayed for a month before moving on to Adhri at in Syria.71

71)

The foregoing conflates the accounts of Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi.

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The plunder from the Qaynuqa included their metal-working tools as well as their large stores of armor and weapons. Muhammad took a fifth of the booty, sharing the rest among his followers.72 He himself acquired two coats of mail, three swords, three lances and three bows (one of which he used in the battle of Uhud soon afterwards).73 This brings up the question of the role of Jewish material wealth in Muhammads antisemitic policy against the Jewish tribes. From his arrival in Medina Muhammad was effectively a war-lord who financed his religious movement by the spoils of war as he put it, The shade of my spear was what protected Islam.74 Hence, we find frequent accounts in the early Sira of the plunder gained from each expedition against his enemies. The resources in arms, money and land that flowed into Muhammads possession as a result of the destruction of the Jewish tribes must be seen as a crucial factor in his thinking and planning. Again, the indignity of indebtedness to the Jews lends verisimilitude to these accounts. Some Qaynuqa were to remain in Medina, but these seem to have been mainly those who formally converted to Islam while remaining resentful of Muhammad and loyal to their former protector Ubayy. Thus Zayd al-Lusayt survived as a thorn in Muhammads side, later mocking him for being unable, though a prophet, to locate his missing camel.75 At the time of the late raid on Tabuk, when Ubayy separated from Muhammad and stayed behind with the Munafiq u n and doubters, the principal men who wished ill to Islam and its people included Rifa a b. Zayd b. al-Tabut of the Qaynuqa .76 During Ubayys final illness, his Munafiq u n followers sought to visit him against the efforts of his Muslim son, while at his funeral in 631

72) al-Waqidi cites Muhammads taking of one-fifth. The despoiling of the Qaynuqa is mentioned in LIX, 2. 73) al-Waqidi, p. 93;Ibn Sa d, Kit a b al-Tabaqa t al-Kab ir, transl. Karachi, 1967, I, 5778, 581. 74) Sahih al-Bukha r i, IV , Book 52, chapter 88, verse 162, which continues: and he who disobeys my orders will be humiliated by paying Jizya. The crucial significance of plunder in Muhammads career and for the success of early Islam is exposed in the care with which details of the quantity and the division of the spoils are recounted in the Sira. 75) al-Waqidi, p. 398; Ibn Ishaq, pp. 6056. 76) Ibn Ishaq, p. 604. An earlier reference at p. 491 to Rifa a having died in Year 6 seems mistaken, unless he did indeed die then and the reference here to the raid of Year 9 is parenthetical and meant to include deceased as well as still living leaders of the Munafiq u n.

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the Qaynuqa [including Zayd] and others pressed forward to the bier.77 Ubayy himself, though later reconciled to the prophet, remained friendly to the Jews. When Muhammad visited Ubayy on his deathbed and reproached him for his friendship towards the Jews, Ubayy replied: What did it profit Asad b. Zur ara that he hated the Jews?78 These fragmented references demonstrate an original nexus between the Jews and Munafiq u n that seems essential for understanding the political decisions taken by Muhammad at Medina even if the general narratives may be attempting to conceal the full circumstances of the case. After the expulsion of the Qaynuqa , Muhammad would prophesy with satisfaction:
He it is who hath expelled those of the People of the Book who have disbelieved from their dwellings at the beginning of the round-up [of the disbelievers to judgement] Were it not that Allah had prescribed exile for them, He would surely have punished them in this world, and for them in the Hereafter is the punishment of the Fire. That is because they opposed Allah and His messenger: if anyone opposes Allah, verily Allah is severe in punishment [LIX, 24].79

This was a stunning success for Muhammad: he had demonstrated that he could crush a powerful and rich Jewish tribe which turned out to be afraid to fight him, he had won enormous plunder and supplies, and he had captured some of the most valuable central property in Medina. This pattern of Muslim attack and Jewish surrender was to be the template for his next two campaigns. Of course, whether the pattern in reality was as it is depicted in the Qur#a n and the Sira is a problem that may well never be solved, but it seems plausible in terms of Jewish and Arab historical behaviors alike.

e. The Historical Kernel How does all this information from the Qur#a n and Sira square with the Constitution of Medina? The central feature of the whole Qaynuqa story is growing disrespect for Muhammad evinced by such episodes as Jewish
al-Waqidi, p. 415. To the indignation of #Umar, Muhammad also prayed over Ubayys grave, possibly in contemplation over the futile opposition of his old rival (al-Waqidi, p. 415; Ibn Ishaq, p. 623). 78) al-Waqidi, p. 414. See above for Abu Umama Asad b. Zur ara. 79) Additional sentences (LIX, 217) were interpolated after round-up on the occasion of the expulsion of the Nadir.
77)

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mockery, the Ali/Hamza insult, and Abdallah b. Ubayys manhandling of the Prophet. The resolution of the problem was to be the failure of the Munafiq u n-Qaynuqa alliance and the expulsion of the Qaynuqa . This is all perfectly in accord with the Constitutions incorporation of the initial security pacts with the non-Muslims and the Jews (Documents A, B and C) which Muhammad deemed to have been broken by the Jewish tribes behavior. Moreover, the emphasis on financial contributions in the growing tension between Muhammad, the Qaynuqa and the Munafiq u n is mirrored in the Constitution as well as in the Qur#a ns imprecations against the niggardly and the Siras elucidation of Jewish scorn for Muhammads demands for contributions which was being communicated to the Munafiq u n. All three sources are in agreement about the crucial role of contributions in Muhammads early political manoeuvring at Medina. Together they reinforce one another complementarily in producing a multifaceted picture of the political situation at the time of the Qaynuqa crisis. Muhammads subsequent campaign of political assassination of his Jewish opponents such as Ka#b b. al-Ashraf and Abu Rafi , his expulsion of the powerful Nadir tribe, the terrifying massacre of the Qurayza tribe, and the final crushing of the Jewish citadels at Khaybar all these may be seen as the prosecution of a policy that began with the attack on the Qaynuqa . Whether Muhammad had the fully developed policy in his mind at the outset or whether he improvised at each stage, is open to debate. But in all these episodes a coherent reading of all the evidence and sources suggests that the retrieval of the historical kernels is feasible. Thus, the assassination in the late summer of 624 of the Jewish Nadir chieftain Ka b b. alAshraf can be linked to Documents D and E. Following the Qaynuqa expulsion Ka b had been plotting with the Meccans to attack Muhammad. To forestall this coalition, Muhammad ordered the murder of Ka b. Our attack upon Gods enemy cast terror among the Jews, and there was no Jew in Medina who did not fear for his life, crowed Muhammad b. Maslama, formerly the evictor of the Qaynuqa and now the organizer of the murdersquad.80 Document D5 (Whoever assassinates, assassinates himself and
80)

Ibn Ishaq, p. 368. See the narrative in Ibn Ishaq, pp. 3649, 482;al-Waqidi, pp. 74, 959. The date varies between July and September. U. Rubin , The Assassination of Ka b b. Al-Ashraf, Oriens, 32, 1990, 6571, describes the later tradition concerning Ka bs treaty with Abu Sufyan. Lecker, Waqidis Account of the Status of the Jews of Medina, argues that Waqidis version of the murder contains errors, including his mistaking the main assassin Sa d b. Mu#adh for Maslama; but the argument seems to be based on al-Waqidis judging one of Ibn Ishaqs contradictory statements preferable to the other. Faizer, The Issue of Authenticity,

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the people of his house, except if he assassinate one who acts wrongly) seems very much to be an assertion of Muhammads right to political assassination. So cowed were the Jews by Ka bs murder that the next day a deputation of Jews and polytheists came to Muhammad for reassurance that the security pact with them (Document C) was still in force. Telling them that nothing would have happened to Ka b had he kept quiet, Muhammad graciously granted them a renewal of the treaty (Document E) written under the date palm at the house of Ramla bint al-Harith which re-affirmed goodwill and sincerity of intention towards the Jewish signatories as long as they did not deal treacherously and break treaties as well as meeting their obligation of contributing to the expenses while the Muslims continued at war with the Meccans.81 Most significantly Document E3b uses the very specific and exclusive Muslimu n without Muminu n, indicating that the non-Jewish Arabs now regarded themselves as a unitary and separate Muslim party to the treaty rather than being just one group associated with others in a security pact.82 In the light of this provisional reconstruction, there seems to be no sound reason why historians should feel obliged to surrender to the exigencies of Pyrrhonist scepticism when basic historical techniques and approaches indicate that a substantially true if in certain respects unreliable version of early Islamic relations with the Jews of Medina can be reconstructed using the key evidence of the Constitution of Medina as a primary control.

pp. 1025, deals with this case as an instance of what he alleges is Waqidis invention of false data and dates for literary purposes. This is unconvincing, primarily because Faizer seems to assume that any new information in Waqidi is ipso facto false information. For photographs of the remains of what is reputedly Ka b b. al-Ashraf s fort, see A. Al-Kaki , The Pictorial Collection of the Most Peculiar Places in Almadinah Almonawwarah, Medina, 1999, II, 4067; K. Mostafa , Historical Sites of Madina (A Pictorial Record), Cairo, 1997, pp. 14, 28. These interesting archaeological sites cannot be visited by non-Muslims. 81) For Document E see Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, pp. 324 ( Watt , clauses 3738). Cf. al-Waqidi, p. 98. 82) Again, the treaty which forms Document G, whose tearing up by the Qurayza provided the pretext for their murder, fits well with al-Waqidis circumstantial narrative. Serjeant , The Sunnah Jamiah, pp. 368 (Watt , clauses 4346), al-Waqidi, pp. 190210.

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