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Muhammad, The Jews and the Constitution of Medina 1

Muhammad, The Jews and the Constitution of Medina:

Retrieving the historical Kernel

P a u l L aw r e n c e R o s e

Pennsylvania State University

Abstract

The Constitution of Medina (Kitab) is perhaps the earliest surviving text ofIslam 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#an, and the

Kitab, in which the last may be used as a control on the other sources. The Kitabitself is analyzed on the basis of R. B. Serjeants critical dissection of the text into

a series of component treaties concluded at various times with the Muslim, Jewish

andMunafiqun residents of Medina. The par ticular episode of the Jewish Qaynuqa#tribe and its Munafiqun allies is investigated to demonstrate the potential of themethod.

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 his-

torians in an acute form since the publication ofCrone and CooksHagar-ism in 1977 is that so little attention has been paid to the quarrels betweenMuhammad and the Jews which are central to the history of early Islam.1

1) P. Crone and M. Cook,Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World, Cam-

bridge, 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

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2 P. L. Rose

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 littlein place of these conventional accounts and generally avoided any attempt

to situate the Jewish issue in the framework of the thorough-going scepti-

cism 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 Mu-hammad) and the Qur#an itself embody valid historical data that can beretrieved with comparative ease and those of a sceptical temperament

who remain convinced that the the Sira, far from being a reliable andtransparent historical source, is essentially a corpus of much later exegeti-

cal invented historical traditions intended to elucidate recondite allu-

sions in the Qur#an which is itself a document of questionable authentichistorical (as opposed to religious) content. The current debates on theseissues are of a difficult technical nature which renders them understand-

able 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. TheOrigins and Shaping of Classical Islamic Civilization, Santa Barbara CA, 2010,pp. 367, 4976. I am most grateful to Patricia Crone for her generous critical com-

ments on this essay, despite our fundamental difference of approach. For useful dis-

cussion 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, Exege tisches Denken und Prophetenbiographie. Eine quellenkri-tische Analyse der Sira-berlieferung zu Muhammads Konflikt mit den Juden, Wies-baden, 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 adifferent 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 HistoricalWriting, 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 His tory. A Framework for Inquiry, revised edition, Princeton,1991 69 103 J P B Th F ti f I l R li i d S i t i th


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been to follow the broad lines of the Sira. Thus, orthodox historianssuch 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 takenby many others.5 Apart from the vivid plausibility of the Sira and the his-torical traditions (hadith) relating to Muhammad, the acceptance has beenfaute de mieux: As F. E. Peters nicely puts it, using the Muslim sources isa calculated risk based on the plausibility and internal coherence of the

material, or simply a counsel of despair: if the hadiths are rejected, thereis 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 inventedsomething, possibly everything, about the position of the Jews; These

stories [about the Ethiopians] are no different from those on Muhammadsencounter 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 histori-

Exegesis in Early Islam. The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the FormativePeriod, Richmond, 2000, and in his article Context: Muhammad, in A. Rippin,ed., The Blackwell Companion to the Quran, Oxford, 2006, pp.187204, offers inter-esting comments on the current state of the historiography. See also the recent ob-

jectively critical survey of 2008 by P. Crone, What Do We Actually Know about Mo-hammed?, available on the internet http://www.opendemocracy.net.

5) See the surveys by J. M. B. Jones, The Maghazi Literature, andM. J. Kister, The Sirah Literature, in A. F. L. Beeston et al., eds.,Arabic Litera-ture to the End of the Umayyad Period, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 34451 and 35267respectively; J. Horovitz, The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Auth-ors (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 post-

Hijra 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 exe-

getical material that the original elements can no longer be retrieved. Crone justifi-

ably 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

SomeMaghazi Reports, in idem, ed., The Biography of Muhammad. The Issue of theSources, Leiden, 2000, pp. 170239, pp. 2323, notes that it is obvious that the bi-

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4 P. L. Rose

cal, but rather a species of tafsir or exegesis of the Qur#an which usesstorytellers tales (qass) to supply the occasion and significance of theoriginal qur#anic verses. Thus, the whole accepted version provided by the

Sira is mainly a projection of 8th and 9th century religious and politicalrealities 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 theMaghazi (which focuses onMuhammads politics and wars) to be congenial and attractive sources for

their intrinsic historical-mindedness. The core of the Sira is the first andfullest 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 isnads (chains of oral transmission with names) to justify hisaccounts of the Prophets deeds, but he is quite willing either to forgo

the isnad altogether, or to give incomplete ones, rather than manufacture

8) Crone, Meccan Trade, pp. 21826; cf. the ensuing abrasive exchange onmethod between R. B. Serjeant, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam: Miscon-

ceptions 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 pressedby J. Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu. Content and Composition of IslamicSalvation History (1978), rev. by G. Hawting, Amherst NY, 2006, pp. 149. Recenttreatments include the two highly sceptical works by Schller, Exege tisches

Denken und Prophetenbiographie and U. Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Lifeof Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, Princeton, 1995; and the morerestrained line ofBerg, 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-WaqidisKitab al-Maghazi,International Journalof Middle East Studies, 28, 1996, 46389, sees the Sira more as literary genre thanexegesis 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, criticizesCrones category of storytelling as too vague and points out the difference be-

tween qisas and the literary-historical genres ofSira andMaghazi.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 his-t i l t d hi t i i th i hi ti ti i t t t th


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them as the authors of legal and theological hadith were all too ready to do.Hence, a key point in favor of the Sira here is the widely admitted differ-ence as to reliability between the historical hadith and their often forged

legal and theological counterparts.10

Most importantly, the sceptics havenot 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 knowl-

edge.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 hadith as a separate Sira-linked genrefrom tafsir (exegesis) see W. M. Watt, The Reliability of Ibn Ishaqs Sources,in his Early Islam. Collec ted Articles, Edinburgh, 1990, pp. 1323; idem, TheMaterials Used by Ibn Ishaq, in B.Lewis and P. M. Holt, eds.,Historians of the

Middle East, London, 1962, pp. 2334. A spirited defence of the historicity of thesereports is in W. M. Watts introduction to The History of al-Tabari. An AnnotatedTranslation, Albany NY, 1988, VI, xvii-xxvi; cf. Berg, Development, pp. 10611,and Donner,Narratives of Islamic Origins. pp. 145. Wansbrough and Crone, how-ever, dismiss the content of these hadiths as mere exegesis and salvation-historyand 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: Muham-

mad b. Umar al-Waqidi,Kitab al-Maghazi, ed. J. M. B. Jones, Oxford, 1966). Waq-idis 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, Jour-nal of Near Eastern Studies, 54, 1995, 1532, while Faizer, The Issue of Authen-ticity, 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 inven-tion 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 chro-

nology, see J. M. B. Jones, The Chronology of the Maghazi A Textual Survey,Bullet in of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 19, 1957, 24580, which offers

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6 P. L. Rose

truth seems to speak out clearly in those passages in Ibn Ishaq and al-

Waqidi where Muhammad is depicted unfavorably or uncomprehendingly.

Finally, it is difficult for most historians to resist the impression that des-

pite these authors Muslim bias, they are attempting to be fair-minded andhistorical. All these traits can be seen in the descriptions of Muham-

mads 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 cam-

paign to vilify and humiliate him and extinguish Islam in spite of his in-

itially benevolent overtures to them.13 This in turn calls for a degree of

scepticism: Is it possible that this picture of an insistently oppositional Ju-

daism is the product of a later 7th or 8th century tradition rather than a

true depiction of Muhammads own attitudes and actions? Might Muham-

mad 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 Medi-

nan Jews behavior as it is depicted in the Qur#an and the early Sira mustbe treated with some caution and not swallowed uncritically. Even so,

much of it seems very plausible to a general historian of antisemitism. Inthe absence of concrete evidence to the contrary their conduct may be

taken as in large part a reasonable response to the introduction of a con-

frontational 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 con-

texts. And from the other side, the picture painted in the earliest Muslim

sources of Muhammads angry and contemptuous, and ultimately murde-

rous reactions to Jewish opposition is very convincing in terms of the emo-

tionality 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 thehistorical 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 Is-

lamic Origins; T. Khalidi,Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period, Cam-bridge, 1994; C. F. Robinson,Islamic Historiography, Cambridge 2003.

13) F th ibl f i f ti f J i h l d i th


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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, suggestingthat 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 distin-

guishing 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 re-

covered?

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 bi-ography of Muhammad. Applying a combined source-criticism and textual

analysis method to the isnads, Schoeler and Motzki have begun to re-construct a minimalist archive of critically secure facts about Muham-

mad and the earliest years of Islam capable of resisting the scythe of revi-

sionist 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 ofcrucial 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

14) J. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies. Sources and Methods of Scriptural Inter-preta tion, Oxford, 1977, p. 126.

15) J. Robson, Ibn Ishaqs Use of the Isnad, Bulletin of the John RylandsLibrary, 38, 1965, 44965, at p. 464. F. M. Donner, The Historical Context, in theCambridge Companion to the Quran, p. 34.

16) For examples of the method see G. Schoeler, Charakter und Authentie dermuslimischen berlieferung ber das Leben Mohammeds, Berlin, 1996; idem, Foun-dations 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 The-ory in the Study of Islamic Origins, Leiden, 2003, pp. 2128; H. Motzki, The Ques-tion 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:

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8 P. L. Rose

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#an itself), namely, the composite treaties known as the Constitution of

Medina (Kitab) concluded between Muhammad and the Arab and Jewishtribes of Medina in the 620s, are used to control the accounts of Muham-

mad and the Jews in the Sira. The particular approach taken in this essayis to adopt the Constitution as a skeletal framework (as anatomized bySerjeant) on to which the Siras data can be grafted so as to present acompatible integrated narrative.18

This neutralizes the a priori revisionist objection to the use of latesources, since leading historians of the school have conceded the early date

of the Kitab, even if failing to grant it the analysis it deserves.19 Wans-

brough almost alone has tried to write off the Constitution as a literarydevice that proves the Sira is mere exegesis.20 On proceeding to test thepassages in the Sira dealing with the Medinan Jewish opposition (seebelow), Wansbrough duly discovered what he called midrashic charac-

teristics, 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 fic-tional. And it ignores the self-evident antiquity and historical character of

theKitab, admitted byCrone

and others, in the interest of a literary-criti-cal argument of a speculative sort. The only scepticist attempt to follow up

18) The document is dissected into its component treaties in the pioneering in-

vestigation by R. B. Serjeant, The Sunnah Jamiah, Pacts with the YathribJews, and the Tahrim of Yathrib: Analysis and Translation of the Documents Com-prised in the so-called Constitution of Medina,Bullet in of the School of Orientaland African Studies, 41, 1978, 141 (reprinted in U. Rubin, ed., The Life of Muham-mad, 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 Muham-

mad. M. Lecker, The Constitution of Medina. Muhammads First Legal Docu-ment, Princeton, 2004, for example, rejects them on largely a priori grounds. (Fordifficulties in Leckers approach, and for the Constitution itself, see below).

19) Cf. Crone and Cook,Hagarism, p. 7: This document is a patently anom-alous and plausibly archaic remnant of the Islamic tradition. P. Crone, Slaveson 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 sub-

stance. Neither Crone nor Cook have attempted to analyze the Constitution.20) Wansbrough, The Sec tarian Milieu, pp.1222; 409; cf. idem, Quranic

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this line is that ofSchller whose re-writing of the whole history of Mu-

hammads attacks on the Jewish tribes is deeply problematic. Thus,

Schller has rejected the historical reality of the assault on the Qay-

nuqa, 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 nottake the evident historical core of the Constitution of Medina into account.23

Secondly, the detailed dating of individual verses of the Qur#an byR. Bell are used as a further control on the Sira.24 This is not as secure acontrol as the Constitution, for not only may objections be raised toBells datings, but there is the revisionist view that the Qur#an text itselfis 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 Bells datings, they are the product of a long expert

understanding of the Qur#an and should be treated seriously despite theirnesessarily speculative nature; in any case they are adopted here more for

their illustrative rather than probative value. Besides, the fact that those

22) Schller,Exegetisches Denken, pp.23060 (Qaynuqa), 256312 (Nadir andQurayza), 2349, 2825, 33641 (the Jewish opponents). For a refutation of these rad-

ically 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. Bellet al.,A Commentary on the Quran, Manchester, 1991. For critical comments, seeM. 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 Warraq, 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. Neu-

wirth, Quran and History: A Disputed Relationship, Journal of QuranicStudies, 5, 2003, 118. Professor Crone is sceptical about Bells method since not

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10 P. L. Rose

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 pro-

nouncements by Muhammad on the Jewish tribes. Though some of the

Qur#ans 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#an can-not be used as a historical source in this respect.26 Of course, the Qur#ansvery 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#an and the Siramay 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 struc-

ture. While the Qur#an and the Sira sides of the triangle may be less cer-tain, the third side, the Constitution, has a strong certitude and allows usto 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 reason-ably substantiated picture of the triangle. The important point here is that

the Sira and the Qur#an contain enough potentially specific references tobe linked, even if speculatively, to par ticular 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 stronglyJewish one with perhaps its 3642,000 Jews numbering half the population.

26) As largely in Schller,Exegetisches Denken.27) 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-Bukhari, Ibn Sad and al-Tabari had access to the lost unabridged original of Ibn

Ishaq which contained valuable source material that was omitted from Ibn His-

hams 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

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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 triballyorganized Jewish power far different from the individual Jews he had con-

versed 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 cen-

tral element in his quarrel with the Jews who were repeatedly condemned in

the Qur#an as the mockers and killers of prophets, and as such the enemiesof 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 di-

vinity precluded the idea of deicide (Qur#an, IV, 157). The Jews, then, mightbe 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 ab-

sent, the intense emotions of Christian antisemitism were not lacking.

A bitter antisemitic emotion is evident in Muhammads rising invectiveagainst his stubborn Jewish opponents who refuse to acknowledge him as

prophet and pervert his message. The progression from initial hope to dis-

appointment 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 theirEclipse under Islam, Columbia, SC, 1988. For the Jewish fortresses, F. Wsten-feld, 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 thelines of Muhammads structural antisemitism as well as his intensifying hostility to

hi J i h t i ( ill b d i t k) S f th i


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12 P. L. Rose

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 un-

belief. 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 Jew-

ish 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 Yasirwere 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 him-

self, as when they tried to trick him into restoring the qibla towards Jeru-salem by promising to follow him if he did.35 Other Jewish chiefs, such as

Sallam b. Mishkam of the Nadir and Kab b. Asad of the Qurayza, on several

32) For his initial adoption of the Yom Kippur fast as the ashura and its replace-

ment by Ramadan, as well as other interactions with Jewish religion, see A. Neu-

wirth, Meccan Texts Medinan Additions? Politics and the Re-reading of

Liturgical Communications, in R. Arnzen and J. Thielmann, edd., Words, Textsand Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea, Leuven, 2004, pp. 7194.

33) Ibn Ishaq,Life of Muhammad, pp. 23970. The lists of names have remainedcuriously un-analyzed in the secondary literature, though L.Caetani, AnnalidellIslam, Milan, 190526, I, 4134, gives a breakdown by tribe. One point that hasnever been noted but that helps explain Muhammads attack on the Qaynuqa tribe

is that groups prominence among his religious opponents. See below. ( Schller,

Exege tisches Denken, pp. 2078, 23740, however, regards the names as largely in-vented).

34) Ib I ha Lif f M h d 241 2


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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 bothsides, 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 ask-

ing: 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 at-

tempted humiliation of Muhammad are recounted by Ibn Ishaq.38 The

Nadir leaders in particular seem to have been active in perhaps five differ-

ent rounds of this game.The Qur#an records the blasphemous insults to which Muhammad be-

lieved 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 market-

places? 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 fromwhich to eat? The wrong-doers also say: You follow only a man who has been

enchanted.39

36) Ibn Ishaq, p. 268. For their later fates see below.37) 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 theo-logizing New Testament.

38) Ib I ha 260 70


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14 P. L. Rose

For the infuriated Prophet such humiliating rejection demanded pun-

ishment. 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 themanything [XLV, 89].

The bitterness of these arguments would certainly have fuelled Muslim

religious antisemitism. Abu Umama Asad b. Zurara, 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 Mu-

hammad 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 con-

vert, 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 con-

tribute to his war expenses and the upkeep of the Emigrants. This appar-

ent 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 insultedally, 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

40) al-Waqidi, p. 414.41) 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

b t i t Fi ha l i t ( 269 70) S Q a V 64 f l


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The issue of contributions for war and the Muslim Emigrants ex-

penses helped to transform these religious quarrels into open political

dissension as Huyayy b. Akhtab and other Jews urged Muhammads

Medinan followers, the Ansar, 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 punish-

ment humiliating. And those who spend their wealth (yunfiquna) .46

What this punishment for the unbelievers, the Hypocrites (Munafi-qun) and the Jews was to be was announced in a quranic verse of theperiod:

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 pre-

tending to convert and seducing his Arab followers away from him. There

are several quranic references to this effect uttered at a high emotionalpitch. 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 themosque 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 Munafiqun (Muslim Hyp-

ocrites, mis-translated from the Arabic, see below) but in most of the referencesthe Jews are targeted as culprits. For these contributions and the Munafiqun, seeb l


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16 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 detailsof 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 (Munafiqun) wasso close that it led to confusion of the main figures by Ibn Ishaqs time.

Apart from their traditional alliances, the Jews and the Munafiqun wereunited by a reluctance to pay contributions (nafaq) to support Muham-mads domestic and military enterprises. This matter ofnafaq indeed gavethe Munafiqun their name; the usual translation Hypocrites, derivedfrom the Arabic undecided and indicating insincere Muslims, was the

meaning projected onto the term only much later. For Muhammad, then,

theMunafiqun represented a political as well as a religious problem whichled 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, orwhether 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 un-

stable network of Jewish-Arab alliances and clientages. In 617 the intenserivalry between the Arab Aws and Khazraj and their respective Jewish


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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 war-

ring 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 partici-

pation 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 ofMedina, reached primarily between the Jews and Muhammad, but this isdoubly inaccurate since the text is obviously a composite of several treaties

reached at different times, and the Jews are not the prime signatories.50

49) In general see A. J. Wensinck,Muhammad and the Jews of Medina (1908),transl. Freiburg, 1975. Watt,Muhammad a t Medina, pp. 192220. Newby,Historyof the Jews of Arabia, pp. 8295. J. Bouman, Der Koran und die Juden. Die Ge-schichte einer Tragdie, Darmstadt, 1990.

50) Ibn Ishaq gives the continuous text in hisLife of Muhammad, pp. 2313. Animproved English translation with numbered articles is in Watt, Muhammad at

Medina, pp. 2215, and a fundamentally re-edited one by Serjeant, The SunnahJamiah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, loc.cit. (given in shortened form in hischapter in Beeston, Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period,pp.1349). Serjeant divides theKitab 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 includesa 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 Cam-bridge Companion to Muhammad, Cambridge, 2010, p. 6179, Appendix. An alter-native translation is offered by F. M. Donner,Muhammad and the Believers. At theOrigins of Islam, Cambridge MA, 2010, pp. 22732. There is an extensive literatureon the Constitution to which a useful introduction is Humphreys,Islamic History,

pp. 928. Detailed treatments include Watt, Muhammad at Medina, pp. 22145;M. Gi l, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, Leiden, 2004, pp. 2145;U R Th C tit ti f M di S N t St di I l i 62 1985


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18 P. L. Rose

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 read-

ing back Muhammads later attacks on the Jews as punishments for their

breach of this single original treaty. That original core, however, probablyfollowed directly on the Muslim alliance between the Muhajirun (Mec-cans) and the Ansar (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 theKitab has long been a matterof 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 Sad,Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, 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 Thalaba appear therein as a Jewish tribe. (Similarly Faizer, Muhammad

and the Medinan Jews, 4667). Lecker, Glimpses of Muhammads Medinan Dec-

ade, p. 68, asserts that the only Jewish parties were small groups of obscure ori-

gin 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?, IsraelOriental Studies, 17, 1997, 2936. On the other hand, Donner,Muhammad and the

Believers, pp. 714, invokes the distinction in clause 1 between Muminun (Believ-

ers) and Muslimun (Muslims) to maintain an untenable hypothesis that the Be-lievers are in fact the local monotheists who would include Jews (cf. P. Crones

h l iti l i A th B li t bl t 10 A t


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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, Muham-mads 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 Ummaevidently designates the members of the security pact (aman) covering theMuslim, Arab, and Jewish inhabitants of the city.55 To apply this term thus

to include Jews would soon become unthinkable when Umma would comeforever to refer exclusively to Muslims. Within a very few years, Muham-

mads theocratic conception of the Umma as a community only of Muslimshad been finalized and Jews and other non-Muslims were to be admitted to

co-existence only as subordinated and protectedDhimmis.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 ofMu#minun in contexts where Mu#minun cannot beidentical with Muslimun who are distinguished from one another. TheseMu#minun are not Muslim Believers as usually translated anachronisti-cally by its later meaning, but rather those who are parties in a mutual se-

curity pact (from the Arabic root#

m n), that is the faithful, the se-cured. They are the Arab tribes and individuals of Medina who had notyet converted to Islam but in vir tue of their political alliance with Muham-

mad were admitted as part of the Umma of Medina along with their Jew-ish allies and clients.

party to the security pact (the faithful, the secured), the term acquiring itsstandard 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 re-

nounces (kafarna) the idolaters, as the Qureish were disowned by Muhammad).55) These remarks on Umma andMuminun are derived in part from Serjeants

analysis (pp. 124) and F. M. Denny, Ummah in the Constitution of Medina, Jour-nal of Near Eastern Studies, 36, 1977, 3947. The formula in Document B3a stronglysuggests that the signatoryMumin who has affirmed what is on this sheet neednot 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 secur-

ity 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 maa

(forms a community with) as amana mina (secure from/by theMuminun); butthi i d d b th t ti f th h hid i hi


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20 P. L. Rose

The Constitution of Medina has been represented contradictorily bothas an edict of toleration and the declaration of an antisemitic strategic pol-

icy. For example, the oft-quoted phrase, The Jews having their religion/

law (din), and the Muslims having their religion/law, has been taken to bea benign equalizing of the two religious groups. However, if it is interpreted

in the light of a similar phrase in the Qur#an Ye [unbelievers] have yourreligion, and I [Allah] have mine [CIX, 6] then this optimistic note dis-

appears and the Jews become inferior to the Muslims.56 Certainly the char-

acterization of the Constitution as an expression of idealistic Muslim toler-ation 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 Constitu-

tion 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 willbe punished for their treachery. The toleration they receive here as

members of the Umma (security confederation) of Medina is in fact a pre-cursor to the subsequent repressive and controlled Dhimmi status thatthey found themselves in soon enough after Muhammads death. The only

toleration they receive in both the Constitution and in theDhimma and itis certainly an important one is the right to remain in their religion, al-beit in straitened status.

The antisemitic innocence of the Constitutions intent has been seri-ously 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 ex-pulsion, 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 #an reference has notpreviously been cited in connection with the Constitution clause.

57) Typical of such apologetics is Ahmad, Muhammad and the Jews: [It wasbased] on a liberal conception of the rule of law with two simple principles: the safe-

guarding 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 Rela tions in the Muslim Tradition, Cambridge, 2003, p. 4: thepatently false claim that medieval Islam was tolerant in the modern sense of the

d d l i ll R S d Th M th f I l i T l H


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Medina, at the very moment it was being written.58 This is perhaps im-

puting 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 ofWellhausen (himself not a friend of the Jews) that the document ex-

hibited 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 ac-

complished 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 toler-

ating or admitting non-Muslim Arabs and Jews as Mu#minun i.e. thoseprotected as parties to the Umma, it is clear that this non-theocratic situ-ation 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 emer-

gence of his final theocratic system of Islam. It was to be settled decisively

by the political conflict through which Muhammad subdued the Jews be-

tween 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 Munafiqun Alliance

The Qur#an contains a number of dire threats against the Jews, many ofwhich can be dated to the early Medinan years. Some have an air of general

menace, while others seem more specific in presaging Muhammads determi-

nation to mount a vengeful campaign of cunning brutality against his Jew-ish opponents.60 Particularly interesting is an indignant veiled threat which

was made concrete in verses added later. The original threat is in Bell, V, 36

[; Flgel, V, 32]: Our messengers have already come to them ([the Jews]

with the Evidences, but even after that many of them are acting extrava-

58) Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries, p. 41.59) Wellhausen, Muhammads Constitution of Medina, in Wensinck,

Muhammad and the Jews of Medina, pp. 134, 1367. Watt interestingly discerns noparticular hostility to the Jews here.

60) G l i t XVI 88 d XXII 25 ifi h XVI


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22 P. L. Rose

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 oppo-site 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

your power (Bell, V, 378; Flgel V, 3334).61

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 intransi-

gence 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 Qay-

nuqa 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 re-plied, O Muhammad, you seem to think that we are your people. Do not de-

ceive 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 ga-

thered 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 Jewswho 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 theQaynuqa affair is apocryphal and the result of exegetical confusion by Ibn Ishaq;

f d t il S E ti h D k 230 60 Thi ll


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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 him-

self 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 pre-

texts 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 Mus-

lim woman was publicly degraded in the Qaynuqa market and a murder-

ous 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 oppo-

nents and their rejection of Muhammads conversionary sermon to them in

their marketplace after Badr. Then, politically, there was their close al-

liance with those Arab leaders reluctant to grant their full loyalty to Mu-

hammad, especially Abdallah b. Ubayy, hitherto the most powerful chief-

tain in Medina and now the leader of the Munafiqun.67 It was becomingclear that this potentially dangerous Jewish-Arab front had to be broken.

There was too the tempting fact that the Qaynuqa

alliance was withUbayys 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 con-

sidered. 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#an VIII, 5559, was provoked by the Qaynuqas actions, though Bell at-tributes 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 Well-

hausen,Muhammed in Medina, p. 92). There seems to be no good reason to doubt itsveracity. The placing of the dispute in the Qaynuqa market is significant.

67) S M L Ki Ib Ub d th Q i B M th d d


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24 P. L. Rose

large storehouses of weapons and armor would prove most useful to Mu-

hammads 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 at-

tack. A month after Badr Muhammads companion #Ali, who had won two

camels as booty from the battle, arranged with the Qaynuqa for the ani-

mals to be used as carriers for the idhkir grass needed by their goldsmithsfor 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 await-

ing 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 dan-

gerous spectacle and probably took it as a further opportunity to ridicule

the behavior of Muslims and the weakness of Muhammad. The incident de-

picts Muhammad in such an unfavorably weak light that it cannot have

been invented by the later traditionists, but must have been irrefutably at-

tested as true. The psychological insult to Muhammad was profound: one

immediate result probably was the ban on wine, but it may also be that thecrushing 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 dishon-

68) 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 Marketsof 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- andEarly Islamic Arabia, Aldershot, 1998, article IX.

69) This strange incident is recounted in the authoritative 9th century collec-

tion of traditions of al-Bukhari: Muhammad b. Ismail al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Buk-hari (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-Bukhari claimed to be so critical

as to have retained only 10,000 of 300,000 hadiths. Cf. Ibn Kathir, The Life of theProphet Muhammad (Al-Sira al-Nabawwiya), transl. Reading, 19982000, II,366 7


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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

Munafiqun to intervene forcefully on behalf of the Qaynuqa who were oldallies 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 his-

torically true). Fortunately, however, another Khazraj chieftain Ubadaal-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 Qay-

nuqa 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 repu-

diated, 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 expul-

sion 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 Qura Oasis, where they stayed for a month before moving on to

Adhriat in Syria.

71


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26 P. L. Rose

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 heused 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 ef-

fectively 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 gainedfrom each expedition against his enemies. The resources in arms, money

and land that flowed into Muhammads possession as a result of the des-

truction 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-Lu-

sayt 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 stayedbehind with theMunafiqun and doubters, the principal men who wishedill to Islam and its people included Rifaa b. Zayd b. al-Tabut of the Qay-

nuqa.76 During Ubayys final illness, his Munafiqun followers sought tovisit 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 Qay-

nuqa is mentioned in LIX, 2.73) al-Waqidi, p. 93;Ibn Sad,Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, transl. Karachi, 1967,

I, 5778, 581.74) Sahih al-Bukhari, IV, Book 52, chapter 88, verse 162, which continues: and

he who disobeys my orders will be humiliated by paying Jizya. The crucial signifi-cance 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 re-

counted in the Sira.75) al-Waqidi, p. 398; Ibn Ishaq, pp. 6056.

76) Ibn Ishaq, p. 604. An earlier reference at p. 491 to Rifaa having died in

Year 6 seems mistaken, unless he did indeed die then and the reference here to the

id f Y 9 i th ti l d t t i l d d d ll till li i


27/30


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 re-

proached him for his friendship towards the Jews, Ubayy replied:What

did it profit Asad b. Zurara that he hated the Jews?78 These fragmented

references demonstrate an original nexus between the Jews and Munafi-qun that seems essential for understanding the political decisions taken byMuhammad 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 disbe-

lieved from their dwellings at the beginning of the round-up [of the disbeliev-

ers 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 Here-

after 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 hadcaptured some of the most valuable central property in Medina. This pat-

tern 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#an and the Sira is a problem that may well never besolved, but it seems plausible in terms of Jewish and Arab historical beha-

viors alike.

e. The Historical Kernel

How does all this information from the Qur#an and Sira square with theConstitution of Medina? The central feature of the whole Qaynuqa storyis growing disrespect for Muhammad evinced by such episodes as Jewish

77) 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. Zurara.79) Additi l t (LIX 2 17) i t l t d ft d th


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28 P. L. Rose

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

Munafiqun-Qaynuqa alliance and the expulsion of the Qaynuqa. This is

all perfectly in accord with the Constitutions incorporation of the initialsecurity pacts with the non-Muslims and the Jews (Documents A, B and C)

which Muhammad deemed to have been broken by the Jewish tribes beha-

vior. Moreover, the emphasis on financial contributions in the growing

tension between Muhammad, the Qaynuqa and theMunafiqun is mirroredin the Constitution as well as in the Qur#ans imprecations against the nig-gardly and the Siras elucidation of Jewish scorn for Muhammads de-mands for contributions which was being communicated to the Munafi-qun. All three sources are in agreement about the crucial role of contribu-tions 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 out-set 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 assassin-

ation in the late summer of 624 of the Jewish Nadir chieftain Kab b. al-

Ashraf can be linked to Documents D and E. Following the Qaynuqa ex-

pulsion Kab had been plotting with the Meccans to attack Muhammad. To

forestall this coalition, Muhammad ordered the murder of Kab. Our at-

tack 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 murder-

squad.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 Assas-

sination of Kab b. Al-Ashraf, Oriens, 32, 1990, 6571, describes the later traditionconcerning Kabs treaty with Abu Sufyan. Lecker, Waqidis Account of the

Status of the Jews of Medina, argues that Waqidis version of the murder containserrors, including his mistaking the main assassin Sad b. Mu#adh for Maslama; but

th t t b b d l Wa idi j d i f Ib I ha t di


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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 assas-

sination.

So cowed were the Jews by Kabs murder that the next day a depu-

tation 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-af-

firmed goodwill and sincerity of intention towards the Jewish signa-

tories 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 Muslimun withoutMuminun, indicating that the non-Jewish Arabs now regarded themselvesas a unitary and separate Muslim party to the treaty rather than beingjust 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 ver-sion of early Islamic relations with the Jews of Medina can be recon-

structed using the key evidence of the Constitution of Medina as a primarycontrol.

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 be-

cause Faizer seems to assume that any new information in Waqidi is ipso facto falseinformation. For photographs of the remains of what is reputedly Kab b. al-Ash-

raf s fort, see A.Al-Ka ki, The Pic torial Collec tion of the Most Peculiar Places in Al-madinah Almonawwarah, Medina, 1999, II, 4067; K. Mostafa,Historical Sites of

Madina (A Pictorial Record), Cairo, 1997, pp. 14, 28. These interesting archaeologi-cal 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 Qu-rayza provided the pretext for their murder, fits well with al-Waqidis circumstan-

ti l ti S Th S h J i h 36 8 (W l 43 46)


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