who was the shepherd of damascus? the enigma of jewish and messianist responses to the islamic...

8/12/2019 WHO WAS THE SHEPHERD Of DAmASCuS? THE ENIgmA Of JEWISH AND mESSIANIST RESPONSES TO THE ISlAmIC CONquESTS IN mARWNID SYRIA

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PART ONE

HISTORY AND SOCIETY


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WHO WAS THE SHEPHERD OF DAMASCUS?THE ENIGMA OF JEWISH AND MESSIANIST RESPONSES TO THE

ISLAMIC CONQUESTS IN MARWNID SYRIA AND MESOPOTAMIA

Sean W. Anthony

Of all the rami ed responses of the local populations of Syria and Mesopo-tamia that the early Islamic conquests inspired, apocalyptic speculationsand messianist movements stand among the most dramatic examples ofthe deeply transformative religious dynamism which resulted from theconquests. Although modern scholarship has of late considerably illumi-nated our understanding of the apocalyptic literature produced in the

wake of these conquests, many of the apocalypticist and/or messianistmovements of the era remain rather neglected, even to the extent of beingentirely unknown. Aiming to remedy this state of a fairs at least partially,this essay examines a hitherto neglected passage from the Persian heresi-

ography Bayn al-adynof the Ghaznavid scholar Ab al-Ma l (wr.ca.1092 C.E.) that considerably illuminates the history of such movementsamong the Jewish inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia. This passage,ultimately deriving from the now lost Kitb al-Maqlt of the in uentialheresiographer Ab s al-Warrq (d. after 864), preserves an account ofa Jewish messianist personage of the Umayyad era known as the Shep-herd (Ar.al-r ) who began a movement among Syro-Mesopotamian

Jewry during the caliphate of Sulaymn ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 715717) andgained famed as a miracle worker and herald of the coming messiah. Hismovement allegedly ended when, after being imprisoned by the Umayyadcaliph, he entered into a period of occultation (Per. ghyeb shod ). Througha critical reading of Ab al-Ma ls account alongside accounts of Syriachistorians living in the 8th century and those of heresiographical works,Muslim, Christian and Jewish, this essays attempts to provide a chrono-logical reconstruction of the currents of Jewish messianist responses to theIslamic conquests as they evolved from the Marwnid to early Abbsidperiods in general and to assess the profound in uence of the Shepherds

The author would like to thank Wadd al-Q, Fred Astren, and the anonymousreviewer for reading the rst draft of this essay and providing many invaluable comments.


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movement on the Jewish messianist movement of Ab s al-Ifahn andthe sawiyya in particular.

Introduction

When in the 630s and 640s the armies of Arabian tribesmen began to oodthe lands of Syria and Mesopotamia, the early vanguards of the Islamic con-quests walked onto the stage of an apocalyptic drama regarded by much ofthe regions populace, regardless of their sectarian allegiances, as alreadyunderway. Indeed, when looking to 7th century Jewish apocalypticism inparticular, the Islamic conquests can with justi cation be imagined asmerely re-igniting the ames of Jewish apocalyptic sentiments and messi-anic expectations that were rst set ablaze by the Byzantine-Persian warsspanning 603628. Much of the impetus for the surge in apocalypticismamong the Jewish denizens of Palestine during this time derives from theSasanian conquests of Byzantine territories in the Levant and their cap-ture of Jerusalem in 614. With the Persian victories, the Jewish populationsfound themselves freed of their Byzantine overlords and, in time, even in

control of Jerusalem. Certainly, the brief and infamously di cult to inter-pret period from 614617 during which the Persians left Jerusalem under Jewish administration created an indelible imprint on the Jewish commu-nities of late antique Syro-Palestine, leading many to look eagerly for theimminent arrival of a messianic redeemer. Yet, a sharp turn of fortune forthe Jews resulted from the Byzantines subsequent victorious campaignsagainst the Persians led by the emperor Heraclius, himself regarded by anumber of his contemporaries as ful lling archetypal, apocalyptic roles.Besides recapturing the territories recently lost to Persian advances, theByzantine resurgence brought with it severe reprisals against the Jewishpopulations of Syria and Palestine in retaliation for Jewish acts of violenceagainst Christians in the wake of the Persian conquest and their perceivedcollusion with invading Persian forces.

Elliot Horowtiz, The Vengeance of the Jews Was Stronger Than Their Avarice: Mod-ern Historians and the Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614, Jewish Social Studies 4 (1998):139; Averil Cameron, Blaming the Jews: The Seventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in

Context,Travaux et Mmoires (Mlanges Gilbert Dagron) 14 (2002): 5778. Gerrit J. Reinink, Heraclius, the New Alexander: Apocalyptic Prophecies during theReign of Heraclius, in G. J. Reinink and B. H. Stolte, eds.,The Reign of Heraclius (610641):Crisis and Confrontation (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 8194.

Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005), 203 f.


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Evidence that these tumultuous events inspired and intensi ed the chil-iastic expectations among the Jews of seventh-century Palestine aboundsin the apocalyptic literature produced in the time period. These apocalyp-tic writings convey attitudes that display expectations that the Byzantine

victories merely represented the last trial to be su fered before historymarched up to the precipice of the messiahs appearance. This is a themedominating the pages of well-known 7th-century Jewish apocalypses likeSefer Zerubbabeland also featuring quite vividly in extant piyym, orliturgical hymns, which have begun to garner increased scholarly atten-tion. It is in such a context, for instance, that the author of theSecrets of

Rabbi im n bar Yoai has the angel Metatron extol the boon representedby the arrival of the Arabian Ishmaelites:

Do not be afraid, mortal, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is bringing aboutthe kingdom of Ishmael only for the purpose of delivering you from that

wicked one [i.e., Edom/Byzantium]. He shall raise up over them a prophetin accordance with His will, and He will subdue the land for them; and theyshall come and restore it with grandeur.

Succor, it seems, had indeed come to the Jews from an unforeseen source;

surely then, the apocalypticist inferred, the messiahs coming drew nigh.Beyond the removal of perceived Byzantine oppression, the Islamicconquests also brought a conspicuous, renewed religious interest amongthe newly minted conquest lite in the revival of Jerusalemparticularlythe esplanade regarded as the former site of the original Jewish templeas a center of religious devotion and cultic activity. Muslim interest in

Jerusalem contrasted starkly with the studied neglect of their Byzantineforbearers. If the seventh-century Armenian account of (Pseudo-)Sebeosis to be believed, many local Jews viewed the construction activities ofthe Hagarenes mosque on the area regarded as the former site of thetemple as holding clear chiliastic signi cance, and even as presaging thereconstruction of Solomons temple. According to Ps.-Sebeos, a numberof Palestinian Jews even went as far as to resolve to construct a new

Gnter Stemberger, Jerusalem in the Early Seventh Century: Hopes and Aspirationsof Christians and Jews, in L. I. Levine, ed., Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism,Christianity, and Islam (New York: Continuum, 1999), 26070; W. J. van Bekkum, Jewish

Messianic Expectations in the Age of Heraclius, in Reinink and Stolte, eds.,The Reign of Heraclius, 95112; Nicholas de Lange, Jewish and Christian Messianic Hopes in Pre-IslamicByzantium, in M. Bockmuehl and J. C. Paget, eds., Redemption and Resistance: The Mes-sianic Hopes of Jews and Christians in Antiquity (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 27484.

In John Reeves,Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic (Atlanta: Society of BiblicalLiterature, 2005), 79 f.


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synagogue at the base of the earliest Islamic structure. In any case, the Jewish participation in the revival and cultivation of neglected locationsof Jerusalems sacred landscape immediately following the Islamic con-quest of Jerusalemca.6378despite Christian e forts to thwart and cir-cumscribe such activitiesboasts too much evidence in both Islamic andnon-Islamic historical sources to deny its historicity. Furthermore, thesigni cance placed on Jerusalem by the Arabian tribesmen who overtookthe city, evidenced by the building activities undertaken therein, was veryunlikely to have been undertaken while aloof to its impact on the local

Jewish populace. The Jews of Palestine and Jewish visitors from elsewhere

likely constituted at least a section of the intended audience for such con-structions in the rst place.The urgency encapsulated within the extant Jewish apocalyptic writings

and, in particular, the exuberance with which they embrace the Islamicconquests naturally gives rise to the question as to what exactly happenedto all this apocalyptic momentum. In a volume dedicated to Fred Don-ner, it is especially important to emphasize that at least a partial answerto this question is that much of this initial enthusiasm and momentum

was absorbed and harnessed by the burgeoning Islamic movement itself, which at its formative, early stages likely remained capacious and accom-modating enough to envelope a wide range of sectarian identities, evenif this phenomenon began to undergo a dramatic decline by the end of

R. W. Thomson and J. Howard-Johnston,The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 1: 102 f., 2: 249. However, key points of Sebeosaccount, which remains problematic in other important respects too, lead one to doubtthe accuracy of such assertions, especially the manner in which this anecdote stronglymirrors the narratives of the Romance of Julian the Apostate that portray the Jews as col-laborators with the designs of Romes last pagan emperor to rebuild the Jewish temple,ordered by edict in 363 A.D. though never fully realized. See G. J. Reinink, Ps.-Methodius:

A Concept of History in Response to the Rise of Islam, in L. I. Conrad and A. Cameron,eds.,The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East I: Problems in the Literary Source Mate-rial , SLAEI 1 (Princeton: Darwin, 1992), 184 f. For an evaluation of the account attributedto Sebeos in general, see Robert Hoyland, Sebeos, the Jews and the Rise of Islam, inR. L. Nettler, ed., Medieval and Modern Perspectives on Muslim-Jewish Relations (Luxem-bourg: Harwood, 1995), 89102.

Stefan Leder, The Attitude of the Population, especially the Jews, towards the Arab-

Islamic Conquest of Bild al-Shm and the Question of their role therein,WO18 (1987):6471; Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 6341099, trans. E. Broido (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992), 6574.

Andreas Kaplony,The aram of Jerusalem, 3241099: Temple, Friday Mosque, Area ofSpiritual Power (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002), 56 f., 247 f. As attested to also in theSecretsof im n bar Yoai ; see Reeves,Trajectories, 82 f.


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the 7th century. Yet, this cannot be the complete answer insofar as theexperiences of and reactions to the early Islamic conquests among the

Jewish the communities of Syria and Mesopotamia were by no meansuniform. Even those Jews most enchanted with the kingdom of Ishmaelfound increasingly with the passage of time that many of their messianicfantasies remained unrealized. Not only that, the burgeoning Muslim pol-ity itself also came to perceive such messianism as being at cross purposes

with, and even a potential threat to, the aspirations of Muslims them-selves. This appears quite acutely in an account recorded by the anony-mous Nestorian author of the 7th-century Khzistn Chronicle, where

one nds mention of a particularly early messianic pretender appearingamong the Jews of Mesopotamia. It reads:

There appeared a certain Jewish man from B rmy, from a town calledPelgt [Ar., al-Fallja], where rivers of the Euphrates divide into the trib-utaries of the various lands. He said that the messiah had come (amar d-etm) and gathered together 400 men from the weavers, barbers, and full-ers. They burned three churches and murdered the authority of the realm(l d-atr). At that time, a force (ayl) from Aql [Ar. al-Kfa] attackedand slaughtered themeven their women and children. And their heads

they impaled on stakes in his village ( wa l-rhn zpaqw bh ba-qrteh).The chronicler thus provides us with a rather memorable incident in

which Jewish messianism clashed rather bloodily with the newly estab-lished Muslim hegemony. The type of incident described in the Khzistn

Fred M. Donner, Muammad and the Believers(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 2010).

Robert G. Hoyland,Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Chris-tian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, SLAEI 13 (Princeton: Darwin, 1997),52631.

In I. Guidi, ed.,Chronica Minora I , CSCO 1,scr. syri 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 1960), 1539.Translated into German by Th. Ndelke, Die von Guidi herausgegebene syrische Chronikbersetzt und commentiert,Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaf-ten, Phil.-Hist. Classe, 128 (1893): 148 (Abh. ix). See now Chase Robinson, The Conquestof Khzistn: A Historiographical Reassessment, BSOAS 67 (2004): 1439.

Khzistn, 33. See M. Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, trans. D. Strassler (Leiden:

Brill, 2004), 502506. There is a fascinating narrative in which a soldier from the Muslim armies describes

seeing the Jews of Ifhn celebrating upon his arrival at the city prior to its conquestin 642. In their midst he sees Ibn ayydthe Jewishdajjl /antichristwho is destinedto reappear at the apocalypse. This account likely has no historical basis, however. See

Ab Nu aym al-Ifahn, Dhikr akhbr Ifahn, ed. S. Dedering (Leiden: Brill, 1931), 1: 2223and Ibn al-Mund,al-Malim, ed. A.-K. al- Uqayl (Qom: Dr al-Sra, 1998), 222. On Ibnayyd, see David Cook,Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, SLAEI 21 (Princeton: Darwin Press,


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Chronicleseems to have been quite rare in the 7th century, but clashes of varying severity between Jewish messianists and their acolytes with theMuslim authorities began to occur with the onset of the 8th century. It is

within such a context that the movement and preaching of the Shepherdmust be weighed and interpreted. To my knowledge, no other scholar hasbrought him to the attention of historians besides Arjomand, who accordshim a brief, passing mention in a study of Islamic apocalypticism. It isnecessary, therefore, to begin with an analysis of the principal accountfrom which nearly all of our knowledge of this gure derives.

The Principal Account

Although one may adduce various allusions to the Damascene Shepherdthroughout the heresiological literature of the Abbsid era, most of theseare rather arcane and elliptical in their reference to the Shepherd. Theresurvives, in truth, only one full- edged account of his religious career.It survives in the oft-neglected Persian heresiography Bayn al-adyn,penned by an Alid scholar of the Ghaznavid court named Ab al-Ma l

Muammad ibn Ubayd Allh al- Alaw (wr. 1092). Although not a lengthy work, Ab al-Ma ls Bayndoes uniquely stand out as our earliest exam-ple of a Muslim heresiography composed in Persian. For our purposes,one of the more useful aspects of his work is that its author, generallyspeaking, was a scholar who conscientiously employed earlier sources incomposing his work, many of which now seem to have been lost.

For his Persian account of the Shepherd, Ab al-Ma l depends exclu-sively uponand, indeed, probably translates directly from Arabicanexcerpt from the much earlier heresiolographical work of the estrangedMu tazil thinker Ab s Muammad ibn Hrn al-Warrq known as the K. al-Maqlt . A gure considerably earlier and more in uential than Abal-Ma l himself, Ab s al-Warrq lived at least until 864, the latestpoint to which his writing activity can be dated with any certainty.

2002), 110 f. and W. Raven, Ibn ayyd as an Islamic Antichrist: A Reappraisal of theTexts, in W. Brandes and F. Schmieder, eds., Endzeiten: Eschatologie in den monotheis-tischen Weltreligionen, Millennium-Studien 16 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2008), 26192.

First in Said Amir Arjomand, Islamic Apocalypticism in the Classic Period, inBernard McGinn, ed.,The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 2: Apocalypticism in West-ern History and Culture(New York: Continuum, 1998), 258; then, subsequently, in idem,ayba, EIr , 10: 341b.

See J. van Ess, Abl-Ma l Moammad, EIr , 1: 334 f. See W. Madelung, Hresiographie,GdAP , 2: 375.


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Although only fragments of the K. al-Maqltsurvive and even then onlyin later works, these fragments testify to the paramount importance of Abs al-Warrqs work for the development of Muslim heresiographyinparticular for that eld in which he excelled most brilliantly among hispeers, namely the study of non-Islamic sects. The K. al-Maqltseems tohave been rather popular among the scholars of the Ghaznavid court. Itspopularity is attested to not only by its extensive use by Ab l-Ma l butalso by the polymath Ab al-Rayn al-Brn (d. after 1050). We have little reason to doubt Ab al-Ma ls assertion that he trans-

lates his account of the Shepherd directly from the K. al-Maqltof Ab

s al-Warrq given his utilization of this work elsewhere in the Bayn;therefore, we can regard Ab al-Ma ls version as a reasonably faithfuland close Persian rendering thereof, even in the absence of the Arabicoriginal. The account as preserved in the Bayn reads as follows:

During the era of the reign and governance of Sulaymn ibn Abd al-Malikal-Umaw, there appeared a man whom the Jews called ra y, but he

was better known (ma rftar bd ) as al-ra . A group of the Jews (khalqaz jahdn) gathered around him, and he called people to piety and asceti-cism and to abandon their inequities ( khalq r beh zohd va prs va-tark-e malem da vat kard ). He said, I am the forerunner of the messiah(man moqaddemah-ye mahd-am) and called the people (khalq) to the reli-gion of the Jews. His supporters made mighty claims and arguments on hisbehalf (sh ah-ye az jehat-e da vh va-borhnh-ye am kardand ). Theysaid that one day he prayed at a home, and the wood of that house turnedcompletely green and began to sprout leaves (rz dar khnah namz kardchb-e n khnah hamah sabz shod va barg bar-vard ). They also said thatin one day they saw him in several cities, and on the date of that same dayletters arrived from those cities (dar yak rz r beh chand shahr ddand va-beh trkh-e n rz az shahrh nmah mad ). [It is also said that] he wasimprisoned inside the prison of Damascus, and every day there would fallnear him sustenance (khrdan ). One day he disappeared from there (aznj ghyeb shod ), though the door of the prison remained closed ( va dar-e zindn hamchann bastah bd ). [They said that] because the Jews greatly

Ibid.; see also D. Thomas, Ab s al-Warrq and the History of Religions, JSS 41(1992): 27590.

Cf. J. van Ess,Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: EineGeschichte des religisen Denkens im frhen Islam (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 19911997),

4: 430 f. Ab al-Ma l al- Alaw, Bayn al-adyn, ed. Abbs Iqbl shtiyn, Muammad TaqDnishpazhh, and Muammad Dabr Siyq (Tehran: Enteshrt-e Rzanah, 1997), 75.

The text here reads r. .n.; however, this is undoubtedly a textual corruption ofr. .y., an Arabic transcription of the Aramaicra y. Cf. L. Nemoy, Corrections andEmendations to al-Qirqisns Kitb al-Anwr, JQR n.s. 50 (1950): 373.


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vexed him (chn jahdn r beseyr ranjah kardand ), he disappeared(npeyd gasht ). A group of the Jews became his followers and are still of

his sect (khalq az yahdn beh geravd va hanz az abaqah-ye hastand )and say that he was an angel ( farashtah bd ).

As translated by Ab al-Ma l, Ab s al-Warrqs account ostensiblypresents us with a number of basic facts about the Shepherd, which onemay summarize as follows. The Shepherds movement originated duringthe caliphate of Sulaymn ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 71517), and he drew hisfollowing predominantly from the Jews. Remembered particularly as amiracle-working holy-man who called the people to piety and righteous

conduct, he harbored profoundly messianistic beliefs, too. Lastly, whilecalling a multitude to faith in the Jewish religion (certainly Jews, but per-haps even non-Jews, as the identity of the people [Per.khalq] in the textis somewhat vague on this point in one instance), he did so while viewinghimself as a forerunner (moqaddemah) of the messiah/mahd . Althoughthe account focuses on his imprisonment in Damascus, the account pro-

vides no hint as to why the Umayyad authorities took such an interestin this miracle-working maven. Yet, after the Shepherds imprisonment,the account concludes with an even more inscrutable mystery: the com-plete disappearance of the miracle-worker from his Damascene prison,presumably never to be seen or heard from again.

There is also much that is arcane and even hazardously factitious aboutthe heresiographers account of the Shepherd. It is not merely that Ab sal-Warrq describes the Shepherds career as attenuated by spectacularlypreternatural feats and miraculous events that ought to give historianspause, but also the way in which he does so. Most conspicuously, nearlyall of the preternatural feats and events mentioned therein harken back

to either biblical or qur nic miracletopoi . Three of the Shepherds mostdistinctive miracles in particular bear the tell-tale signs of having beeninspired by either biblical or other Jewish/Christian parascriptural materi-als. That the Shepherds prayers cause even lumber and felled wood to blos-som, for instance, conjures imagery strongly evocative of contemporary,

It is noteworthy that Ab Hshim ibn Muammad ibn al-ana yya was also placedin the prison of Damascus around the same time, though by Wald I rather Sulaymn,

likely due to the considerable following he enjoyed among the Kaysniyya, many of whomregarded him as imm. Cf. EI , art. Ab Hshim (T. Bayhom-Daou). Later, Wald pur-portedly released Ab Hshim for good behavior and placed him under house arrest. See

Amad ibn Yay al-Baldhur, Ansb al-ashrf , vol. 2, ed. W. Madelung (Beirut: KlausSchwarz, 2003), 648 f. Is it possible that the imprisonment of the Shepherd re ects a some-

what standard Marwnid policy?


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pan-sectarian expectations of both the eschatological re-appearance of Aarons owering sta f and the allegorical imagery associated with theDavidic messiah (Is. 11:1). The Shepherds miraculously speedy transportfrom town to town in a single day likewise nds precedence in biblicalmiracle stories (cf. 1 Kgs. 18:12 and Acts 8:3940). Furthermore, the con-tention that the Shepherd mysteriously found sustenance of an unknownorigin clearly mirrors a similar miracle attributed to the qur nic Mary(Q. 3:37). Yet, that the miracles associated with the Shepherd so transparently

derive from such tropes does not necessarily nullify the historicity of Ab

s al-Warrqs account entirely. Their centrality to the religious imagi-nary of the inhabitants of the early Islamic world ensured their typologicalsigni cance for any would-be messianic pretender. In other words, theseare old miracles of a well-known sort in the late antique world, and the

very commonplace status of such tropes created expectations that anyapocalyptic movement worth its salt would have to at least address, ifnot embody. To do otherwise would be a bit of a letdown as ostentatiousclaimants to divine charisms go. Considering the Jewish context, one par-ticularly compelling aspect of these miracles is the potential Elijah con-nection that may very well underlie each of the tropes.

See Reeves,Trajectories, 188 f. For further examples, see R. I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia 58 (Minneapo-

lis: Fortress Press, 2009), 22627 and especially n. 81 thereto. Given the Islamic context,Muammads miraculous night journey (isr ) from Mecca to Jerusalem and back certainlyprovides another relevant parallel as well; cf. Q. 17:1 and EQ, s.v. Ascension (M. Sells). By

Ab s al-Warrqs time, however, the exegetical focus on these yas falls predominatelyon the narrative of Muammads ascension, which acquired a much more paradigmaticsigni cance in the Islamicimaginaire, rather than that of his miraculous transportation.See Mohammed Amir-Moezzi, ed., Le voyage initiatique en terre dislam: Ascensions clesteet itinraries spirituels (Louvain: Peeters, 1996).

The Persian word for sustenance in Ab al-Ma ls account, khrdan almost cer-tainly translates the Arabic rizq of the qur nic pericope. As I have noted elsewhere, thisis a commonplace miracle also attributed to another Syrian pseudo-prophet from the reignof Abd al-Malik ibn Marwn named al-rith ibn Sa d; see S.W. Anthony, The Prophecyand Passion of al-ri ibn Sa d al-Kab: Narrating a Religious Movement from theCaliphate of Abdalmalik ibn Marwn, Arabica 57 (2010): 1 f. The miracle is not solelyattributed to would-be prophets in the Islamic tradition; it also appears in narratives ofthe death of the early Anr martyr Khubayb ibn Ad. See D. Cook, Martyrdom in Islam

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2122. That this martyrological account ofKhubaybs death originates from the Umayyad period with the scholar Ibn Shihb al-Zuhrhas recently been demonstrated by N. Boekho f-van der Voort, The Raid of the Hudhayl:Ibn Shihb al-Zuhrs Version of the Event, in H. Motzki (with N. Boekho f-van der Voortand S.W. Anthony), Analysing Muslim Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghz adth (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010), 305382.


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Like Elijah, the Shepherd is a predecessor to the messiah and herald ofhis coming (Mal. 4:5), may be miraculously transported by God from placeto place (1 Kgs. 18:12; 2 Kgs. 2:11), and miraculously receives sustenance intimes of want (1 Kgs. 17:4). Moreover, many of these thematic elementsof the Elijah persona had considerably expanded in late antique apoca-lypticism, as elaborated among both Jews and Christians. For instance,to Elijah is commonly assigned the role of recovering Aarons oweringrod the very rod whose magical properties, although unmentionedin the above account, the Shepherd replicates through his prayers. Theaccount preserves another key detail in this respect too where it mentions

that some regarded the Shepherd as somehow an angel. Whereas as angelacts as a deliverer in most late antique narratives of holy-men miracu-lously escaping prison, the Shepherds prison escape resembles morean apotheosis: it is by virtue of his quasi-angelic nature that he breaksfree from his Umayyad jailers. This, again, appears to draw from Elijahsown heavenly ascension and apotheosis as a model, which was regardedin late antique religious thought as having conferred on the prophet a

For subsequent extrapolations on these themes in Rabbinic literature, see Brenda J. Shaver, The Prophet Elijah in the Literature of the Second Temple Period, (PhD diss.,University of Chicago, 2001), 198 f.

See Sefer Zerubbabel and Pirqe Maia in Reeves,Trajectories, 57 and 159, respec-tively. From an early date, Jewish writers amalgamated the prophet Elijah with the priestPhineas, the grandson of Aaron (see Num. 25:7), and attributed to Elijah/Phineas the con-cealment of the very sta f of Moses and, although less consistently, the sta fs recovery atthe advent of the messiah as well. See Robert Hayward, Phineasthe Same as Elijah, Journal of Jewish Studies29 (1978): 2234.

Such angelic rescues and deliverance for the unjustly imprisoned seems to havebecome an in uential trope in late antique Syriac matyrologies as well; e.g. see Jean M.Fiey,Saints Syriaques, ed. L. I. Conrad, SLAEI 6 (Princeton: Darwin, 2004), 39f. (58), 115f.(238), 141 (315) and Joel Walker,The Legend of Mar Qadagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 33 (25).The biblical narratives in Acts 5, 12, and 16 are paradigmatic for these stories; see John B.

Weaver, Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in Acts of the Apostles, BZNW 131 (Berlin: W. deGruyter, 2004).

In general, see Alan F. Segal, Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Chris-tianity and their Environment, in ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1352 f. and Christopher Begg,Josephus Portrayal of the Disappearances of Enoch, Elijah, and Moses: Some Observa-tions, JBL 109 (1990): 69192. Contrast this picture with the Moses of Crete discussedby the church historian Socrates Scholasticus (d. after 439). According to Socrates, there

appeared in Crete in the 400s a Pseudo-Moses claiming to be sent from heaven to leadto the Jews across the sea. After he achieves his deception, he leads many Jews to theirdeath by convincing them to cast themselves into the sea. Thereafter, he disappears, lead-ing the Jews to speculate that he had been a demon (Gk.damn) sent to deceive them.See Histoire ecclsiastique, ed. G.C. Hansen and trans. P. Prichon and P. Maraval, SourcesChrtiennes 506 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 20042007), 7: 139 (VII.xxxviii.11).


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semi-divine and quasi-angelic nature, both among Jews and Christians.It seems reasonable to hypothesize that the Shepherd, like many Jewishmessianists before him, modeled himself along the lines of the archetypal,eschatological persona of Elijah. Yet, even with this charitable reading, several alarming obstacles

remain in the way of embracing the historicity of the account whole-sale. The surviving information about the biography of the accountsauthor illuminates the nature of story, too. It is well-known that, priorto acquiring infamy as a heretic and freethinker (Ar. zindq, mulid ), Abs al-Warrq had been an Immmutakallim and composed a number

of works on the subject of the immate and, perhaps most famously, atreatise criticizing theUthmnyaof the Mu tazil belle-lettrist al-Ji(d. 869). Indeed, al-Warrqs in uence among the Imm intellectualspersisted rather palpably even well into the 5th/11th centuryprominentlyexempli ed, for instance, by the strident e forts of al-Sharf al-Murta(d. 1044) to rehabilitate him back into the fold of Islam. Ab s al-Warrqsfamiliarity with Imm thought and belief, therefore, was indubitablythorough and profound. It is thus quite remarkable that, given his Immpedigree, al-Warrqs account of the Shepherd also employs an array ofSh tropes andtopoi as well.

Most prominent among these, of course, is the statement, in Abal-Ma ls Persian re-wording, that after being interned in prison the Shep-herd was made to disappear ( ghyeb shod ). Even in its Persian trans-lation, the passage very likely preserves su cient vestiges of Ab ss

Lucy Wadeson, Chariots of Fire: Elijah and the Zodiac in Synagogue Floor Mosaicsof Late Antique Palestine, Aram 20 (2008): 141; Kristen H. Lindbeck, Elijah and the Rabbis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 46 f.

Thus, in a sermon of Jacob of Sarug the angels welcome the ascending Elijah toheaven as angel of esh, man of spirit (r d-besr n d-r). See Stephen A.Kaufman, trans., Jacob of Sarugs Homilies on Elijah, Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 18(Piscatawny, NJ: Gorgias, 2009), 4245. Cf. Maja Kominko, Elijah in the Christian Topog-raphySyriac Story and Greek Image? Aram 20 (2008): 101110.

Ab al-asan al-Ash ar, Maqlt al-islmiyyn wa-ikhtilf al-mualln, ed. H. Ritter(Beirut: Klaus Schwarz, 2005), 64; al-Mas d, Murj al-dhahab wa-ma din al-jawhar , ed.Ch. Pellat (Beirut: Manshrt al-Jmi a al-Lubnnya, 1974), 4: 77 It was common to claimthat so-called crypto-zindqs, among whose ranks Muslim authors often placed Ab s

al-Warrq, gained their foothold in the midst of the Muslim community by posing asR s; e.g., see M. Chokr, Zandaqa et zindqs en Islam au second sicle de lhgire (Damas-cus: Institut Franais de Damas, 1996), 216. However, the historicity of the assertion in

Ab ss case nds con rmation in his authorship of a K. al-Imma and the posthumousand often earnest defense of his reputation against accusations of zandaqa by a numberof Twelver theologians.


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distant lands though bodily con ned in prison, and removed himselffrom this world due to the sins of his followers and partisans. Accordingto one tradition, Ms al-Kim said before his death (or occultation, if

you will): Verily, God Most High became angry with the Sh a and mademe choose (to sacri ce) either myself or themand by God, I redeemedthem with my own soul (inna allh azza wa-jalla ghaiba al al-sh a

fa-khayyaran bi-nafs aw hum fa-waqaytuhum wa-llhi bi-nafs ). All of this leads one to wonder: Is there something parodicor even

sardonicin Ab s al-Warrqs account of the Damascene Shepherd aspreserved in Ab al-Ma ls Bayn? Is the account purely a heresiological

ction? I would like to suggest that is not, at least not entirely. Many of theaforementioned features of the account can be understood as typologicalportrayals; al-Warrqs account mobilizes a series of religious typologies,

which he uses to portray the Damascene Shepherds mysterious religiousmessage, mission, and, ultimately, disappearance. Filtered through such atypological lens, the reader can apprehend a number of religioustopoiandtropes common to Jews, Christians and Muslims in Ab s al-Warrqsage that are themselves quite polysemic, making his narrative as deeplysymbolic as it is literary. Yet, does his account pro ferhistoricalinsight?

While the penchant of Muslim heresiographers for reading Islamic para-digms into past and present religions and imputing to them ideas whichare, in truth, quite foreign is well-known, this may be said to be a feature

E.g., see Ibn Bbawayh al-adq,Uyn akhbr al-Ri(Beirut: Mu assasat al-A lam,2005), 1: 95. For further examples see Muammad ibn al-asan ibn Farrukh al-a fr, Ba ir al-darajt , ed. Musin Kchabgh (Tabriz: Maktabat yat Allh al-Mar ashl, 1983),397408; M. A. Amir-Moezzi,The Divine Guide in Early Sh ism: The Sources of Esotericismin Islam, trans. D. Streight (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 94; and Loebenstein, Miracles in Thought, 23940. The ability of supernatural locomotion gures prominently in themiraculous deeds of Mani as well; see EIr , art. Mani (W. Sundermann).

This is the correct reading, whereas the printed text reads ayyaran . Ab Ja far al-Kulayn,al-Kf , ed. A. A. al-Gha fr (Tehran: Dr al-Kutub al-Islmiyya,

19681971), 1: 260. The trope thereafter also appears in heresiological treatments of IbnSaba and the Sabaiyya. See Sa d ibn Abdallh ibn Ab Khalaf al-Qumm, K. al-Maqlt wa-al- raq, ed. Muammad Javd Mashkr (Tehran: aydar, 1963), 21 and Ps.-Nshi al-

Akbar (=Ja far ibn arb, d. 850?),Ul al-nial , 23, in: J. van Ess, ed., Frhe mu tazilische Hresiographie: Zwei Werke des Ni al-Akbar (gest. 293 H.) (Beirut: Ergon, 2003). On the

authorship of the latter work, see W. Madelung, Frhe mu tazilitische Hresiographie:Das Kitb al-Ul des a far ibn arb, Der Islam 57 (1980): 22036. Yet, even this notionof the messiah being hidden by God because of the sins of his people has direct Jewishparallels; see Berger, Captive at the Gates of Rome, 2.

A famous example is that of Mani and his alleged claim, like Muammad, to havebeen khtam al-anbiy ; see G. G. Stroumsa, Seal of the Prophets: The Nature of a Man-ichean Metaphor, JSAI 7 (1986): 6174.


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present in all heresiological writing more generally speaking. On theother hand, there is also the Imm penchant for attributing nearly everyknown miracle and wonder to the imms, motivated by the impetus toportray them as archetypal holy-men theoretically capable of performingany divinely sanctioned miracle. Hence, any attempt to disentangle thehistorically true assertions of such an account poses a number of formi-dable hermeneutical obstacles that are unavoidable, given the features ofthe heresiological genre. Still, from the perspective of the present author,it seems too parsimonious to deny the account any historicity whatsoever.The question still remains unanswered though as to just how one ought to

go about discovering if any historical events or persons actually lie behindthe account. Therefore, to further evaluate this account requires that wecast our net wider than we have hitherto ventured to do.

D vs. R : A Pre-History of the sawiyya?

Ab al-Ma ls Bayn preserves the only full- edged narrative accountof the Shepherd; however, outside the pages of this Persian heresiogra-

phy one does stumble upon other references to his existence, albeit quiteobliquely. These additional references allow one to at least surmise that hisexistence was not entirely unknown outside the work of Ab s al-Warrqand his Ghaznavid redactor and to thereby conceive of his movement inthe larger context of Jewish messianism in 7th and 8th centuries. Oneof the more straightforward, earlier examples of these references comesfrom the work of one of al-Warrqs contemporaries: the Mafti al- ulmof Muammad ibn Ms al-Kh razim (d.ca. 850). In his treatment ofthe Jewish sects, al-Kh razim brie y mentions a Jewish sect known asthe R iyya, named after one who made claims to prophecy among them[i.e., the Jews] and was named the Shepherd. Likewise, al-Brn, who

A. Cameron, How to Read Heresiology, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Stud-ies 33 (2003): 47192.

M. A. Amir-Moezzi, Savoir cest pouvoir: exgse et implications du miracle danslimamisme ancient (Aspects de limamologie duodcimain V), in D. Aigle, ed., Miracleet Karma: Hagiographies mdivales compars (Turnhout, Brepols: 2000), 25186 (esp.

25862). Muammad ibn Ms al-Kh razim, Mafti al- ulm, ed. G. van Vloten (Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1895), 3435: al-r ya mansbn il wid tanabbaa fhim wa-kna yusammal-r ; Eng. tr. C. E. Bosworth, Al-wrazm on Theology and Sects: the chapter onkalm in the Maft al- ulm, BO 29 (1977): 92. Ab al-Ma l also mentions a Jewish sectknown as the R ya; see Bayn, 29.


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as noted above also had access to al-Warrqs Maqlt , lists the Shepherdby name in hisal-thar al-bqiya alongside another messianist, the Jew-ish rebel Ab s al-Ifahn, among those who proclaimed themselvesprophets from among their [i.e. the Jews] sects. Al-Brns mention of Ab s al-Ifahn alongside the Damascene

Shepherd brings us to the most intriguing aspect of the sparse Muslimheresiological discussions of early Jewish sectarianismand also one ofits most perplexing. Ab al-Ma l also discusses Ab s al-Ifahn andhis movement in the Bayn; moreover, he also draws a direct and explicitlink between the Shepherd and Ab s by casting the former as the lat-

ters predecessor. The extent to which Ab al-Ma ls account of Ab sal-Ifahn depends on the writings of al-Warrq remains more ambiguousthan in the account of the Shepherd, where he explicitly indicates that hedirectly quotes al-Warrqs Maqlt . Yet, there are strong indications that

Ab al-Ma l does at least draw upon and summarize al-Warrqs text.The relevant section of his account reads as follows:

In the days of Ab Ja far al-Manr a man from among the Jews appearednamed Ab s al-Ifahn. He was a tailor from the inhabitants of Nisibis

whose name was [originally] Ab Isq ibn Ysuf. He said to the people(beh khalq goft ) that he was the messenger of the messiah (rasl-e mas)and that before the messiah his ve messengers will come rst ( psh azmas panj rasl-e bekh hand mad badav). They said that the Shepherd

was one of this group and that he himself was Jesus, the son of Mary(azn jomlah yak r r goft va keh khd s ibn Maryam bd ). He also saidthat there was a place where the aides of Moses lived ( yrn-e Ms njbshand ) in the midst of this world (dar meyn-e dony) where there is ariver (dary) that runs through the sand (dar rg m ravad ). For six days ofthe week it is thus; but on the Sabbath this sand must remain in place andcease to run. Uttering repeatedly such tri es (turraht ), a multitude (khalq)gathered around him.

This account contains a number of striking features. Most uncanny is Ab s al-Ifahn purported identi cation of the Shepherd with Jesusof Nazareth (i.e., s ibn Maryam). This assertion nds no exact paral-lel in other accounts and is, therefore, di cult to interpret on its own.

Ab al-Rayn Muammad ibn Amad al-Brn,al-thr al-bqiya an al-qurnal-khliya, ed. E. Sachau (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1878), 15.11: mutanabbiy raqihim. Bayn al-adyn, 75.

Recently, van Ess ( Der Eine und das Andere, 827 f.) has used this passage to arguefor a Judeao-Christian basis to Ab s al-Ifahns revolt. In my view, however, this con-clusion is unwarranted for reasons to be discussed shortly. It is more likely that Ab ss


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I would like to suggest that this identi cation results from an error on Abal-Ma ls part, deriving from a transposition of the titlemas with thequr nic name for Jesus of Nazareth. We shall encounter con rmation forthis hypothesis further below. More important to emphasize, however, isthat Ab al-Ma ls placement of Ab s al-Ifahn as an admirer andcontinuator of the Shepherds religious message is, in fact, not unique andnds con rmation elsewhere.The most important text con rming the Shepherds relationship with

the movement of Ab s al-Ifahn is one long known and much stud-ied by modern scholarship: the K. al-Milal wa-al-nialof al-Shahrastn

(d. 1153). The relevant passage from al-Shahrastn mirrors to a great extentthat of Ab al-Ma l, so much so that al-Shahrastns account probablypreserves much of the wording of the ArabicVorlage upon which Abal-Ma ls account depends. The account of al-Shahrastn a rms that

Ab s claimed that he was the messenger of the awaited messiah(rasl al-mas al-muntaar ) and that the messiah has ve messengers

who shall come before him, one after another. Shahrastn adds furtherdetails, too, such as Ab ss alleged claim to be a prophet (nab ), and,most importantly for our interests, that,

He would make it requisite to testify to the veracity of the messiah and heextolled the message of the Shepherd. He also claimed that the Shepherd ishimself the messiah (kna yjibu tadq al-mas wa-yu aimu da wat al-r wa-za ama anna al-r huwa al-mas).

Textually, my translation above has amended Curetons Arabic text to readda wat al-r rather thanda wat al-d as conventionally read. The latter,better-known reading likely resulted from the texts similarity to Q. 2:186,If my servants ask you about me, I am near and answer the call of he

who calls out when he has called out to me (da wat al-d idh da n ).Thus, the text of Shahrastns Milal was likely inadvertently quranicizedby a copyist, e fectively occluding the mention of the Shepherd (al-R )from the text. Ab al-Ma l and al-Shahrastns account clearly parallel each other,

although they do depart from one another in important details, too. Despite

messianic revolt was Jewish in inspirationas opposed to Jewish-Christianbut none-theless embraced a wide array of non-Jewish followers. K. al-Milal wa-al-nial , ed. W. Cureton (Leipzig: Harrossowitz, 1923), 168, where one

should emend the text to read da wat al-r rather than da wat al-d . I would like to thank Wadad al-Q for suggesting to me the possibility of this

qur nic etiology for the corruption of Shahrastns text.


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the persistent, albeit inadvertent, misreading of Shahrastns entry on thesawiyya, both texts refer explicitly to the Shepherd/al-R as important,in uential predecessor of Ab s al-Ifahn. Most prominently, Abal-Ma ls account places the Shepherd among the ve messengers whileattributing to Ab s al-Ifahn the belief that the Shepherd was himself

Jesus of Nazareth (redivivus?). By contrast, al-Shahrastn, while repeatingthe ve messengertopos, identi es the Shepherd simply as the progeni-tor of Ab ss religious message (da wa) and asserts that he regardedthe Shepherd as themessiahnot Jesus of Nazareth as claimed by Abal-Ma l.

These textual divergences and overlaps strike me as being predomi-nantly redactionary in nature. What di ferences do exist arise entirelyfrom subtle rearrangements of shared sets of keywords and ideas. Thisstrongly suggests that the texts shared a mutual dependence upon anindependent rendering of a single, older narrative. This narrative, given

what we know about the authors of these texts, was likely authored byal-Warrq. Finally, the fact that al-Shahrastn stops short of claiming the

Ab s al-Ifahn regarded the Shepherd as himself being Jesus of Naza-reth is textually signi cant for Ab al-Ma ls text, as noted above, insofaras it provides important evidence that Ab al-Ma ls source text merelystated a titlei.e.,al-masand did not claim that Ab s regarded theShepherd to be Jesus of Nazareth. An additional feature pointing to al-Shahrastns and Ab al-Ma ls

mutual dependence on Ab s al-Warrqs Maqltis the presence inboth accounts of a distinctive, stylistic technique of heresiological writ-ing, which seems to be a trademark of al-Warrqs stylistic depiction ofthese two Jewish sectarians. This trademark style consists of a tendency

to describe and depict the beliefs of false-prophets in terms of religioustypes well-known in al-Warrqs day. We have previously observed thissame technique in al-Warrqs account of the Shepherd, which he heav-ily colored with tropes and religious ideas current to the Imms of hislifetime. This tendency remains perceptible in the accounts of Ab sal-Ifahn in al-Shahrastn and Ab al-Ma l, which likely relied heavilyon al-Warrqs material. Al-Shahrastns account, for instance, asserts that Ab s led a rebel-

lion during al-Manrs caliphate in the city of Rayy (a fact Ab al-Ma lneglects to mention) and that, once engaged in battle, he drew a circlearound his followers using a myrtle sta f (d s) that protected them frombeing harmed by the caliphs armies. Just as we saw in case of the narra-tive of the Damascene Shepherd, this passage contains a subtly typological


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casting of the events of Ab s al-Ifahns revoltone also nds suchmastery of circle magic featured in thesra-literature as an ability of theProphet and, in particular, the usage of a myrtle sta f itself evokes Aar-ons rod and its magical properties just as does the Shepherds miracle ofcausing deadwood to green and bloom.

To this example, one should add al-Shahrastns record of Ab ssclaim to have miraculously traveled to the tribes of Moses (ban Msibn Imrn) behind the sea of sand to whom he preached the word ofGod. Again, the typological nature of this narrative is quite apparent.Not only does Shahrastns account evoke older Jewish conceptsthe

sea of sand in particular references the Talmudic river of stones namedSambayon beyond which the exiled tribes of Israel settled but thestory of Ab ss journey to the lost tribes of Israel also appears to be atypological adaptation of the story native to the Islamic tradition as well.The Prophet Muamamd, too, allegedly had been transported to visit thelost tribes of Israel during hisisr . According to the traditions relating theevent, Muammad preached to these lost tribes the tenets of Islam, after

which they embraced him and his message as sent by God. This accountof Muammads miraculous journey to the lost tribes begins appearingin exegetical glosses on the people of Moses (qawm Ms) of Q. 7:159 asearly as the mid-8th century. It is hard to imagine that Warrqs accountof Ab ss journey to the lost tribes was not in uenced by this story. Itis notable that Ab al-Ma ls account emphasizes the centrality of thelost tribes in Ab s al-Ifahns preaching as well, strongly suggest-ing that both he and Shahrastn utilized al-Warrqs Maqltas a tem-plate for their own account. In further keeping with Ab s al-Warrqs

The rst to note this connection was I. Goldziher, Zauberkreise, inGesammelteSchriften, ed. J. Desomogyi (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), 5: 403 f.; citing the story theProphets and al-Zubayr ibn Awwms visit to the jinn in Muibb al-Dn al-abar,al-Riyal-naira f manqib al- ashara, ed. Muammad Mutaf Ab al- Al (Cairo: Maktabatal-Jind, 19701971), 4: 49 f.

See Reeves,Trajectories, 187 f. (esp. 194). On the myrtle rods and magically protec-tive circles in Jewish traditions, see Steven Wasserstrom, The sawiyya Revisted,SI 75(1992): 63 and n. 27 thereto.

Shahrastn, Milal , 168: wa-dhahaba il ban Ms ibn Imrn alladhna hum war aal-raml li-yusmi ahum kalm Allh.

For origins of this myth of the Lost Tribes in Midrash and its Muslim iterations andadaptations, see Wasserstrom, sawiyya, 63 f. and Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qur n:The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image, SLAEI 17 (Princeton: Darwin, 1999), 26 f.

For an early attestation to the story see, Muqtil ibn Sulaymn al-Balkh,al-Tafsr , ed.Abdallh Mamd Shita (Cairo: al-Hay a al-Miriyya al- mma li-l-Kitb, 19791989), 2:554 (cited in Rubin, Between Bible and Qur n, 47 f.).


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penchant for typological parallels, one should note that the feats of Abs al-Ifahn are claimed by Sh ite imms in Imm literature as well.Furthermore, just as Ab s sought aid for his revolt from the legendarylost tribes, so too the people of Moses are often said to ll the ranks ofthe Mahds/Q ims armies in Sh eschatology as well. The prominenceof Sh typologies in both the account of the Shepherd and of Ab sal-Ifahn strongly suggest a common author who was well acquainted

with the religious ideas and narratives current among the Immiyya inthe 9th century. Since we know who the author of the account of theShepherd was, we undoubtedly can know that the author of the account

of Ab s al-Ifahn behind those of al-Shahrastan and Ab al-Ma l was also al-Warrq.Despite the considerable body of scholarship that has been written on

Ab s al-Ifahn and his movement, the indebtedness of this personal-ity and his movement to that of the Shepherd, or at least the mere con-nection between the two, has gone unnoticed by nearly all studies of Abs and his sect, the sawiyya, due to a stubbornly persistent misreadingof the text of Shahrastns K. al-Milal wa-l-nial . The misreading arosefrom the fact the Curetons edition of the MS of Shahrastns work ren-ders the two instances of al-r in the above text as al-d . Subsequenteditions of Shahrastns text slavishly follow Curetons readingdespitethe recent e forts of Gimaret and Monnot in their French translation ofal-Shahrastns heresiography and Arjomand to bring attention to andto rectify the corrupted reading. Curetons (admittedly understandable)misreading of the text thereafter misguided scholars for over a centuryto search for the possible in uence of Sh ite opposition movementson Jewish sectarian movements of the early Islamic period, due to the

Sh ites well-known utilization of clandestine, organized networks ofd sto propagate both their religious doctrines and political programs. Thissame misreading ofd forr reappears, furthermore, in al-Shahrastns

Usually the story is attributed to Muammad al-Bqir, in which he narrates a storyabout a certain man whose identity he does not reveal but who almost certainly is himself;see al-Shaykh al-Mufd (attrib.),al-Ikhti, ed. Al Akbar al-Gha fr (Qom: Mu assasat

al-Nashr al-Islm, 2004), 315 f. The apostle Paul famously uses this trope as well in 2 Cor12. See also Rubin, Bible and Qur n, 45, 77 (I am unconvinced, however, by Rubins linkingof such miracles with the Sh doctrine of the ghayba).

Rubin, Bible and Qur n, 45. D. Gimaret and G. Monnot, trans., Livre des religions et des sectes (Louvain: Peeters,

1986), 1: 640 and n. 55 thereto; Arjomand, Islamic Apocalypticism, 277 n. 30.


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passages on Ab ss considerably more shadowy successor Ydghn, who Shahrastn also asserts revered and continued the message of theShepherd, too. The longevity of this error is likely rooted in the fact thatthe rst scholar led astray by Curetons erroneous reading was the deserv-edly much-revered Israel Friedlnder, who cited the importance ofd s tothe sawiyya as compelling evidence for the in uence of Sh ism on Jew-ish sectarianism. His interpretation, followed by virtually every historianof the sect thereafter, found its most earnest proponent in Yoram Erder

who, in his otherwise impeccable work on the Ab s and the sawiyya,chased the illusory notion as far down the rabbit hole as one would imag-

ine possible. Erder did this even despite his knowledge of the existenceof Ab al-Ma ls account and its unambiguous associations of Ab sal-Ifahn with the Shepherds movement. Within both al-Shahrastns and Ab al-Ma ls texts, the nature of

the continuity between the Shepherd and Ab s al-Ifahn in termsof their common beliefsi.e., beyond their shared messianismremainssomewhat vague. The Ash ar heresiographer Abd al-Qhir ibn hiral-Baghdd (d. 1037) provides us, however, with an insightful and indis-pensible clue into the nature of this continuity in a short discussion ofthe Khrij sect known as the Yazdiyya and its founder Yazd ibn [Ab]Unaysa.

Shahrastn, Milal , 169.1 again emending the text to read al-r rather thanal-d .

Israel Friedlnder, Jewish-Arabic Studies: Shiitic Elements in Jewish Sectarianism, JQR n.s. 3 (1912): 26165.

Yoram Erder, The Doctrine of Ab s al-Ifahn and Its Sources, JSAI 20 (1996):186 f. Depending solely on Monnots French translation for Ab al-Ma ls account of Abs (see his Islam et religions[Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986], 107), Erder perfunctorilydismisses Monnots emendation of Shahrastns d to r , declaring There is no basisfor the suggestion to change the worldal-d to al-r (ibid., 185 n. 124). Moshe Gil cameclosest to noticing the textual problem, highlighting a number of problematic aspects toidentifying Yudghn as al-R ( Jews in Islamic Countries, 247 and n. 151 thereto).

On whom, see J. van Ess, Yazd ibn Unaisa und Ab s al-Ifahn: Zur Konvergenzzweier sektiererischer Bewegnung. InStudi in onore di Francesco Gabrieli nel suo ottante-simo compleanno, ed. R. Traini (Rome: Universit di Roma La Sapienza, Dipartimentodi Studi Orientali, 1984), 1: 301313; idem,Theologie und Gesellschaft , 2: 614 f. There aremany divergent names for this sect and its founder. Ibn ajar al- Asqaln (depending on

Dhahabs Mzn) knows him as Zayd ibn Ab Unaysa in his Lisn al-mzn (Hyderabad:D irat al-Ma rif al-Nimiyya, 191113), 2: 501 f; Khall ibn Aybak al-afad gives his namerather as Burayd ibn Ab Unaysa in hisal-Wf bi-wafayt , vol. 10, eds. Al Amra and

Jacqueline Sublet, Bibliotheca Islamica 6j (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1980), 123; and Ibnal-Murta renders his name as Yazd ibn Ab Shayba inal-Munya wa-al-amal f shar al-milal wa-l-nial , ed. M. J. Mashkr (Beirut: Dr al-Fikr, 1979), 33.


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Abd al-Qhir states that Yazd believed that it is necessary to recog-nize the sawiyya and the Ra yniyya of the Jews as Believers becausethey a rmed the prophecy of Muammad ( yajibu an yakna al- sawiyya wa-al-ra yniyya min al-yahd mu minn li-annahum aqarr bi-nubuwwatmuammad ). By the Ray niyya, Abd al-Qhir undoubtedly intendsthe followers of the Shepherdthe sects name appearing here as derivedfrom the Aramaic rendering of his title (i.e.,ra y; see above) rather thanthe Arabicr and thus provides us here with an indispensible insight.Abd al-Qhir here posits not a minor doctrinal continuity between thefollowers of the Shepherd and those of Ab s al-Ifahn but, whats

more, a continuity on the very point for which the sawiyya were mostremembered by Muslim theologians: their recognition of Muammadsprophecy as legitimately true but as limited to the Arabs.

This belief features not only in Muslim heresiological treatments ofthe swiyya, but also Jewish ones as well. The Karaite scholar Ya qbal-Qirqisn ( . early 10th century) states that Ab s al-Ifahn not onlyrecognized Muammad and Jesus but also enjoined [his followers] to readthe Gospel and the Qur n to know their interpretation (amara bi-qir at

Goldziher suggested that al-ra ynya ought to be emended to read al-yudghnyain adrs edition; see his review in ZDMG 65 (1911): 36162. His is a plausible rendering,

with the bene t of mirroring the chronological priority of the sawya over the Yudghnyain the text. However, I concur with Friedlnder (art. cit., 285 and n. 413 thereto) that,strictly speaking, the emendation is super uous. Also, Goldzihers suggestion reveals nocognizance on his part of our messianist Shepherd from Damascus but merely of Ya qbal-Qirqisns account of Yudghn.

K. al-Farq bayna al- raq wa-bayn al- rqa al-njiya minhum, ed. Muammad adr(Cairo, 1910), 26364. Cf. idem,al-Milal wa-al-nial , ed. A. N. Nader (Beirut: Dar al-Machreq,1970), 78 where the similar claim is made regarding Yazds beliefs, but where the two sectsare not mentioned as examples. Yazd ibn Unaysas ecumenical approach was staunchlyrejected by nearly all theologians, as were other, more notorious beliefs of his like hisexpectation of a non-Arab prophet to arise from the mysterious qur nic bi a who

would abrogate the law of Muammad. See Ash ar, Maqlt , 103 f. Cf. the Imm tradi-tion wherein it is Ja far al-diq who relates that he read in the Muaf Ftima that the zandiqa shall appear in the year 128/7456 in a fr, Ba ir , 157 and Kulayn, Kf , 1: 240.The latter is likely a reference to the beginning of the Abbsid movement; see E. Kohlberg,Authoritative Scriptures in Early Imm Sh ism in . Patlagean and A. Le Bolluec, eds., Les retours aux critures fondamentalismes presents et passs (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), 303.

On the rejection of their status as Muslims even with their a rmation ofMuammads prophetic call, see Ab Bakr al-Bqilln, K. al-Tamhd , ed. Richard J.

McCarthy (Beirut: Librairie Orientale, 1957), 161, 165et passim; Abd al-Ramn ibn Mamnal-Mutawall, al-Mughn , ed. Marie Bernand, Supplment aux Annales Islamologiques 7(Cairo: Institut Franais dArchologie Orientale, 1986), 52; al-Q Iy,al-Shaf bi-ta rfuqq al-Muaf, ed. Al Muammad al-Bajw (Cairo: s al-Bb al-alab, 1977), 2:1070; Mora ibn D asan Rz,Taberat al- avmm f ma refat maqlt al-anm, ed.A. Iqbl (Tehran: Enteshrt-e Asr, 1984), 22f.


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al-injl wa-al-qur n wa-ma rifat tafsrihim). Qirqisn also provides afurther parallel between the fate of Ab s al-Ifahn and the Shepherdof Ab al-Ma ls Bayn by recording the belief among the sawiyya that

Ab s too had entered into occultation. According to Qirqisn, Ab srebelled against the Muslim authorities with an army. When he was killed,A group of his followers claimed that had not been killed but had onlyentered into the mountains crevice, and no word of him was heard there-after (qawm min abihi yaz amna annahu lam yuqtal wa-innamdakhala f kharq min al-jabal wa-lam yu raf khabaruhu). This meansthat Ab s, like the Shepherd, did not die a human death, but disap-

peared into occultation, according to his followers. A re-visiting of Shahrastns treatment of the Jewish sects, therefore,initially appears to provide a sound chronological and historical frame-

work within which one can begin to understand the Shepherds move-ment, despite the heavily typological cast in which the accounts of bothmessianist personas were written. Shahrastns account of Ab sal-Ifahn and his successor Ydghn suggests that messianist move-ments remained common among the Jews from Syria to Iran through-out the 8th century and that such movements, moreover, arose as anorganically united phenomena rather than a series of unrelated, isolatedmovements. Continuity between these movements persisted despite thegeographic distances separating them. Evidence for this may be found in

Jewish sources as well. Despite the centrality of Iranian geography in theaccounts of Ab ss messianist activities around Rayy, Qirqisn knowsof large numbers of sawiyya in Damascus, for example. Yet, before sucha continuity can be asserted with certainty, a number of reservations mustbe addressed. These arise from the fact that the historical context of Ab

Ya qb al-Qirqisn, K. al-Anwr wa-al-marqib: A Code of Karaite Law, ed. L. Nemoy(New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 193943), 1: 52. Cf. al-Maqdis, K. al-Bad wa-al-tarkh, ed. Cl. Huart (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 18991919), 4: 35; Taq al-Dnal-Maqrz,al-Maw i wa-al-i tibr f dhikr al-khia wa-al-athr , ed. A. F. Sayyid (London:al-Furqn Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2003), 4(2): 960 where it is said Ab s believedin the prophecy of Muammad after ascending to heaven and encountering him there.It is interesting to note al-Maqdis places the follower of Ab ss successor, Yudghn,alongside the Christian sects (op. cit., 4: 42.2 and 46.7, reading al-ydghnya where the

MS reads al-yudh nya). Qirqisn, 1:12. The occultation of the libid Abdallh ibn Mu wiya (d. 747 or shortly thereaf-

ter), who rebelled in eastern Iran in 744747, is described in similar terms as well; seeNawbakht, Firaq, 31 and Ash ar Maqlt , 22.

Qirqisn, 1:12.ult.


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s al-Ifahn, though himself a much better known personage than theShepherd, remains extremely problematic.

This is due to the fact that the two principal sources hitherto utilized byscholars for writing the history the activities of Ab s al-Ifahn and hismovement, one Muslim and the other Jewish, are in profound disagree-ment over the historical context in which his movement begins. The prin-cipal Muslim source, the Milalof al-Shahrastn, places the origins of hismovement during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Marwn II (r. 744750)but asserts that his movement did not begin to manifest its revolution-ary tendencies until the reign of the second Abbsid caliph Ab Ja far

al-Manr (r. 75475), during which he staged the revolt that cost himhis life. By contrast, the Karaite author al-Qirqisn places both the begin-ning of Ab ss movement as well as its climax in a subsequent uprisingagainst the Muslim authorities all within the reign of the Umayyad caliphAbd al-Malik ibn Marwn (r. 685705). The conundrum posed by thesetwo accounts is a famous one, and scholarship has been split from anearly date between two camps, with some scholars preferring the earlierdate of al-Qirqisn and others preferring the later date of al-Shahrastn.However, due to the circumstantial nature of the evidence put forward toresolve the impasse, no de nitive consensus has yet emerged.

Can the new data from Ab al-Ma ls Baynon the Shepherd ame-liorate this issue? Given the divergences between the Muslim and Jewishsources on Ab s al-Ifahn, it should come as no surprise that onends a similar dissonance between the Muslim and Jewish sources on the

issue of the Shepherd. Hence, the Karaite al-Qirqisn actually does knowof a gure bearing the title of al-R ; however, al-Qirqisns Shepherd isnot Ab s al-Ifahns predecessor but, rather, hissuccessor . According

to al-Qirqisn, it was Ydghn who was called by his followers the Shep-herd (ra y). This contradicts al-Shahrastns assertion that Ydghnmerely revered the Shepherd, as did Ab s. The Karaite scholar furtherstates that Ydghns title ra y merely served as the shortened form forr al-ummai.e., the shepherd of the community. Al-Qirqisns alsoaccount notably claims that [Ydghns] followers purport that he is themessiah and that he has not died; they [thus] expect his return (abuhu

Wasserstrom, sawiyya, 58 f. Qirqisn, 1: 13, 52 f.


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yaz amna annahu al-mas wa-annahu lam yamut wa-hum yatawaqqi nruj ahu). Al-Qirqisns account clearly creates problems for the chronology

encountered in the Muslim sources discussed above. There is a tempta-tion to harmonize the texts by imagining a scenario in which Yudghn isnot actually identical with the Damascene Shepherd but, rather, appropri-ates his title; but this does nothing to resolve the remaining chronologicalcontradictions. Without resorting to harmonization, however, the overlapsbetween al-Qirqisns account of Yudghn and al-Warrqs account of theShepherd (as redacted by later sources) suggests one of two scenarios.

The rst is a scenario in which one account is false and the other true;and the second a scenario in which al-Qirqisns account inverts the cor-rect chronology by placing the Shepherd after Ab s al-Ifahn andthereby erroneously imputes information about the Damascene Shepherdto Yudghn while relying on Muslim sourcesperhaps al-Warrq himselfbut, if so, probably indirectly. However, all of this is admittedly speculativeand tendentiously attributes the muddling to al-Qirqisn while treatingal-Warrqs account, by virtue of its earlier date and despite its imperfectredaction by later authors, as unassailably accurate. This solution, there-fore, remains equally problematic.

In what follows I would like to suggest an alternative path to circum- vent this conundrum that separates the data provided by the Muslim and Jewish sources. Although I believe it is impossible to ever fully resolve theconundrum, a solution presents itself by turning to a somewhat unex-pected source. It is to this source that our study now turns.

Qirqisn, 1: 52.ult. The accounts of subsequent Jewish authors hardly diverge fromQirqisns account, but this is due to fact, as Gill has argued ( Jews in Islamic Countries,146 f.), that his account serves as the template for all others thereafter.

In a recent work available to me only after having written the present study, Josef van Ess discusses the issues raised by Ab l-Ma ls passage on the R somewhat in detail;see his Der Eine und das Andere: Beobachtungen an islamischen hresiographischen Texten,StIO 23 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2011), 2: 82729. Van Ess decides, too hastily in my view,to identify the R of Ab l-Ma ls account with Ydghn in Qirqisns account, beingthat Qirqisn also attributes to Yudghn the title al-R . However, this historical rei ca-tion of Qirqisns account encounters an insurmountable problem: Ab l-Ma l placeshis R in Syria and depicts him as Ab s al-Ifahns predecessor, whereas Qirqisn

places Yudghn in Iran, namely Hamadn, and also depicts him as a successor, ratherthan predecessor, of Ab s. Though van Ess puzzles over this, he never provides a goodsolution to the problem and even neglects to take into account that Shahrastn describes

Ydghn as himself a proponent of the R s message, as Shahrastn also describes Abs al-Ifahn as doing ( Milal , 169.1, again emending the text to read al-r rather thanal-d ).


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Severus the Imposter

As noted in the introduction, Muslim and Jewish authors were not theonly writers to notice, observe, and report stories of the misadventures ofmessianic claimants and would-be prophets who arose among the Jew-ish inhabitants of lands overrun in the course of the Islamic conquests.Syriac-speaking Christians of sundry sectarian and geographical perspec-tives also observed and took note of this phenomenon, providing us witha welter of relevant materials that can illuminate considerably a numberof the mysteries of the accounts of the Shepherd examined above.

A particularly long account of a similar charismatic religious gure ofutmost importance to this study appears in the 8th-century, Syriac historyknown asThe Chronicle of Zuqnn(hereafter:Chron. Zuqnn). This anony-mous author of this work speaks of an imposter (Syr.ma yn) appearingin the West among the Jews who is subsequently cruci ed by them ca.7345i.e., in the middle of the reign of Umayyad caliph Hishm ibnAbd al-Malik (r. 724743). The account begins as follows:

At this time [Satan] stirred up a man from Mardn in a village named PLT

and led him to the West, to the land of the Samaritans. He was introduced tothe house of an important Jew, and while there, he impregnated the daugh-ter of that Jew. When the Jews learned about this matter, they beat himto the point of death, applying various tortures because he was Christian.

When he found an opportunity, he ed from them, and set his mind on allkinds of evil doings against them. He went down to the land of B rmy[i.e., Southern Mesopotamia] that was immersed in all the evils of sorcery.He gave himself over to sorcery (art) and all the crafts of the Deceiver (en teh d-kelqar). He was trained in all evil doings and became per-fected in them. Thus he left and went up to that land, and said to them,

I am Moses, who in the past brought out Israel from Egypt, and who was with them in the sea and in the desert (marbr) for forty years. Now I cometo rescue Israel and to bring her out of the desert (marbr). Then I willintroduce her afresh to inherit this Promised Land, as your forefathers inher-ited in the past when the Lord had destroyed all the nations that were therebefore them. And now, too, he will destroy all of them before you, and you

J.-B. Chabot, ed., Incerti auctoris Chronion Pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum, CSCO91, 104,scr. syri 43, 53 (Louvain: Peeters, 1927, 1965), 2: 17274 (hereafterChron. Zuqnn).

Ibid., 2: 173f. Here, I reproduce with only minor changes the translation of AmirHarrak, trans.,The Chronicle of Zuqnn Parts III and IV, A.D. 488775 (Toronto: Ponti calInstitute of Mediaevel Studies, 1999), 163f. See also the French translation of Robert Hespel,Chronicon anonymum Pseudo-Dyionysianum vulgo dictum, II , CSCO 507,scr. syri 213 (Lou-

vain: Peeters, 1989), 130 f. Unidenti ed; see Harrak, 163 and n. 2 thereto.


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will enter it and inherit it as in the past, and all the scattered of Israel willgather as it is written, He will gather the scattered of Israel. (Ps. 147:2)

The chroniclers account continues to relate the Jews gullibility in follow-ing this man and, subsequently, the imposters guileful and misanthropicdeeds against them: he would take groups of them up to the mountainpaths only to cast them over their peaks, and he would con ne themin caves and clefts to die from deprivation. This imposter allegedly alsomanipulated the Jews with his mastery of sorcery learned during hissojourns in B rmy in order to extort massive amounts of the Jewsgold, wealth, and property. Once he nished having his way with them,

the imposter ed and returned to his homeland, whereupon the insidi-ous nature and the cruelty of his chicanery soon become apparent. Theaccount concludes:

Then the Jews came to themselves, realizing what he had done to them;all of them went out after him to the four corners, asking about him andsearching for him. When they found him, they brought him to Hishm, theCommander of the Faithful ( Ham amr da-mhaymn ), who handed himover to them. After they had made him su fer all sorts of tortures and inju-ries, they cruci ed him on a wooden cross, and he died ( zaqphy al qays wa mt ).

The author ofChron. Zuqnncast his account in a transparently didactictone, which certainly produced embellishments and exaggerations in theaccount; however, he provides us, I contend, with an account of a g-ure who shares uncanny similarities with aspects of the portrayals of theDamascene Shepherd and Ab s al-Ifahn found in the Muslim and

Jewish sources that needed to be explored.The most pressing and obvious question raised by this text, in my view,

is: Does this account narrate the activities of the Shepherd, albeit withoutnaming him as such? Certainly there are stark incongruities between thisaccount and that of al-Warrq. For one, the Arabic heresiological accountsmake no mention of the Shepherds execution but merely of his impris-onment. Moreover, the executed imposter ofChron. Zuqnn meets hisend during the caliphate of Hishm, some two decades after the reign ofSulaymn in which al-Warrq places the story of the Shepherd. Certainly

The Syriac here is vague, accommodating a number of di ferent translations. Cf.Harrak, they cruci ed him on a stake, (164) and Hespel, ils le cruci rent sur le bois(132). Here, I have translatedqays (lit., wood) as a cross (cf. Syr Acts 5:30) as parallel tothe Arabickhashaba, which can also be used in the sense of cross.


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the above account, however, is that the imposter pro ts monetarily fromhis prophetic claimsthesine qua non for exposing prophets among reli-gious communities of early and late antiquity.

Even more substantive are the chroniclers notices on the impostersmessage. What interests us in particular is his claim not only to be Mosesbut his desire to re-gather Israel from the desert/wilderness (Syr.marbr).This desire expresses an idea deeply consonant with Ab s al-Ifahnsclaim that the lost tribes of Israel would soon re-gather. Although notdirectly attested to as a part of the Shepherds message, the appearanceof this theme in Ab ss movement may provide indirect evidence of

its importance to the Shepherds message as well, inasmuch as Ab shad been deeply in uenced by him. Here, the importance of the Elijah-like miracles attributed to the Shepherd in al-Warrqs account assumerenewed importance, for this keys us into the possibility that the Shepherdeither billed himself, or was billed by his followers, as an Elijah-like gure.By late antiquity, Elijah had long since assumed the role in Jewish apoca-lypticism of the personality who would regather the lost tribes of Israel(e.g., see Sirach 48:10). The claims by the Zuqnn chroniclers imposters,therefore, fall very much in line with the many Elijah-like miracles attrib-uted to the Shepherd in al-Warrqs account preserved by Ab al-Ma l.The Zuqnn chroniclers assertion that the imposter claimed to be Moses,though di cult to interpret, is also potentially congruent with the title ofthe Shepherd found in the Muslim heresiographers accounts, for Mosesis widely referred to in Rabbinic literature as the faithful shepherd, shep-herd of Israel, etc. It is theoretically possible thatjust as Ab al-Ma lerroneously transposed mas for s ibn Maryam in his adaptation of

E.g. see Didache 11:12, Hermas Man. 11:712. An idea that survives in Karaite religious thought and that remains prominent in

Jewish eschatology more generally speaking; see Erder, Doctrine, 185, n. 123. See Aaron Rosemarin, Moses im Lichte der Agada (New York: Goldbaltt, 1932), 82

and Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, trans. H. Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish PublicationSociety of America, 19671969), 7: 322a. The title faithful shepherd appears as early asthe Second Temple Period, as it features in a liturgical fragment from the Qumran texts(see1Q 34 ii.8). However, see James R. Davila, Liturgical Works, Eerdmans Commentar-ies on the Dead Sea Scrolls 6 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 24, who interpretsthe text as referring to David. Jesus claim to be the good shepherd in Jn. 11:14 may also

allude to this title of Moses; see J. Jeremias, Myss, in G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, eds.,Theological Dictionary of the New Testament , trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.:Eerdmans, 196476), 4: 872. Compare this data with mention of the seven shepherds ofIsrael to be resurrected from the day at the Messiahs advent in theresponsum of R. HaiGaon (9391038 C.E.) on the topic of redemption; the names of the so-called shepherds are

Adam, Seth, Methuselah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Jacob (Reeves,Trajectories, 140).


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al-Warrqs accountso the Zuqnn chronicler transposed the title ofShepherd with Moses. Then again, it is equally plausible that the Zuqnnchroniclers claim that the imposter touted himself as the second comingof Moses is merely a trope. Otherwise, the anonymous chronicler maymerely preserve a detail about the Shepherd entirely congruent with what

we known about his message from al-Warrqs accounti.e., by donningthe title ofal-R , or Ra y, he in fact claimed to be Moses. While suchsolutions may strike one as mere harmonizations, they nd further sup-port elsewhere in the Syriac historical tradition, and one need not relysolely on such speculations to sustain the connection between the Muslim

accounts and that ofChron. Zuqnn. As fortune has it, yet another Syriac account survivesor, rather,multiple accounts based on an earlier archetyperelating events thatputatively transpired ca. 7201. The second account was likely pennedby a contemporary of the Zuqnn chronicler, Theophilus of Edessa(ca. 695775), whose historical work, though no longer extant, served asthe basis for many subsequent Christian histories for events in the NearEast spanning fromca. 590 to 750. Theophilus text, therefore, comesdown to us only partially as redacted in Syriac by Dionysius of Tell-Mar(d. 845; whose own history survives only in the redaction of the anony-mous SyriacChronicle of 1234, but also to a great extent in theChronicleMichael the Syrian, d. 1199), in Arabic by Agapius of Manbij (d.ca. 941),and in Greek by Theophanes the Confessor (d.ca. 817). In what follows,

The Zuqnn chroniclers account may betray the in uence of the story of the Psuedo-Moses of Crete, who claimed to be Moses sent from heaven to lead the Jews across the seaon dry land, narrated in Socrates Scholasticus, Histoire, 7:1389 (VII.xxxvii). Both storiesshare interesting, structural commonalities in that both Socrates Pseudo-Moses and thatof the Zuqnn chronicler beguile the Jews rst by claiming to be Moses, then convincingthem to abandon their wealth, and eventually succeed in killing large numbers of themby casting them o f cli fs.

Al-Qirqisn, it should be recalled, gives the titlera al-ummaa tting Arabicparallel to the shepherd of Israelas one of the variants of the title of the Shepherd(op. cit., 1: 52 f.), albeit with reference to Ydghn. For thematic presentations of Elijah asthe second Moses, see Shaver, Prophet Elijah, 58 f.

Hoyland,Seeing Islam, 400 f. For Hoylands attempt to reconstruct this source, seeibid., 63171 (Severus appears at p. 654).

J.-B. Chabot, ed.,Chroncium ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens, CSCO 8182,scr. syri

3637 (Louvain: Peeters, 1916, 1920), 1: 308 and Michael the Syrian,Chronique, 2: 490 (Fr.)and 4: 456 (Syr.). Theophanes the Confessor,Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883),1: 401 ( . . 6213); Eng. trans. Cyril Mango and Rogert Scott,The Chronicle of Theophanesthe Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History 284813 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1997), 554; Agapius of Manbij, K. al- Unwn, part 2.2, ed. and trans. A. A. Vasiliev, in PO 8(1912): 504.


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I give the version redacted by Dionysius of Tell-Mar as preserved inChron. 1234; it reads:

At this time, a Syrian from Edessa named Severus (Swr)a crafty andcunning man ( ga r n wa mdarm)was living in a town named GSKin the province (ln) of Mardn. Hoping to acquire some money, he

went to the Jews and led them astray/seduced them (e b-hn). To some ofthem he would say, I am the messiah (m), but to other Jews the mes-senger of the messiah (zgar da-m). He acquired large quantities ofgold and afterwards when he became well-known to Maslama (etbeb law MWSLM ). [Maslama] arrested [Severus] and took all that he had acquired.But when he confessed to the scheme, [Maslama] released him.

A number of details immediately key us into the fact that this account mir-rors not only that of the chronicler of Zuqnn but also that of al-Warrq.Looking rst toChron. Zuqnn, one can see that both gures hail fromMardn; both are imposters who led Jews astray; both are known for theirguile and conjurers tricks, which they use to extort large sums of moneyfrom the Jews; and both make messianic claims. There can be, therefore,little doubt that, despite the fact that Theophilus account apparently doesnot narrate the execution of this imposter, the two accounts refer to thesame individual. With regard to Ab s al-Warrqs account, it is note-

worthy that both Theophilus and his relate the story of a messianist whomthe Umayyads arrest and to whom they attribute highly similar preaching.

The above account fromChron. 1234preserves what is by far the long-est version. Other redactors of Theophilus account provide much briefer

versions with fewer details. Agapius, although also providing a muchshorter account, adds a number of important details that bring it intofurther conformity with the account inChron. Zuqnn. These are that

the man was Christian but converted to Judaism (kna narny wa-tahawwada); that he claimed he came to save them and then collectedgreat wealth; had acquired knowledge many deceitful tricks and a bitof sorcery; and, most problematically, that Yazd II ibn Abd al-Malik

Chron. 1234, 1: 308. Unidenti ed. The biblical prophet Elijah also appears prior to the parousia of Jesus as the mes-

senger before Christ/the Messiah (zgar qdm m) in the Bar Apocalypse 3.22, inB. Rogemmena,The Legend of Sergius Bar: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalypticin Response to Islam(Leiden: Brill, 2009), 263.

I.e., Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwn (d. 738), Umayyad prince and (atthe time of this account) governor of al-Jazra, Armenia and dharbyjn; see EI , s.v.Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik (G. Rotter).

In Arabic: za ama annahu j a la-yukhalliahum fa-jama a ml am wa-qadta allama makhrq [sic] kathra wa-shay min al-sir . Cf. the similar statement


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(r. 720724), once he heard of him, had him executed. No other accountderiving from Theophilus mentions Severus death at the hands of thecaliph Yazd II: Theophanes is silent on the matter, and Michael the Syrianmerely notes brie y that the governor (adeh da-l) exposed his tricks (awda b-en teh). There is a distinct possibility that either Theophi-lus account contained further details in agreement with the chroniclerof Zuqnn, or that Agapius himself augmented Theophilus account withdetails fromChron. Zuqnn. The latter possibility may have the added ben-e t of providing a rationale for Agapius unique assertion that Yazd II hadthe imposter executed, for Theophilus original account appears to have

left the fate of Severus open-ended. The most salient observation to be had is how the additional detailsof Theophilus account bring us even closer to the Muslim heresio-logical accounts of the Shepherd. Although not exactly in chronologi-cal harmony with Ab s al-Warrqs account of the Shepherd, thechronological proximity of the two accounts renders the disharmonybetween Severus release from prison in the reign of Yazd II and hisappear-ance during Sulaymns caliphate quite negligible. There is, of course, nomention of the Shepherds ghayba; however, this appears to have been one

concerning the Persian Zoroastrian Prophet and miracle-working al-Muqanna who rebelledagainst the Abbsids ca. 75680 in Ibn Khallikn,Wafayt al-a yn wa-anb al-zamn, ed.Isn Abbs (Beirut: Dr al-dir, 1994), 3: 263. See also Elton L. Daniel,The Political andSocial History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bibliotheca Islamica,1979), 13747.

Agapius, Unwn, 504. Michael,Chronique, 4: 456. Scholars have adduced other sources as mentioning Severus, too; however, these are

of dubious value. Some later manuscripts of the Mozarab Chronicle of 754 mention a simi-larly devious imposter named Serenus (viz., he who is serene) as appearing in Iberia andrunning afoul the authorities there, but this story results from later interpolation and wasnot original to chronicle. For the Iberian account, see Chron. 754, 74 in K. B. Wolf, trans.,Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,1990), 13940. Joshua Starr was, perhaps, the rst scholar to demonstrate the problematicnature of this textual interpolation in his, Le mouvement messianique au dbut du VIIIsicle, Revue des tude juives 52 (1937): 88 f. As for the oft-cited Goanicresponsum of acertain Rabbi Naronai treating former followers of a Jewish imposter wishing to readmit-ted into t

who was the shepherd of damascus? the enigma of jewish and messianist responses to the islamic...

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