reynolds-the-quran-in-its-historical-context-2

The Jews of the Hijaz in theQur' an and in their inscriptions 1Robert G. Hoylandare mentioned numerous times in the Qur'an, whether via the root hwdtimes), as "Children oflsrael" (43 times), or subsumed under the category ofof the Book" (32 times). This ensured that their history and place in;:1\llUI~anl!lla·~a·s Ar~bia would receive substantial attention in biographies of theProphet and in commentaries on the Qur'an. And this in tum has filtered through· into a steady stream of secondary scholarship on the subject of "Mul;tammad and·the Jews." Yet outside ofthe blazing limelight of the Prophet's lifetime we know. nothing about the Jewish communities of northwest Arabia. The question. . how the Jews came to be in this region did interest early Muslim historians to' 'some extent, and many of them took the time to sketch out some ideas on this•. \subject. Usually they speak of waves of Jewish refugees coming from the Levant·.:'or the Persian realm in the wake of Babylonian, Roman and Iranian conquests or;:,persectiticms. Sometimes they even attribute a priestly pedigree to the Jews of thegoing back to Aaron, brother of Moses, though more often they are said todescend from ancient Arab clans who converted to Judaism a long time ago.Hn·"''"""r, one has a sense that they are mostly speculating and do not have anyreal information about the Jews of those distant times, and they are certainly not:;able to bridge the gap between the Hijazi Jews' putative origins and their sudden'rise to prominence in the early seventh century. 2am immensely grateful to Michael Macdonald, who, with characteristic generosity, allowed mefull use of his wqnderfullibrary and patiently answered my numerous queries. In the transliterationsystem of the present articles and b (which correspond to sh and kh elsewhere in this volume):· .. ·.,.are used for the sake of the precision necessary for discussing inscriptions,·. '2: There is quite a large. literature on Muslim writings on tl1e Jews of Muhammad's Arabia, as onewould expect given their prominence in the Qur'an. For older material see the references cited in•; · D.S. Margoliouth, The Relations between Arabs and Israelites prior to the Rise of Islam, London:British Academy, I 924, and S. W, Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews 3, New York:Columbia University Press, 1957 (esp. 60-74 and the notes thereto). More recently, seeM, Gil,·· :.".The·Origin of the Jews ofYathrib," JSAI 4, 1984, 203-34; G. Newby, A History of the Jews of.. Arabia, ·Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988; M. Lecker, Muslims, Jews and·.Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina, Leiden: Brill, 1995; idem, Jews and Arabs in Pre- andIslamic Arabia, Aldershot: Variorum, 1998; U. Rubin, "Jews and Judaism," in EQ, 3.21-34,· · · which provide a good bibliography,