Was Muhammad Influenced by the Jewish Communities of Arabia - Coursework Example

Muhammad: Crossroad of Diverse Monotheism I. Introduction The Jews have been dwelling in the Arabian Peninsula centuries prior to the birth of the Prophet of Islam. However, the dates and incidents pertaining to their arrival are cloaked in legends and myths, and even the most courageous endeavours at reconstructing the history of this ancient period are founded on pure speculations. The Jewish communities in the highly developed urban cultures of earliest South Arabia most probably can be traced back to biblical times. The well-known encounter between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba bears out the distant past of Israelite-Arabian contacts (Stillman, 1979). “This was the Arabia Felix of classical geographers, a land of incense and spices and a way station on the routes to eastern Africa, on the one hand, and India and the Orient, on the other” (ibid, 3). Jewish early settlers had previously instituted themselves in the sanctuary communities of northern Arabia through the later part of the Second Temple era. Even though this region was not as ethnically blessed as the southern area, it was not in any ways completely an Arabia Deserta. Jews could develop a means of subsistence in date-growing, caravan business and in the trades. Their hierarchies must have been enlarged by refugees who escaped from Judea after the upheavals against Rome disintegrated in a sea of blood in 70 and 135 C.E. At the time of Muhammad’s birth, this is dated at around the year 571, Jews were not merely to be located in large numbers in Arabia but were tightly entrenched into the life and culture of the peninsula (Lewis, 1984). Akin to their pagan fellow citizens, the Jews spoke Arabic, were structured into small units of clans and tribes, and had taken on board several of the values of desert communities. They forged alliances and partook in intertribal conflicts. Jewish influence in Arabia was immense that for a short period of time Judaism was accepted by the royal house of the Yemenite kingdom. Even though the religious power of the Jews was well-established in pagan Yemen, they themselves perhaps represented a fairly insignificant proportion of the population (Goitein, 1966). In spite of the high degree of integration into Arabian society, Jews were still perceived as a separate racial or ethnic group with their own unique customs and attributes. Arab lyricists and poets of the pre-Islamic period seldom refer to Jewish religious traditions, and the Koran oftentimes cites such classic Jewish institutions as the “Sabbath, kashrut, and the Torah” (Stillman, 1979, 4). The everyday medium of communication used by the Jews among themselves with its blending of Aramaic and Hebrew expressions appeared to the Arabs a dialect uniquely all its own. A number of Aramaic words and concepts, nevertheless, passed unnoticed into the language of Arabs. Also, religious notions, ethical ideas and homiletic wisdom were dispersed among the pagan Arabs who were able to establish contact with Jews. Similarly, with respect to the Christians of Arabia who, like the Jews, those had formed a separate religious community while simultaneously being greatly assimilated (ibid). II. The Jews and Muhammad The child Muhammad had almost certainly encountered several Jews and Christians. His native land of Mecca was a leading mercantile harbour situated next to the caravan road connecting “Yemen in the south with Byzantine Egypt and Syria-Palestine to the northwest and the Sasanian Empire to the northeast” (Stillman, 1979, 5). As the Muslim tradition claims, Muhammad had on further occasion went along with caravans into Syria and had witnessed the piousness of the Syriac monks, which created a profound and enduring impression upon him. He also came into contact with Christian and Jews in Arabia (Glubb, 1971). The trade channels to Syria passed through the Valley of Villages, which is comprised of a large Jewish population. Past north, on the borders of the Byzantine territory, were Christian Arab communities. Moreover, in north-eastern Arabia on the periphery of Mesopotamia, which was the governing centre of the Sasanian Empire, were significant populace of Christian Arabs. Muhammad came into closest encounters with merchant Jews and Christians, either in Mecca itself, or during one of the once a year celebrations (Bell, 1926). A few of the merchants whom Muhammad came into contact with perhaps played as unpaid missionaries who besides their commercial engagements disseminate the message of the Supreme Being; these self-proclaimed missionaries most definitely did not lecture detailed points of creed or spirituality, but rather highlighted the moral and ethical importance of monotheism to their pagan Arab audience. In spite of some noticeable external dissimilarities between Christians and Jews, the message they sermonized seemed astonishingly the same. Primarily, there is one God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and all that exist, Who has in His forgiveness and compassionate kindness unveiled to humankind what is obligatory of him, and Who on the Last Day will summon all souls before His almighty judgment throne, rewarding the honourable with everlasting paradise and damning the offender to endless agony (Cook, 1983). The canon of conduct instructed by these missionaries was also remarkable in its resemblance, such as “thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, oppress not the widow, the orphan, the stranger or the indigent” (Stillman, 1979, 6). As merchants, they also put emphasis on the responsibility to maintain impartial influences and means and to be truthful in any business transactions (ibid). The point in time was mature enough for this type of proselytizing. There was a spiritual disquiet in the peninsula not different from that of the Mediterranean world in the late antiquity period. The long-established Arab paganism and polydemonism had turned out to be barren and unproductive to a large percentage of the population. The townspeople were becoming ethnically, culturally and morally more refined (Peters, 1994). Numerous self-employed seekers of God, known as ḥanīfs in Arabic folklore, head out on a pilgrim’s movement toward monotheism without acknowledging either Judaism or Christianity; a number of these more responsive souls were motivated with the conviction that they had been elected like the prophets of previous times to convey the Divine message to their fellow people (ibid). III. The Influence of the Jews on Muhammad’s Life and Works One of the sensitive souls was Muḥammad b.c Abd Allāh b.c Abd al-Muṭallib of the Hashemite tribe of the clan of Quraysh in Mecca. Muhammad is set apart from other hanifs, probable prophets, and from the fact that he was a grand spiritual genius. Muhammad appears to have been specifically inspired by the missionaries’ everyday allusions to a book or manuscript as divine right. These preachers would carry their scripture in hand, quoting passages in the original language and afterwards interpreting them into conked out Arabic. The moral codes mentioned were frequently carried home by scenic homiletic sagas. Muhammad in due course came to the deep-seated judgment that God was one, hence was His message, which He had divulged to various peoples at diverse periods in their own tongue. He began to marvel on the concern which implies that even though God has limitless mercy He had not yet conferred His saving word upon the Arab people who thus far had been off course in night and were, thus, denounced to eternal damnation (Warraq, 2000). Muhammad started to contemplate on the spiritual condition and future of his people hence he decided to bring to them God’s heavenly scripture in their own language (ibid). Muhammad was, as told in legends and accounts, given to contemplations and night vigils, encouraged probably by the ascetic exemplars of anchorite monks who could be located anywhere throughout the Syrian and Arabian deserts, or possibly by the devout hanifs, or even by Judeo-Christian sects such as the Ebionites. At some stage in one of his vigil on a secluded mountainside not far-off from Mecca the answer to his spiritual anxieties came. It was Muhammad who was chosen. Like most righteous prophets, Muhammad was not completely ready for his divine responsibility. He even suspected that his sanity is betraying him (Watt, 1964). But eventually, he became persuaded that God, Allah, had communed with him through angel Gabriel and was disclosing to him a message in comprehensible Arabic. His honesty convinced others. Muhammad’s first converts were his family members, his wife, adopted son and his cousin. Before long he began to handle with some accomplishment amongst his fellow Meccans. Even them, and they were the mainstream, who were not influenced by his preaching revered him as a man endowed with spiritual prowess. However, when Muhammad’s message of approaching judgment before Allah reached its finality in a complete rejection of traditional Arab paganism, Muhammad began to endure severe, painful opposition and criticisms (Ahmad, 1979). Mecca was the dominant religious heart of pagan Arabia, and its place of pilgrimage, the Kacba was the aim of an essential annual pilgrimage. The religious and economic motives that he exposed were extremely immense. His adversaries charged him of being a madman. They alleged him of developing teachings instructed to him by others (ibid). Fundamentally, the narrative of Muslim-Jewish relations commenced with Muhammad’s appearance in Medina. Before the Hijra, he had got together with Christians and Jews who had come to Mecca on business, in addition to his own journeys (Bell, 1926). For a long time now, it has been debated whether Muhammad’s primary monotheists emissaries were Jews or Christians. In the nineteenth century, Abraham Geiger became the first to dispute logically for Jewish teachers. This assumption prevailed until the 1920s when Tor Andrae and Richard Bell released strong evidence for Christian advisers (ibid). On the other hand, S.D. Goitein (1966) has promoted very compelling arguments in goodwill of sectarian Jewish influences. Nevertheless, it is clear from Muslim accounts that in Medina, Muhammad encountered in an everyday personal contact a large, organized Jewish community. The meeting did not bear out to be a favourable one. IV. Muhammad’s Response towards the Jews Majority of the contemporary historians in the Western world have argued that Muhammad appeared in Medina anticipating to be welcomed by the Jews living there, and when he was casted off, he bowed in opposition to them in resentment, driving out two tribes and massacring the third (Lewis, 1984). The renowned British scholar, W. Montgomery Watt (1964), even bravely speculated that “had the Jews come to terms with Muhammad instead of opposing him... they might have become partners in the Arab empire and Islam a sect of Jewry” (Stillman, 1979, 10). These insights do not provide Muhammad much recognition as a scholar of religion or as a statesman. He would have been exceptionally inexperienced to assume that the Jews would acknowledge his new faith. He must have been conscious that Jews did not give credit to Christians, nor did Christians recognize Jews, nor did affiliates of the various Christian sects acknowledge each other (ibid). On the other hand, he may have anticipated that the Jews of Medina would forfeit the legitimacy of his undertaking to the Arab people. The faithful Gentiles had been awarded an assured degree of approval by Jews in the Hellenistic period, and those on the path to monotheism were perhaps still heartened. There is inside proof in the Koran for the perspective that Muhammad was motivated in his task to the pagans of Mecca by his monotheist teachers (Ahmad, 1979). If Goitein (1966) is precise in inferring that these teachers in Mecca were sectarian Jews, in that case the severe hatred shown to Muhammad by the Jews in Medina is more greatly understandable since it originates from the fierce conflict within Jewry at that moment between the powers of accepted view and sectarianism. One of Muhammad’s initial actions was the dissemination of a document that summarized the relationships between the different communities in Medina. This manuscript looks like an agreement for the control of the community and, hence, has been interpreted by many scholars as the Constitution of Medina. Somewhat, it was a constitution, but in fact was merely a temporary step and was shortly discarded by Muhammad when it has lost its value. Basically, the document is expressive evidence to Muhammad’s political insight and ambassadorial skill (Watt, 1964). The document validated the Jews as members of the community of Medina with particular rights and obligations. This status, nevertheless, was awarded only as long as the Jews did not commit misdeeds. The ambiguity of this criterion was to provide Muhammad with an official opportunity for changing their status at a latter period (Peters, 1994). The Jewish intellectuals of Medina must have been certainly annoyed to Muhammad. It was wicked enough that they declined his prophet mission, but this, as previously implied, was comprehensible in a common sense even to Muhammad. That they frankly challenged what he had to elaborate was even more wrong. And that they mocked and laughed at what appear to them his obvious mistakes in accounting biblical and midraschic tale was inexcusable (Ahmad, 1979). The educated Jews go against him on the stage at which he was extremely defenceless and at the moment in which he could do slightest about it. V. Conclusion The encounter between Muhammad and the Jewish communities in the ancient has been legendary, and at the same time, historical. It is apparent, from the accounts of Muslim scholars, that Muhammad was impressively influenced by the Jewish merchant-missionaries and which manifested at the time following God’s revelation to him that he has a mission to fulfill for his Arab people. However, this spiritual influence of the Jews to the life and missions of Muhammad ironically constructed his identity but later on destroyed it. The religious knowledge that Muhammad gained from his monotheist mentors was the instrument he used to promote his new faith, but then again the avenue which the Medinese Jews used to attack his religious ideologies. The conflict that was forged between the Arabs and the Jews during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad has now manifested itself in the continuing bitter strife between the Israelites and the Palestinians. The religion that served to be the bonding agent for the Arabs, as well as to the Jews, later on emerged as an institution that carries with it the seed of its own destruction. Works Cited Ahmad, B. (1979). Muhammad and the Jews: A Reexamination. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. Bell, R. (1926). The Origins of Islam in Its Christian Environment. London: Macmillan. Cook, M. (1983). Muhammad. New York: Oxford University Press. Glubb, J. B. (1971). The Life and Times of Muhammad. New York: Stein and Day. Goitein, S. (1966). Studies in Islamic History and Institutions. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Lewis, B. (1984). The Jews of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Peters, F. (1994). Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Stillman, N. (1979). The Jews of Arab Lands. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. Warraq, I. (2000). The Quest for Historical Muhammad. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Book. Watt, W. M. (1964). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. London: Oxford University Press. Read More