Muhammad and The Jews — Page 7
INTRODUCTION taken prisoner at e Ayn al-Tamr. He became the slave of Qays b. Makhramah b. al-Mugalib b. eAbd Manaf b. Qusayy, and having accepted Islam became his maw/a. It was during e Abd al-Malik's ) reign that Mecca was besieged and the Kaebah destroyed. But he J was also the caliph who consolidated the Arab rule and left a splendid" empire. For about thirty years Ibn Is]faq lived in Medina where Imam Malik and Saeid al-Musayyib 1 were his contemporaries. He was taught by many teachers who were sons of the §abiibah. The great Traditionist al-Zuhri was among his teachers. The man who roused the antagonism of Imam Malik and the admiration of al-Zuhri was obviously not an ordinary person, and the time in which he lived was not ordinary either. Spain, Kashghar and Multan were conquered while he was still in Medina. He also saw the collapse of the Umayyads and the rise of the Abbasids. He died in Baghdad between 150/ 767 and 154/770 in the reign of al-Man~iir. Much has been written about his life, and his work has been evaluated from every point of view. 2 Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship has, however, ignored the events which took place in his lifetime and influenced his views regarding the Jews living under Muslim rule. On his arrival in the Abbasid capital Ibn Is]faq must have observed that the Jewish community which had the appearance of a state, had a peculiar constitution. The Exilarch and the Gaon were of equal rank. The Exilarch's office was political. He represented Babylonian-Persian Judaism under the Caliphs. He collected the taxes from the various communities, and paid them into the treasury. The Exilarchs, both in bearing and mode of life, were princes: They drove about in a state carriage; they had outriders and a kind of body-guard, and received princely homage. . . . 1 Abil MuI:iammad Sa"id b. al-Musayyib (15/636-94/712) was born during the caliphate of eumar. A faqih and mufti, he was highly regarded by ""Umar II. Al-Zuhri, Makhiil and Qatadah considered him one of the greatest scholars. 2 SeeibnSa""d,Al-Tabaq<ital-Kubra(Beirut,1958), Vol. VII, pp. 32 ff. ; al-Bukhari, Kit<ib al-Ta,rlkh al-Kabir (Hyderabad, 1361), Vol. I, p. 40; al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-/fuff<i; (Hyderabad, 1956), Vol. I, pp. 172-74; Ibn I;Iajar al-"" Asqalani, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib (Hyderabad, 1326), Vol. IX, pp. 38-45; al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Ta,rikh Baghdad (Cairo, 1931), pp. 214-34; Ibn Khallikan, Kit<ib Wafay<it al-A""yiin wa-Anba, Abna• al-Zama11, ed. II:isan ""Abbas (. Beirut, n. d. ), Vol. JV, pp. 276-7; Ibn Sayyid al-Niis, "Uyiin al-Athar ft F1111ii11 al-Magh<izi wa al-Shamii,ili wa-al-Siyar (Cairo, 1356), Vol. I, pp. 8-17; Johann Fikk, Mubammad lbn lsb<iq (Frankfurt am Main, 1925); J. Horovitz, "The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and their Authors", Islamic Culture, (1928), pp. 169-80; A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad(London, 1955), Introduction; Muhammad Hamidullah, Muhammad Ibn lslJ<iq (Karachi, 1967). 7