Muhammad and The Jews — Page ii
Prof S. NURUL HASAN, Delhi University: Muhammad and the Jews is probably the first objective study by a Muslim of a subject that needs a full appreciation in the background of the Arab struggle against zionism. The study conclusively rejects the legendary account of the mass execution of the Banu Qurayzah and the expulsion of Banu Qaynuqa from Medina. Prof F. E. PETERS, New York University: Dr Barakat Ahmad's Muhammad and the Jews is a new approach to a work that has badly needed doing. Muhammad and the Jewish community at Medina had complex and important relations with each other in the early days of Islam, as every student of the subject is we ll aware. But as Dr Ahmad has pointed out, our understanding of those relations is hopelessly covered by our own preconceptions. What is more important is that Dr Ahmad has , laid bare the same preconceptions on the part of the earliest reporters of these same events. Dr Ahmad i s, throughout the work, in admirable control of all the sources, both medieval accounts and the many meditations of modern scholars on the same events. Historians have no obligation to be either ecumenical or conciliator y. Dr Ahmad has attempted to be neither, but to write as an hi storian. He has succeeded admirably well and, in the process, had added something to the course of both ecumenism and conciliation. Rs 75