Muhammad and The Jews — Page 24
emotional factors which lead to the continued acceptance of such myths in the absence of any substantial and trustworthy evidence. Of all historical 'facts', stories of massacres and mass executions and murders are most susceptible to doubt and the most likely to prove either pure fabrications or high exaggerations. lbn Isl). aq and to a lesser degree, al-Waqidi and lbn Sa""d and their predecessor al-Zuhri and Musa b. ""Uqbah remembered, noted and reproduced what they considered to be significant facts. Events and details which are significant from our point of view were probably not of any consequence to them 1. They were not of any importance to the Jews either. There were no Jewish historians and writers, no correspondents, no travellers who carried the tales of the misfortunes of the Jews of the I;Iijaz when these tragic events were taking place. It is improbable and difficult, however, to believe that in the second and third centuries of Islam when Ibn Isl). aq and lbn Sa""d were collecting their material, the learned rabbis of the Gaonate and the Exilarchate of Babylon were unable to obtain the Jewish version of the events which had a profound influence on the life of the Jewish community of the l;Iijaz at the time of the Apostle. It is not normal with the Jews not to record their misfortunes. The Jews of Khaybar reported to be expelled by ""Umar were settled in Kufa, which was not very far from the Gaonate. 2 They were the descendants of the B. al-Nac;lir and the children of the· B. Quray?'. ah; Jewish scholars could gather their material from them. Samuel Usque's book A Consolation for the Tribulations of Jsrael- Third Dialogue 3 is a sixteenth-century classic of Jewish martyrology. This "deft painter of Jewish suffering", who "caused the Jong procession of Jewish history to file past the tearful eyes of his contemporaries, in all its sublime glory and abysmal tragedy"4 reports neither the expulsion of the B. Qaynuqa"" and the B. al-Nac;lir nor the execution of the B. Quray?'. ah. Jewish history up to Geiger's time (1833) seems to be free of these stories. The Jews lost their dominant position in Yathrib and Khaybar because they could not adapt like the Quraysh of Mecca although the terms offered to them were different and far less stringent than those to the Quraysh and other pagan Arabs. 1 See supra, pp. 19 and 20 for examples. 2 Graetz, Vol. III, p. 85; Baron, Vol. III, p. 89. 3 Samuel Usque, A Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel-Third Dialogue, translated by Gershon I. Gelbart (New York, 1964). 4 Ibid. , p. 16. 24