Muhammad and The Jews — Page 2
INTRODUCTION Historians, commentators of the Qur"'iin and eminent transmitters have committed frequent errors in reporting stories and events. They accepted them as they were transmitted, without regard for their value. They did not check them with the principles underlying such historical situations, nor did they compare them with similar material. They neither measured them with the yardstick of philosophy, with the help of knowledge f?f the nature of things, nor with the help of speculation and historical insight. Therefore, they strayed from the truth and found themselves lost in the desert of untenable assumptions and errors. - IBN KHALD-ON In 1833 the Rabbi at Wiesbaden, Abraham Geiger wrote a prize essay Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen ? 1 Rudolf Leszynsky, who also wrote a book on a related subject, 2 called Geiger's essay "epochemachender Schrift" (epoch-making writ- ing). Since then several books and articles dealing with various aspects of the Muslim-Jewish relations have been written. The latest is, probably, Goitein's book Jews and Arabs. a For Western scholars the origin of Islam, and specially of the Qur"'iin, has always been a fascinating subject. "Who instructed the Prophet, who were these teachers?" 4 After observing that "a somewhat uneven literature has grown up around the question" 5 , Goitein concludes that it seems 1 Geiger's book was translated i nto English by F. M. Young and printed in India in 1896 under the title Judaism and Islam. Ktav Publishing House, New York, republished the translation in 1970. 2 Die Jude11 in Arabie11 zur Zeit Mohammeds (Berlin, 1910). 3 S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs:Their Colltacts Through the Ages (New York, 1955). 4 Ibid. , 5 Ibid. , 2