Competing monotheism – – – – – Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity Arabia and the rise of Islam

Note: As according to al-Biruni, the pre-Islamic Arabic calendar was lunisolar as adopted from the Jews, some dates in this article may be based on the assumption that Arabs in Hijaz used Jewish calendar with Arabic month names. Muslims who do not subscribe to this theory may be offended by this.

622 CE, or 4382 AH, Yathrib.

Muhammad was walking on the streets of Yathrib, where he was confronted by a Jewish girl.

“Who are you?” Asked Muhammad, “Who’s your father?”

“Maryam bint Huyyay ibn Uzayr, ” said the girl, “My father is a teacher of Torah. ” (“Maryam bint Huyyay ibn Uzayr” is the Arabic form of “Miriam bat Hayyim ben Ezra”)

“Your people have corrupted the law of God. ” Said Muhammad, “and I am here to restore it”.

“Except that your very statement makes you a false prophet in God’s law. That’s what the rabbis in Babylonia are saying. ” Said Maryam, who, as a rabbi’s daughter, had heard her father discussing the Torah with others, and who had read the Scriptures by herself.

“And they are the very ones corrupting the laws of God. ” Said Muhammad.

……

The story above is fictional, but the background is real. For Yathrib was, indeed, a battleground between two strictly monotheistic religions in a time of competition between three monotheistic faiths for the souls of Arabs.

After the destruction of the Temple and suppression of Bar Kochba revolt, many Jews went into Arabia, where they married local women, absorbed local converts and formed a powerful group in the region. Himyar, one of the most significant regional powers, adopted Judaism in 390 CE(284th Year of the Bostran Era and 4150 AH) and the last king tried to Judaize all inhabitants before he was toppled by the Christian Aksum. In many other areas, Jews became the lords of the cities and oases, like in Yathrib(until they lost some of their power to the Arab tribes in the same city). Indeed, the name of Yathrib today, Medina, is of Aramaic origin, meaning simply “the city”, which indicated its importance for Jews of Hejaz.

At the same time, Christianity was also gaining converts among Arabs. During the reign of Emperor Valens, the Tanukhids revolted under Queen Mavia(who, being impressed by the piety of a monk named Moses, converted to Nicene Christianity), until it was agreed for a Nicene bishopric to be set up among the Tanukhids with the aforesaid monk Moses being the bishop. As a result, Christian activities grew among Transjordanian Arab tribes that were serving as foederati of the Roman Empire. Ghassanids, an Arab group that migrated from Yemen to Transjordan in 3rd Century as foederati of the Roman Empire, were initially Miaphysite Christians but later became Chalcedonian Christians; while Lakhmids, who ruled Eastern Arabia as vassals of the Sasanian Empire, were followers of Church of the East. While the number of Christians in Hejaz was relatively minor, in Najran a significant Christian community existed. Surprisingly, no pre-Islamic Arabic translation of Bible had been found, although some readings in early lectionaries might have origins from that time.

It was in such an environment that Islam emerged. It’sbelieved that a primitive Arab monotheism, hanif, already existed at the time, although insufficient evidence could lead to this idea. If this is indeed true, this reflected how the idea of a one supreme God had taken roots among Arabs amidst the struggle between two monotheistic faiths even though none of the two established monotheist faiths were able to completely eliminate Arabian polytheism.

This didn’t mean that attempt to destroy Arabian polytheism didn’t exist. In 568 CE, the Aksumite governor of Yemen built a magnificent church in Saana, and tried to divert pilgrims there. It backfired as a man of Banu Quraish, the tribe responsible for Kaaba, the pilgrimage centre of Arabs at the time, desecrated the church. In response, the Aksumites tried to destroy the Kaaba. The plan failed, and a few years later Persians conquered Yemen. Around this time, Muhammad was born.

Born on either 28th November or 2nd December, 570 CE( 12 or 17th Kislev, 4331 AH in Hebrew Calendar and 12 or 17th Rabi al-Awwal/Khuwwan in pre-Islamic Arabian calendar), Muhammad was born without father and sent to a Bedouin family for fostering, and later raised up by his grandfather and uncle. During his teens and later, he followed the caravan to Syria, where he was likely exposed to Christianity. At the age of 25, he married Khadija, a wealthy businesswoman(15 years his senior according to majority sources), and together they had several children, of whom only one, Fatimah, survived. Both Muhammad and Khadija were hanif according to traditions, and Muhammad often retreated to various sites to contemplate.

In 21st June, 610 CE( 21st Sivan, 4370 AH in Hebrew Calendar and 21st Ramadan/Natiq in pre-Islamic Arabian calendar), he received his revelation, marking the beginning of Islam.

As Islam spreaded, it naturally got hatred from the Meccan polytheists. As a result, Muhammad and his followers were forced to flee, first to Aksum, and later to Yathrib.

Islam had many similarities to Judaism, include fasting on the 10th Day of the 1st Month, one single God with many prophets, praying towards a particular position(Jews to Jerusalem, and early Islam faced Jerusalem until changed to Mecca later), requirement for women to cover their hair in public(Jews for married women only, Muslims for all females above puberty), and an elaborate routine of daily prayers, and Islam aknowledged the major Jewish prophets, and Muhammad expected that Jews would follow him. Indeed, Muhammad once proudly said that all Jews would follow if 10 chiefs of Jews followed him.

Of course, this proved to be delusional, as Jews believed that Prophethood had ceased after the death of Hagai, Zachariah and Malachi during the late Persian period, and the very idea of a prophet who could set the commandmensts in Torah aside was antithetical to Judaism. Moreover, the fact that Jews had two sets of scriptures — — Written Tanakh and Oral Torah — — caused the Islamic prophet to think that Jews had corrupted the law of God. Indeed, Quran and Hadith contained many messages that mocked the core beliefs of Rabbinical Jews, include one about how Jews turned the tombs of prophets into a place of worship(which mocked the Jewish practice of praying at graves of the tsaddikim), how Jews called Ezra son of God(which was outright false), and another about how Jews softened the punishment for adultery(which mocked the rabbinical tendencies to make capital punishment almost impossible to be carried out).

Less noticed where the interactions between Christians and Muhammad’s early followers, although Quran and Hadith did contain many condemnations of the idea of trinity and Jesus as son of God.

Although Jews and other peoples of Medina were given equal rights in the Constitution of Medina, Jews later allied with the enemies of Muhammad, which caused the expulsion of Jews from Medina after a few battles, and which, according to Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham, caused Muhammad to order the extermination of all adult males of the Banu Qurayza.

It’s interesting that during the Battle of Uhud, a Jewish rabbi fought alongside Muhammad and was killed on the battle.

Other Jews were exiled to Khaybar, and two other battles were waged by the Muslims against Jews. Ultimately, Jews were allowed to stay in Khaybar but must give half of their production to the Muslims. Amidst the battles, Huyyay ibn Akhtab(Hayyim ben Ahituv in Hebrew) was killed, and Muhammad took his 17-year-old daughter, Safiyya(Tzofia), as wife.

As Muhammad gradually unified Arabia under the banner of Islam, the Jewish-influenced calendar was replaced by a pure lunar calendar in 632 CE. Muhammad died on the same year, and his leadership of the Muslim community was succeeded by Abu Bakr, his father-in-law(for Muhammad was married to A’ishah, Abu Bakr’s daughter) and companion.

Abu Bakr crushed an attempt by some Arab tribes to rebel, and later was succeeded by Umar. Umar ordered the expulsion of much of the Jews of Khaybar, along as Christians of Najran, to the Levant, although evidences showed that many Jews remained in Khaybar, where they continued to communicate with the Babylonian Geonim. Somewhere after Benjamin of Tudela’s visit to Arabia in 1100s, the Khaybar Jewish community became extinct.

The Christian Arab tribes moved into the Levant after the collapse of the Roman Transjordanian frontier, and their descendants have since merged with local Christians into the modern Christian-Arab community in the Levant. With the emigration of Arab Christians to the Americas, the scions of Ghassanids have won in their own way by spreading far across the Atlantic and prospering in where they live, even if they lost most of the souls of Arabs to the Muslims.

Jews would, however, continue to live in Yemen until their mass emigration to Israel in the Operation Magic Carpet. With the expulsion of the last Jews of Yemen in recent days, the Jewish history in Arabia came to an end. The struggle between three religions, however, is not over, and it simply turns into another form — — the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Christians divided between the Arab side, the Israeli side and the third side.