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Koran 6 Muslim cultural expansion in the Koran: how Muhammed’s community grew and its relation with other monotheists (Abrahamic faiths) and its contacts with pagansDilmun

Dilmun and its neighbors in the 10th century BCE. The Dilmun civilization was an important trading centre[16] which at the height of its power controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes.[16] The Sumerians regarded Dilmun as holy land.[17] Dilmun is regarded as one of the oldest ancient civilizations in the Middle East.The Sumerians described Dilmun as a paradise garden in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Sumerian tale of the garden paradise of Dilmun may have been an inspiration for the Garden of Eden story. Dilmun appears first in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the end of fourth millennium BCE, found in the temple of goddess Inanna, in the city of Uruk. The adjective "Dilmun" is used to describe a type of axe and one specific official;

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in addition there are lists of rations of wool issued to people connected with Dilmun. Dilmun was an important trading center from the late fourth millennium to 1800 BC. At the height of Dilmun's power, Dilmun controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes.

Dilmun, sometimes described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever. Thorkild Jacobsen's translation of the Eridu Genesis calls it "Mount Dilmun" which he locates as a "faraway, half-mythical place". Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. The promise of Enki to Ninhursag, the Earth Mother: For Dilmun, the land of my lady's heart, I will create long waterways, rivers and canals, whereby water will flow to quench the thirst of all beings and bring abundance to all that lives. Ninlil, the Sumerian goddess of air and south wind had her home in Dilmun. It is also featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh. However, in the early epic "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta", the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place in a world "before Dilmun had yet been settled".

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HejazThamud The Thamud (Arabic: ثمود) was an ancient civilization in Hejaz, which flourished from 3000 BCE to 200 BCE. Recent archaeological work has revealed numerous Thamudic rock writings and pictures. Before the rise of Islam, approximately between 400–600 CE, the Thamud totally disappeared.

Kingdom of Saba (9th century BCE – 275 CE) During Sabaean rule, trade and agriculture flourished, generating much wealth and prosperity. The Sabaean kingdom was located in Yemen, and its capital, Ma'rib, is located near what is now Yemen's modern capital, Sana'a. According to South Arabian tradition, the eldest son of Noah, Shem, founded the city of Ma'rib. During Sabaean rule, Yemen was called "Arabia Felix" by the Romans, who were impressed by its wealth and prosperity. The Roman emperor Augustus sent a military expedition to conquer the "Arabia Felix", under the command of Aelius Gallus. After an unsuccessful siege of Ma'rib, the Roman general retreated to Egypt, while his fleet destroyed the port of Aden in order to guarantee the Roman merchant route to India. The success of the kingdom was based on the cultivation and trade of spices and aromatics including frankincense and myrrh. These were exported to the Mediterranean, India, and Abyssinia, where they were

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greatly prized by many cultures, using camels on routes through Arabia, and to India by sea. During the 8th and 7th century BCE, there was a close contact of cultures between the Kingdom of Dʿmt in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea and Saba. Though the civilization was indigenous and the royal inscriptions were written in a sort of proto-Ethiosemitic, there were also some Sabaean immigrants in the kingdom as evidenced by a few of the Dʿmt inscriptions. Agriculture in Yemen thrived during this time due to an advanced irrigation system which consisted of large water tunnels in mountains, and dams. The most impressive of these earthworks, known as the Marib Dam, was built ca. 700 BCE and provided irrigation for about 25,000 acres (101 km2) of land[65] and stood for over a millennium, finally collapsing in 570 CE after centuries of neglect.

Pre-Islamic ArabiaArthur Goldschmidt Jr., Lawrence Davidson. A Concise History of the Middle East, 9th ed.,

p.22 Arabia’s political situation ranged from complex to chaotic. Three outside powers contended for control: the Byzantine Empire, champion of Orthodox Christianity; Sasanid Persia, ruled by Zoroastrians but harboring Nestorian Christians, Jews, Buddhists, dissident Manichaeans, and other sects; and Ethiopia, which espoused the same Monophysite Christianity as the Byzantines’ rebellious Egyptian subjects, the Copts.

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Each empire had a client Arab tribe that it paid handsomely and furnished with the trappings of monarchy in return for military service. The peninsula was often ravaged by wars among these three tribes: the pro-Byzantine Ghassanids of the northwest; the pro-Sasanid Lakhmids, with their capital at Hira, near the Euphrates; and the Christian tribe of Kinda, situated in central Arabia and friendly to Ethiopia. Other Arab tribes, some still animist (ascribing spiritual power to natural objects), others partly Zoroastrian, Jewish, or Christian, would mix in their quarrels. Southern Arabia underwent two consecutive foreign occupations: Ethiopian (ca. 525-575) and Persian (ca. 575-625).

pp. 16-17 Dissident Christian Sects

One Christian group, the Arians, which arose in the early fourth century C.E., taught that Christ, though divinely inspired and sired, was still a man not equivalent to God. The Arians’ foes argued that if Christ were merely a man, his crucifixion, death, and resurrection could not redeem humankind. They won the church’s acceptance of Christ’s divinity at a council held in Nicaea in 325 CE…Arianism became a heresy ( a belief contrary to church doctrine), and its followers were persecuted as if they had betrayed the Roman

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Empire. Most Christians, though, accepted the divine trinity: God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Was Christ really God? If so, do Christians accept the Gospel stories of his mother’s pregnancy and of his birth, baptism, mission, and suffering—all essentially human attributes?

In Antioch grew up a school of theologians called the Nestorians. They saw Christ as two distinct persons, divine and human, closely and inseparably joined. A church council at Ephesus condemned this view in 430 C.E., after which the emperor and the Orthodox church tried to suppress Nestorianism throughout the Byzantine Empire. Many Nestorians found refuge in Persia and sent out missionaries to Central Asia, India, China, and even southern France. Some of their opponents, called Monophysites, went to the opposite extreme, claiming that Christ contained within his person a single wholly divine nature. Though centered in Alexandria, this Monophysite idea won followers throughout Egypt, Syria and Armenia (an independent kingdom in eastern Anatolia). The Egyptian Monophysites called themselves Copts, the Syrian ones Jacobites; their churches (plus the Armenian one) still survive today. The majority of Orthodox bishops,

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meeting at Chalcedon in 451, declared that the Monophysites were heretics, like the Arians and the Nestorians. The Orthodox church found a compromise formula: Christ the savior was both perfect God and perfect man. His two natures, though separate, were combined within the single person of Jesus Christ. Whenever the Byzantine emperor upheld the Chalcedon formula, the Orthodox bishops would use their political power to persecute Egyptians and Syrians who would not recant their Monophysite (or Nestorian) heresy. This policy turned dissenters against Constantinople and would later facilitate the Arab conquests and the process by which Islam displaced Christianity as the majority religion in the Middle East.

p. 22 Southern Arabia

During the time when Rome and Persia seemed to dominate the Middle East, there was actually a third power, far off and almost ignored. Southern Arabia, with its monsoonal rain and lush vegetation, seemed a world apart, but it fostered the growth of several city-states. Saba (whence came that mythic queen of Sheba to call on Solomon) is the best known. Even before the time of Christ, its people, the Sabaens, had developed a thriving trade between their base in Yemen and the far

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shores of the Indian Ocean. They were the first people to make India and its products known to the Roman world and to colonize East Africa. The Sabaeans dammed mountain streams and terraced the Yemen hillsides to support an elaborate agriculture. Their main export crop was frankincense, used by the pagan Romans to mask the offensive odor when they cremated their dead. The spread of Christianity, which replaced cremation with burial, hurt the frankincense trade. When Ethiopia turned Christian and became Byzantine allies, the Yemeni Arabs, whose kings had by then adopted Judaism, got caught in the middle. Several dam breaks, an Ethiopian invasion, and a commercial depression combined in the sixth century C.E. to weaken southern Arabia.

Zoroastrian Beliefs

Zarathustra (in Greek, Zoroaster) was a Persian prophet who at the age of 30 believed he had seen visions of God, whom is Ahura Mazda, the creator of all that is good and who alone is worthy of worship. This was a departure from previous Indo-Persian polytheism, and Zarathustra has been termed the first non-biblical monotheist.

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There is disagreement among scholars as to exactly when and where Zarathustra lived, but most agree that he lived in eastern Iran around the sixth century BCE.

Zoroastrianism became the official religion of the Persian Empire, but it virtually disappeared in Persia after the Muslim invasion of 637 CE. Only about 10,000 survive in remote villages in Iran, but over the centuries many sought religious freedom in India. Today, most Zoroastrians are in India, where they are called Parsiis and number about 200,000.

The Zoroastrian concept of God incorporates elements of both monotheism and dualism. In his visions, Zarathustra was taken up to heaven, where Ahura Mazda revealed that he had an opponent, Aura Mainyu, the spirit and promoter of evil. Ahura Mazda charged Zarathustra with the task of inviting all human beings to choose between him (good) and Aura Mainyu (evil).

Though Zoroastrianism was never as aggressively monotheistic as Judaism or Islam, it does represent an original attempt at unifying under the worship of one supreme god a polytheistic religion comparable

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to those of the ancient Greeks, Latins, Indians, and other early peoples.

Its other salient feature, namely dualism, was never understood in an absolute, rigorous fashion. Good and Evil fight an unequal battle in which the former is assured of triumph. God's omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited.

Zoroaster taught that man must enlist in this cosmic struggle because of his capacity of free choice. Thus Zoroastrianism is a highly ethical religion in which the choice of good over evil has cosmic importance. Zarathustra taught that humans are free to choose between right and wrong, truth and lie, and light and dark, and that their choices would affect their eternal destiny.

The Zoroastrian afterlife is determined by the balance of the good and evil deeds, words, and thoughts of the whole life. For those whose good deeds outweigh the bad, heaven awaits. Those who did more evil than good go to hell (which has several levels corresponding to degrees of wickedness). There is an intermediate stage for those whose deeds weigh out equally.

This general principle is not absolute, however, but allows for human weakness. All faults do not have to

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be registered or weighed forever on the scales. There are two means of effacing them: confession and the transfer of supererogatory merits (similar to the Roman Catholic "Treasury of Merits"). The latter is the basis for Zoroastrian prayers and ceremonies for the departed.

Zoroaster invoked saviors who, like the dawns of new days, would come to the world. He hoped himself to be one of them. After his death, the belief in coming saviors developed further. He also incorporated belief in angels and demons.

Zoroaster's ideas of ethical monotheism, heaven, hell, angelology, the resurrection of the body, and the messiah figure have notable parallels in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The early 7th century in Arabia began with the longest and most destructive period of the Byzantine–Sassanid Wars. It left both empires exhausted and susceptible to third-party attacks, particularly from nomadic Arabs united under a newly formed religion. According to historian George Liska, the "unnecessarily prolonged Byzantine–Persian conflict opened the way for Islam" 

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Nabataean trade routes in Pre-Islamic Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabian Peninsula prior to the rise of Islam in the 630s. Pre-Islamic religion in Arabia consisted of indigenous polytheistic beliefs , Judaism , and Iranian religions, and ancient Arabian Christianity, Nestorians, Among the most prominent civilizations were (see above) the Thamud which arose around 3000 BCE and lasted to about 300 CE and Dilmun which arose around the end of the fourth millennium and lasted to about 600 CE, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. It is called the period of Jahilliyyah that is the age of ignorance. In pre-Islamic times, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christianized Arabs(including Abd al-Qays), Aramean Christians, Persianspeaking Zoroastrians and Jewish agricultur-

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alists. Zoroastrianism was also present in Eastern Arabia.The Zoroastrians of Eastern Arabia were known as "Majoos" in pre-Islamic times.

Iranian religions existed in pre-Islamic Arabia on account of Sasanian military presence along the Persian Gulf and South Arabia and on account of trade routes between the Hejaz and Iraq. Some Arabs in northeast of the peninsula converted to Zoroastrianism and several Zoroastrian temples were constructed in Najd. Some of the members from the tribe of Banu Tamim had converted to the religion. There is also evidence of existence of Manichaeism in Arabia as several early sources indicate a presence of "zandaqas" in Mecca, although the term could also be interpreted as referring to Mazdakism. There is evidence for the circulation of Iranian religious ideas in the form of Persian loan words in Quran such as firdaws (paradise).Zoroastrianism was also present in Eastern Arabia and Persian-speaking Zoroastarians lived in the region.They were known as "Majoos" in pre-Islamic times. The religion was introduced in the region including modern-day Bahrain during the rule of Persian empires in the region starting from 250 B.C. It was mainly practiced in Bahrain by Persian settlers. Zorastrianism was also practiced in the Persian-ruled area of modern-day Oman. The religion also existed in Persian-ruled area of modern Yemen. The descendants of Abna, the Persian conquerors of Yemen were followers of Zorastrianism.

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Arab polytheism, the dominant belief system, was based on the belief in deities and other supernatural beings such as djinn. Gods and goddesses were worshipped at local shrines, such as the Kaaba in Mecca. The Kaaba was dedicated to Hubal and also contained the images of the three chief goddesses Al-lāt, Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt. Some scholars postulate that Allah may have been one of the gods of the Meccan religion to whom the shrine was dedicated although it seems he had little relevance in the religion. Many of the physical descriptions of the pre-Islamic gods are traced to idols, especially near the Kaaba, which is believed to have contained up to 360 of them. The religious beliefs and practices of the nomadic Bedouin were distinct from those of the settled tribes of towns such as Mecca.Nomadic religious belief systems and practices are believed to have included fetishism, totemism and veneration of the dead but were connected principally with immediate concerns and problems and did not consider larger philosophical questions such as the afterlife. Settled urban Arabs, on the other hand, are thought to have believed in a more complex pantheon of deities. While the Meccans and the other settled inhabitants of the Hejaz worshiped their gods at permanent shrines in towns and oases, the Bedouin practised their religion on the move.[10]

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Christian in ArabicIn the Qur’an—Nasrani (m.)=Nazarene (Jesus of Nazareth); Nasraniyyin=male Christians; nasraniyyat=female ChristiansModern arabic (common form from al-masih=the Messiah)—masihi=male Christian; masihiyyah=female Christian; masihiyyun=male Christians (nominative); masihiyyin=male Christians (oblique); masihiyyat=female Christians Arabic Christians tend to use another name which is closer to Jesus’ name in Arabic, Yasu, or yasu al-masih, Jesus the Messiah)—yasu’I=Jesuit (actual meaning), and by extension, Christian; yasu’iyyun=Jesuits (nominative); yasu’iyyin=Jesuits (oblique) Other religions were represented to varying, lesser degrees. The influence of the adjacent Roman, Axumite and Sassanian empires resulted in Christian communities in the northwest, northeast and south of Arabia. Christianity made a lesser impact, but secured some conversions, in the remainder of the peninsula. . Christianity was established first by the early Arab traders who heard the gospel from Peter the apostle at Jerusalem as well as those evangelized by Paul's ministry in Arabia. According to the Bible in Acts 2:1-13:1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole

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house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.” and Galatians 1:15-17: 15 But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my

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immediate response was not to consult any human being. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Christianity was mostly prominent in Najran, South Arabia. In the latter stages of the pre-Islamic era, Christianity gained converts with some unorthodox sects, such as the gnostics, having a presence. With the exception of Nestorianism in the northeast and the Persian Gulf, the dominant form of Christianity was Monophysitism. The peninsula had been subject to Jewish migration since Roman times, which had resulted in a diaspora community supplemented by local converts. Additionally, the influence of the Sasanian Empire resulted in Iranian religions being present in the peninsula. Zoroastrianism existed in the east and south whilst there is evidence of Manichaeism or possibly Mazdakism being practised in Mecca.

“Arab Christians”:

Jubail Church is a 4th-century church building near Jubail, Saudi Arabia. It originally belonged to the Church of the East, an ancient Nestorian branch

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of Eastern Christianity in the Middle East. It is one of the oldest churches in the world. Arab Christians are Indigenous peoples of Western Asia, with a presence there predating the seventh-century Early Muslim conquests in the Fertile Crescent. There were many Arab tribes which adhered to Christianity beginning with the 1st century, including the Nabateans and the Ghassanids. Nabateans were possibly among the first Arab tribes to arrive to the Southern Levant in the very late first millennium BC. The Nabataeans initially adopted pagan beliefs, but they became Christians by the time of the Byzantine period around the 4th century. The new Arab invaders, who soon pressed forward into their seats found the remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into peasants. Their lands were divided between the new Qahtanite Arab tribal kingdoms of the Byzantine vassals, the Ghassanids and the Himyarite Kingdom, the Kindah in North Arabia. The tribes of Tayy, Banu Abdul Qays, and Taghlib are also known to have included many Christians in the pre-Islamic period. The southern Arabian city of Najran was a center of Arabian Christianity, made famous by the persecution by one of the kings of Yemen, Dhu Nawas, who was himself an enthusiastic convert to Judaism. The leader of the Arabs of Najran during the period of persecution, al-Ḥārith, was canonized by the Catholic Church as Arethas. Some modern scholars suggest that Philip the Arab was the first Christian emperor of Rome. By the fourth century, a significant number of

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Christians occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. The New Testament has a biblical account of Arab conversion to Christianity recorded in the book of Acts. When Saint Peter preaches to the people of Jerusalem, they ask, "And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? [. . .] both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." (Acts 2:8, 11, English Standard Version). Arab Christians are thus one of the oldest Christian communities. The first mention of Christianity in Arabia occurs in the New Testament as the Apostle Paul refers to his journey in Arabia following his conversion (Galatians 1: 15-17). Later, Eusebius discusses a bishop named Beryllus in the see of Bostra, the site of a synod c. 240 and two Councils of Arabia. Christians existed in Arab lands from at least the 3rd century onward. Also, there were Christian influences coming from Ethiopia in particular in pre-Islamic times, and some Hejazis, including a cousin of Muhammad's wife Khadija bint Khuwaylid, according to some sources, adopted this faith, while some Ethiopian Christians may have lived in Mecca.

The main areas of Christian influence in Arabia were on the north eastern and north western borders and in what was to become Yemen in the south. The north west was under the influence of Christian missionary activity from the Roman Empire where

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the Ghassanids, a client kingdom of the Romans, were converted to Christianity. In the south, particularly at Najran, a centre of Christianity developed as a result of the influence of the Christian Kingdom of Axum based on the other side of the Red Sea in Ethiopia. Both the Ghassanids and the Christians in the south adopted Monophysitism. The third area of Christian influence was on the north eastern borders where the Lakhmids, a client tribe of the Sassanians, adopted Nestorianism, being the form of Christianity having the most influence in the Sassanian Empire. As the Persian Gulf region of Arabia increasingly fell under the influence of the Sasanians from the early third century, many of the inhabitants were exposed to Christianity following the eastward dispersal of the religion by Mesopotamian Christians. However, it was not until the fourth century that Christianity gained popularity in the region with the establishment of monasteries and a diocesan structure. In 1986, the remains of a church thought to date to the 4th century were discovered in Jubail in eastern Saudi Arabia. In pre-Islamic times, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christianized Arabs (including Abd al-Qays) and Aramean Christians among other religions. Syriac functioned as a liturgical language. Serjeant states that the Baharna may be the Arabized descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), among other religions at the time of Arab conquests. Beth Qatraye

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which translates "region of the Qataris" in Syriac was the Christian name used for the region encompassing north-eastern Arabia. It included Bahrain, Tarout Island, Al-Khatt, Al-Hasa, and Qatar. Oman and the United Arab Emirates comprised the diocese known as Beth Mazunaye. The name was derived from 'Mazun', the Persian name for Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Sohar was the central city of the diocese. In Nejd, in the centre of the peninsula, there is evidence of members of two tribes, Kindah and Taghlib, converting to Christianity in the 6th century. However, in the Hejaz in the west, whilst there is evidence of the presence of Christianity, it is not thought to have been significant amongst the indigenous population of the area. Arabicized Christian names were fairly common among pre-Islamic Arabians, which has been attributed to the influence that Syrianized Christian Arabs had on bedouins of the peninsula for several centuries before the rise of Islam. Neal Robinson, based on verses in the Quran, believes that some Arab Christians may have held unorthodox beliefs such as the worshipping of a divine triad of God the father, Jesus the Son and Mary the Mother. Furthermore, there is evidence that unorthodox groups such as the Collyridians, whose adherents worshiped Mary, were present in Arabia, and it has been proposed that the Qur'an refers to their beliefs. However, other scholars, notably Mircea Eliade, William Montgomery Watt, G.R.

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Hawting and Sidney H. Griffith, cast doubt on the historicity or reliability of such references in the Quran. Sura Al-Feel (The Elephant) 105 is a Makkan surah.It takes its title from the discussion of the masters of the elephant whose destruction it relates. It is said that Abrahah, an Abyssinian [Christian] general who ruled Yemen, had built a church in San’a in order to divert pilgrims from the Ka’bah in Makkah. But when the pilgrims did not abandon their worship at the Ka’bah, Abrahah sent an army against Makkah in the year 570 (Muhammad’s birth year),. According to some, a few members of the Quraysh ahd either defiled or burned down Abrahah’s church. Along with the largest army that had ever been assembled in Arabia, Abrahah sent an elephant, which he intended to use to pull down the Ka’bah. God, however, protected the Quraysh and the Ka’bah by sending against them a swarm of birds that pelted them with stones. This Surah has been interpreted by Muslims who recall that Muhammad invoked the memory of this event during his conquest of Makkah, to remind the Quraysh that they were not protected because of their status, but because God wished to protect the Ka’bah and to make way for the coming of His final Messenger, Muhammad, who are here to return His sanctuary to sanctity.

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105. Surah Al-Feel (The Elephant)

1. Have you (O Muhammad ( )) not seen how your Lord dealt with the Owners of the Elephant? [The elephant army which came from Yemen under the command of Abrahah Al-Ashram intending to destroy the Ka'bah at Makkah].

2. Did He not make their plot go astray?

3. And sent against them birds, in flocks,

4. Striking them with stones of Sijjil.

5. And made them like an empty field of stalks (of which the corn has been eaten up by cattle).

Though the elephant appears here in the singular, some say that Abrahah had eight or twelve elephants in his army. According to the earliest histories, when commanded to approach Makkah, the elephant knelt and would not be moved, despite being beaten by the army. When turned in any other direction, it would rise

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and walk, but when turned toward Makkah, it would again kneel and refuse to move (Ibn Ishaq).

That God made Abrahah’s scheming go astray alludes to the manner in which God allowed them to plan the entire expedition and carry it out to their own demise, since from a Quranic perspective, God is the best of plotters (3:54; 8:30), and the scheming of the disbelievers is naught but astray (40:25).

There are so many references to Jews in the Qur’an that we would need 24 pages of text just to list the references. In some references Jews are attacked and denigrated. In others Jews are revered as upholders of God’s will and ancient tradition.

Here is a list of the ways Jews are referred to in the Qur’an:

Children of Israel--bana isra’il

The people of Moses—qawm musa

Those who have Judaized—al-ladhina hadu

Jews—al-Yahud

Jew or Jewish—yaudi

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The tribes (of Israel)—al-asbat

People of the Book—ahlu al-kitab (also refers to Christians; the Book may refer to all scriptures, the Tanach, the New Testament and the Qur’an), the variations of this name are below--

Those who have been given the book

Those whom We have given the Book

Those who have been given a portion of the Book

Those who have read/recite the Book

Successos who have inherited the Book

People of the Reminder—dhikr (Arabic); zekher (Hebrew) is a synonym for scripture (divine writ)

Those who have been given a portion of the Book

Those who have knowledge of the Book

Those who have been given the Knowledge beforehand

People of Abraham who were given the Book and the wisdom

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On the Qur’an as an example of Religious Phenomenology

Jews were the key representatives of monotheism in Arabia in the seventh century when the Qur’an emerged as a text. Current scholarly consensus is that Jews were not the primary teachers or informants for Muhammad, because Jewish ideas were so pervasive in Arabia at the time that there was no need to have specifically Jewish informants, rather Muhammad grew up in a cultural climate where forms of Jewish monotheism were already pervasive. Many of the texts reflect a good deal of anger toward the Jews, which reflects the complexity of the relationship between Muhammad and his followers and the Jews, who, from the former’s viewpoint, should have accepted Muhammd’s monotheism as the correction of their own. However, this phenomenon is the natural historical result, or the phenomenology of religion, when a new faith confronts its predecessor. Members of established reliiongs always oppose the emergence of new religions, which represent competiton and existential threat. In my previous course, “A Rabbi Encounters the New Testament, for example, we found that the Jews could not accept the emergence of Christianity as a valid religon because such an acceptance would acknowledge that their own religon was lacking or incomplete. Otherwise, wy

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would God send another prophet with another divine message, and one that contradicts their own scripture at that? New religions, however, derive their authority in part from the authority of established religions. Yet, new religions, must also criticize the establishment relgions because failure to do so would fail to offer a justification for their own new expression of the divine will. If a new religion survives its birth-pangs and produces a scripture, it records the antagonism and its own emotiional responses within it. One must keep in mind that scripture is the earliest record we have for the moment of religioius emergence.Abstracted from an article by Reuven Firestone, “The Quran on Jews and Judaism,” The Reform Jewish Quarterly, (Winter 2018) LXV/1, pp. 154-167.

There are several traditions that place Israelites in Arabia as early as the First Commonwealth of Israel. One such legend has three divisions of Israelite soldiers being sent by either King David or King Solomon while another places the earliest migration just prior to the destruction of the First Temple. Yet another tradition, shared with northern Yemenite Jews, states that under the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Israelites, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen. The Jews of southern Yemen have a tradition that they are

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the descendants of Judeans who settled in the area before the destruction of the Second Temple. According to tradition, those Judeans belonged to a brigade dispatched by King Herod to assist the Roman legions fighting in the region (see Aelius Gallus). Khaybar and Yathrib were two Jewish communities in Arabia that initially maintained a measure of independence. The Jews shared Yathrib with two Arab clans, the Aws and the Khazraj, that who were sometimes friendly and other times quite hostile. According to tradition, the Jews of Khaybar were descended from the Rechabites who, under clan founder Yonadab ben Rechav, led a nomadic existence. Following the destruction of First Temple, they wandered as far as the region of Khaybar, drawn to it by its oasis of palm trees and grain fields. The oasis was strategically located on the Arabian route up to Israel and Syria, 140 kilometres (90 mi) north of Medina. The Rechabite warriors of Khaybar built a line of forts and castles with the strongest of them being Kamus, built atop an inaccessible cliff.

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The 'Crowned Man' excavated from the Stone Building in Zafar.Aksumite occupation of Yemen (525 – 570 CE) The Aksumite intervention is connected with Dhu Nuwas (see below), a Himyarite king who changed the state religion to Judaism and began to persecute the Christians in Yemen. Outraged, Kaleb, the Christian King of Aksum with the encouragement of the Byzantine Emperor Justin I invaded and annexed Yemen. The Aksumites controlled Himyar and attempted to invade Mecca in the year 570 CE (see excerpt from Qur’an below regarding this incursion). Eastern Yemen

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remained allied to the Sassanids via tribal alliances with the Lakhmids, which later brought the Sassanid army into Yemen, ending the Aksumite period.

Ring-stone of Yishak bar Hanina with a Torah shrine, 330 BCE - 200 CE. found in Dhofar There are numerous accounts and traditions concerning the arrival of Jews in various regions in Southern Arabia. One tradition suggests that King Solomon sent Jewish merchant marines to Yemen to prospect for gold and silver with which to adorn his Temple in Jerusalem. In 1881, the French vice consulate in Yemen wrote to the leaders of the Alliance (the Alliance Israelite Universelle) in France, that he read in a book by the Arab historian Abu-Alfadathat the Jews of Yemen settled in the area in 1451 BC. Another legend says that Yemeni tribes converted to Judaism after the Queen of Sheba's visit to king Solomon. The Sanaite Jews have a tradition that their ancestors settled in Yemen forty-two years before the destruction of the First Temple. It is said that under

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the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Jews, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen.  Another legend states that when Ezracommanded the Jews to return to Jerusalem they disobeyed, whereupon he pronounced a ban upon them. According to this legend, as a punishment for this hasty action, Ezra was denied burial in Israel. As a result of this local tradition, which can not be validated historically, it is said that no Jew of Yemen gives the name of Ezra to a child, although all other Biblical appellatives are used. The Yemenite Jews claim that Ezra cursed them to be a poor people for not heeding his call. This seems to have come true in the eyes of some Yemenites, as Yemen is extremely poor. However, some Yemenite sages in Israel today emphatically reject this story as myth, if not outright blasphemy. Archaeological records referring to Judaism in Yemen started to appear during the rule of the Himyarite Kingdom, established in Yemen in 110 BC. Various inscription in Musnad script in the second century CE refer to constructions of synagogues approved by Himyarite Kings. According to local legends, the kingdom's aristocracy converted to Judaism in the 6th century CE. The Christian missionary, Theophilos, who came to Yemen in the mid-fourth century, complained that he had found great numbers of Jews. By 380 A.D, Himyarites religious practices have undergone fundamental changes. The inscriptions were no longer addressed to El Maqah or 'Athtar, but to a single deity called Rahman. Debate among scholars continues as

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to whether the Himyarite monotheism was influenced by Judaism or Christianity. Jews became especially numerous and powerful in the southern part of Arabia, a rich and fertile land of incense and spices and a way station on the routes to Africa, India, and East Asia. The Yemeni tribes did not oppose Jewish presence in their country. By 516, tribal unrest broke out, and several tribal elites fought for power. One of those elites was Joseph Dhu Nuwas or "Yûsuf 'As'ar Yaṯ'ar" as mentioned in ancient south Arabian inscriptions. The actual story of Joseph is murky. Greek and Ethiopian accounts, portray him as a Jewish zealot. Some scholars suggest that he was a converted Jew. Nestorian accounts claim that his mother was a Jew taken captive from Nisibis and bought by a king in Yemen, whose ancestors had formerly converted to Judaism. Syriac and Byzantine sources maintain that Yûsuf ’As’ar sought to convert other Yemeni Christians, but they refused to renounce Christianity. The actual picture, however, remains unclear. Some scholars believe that Syriac sources reflected a great deal of hatred toward Jews. In 2009 a BBC broadcast defended a claim that Yûsuf ’As’ar offered villagers the choice between conversion to Judaism or death and then massacred 20,000 Christians. The program's producers stated that, "The production team spoke to many historians over 18 months, among them Nigel Groom, who was our consultant, and Professor Abdul Rahman Al-Ansary [former professor of archaeology at the King Saud

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University in Riyadh]." Inscriptions attributed to Yûsuf ’As’ar himself show the great pride he expressed after killing more than 22,000 Christians in Ẓafār and Najran. According to Jamme, Sabaean inscriptions reveal that the combined war booty (excluding deaths) from campaigns waged against the Abyssinians in Ẓafār, the fighters in ’Ašʻarān, Rakbān, Farasān, Muḥwān (Mocha), and the fighters and military units in Najran, amounted to 12,500 war trophies, 11,000 captives and 290,000 camels and bovines and sheep. Historian Glen Bowersock described this as a "savage pogrom that the Jewish king of the Arabs launched against the Christians in the city of Najran. The king himself reported in excruciating detail to his Arab and Persian allies about the massacres he had inflicted on all Christians who refused to convert to Judaism." There were also reports of massacres and destruction of places of worship by Christians too. Francis Edward Peters wrote that while there is no doubt that this was a religious persecution, it is equally clear that a political struggle was going on as well. It is likely that Dhu Nuwas was a leader of a liberation movement seeking to free Yemen from an increasing foreign meddling in the nation's affairs, and Judaism became a vital element in the resistance. According to ‘Irfan Shahid’s Martyrs of Najran – New Documents, Dhu-Nuwas sent an army of some 120,000 soldiers to lay siege to the city of Najran, which siege lasted for six months, and the city taken

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and burnt on the 15th day of the seventh month (i.e. the lunar month Tishri). The city had revolted against the king and they refused to deliver it up unto the king. About three-hundred of the city’s inhabitants surrendered to the king’s forces, under the assurances of an oath that no harm would come to them, and these were later bound, while those remaining in the city were burnt alive within their church. The death toll in this account is said to have reached about two-thousand. However, in the Sabaean inscriptions describing these events, it is reported that by the month Dhu-Madra'an (between July and September) there were “1000 killed, 1500 prisoners [taken] and 10,000 head of cattle.” There are two dates mentioned in the “letter of Simeon of Beit Aršam.” One date indicates the letter was written in Tammuz in the year 830 of Alexander (518/519 CE), from the camp of GBALA (Jebala), king of the ‘SNYA (Ghassanids or the Ġassān clan). In it, he tells of the events that transpired in Najran, while the other date puts the letter’s composition in the year 835 of Alexander (523/524 CE). The second letter, however, is actually a Syriac copy of the original, copied in the year 1490 of the Seleucid Era (= 1178/79 CE). Today, it is largely agreed that the latter date is the accurate one, as it is confirmed by the Martyrium Arethae, as well as by epigraphic records, namely Sabaean inscriptions discovered in the Asir of Saudi-Arabia (Bi’r Ḥimâ), photographed by J. Ryckmans in Ry 507, 8 ~ 9, and by A. Jamme in Ja 1028, which give the old Sabaean year 633 for these operations (said to correspond with 523 CE).

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Jacques Ryckmans, who deciphered these inscriptions, writes in his La Persécution des Chrétiens Himyarites, that Sarah'il Yaqbul-Yaz'an was both the tribal chief and the lieutenant of Yûsuf ’As’ar (the king) at the time of the military campaign, and that he was sent out by the king to take the city of Najran, while the king watched for a possible Abyssinian/Ethiopian incursion along the coastal plains of Yemen near Mokhā (al-Moḫâ) and the strait known as Bāb al-Mandab. It is to be noted that the Ethiopian church in Ẓafâr, which had been built by the king of Yemen some years earlier, and another church built by him in Aden (see: Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, Epitome of Book III, chapter 4), had been seen by Constantius II during the embassage to the land of the Ḥimyarites (i.e. Yemen) in circa340 CE. This church was set on fire and razed to the ground, and its Abyssinian inhabitants killed. Later, foreigners (presumably Christians) living in Haḏramawt were also put to death before the king’s army advanced to Najran in the far north and took it. Byzantine emperor Justin I sent a fleet to Yemen and Joseph Dhu Nuwas was killed in battle in 525 CE. The persecutions ceased, and the western coasts of Yemen became a tributary state until Himyarite nobility (also Jews) managed to regain power. There are also several historical works which suggest that a Jewish kingdom existed in Yemen during pre-Islamic late antiquity. In Yemen, several inscriptions dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries

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CE have been found in Hebrew and Sabaean praising the ruling house in Jewish terms for "helping and empowering the People of Israel". In Bayt al-Ḥāḍir, a village situated near Tan‘im, Professor Walter Müller also discovered in the central mosque of the village an important Judeo-Ḥimyarite inscription showing a partial list of the 24-priestly wards described in I Chronicles 24, which said inscription happened to be engraved upon a column believed to have formerly belonged to a synagogue. Yet, even here, part of the inscription was embedded in the ground belonging to the mosque. The inscription is believed to date back to the 4th century CE, and attests to the antiquity of the Jews in that area. To that same period belongs another bilingual Sabaean-Hebrew inscription, which Professor Giovānnī Garbinī of Naples discovered in 1970. The inscription is found on a column in Bayt al-Ašwāl near Ẓafār [Dhofār] (c. 17 km. from the town of Yarim) and shows, interposed on an earlier writing, the words, "The writing of Judah, of blessed memory, Amen shalom amen," engraved in antiquated Assyrian (Hebrew) script in between larger, sculpted Sabaean script.

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Image of a king from Zafar, c. 450–525 CE. May represent Dhū Nuwās (note the prominent sidelocks).This standing relief image of a crowned man is sometimes taken to be a representation possibly of the Jewish king Malkīkarib Yuhaʾmin, or the Christian Sumuyafa Ashwa . Dhū Nuwās, (Arabic:  نواس or Yūsuf Ibn (ذوSharhabeel (Arabic:  شرحبيل بن ;Syriac Masruq [1](يوسفGreek Dounaas (Δουναας), was a Judaic warlord in Yemen between 517 and 525-27 CE, who came to renown on account of his military

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exploits against people of other religions living in his kingdom. While most sources agree that Abu Karab was the first of the Himyarite kings to convert to Judaism, the circumstances of his conversion are immersed in myth and legend. According to the traditional account, Abu Karab undertook a military expedition to eliminate the growing influence of Byzantium in his northern provinces. His forces reached Medina, which was then was known as "Yathrib". Not meeting any resistance, they passed through the town, leaving one of the king’s sons behind as governor of the town. A few days later, however, the people of Yathrib killed their new governor, the king's son. Upon receiving the news, the king turned his troops back to avenge his son’s death, and destroy the town. He ordered that all palm trees around the town be cut down, because the trees were the main source of the town's inhabitants' income, and then laid siege to the town. The Jews of Yathrib fought alongside their pagan Arab neighbors, trying to protect their town. During the siege, Abu Karab fell ill. Two local Jewish scholars, named Kaab and Assad, took the opportunity to travel to his camp, and persuaded him to lift the siege. The scholars also inspired in the King an interest in Judaism, and he converted in 390, persuading his army to do likewise. Kaab and Assad later returned with Abu Karab to his kingdom, where they were tasked with converting the population. However, while some scholars say the population

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converted on a wholesale basis, others opine that only about half became converts, the rest maintaining their pagan beliefs and temples. Among those who converted to Judaism was Harith Ibn-Amru, a nephew of Abu Karab, whom Abu-Karab appointed Viceroy of the Maadites on the Red Sea, and headed the government of Mecca and Yathrib.Tubba Abu Karab As'ad is said to have been killed by his own soldiers, who tired of his constant military campaigns. He left three sons: Hasan, Amru, and Zorah (Yusuf).One dissenter from the view that Abu Karab was a convert to Judaism is author J. R. Porter. Writing in the 1980s, Porter argued that the accounts of Karab's conversion first appear much later in the historical record and are therefore unreliable. Porter nonetheless acknowledged that a move toward Judaism on Karab's part would be "entirely credible", given the presence of powerful Jewish tribes in Yathrib. Porter states that a later Himyarite King, Dhu Nowas (517–525 CE) was "certainly" a convert to Judaism. Although the last Jewish king of Yemen, Dhu Nuwas, was overpowered in 525 CE after he was defeated by Christian Ethiopian invaders, other Jewish kingdoms continued in Arabia up until 620 CE. The last of them were destroyed with the rise of Islam. Archeologists have discovered inscriptions from the fifth and sixth centuries containing Jewish religious terms such as: "Rahman" ("the Merciful," a divine

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epithet), "the God of Israel", Ibn Hisham's Sirat Rasul Allah (better known in English as the Life of Muhammad), describes the exploits of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās. Ibn Hisham explains that Yūsuf was a Jew who grew out his sidelocks (nuwas meaning, "forelock" or "sidelock"), and who became known as "lord of the sidelocks." The historicity of Dhū Nuwās is affirmed by Philostorgius and by Procopius (in the latter's Persian War). Procopius writes that in 525, the armies of the Christian Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia invaded Yemen at the request of the Byzantine Emperor, Justin I, to take control of the Jewish kingdom in Ḥimyar, then under the leadership of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās, who rose to power in 522. Ibn Hisham explains the same sequel of events under the name of "Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās." Indeed, with this invasion, the Ḥimyarites were smitten, and as such the supremacy of the Jewish religion in the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, as well as in all of Yemen, came to an abrupt end.Imrū al-Qays, the famous Yemeni poet from the same period, in his poem entitled taqūl lī bint al-kinda lammā ‘azafat, laments the death of two great men of Yemen, one of them being Dhū Nuwās, whom he regards as the last of the Himyarite kings:

"Art thou not saddened how fate has become an ugly beast, / the betrayer of its generation, he that swalloweth up people? It has removed Dhū Nuwās from the fortresses / who once ruled in the strongholds and over men / [An armored knight, who

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hurriedly broke the ends of the earth / and led his hordes of horse unto her uttermost parts And has shut up a dam in the place of the sunrise / for Gog and Magog that are (as tall as) mountains!]"

One Syriac source appears to suggest that the mother of Dhū Nuwās may have been herself a Jew hailing from the Mesopotamian city of Nisibis. If so, this would place her origins within the Sassanid imperial sphere, and would illuminate possible political reasons for his later actions against the Christians of Arabia, who were natural allies of the Byzantine Empire. Many modern historians, though Christopher Haas is an exception, have argued that her son's conversion was a matter of tactical opportunism, since Judaism would have provided him with an ideological counterweight to the religion of his adversary, the Kingdom of Aksum, and also allowed him to curry favour with the Sassanid shahanshah. According to Ibn Ishaq, the king of Himyar named Dhu Nuwas had burned the Christians in Najran. Based on other contemporary sources, after seizing the throne of the Ḥimyarites in ca. 518 or 523 Dhū Nuwās attacked the Aksumite (mainly Christian Ethiopians at Najrān, capturing them and burning their churches. After accepting the city's capitulation, he massacred those inhabitants who would not renounce Christianity.

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An invading army from Aksum (Habashah) occupied Yemen. Dhu Nuwas decided to kill himself by drowning himself in the sea. Arab tradition states that Dhū Nuwās committed suicide by riding his horse into the Red Sea. The Himyarite kingdom is said to have been ruled prior to Dhu-Nuwas by the Du Yazan dynasty of Jewish converts, as early as the late fourth century. According to a number of medieval historians, who depend on the account of John of Ephesus, Dhū Nuwās announced that he would persecute the Christians living in his kingdom because Christian states persecuted his fellow co-religionists in their realms; a letter survives written by Simon, the bishop of Beth Arsham in 524 CE, recounting Dimnon (who is probably Dhū Nuwās') persecution in Najran in Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab historians, Dhū Nuwās then proceeded to write a letter to the Lakhmid king Al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu'man of al-Ḥīrah and King Kavadh I of Persia, informing them of his deed and encouraging them to do likewise to the Christians under their dominion. Al-Mundhir received this letter in January 519, as he was receiving an embassy from Constantinople seeking to forge a peace between the Roman Empire and al-Ḥīrha. He revealed the contents of the letter to the Roman ambassadors who were horrified by its contents. Word of the slaughter quickly spread throughout the Roman and Persian realms, and refugees from Najran even reached the

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court of the Roman emperor Justin I himself, begging him to avenge the martyred Christians. The name Yūsuf ’As’ar Yath’ar (believed to be Joseph Dhū-Nuwas) appears in an old South Arabian inscription.[8] Related inscriptions from the same period were also deciphered by Jamme and Ryckmans, showing that in the ensuing wars with his non-Jewish subjects, the combined war booty (excluding deaths) from campaigns waged against the Abyssinians in Ẓafār, the fighters in ’Ašʻarān, Rakbān, Farasān, Muḥwān (Mocha), and the fighters and military units in Najran, amounted to 12,500 war trophies, 11,000 captives and 290,000 camels and bovines and sheep. According to ‘Irfan Shahid’s Martyrs of Najran – New Documents, Dhu-Nuwas sent an army of some 120,000 soldiers to lay siege to the city of Najran, which siege lasted for six months, and the city taken and burnt on the 15th day of the seventh month (i.e. the lunar month Tishri). The city had revolted against the king and they refused to deliver it up unto the king. About three-hundred of the city’s inhabitants surrendered to the king’s forces, under the assurances of an oath that no harm would come to them, and these were later bound, while those remaining in the city were burnt alive within their church. The death toll in this account is said to have reached about two-thousand. However, in the Sabaean inscriptions describing these events, it is reported that by the month Dhu-Madra'an (between July and September) there were “1000 killed, 1500 prisoners [taken] and 10,000 head of cattle.”

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Jacques Ryckmans, who deciphered the Sabaean inscriptions, writes in his La Persécution des Chrétiens Himyarites, that Sarah'il Yaqbul-Yaz'an was both the tribal chief and the lieutenant of Yûsuf ’As’ar (the king) at the time of the military campaign, and that he was sent out by the king to take the city of Najran, while the king watched for a possible Abyssinian/Ethiopian incursion along the coastal plains of Yemen near Mokhā (al-Moḫâ) and the strait known as Bāb al-Mandab. It is to be noted that the Ethiopian church in Ẓafâr, which had been built by the king of Yemen some years earlier, and another church built by him in Aden (see: Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, Epitome of Book III, chapter 4), had been seen by Constantius II during the embassage to the land of the Ḥimyarites (i.e. Yemen) in circa 340 CE. This church was set on fire and razed to the ground, and its Abyssinian inhabitants killed. Later, foreigners (presumably Christians) living in Haḏramawt were also put to death before the king’s army advanced to Najran in the far north and took it. King Yusuf Asar Yathar, described in an inscription as "king of all nations," had led the major tribes of Yemen (Hamedan, Madh'hij, Kindah, Murad) and successfully defeated the Abyssinian forces in Ẓafâr, Mokhā and Najran.Dhi Yazan leader, Smeaf' Ashwa' ( أشوع become the ,(سميفعsuccessor of Yusuf in 527 and the Abyssinian forces led by Abraha had invaded Yemen again in 531.

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Surat al-Fil (The Elephant) alludes to the Christian Abyssinian fate in Arabia and their military campaign against Mecca in the year 570 of the Christian Abyssinians era. Abrahah, the Christian conqueror of the Yemen (which at that time was ruled by the Abyssinians), built church at Sana'a, hoping thus to divert the annual Arabian pilgrimage from the Meccan sanctuary, the Kabah, to the new church. When this hope remained unfulfilled, he determined to destroy the Kabah; and so he set out against Mecca at the head of a large army, which included a number of war elephants as well. Abrahah's army was totally destroyed on its march - by stones of Sjeel ( سجيل (حجارةaccording to verses mentioned in the Quran.[13]

 'Irfan Shahid, in the Introduction to his book, Martyrs of Najran (published in 1971), quotes from the Nestorian Chronicle from Saard (Séert) edited by Addai Scher (see: Patrologia Orientalis vol. IV, V and VII), compiled shortly after anno 1036 CE from extracts of old Syriac historical works no longer extant, saying: "…In later times there reigned over this country a Jewish king, whose name was Masrūq. His mother was a Jewess, of the inhabitants of Nisibis, who had been made a captive. Then one of the kings of Yaman had bought her and she had given birth to Masrūq and instructed him in Judaism. He reigned after his father and killed a number of the Christians. Bar Sāhde has told his history in his Chronicle.

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Tubba Abu Karab As'ad (Abu Karab) was the Himyarite king of Yemen. Tubba (Arabic: ع is a title (تبwhich means "the one who follows the sun like a shadow"; Abu Karab means "the father of strength and solidity". He ruled Yemen from 390–420 CE. Abu Karab is commonly cited as the first of several kings of Arabia to convert to Judaism. Fifth century Arabia was located between the two competing empires of Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia. Prized Indian spices were delivered over Arabia’s trade routes. Some historians believe that conversion to Judaism was a means by which the inhabitants of Arabia at the time could remain neutral vis-a-vis the neighboring powers, in order to grow their prosperity. Some others say that the philosophy and rules of Judaism were attractive to the pagans of Arabia.

Jewish-Muslim relations in Yemen

Jewish shopkeeper of Manakha, Yemen (circa 1931)As Ahl al-Kitab, protected Peoples of the Scriptures, the Jews were assured freedom of religion only in exchange

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for the jizya, payment of a poll tax imposed on certain non-Muslim monotheists (people of the Book). In exchange for the jizya, non-Muslim residents are then given safety, and also are exempt from paying the zakat which must be paid by Muslims once their residual wealth reaches a certain threshold. Active persecution of Jews did not gain full force until the Zaydi clan seized power, from the more tolerant Sunni Muslims, early in the 10th century. The legal status of Jews in Yemen started to detoriate around the time Tahirids took Sana'a from Zaidis, mainly because of new discriminations established by the Muslim rulers. Such laws weren't included in Zaidi legal writings till comparatively late with Kitab al-Azhar of Imam al-Murtada in the first half of the fifteenth century. This also led to detoriation of economic and social situation of the Jews. The Jewish intellectuals wrote in both Hebrew and Arabic and engaged in the same literature as the Muslim-majority. Per a late 9th century document, the first Zaydi imam al-Hadi had imposed limitations and a special tax on land held by Jews and Christians of Najran. In the mid-11th century, Jews from a number of communities in Yemen highlands including Sana'a appear to have been attracted to Sulayhids' capital of Dhu Jibla. The city was founded by Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Sulaihi in mid-11th century and according to Tarikh al-Yamman of famed Yemenite author Umara al-Yamani (1121–74), was named after a Jewish pottery merchant. During the 12th century, Aden was first ruled by Fatimids and then Ayyubids. The city formed a

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great emporium on the sea route to India. Documents of the Cairo Geniza pertaining to Aden reflect a thriving Jewish community led by the prominent Bundar family. Abu Ali Hasan ibn Bundar (Heb. Japheth) served as the head of the Jewish communities of both Aden and Yemen as well as a representative of the merchants in Aden. His son Madmun was the central figure in Yemenite Jewry during the flourishing of trade with India. The Bundar family produced some celebrated negidim who exerted authorities over Jews of Yemen as well as Jewish merchants in India and Ceylon. The community developed communal and spiritual connection in addition to business and family tied with other Jewish communities in the Islamic world. They also developed ties with and funded Jewish centers and academies of Babylon, Palestine and Egypt. Due to the trade, Jews also emigrated to Aden due to mercantile and personal considerations. Wikipedia article excerpt, The Jews of Hadramaut:

The community was very old, and, after the rise of Islam and the expulsion of the Hejazi Jews, the main centers of Jewish population in Arabia were in Hadhramaut and in Aden. However, the Jews of Hadhramaut were much more isolated than their counterparts in Aden, and the community only became

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known to the outside world in the 1940s. The community had distinctive religious traditions. Many of the Hadhrami Jews converted to Islam, but after the founding of the State of Israel, some of the community made Aliyah, and those who remains blended in and converted to islam. Today there are no more Hadhramaut Jews known to exist in Yemen today.

Hadrami Dagger

Yakob Ben Yosef tomb in Mukalla. The Jews of Hadhramaut lived in Seiyun, Tarim, Mukalla and Al-Sheher. Among the well known Jewish families of the region in Al-Sheher and Mukalla are Ben Haneen, Ben Haiem, Ben Yaze'a, Ben Ysra'ail and Ben Qatian. Most of these families converted to Islam in the time period from 1509 until the 1960s and a few migrated to Israel after 1948. After the union between

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south and north and because of the strict tribal system most of these families melted in the tribal community by renaming their family name after a well-known tribe to avoid discrimination based on their former Jewish roots. The Ben Qattian family in Hadhramaut are dagger-makers and gold-smiths. Their handmade daggers are well known.

Wikipedia article excerpt, Habani Jews (Eastern Yemen):

Between 1165 and 1117 Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela traveled through Arabia arriving as far south as Eden. According to Tudela's travel log he found an independent Jewish warrior tribe living in several mountainous areas near the district of Tihamah in Yemen. He noted that this group of Jews were at times in armed combat with various north African tribes and also had contact with Jewish communities in Persia and Egypt. Local Yemenite accounts place the establishment of a substantial Jewish presence in Southern Yemen after the Himyar tribe accepted Judaism, approximately 100 C.E. According to Habbani Jewish sources Jewish migrants, traveling south from Saudi Arabia, first settled in an area known as "Ilmarkh" near a mountain known as Ishav which is 10 km east from the city of Habban. The area, once known as Mount "Da'ah", was said to have once been the seat of a Jewish rulership that may have also been connected to the Himyar tribe.

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History of the Jews of Oman:

Map of Oman There was a Jewish presence in Oman for many centuries, however, the Jewish community of the country is no longer in existence.

Some of the earliest Jewish history in what is now Oman is associated with the Biblical/Quranic figure Job/Ayyoub. The Tomb of Job is located in Jabal Dohfar 45 miles from the port city of Salalah.

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The Tomb of Job. Ishaq bin Yahuda[edit] The subsequent, more documented Omani Jewish

community was made famous by Ishaq bin Yahuda, a merchant who lived in the 9th century. Bin Yahuda lived in Sohar, and sailed for China between the years of 882 and 912 after an argument with a Jewish colleague, where he made a great fortune. He returned to Sohar and sailed for China again, but his ship was seized and bin Yahuda was murdered at the port of Sumatra.

Sassanid period (570 – 630 CE) The Persian king Khosrau I sent troops under the command of Vahriz (Persian:  وهرز who helped the ,(اسپهبدsemi-legendary Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan to drive the Ethiopian Aksumites out of Yemen. Southern Arabia became a Persian dominion under a Yemenite vassal and

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thus came within the sphere of influence of the Sassanid Empire. After the demise of the Lakhmids, another army was sent to Yemen, making it a province of the Sassanid Empire under a Persian satrap. Following the death of Khosrau II in 628, the Persian governor in Southern Arabia, Badhan, converted to Islam and Yemen followed the new religion.

The Achaemenids in Northern Arabia

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Al Khazneh in the ruins of Petra(Jordan) Achaemenid Arabia corresponded to the lands between Egypt and Mesopotamia, later known as Arabia Petraea. According to Herodotus, Cambyses did not subdue the Arabs when he attacked Egypt in 525 BCE. His successor Darius the Great does not mention the Arabs in the Behistun Inscription from the first years of his reign, but mentions them in later texts. This suggests that Darius conquered this part of Arabia.Nabateans The Nabataeans are not to be found among the tribes that are listed in Arab genealogies because the Nabatean kingdom ended a long time before the coming of Islam. They settled east of the Syro-African rift between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, that is, in the land that had once been Edom. And although the first sure reference to them dates from 312 BCE, it is possible that they were present much earlier. Petra (from the Greek petra, meaning 'of rock') lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, east of Wadi`Araba in Jordan about 80 km (50 mi) south of the Dead Sea. It came into prominence in the late 1st century BCE through the success of the spice trade. The city was the principal city of ancient Nabataea and was famous above all for two things: its trade and its hydraulic engineering systems. It was locally autonomous until the reign of Trajan, but it flourished under Roman rule. The town grew up around its Colonnaded Street in the 1st century and by the middle of the 1st century had witnessed rapid urbanization. The quarries were probably opened in this period, and there

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followed virtually continuous building through the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.Roman Arabia There is evidence of Roman rule in northern Arabia dating to the reign of Caesar Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE). During the reign of Tiberius (14–37 CE), the already wealthy and elegant north Arabian city of Palmyra, located along the caravan routes linking Persia with the Mediterranean ports of Roman Syria and Phoenicia, was made part of the Roman province of Syria. The area steadily grew further in importance as a trade route linking Persia, India, China, and the Roman Empire. During the following period of great prosperity, the Arab citizens of Palmyra adopted customs and modes of dress from both the Iranian Parthian world to the east and the Graeco-Roman west. In 129, Hadrian visited the city and was so enthralled by it that he proclaimed it a free city and renamed it Palmyra Hadriana.

Map showing Roman emperor Trajan control of northwestern Arabia until Hegra (actual Mada'in Saleh) The Roman province of Arabia Petraea was created at the beginning of the 2nd century by emperor Trajan. It was

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centered on Petra, but included even areas of northern Arabia under Nabatean control. Recently has been discovered evidence that Roman legions occupied Mada'in Saleh in the Hijaz mountains area of northwestern Arabia, increasing the extension of the "Arabia Petraea" province. The desert frontier of Arabia Petraea was called by the Romans the Limes Arabicus. As a frontier province, it included a desert area of northeastern Arabia populated by the nomadic Saraceni.Qahtanite In Sassanid times, Arabia Petraea was a border province between the Roman and Persian empires, and from the early centuries CE was increasingly affected by South Arabian influence, notably with the Ghassanids migrating north from the 3rd century.

The Ghassanids revived the Semitic presence in the then Hellenized Syria. They mainly settled the Hauran region and spread to modern Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The Ghassanids held Syria until engulfed by the expansion of Islam. Greeks and Romans referred to all the nomadic population of the desert in the Near East as Arabi. The Greeks called Yemen "Arabia Felix" (Happy Arabia). The Romans called the vassal nomadic states within the Roman Empire "Arabia Petraea" after the city of Petra, and called unconquered deserts bordering the empire to the south and east Arabia Magna (Larger Arabia) or Arabia Deserta (Deserted Arabia).

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From the 3rd century BCE to arrival of Islam in the 7th century CE, Eastern Arabia was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties of the Parthians and Sassanids.By about 250 BCE, the Seleucids lost their territories to Parthians, an Iranian tribe from Central Asia. The Parthian dynasty brought the Persian Gulf under their control and extended their influence as far as Oman. Because they needed to control the Persian Gulf trade route, the Parthians established garrisons in the southern coast of Persian Gulf. In the 3rd century CE, the Sassanids succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the rise of Islam four centuries later.

One must realize that the groups in contact with Mohammed and other Arabs in the Arabian peninsula were not necessarily Christians, Jews, etc. as we know them. The Christian name used for the region encompassing north-eastern Arabia was Beth Qatraye, or "the Isles". The name translates to 'region of the Qataris' in Syriac. It included Bahrain, Tarout Island, Al-Khatt, Al-Hasa, and Qatar. By the 5th century, Beth Qatraye was a major centre for Nestorian Christianity, which had come to dominate the southern shores of the Persian Gulf. As a sect, the Nestorians were often persecuted as

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heretics by the Byzantine Empire, but eastern Arabia was outside the Empire's control offering some safety.

Fall of the Empires Before the Byzantine–Sassanid War of 602–628, the Plague of Justinian erupted, spreading through Persia and into Byzantine territory. Procopius, Constantinople's local historian that lived to witness the plague, documented that citizens were dying at a rate of 10,000 per day. The exact number; however, is often disputed by contemporary historians. Both empires were permanently weakened by the pandemic as their citizens struggled to deal with death as well as heavy taxation, which increased as both empires campaigned for more territory. Despite almost succumbing to the plague, Byzantine emperor Justinian I attempted to resurrect the might of the Roman Empire by expanding into Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula had a long coastline for merchant ships and an area of lush vegetation known as the Fertile Crescent which could help fund his expansion into Europe and North Africa. The drive into Persian territory would also put an end to tribute payments to the Sasanians, which resulted in an agreement to give 11,000 lb (5,000 kg) of tribute to the Persians annually in exchange for a ceasefire. However, Justinian could not afford further losses in Arabia. The Byzantines and the Sasanians sponsored powerful nomadic mercenaries from the desert with enough power to trump the possibility of aggression in

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Arabia. Justinian viewed his mercenaries as so valued for preventing conflict that he awarded their chief with the titles of patrician, phylarch, and king – the highest honours that he could bestow on anyone. By the late 6th century, an uneasy peace remained until disagreements erupted between the mercenaries and their patron empires. The Byzantines' ally was a Christian Arabic tribe from the frontiers of the desert known as the Ghassanids. The Sasanians' ally; the Lakhmids, were also Christian Arabs, but from what is now Iraq. However, denominational disagreements about God forced a schism in the alliances. The Byzantines' official religion was Orthodox Christianity, which believed that Jesus Christ and God were two natures within one entity. The Ghassanids were Monophysite Christians from Iraq, who believed that God and Jesus Christ were only one nature. This disagreement was unforgivable and resulted in a permanent break in the alliance. Meanwhile, the Sassanid Empire broke their alliance with the Lakhmids due to false accusations that the Lakhmid's leader committed treason and the Lakhmid kingdom was destroyed. The fertile lands and important trade routes of Iraq were now open ground for upheaval.Rise of Islam

Expansion of the caliphate, 622–750 CE.

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   Prophet Muhammad, 622–632   Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661   Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

When the stalemate was finally broken and it seemed that Byzantium had finally gained the upper hand in battle, nomadic Arabs invaded from the desert frontiers bringing with them a new social order that emphasized religious devotion over tribal membership. By the time the last Byzantine-Sassanid war came to an end in 628, Islam was already united under the power of the politico-religious Caliphate (or leader). The Muslims were able to launch attacks against both empires which resulted in destruction of the Sassanid Empire and the overthrowing of Byzantium's territories in the Levant, the Caucasus, Egypt, Syria and North Africa.[104] Over the following centuries, most of the Byzantine Empire and the entirety of the Sassanid Empire came under Muslim rule. "Within the lifetime of some of the children who met Muhammad and sat on the Prophet's knees, Arab armies controlled the land mass that extended from the Pyrenees Mountains in Europe to the Indus River valley in South Asia. In less than a century, Arabs had come to rule over an area that spanned five thousand miles."

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Judaism

Seal ring from Zafar with writing "Yishaq bar Hanina" and a Torah ark, 330 BCE–200 CE A thriving community of Jewish tribes existed in pre-Islamic Arabia and included both sedentary and nomadic communities. Jews had migrated into Arabia from Roman times onwards. Arabian Jews spoke Arabic as well as Hebrew and Aramaic and had contact with Jewish religious centers in Babylonia and Palestine. The Yemeni Himyarites converted to Judaism in the 4th century, and some of the Kindah, a tribe in central Arabia who were their vassals, were also converted in the 4th/5th century. There is evidence that Jewish converts in the Hejaz were regarded as Jews by other Jews and non-Jews alike and have sought advice from Babylonian rabbis on matters of attire and kosher food. In at least one case, it is known that an Arab tribe agreed to adopting Judaism as a condition for settling in a town dominated by Jewish inhabitants. Some Arab women in Yathrib/Medina are said to have vowed making their child a Jew if the

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child survived, since they considered the Jews to be people "of knowledge and the book" (`ilmin wa-kitābin). Philip Hitti infers from proper names and agricultural vocabulary that the Jewish tribes of Yathrib consisted mostly of Judaized clans of Arabian and Aramaean origin. The key role played by Jews in the trade and markets of the Hejaz meant that market day for the week was the day preceding the Jewish Sabbath. This day, which was called aruba in Arabic, also provided occasion for legal proceedings and entertainment, which in turn may have influenced the choice of Friday as the day of Muslim congregational prayer. Toward the end of the sixth century, the Jewish communities in the Hejaz were in a state of economic and political decline, but they continued to flourish culturally in and beyond the region. They had developed their distinctive beliefs and practices, with apronounced mystical and eschatological dimension. In the Islamic tradition, based on a phrase in the Quran, Arabic Jews are said to have referred to Uzair as the son of Allah, although historical accuracy of this assertion has been disputed. Jewish agriculturalists lived in the region of Eastern Arabia. According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the Arabized "descendants of converts from Christians (Arameans), Jews and ancient Persians (Majus)inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal

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provinces of Eastern Arabia at the time of the Arab conquest".

Christianity

The main areas of Christian influence in Arabia were on the north eastern and north western borders and in what was to become Yemen in the south. The north west was under the influence of Christian missionary activity from the Roman Empire where the Ghassanids, a client kingdom of the Romans, were converted to Christianity. In the south, particularly at Najran, a centre of Christianity developed as a result of the influence of the Christian Kingdom of Axum based on the other side of the Red Sea in Ethiopia. Both the Ghassanids and the Christians in the south adopted Monophysitism.[126]

Jubail Church in eastern Saudi Arabia. The 4th century remains are thought to be one of the oldest surviving church buildings in the world. The third area of Christian influence was on the north eastern borders where the Lakhmids, a client tribe of the Sassanians, adopted Nestorianism, being the form of Christianity having the most influence in the Sassanian Empire. As the Persian Gulf region of Arabia increasingly fell under the influence of the

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Sasanians from the early third century, many of the inhabitants were exposed to Christianity following the eastward dispersal of the religion by Mesopotamian Christians. However, it was not until the fourth century that Christianity gained popularity in the region with the establishment of monasteries and a diocesan structure. In 1986, the remains of a church thought to date to the 4th century were discovered in Jubail in eastern Saudi Arabia.In pre-Islamic times, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christianized Arabs (including Abd al-Qays) and Aramean Christians among other religions. Syriac functioned as a liturgical language. Serjeant states that the Baharna may be the Arabized descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), among other religions at the time of Arab conquests. Beth Qatraye which translates "region of the Qataris" in Syriac was the Christian name used for the region encompassing north-eastern Arabia. It included Bahrain, Tarout Island, Al-Khatt, Al-Hasa, and Qatar. Oman and the United Arab Emirates comprised the diocese known as Beth Mazunaye. The name was derived from 'Mazun', the Persian name for Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Sohar was the central city of the diocese. In Nejd, in the centre of the peninsula, there is evidence of members of two tribes, Kindah and Taghlib, converting to Christianity in the 6th century. However, in the Hejaz in the west, whilst there

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is evidence of the presence of Christianity, it is not thought to have been significant amongst the indigenous population of the area.Arabicized Christian names were fairly common among pre-Islamic Arabians, which has been attributed to the influence that Syrianized Christian Arabs had on bedouins of the peninsula for several centuries before the rise of Islam.Neal Robinson, based on verses in the Quran, believes that some Arab Christians may have held unorthodox beliefs such as the worshipping of a divine triad of God the father, Jesus the Son and Mary the Mother. Furthermore, there is evidence that unorthodox groups such as the Collyridians, whose adherents worshiped Mary, were present in Arabia, and it has been proposed that the Qur'an refers to their beliefs. However, other scholars, notably Mircea Eliade, William Montgomery Watt, G.R. Hawting and Sidney H. Griffith, cast doubt on the historicity or reliability of such references in the Quran.

Iranian religions According to Serjeant, the Baharna people may be the Arabized descendants of converts from the original population of ancient Persians (majus) as well as other religions.

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Mircea Eliade argues that Muhammad's knowledge of Christianity "was rather approximative" and that references to the triad of God, Jesus and Mary probably reflect the likelihood that Muhammad's information on Christianity came from people who had knowledge of the Monophysite Church of Abyssinia, which was known for extreme veneration of Mary.

William Montgomery Watt points out that we do not know how far Muhammad was acquainted with Christian beliefs prior to the conquest of Mecca and that dating of some of the passages criticizing Christianity is uncertain. His view is that Muhammad and the early Muslims may have been unaware of some orthodox Christian doctrines, including the nature of the trinity, because Muhammad's Christian informants had a limited grasp of doctrinal issues.

Watt has also argued that the verses criticizing Christian doctrines in the Quran are attacking Christian heresies like tritheism and "physical sonship" rather than orthodox Christianity.

G.R. Hawting, Sidney H. Griffith and Gabriel Reynolds argue that the verses commenting on apparently unorthodox Christian beliefs should be read as an informed, polemically motivated caricature of mainstream Christian doctrine whose goal is to highlight how wrong some of its tenets appear from an Islamic perspective.

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History of the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula

Map of the territory and area covered by present-day Saudi Arabia.

Early history The first mention of Jews in the areas of modern-day Saudi Arabia dates back, by some accounts, to the time of the First Temple. Immigration to the Arabian Peninsula began in earnest in the 2nd century CE, and by the 6th and 7th centuries there was a considerable Jewish population in Hejaz, mostly in and around Medina, in part because of the embrace of Judaism by such leaders as Dhu Nuwas (who was very aggressive about converting his subjects to Judaism, and who persecuted Christians in his kingdom as a reaction to Christian persecution of Jews there by the local Christians and Abu Karib Asad. According to Al-Masudi the northern part of Hejaz was a dependency of Kingdom of Judah, and

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according to Butrus al-Bustani the Jews in Hejaz established a sovereign state. The German orientalist Ferdinand Wüstenfeld believed that the Jews established a state in northern Hejaz.

Tribes of Medina[edit]

Map showing the region of Hejaz outlined in redThere were three main Jewish tribes in Medina before the rise of Islam in Arabia: the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qainuqa, and the Banu Qurayza. Banu Nadir was particularly hostile to Muhammad's new religion. Other Jewish tribes lived relatively peacefully under Muslim rule.Other Arabian Jewish tribes

Banu Alfageer Banu Awf Banu Aws Banu Harith  or Bnei Chorath Banu Jusham Banu Quda'a Banu Sa'ida

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Banu Shutayba Banu Ghifar

While Muhammad had initially been invited by the non-Jewish, pagan, tribes of Yathrib (Medina), the Aws and the Khazraj, to arbitrate their blood feud, the Jewish tribes, which were the initial inhabitants and the best farmers with the best oasis lands, were initially part of the peaceful pact between the pagan tribes in Yathrib and the Muslims under Muhammad, both those who had converted and were native toYathrib, and those who had come from Mecca with Muhammad on the hijra (journey from Mecca to Medina). However, in 627, in 10,000 man allied army made up of Quraysh, the Ghatafan tribe, and other smaller groups including elements of the Jewish Banu Nadir tribe convered on Medina (Yathrib). During the ensuing two week siege (the Battle of the Ditch) the Banu Qurayza Jews, whose compounds lay outside the defences of the town, broke their treaty with Muhammad and sold provisions to the Meccans. Eventually the Meccan alliance dissolved and the Muslim defense triumphed. Since the Banu Qurayza Jews had betrayed their non-aggression pact with the Muslims, realizing their situation, they barricaded themselves in their oasis forts and prepared for a Muslim siege. Muhammad offered them the choice of converting to Isalm, but all

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but a handful refused. Realizing they could not lift the Musolim siege, the Jews surrendered. Muhammad allowed the chief of the Aws tribe (formerly pagan, now Moslem), hwo had been closely allied with the Banu Qurayza befoe to determine their punishment. He diecided that themen should be executed and the women and children sold into slavery. In April of 627, some 400 men of the Banu Qurayza were executed by the sword (their leader, who had condmened siding with the Meccans, and those few who converted to Islam were spared). Approximatley 1,000 women and children wer sold to the tribes of Najd in return for arms and provisions. Muhammad took one woman, Rayhana, daughter of the Jewish tribal chieftain, for his concubine. She later converted to Islam. After Muhammad established peace with the Meccans in 628, Muhammad turned his attention to the town of Kaybar, which lay in the mountains of the Hejaz some 95 miles north of Medina. The city was populated by Jewish tribes, including the Banu Nadir, who had been exiled by Muhammad from Medina after having been the cement of the Meccan led- alliance which had besieged Medina during the Battle of the Ditch. Khaybar was noted for its agricultural wealth, and was famous for its rich date farms and crafts. In late May, 628, Muhammad marched to Khaybar at the head of an army of 1,700 infantry and 200 cavalry. The Muslims caught the Jews of Khaybar unaware, and afer a brief but vicious battle on the open plain,

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the Jewish forces retired into the mudbrick redoubts that dotted the date orchards of the town. At one particularly stubborn keep, the renowned warrior Ali, nephew of the Prophet, tore the door off the fort and used it as a shield, eventually crashing his sword down on the head of the Jewish chief so that his helmet, head and upper body were split in half. Finally, the Jews of Khaybar agreed to a negotiated truce. They could reamin in Khaybar if they paid half their annual date yield to the Muslims in tribute. As the Qur’an dictated, Muhammad took one-fifth of the land of Khaybar as his to distribute to his wives, family and others he deemed fit. The Muslim armies subdued the other Jewish oases of the Hejaz as well. The town of Tayma’, for examle, surrendered peacefully, and agreed to pay the jizya, or a tax levied on non-Muslims to retain their right to practice their religion and enjoy the protection of the Muslim army. While eating dinner hosted by a Jewish family in Khaybar, however, a Jewish woman poisoned th lamb shoulder that was being served to Muhammad and his aides. Muhammad heard the meat telling him (a miracle, according to Muslim legend) it was poisoned, and he stopped eating it. One of his Companions had eaten too much, however, and died. The poison that Muhammad had ingested made him ill for a time, and until his death he sometimes felt pangs of pain from the poison.The Banu Nadir (Arabic:  النضير were (בני נצ'יר :Hebrew ,بنوa Jewish tribe who lived in northern Arabia until the 7th

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century at the oasis of Medina. The tribe challenged Muhammad as the leader of Medina, planned along with allied nomads to attack Muhammad  and were expelled from Medina as a result. The Banu Nadir then planned the battle of the Trench together with the Quraysh They later participated in the battle of Khaybar. In early Medina, in addition to the Banu Nadir, there were two other major Jewish tribes: the Banu Qurayza and the Banu Qaynuqa. They were joined earlier by two non-Jewish Arab tribes from Yemen, Banu Aus and Khazraj.Like other Medinese Jews, Banu Nadir bore Arabic names, but spoke a distinct dialect of Arabic. They earned their living through agriculture, money lending, and trade in weapons and jewels, maintaining commercial relations with Arab merchants of Mecca. Their fortresses were located half a day's march to the south of Medina. Banu Nadir were wealthy and lived in some of the best lands in Medina. When the two Arabian tribes of Aws and Khazraj went to war against each other in the Battle of Bu'ath in 617, the three Jewish tribes split on different sides of the war. The Banu Nadir, led by Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf and Huyayy ibn Akhtab, and the Banu Qurayza fought with the Aus, while the Banu Qaynuqa were allied with the tribe of Khazraj. The latter were defeated after a long and arduous battle. Muhammad was invited to Medina to broker a peace between the warring tribes, and in September 622 he arrived with a group of his followers, who were

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given shelter by members of the indigenous community known as the Ansar. Amongst his first actions were the construction of the first mosque in Medina, as well as obtaining residence with Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. He then set about the establishment of a pact, known as the Constitution of Medina, between the Muslims, the Ansar, and the various Jewish tribes of Medina  to regulate the matters of governance of the city, as well as the extent and nature of inter-community relations. The conditions of the pact included boycotting Quraysh, abstinence from "extending any support to them", assistance of one another if attacked by a third party, as well as "defending Medina, in case of a foreign attack". When Muhammad expelled the Jewish tribe of the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nadir did not get involved, viewing the conflict as another example of tribal struggle. The conflict led to a ruling that such future action by any of the other parties under the Constitution of Medina would constitute a voiding of their benefits under the system. After the Battle of Badr, one of the Banu Nadir's chiefs Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, went to the Quraish in order to lament the loss at Badr and to incite them to take up arms to regain lost honor, noting the statement of Muhammad: "He (Ka'b) has openly assumed enmity to us and speaks evil of us and he has gone over to the polytheists (who were at war with Muslims) and has made them gather against us for fighting". This was in contravention of the Constitution of Medina, of which the tribe led by Ka'b

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ibn al-Ashraf was a signatory, which prohibited them from "extending any support" to the tribes of Mecca, namely Quraish. Some sources suggest that during his visit to Mecca, Ka'b concluded a treaty with Abu Sufyan, stipulating cooperation between the Quraysh and Jews against Muhammad. Other historians cite that Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, who was also a gifted poet, wrote a poetic eulogy commemorating the slain Quraish notables; later, he also wrote erotic poetry about Muslim women, which the Muslims found offensive. This poetry influenced so many [17]that this too was considered directly against the Constitution of Medina which states, loyalty gives protection against treachery and this document will not (be employed to) protect one who is unjust or commits a crime Muhammad called upon his followers to kill Ka'b. Muhammad ibn Maslama offered his services, collecting four others. By pretending to have turned against Muhammad, Muhammad ibn Maslama and the others enticed Ka'b out of his fortress on a moonlit night, and killed him in spite of his vigorous resistance.Some attribute this action to norms of the Arab society that demand retaliation for a slight to a group's honor. The Jews were terrified at his assassination, and as the historian ibn Ishaq put it "...there was not a Jew who did not fear for his life".

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Submission of Banu Nadir to the Muslim troops (14th-century painting) After defeat by the Quraish at the Mount Uhud in March, 625, the Banu Nadir challenged Muhammad as the leader of Medina. In July of the same year, two men were killed during skirmish in which the Muslims were involved. As a result, Muhammad went to the Nadir, asking them to make a contribution towards the blood money of two men killed. Initially most of the Nadir, except Huyayy ibn Akhtab, were inclined to accept Muhammad's request. However, Ibn Ubayy communicated to ibn Akhtab of his intent, along with allied nomads, to attack Muhammad. The Nadir, then postponed the contribution until later that day. Muhammad left the locality immediately accusing the Banu Nadir of plotting to assassinate him, saying to have learned this either through revelation or Muhammad ibn Maslama. According to other sources, the Banu Nadir invited Muhammad to their habitations for a religious debate, to which Muhammad accepted. Muhammad also accepted the condition that he bring no more than three men with him. On his way he was notified by a

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Banu Nadir convert to Islam of an assassination attempt at the debate. Muhammad besieged the Banu Nadir. He ordered them to surrender their property and leave Medina within ten days. The tribe at first decided to comply, but "certain people of Medina who were not Believers of Muhammad sent a message to the Banu al-Nadir, saying, 'Hold out, and defend yourselves; we shall not surrender you to Muhammad. If you are attacked we shall fight with you and if you are sent away we shall go with you.'"  Huyayy ibn Akhtab decided to put up resistance, hoping also for help from the Banu Qurayza, despite opposition within the tribe. The Nadir were forced to surrender after the siege had lasted for 14 days, when the promised help failed to materialize and when Muhammad ordered the burning and felling of their palm-trees. Under the conditions of surrender, the Banu Nadir could only take with them what they could carry on camels with the exception of weapons. The Banu Nadir marched out of Medina to the music of pipes and tambourines. Al-Waqidi described their impressive farewell: "Their women were decked out in litters wearing silk, brocade, velvet, and fine red and green silk. People lined up to gape at them." Most of Banu Nadir found refuge among the Jews of Khaybar, while others emigrated to Syria. According to Ibn Ishaq, the chiefs of Nadir who went to Khaybar were Sallam b. Abu'l-Huqayq, Kenana ibn al-Rabi and Huyayy b. Akhtab. When these chiefs arrived in

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Khaybar, the Jewish inhabitants of Khaybar became subject to them. Muhammad divided their land between his companions who had emigrated with him from Mecca. Until then, the emigrants had to rely upon the Medinese sympathizers for financial assistance. Muhammad reserved a share of the seized land for himself, which also made him financially independent. Upon expulsion of the Banu Nadir, Muhammad is said to have received a revelation of the Surah al-Hashr. A number of Jews who had formed a party against Muhammad, including Sallam b. Abu'l-Huqayq, Kenana ibn al-Rabi and Huyayy b. Akhtab, the chiefs of Nadir who had gone to Khaybar, together with two chiefs from the tribe of B. Wa'ili went to Quraysh and invited them to form a coalition against Muhammad so that they might get rid of him altogether. Then they persuaded the tribe of Ghaftan to join the battle against Muhammad. Banu Nadir promised half the date harvest of Khaybar to nomadic tribes if they would join the battle against Muslims. Abu Sufyan, the military leader of Quraysh, with the financial help of Banu Nadir had mustered a force of size 10,000 men. Muhammad was able to prepare a force of about 3000 men. He had however adopted a new form of defense, unknown in Arabia at that time: Muslims had dug a trench wherever Medina lay open to cavalry attack. The idea is credited to a Persian convert to Islam, Salman the Persian. The siege of Medina began on March 31, 627 and lasted for

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two weeks. Abu Sufyan's troops were unprepared for the fortifications they were confronted with, and after an ineffectual siege lasting several weeks, the coalition decided to go home. Surah Al-Ahzab (The Confederates) 33:9-33:27:

9. O you who believe! Remember Allah's Favour to you, when there came against you hosts, and We sent against them a wind and forces that you saw not [i.e. troops of angels during the battle of Al-Ahzab (the Confederates)]. And Allah is Ever All-Seer of what you do.

10. When they came upon you from above you and from below you, and when the eyes grew wild and the hearts reached to the throats, and you were harbouring doubts about Allah.

11. There, the believers were tried and shaken with a mighty shaking.

12. And when the hypocrites and those in whose hearts is a disease (of doubts) said: "Allah and His Messenger ( ) promised us nothing but delusions!"

13. And when a party of them said: "O people of Yathrib (Al-Madinah)! There is no stand (possible) for you (against the enemy attack!) Therefore go back!" And a band of them ask for permission of the Prophet (  ) saying: "Truly, our homes lie open (to

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the enemy)." And they lay not open. They but wished to flee.

14. And if the enemy had entered from all sides (of the city), and they had been exhorted to Al-Fitnah (i.e. to renegade from Islam to polytheism) they would surely have committed it and would have hesitated thereupon but little.

15. And indeed they had already made a covenant with Allah not to turn their backs, and a covenant with Allah must be answered for.

16. Say (O Muhammad   to these hypocrites who ask your permission to run away from you): "Flight will not avail you if you flee from death or killing, and then you will enjoy no more than a little while!"

17. Say: "Who is he who can protect you from Allah if He intends to harm you, or intends mercy on you?" And they will not find, besides Allah, for themselves any Wali (protector, supporter, etc.) or any helper.

18. Allah already knows those among you who keep back (men) from fighting in Allah's Cause, and those who say to their brethren "Come here towards us," while they (themselves) come not to the battle except a little.

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19. Being miserly towards you (as regards help and aid in Allah's Cause). Then when fear comes, you will see them looking to you, their eyes revolving like (those of) one over whom hovers death, but when the fear departs, they will smite you with sharp tongues, miserly towards (spending anything in any) good (and only covetous of booty and wealth). Such have not believed. Therefore Allah makes their deeds fruitless, and that is ever easy for Allah.

20. They think that Al-Ahzab (the Confederates) have not yet withdrawn, and if Al-Ahzab (the Confederates) should come (again), they would wish they were in the deserts (wandering) among the bedouins, seeking news about you (from a far place); and if they (happen) to be among you, they would not fight but little.

21. Indeed in the Messenger of Allah (Muhammad ) you have a good example to follow for him who hopes in (the Meeting with) Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah much.

22. And when the believers saw Al-Ahzab (the Confederates), they said: "This is what Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad  ) had promised us, and Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad  ) had spoken the truth, and it only added to their faith and to their submissiveness (to Allah).

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23. Among the believers are men who have been true to their covenant with Allah [i.e. they have gone out for Jihad (holy fighting), and showed not their backs to the disbelievers], of them some have fulfilled their obligations (i.e. have been martyred), and some of them are still waiting, but they have never changed [i.e.they never proved treacherous to their covenant which they concluded with Allah] in the least.

24. That Allah may reward the men of truth for their truth (i.e. for their patience at the accomplishment of that which they covenanted with Allah), and punish the hypocrites if He will or accept their repentance by turning to them in Mercy. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

25. And Allah drove back those who disbelieved in their rage, they gained no advantage (booty, etc.). Allah sufficed for the believers in the fighting (by sending against the disbelievers a severe wind and troops of angels). And Allah is Ever All-Strong, All-Mighty.

26. And those of the people of the Scripture who backed them (the disbelievers) Allah brought them down from their forts and cast terror into their hearts, (so that) a group (of them) you killed, and a group (of them) you made captives.

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27. And He caused you to inherit their lands, and their houses, and their riches, and a land which you had not trodden (before). And Allah is Able to do all things.

In 628, Muhammad attacked Khaybar. Later, Muhammad sent a delegation under Abdullah bin Rawaha to ask another chief of the Banu Nadir, Usayr (Yusayr) ibn Zarim, to come to Medina along with other Nadir leaders to discuss the two groups' political relations. Among whom were Abdullah bin Unays, an ally of Banu Salima, a clan hostile to the Jews. When they came to him they spoke to him and treated him saying that if he would come to Muhammad he would give him an appointment and honour him. They kept on at him until he went with them with a number of Jews. Abdullah bin Unays mounted himon his beast until when he was in al-Qarqara, about six miles from Khaybar, al-Yusayr changed his mind about going with them. Abdullah perceived his intention as he was preparing to draw his sword so he rushed at him and struck him with his sword cutting off his leg. Al-Yusayr hit him with a stick of shauhat wood which he had in his hand and wounded his head. All Muhammad's emissaries fell upon the thirty Jewish companions and killed them except one man who escaped on his feet. Abdullah bin Unays is the assassin who volunteered and got permission to kill Banu Nadir's Sallam ibn Abu al-Huqayq at a previous night mission in Khaybar.

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Muhammad and his followers attacked Khaybar in May/June 628 after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. Although the Jews put up fierce resistance, the lack of central command and preparation for an extended siege sealed the outcome of the battle in favor of the Muslims. When all but two fortresses were captured, the Jews negotiated their surrender. The terms required them to hand over one-half of the annual produce to the Muslims, while the land itself became the collective property of the Muslim state.

The Banu Qaynuqa (Arabic:  قينقاع ;בני קינקאע :Hebrew ;بنوalso spelled Banu Kainuka, Banu Kaynuka, Banu Qainuqa, Banu Qaynuqa) was one of the three main Jewish tribes living in the 7th century of Medina, now in Saudi Arabia. In 624, the great-grandfather of Banu Qaynuqa tribe is Qaynuqa ibn Amchel ibn Munshi ibn Yohanan ibn Benjamin ibn Saron ibn Naphtali ibn Hayy ibn Moses and they are descendant of Manasseh ibn Joseph ibn Jacob ibn Isaac son of Abraham.[1] They were expelled during the Invasion of Banu Qaynuqa, after breaking the treaty known as the Constitution of Medina. In the 7th century, the Banu Qaynuqa were living in two fortresses in the south-western part of the city of Yathrib, now Medina, having settled there at an unknown date. Although the Banu Qaynuqa bore mostly Arabic names, they were both ethnically and religiously Jewish. They owned no land, earned their living through commerce and craftsmanship, including goldsmithery. The marketplace of Yathrib was located

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in the area of the town where the Qaynuqa lived. The Banu Qaynuqa were allied with the local Arab tribe of Khazrajand supported them in their conflicts with the rival Arab tribe of Aws. In September 622, Muhammad arrived at Yathrab now called as Medina with a group of his followers, who were given shelter by members of all indigenous tribes of the city who came to be known as the Ansar. He proceeded to set about the establishment of a pact, known as the Constitution of Medina, between the Muslims, the Ansar, and the various Jewish tribes of Yathrab to regulate the matters of governance of the city, as well as the extent and nature of inter-community relations. Conditions of the pact, according to traditional Muslim sources, included boycotting the Quraysh, abstinence from "extending any support to them", assistance of one another if attacked by a third party, as well as "defending Medina, in case of a foreign attack".The nature of this document as recorded by Ibn Ishaq and transmitted by Ibn Hisham is the subject of dispute among modern historians many of whom maintain that this "treaty" is possibly a collage of agreements, oral rather than written, of different dates, and that it is not clear when they were made or with whom. In March 624, Muslims led by Muhammad defeated the Meccans of the Banu Quraish tribe in the Battle of Badr. Ibn Ishaq writes that a dispute broke out between the Muslims and the Banu Qaynuqa (the allies of the Khazraj tribe) soon afterwards. When a Muslim woman visited a jeweler's shop in the Qaynuqa

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marketplace, she was molested. The goldsmith, a Jew, pinned her clothing such that, upon getting up, she was stripped naked. A Muslim man coming upon the resulting commotion killed the shopkeeper in retaliation. A mob of Jews from the Qaynuqa tribe then pounced on the Muslim man and killed him. This escalated to a chain of revenge killings, and enmity grew between Muslims and the Banu Qaynuqa. Traditional Muslim sources view these episodes as a violation of the Constitution of Medina. Muhammad himself regarded this as casus belli. Western historians, however, do not find in these events the underlying reason for Muhammad's attack on the Qaynuqa. According to F.E. Peters, the precise circumstances of the alleged violation of the Constitution of Medina are not specified in the sources. According to Fred Donner, available sources do not elucidate the reasons for the expulsion of the Qaynuqa. Donner argues that Muhammad turned against the Qaynuqa because as artisans and traders, the latter were in close contact with Meccan merchants. Weinsinck views the episodes cited by the Muslim historians, like the story of the Jewish goldsmith, as having no more than anecdotal value. He writes that the Jews had assumed a contentious attitude towards Muhammad and as a group possessing substantial independent power, they posed a great danger. Wensinck thus concludes that Muhammad strengthened by the victory at Badr, soon resolved to eliminate the Jewish opposition to himself.[4] Norman Stillman also believes that Muhammad decided to move against the Jews of

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Medina after being strengthened in the wake of the Battle of Badr. Muhammad then approached the Banu Qaynuqa, gathering them in the market place and addressing them as follows,

“ O Jews, beware lest God bring on you the like of the retribution which he brought on Quraysh. Accept Islam, for you know that I am a prophet sent by God. You will find this in your scriptures and in God's covenant with you. ”

To which the tribe replied,

“ Muhammad, do you think that we are like your people? Do not be deluded by the fact that you met a people with no knowledge of war and that you made good use of your opportunity. By God, if you fight us you will know that we are real men! ”

Shibli Nomani and Safi al-Mubarakpuri view this response as a declaration of war. According to the Muslim tradition, the verses 3:10-13 of the Qur'an were revealed to Muhammad following the exchange. Muhammad then besieged the Banu Qaynuqa for fourteenor fifteen days, according to ibn Hisham, after which the tribe surrendered unconditionally. It was certain, according to Watt, that there were some sort of negotiations. At the time of the siege, the Qaynuqa had a fighting force of 700 men, 400 of whom were armoured. Watt concludes, that Muhammad

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could not have besieged such a large force so successfully without Qaynuqa's allies' support. After the surrender of Banu Qaynuqa, Abdullah ibn Ubayy, the chief of a section of the clan of Khazraj pleaded for them. According to Ibn Ishaq: According to William Montgomery Watt, Abd-Allah ibn Ubayy was attempting to stop the expulsion, and Muhammad's insistence was that the Qaynuqa must leave the city, but was prepared to be lenient about other conditions; Ibn Ubayy argument was that presence of Qaynuqa with 700 fighting men can be helpful in the view of the expected Meccan onslaught. Because of this interference and other episodes of his discord with Muhammad, Abdullah ibn Ubayy earned for himself the title of the leader of hypocrites (munafiqun)… The Banu Qaynuqa left first for the Jewish colonies in the Wadi al-Kura, north of Medina, and from there to Der'a in Syria, west of Salkhad. In the course of time, they assimilated with the Jewish communities, pre-existing in that area, strengthening them numerically. Muhammad divided the property of the Banu Qaynuqa, including their arms and tools, among his followers, taking for the Islamic state a fifth share of the spoils for the first time. Some members of the tribe chose to stay in Medina and convert to Islam. One man from the Banu Qaynuqa, Abdullah ibn Salam, became a devout Muslim. Although some Muslim sources claim that he converted immediately after Muhammad’s arrival to Medina, modern scholars give

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more credence to the other Muslim sources, which indicate that 8 years later, 630, as the year of ibn Salam’s conversion.

Detail from miniature painting The Prophet, Ali, and the Companions at the Massacre of the Prisoners of the Jewish Tribe of Beni Qurayzah, illustration of a 19th-century text by Muhammad Rafi Bazil. Manuscript now in the British Library. The Banu Qurayza (Arabic:  قريظة ;בני קוריט'ה :Hebrew ,بنوalternate spellings include Quraiza, Qurayzah, Quraytha, and the archaic Koreiza) were a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathrib (now known

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as Medina), until the 7th century, when their violation of a pact brokered by Muhammad led to their demise.Jewish tribes reportedly arrived in Hijaz in the wake of the Jewish-Roman wars and introduced agriculture, putting them in a culturally, economically and politically dominant position. However, in the 5th century, the Banu Aws and the Banu Khazraj, two Arab tribes that had arrived from Yemen, gained dominance. When these two tribes became embroiled in conflict with each other, the Jewish tribes, now clients or allies of the Arabs, fought on different sides, the Qurayza siding with the Aws.In 622, the Islamic prophet Muhammad arrived at Yathrib from Mecca and established a pact between the conflicting parties. While the city found itself at war with Muhammad's native Meccan tribe of the Quraysh, tensions between the growing numbers of Muslims and the Jewish communities mounted. In 627, when the Quraysh and their allies besieged the city in the Battle of the Trench, the Qurayza initially tried to remain neutral but eventually entered into negotiations with the besieging army, violating the pact they had agreed to years earlier. Subsequently, the tribe was charged with treason and besieged by the Muslims commanded by Muhammad. The Banu Qurayza eventually surrendered and their men were beheaded, except for a handful who converted to Islam. The spoils of battle, including the enslaved women and children of the tribe, were divided up among the Islamic warriors that

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had participated in the siege and among the emigrees from Mecca (who had hitherto depended on the help of the Muslims native to Medina. The historicity of this incident has been questioned by some scholars. Extant sources provide no conclusive evidence whether the Banu Qurayza were ethnically Jewish or Arab converts to Judaism. Just like the other Jews of Yathrib, the Qurayza claimed to be of Israelite descent and observed the commandments of Judaism, but adopted many Arab customs and intermarried with Arabs. They were dubbed the "priestly tribe" (kahinan in Arabic from the Hebrew kohanim). Ibn Ishaq, the author of the traditional Muslim biography of Muhammad, traces their genealogy to Aaron and further to Abraham but gives only eight intermediaries between Aaron and the purported founder of the Qurayza tribe. In the 5th century CE, the Qurayza lived in Yathrib together with two other major Jewish tribes: Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir. Al-Isfahani writes in his 10th century collection of Arabic poetry that Jews arrived in Hijaz in the wake of the Jewish-Roman wars; the Qurayza settled in Mahzur, a wadi in Al Harrah. The 15th century Muslim scholar Al-Samhudi lists a dozen other Jewish clans living in the town of which the most important one was Banu Hadl, closely aligned with the Banu Qurayza. The Jews introduced agriculture to Yathrib, growing date palms and cereals, and this cultural and economic

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advantage enabled the Jews to dominate the local Arabs politically. Al-Waqidi wrote that the Banu Qurayza were people of high lineage and of properties, "whereas we were but an Arab tribe who did not possess any palm trees nor vineyards, being people of only sheep and camels." Ibn Khordadbeh later reported that during the Persian domination in Hijaz, the Banu Qurayza served as tax collectors for the shah. Ibn Ishaq tells of a conflict between the last Yemenite King of Himyar and the residents of Yathrib. When the king was passing by the oasis, the residents killed his son, and the Yemenite ruler threatened to exterminate the people and cut down the palms. According to Ibn Ishaq, he was stopped from doing so by two rabbis from the Banu Qurayza, who implored the king to spare the oasis because it was the place "to which a prophet of the Quraysh would migrate in time to come, and it would be his home and resting-place". The Yemenite king thus did not destroy the town and converted to Judaism. He took the rabbis with him, and in Mecca, they reportedly recognized the Kaaba as a temple built by Abraham and advised the king "to do what the people of Mecca did: to circumambulate the temple, to venerate and honor it, to shave his head and to behave with all humility until he had left its precincts." On approaching Yemen, tells Ibn Ishaq, the rabbis demonstrated to the local people a miracle by coming out of a fire unscathed and the Yemenites accepted Judaism.

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The situation changed after two Arab tribes named Banu Aws and Banu Khazraj arrived to Yathrib from Yemen. At first, these tribes were clients of the Jews, but toward the end of the 5th century CE, they revolted and became independent.[3] Most modern historians accept the claim of the Muslim sources that after the revolt, the Jewish tribes became clients of the Aws and the Khazraj. William Montgomery Watt however considers this clientship to be unhistorical prior to 627 and maintains that the Jews retained a measure of political independence after the Arab revolt. Eventually, the Aws and the Khazraj became hostile to each other. They had been fighting possibly for around a hundred years before 620 and at least since 570s. The Banu Nadir and the Banu Qurayza were allied with the Aws, while the Banu Qaynuqa sided with the Khazraj. There are reports of the constant conflict between Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir, the two allies of Aws, yet the sources often refer to these two tribes as “brothers”. Aws and Khazraj and their Jewish allies fought a total of four wars. The last and bloodiest altercation was the Battle of Bu'ath, the outcome of which was inconclusive. The Qurayza appear as a tribe of considerable military importance: they possessed large numbers of weaponry, as upon their surrender 1,500 swords, 2,000 lances, 300 suits of armor, and 500 shields were later seized by the Muslims. Meir J. Kister notes that these quantities are "disproportionate relative to the number of fighting men" and conjectures that the "Qurayza used to sell (or lend)

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some of the weapons kept in their storehouses". He also mentions that the Qurayza were addressed as Ahlu al-halqa ("people of the weapons") by the Quraysh and notes that these weapons "strengthened their position and prestige in the tribal society". The continuing feud between the Aws and the Khazraj was probably the chief cause for several emissaries to invite Muhammad to Yathrib in order to adjudicate in disputed cases. Ibn Ishaq recorded that after his arrival in 622, Muhammad established a compact, the Constitution of Medina, which committed the Jewish and Muslim tribes to mutual cooperation. The nature of this document as recorded by Ibn Ishaq and transmitted by Ibn Hisham is the subject of dispute among modern historians, many of whom maintain that this "treaty" is possibly a collage of agreements, of different dates, and that it is not clear when they were made. Watt holds that the Qurayza and Nadir were probably mentioned in an earlier version of the Constitution requiring the parties not to support an enemy against each other. Aside from the general agreements, the chronicles by Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi contain a report that after his arrival, Muhammad signed a special treaty with the Qurayza chief Ka'b ibn Asad. Ibn Ishaq gives no sources, while al-Waqidi refers to Ka’b ibn Malik of Salima, a clan hostile to the Jews, and Mummad ibn Ka’b, the son of a Qurayza boy who was sold into slavery in the aftermath of the siege and subsequently became a Muslim. The sources are suspect of being against the Qurayza and therefore the historicity of this agreement between

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Muhammad and the Banu Qurayza is open to grave doubt. Among modern historians, R. B. Serjeant supports the historicity of this document and suggests that the Jews knew "of the penalty for breaking faith with Muhammad". On the other hand, Norman Stillman argues that the Muslim historians had invented this agreement in order to justify the subsequent treatment of the Qurayza. Watt also rejects the existence of such a special agreement but notes that the Jews were bound by the aforementioned general agreement and by their alliance to the two Arab tribes not to support an enemy against Muhammad. Serjeant agrees with this and opines that the Qurayza were aware of the two parts of a pact made between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes in the confederation according to which "Jews having their religion and the Muslims having their religion excepting anyone who acts wrongfully and commits crime/acts treacherously/breaks an agreement, for he but slays himself and the people of his house." During the first few months after Muhammad's arrival in Medina, the Banu Qurayza were involved in a dispute with the Banu Nadir: The more powerful Nadir rigorously applied lex talionis against the Qurayza while not allowing it being enforced against themselves. Further, the blood money paid for killing a man of the Qurayza was only half of the blood-money required for killing a man of the Nadir,[29] placing the Qurayza in a socially inferior position. The Qurayza called on Muhammad as arbitrator, who delivered the surah 5:42-45and judged that the Nadir and Qurayza should be treated alike in the application of lex talionis and

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raised the assessment of the Qurayza to the full amount of blood money. Tensions quickly mounted between the growing numbers of Muslims and Jewish tribes, while Muhammad found himself at war with his native Meccan tribe of the Quraysh. In 624, after his victory over the Meccans in the Battle of Badr, Banu Qaynuqa threatened Muhammad's political position and assaulted a Muslim woman which led to their expulsion from Medina for breaking the peace treaty of Constitution of Medina. The Qurayza remained passive during the whole Qaynuqa affair, apparently because the Qaynuqa were historically allied with the Khazraj, while the Qurayza were the allies of the Aws.Soon afterwards, Muhammad came into conflict with the Banu Nadir. He had one of the Banu Nadir's chiefs, the poet Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, assassinated and after the Battle of Uhud accused the tribe of treachery and plotting against his life and expelled them from the city. The Qurayza remained passive during this conflict, according to R. B. Serjeant because of the blood money issue related above. In 627, the Meccans, accompanied by tribal allies as well as the Banu Nadir - who had been very active in supporting the Meccans - marched against Medina - the Muslim stronghold - and laid siege to it. It is unclear whether their treaty with Muhammad obliged the Qurayza to help him defend Medina, or merely to remain neutral, according to Ramadan, they had signed an agreement of mutual assistance with Muhammad. The Qurayza did not participate in the fighting - according

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to David Norcliffe, because they were offended by attacks against Jews in Muhammad's preaching - but lent tools tothe town's defenders. According to Al-Waqidi, the Banu Qurayza helped the defense effort of Medina by supplying spades, picks, and baskets for the excavation of the defensive trench the defenders of Medina had dug in preparation. According to Watt, the Banu Qurayza "seem to have tried to remain neutral" in the battle but later changed their attitude when a Jew from Khaybar persuaded them that Muhammad was sure to be overwhelmed and though they did not commit any act overtly hostile to Muhammad, according to Watt, they entered into negotiations with the invading army. Ibn Ishaq writes that during the siege, the Qurayza readmitted Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the chief of the Banu Nadir whom Muhammad had exiled and who had instigated the alliance of his tribe with the besieging Quraysh and Ghatafan tribes. According to Ibn Ishaq, Huyayy persuaded the Qurayza chief Ka'b ibn Asad to help the Meccans conquer Medina. Ka'b was, according to Al-Waqidi's account, initially reluctant to break the contract and argued that Muhammad never broke any contract with them or exposed them to any shame, but decided to support the Meccans after Huyayy had promised to join the Qurayza in Medina if the besieging army would return to Mecca without having killed Muhammad. Ibn Kathir and al-Waqidi report that Huyayy tore into pieces the agreement between Ka'b and Muhammad.

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Rumors of this one-sided renunciation of the pact spread and were confirmed by Muhammad's emissaries, Sa'd ibn Mua'dh and Sa'd ibn Ubadah, leading men of the Aws and Khazraj respectively. Sa'd ibn Mua'dh reportedly issued threats against the Qurayza but was restrained by his colleague. As this would have allowed the besiegers to access the city and thus meant the collapse of the defenders' strategy. Muhammad "became anxious about their conduct and sent some of the leading Muslims to talk to them; the result was disquieting." According to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad sent Nuaym ibn Masud, a well-respected elder of the Ghatafan who had secretly converted to Islam, to go to Muhammad's enemies and sow discord among them. Nuaym went to the Qurayza and advised them to join the hostilities against Muhammad only if the besiegers provide hostages from among their chiefs. He then hurried to the invaders and warned them that if the Qurayza asked for hostages, it is because they intended to turn them over to the Medinan defenders. When the representatives of the Quraysh and the Ghatafan came to the Qurayza, asking for support in the planned decisive battle with Muhammad, the Qurayza indeed demanded hostages. The representatives of the besiegers refused, breaking down negotiations and resulting in the Banu Qurayza becoming extremely distrustful of the besieging army. The Qurayza did not take any actions to support them until the besieging forces retreated. Thus the threat of a second front against the defenders never materialised.

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After the Meccans' withdrawal, Muhammad then led his forces against the Banu Qurayza neighborhood. According to Ibn Ishaq, he had been asked to do so by the angel Gabriel. The Banu Qurayza retreated into their stronghold and endured the siege for 25 days. As their morale waned, Ka'b ibn Asad suggested three alternative ways out of their predicament: embrace Islam; kill their own children and women, then rush out for a charge to either win or die; or make a surprise attack on the Sabbath. The Banu Qurayza accepted none of these alternatives. Instead they asked to confer with Abu Lubaba, one of their allies from the Aws. According to Ibn Ishaq, Abu Lubaba felt pity for the women and children of the tribe who were crying and when asked whether the Qurayza should surrender to Muhammad, advised them to do so. However he also "made a sign with his hand toward his throat, indicating that [their fate] at the hands of the Prophet would be slaughter". The next morning, the Banu Qurayza surrendered and the Muslims seized their stronghold and their stores. The men - Ibn Ishaq numbers between 400 and 900 - were bound and placed under the custody of one Muhammad ibn Maslamah, who had killed Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, while the women and children - numbering about 1,000 - were placed under Abdullah ibn Sallam, a former rabbi who had converted to Islam. The circumstances of the Qurayza's demise have been related by Ibn Ishaq and other Muslim historians who relied upon his account. According to Watt, Peters and Stillman, the Qurayza surrendered to Muhammad's

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judgement - a move Watt classifies as unconditional.[ The Aws, who wanted to honor their old alliance with the Qurayza, asked Muhammad to treat the Qurayza leniently as he had previously treated the Qaynuqa for the sake of Ibn Ubayy. (Arab custom required support of an ally, independent of the ally's conduct to a third party.) Muhammad then suggested to bring the case before an arbitrator chosen from the Aws, to which both the Aws and the Qurayza agreed to. Muhammad then appointed Sa'd ibn Mua'dh to decide the fate of the Jewish tribe. According to Hashmi, Buchanan and Moore, the tribe agreed to surrender on the condition of a Muslim arbitrator of their choosing. According to Khadduri (also cited by Abu-Nimer), "both parties agreed to submit their dispute to a person chosen by them" in accordance with the Arabian tradition of arbitration.] Muir holds that the Qurayza surrendered on the condition that "their fate was decided by their allies, the Bani Aws". In all accounts, the appointed arbitrator was Sa'd ibn Mua'dh, a leading man among the Aws. During the Battle of the Trench, he had been one of Muhammad's emissaries to the Qurayza (see above) and now was dying from a wound he had received later in the battle. When Sa'd arrived, his fellow Aws pleaded for leniency towards the Qurayza and on his request pledged that they would abide by his decision. He then decreed that "the men should be killed, the property divided, and the women and children taken as captives". Muhammad approved of the ruling, calling it similar to God's judgment. Chiragh Ali argued that this

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statement may have referred to "king" or "ruler" rather than God. Sa'd dismissed the pleas of the Aws, according to Watt because being close to death and concerned with his afterlife, he put what he considered "his duty to God and the Muslim community" before tribal allegiance. Tariq Ramadan argues that Muhammad deviated from his earlier, more lenient treatment of prisoners as this was seen "as sign of weakness if not madness", Peterson concurs that the Muslims wanted to deter future treachery by setting an example with severe punishment. Lings reports that Sa'ad feared that if expelled, the Qurayza would join the Nadir in the fight against the Muslims. According to Stillman, Muhammad chose Sa'd so as not to pronounce the judgment himself, after the precedents he had set with the Banu Qaynuqa and the Banu Nadir: "Sa`d took the hint and condemned the adult males to death and the hapless women and children to slavery." Furthermore, Stillman infers from Abu Lubaba's gesture that Muhammad had decided the fate of the Qurayza even before their surrender. Ibn Ishaq describes the killing of the Banu Qurayza men as follows: Then they surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of B. al-Najjar. Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought

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out to him in batches. Among them was the enemy of Allah Huyayy b. Akhtab and Ka`b b. Asad their chief. There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900. As they were being taken out in batches to the apostle they asked Ka`b what he thought would be done with them. He replied, "Will you never understand? Don't you see that the summoner never stops and those who are taken away do not return? By Allah it is death!" This went on until the apostle made an end of them. Huyayy was brought out wearing a flowered robe in which he had made holes about the size of the finger-tips in every part so that it should not be taken from him as spoil, with his hands bound to his neck by a rope. When he saw the apostle he said, "By God, I do not blame myself for opposing you, but he who forsakes God will be forsaken." Then he went to the men and said, "God's command is right. A book and a decree, and massacre have been written against the Sons of Israel." Then he sat down and his head was struck off. Several accounts note Muhammad's companions as executioners, Ali and Al-Zubayr in particular, and that each clan of the Aws was also charged with killing a group of Qurayza men. Subhash Inamdar argues that this was done in order to avoid the risk of further conflicts between Muhammad and the Aws. According to Inamdar, Muhammad wanted to distance himself from the events and, had he been involved, he would have risked alienating some of the Aws.

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It is also reported that one woman, who had thrown a millstone from the battlements during the siege and killed one of the Muslim besiegers, was also beheaded along with the men. Ibn Asakir writes in his History of Damascus that the Banu Kilab, a clan of Arab clients of the Banu Qurayza, were killed alongside the Jewish tribe.Three boys of the clan of Hadl, who had been with Qurayza in the strongholds, slipped out before the surrender and converted to Islam. The son of one of them, Muhammad ibn Ka'b al-Qurazi, gained distinction as a scholar. One or two other men also escaped. The spoils of battle, including the enslaved women and children of the tribe, were divided up among the Islamic warriors that had participated in the siege and among the emigrees from Mecca (who had hitherto depended on the help of the Muslims native to Medina. Mohammad collected one-fifth of the booty, which was then redistributed to the Muslims in need, as was customary. As part of his share of the spoils, Muhammad selected one of the women, Rayhana, for himself and took her as part of his booty. Muhammad offered to free and marry her and according to some sources she accepted his proposal. She is said to have later become a Muslim. Some of the women and children of the Banu Qurayza who were enslaved by the Muslims were later bought by Jews, in particular the Banu Nadir. Peterson argues that this is because the Nadir felt responsible for

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the Qurayza's fate due to the role of their chieftain in the events.

According to Islamic traditions, the Qur'an briefly refers to the incident in Surah Al-Ahzab (the Confederates) 33:26:  And those of the people of the Scripture who backed them (the disbelievers) Allah brought them down from their forts and cast terror into their hearts, (so that) a group (of them) you killed, and a group (of them) you made captives.

 Yet it is historically doubtful whether the Qur'an really refers to this event. Muslim jurists have looked upon Surah Al-Anfal (The Spoils of War) 8:55-58  as a justification of the treatment of the Banu Qurayza, arguing that the Qurayza broke their pact with Muhammad, and thus Muhammad was justified in repudiating his side of the pact and killing the Qurayza en masse:

55. Verily, The worst of moving (living) creatures before Allah are those who disbelieve , - so they shall not believe.

56. They are those with whom you made a covenant, but they break their covenant every time and they do not fear Allah.

57. So if you gain the mastery over them in war, punish them severely in order to disperse those who are behind them, so that they may learn a lesson.

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58. If you (O Muhammad  ) fear treachery from any people throw back (their covenant) to them (so as to be) on equal terms (that there will be no more covenant between you and them). Certainly Allah likes not the treacherous.

Arab Muslim theologians and historians have either viewed the incident as "the punishment of the Medina Jews, who were invited to convert and refused, perfectly exemplify the Quran's tales of what happened to those who rejected the prophets of old" or offered a political, rather than religious, explanation. In the 8th and early 9th century many Muslim jurists, such as Ash-Shafii, based their judgments and decrees supporting collective punishment for treachery on the accounts of the demise of the Qurayza, with which they were well acquainted. However, the proceedings of Muhammad with regard to the Banu Nadir and the Banu Qurayza were not taken as a model for the relationship of Muslim states toward its Jewish subjects. Paret and Watt[ say that the Banu Qurayza were killed not because of their faith but for "treasonable activities against the Medinan community". Watt relates that no important clan of Jews was left in Medina, but he and Paret also note that Muhammad did not clear all Jews out of Medina. Aiming at placing the events in their historical context, Watt points to the "harsh political circumstances of that

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era" and argues that the treatment of Qurayza was regular Arab practice. Similar statements are made by Stillman, Paret, Lewis and Rodinson. On the other hand, Michael Lecker and Irving Zeitlin consider the events "unprecedented in the Arab peninsula - a novelty" and state that "prior to Islam, the annihilation of an adversary was never an aim of war." Similar statements are made by Hirschberg and Baron. Some authors assert that the judgement of Sa'd ibn Mua'dh was conducted according to laws of Torah. Muhammad Hamidullah goes further and says that Sa'd "applied to them their own Biblical law [...] and their own practice."No contemporaneous source says explicitly that Sa'd based his judgment on the Torah. Moreover, the respective verses of the Torah make no mention of treason or breach of faith, and the Jewish law as it existed at the time and as it is still understood today applies these Torah verses only to the situation of the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, and not to any other period of history. Walid N. Arafat and Barakat Ahmad have disputed that the Banu Qurayza were killed on quite such a large scale. Arafat disputes large-scale killings and argued that Ibn Ishaq gathered information from descendants of the Qurayza Jews, who embellished or manufactured the details of the incident. Arafat relates the testimony of Ibn Hajar, who denounced this and other accounts as "odd tales" and quoted Malik ibn Anas, a contemporary of Ibn Ishaq, whom he rejected as a "liar", an "impostor" and for seeking out the Jewish descendants for gathering

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information about Muhammad's campaign with their forefathers. Ahmad argues that only some of the tribe were killed, while some of the fighters were merely enslaved. Watt finds Arafat's arguments "not entirely convincing", while Meir J. Kister has contradicted the arguments of Arafat and Ahmad. In recent times, the historicity of this event has been put into question by Hans Jansen and Fred Donner.

Different versions concerning the sentence of Sa‘d b. Mu‘adh- Norman A. STILLMAN, in his book “The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book”, page 141 said :When Sa‘d reached the Apostle of Allah-may Allah bless him and grant him peace-the Apostle said, “Rise to greet your leader.” The emigrants of Quraysh said to themselves that the Apostle must be referring to the Helpers. The helpers, on the other hand, thought the Apostle was including everyone, and so they got up and said, “O Abu ‘Amr, the Apostle has appointed you arbiter the fate of your clients so that you may pass judgment upon them.” “Will you accept as binding, by Allah’s covenant and His Pact, the judgment upon them once I have given it?” They replied that they would. “And will it be binding upon one who is here,” he said turning toward the Apostle, not mentioning him by name out of respect. The Apostle of Allah-may Allah bless him and grant him peace-answered yes. Sa‘d said, “My judgment is that that the men be executed, their property divided, and the women and

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children made captives. ‘Asim b. ‘Umar b. Qatada told me on the authority of ‘Abd al-Rahman b. ‘Amr b. Sa‘d b. Mu‘adh on the authority of Alqama b. Waqqas al-Laythi that the Apostle said to Sa‘d, “You have judged them according to the verdict of Allah above the seventh heaven."- Martin LINGS (British converted to Islam), in his book "MUHAMMAD: his life based on the earliest sources", page 231 and 232 said : Sa‘d was a man of mighty stature, of handsome and majestic appearance, and when he came to the camp the Prophet said "Rise in honour of your liege lord," and they rose to greet him saying: "Father of ‘Amr, the Messenger of God hath appointed thee to judge the case of thy confederates." He said: "Do ye then swear by God and make by Him your covenant that my judgement shall be the verdict upon them?" "We do," they answered. "And is it binding upon him who is here?" he added, with a glance in the direction of the Prophet, but not mentioning him out of reverence. "It is," said the Prophet. "Then I judge," said Sa‘d, "that the men shall be slain, the property divided, and the women and children made captive."1 The Prophet said to him: "Thou hast judged with the judgement of God from above the seven heavens." Martin LINGS added the footnote 1 at the bottom of the page 2321 Sa‘d's judgment was no doubt directed mainly against their treachery; but in fact it coincided exactly with Jewish law as regards the treatment of a besieged city, even if it

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were innocent of treachery: When the Lord thy God hath delivered it unto thy hands, thou shalt smite every male therein with the edge of the sword: but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself. Deuteronomy 20: 12.- Daniel C. Peterson, in his book “Muhammad, Prophet of God”, page 127, said : After receiving promises from all the Muslims present that they would indeed abide by his judgment, Sa‘d decreed the execution of the men of Banu Qurayza, the enslaving of their women and children, and the division of their property among the muslims.5 “You have judged,” said the Prophet, “with the judgment of God from above the seven heavens.”6Daniel C. Peterson added the footnote 6 at the bottom of the page 127 6. PERHAPS with some apologetic intent, the late English scholar Martin Lings notes, correctly, that Sa'd judgment accords with that of the law of Moses as recorded in Deut. 20:10:14. See Lings, p. 232 n.1.II) Primary Source (Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah is the oldest and most complete biography of Muhammad)A. GUILLAUME, in his book “The life of Muhammad: A translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah”, page 463, 464 said: When Sa‘d reached the apostle and the Muslims the apostle told them to get up to greet their leader. The

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muhajirs of Quraysh thought that the apostle meant the Ansar. while the latter thought that he meant everyone, so they got up and said ‘O Abu ‘Amr, the apostle has entrusted to you the affair of your allies that you may give judgment concerning them.’ Sa‘d asked, ‘Do you covenant by Allah that you accept the judgment I pronounce on them?’ They said Yes, and he said ‘And is it incumbent on the one who is here?’ (looking) in the direction of the apostle, not mentioning him out of respect, and the apostle answered Yes. Sa‘d said, ‘Then I give judgment that that the men should be killed, their property divided, and the women and children taken as captives. ‘Asim b. ‘Umar b. Qatada told me on the authority of ‘Abdul-Rahman b. ‘Amr b. Sa‘d b. Mu‘adh from Alqama b. Waqqas al-Laythi that the apostle said to Sa‘d, ‘You have given the judgement of Allah above the seven heavens.’

References in literature[edit] The fate of the Banu Qurayza became the subject of Shaul Tchernichovsky's Hebrew poem Ha-aharon li-Venei Kuraita (The Last of the Banu Qurayza).[4]

The Encyclopedia Judaica (Vol. XI, col. 1212) estimates the Jewish population of Medina at 8,000 to 10,000. Barakat Ahmad(p. 43) calls this an understatement and calculates that there still remained 24,000 to 28,000 Jews in Medina, after the demise of the Qurayza. These figures are cited by Peters (Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, p. 301 (note 41): "According to Ahmad, whose estimate of the Jewish population at 36,000-42,000 has already

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been cited, the departure of the Banu Nadir and the decimation of the Banu Qurayza would still have left between 24,000-28,000 Jews at Medina.") but are disputed by Reuven Firestone ("The failure of a Jewish program of public satire in the squares of Medina"). Watt (Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman, p. 175f.) describes the remaining Jews as "several small groups". Al-Dawoody, Ahmed (2011). The Islamic Law of War: Justifications and Regulations. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 27.  ISBN 9780230111608.  It is pointed out that this sentence was given according to the rules of Banū Qurayzah’s own religion, specifically the Book of Deuteronomy (20: 10-15) ToseftaThe savoraim, the Jewish sages of Babylonia and the Levant who were involved in the dissemination of rabbinic halakha as codified in the Mishnah and, later, the Talmud, maintained close relations with the Jewish communities of Yemen and Arabia, and their rulings were accepted in those regions. Safrai, Shmuel. "The Era of the Mishnah and Talmud (70-640). A History of the Jewish People.H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed. Harvard Univ. Press, 1976. p.351-382. Maimonides, writing in the 13th century, reported a long-standing tradition that Deuteronomy 20 applied only to the period of the conquest of Canaan and was never applicable thereafter. Mishne Torah Sanhedrin 11. According to David M. Granskou and Peter Richardson (Anti-Judaism in Early

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Christianity) this command has not been practiced by Jews after times of David.

The Banu Alfageer was one of the Jewish tribes of Arabia during Muhammad's era.They were included in point 31 of the Constitution of Medina as allies to the Muslims, being as "one nation", but retaining their Jewish religion. The Banu Awf (Arabic:  عوف Banu ‘Awf) was one ,بنوof the Jewish tribes of Arabia during Muhammad's era.[1]

The Banu Awf was an Arab tribe who wished to settle in the Jewish-ruled Tayma. The local people in Tayma insisted as a condition of settling in Tayma, Banu Awf must adopt Judaism. After having done so, they moved on to Yathrib.They were included in Point 25 of the Constitution of Medina as allies to the Muslims, being as "one nation", but retaining their Jewish religion.[3][4]

The Banū Aws (Arabic:  أوس pronounced [ˈbænuː  بنوʔæws], "Sons of Aws") or simply Aws (Arabic: أوس, also romanised as Aus) was one of the main Arab tribes of Medina. The other was Khazraj, and the two, constituted the Ansar ("helpers [of Muhammad]") after the Hijra.Aws and Khazraj were known as Banū Qayla ( بنو-in pre-Islamic era.[1]The word al ([bænuː ˈqɑjlæˈ]  قيلةAws means "the gift", probably a contraction for Aws Manāt (Arabic:  مناة the gift of Manāt"). The name was" ,أوسchanged in Islamic times to Aws Allāh (Arabic:  الله .(أوس

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About 300 AD[4] during the emigration of Kahlān from Yemen prior to the Great Flood of Mar'ib Dam, Thaʻlaba bin ʻAmr, grand father of al-Aws, separated from his tribe and settled in Yathrib (Medina), which was then controlled by Jewish clans, and the Banu Qayla were subordinate to the Jews for some time, until Mālik bin ʻAjlān of Khazraj asserts independence of the Jews so Aws and Khazraj obtained a share of palm trees and strongholds. Thus, about the 5th century, the Banu Qayla took control of Yathrib, and Jews retired into the background for about a century. During the period before the Hijra, Abū Qays al-Aslat of the clan of Wāʼil, the leader of Aws, gave away the leadership to Ḥuḍayr bin Simāk of ʻAbd al-Ashhal. After a serious defeat, ʻAbd al-Ashhal and Ẓafar were withdrawn from Yathrib. The opposing leader, ʻAmr bin Nuʻmān, of the Khazrajite clan of Bayāḍa, drove the Jews tribes of Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir into alliance of the two. Nomads of Muzayna joined them too. Most of the Khazraj except ʻAbd Allāh bin Ubayy and another Khazraj leader, as well as the Jews tribe Banū Qaynuqāʻ [3]  and the nomadic Juhayna and Ashjaʻ, suppurted ‘Amr bin Nu‘mān. The Awsite clan of Ḥāritha remained neutral. Then, in about 617, the Battle of Buʻāth began: the Aws forced back at first but finally defeated their opponents. The leaders of both sides were killed. Shi'a sources say they were Jews, But a Jewish source says that they and the Banu Khazraj were Arab tribes from Yemen who came to Medina in the fourth century. The Jewish source says that the two tribes

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took the power of Medina from the Jews in the 5th century by "calling in outside assistance and treacherously massacring at a banquet". However, all sources agree that the Banu Aus and the Banu Khazraj became hostile to each other. A Shi'a source says that they had been fighting for 120 years and were sworn enemies. The Jewish source states that they went to war against each other in the Battle of Bu'ath a few years before the Islamic prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina.There were many Jewish tribes in Medina: Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayza, Banu Qaynuqa and many others. During the battle, the Banu Nadir and the Banu Qurayza fought with the Banu Aus, and the Banu Qaynuqa were allied with the Banu Khazraj. The latter were defeated after a long and desperate battle. Muhammad came to Medina as a mediator, invited to resolve the feud between the Banu Aws and the Banu Khazraj. He ultimately did so by absorbing both factions into his Muslim community and forbidding bloodshed among Muslims. The Banu Aus were included in the Constitution of Medina as allies to the Muslims, "one nation/community with the Believers". Then, Banu Aus and others became known as the Ansar. The Banu Qurayza were a Jewish tribe who lived in Medina. The tribe's men, apart from a few who converted to Islam, were killed in 627 after a siege mounted by Muslim inhabitants of Medina and

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immigrants from Mecca. The Banu Qurayza had agreed to aid their Meccan enemies in their attack on Medina, which the Muslims had just repulsed in the Battle of the Trench. Since the Banu Qurayza had been an ally of the Banu Aus during the Battle of Bu'ath, they choose Sa'ad ibn Mua'dh, the chief of the Banu Aus  as their judge. He, in spite of the pleading of his own tribe, condemned the men to death and the women and children to slavery. Sa'ad ibn Mua'dh himself died shortly after the event from injuries that he had received during the Battle of the Trench.

In 624, Muhammad ordered the death of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf. According to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad ordered his followers to kill Ka'b because he "had gone to Mecca after Badr and inveighed against Muhammad. He also composed verses in which he bewailed the victims of Quraysh who had been killed at Badr. Shortly afterwards he returned to Medina and composed amatory verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women". The killing was carried out by the Banu Aus. When men of the Banu Aus killed Ka'b, some Khazraj tribesman, including Abdallah ibn Unais, went to Muhammad and received permission to kill the person responsible for the killing of Sallam ibn Abu al-Huqayq, who was killed during the Expedition of 'Abdullah ibn 'Atik . Sallam ibn Abu al-Huqayq (Abu Rafi) was a Jew, who had helped the troops and provided them with a

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lot of wealth and supplies[16] and mocked Muhammad with his poetry. When the Muslims had settled their affair with the Banu Quraiza, the Banu Khazraj, a rival of the Banu Aws, successfully asked for Muhammad's permission to kill him, which Muhammad accepted, for a virtue equal to that of the Banu Aws, who had killed Ka'b.