Ilkka Lindstedt, “The Fate of the Medinan Jews" скачать в хорошем качестве

Ilkka Lindstedt, “The Fate of the Medinan Jews"

This paper was presented at the conference 'The “Seven Long Ones” (al-Sabʿ al-Ṭiwāl): Approaches to Surahs 2–7 and 9', held at Pembroke College, Oxford (24-25 March 2025). The event was organized as part of the project 'Qur’anic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm', which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 771047). Scholarship on the Jews of Arabia, including the Hijaz, has advanced significantly, thanks to new epigraphic finds. On the basis of literary sources, Yathrib/Medina, where the Prophet Muhammad spent the last ten years of his life, was home to a significant Jewish community. In the so-called Constitution of Medina, which stems from the early Medinan period, a number of Jewish groups are included among Muhammad’s community as allies or group members, depending on how one reads the treaty. Also, jumping to the post-Muhammadan era, quite a few non-Arabic texts note that there was some form of collaboration between Jews and the Arabian believers during, at least, the conquest period. On the other hand, the sīrah narratives, and most modern scholars, claim that that there was a definitive “break with the Jews”: according to this view, the Medinan (and perhaps other Arabian) Jews were either expelled or killed before the death of the Prophet Muhammad, if they did not convert. What gives? Various interpretations have been put forward in light of these sources. Based on a critical reading of key sources, Lindstedt argues that the “break with the Jews” was more limited than previously thought. The conflict was restricted to a few Jewish tribes, with other Medinan Jews either supporting the Prophet Muhammad or remaining neutral. A reading of the Medinan Qur’an also bolsters this interpretation: there appears to be only scarce evidence of actual conflicts with the Jews, though, as is well known, they are rather often castigated. Moreover, even the late surahs (such as Q 5) suggest that there were Jews in Medina.