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LE JUDASME DE LARABIE ANTIQUE
Judasme ancien et origines du christianisme
Collection dirige par
Simon Claude Mimouni (EPHE, Paris)

quipe ditoriale:
Jos Costa (Universit de Paris-III)
David Hamidovic (Universit de Lausanne)
Pierluigi Piovanelli (Universit dOttawa)

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 LE JUDASME
DE LARABIE ANTIQUE

Actes du Colloque de Jrusalem

(fvrier 2006)

Sous la direction de Christian Julien Robin

2015
 2015, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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 T HE JEWISH POETS OF MUH. AMMADS H. IJAZ
Robert Hoyland
Institute for Study of the Ancient World, New York University

In a recent article on the Jewish inscriptions of the ijz I mentioned

that there existed some scraps of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry composed by
northwest Arabian Jews in the sixth and early seventh century.1 I did not
go into any detail since, as I observed, they are comparable in sentiment
and style to pre-Islamic Arabic poetry in general, and lack any specific his-
torical detail or concrete religious expression. However, this material is
little known and so, for the sake of the completeness of this volume on
Judaism in Arabia, I shall say a few words on this topic.

Modern Works on Arabian Jewish Poetry

There is a rich and detailed tradition of scholarship on Jewish history
and Jewish literature and so, unsurprisingly, there are a large number of
references and allusions to these Jews who seem to have assimilated so
well to Arab culture that they composed odes in Arabic using Bedouin
poetic forms. However, substantial discussion and treatment of the sub-
ject is much rarer. Probably the earliest meaningful consideration of it is
Theodor Nldekes Die Gedichte der Juden in Arabien, which appears
as a chapter in his Beitrge zur Kenntnis der Poesie der alten Araber
(Hannover 1864). Since the material had in his time not yet been collected,
he concerned himself principally with bringing together and presenting
all the examples of such poetry that he could find by trawling through
the tenth-century encyclopaedic (Kitb al-Aghn) (Book of Songs) and
some poetic anthologies. His analysis of the texts was confined to a few
short comments, in particular noting the rarity of real Jewish names, the
thoroughly Arab character of the texts, and the fact that no Biblical
or Talmudic influences were in evidence. Franz Delitzsch took matters a
little further in his Jdisch-Arabische Poesien aus Vormuhammedischer Zeit
(Leipzig, 1874) by offering an in-depth look at one of the poems of the
most famous of the Arabian Jewish poets, namely al-Samawal ibn diy,2

1. The Jews of the Hijaz in the Qurn and in their Inscriptions in G.S.
R eynolds , ed. The Qurn in its Historical Context 2 (London, Routledge, 2011), 92.
2. It is not a full-length study of the topic, but just a translation of this one
poem and of the commentary of it in honour of his teacher Ezra Fleischer (the
512 ROBERT HOYLAND

whose whole corpus (dwn) was subsequently edited by J.W. Hirschberg

in 1931.
More analytical is the contribution of D.S. Margoliouth in his Schweich
lectures of 1921 (The Relations between Arabs and Israelites prior to the
Rise of Islam, London 1924, esp. 71-81). He introduced a sceptical note, at
times going so far as to suggest that none of the Arabic poetry attributed
to Arabian Jews can be assumed to be genuine:
That any odes by Jews could have survived the clearance of the Peninsula
from the nation by Mohammed and Omar is simply not to be believed. But
historians who can produce the Arabic dirge composed by Adam over Abel
would have comparatively little difficulty in producing those wherein the
Jews of Medinah and Taima deplored the misfortunes that had befallen
them, or, if this was thought desirable, boasted of their exploits in love and
war (p. 76).
This line of argument did not, however, find favour, and subsequent
studies adopted a largely descriptive and uncritical approach. Murad Farajs
Al-shuar al-yahd al-arab / Les potes judo-arabes (Cairo, 1929) sim-
ply recounts the lives of these poets and provides commentary on their
poetry without questioning their authenticity or pondering their wider
significance.3 And the studies dedicated to Arabian Jews by Hirschberg
(1946), Ben Zeev (1957) and Newby (1988) do no more than rehearse the
standard narratives about these Jewish poets of Arabia without subjecting
them to any critical view.4

The Poets
The topic had already been allotted some attention by a number of
medieval Muslim authors. The first to take it up, whose writings are

subtitle of the work is: ein Specimen aus Fleischers Schule als Beitrag zur Feier seines
Jubilums).
3. Faraj was a very prominent member of Egypts Jewish community. He was
a lawyer, serving as legal counsel to the Khedive Abbas Hilmi (r. 1892-1914) and
as judge at the Karaite court in Cairo, and also a poet in his own right, authoring
numerous volumes of original verse. His work on Judeo-Arab poets was important
to his own agenda, which was concerned with emphasising the historic links
between Judaism and Islam on the one hand and between Hebrew and Arabic on
the other.
4. H.Z. H irschberg , Yisrael ba-A rav (Tel Aviv, 1946); Y. Ben Z eev,
Ha-Yehdm ba-Arav (Jerusalem, 1957); G.D. Newby, A History of the Jews of
Arabia from Ancient Times to their Eclipse under Islam (Columbia SC, 1988), 55-57.
There is also a short section on this topic in H.G. Mustafa, Religious Trends in
Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry (Bombay, 1968), 117-24. I attempted to get hold of the
masters thesis by Abdallah Jibril Miqdad on Shir al-yahd f l-jhiliyya wa-adr
al-islm (Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, 1981), but was not successful.

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 THE JEWISH POETS OF MUAMMADS IJZ 513
extant, is the Basran traditionist and philologist Muammad ibn Sallm
al-Juma (d. 846). He is well known to modern scholars for his selec-
tion of old and new poetry, which goes under the name of abaqt ful
al-shuar (The generations of the most outstanding poets). Having
dealt with the bards of the cities of Medina, Mecca, Taif and Bahrain he
proceeds to provide a list of the poets of the Jews:5
1. Al-Samawal ibn diy
2. Al-Rab ibn Ab l-uqayq
3. Kab ibn al-Ashraf
4. Shuray (ibn Imrn)
5. Saya (Shuba) ibn Ghar/Ar
6. Ab l-Qays ibn Rifa
7. Ab l-Dhayyl
8. Dirham ibn Zayd
He gives very little biographical information about any of them except
to recount in brief the oft-reiterated anecdote about how al-Samawal kept
safe the arms entrusted to him by Imru al-Qays, a prince of the tribe of
Kinda, even though it meant losing his own son, and how Kab al-Ashraf
was assassinated at the instigation of the prophet Muammad.
A century or so later the prolific collector of Arabian/Arab antiquities
Ab l-Faraj al-Ifahn (d. 967) dedicated a small section of his compen-
dious work on musicians, singers and poets, the Kitb al-aghn (Book
of Songs), to the same topic.6 One also finds scattered among the many
volumes of his magnum opus references to other Jewish poets, and in total
he cites verses from eleven of them:
1. Al-Samawal ibn diy
2. Al-Rab ibn Ab l-uqayq
3. Kab ibn al-Ashraf
4. Shuray (ibn al-Samawal)
5. Saya (Shuba) ibn Ghar/Ar
6. Ab l-Qays ibn Rifa
7. Ab l-Dhayyl7
8. Sarah of Quraya
9. Kab ibn Sad of Quraya
10. Aws ibn Dan of Quraya

5. A l-Juma, abaqt ful l-shuar, ed. M.M. Shakir (Jeddah, n.d.), 1.279-
96.
6. Al-aghn, ed. Ibrahim al-A byari (Cairo, 1969), 7899-8838 (= Dar al-Kutub
19.93-107). Dependent on him is Ibn Sad al-Andalus (d. 1274) for the section
on Jewish poets of the ijz of his Nashwat al-arab, ed. Nasrat A bd al-R ahman
(Amman, 1982), 1.815-25.
7. Written as Ab l-Zannd in some manuscripts.
514 ROBERT HOYLAND

Since al-Ifahn was trying to give as full a picture as he could, rather

than an overview like al-Juma, he includes biographical data about each
of the poets. Al-Samawal ibn diy is the best known of the group and
details of his life are found in numerous medieval Muslim histories. He
was a native of Tayma, an ancient oasis of northwest Arabia, once the ref-
uge of the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus (ca. 553-43 BC), and governed
by a Jewish clan in the late Roman period.8 His father had ties with the
tribe of Ghassn, and this explains why al-Samawal is often labelled the
Ghassnid.9 The family home is usually described as a castle and referred
to by the name of al-Ablaq. The single most commonly related piece of
information about him concerns his loyalty and his fidelity to his prom-
ises. The story which we alluded to above tells how the Kindite Imru
al-Qays asked al-Samawal if he could deposit his weapons and armour in
his castle for safekeeping while he travelled to Constantinople to beg the
emperor to restore to him his kingdom. Not long after his departure ene-
mies of his came looking for him and besieged the castle, but al-Samawal
refused to surrender Imru al-Qays possessions to the invader. Unfortu-
nately al-Samawals son happened to return from a hunting trip at that
moment and was captured, but even when the life of his child was threat-
ened al-Samawal remained true to his pledge to safeguard what had been
entrusted to him. This act earned him lasting fame among subsequent
generations of Arabs, and he is celebrated in verse by a number of later
authors. The deed itself led to the coining of a popular Arabic proverb,
more loyal than Samuel (awf min al-Samawal).10
The only other Arabian Jewish poet who achieved a measure of renown
was al-Rab ibn Ab l-uqayq, who was a chief of the tribe of Nar
and whose family seat was the castle of Qam in Khaybar.11 Our ear-
liest sources do not mention him, but rather his son Kinna, because in
his care was afiyya bint uyayy, who subsequently became Muammads

8. An Aramaic inscription from Tayma, dated AD 203, and one from Madain
Salih, dated 356, refer to the Jewish headman of the oasis (Hoyland, The Jews of
the Hijazin the Qurn and in their Inscriptions, in G.S. Reynolds, ed., The Quran
in its Historical Context 2 (London, Routledge, 2011), 95-96). The Madain Salih
text names the headman of that settlement as Adyon son of aniy son of Samuel
and the headman of Tayma as Amr son of Adyon son of Samuel. It is plausible that
the Arabic diy corresponds to the Aramaic Adyon ( dywn).
9. Al-Ifahn notes that some allege that it was his mother who was of Ghassn
(quoted by J. Horovitz , The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet, Islamic Culture
3, 1929, 174 n. 2), but Michael Lecker informs me that this is highly unlikely (see
his The Constitution of Medina, Princeton 2004, 77).
10. Al-aghn, 8815-19. The story is also recounted by al-Ifahns contemporary,
al-Muahhar ibn hir al-Maqdis (d. ca. 966), in his Kitb al-bad wa-l-tarkh, ed.
C. Huart (Paris, 1903), 3.203. He mentions Ablaq castle in Tayma (ibid., 4.70),
but does not link it to al-Samawal.
11. Already reported by Khalfa ibn Khayy (d. 855) in his Tarkh, ed. A.D.
al-Umari (Damascus, 1977), 1.82.

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 THE JEWISH POETS OF MUAMMADS IJZ 515
wife after most of Kinnas family were killed in the raid on Khaybar led
by the prophet.12 It is only with al-Ifahns Aghn that we read about
the poetic exploits of al-Rab. For example, he had a versifying contest
with the famous Arab poet, al-Nbigha al-Dhubyn (d. ca. 604), the lat-
ter reciting one hemistich, while al-Rab had to supply the next, keeping
to the same meter and finding a rhyme.

The Poems
As has been noted by just about every scholar who looked at these
Jewish Arabic poems, they conform to the norms of pre-Islamic Arabic
poetry, insofar as we can ascertain them from the surviving body of this
literature, and all the standard genres are found among them.13 For exam-
ple, tribal boasting (mufkhara) is well represented in the poems of al-
Samawal, as in the following piece:14
I was true with the mail-coats of the Kindite,
I am true though many a one is blamed for treason.
Once did diy, (my father), exhort me:
O Samawal, never destroy what I have built.
For me diy built a strong-walled castle
With a well where I drew water at pleasure;
So high, the eagle slipping back is baffled.
When wrong befalls me I endure not tamely.
And such boasting is a key feature of his most celebrated poem, The
noble are few (inna l-kirma qall), which was selected by Ab Tammm
(d. 845), son of a Christian wine-merchant from Damascus, for his anthol-
ogy of verse (amsa) on the virtues most highly praised by the Arabs:15

12. Muammad ibn abb, al-Muabbar, ed. I. Lichtenstdter (Beirut, n.d.),

1.90; Ibn Qutayba, Kitb al-marif, ed. Tharwat Ukasha (Cairo, 1992), 1.138;
and see the contribution of Michael Lecker in this volume.
13. Another theme, that of the immortality of verse, appears in a poem of
al-Samawal that is discussed by K. Dimitriev, Glory and Immortality: the motif of
monumentum aere perennius by Samawal b. diy in idem and I. Toral-Niehoff
eds., Religious Culture in Late Antique Arabia (Leiden, forthcoming).
14. Aghn, 2412 (Dar al-Kutub 6.88), 8819; this is the translation of
R.A. Nicholson in his A Literary History of the Arabs (New York, 1907), 85.
The number of verses of this poem varies in different sources; see Nldeke , Die
Gedichteder Juden in Arabien, in id., Beitrge zur Kenntnis der Poesie der alten
Araber, Hannover, 1864, 61 n. 2.
15. Translated by Arthur A rberry, Arabic Poetry: a Primer for Students
(Cambridge, 1965), 30-33. For the Arabic see G.W. Freytag, Ab Tammm:
Hamasae Carmina (Bonn, 1828-47), 49-54, and J.W. Hirschberg, Der Divan
des as-Samaual ibn Adija (Krakow, 1931), 21-23. There are also modern editions
and studies of the oeuvre ascribed to al-Samawal: e.g. Mukhtar al-Ghawth,
Al-Samawal: akhbruhu wa-l-shir al-mansb ilayh (Beirut, 1994), and Wadih
al-Samad, Dwn al-Samawal (Beirut, 1996).
516 ROBERT HOYLAND

When a mans honour is not defiled by baseness,

then every cloak he cloaks himself in is comely;
And if he has never constrained himself to endure despite,
then there is no way (for him) to (attain) goodly praise.
She (was) reproaching us, that we were few in numbers;
so I said to her, Indeed, noble men are few.
Not few are they whose remnants are like to us
youths who have climbed to the heights, and old men (too).
It harms us not that we are few, seeing that our kinsman is mighty,
whereas the kinsman of the most part of men is abased.
We have a mountain where those we protect come to dwell,
impregnable, turning back the eye and it a-weary;
Its trunk is anchored beneath the soil,
and a branch (of it) soars with it to the stars, unattainable, tall.
We indeed are a folk who deem not being killed a disgrace,
though (the tribes of) Amir and Sall may (so) consider it.
The love of death brings our term (of life) near to us,
but their term hates death, and is therefore prolonged.
Not one sayyid of ours ever died a natural death, nor was any
slain of ours ever left where he lay unavenged.
Our souls flow out along the edge of the sword-blades,
and do not flow out along other than the sword-blades.
We have remained pure and unsullied,
and females and stallions who bore us in goodly fame kept intact our stock.
We climbed on to the best of backs,
and a descending brought us down in due time to the best of bellies.
So we are as the water of the rain-shower in our metal is no bluntness,
neither is any miser numbered amongst us.
We disapprove if we will of what other men say,
but they disavow never words spoken by us.
Whenever a sayyid of ours disappears, (another) sayyid arises,
one eloquent to speak as noble men speak, and strong to act moreover.
No fire of ours was ever doused against a night-visitor,
neither has any casual guest alighting found fault with us.
Our (battle-)days are famous amongst our foes;
they have well-marked blazes and white pasterns;
And our swords in all west and east they have been blunted
from smiting against armoured warriors;
Their blades are accustomed not to be drawn and then sheathed
until the blood of a host is spilled.
If you are ignorant, ask the people concerning us and them
and he who knows and he who is ignorant are (assuredly) not equal.16

16. In the amsa there is a final verse: Surely the Ban 1-Daiyn are (as)
a pole for their people, their mills turn and rotate around them, but Hirschberg

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 THE JEWISH POETS OF MUAMMADS IJZ 517
The most popular of all themes in pre-Islamic poetry, the nostalgic
address to the beloved before the remains of a campsite that she once
inhabited is exemplified by Ab l-Dhayyl:17
Do you know the abode its occupier now departed at al-ijr,
between Mustawa and Thamad,
The abode of a languid, full-figured woman,
with a laugh like the freezing hail,
A wonderful bed-fellow for a young man on a cold night
when the constellation of Leo is setting.
Who will help a heart that is infatuated with grief
and encompassed by loss.
Anguish over unfulfilled or unfulfillable love also features prominently
in the repertoire of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and al-Samawals brother
(or grandson) Saya gives us a plaintive example of this:18
O Lubba, sister of the clan of Mlik,
dont sell the current time for the end time,
O Lubba, cure me, dont kill me;
the healer is preferred to the killer.
O Lubba, can you show favour
to a needy and beseeching lover?
You have held out what cannot be obtained from you,
And often you have held out false hope.
If you ask after me ask one well-informed,
for only true knowledge will satisfy the interrogator.
He who knows us well can give you news of us
the knowledgeable is not like the ignorant.
Truly, when summons draw on the impassioned,
and the hearer harkens to the speaker,
And people contend with one another
with divisive thoughts, words and speech,
We shall not make the false into truth
nor veil the truth with falsehood.
For we fear lest our dreams lose their force
And we languish in obscurity for all eternity.

(Dwn, 23) argues that this does not belong here, since al-Samawal was not of the
Ban Daiyn.
17. Al-Ifahn, Aghn, 8828.
18. Ibid., 8824-25. Nldeke , Die Gedichteder Juden in Arabien, in id.,
Beitrge zur Kenntnis der Poesie der alten Araber, Hannover, 1864, 64-65, argues
that it is chronologically unlikely that he would be al-Samawals brother since
he is said to have lived until the time of the caliph Muwiya (660-80), whereas
al-Samawal flourished in the mid-sixth century. Nldeke also declares, without
explanation, that he is wrongly called Saya (cf. Yeshayah, i.e. Isaiah), and must
rather have borne the name Shuba.
518 ROBERT HOYLAND

Finally, there is the elegy (rith), which is often practised by women,

and in the case of the Arabian Jews its representative is Sarah, who laments
the fate of her tribe of Quraya, which was attacked by Muammads
troops:19
My life (I would give) for a people who wanted for nothing in Dh urud,
now effaced by the winds,
The mature men of Quraya were annihilated
by the swords and lances of Khazraj,
We suffered a loss under the heavy onslaught,
such that for those afflicted the clear water came to taste bitter,
Had they been more resourceful in the affair,
they would have kept at bay a mighty dark-clad army.
It is the close correspondence between Arabian Jewish verse and the
norms of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry that is most remarked upon by mod-
ern scholars. Even when it does touch upon spiritual notions, it tends not
to go beyond the generic fatalism that is a hallmark of pagan Arabian
odes. For example, Ab l-Dhayyl declares: I am certain that if I do not
die today, I shall be tomorrows ransom; we are no different to our fore-
bears and everyone whose term of life expires arrives (at deaths door).20
The nearest we come to monotheist sentiments are the like of the observa-
tion of al-Rab ibn Ab l-uqayq that Man loves to encounter good for-
tune, but God only acquiesces to what He wills.21 The only time he hints
at possessing his own distinct faith and confessional community is in his
remark that: When we seek judgement in our religion, we are satisfied
with the judgement of the Just One, who separates (good from evil); we
do not make truth out of falsehood nor adhere to falsehood in preference
to truth.22 Aws ibn Dan speaks of Judaism directly, though it does sound
rather contrived and the use of the term Islam for Muammads teachings
at this early stage seems suspect:23
She called me to Islam the day I met her
But I said to her, nay, rather become a Jewess;
Then we (will live) according to the Torah of Moses and his religion.

19. Al-Ifahn, Aghni, 8808-9.

20. Al-Juma, Shuar, 1.293.
21. Ibn al-Athr, Tarkh, ed. Umar Tadmuri (Beirut, 1997), 1.594 (spoken at
the outbreak of one of the feuds of the jhiliyya, namely the War of Fri, when a
man of the Ban l-Najjr clashed with a youth of Bal of Qua).
22. Al-Juma, Shuar, 1.282. This poem is also cited (and attributed to
al-Rab) by Ab Uthmn al-Ji (d. 869), Al-bayn wa-l-tabyn (Beirut, 2002),
1.184, and Ibn Ab Duny (d. 894), Maqtal A l, ed. Ibrahim Salih (Damascus,
2001), 101.
23. Al-Ifahn, Aghn, 8813; his name is written Aws ibn Zaby in some
manuscripts.

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 THE JEWISH POETS OF MUAMMADS IJZ 519
By my life, what good as a religion is that of Muhammad?
Each of us thinks that his religion is the right way,
But (only) he who is led to the gate of salvation is rightly guided.
Again it is al-Samawal who provides us with more substantial material.
Although most of the compositions placed under his authorship appear to
evince the same lack of interest in religion as the overwhelming majority
of pre-Islamic Arabic odes, there are two which are overtly religious in
expression. One, which is preserved in the anthology put together by Abd
al-Malik al-Ama (d. 828), is fully given over to religious matters.24 He
opens with how he was brought to life and nurtured by God and how,
for that reason, his life is a ransom for his death (ayt rahnu bi-an
sa-amtu). Then he moves on to speak of the Day of Reckoning (al-isb),
which he knows he must face along with its consequences of reward or
punishment, resurrection or extinction. He declares that he only seeks sus-
tenance (rizq) in the permitted amount and is content with piety for his
bed. And he concludes on a determinist note, noting that God has already
decided upon the level of sustenance that He will dole out, and neither
will more be given to the powerful nor less to the weak. One could say
that this poem still follows the pre-Islamic Arabian model, taking a proud
and fatalistic stance, but with a monotheist twist.25 The same is true of
the second poem, which was discovered in the medieval repository of the
Jewish community of Cairo known as the Geniza. It is in a sense very tra-
ditional, boasting about ancestors and their glorious past deeds; it is just
that in this case they are Israelites and from Egypt rather than Arabia,
and their praiseworthy deeds were worked for them by God:26
Let me recount the high qualities of a people
which their God has chosen with signs and miracles
Are we not the people of Egypt which was chastised;
we for whose sake Egypt was struck with ten plagues?
Are we not the people of the divided sea;
we for whose sake Pharaoh was drowned on the day of his arduous enterprise?...
Are we not the people of the sanctuary,
for whom clouds descended which shaded them the whole journey?
From sun and rain they were their guard,

24. Al-Ama iyyt, ed. Ahmad Muhammad Shakir (Cairo, 1993), 85.
25. In the version of the poem I am using there is reference to King David,
but to no other Biblical figure, and David was very familiar to pre-Islamic Arabian
poets, famous for his highly effective chain-mail. However, in other versions
explicitly Jewish figures and themes are adduced; cf. Mustafa, Religious Trends in
Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry, Bombay, 1968, 122: The poet has referred to David,
Solomon, Yay (the Baptist), Jacob and Moses, and also made mention of Holy
Torah, Tbt and other sacred relics.
26. Hartwig Hirschfeld, A Poem attributed to al-Samaual, Jewish Quarterly
Review 17 (1905), 431-40.
520 ROBERT HOYLAND

protecting their hosts from the fierce hot wind.

Are we not the people of the quails and the manna,
and they for whom the stone poured forth the sweetness of water?...

Authenticity
These last two compositions bring us to the question of how we can
know whether any of these poems by Arabian Jews are genuine or not.
Concerns were voiced early on,27 but publication of this particular poem
prompted a more thoroughgoing response. In an article published in 1906
D.S. Margoliouth put forward a number of reasons why he considered
the poetic corpus ascribed to al-Samawal to be suspect.28 Firstly, certain
of the poems are attributed to other persons; even the famous ode The
noble are few is assigned a different author by Ibn Qutayba. Secondly,
lines from the same poem are sometimes accorded different metres and the
Geniza poem vacillates between two metres and often applies them incor-
rectly. Thirdly, some of the poems, especially the one in the A ma iyyt
and the one from the Geniza, betray some dependence on the Quran,
both in terms of vocabulary and concepts, which, avers Margoliuth, makes
no sense for a pre-Islamic poet.
Hirschberg, who had discovered and published the Geniza poem,
offered a swift rebuttal of these arguments.29 The flaws in the metre,
he said, might be due to corruptions and gaps in the text, or imperfect
copying or the substitution of synonyms for words that had been forgot-
ten. As for the existence of Quranic words and ideas in this and other
poems of al-Samawal, they need not be specific to the Quran, but rather
part of the religious vocabulary of the Jews and Christians whom we know
to have been present in west Arabia in pre-Islamic times. And in general
he maintains that the total lack of any reference to Islam in al-Samawals
corpus makes it unlikely that they were composed in the Islamic period,
especially given Muslim antipathy towards Jews.
My own instinct would be to side with Margoliouth. Certainly, the par-
allels with the Quran are suspiciously close. For example, the A ma iyyt
poem opens with the words nufatun m muntu yawma muntu (as a

27. Noted by Thomas Bauer in EI, s.v. al-Samawal b. diy. Apparently

Dr. Fadl ibn Ammar Alammari wrote a book on Samuel al-Samawal: the legend
and the anonymous man (Kuwait 2001), questioning the veracity of the tales and
verses attached to al-Samawal, but I only know of this work from the brief review
of Joseph Sadan in the newspaper Haaretz Nov 16 2001.
28. A Poem attributed to al-Samaual, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 38
(1906), 363-71.
29. Notes on the Poem ascribed to al-Samaual, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society 38 (1906), 701-4.

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 THE JEWISH POETS OF MUAMMADS IJZ 521
drop of sperm I was ejected on the day I was determined)30 and it is hard
not to hear in this the echo of Quran 53.46: min nufatin idh tumn
(from a drop of sperm when it is ejected).31 The same goes for the use
of the word muqt, which has meant that this poem has been cited by
medieval Muslim commentators in respect of Quran 4.85: kna Allh
al kulli shayin muqtan (assumed to be the fourth form active participle
of the root qwt, preserving or sustaining).32 It is, however, impossible
to disprove Hirschbergs point that shared vocabulary could be the result
of shared environment rather than direct borrowing. In the end, the lack
of any clear reference to an external reality in any of these Arabian Jewish
odes makes assessment of their authenticity and dating very tenuous.

Conclusion
In his book on the History of the Jews of Arabia Newby declares that
whatever the origin of the Arabian Jews, they identified with Jewish inter-
ests and concerns outside Arabia and expressed their interests in correct
practice to authorities beyond their local rabbis and community leaders.33
He is aware that the verse compositions of these Jews do not substanti-
ate this (there is nothing to indicate that they are particularly Jewish,
pp. 55-56), and indeed they seem to suggest that their authors espouse the
secular values of pre- and early Islamic Arabia.3 4 Yet he argues strongly
against those who assert that the very secular nature of the pre-Islamic

30. One could just translate on the day I was ejected, but one expects some
play on words here and the root may also signifies fate. There is a common
variant of nufatun m khuliqtu yawma buritu (cited, for example in al-Zubayds
Tj al-A rs) which presumably underlies Hirschbergs translation of als irgend ein
Samentropfen wurde ich erschaffen am Tage, da ich erschaffen wurde.
31. I. Goldziher (in a book review in ZDMG 57, 1903, 397) suggests a link
with the Babylonian Talmud Nidda 16b, where, amid a discussion of whether
sexual intercourse may take place in the daytime, the tale is told of how the angel
in charge of conception took a drop of sperm from a human and asked God: What
shall be the fate of this drop? But there is no overt connection with the line in
al-Samawal and no linguistic parallels.
32. M argoliouth, A Poem attributed to al-Samawal, Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society 38 (1906), 364.
33. History of the Jews of Arabia from Ancient Times to their Eclipse under Islam
(Columbia SC, 1988), 54. He substantiates this by pointing to references in the
Mishna to Arabian Jewry, but in the Mishna, and also in the Talmud, Arabia
generally means the region on the east bank of the Jordan and not faraway ijz
(see the comments and references in my The Jews of the Hijazin the Qurn and
in their Inscriptions, in G.S. Reynolds, ed., The Quran in its Historical Context 2
(London, Routledge, 2011), 92).
34. History of the Jews of Arabia from Ancient Times to their Eclipse under
Islam (Columbia SC, 1988), 56. To counter this he remarks that Kab was both a
Jewish poet and a transmitter of haggadic material, but he has muddled up Kab ibn
al-Ashraf (poet) and Kab al-Abr (Jewish sage).
522 ROBERT HOYLAND

Jewish poets speaks to the fact that they were not Jews or, at least, that
they were not very strong Jews, having been converted from paganism.35
This returns us to the question that I posed in my article on the
Jewish inscriptions of the Hijaz: Should we think in terms of, as Tor-
rey puts it, a genuine Hebrew stock linked with the learned centres in
the greater world outside Arabia and possessing a relatively high civi-
lization, or rather of a community mostly made up of Arab converts
substantially integrated within Arabian society and barely in touch with
non-Arabian Jewish communities, and possessing a relatively low level of
Jewish education? (p. 111). Newby would side with Torrey, but it has to
be said that the Arabian Jewish poetry that I have looked at in this article
supports the latter view. Yet the Quran does, as Newby rightly stresses,
presuppose a moderate degree of familiarity with Jewish tradition, espe-
cially exegetical narratives, among the Jews that Muhammad came into
contact with. We could assume that they represent two separate groups
from different societal backgrounds: Israel Friedlanders sons of the des-
ert, men of the sword, soldiers, warriors and nomads versus Hartwig
Hirschfelds peaceful palm-growers, craftsmen and traders who lived in
settled habitations.36 Or it may well be that this division is not as stark as
it is so often made out to be, and that those poets and not just Jewish
ones who play up their desert connections were much more plugged in
to wider settled society than their literary sentiments would suggest.37 To
provide answers to these questions we need, as Patricia Crone has recently
emphasized, to map the theological landscape of the Near East,38 but it
is also essential that we think in a more subtle and complex way about
the socio-landscape and the manner in which that intersects and interacts
with the theological landscape.

35. History of the Jews of Arabia from Ancient Times to their Eclipse under Islam
(Columbia SC, 1988), 140 n. 40 (note to p. 56). He does not name his antagonists,
but already Nldeke had noted the weakness of their attachment to their old
Jewish ways, though he did also emphasise that through their religion they were
sharply distinguished from the other Arabs and that their literary tradition always
gave them, as people of the Scripture, a significant spiritual advantage over the
tribes living around them (Die Gedichteder Juden in Arabien, in id., Beitrge zur
Kenntnis der Poesie der alten Araber, Hannover, 1864, 56).
36. Quoted by Newby, History of the Jews of Arabia from Ancient Times to their
Eclipse under Islam (Columbia SC, 1988), 50. Newby himself opines that there
were Jews who were pastoral nomads and there were urban, literate, powerful
Jews, but concerning the Jewish literary figures he simply says that their art and
values reflect the pastoral ideals of the pre-Islamic Arab poet without specifying
their social background or status (ibid., 55).
37. James Montgomery has expressed some interesting ideas in this vein in his
The Empty Hij in id., ed. Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the many to
the one: Essays in celebration of Richard M. Frank (Leuven, 2006), 37-97 (consider
his closing sentence: Arabic qada poetry is a necessary though by no means
sufficient condition for the miracle of an Arabic Qurn).
38. Angels versus Humans as Messengers of God: the view of the Qurnic
Pagans in P. Townsend and M. Vidas , eds. Revelation, Literature and Community
in Late Antiquity (Tbingen, 2011), 332.

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