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18 Apostasy and Apostates Apostle and Apostlesnip

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

remained at Medina and -became Mohammedans. Later on Tha'labah ibn Saya, 'Usaid ibn Saya, and Asad ibn 'Ubaid yielded, fearing attack on the part of the prophet's men. A large number followed the example which had thus been set, and, when Khaibar was definitely taken, went over to the new faith. Among them was a woman, Raihanah, whom Mohammed at one time desired to marry. Most of these apostasies were due to force, very few to conviction (see Hirschfeld, " Revue des Etudes Arabic tradition knows also Juives," x. 10 et seq.). of an apostate Jew in Palmyra, Abu Ya'kub, who provided fictitious genealogies, and connected the Arabs with Biblical personages (Goldziher, " Muhammedanische Studien," i. 178). In the ninth century mention is made of Sind ibn 'Ali al-Yahudi, court In the same astrologer of the calif Al-Ma'mun. century lived Ali ibn Rabban al-Tabari, author of a work on medicine; as his name implies, the son of a rabbi, which fact, however, did not prevent him from joining the dominant church. Another Jew, however, Isma'il ibn Fadad (Spain?, eleventh century), was more steadfast. Ibn Hazm, author of the "Kitab al-Milal wal-Nihal," had, indeed, persuaded him of the truth of Islam, but he refused to apostatize since " apostasy was a disgraceful thing" ("Z. D. M. G." xlii. 617). In the twelfth century many enlightened Jews joined Islam, partly owing, as Grata thinks (" Gesch. der Juden," vi. 303; Englished., iii. 441), to the degeneracy that had taken hold of Eastern Judaism, manifesting itself in the most superstitious practises, and partly moved by the wonderful success of the Arabs in becoming a world-power. Among these Apostates that occupied a prominent position was Nathaniel Abu al-Barakat Hibat Allah ibn 'Ali of

Bagdad,

Among En-

physician, his

philosopher,

and

philologist.

many admirers was Isaac, the son of Abraham ibn Ezra, who dedicated to him, in 1143, a poem expressing the

lightened wish that he might live to see the Apostates Messianic redemption in the risen Jeruto Islam, salem. Both Isaac ibn Ezra and Hibat Allah, his wealthy benefactor, became Moslems twenty years later. Another apostate of this time was Abu Nasr Samuel ibn Judah ibn Abbas (Samuel of Morocco), the rabbi and liturgical poet of Fez, author of the " Ifham al- Yahud. " Samuel makes the curious statement ("Monatsschrift," xlii. 260) that most of the Karaites had gone over to Islam, because their system is free from all the absurdities of the Rabbinites, and their theology not so different from that of the

Mohammedans. The statement is, however, ungrounded. Some of the Jewish sects, however, that arose in the Mohammedan East went perilously near to the point where all distinction between them and Islam would be wiped out. Shahrastani, at least, speaks of one such

sect,

the 'Isawiyyah, that ac-

knowledged the prophecy of Mohammed, but held that it referred only to the Arabs; and this is corroborated by other authorities (Shahrastani, translated by Haarbrucker, i. 254, ii. 421; "Monatsschrift," 1885, p. 139; "Z. D. M. G." xlii. 619). The year 1142 brought a great crisis to the J ews in southwestern Europe. The rise of the Almohades

(

Almuwahhidin

18

= Unitarians)

in

northern Africa

and the great wave of religious reform, mixed with religious fanaticism, which swept over Fez and into southern Spain, left them in most cases no choice but

Many submitted to the adoption of Islam or death. and in a touching communication to his unfortunate brethren, sent in 1160 by

outward conversion



Maimun ben

Joseph, the father of Maimonides, he exhorts his brethren to remain firm in Outward their faith, and advises those that have Conyielded to encourage one another as versions to far as possible in the observance of the

The letter is directed Jews in Fez (Simmons, "Jew. Quart. Rev." ii. 62 et seq.). Then the Jewish

Islam.

rites.

especially to the

controversy arose whether such as had publicly professed belief in Mohammed were any longer Jews or not. One rabbi denied it, insisting that since death was preferable to Apostasy, the prayer and religious observance of the forced convert had no merit whatsoever. This view is sharply criticized in a treatise ascribed to Moses Maimonides, the genuineness of which, though maintained by Geiger, Munk, and Grata, has been convincingly refuted by M. Friedlander ("Guide of the Perplexed," i., xvii., xxxiii., et seq.), in which Islam is declared to be simply a belief in Mohammed, and that Islam is not idolatry, to avoid which only the Law demands the sacrifice of

life.

Abraham

ibn Sahl, a Spanish poet of the thirteenth century, was, however, distrusted by his new coreligionists, who did not believe that his conversion

was

sincere.

Among

the Apostates that followed in the footsteps of Samuel ibn Abbas, denouncing their ancestral religion while pleading for the Islamic faith, are mentioned: 'Abd-al-Hakk al-Islami, in Mauritania, in the fourteenth century, who published a work proving the validity of Mohammed's prophecy from passages of the Bible which he quotes in the

Hebrew language

(Steinschneider, "Polem. Lit." p.

125) Abu Zakkariyah Yahya ibn Ibrahim b. Omar al-Rakili, who wrote, about 1405, "Tayit al-Millah,"

work against the Jews, wherein passages from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Koran a

are quoted

(ib.

pp. 34,

83).

The frenzy of the Shabbethaian movement ended in many Jews assuming the turban, the symbol of Islamism. To these belonged as leaders: Shabbethai Zebi; Nehemiah Cohen Guidon, the sultan's physician Daniel Israel Bonafoux, and finally Berakyah, son of Jacob Zebi Querido, regarded as successor of Shabbethai Zebi, who with his hundreds of followers founded a Jewish-Turkish sect still existing under the name of Donmeh. The bloody persecution of the Jews during the Damascus affair in 1840 caused Moses Abulafia to yield and assume the turban in order to escape further torture. In general it may be said that the Apostates to Islam exhibited no great animosity toward their former brethren. Those that went over to the side of Ishmael never forgot that he and Isaac were both sons of Abraham; and the reason for this is probably to be found in the tolerance which Mohammedans almost universally showed to the Jews. K. G.



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