Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/23

 POWER OP THE JEWS.

Janab as a great family of the Jews, This fact is further known of the Jews in Khaibar with whom he fought in the 7th year. The Banu Nadhir are supposed to be referred to in Quran, lix. 2. They are there described as so powerful that the Muslims despaired of their conquest, and the fastnesses which they possessed would have banished thoughts of a capture, if as Muhammad with probable exaggeration expresses it, they themselves had not destroyed their houses with their own hands, or if, as Abulieda with greater historical probability asserts, they, fearing a long siege, had not withdrawn themselves and turned to quieter regions. The want of settled civil life, which continued in Arabia till the rule of Muhammad, was very favourable to the Jews, who had fled to that country in large numbers after the Destruction of Jerusalem, inasmuch as it enabled them to gather together and to maintain their independence. A century before Muhammad, this independence had reached such a pitch that among the Himyarites the Jewish ruler actually had jurisdiction over those who were not Jews ; and it was only the mistaken zeal of the last Jewish Governor, Dim Nawas, which led him to a cruel attempt to suppress other creeds (which attempt is pictured for us with the very colours of a martyrologist), that brought about the fall of the Jewish throne by the coming of the Christian Abyssinian King. 4 Although it seems to me altogether improbable that the passage in Quran Ixxxv. 4 refers to this event, partly because of the indefiniteness of the allusion and partly because on this supposition the Christians are called " the believers," 5 which is never the case elsewhere, though as a rule Muhammad's treatment