Kaʿb al-Ahbār

Kaʿb al-Ahbār ( Arabic كعب الأحبار, DMG Kaʿb al-Aḥbār ; † between 652 and 655 in Homs ) was a Yemeni Jew who converted to Islam during the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Chattab , worked as an exegete and appears in traditional Islamic literature as a transmitter of Jewish and ancient South Arabian legends.

Life

Information about Ka'b's life is sparse. He came to Medina at the time of ʿUmar's caliphate , became his advisor and accompanied the caliph when he took possession of Jerusalem for the Muslims in 638 . In various reports that at-Tabarī narrates, it is told how Kaʿb showed the caliph the holy places in the city and interpreted the Islamic conquest of the city for propaganda purposes as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies. He is also said to have been the one who gave ʿUmar the honorable surname al-Fārūq . This title was used in Jewish circles at the time in connection with the Messiah. The close relationship with the caliph seems to have continued even afterwards. According to a report at at-Tabarī, the Kaʿb predicted it would occur three days before ʿUmar's death.

Even during the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan , Kaʿb still seems to have played an important political role. When ascetic circles in Syria accused the caliph of self-enrichment, Ka'b is said to have defended him. This earned him a physical and verbal attack by the Prophet's companion Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī , in which his Jewish origin was also discussed. After this incident, Muawiya tried to bring Ka'b to Damascus as his adviser , but nothing is known about this Syrian phase of his life.

Koran exegesis

As part of his Koran exegesis, Kaʿb introduced numerous legends and narrative motifs from the Talmud and Midrash into Islam. In connection with the third sura ( Āl ʿImrān ), verse 96, he ascribed to the Kaaba a role in cosmogony similar to that of Jerusalem in Jewish legends: at the beginning, forty years before the creation of heaven and earth the Kaaba was the foam over the water; from her then God would have spread the earth. The idea of ​​the “well-kept tablet” ( lauḥ maḥfuẓ ), which is linked to a passage in the Koran ( Sura 85 : 22), probably goes back to Kaʿb. It is a kind of heavenly original table that should already contain all of earthly events. Whenever God wants to produce something, Ka'b taught, He commands his pen to write on this board. He then lowers the tablet to Isrāfīl , a mighty angel whose body extends from heaven to hell. Isrāfīl then reads the tablet and transmits the divine commands to the archangel Michael, who in turn has a myriad of other angels at his disposal who then implement the divine commands in the world. This is how God controls what is going on in the world.

Kaʿb as a Jewish witness for Muhammad's prophethood

Kaʿb al-Ahbār served early on among Muslims as a witness that the Jewish writings foretold Muhammad's coming. A story quoted by Muhammad ibn Saʿd in his Tabaqāt work reports that Kaʿb was once asked why he first converted to Islam under the Caliphate of Umar. He then said that in his youth his father had given him a book that he had compiled from the Torah . However, he kept all other Jewish books under lock and key and under oath forbade him to read them. It was only after the death of Muhammad that he decided to break the oath he had given his father and study the books. In it he found a description of the Prophet and his community that led him to accept Islam. This legend earned Ka'b a reputation for being in possession of a secret Jewish book lore that confirmed Muhammad's claim to prophecy.

ĀUmāra ibn Wathīma al-Fārisī, who wrote the first Qisas al- Anbiyāʾ work in the 9th century, cites a story in Kaʿb's name according to which God commissioned the angel Gabriel to do so at the beginning of time, even before he created Adam to receive the light of Muhammad from the place of his grave, which at that time was the lightest place in the whole world. This light was then kneaded into a white pearl with the water from two paradise springs and placed in Adam's body after the creation of Adam, in order to be passed on from generation to generation and only to take on human form with the appearance of Muhammad. This narrative of Muhammad's preexistence was taken over in many later Arabic works and was further developed there.

The negative Kaʿb image

However, Kaʿb was also accused early on of attempting to secretly introduce Jewish customs and ideas into Islam. There is a report in at-Tabari, according to which he had tried to get the caliph ʿUmar to set up the prayer place in Jerusalem at the back of the Temple Mount so that the Muslims would have prayed towards the rock when they prayed in Mecca. Umar is said to have seen through this attempt to turn the rock worshiped by the Jews into the Qibla of the Muslims and therefore relocated the prayer area to the front area of ​​the Ḥaram . After scholars such as Ibn Kathīr later branded stories of biblical origin as Isrā'īlīyāt alien to Islam , the legends traced back to Kaʿb al-Ahbār were viewed much more critically.

In the course of the conflict with the modern state of Israel, the attitude of Arab scholars towards Kaʿb has intensified even further. Mahmūd Abū Rayya, a disciple of Rashīd Ridā , has even gone so far as to accuse Kaʿb of a conspiracy against Islam and to call him the first Zionist in a 1946 article . Because of this polemic, Abd Alfatah Twakkal saw himself called upon in his master's thesis, submitted to McGill University in 2007 , to rehabilitate Kaʿb al-Ahbār as a traditionalist.

literature

• Heribert Busse : ʿOmar b. al-Ḫaṭṭāb in Jerusalem. in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984) 73-119.
• B. Chapira: Legendes bibliques attributes à Kaʿb al-Ahbâr . in Revue des etudes juives 69 (1919) 86-107; 70 (1920) 37-43.
• Moshe Perlmann: A Legendary Story of Ka'b al-Ahbār's Conversion to Islam. in: The Joshua Starr Memorial Volume . New York 1953. pp. 85-99.
• M. Schmitz: Art. Kaʿb al-Aḥbār in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. IV, pp. 316b-317a.
• Abd Alfatah Twakkal: Ka'b al-Ahbār and the Isrā'īliyyat in the Tafsīr Literature . MA thesis, McGill University 2007. Available online here: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/QMM/TC-QMM-18763.pdf
• Israel Wolfensohn: Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and his position in the Ḥadīṯ and in the Islamic legend literature. Gelnhausen 1933.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Busse 91.
2. ↑ See Patricia Crone et al. Michael Cook: Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World. Cambridge 1977. p. 5.
3. ↑ See Schmitz 316b.
4. ↑ See AJ Cameron: Abû Dharr al-Ghifârî: an examination of his image in the hagiography of Islam. London 1982. pp. 62-120.
5. ↑ See also Tilman Nagel: Mohammed. Life and legend. Munich 2008. p. 19.
6. ↑ Cf. al-Qazwini: The miracles of heaven and earth, translated from Arabic and edited by Alma Giese. Stuttgart 1986. pp. 67f. and Twakkal 35-43.
7. ↑ See Perlmann.
8. ↑ Cf. Marion Holmes Katz: The birth of the prophet Muhammad: devotional piety in Sunni Islam. London 2009. pp. 15-24.
9. ↑ See Busse 84f.
10. ↑ Cf. G. Vajda: Art. Isrāʾīlīyāt in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. IV, pp. 211b-212b.
11. ↑ Mahmūd Abū Rayya: "Ka'b al-Aḥbār, huwa ṣ-ṣahyūnī l-awwal." in al-Risāla 14 (1946): 360-363, cited above. at Twakkal 102.