نصوص أدبيّة: ENA 2541.1

الوصف

"The Tale of the [Jewish] Companions of Muḥammad" also known as "The Tale of Baḥira." Relating how 10 Jewish sages, somehow related to a stylite named Baḥira, made a subterfuge of joining themselves to Muḥammad but actually sought to corrupt the Quran in order to protect the Jewish people. They allegedly included a secret acrostic within the Quran that reads כך יעצו חכמי ישראל לאלם הרשע ("Thus did the wise men of Israel counsel the dumb wicked man," אלם being a reference to Isaiah 56:10.) The fabricated Quranic verses that spell out this phrase are listed on verso. The 10 sages are named, including characters well-known from Islamic literature (e.g., Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and the father of Muḥammad's Jewish concubine Ṣafiyya) and characters that are not otherwise attested and have quite unusual epithets (e.g., al-Munhazim ilā l-Janna). Information in part from Krisztina Szilagyi's description on FGP. See also the (faulty) edition in J. Leveen, "Mohammed and His Jewish Companions," The Jewish Quarterly Review , Apr., 1926, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Apr., 1926), pp. 399- 406. ASE