The Death of a Prophet. Stephen J. Shoemaker
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the possibility that, as the text seems to suggest, it is the prophet who conquers the land. Inasmuch as God raised up this Ishmaelite prophet for the purpose of delivering the Jews from the Romans, it seems implicit that the prophet was to achieve this divine mission by leading the conquest of the land himself.
Indeed, the reading that it is the prophet, rather than God, who conquers the land seems highly preferable here, as is confirmed by the other witnesses to this seventh-century Jewish apocalypse, all of which preserve a memory of the Ishmaelite prophet, rather than God, as the one who conquers the land. For example, a fragment preserving the opening section of The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn survives among the Cairo Geniza texts, and according to this version, “He raises over them a crazy prophet, possessed by a spirit, and he conquers the land for them [
Other closely related sources convey a similar understanding of Muhammad’s role in the conquest of Palestine, namely, the Ten Kings Midrash and The Prayer of Rabbi Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai, both of which seem to have drawn independently on the now lost seventh-century apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn.35 Judging from the historical figures identified in the Ten Kings Midrash, it is roughly contemporary with The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn, placing its composition sometime not long after the reign of al-Walīd II (d. 744).36 And while the Ten Kings Midrash appears to have also made direct use of this older apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai, there is no mention in the Ten Kings Midrash of God raising up an Ishmaelite prophet, and the original Ishmaelite “messianism” of this source has been slightly rearranged. Nevertheless, the relevant section concludes with the following prediction concerning Muhammad. “At the beginning of his dominion, when he goes forth, he will seek to do harm to Israel, but great men of Israel will join with him and give him a wife from among them, and there will be peace between him and Israel. He will conquer all the kingdom and come to Jerusalem and bow down there and make war with the Edomites and they will flee before him and he will seize the kingship by force and then he will die.”37 The indication that Muhammad led the conquest of Palestine and would die only afterward is unambiguously clear here, confirming what we have seen in the Doctrina Iacobi and The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn, but the notice that he would actually come to Jerusalem to “bow down there” is otherwise unprecedented to my knowledge. Nevertheless, this feature would appear to comport with the exalted status of Jerusalem in earliest Islam, as is further discussed in the final chapter.
Likewise, The Prayer of Rabbi Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai, a more recent text dating from the time of the First Crusade, also describes Muhammad as leading the invasion of Palestine. Although The Prayer of Rabbi Shimʿōn has transformed the relevant prophecy so that it relates to the events of the Crusades, its words clearly echo both the Cairo and Munich versions of The Secrets, noting that “a crazy man possessed by a spirit arises and speaks lies about the Holy One, blessed be He, and he conquers the land, and there is enmity between them and the sons of Esau.”38 While the Ishmaelite prophet is here portrayed in strongly negative terms, this leader, originally Muhammad one must assume, is said to conquer the land. Thus, despite the change of historical context, The Prayer of Rabbi Shimʿōn has reused this older tradition of the Ishmaelite prophet’s conquest of Palestine, applying it unchanged to the new circumstances presented by the Crusades.
The persistence of this particular theme, Muhammad’s conquest of the land, across all of these sources, despite their heavy revisions to this prophecy, rather strongly suggests that this was an original feature of the earlier seventh-century apocalypse on which they have all drawn. Although each has altered the originally positive, messianic assessment of Muhammad and his religious movement that was present in their now lost source, their convergence in reporting Muhammad’s leadership of the Arab invasion of Palestine seems to confirm that this feature was a primitive element of this near contemporary apocalyptic vision of the Islamic conquests. Thus, this complex of texts bears witness to a tradition of Muhammad’s continued vitality and leadership during the invasion of Palestine within the context of Jewish messianic expectations, seemingly recorded, like the Doctrina Iacobi, close to the time of the Arab conquests themselves. It is an impressive convergence on this point, which appears to reflect a very early memory from the Palestinian Jewish community of Muhammad’s leadership during the invasion of Palestine.
It is somewhat difficult to assess the quality of this witness according to Hoyland’s criteria, particularly in light of its apocalyptic genre. On the one hand, the source of its information is identified as the angel Metatron, and it presents the Ishmaelite prophet’s invasion of Palestine within a totalizing narrative of Israel’s deliverance at the hands of this prophet and his followers. On the other hand, it would appear that this notice, despite its obvious literary conventions, originated within a context that was either very close to or perhaps even inside the primitive Islamic community itself. The early Jewish apocalyptic vision of the Islamic conquest that has been collectively adopted by these later texts clearly seems to have anticipated Jewish redemption through the invading Ishmaelites and their prophet. The seventh-century Jewish group that produced the original apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn at a time close to the events of the Arab conquest themselves appears to have placed its faith in the “Islamic” prophet and the early caliphs as deliverers raised up by God. In its acceptance of Muhammad’s divine guidance, the apocalypse thus seems to reflect a viewpoint that in some sense is that of an insider.
While this perspective is perhaps difficult to comprehend in light of the confessional boundaries that have long since separated Islam and Judaism, recent research into Islamic origins has revealed that such divisions were likely not as important during Islam’s first decades. The apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn is itself important evidence of the early Islamic community’s openness to other monotheist confessions, and it would seem that it preserves the visionary hopes of a Jewish group that joined cause with the invading Arabs and the message of their prophet, whom they saw as their liberator. There are in fact strong indications that Islam’s sacred geography originally focused not on Mecca and the Ḥijāz, but instead on Jerusalem and Palestine, which Muhammad’s earliest followers seem to have regarded as the promised land of their inheritance, a holy land rightfully belonging to Abraham’s descendants, Jews and Arabs alike. The Islamic invasion of the Holy Land thus seems to have been conceived at least in part as the liberation of the Abrahamic patrimony from Roman rule and oppression, an undertaking that would have aligned the Arab cause with Jewish apocalyptic hopes.
Consequently, one would imagine that this apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn reflects the perspective of a Jewish group that was sympathetic to, if not even allied with, the invading Arabs and their prophet. Its prediction that this prophet would lead the conquest of the Holy Land thus seems to reflect the perspective of contemporary eyewitnesses who themselves had some experience of the invasion and early Islamic rule over Jerusalem. Whatever the precise nature of the community behind this text may have been, it clearly describes the invading Arabs and their prophet in positive terms, as divinely appointed agents of deliverance. The sharp dissonance of this favorable assessment of Muhammad and his devotees with later Jewish attitudes toward Islam speaks not only to the antiquity of the source itself; this quality also diminishes the possibility that Muhammad’s participation in the conquests was contrived to serve some polemical purpose. To the contrary, it is extremely difficult to envision a later Jewish redactor inventing the idea of Muhammad’s divinely appointed liberation of the Holy Land. It is instead much easier to understand such sentiments as reflecting the impressions of contemporary Jews whose apocalyptic expectations aligned them, at least for