Rabbi Nathanael Al-Fayumi was a 12th century Jewish Yemenite rabbinic scholar who produced an ethical-philosophical treatise in Judeo-Arabic entitled "Bustan al-Ukul" ("Orchard of the Intellect" or as Rabbi Yosef Qafih titled it in Hebrew "Gan Sekhalim"). He was a man thoroughly versed in the science and philosophy of the day and in characterizing the intellectual culture of Yemenite Jewry of the era, Dr. David Levine in the introduction to his English translation (all English quotes here of the work are from his translation) protested that "under brighter political and social conditions the splendor of Jewish achievements in Moorish Spain might have been rivaled by that in South-western Arabia. But the sun of the Andalusian Jews failed to rise for their brethren in Yemen." (p. xii)
Al-Fayumi's theological work is perhaps best known for one very interesting claim concerning the founder of Islam. In the sixth chapter he shockingly asserts that Muhammed was a prophet. The idea is one that is radical and potentially dangerous to Judaism, insofar as it may lend credence to the idea that the Torah is not eternal and is subject to abrogation and replacement by the Quran. Al-Fayumi therefore exerted extra care in affirming the eternality of the Torah:
the Torah has not been abrogated and never will be... and that it will not be annulled or forgotten out of the mouths of the people as long as the heaven and the earth last; and furthermore this people will not be pierced through, will not be destroyed, will not disappear. (p. 97)
We shall not be exculpated before God if we forsake it [the Torah] and take upon ourselves another law merely because the nations deride our claim, saying, "For your good God has sent us a prophet who has abrogated your law." (p.103)Al-Fayumi suggests that while the Torah is eternal and confers extra merit upon the nation of Israel, that just as Hazal affirmed the existence of gentile prophets in the past, so too may there be gentile prophets in the current era, communicating religion unto mankind:
Know then my brother, that nothing prevents God from sending unto His world whomsoever He wishes, since the world of holiness sends forth emanations unceasingly from the light world to the coarse world to liberate the souls from the sea of matter - the world of nature - and from destruction in the flames of hell. Even before the revelation of the Law He sent prophets to the nations, as our Sages of blessed memory explain, "Seven prophets prophesied to the nations of the world before the giving of the Torah: Laban, Jethro, Balaam, Job, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar." And again after its revelation nothing prevented Him from sending to them whom He wished that the world might not remain without religion. (p. 104)One cannot help but hear Maimonides echoing a similar sentiment in H. Melakhim 11:11. While he certainly did not entertain or suggest the prophethood of Muhammed, he did see the advent of Islam and Christianity as a post-facto manifestation of the divine will:
מחשבות בורא עולם--אין כוח באדם להשיגם, כי לא דרכינו דרכיו ולא מחשבותינו מחשבותיו. וכל הדברים האלו של ישוע הנוצרי, ושל זה הישמעאלי שעמד אחריו--אינן אלא ליישר דרך למלך המשיח, ולתקן את העולם כולו לעבוד את ה' ביחד: שנאמר "כי אז אהפוך אל עמים, שפה ברורה, לקרוא כולם בשם ה', ולעובדו שכם אחד"
the thoughts of the Creator of the universe - are not within the power of man to grasp, for our ways are not His ways, nor are our thoughts, His thoughts. And all of these matters of Jesus the Nazarene, and of the Ishmaelite who arose after him -- they serve as nothing other than to straighten the path for the Messiah, and to rectify the entire world to serve God in unity: as it is said: 'For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve Him with one consent..'Here is the bulk of the discussion wherein Al-Fayumi concerns himself with the prophethood of Muhammed and Islamic claims of abrogation (p. 105-110):
The Koran mentions that God favored us, that He made us superior to all other men: "O children of Israel, remember my favor wherewith I showed favor unto you; and that to you above all creatures have I been bounteous;" and further, "I have made you excellent with a settled decree, it is not a rumor." He speaks after this manner in many verses and also to the effect that the Torah has not been abrogated. This contradicts what they assert because of the power they exercise over us, because of our weakness in their eyes, and because our succor has been cut off. And concerning that he said, "As in my presence, and declares true what is in my presence from the Torah, "And he says, "How will they submit to thy decision since they have the Torah wherein is the judgment of God?" The judgment of God shall never be forgotten. And it is further said, 'Thou shalt not find any change in the ordinance of God." He means the Torah. How can we change His tradition and His religion which Moses brought down? Our pious forefathers witnessed no change in God's tradition and religion received from Moses His messenger. Following in their footsteps we have made choice of it, and emulating their laudable qualities we cling fast to the Torah and the performance of its duties and precepts, for its exchange or alteration is forbidden. It is further said, "God desireth to declare these things unto you and direct you according to the ordinances of those who have gone before you." That indicates that Mohammed was a prophet to them but not to those who preceded them in the knowledge of God. And he said, "O People of the Book, He shall not accept a deed of you unless ye fulfill the Torah. "And again, "If there is any doubt concerning what I reveal unto thee, then ask those who received my Book before thou didst." This indicates that He would not have commanded him to ask concerning the Book had He annulled it. And if they say, "Lo, our Book abrogates your Book, just as your Book abrogates the Book of Abraham," we reply, "That is not true. On the contrary, we uphold the religion of our father Abraham, and especially circumcision which God made incumbent upon him, according to the passage, "For I know him, that he will command his sons and his house after him, etc.” When God sent Moses al-Kalim with the Torah to the children of Israel they were six hundred thousand. And God made incumbent upon them what He had made incumbent upon Abraham, but to those duties he added what the times required. But He did not annul the Law of Abraham. On the contrary, in a number of passages Moses al-Kalim calls upon God in His name and in the name of Isaac and Jacob... Similarly, when we argue with non-Jewish disputants in regard to the nullification of our Law, we give them a silencing reply: "What do you say about the Law received by Moses al-Kalim? What distinguishes it, ignorance or wisdom?" They must perforce answer not "ignorance" but "wisdom." This answer suffices, for wisdom is never altered, changed, abrogated or replaced by something else. God forbid that He should give a command at the hands of a prophet with signs, proofs, miracles and extraordinary manifestations in the heavens, and then should set about to abrogate and annul it. But it is His way to continually command whom He wishes and send whom He wishes to whomsoever He wishes, since all the worlds are His possession and in His grasp. A proof that He sends a prophet to every people according to their language is found in this passage of the Koran, "We sent a prophet only according to the language of His people." Consequently had He sent a prophet to us He would have surely been of our language, and again, had He been for us why did God say to him, 'Lo thou art one of the apostles sent to warn a people whose fathers I have not warned." He meant the people who served at-Lat and al-Uzzah. As for us, behold our fathers were not without warnings throughout an extended period, and likewise prophets did not fail them. But Mohammed's message was to a people whose fathers had not been warned and who had no Divine Law through which to be led aright, therefore he directed them to his law since they were in need of it. And as for other people they had something to lead them aright. It is not proper to contradict those who are of another religion since their irreligion and their punishment are not our concern but that of the Praised and Exalted One. But it is our duty to fear and reverence Him as He commanded us in the Law which He delivered to our prophets. Through it the covenant was assumed by them and by us, as we have pointed out in this treatise. Thus spoke one of the learned condemning the bigotry of the sects and their strife, "The teachings of bigotry shall not tyrannize forever, for knowledge has appeared in its stead and is spread broadcast. Take as proof the fact that the seekers of knowledge are going from strength to strength although the ignorant multitude are not cognizant of it." Since the Creator — blessed and exalted be He !—controls the record of all mankind according to which they receive their deserts. He brings to light their good and their evil deeds just as Holy Writ declares, "The end of the matter makes the whole thing understand : fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole duty of man. For every work God bringeth in judgment with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil."
No rabbinic thinker prior or since has made explicit a claim attesting to the prophethood of Muhammed. Indeed quite the opposite can be seen in the choice terms our forebears employed in describing the man. As Rabbi Qafih (Iggeros HaRambam, p. 22 note #36), Marc Shapiro (Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters, p. 151) and other scholars have noted, in Jewish communities Muhammed was known by the epithet "meshuggah" (madman). Such sentiments have been expressed by R. Sherira Gaon, R. Avraham b. Hiya, and others. The Rambam even went so far as to mockingly entitle him "pasul" (invalid, unfit) as a play on the Arabic honorific "rasul" (apostle) which oft followed his name in Islamic discourse. The claim of Muhammed's prophetic stature is one that appears to have otherwise been universally denied in rabbinic Judaism.
Rabbi Yosef Qafih produced a Hebrew translation of Al-Fayumi's work based on manuscripts his family preserved in Yemen. It is of note that his community is the only one that studied this document on a continuous basis throughout the centuries since the date of its composition. Accordingly, some credence ought be lent to the sentiments expressed by those who transmitted to us this work as an inheritance. In the introduction R. Qafih writes that the Jews of Yemen were subject to a very hostile social atmosphere and were daily provoked by Muslims trying to egg them into conversations leading either to their conversion or execution (in the footnotes he records many such occasions). The two main questions which the Muslims would try to trip the Jews up on were: a) Is the Torah eternal or is it void in light of a superseding revelation? and b) Was Muhammad a genuine prophet of God or a false prophet? R. Qafih basically argues that R. Nathanael Al-Fayumi in making such statements was attempting to provide apologetic material and ammunition intended to help preserve the Jews in a hostile environment. His intentions then in attesting to the prophethood of Muhammed were not at all prompted by ideological or philosophical conviction, or some kind of universalist ecumenicism or pluralism (as Dr. Shapiro suggests as precedent for Lord Jonathan Sacks' tact). Rather, he wanted to arm his coreligionists with answers that would enable them to face such charged theological inquiries and live to tell the tale. For those who would like to suggest that the condition of the Jewry in Yemen in his day was pleasant and thus we ought not consider his context an important lens through which to consider his sentiments, one need look no further than his own assessment of his own era:
The nations do revile us, treat us contemptuously and turn their hands against us, so that we stand among them in speechless terror as the sheep before the shearer. (Levine, p. 110)We detect here that the Jews of Yemen lived in fear and trepidation of enunciating anything that could possibly be construed as a criticism of Muhammed or Islam. Every word had to be tightly guarded and calculated so as to insure being able to live yet another day. When their oppressor lorded over them, they stood in "speechless terror" - a situation which Al-Fayumi in part sought to rectify. And if he were insufficiently clear in communicating the present danger against the Jews, in admiring the tenacity with which the Jews cleave to their ancestral faith he continues:
Had any other nations been visited with a tenth of a tenth, or even less of the misfortunes suffered by us from the remote past down to the very present, they would abandon whatever religious faith they posses, they would desert their sects at short notice.The era in which he lived was indeed one that proved to be increasingly turbulent. Shortly after R. Nathanael's death, his son R. Jacob in the capacity of Nagid of Yemenite Jewry wrote at the urging of a disciple of Maimonides (Solomon ha-Kohen) to him concerning the condition of Jewry there, which proved to serve as the pretext for Maimonides famous Iggereth Teiman in which he addresses the growing persecution and how the community ought respond. Additionally we know based on a letter by a Jewish woman of Aden that was preserved in the genizah that in 1198 (the Bustan was written around 1165) the Ayyubid sultan, Mu'izz al-Din Isma'il attempted to institute a forcible conversion of the Jews of Yemen, and decreed that those Jews who had prior outwardly converted to Islam and had since returned to the faith of their fathers were to be subject to death (see fn#8 of Yosef Tobi's Conversion to Islam among Yemenite Jews under Zaydi Rule).
The Bustan al-Ukul is a precious pearl, giving us insight into the religious and intellectual milieu of 12th c. Yemenite Jewry. As we saw in his Quranic proofs for the veracity and eternality of the Torah, wisdom is immutable and incorrigible. He therefore unhesitatingly incorporated and communicated ideas from outside of the Jewish canon insofar as they were understood to be repositories of human knowledge. This attitude is one that can be found amongst the writings of Hazal, and amplified in the Maimonidean tradition. It is one that would do well to emulate today. However concerning attestations to Muhammed's prophethood, we would do well to inform ourselves of the possible motives of his statements. Particularly in light of aggressive proselytizing tactics today, we cannot ignore the historical context and the tradition and sentiments of those who have preserved and transmitted the sefer down to us.
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