أَفَرَأَيتُمُ اللّاتَ وَالعُزّىٰ, وَمَناةَ الثّالِثَةَ الأُخرىٰ
‘Have you considered al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, the third, the other?’
Qur'an 53:19–20.
Cf. Said Reynolds, G. & Quli Qarai, A. (2018). The Quran & The Bible. USA: Yale University. p. 787.
The story of how the young Salman Rushdie first came across, at Cambridge, the classic account of the so-called ‘Satanic Verses’, which ultimately inspired the novel (published in 1988), is rather interesting, and he sets it out in detail in his memoir Joseph Anton (2012).
Salman Rushdie was only 20 years old and wanted to take a course in Islamic history. A course was offered, but few showed any interest and it was cancelled. He was persistent, however, and managed to have a course offered in which he would be the only student. What I found especially interesting is that he was not in fact taught by an Orientalist or even by a historian of the Islamic world. The person who offered him the course was a medievalist named Arthur Hibbert.
The version of the story of the ‘satanic verses’ that Rushdie read first, I believe, was probably the account told by one of the earliest biographers of Muhammad, a man of Medina called Ibn Ishaq (d. 767). Read it here (from p. 165): https://archive.org/details/GuillaumeATheLifeOfMuhammad/page/n104/mode/1up
But this is a very early story. The satanic verses are known in the Islamic tradition as ‘The Story of the Gharānīq’ (قصة الغرانيق). It narrates the occasion on which Muhammad (d. 632 CE) mistook the whisperings of Satan for ‘divine revelation’. It is told that the satanic intrusions led Muhammad to utter verses in praise of the pagan idols of seventh-century Mecca, bringing him to acknowledge their powers of intercession before G-d. Several academic specialists in Islam think that the incident is the product of literary invention on the part of the earliest Muslim biographers and historians.
Against those who regard it as literary invention, most Western historians consider it substantially historical, by the same argument: it is implausible that Muslims should have invented an account so damaging to their prophet. So maintain Muir (Life of Mahomet, II, ch. 5, pp. 150–154), Watt (Muhammad at Mecca, pp. 103–104; Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, p. 61), Rodinson (Muhammad, p. 106), Peters (Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, SUNY, 1994, pp. 160–161), Guillaume (Islam, pp. 35–36) and the Iranian ʿAlī Dashtī (23 Years, pp. 31–32).
For example, here is a shorter version told by Ibn Ishaq's teacher, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 742), a revered Medinan scholar of Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad. Rushdie's real source for the story, however, was probably a book by the Scottish Orientalist William Montgomery Watt entitled Muhammad at Mecca. Watt's scholarship is famous (infamous to some) for its irenic approach, which promises to ‘say nothing that implies the rejection of any of the fundamental doctrines of Islam’.
Moreover, what does it mean to say that the incident of the ‘Satanic Verses’ appears in the Islamic tradition? It means that the historical Muslim sources that collect, transmit and preserve the cultural memories of the first Muslim community recorded and reported the incident of the ‘Satanic Verses’. We have at least 50 historical reports from the first 200 years of Islam (approximately 610–810 CE) that describe in detail the occasion on which Muhammad supposedly mistook the deception of Satan for the command of G-d, thereby altering the message of the Qur'an. These 50 or more reports are known as narrations (or رواية / riwāya in Arabic). The narration here is recorded in one of the oldest and most authoritative biographies of Muhammad, by one Ibn Ishaq, who died in 773 CE. The full text is available in English translation. (See Guillaume, A. (1955). The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Pakistan: Oxford University Press. pp. 165–167.) The narration is rather long, but a close reading shows the following perceptible narrative units and motifs. The remaining narrations have the same general contours as the one above, with notable changes in wording and some divergent narrations. These are not our concern here.
The reports of the incident of the satanic verses were recorded by virtually all of Muhammad's biographers in the first two centuries of Islam:
ʿUrwah b. al-Zubayr, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Musa b. ʿUqbah, Ibn Ishaq, Abu Mashʿar, Yunus b. Bukayr and al-Waqidi.
Similarly, in the first 200 years of Islam, the exegetes of the Qur'an recorded the incident:
Abu al-ʿAliyah, Saʿid b. Jubayr, Mujahid b. Jabr, Dahhak, ʿIkrimah, Muhammad b. Kaʿb, al-Hasan al-Basri, Qatadah, Abu Salih, ʿAtiyyah al-ʿAwfi al-Suddi, Kalbi, Muqatil, Ibn Jurayj, Maʿmar b. Rashid and Yahya al-Basri.
Six of them transmitted the incident on the authority of ʿAbd Allah Ibn ʿAbbas, with notable consistency. Ibn ʿAbbas was a close companion of Muhammad and a scholar.
A study of the history of transmission of the incident shows that it circulated widely and was reported, in the first two hundred years of Islam, in almost every major intellectual centre of the Islamic world, from the Hijaz to Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and North Africa. All the major cities of the Islamic world knew of the incident, and accepted it as true, in places such as Medina, Mecca, Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, Rayy, Balkh, Samarqand, Marw, Sanaa, Fustat and Qayrawan. This leads us to the next important question: why was an embarrassing incident accepted as true? To understand the reasons behind its early acceptance by Muslims, we need to understand why later Muslims rejected the satanic verses.
Later Muslims dismissed the incident as ‘spurious’ and theologically ‘abominable’ on the basis of two considerations: one, Muhammad was ‘protected by G-d’. He was, in their view, infallible and not prone to error in his delivery of the revelation. This, however, raises the question: why did the first Muslims transmit such a story if it was in fact a literary invention of a fertile imagination? Here we must understand that early Islamic memory (including the life of Muhammad) was preserved by three distinct discourses. That is to say, the earliest historical accounts of Islam and of the life of Muhammad fall into three different methods of preserving history, often at odds with one another. The three discourses are called Hadith, Sirah and Tafsir. The incident of the ‘Satanic Verses’ is reported in the genres of history-writing that fall under Sirah and Tafsir. The former describes the biography and life of Muhammad, while the latter is an exegesis or commentary on the Qur'an. The scholars of Sirah and Tafsir were not primarily concerned with establishing norms of religious law and praxis for Muslims, but sought to construct a narrative of the historical and moral epic of Muhammad's life in his heroic struggle to establish the divine religion. The Sirah, which contains many of the reports of the ‘Satanic Verses’, is not the only trace of the episode. The Hadith preserves a purged version: according to Ibn ʿAbbās, Muhammad prostrated himself on reciting sura 53, and with him ‘the Muslims, the idolaters, the jinn and men’ (al-Bukhārī); and according to Ibn Masʿūd, only one man refused and took a handful of earth to his forehead (al-Bukhārī, Muslim). None of those traditions explains why the idolaters prostrated themselves, when the sura, as it is read today, castigates their goddesses. For Uri Rubin, those abbreviated traditions are what remains of the original story of the temptation, converted into a harmless ritual anecdote; the old man who sincerely tried to join in (al-Walīd, in Ibn Isḥāq) became a mocking enemy (the Umayya ibn Khalaf of Ibn Masʿūd).
Popular pre-Islamic tradition worshipped three goddesses, regarded as ‘daughters of Ilah (Allah)’ [1], alongside many other tribal gods. The Qur'an rejects them outright in 53:21–23. Nevertheless, the early Muslims themselves relate that, as Muhammad was reciting verses 19–20 in Mecca, Satan placed on his tongue certain words that acknowledged them as intercessors:
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| Berlin, Staatsbibliothek: Wetzstein II 1913 folio 184v. |
أَفَرَءَيۡتُمُ ٱللَّٰتَ وَٱلۡعُزَّىٰ
وَمَنَوٰةَ ٱلثَّالِثَةَ ٱلۡأُخۡرَىٰۤ
‘Have you considered al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā,
and Manāt, the third, the other?’
They are recorded by the Islamic sources themselves, not by their adversaries. Biographies and commentaries of the first two centuries of Islam preserve them, with minor variants but with a constant core (al-gharānīq al-ʿulā and the mention of intercession with Allah). They are not, therefore, an external accusation, but a memory that the Muslim community kept of itself. The most widespread form runs:
تلكَ الغَرانيقُ العُلَى وإنَّ شفاعتَهُنَّ لتُرتَجى
(‘Those are the exalted gharānīq [divinities], whose intercession [with Allah] is surely to be hoped for.’) [2] [3]
The Qur'an as it is recited today preserves no trace of that phrase, and the irony is not slight: the very sura that opens by proclaiming that Muhammad ‘does not speak out of caprice’ and that his message ‘is nothing but an inspired revelation’ (53:3–4) is, according to his own biographers, the one that saw him speak for an instant with an alien voice. After naming Manāt, the canon passes without visible seam from the goddesses to the mockery of their filiation, and the satire reduces the ‘daughters of Allah’ to mere names that the idolaters and their fathers invented (53:23). That the fixed text has smoothed the join does not prevent the tradition from having preserved the stitch, and it was preserved precisely by the community that had the most to lose by it. The mockery, as the canon preserves it, runs thus:
أَلَكُمُ الذَّكَرُ وَلَهُ الأُنثَى (21) تِلْكَ إِذاً قِسْمَةٌ ضِيزَى (22)
‘Is the male for you and the female for Him? That would then be an unjust division.’
Cf. Said Reynolds, G. & Quli Qarai, A. (2018). The Quran & The Bible. USA: Yale University. p. 786.
These are called ‘The Satanic Verses’ (قصة الغرانيق). In modern times, Salman Rushdie has used only this term as the title of his fictional and unrelated ‘novel’, and this article does not analyse that modern tale. As for the original satanic verses, they refer to the goddess-idols, the triad of al-Lat (ٱللَّٰتَ-אללאת), Uzza (אלעזי-ٱلۡعُزَّىٰ) and Manat (מנאת-مَنَوٰةَ). These are the ‘Satanic Verses’; the subtext of the event is that Muhammad was retreating from his otherwise inflexible monotheism by saying that these goddesses were real and their intercession efficacious. The names of these three goddesses, venerated in different parts of Arabia, constituted the main core of the pre-Islamic pantheon of the inhabitants of Mecca, who called them ‘Daughters of G-d’. Al-Lāt (‘the goddess’) had her main sanctuary at Ta'if, where she was venerated in the form of a square rock, described as a block of white granite. Herodotus mentions her as ‘Alilat’ (Histories 1.131 and 3.8), and oaths were frequently sworn by her. Al-ʿUzzā (‘the most powerful’) had her main sanctuary at Nakhla, near Mecca: a sacred grove of three acacias (samura) with an enclosure built beside them. Manāt (‘fate’) was venerated at al-Mushallal, near Qudayd, on the Red Sea coast between Mecca and Medina, and her idol was a great black stone.
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| Amin, O. S. M. (2020). [Relief of the Arab goddess Al-Lat, Manat and al-Uzza of Hatra] [Image]. Iraq Museum. This relief carving depicts three women upon a standing and roaring lion. In the middle, Al-Lat (also Allat, Allatu and Alilat) wears a magnificent military costume and a cap on her head (similar to Athena). Her right arm holds a long spear while her left hand holds a shield. A Medusa appears on her breast. Al-Lat stands on both feet. She is flanked by two smaller female figures; both raise the right hand in greeting, while with the left they grasp and lift an elegant garment. They also stand on their left foot while their right foot is slightly relaxed, unlike Al-Lat. It is not known whether these women represent worshippers or the goddesses Manat and al-Uzza. From the fifth temple at Hatra, Nineveh Governorate, Iraq. Parthian period, first to third century CE. On display in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, Iraq. |
Hence, according to the Islamic tradition, when the angel Gabriel (Jibril) made Muhammad see his error and he retracted, declaring that such words had been inspired in him not by G-d but by Satan, according to the very doctrine of the substitution and abrogation of verses (sura 2:106) such a verse is annulled.
An authentic ‘divine revelation’ came to replace these two ‘demonic verses’ with the present verses 21–22. Nevertheless, certain Qur'anic passages (17:73–74 and 22:52), which read as follows:
وَإِن كَادُواْ لَيَفْتِنُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلَّذِى أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْكَ لِتَفْتَرِيَ عَلَيْنَا غَيْرَهُۥ ۖ وَإِذًا لَّٱتَّخَذُوكَ خَلِيلًا (73) وَلَوْلَا أَن ثَبَّتْنَاكَ لَقَدْ كِدتَّ تَرْكَنُ إِلَيْهِمْ شَيْـًٔا قَلِيلًا (74) إِذًا لَّأَذَقْنَكَ ضِعْفَ ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ وَضِعْفَ ٱلْمَمَاتِ ثُمَّ لَا تَجِدُ لَكَ عَلَيْنَا نَصِيرًا (75)
(17:73) And they were indeed about to tempt you (yaftinūnaka) away from what We have revealed to you (awḥaynā ilayka), that you might invent (taftariya) against Us something other; and in that case they would have taken you as an intimate friend (ḫalīlan). (17:74) And had We not made you firm and steadfast (ṯabbatnāka), you would have been about to incline towards them (tarkanu ilayhim) a little (shayʾan qalīlan). (17:75) Had that been so, We would have made you taste double (ḍiʿfa) the punishment in life and double in death; and then you would have found for yourself no helper (naṣīran) against Us.
وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِن قَبْلِكَ مِن رَّسُولٍ وَلَا نَبِيٍّ إلَّا إِذَا تَمَنَّىٰ أَلْقَى الشَّيْطَانُ فِي أُمْنِيَّتِهِ فَيَنسَخُ اللَّهُ مَا يُلْقِي الشَّيْطَانُ ثُمَّ يُحْكِمُ اللَّهُ آيَاتِهِ ۗ وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ
(22:52) And We sent no messenger (rasūlin) before you, nor any prophet (nabiyyin), but that, when he cherished a wish or desire (tamannā), Satan (al-shayṭānu) cast something into his wish (fī umniyyatihi); but God abrogates, effaces or annuls (yansaḫu) what Satan casts, and then God makes firm, secures or renders unequivocal (yuḥkimu) His verses or signs (āyātihi). For God is All-Knowing (ʿalīmun), Wise (ḥakīmun).
They appear to support the plausibility of this tradition, whose origin is distinctly Islamic; indeed, in sura 71:23 other names of gods are mentioned, as it reads:
وَقَالُوا۟ لَا تَذَرُنَّ ءَالِهَتَكُمۡ وَلَا تَذَرُنَّ وَدًّۭا وَلَا سُوَاعًۭا وَلَا يَغُوثَ وَيَعُوقَ وَنَسۡرًۭا
‘And they said [the notables]: “Do not abandon your gods, and do not abandon Wadd (Waddan), nor Suwāʿ (Suwāʿan), nor Yaghūth (Yaghūtha), nor Yaʿūq (Yaʿūqa), nor Nasr (Nasran).”’
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn describes the deities Wadd, Suwaʿ, Yaghuth, Yaʿuq and Nasr as names of idols worshipped by the people of Noah, on the basis of what verse 23 of that sura says. Some Muslim scholars argue that these are rather the names of the idols worshipped by the Arabs of the time of Muhammad. A tradition in the Talmud speaks of five temples of idol worship, one of which, located in ‘Arabia’ (though here the term applies to a broad area), is called (in Aramaic) Nishra-נשרא and is probably connected with the reference in this verse to ‘Nasr’ (meaning ‘eagle’), as mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Avodah Zarah 11b:
אמר רב חנן בר רב חסדא אמר רב, ואמרי לה [ויש אומרים] שאמר זאת רב חנן בר רבא אמר רב: חמשה בתי עבודה זרה קבועין הן, אלו הן: בית בל בבבל, בית נבו בעיר כורסי, תרעתא שבעיר מפג, צריפא שבאשקלון, נשרא שבערביא. כי אתא [כאשר בא] רב דימי מארץ ישראל לבבל אמר: הוסיפו עליהן את יריד שבעין בכי, נדבכה שבעכו. איכא דאמרי [יש שאומרים] שהיה שונה: נתברא שבעכו. רב דימי מנהרדעא מתני איפכא [היה שונה להיפך]: יריד שבעכו, נדבכה שבעין בכי.
§ Rav Chanan bar Rav Chisda said that Rav said, and some say that it was Rav Chanan bar Rava who said that Rav said: There are five fixed houses of idolatry, and these are they: the house of Bel in Babylon; the house of Nebo in the city of Khursi; Tar'ata in the city of Mapag; Tzerifa in Ashkelon; Nishra in Arabia. When Rav Dimi came from the Land of Israel to Babylon, he said: They added to them the fair at Ein Bekhi and Nadbekhe at Akko. There are those who say that he taught: Natbera at Akko. Rav Dimi of Neharde'a teaches the reverse: the fair at Akko and Nadbekhe at Ein Bekhi.
Gerald R. Hawting (Idea of Idolatry, 115) refers to a comment in the Syriac Doctrine of Addai of the fourth or fifth century that the ‘Arabs’ worship neshra (‘eagle’). See the Doctrine of Addai, 24.
The consequences did not escape the scholars. Alfred Guillaume admits that the episode opens the door to asking whether Muhammad might have been mistaken in believing other words of his to be inspired, and adds that the Qur'an itself acknowledges that this has been the possible fate of the prophets (22:52) (Guillaume, Islam [Penguin Books, reprinted edition 1990], pp. 35–36). Benjamin Walker relates that his adversaries raised the same doubt: if some verses had come from Satan, how could one know that the others had not? (Foundations of Islam, pp. 110–111). The Qur'anic reply was that Satan also interfered in the revelations of earlier prophets (22:52) and that what Muhammad taught was not the word of an accursed devil (81:25).
Muhammad HaShakan spoke in the name of Allah (G-d) and then admitted that he had in fact spoken the words of Satan; in the face of this, the Torah warns us about this kind of case:
Saʿadia Gaʾon, Tafsir on Deut. 18:20, in Isaac ben Abraham Maḥfūd, Torah with Targum, Tafsir and Rashi, vol. 5 (Deuteronomy), Yemen, 18th century, Ms. hebr. oct. 189, fol. 50r, Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
אַךְ הַנָּבִיא אֲשֶׁר יָזִיד לְדַבֵּר דָּבָר בִּשְׁמִי אֵת אֲשֶׁר לֹא-צִוִּיתִיו לְדַבֵּר וַאֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר בְּשֵׁם אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים וּמֵת הַנָּבִיא הַהוּא
‘But the prophet who wilfully presumes to speak a word in My name — that which I did not command him to speak — or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’
Parashat Shoftim, Sefer Devarim 18:20.
Maḥfūd, Torah with Targum, Tafsir and Rashi, fol. 50r,
ואי מתנבי תווקח פתקוול קולא עני. מא לם אמרה אן יקולה. ומן יתנבא למעבודאת אכר פליקתל דאליך אלמתנבי
תפסיר רס"ג, דברים יט שפטים ושטרים
وأيّ متنبّئ توقّحَ فتقوّلَ قولاً عنّي، ما لم آمره أن يقوله، ومن يتنبّأ لمعبودات أُخَر فليُقتل ذلك المتنبّئ‘And any prophet (mutanabbiʾ) who acts insolently and so fabricates a saying in My Name, which I did not command him to say, and whoever prophesies on behalf of other objects of worship, let that prophet be put to death.’
Muhammad prophesied in the name of idols, an error that he afterwards sought to amend by ascribing it to Satan. Subsequently Muhammad corrected and repudiated this idolatrous influence.
The Sunni justification, and the opinion of the RaMBaM and R. Yehudah HaLevi.
According to accounts preserved by al-Ṭabarī, al-Wāqidī and Ibn Saʿd, when Muhammad was reciting Sūrat al-Najm before an assembly of the notables of Quraysh — إجتماع كبار رجال مكة (ijtimāʿ kibār rijāl Makka, ‘meeting of the notables of Mecca’) — Satan is said to have cast upon his tongue a phrase that acknowledged al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā and Manāt. The sources express this fact with the formula:
أَلْقَى الشَّيْطَانُ فِي أُمَنِيَّتِهِ (alqā al-shayṭānu fī umaniyyatihi, ‘Satan cast something into his recitation’) or, in other versions, أَلْقَى الشَّيْطَانُ عَلَى لِسَانِهِ (alqā al-shayṭānu ʿalā lisānihi, ‘Satan cast something upon his tongue’).
He was possessed by impure spirits (إمتلكَته الارواح؛ lit. ‘the spirits took possession of him’); on hearing it, the notables of Quraysh rejoiced, for they understood that their divinities had been acknowledged. When Muhammad concluded the recitation of Sūrat al-Najm, he pronounced:
فَاسْجُدُوا لِلَّهِ وَاعْبُدُوا Fa-sjudū li-Llāhi wa-ʿbudū. (‘Prostrate yourselves before God and worship!’) (Q 53:62)
Then Muslims and idolaters prostrated themselves together. The news of that prostration reached, according to Ibn Isḥāq, al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Saʿd, the emigrants in Abyssinia, who believed Quraysh to have been converted, and some set out on the return journey. Ibn Saʿd and the version of Abū Maʿshar add that the notables replied that, if Muhammad conceded a share to their gods, they would follow him. Muir observed that this return, on account of that rumour, is a fact that all admit, and that the account of al-Wāqidī and al-Ṭabarī is the only intelligible explanation of it. That same evening, according to the tradition, Gabriel appeared before Muhammad and said to him:
يَا مُحَمَّدُ! مَاذَا صَنَعْتَ؟ لَقَدْ تَلَوْتَ عَلَى النَّاسِ مَا لَمْ آتِكَ بِهِ عَنِ اللَّهِ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ، وَقُلْتَ مَا لَمْ يُقَلْ لَكَ (‘O Muhammad! What have you done? You have recited to the people what I did not bring you from God, Mighty and Majestic, and you have said what was not said to you.’)
(Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1954), vol. 17, 186–188, commentary on Sūrat al-Ḥajj 22:52.)
Muhammad was grieved by the reprimand. The exegetical tradition afterwards linked the episode with Q 22:52:
وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِن قَبْلِكَ مِن رَّسُولٍ وَلَا نَبِيٍّ إِلَّا إِذَا تَمَنَّىٰ أَلْقَى الشَّيْطَانُ فِي أُمَنِيَّتِهِ ۖ فَيَنسَخُ اللَّهُ مَا يُلْقِي الشَّيْطَانُ ثُمَّ يُحْكِمُ اللَّهُ آيَاتِهِ ‘We sent no messenger or prophet before you but that, when he recited, Satan cast something into his recitation; but God abrogates what Satan casts, and then God makes His verses firm.’ (Q 22:52)
Later exegesis did not limit itself to transmitting the account. Al-Zamakhsharī, the Muʿtazilī commentator, narrates it in detail: he speaks of a desire to reconcile Quraysh, of a tongue that ran ahead without his noticing, and of a protection (ʿiṣma) that came to Muhammad only afterwards (Gätje, The Qur'an and its Exegesis, pp. 53–55). The Tafsir al-Jalālayn, among the most widely circulated in the Sunni world, gives it as the occasion for 22:52 and specifies that Satan cast the words onto his tongue without his knowing it.
In the face of such explanations as the Sunnis give of this text, in the Middle Ages, for example, the RaMBaM (Maimonides) regards Muhammad as a madman, as can be read in the Iggeret Teiman, where he refers to Muhammad under the epithet meshuga (משוגע, ‘madman’), as is read in ch. 15:
ודניאל סוף מה שספר מלכות ישמעאל ועמידת מחמד ואחריו ביאת הגואל בסמוך. וכן ישעיהו ביאר שהראיה על ביאת המשיח היא הראות משוגע
‘And Daniel, at the end of what he related, [speaks of] the kingdom of Ishmael and the rise of Muhammad, and after him the coming of the Redeemer soon thereafter. Likewise Isaiah made clear that the proof of the coming of the Messiah is the appearance of a madman…’
-Abraham S. Halkin, ed., Moses Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen: The Arabic Original and the Three Hebrew Versions (New York, 1952); cf. Hamdan Dammag, ‘The Epistle to Yemen: The National and Religious Inclination of the Philosopher Maimonides’, Tabayyun 5, no. 21 (summer 2017): 38.
We have explained this in detail in the article ‘Maimonides' Reading of the Qur'an: Muhammad as Prophet or as Madman?’
Furthermore, the Andalusian rabbi R. Yehudah HaLevi, in his work Sefer HaKuzari (ספר הכוזרי), also known by the name كتاب الرد والدليل في الدين الذليل (כתאב אלרד ואלדליל פי אלדין אלד'ליל — Kitab al-radd wa'l-dalil fi al-din al-dhalil: ‘The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion’), declares in Discourse Four, 11, that Muhammad was among the mutafalsifīn fī jānib Allāh (מתפלספין פי גאנב אללה; متفلسفين في جانب الله): ‘those who philosophise on the side of G-d’ (See: Muslims as Noahides? The Seven Laws of Noah in the Qur'an?)
Finally, the RaMBaM, despite having spoken well of the devotion of the Yishmaelim (Muslims), teaches that while Islam is part of G-d's plan to prepare the world for the Messianic age, Muhammad is not a prophet, as is read in the Yad ha-Chazaqah or Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim u-Milkhamot 11:7:
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" (ראה צפניה ג,ט). …and those of this Ishmaelite [Muhammad] who arose after him — are only to straighten the way for the King Messiah, and to repair the whole world to serve G-d together, as it is said: ‘For then will I turn to the peoples a pure speech, that they may all call upon the name of G-d, and serve Him with one consent’ (see Zephaniah 3:9).
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[1] After stressing that Muhammad was granted a full understanding of some of the most profound truths, the Qur'an draws our attention to certain symbols that men often choose to invest with divine qualities and powers: in this case, and by way of example, the blasphemous imagery of Muhammad's pagan contemporaries represented by the triad of Al-Lat, Al-Ussa and Manat. These three goddesses — whom the pagan Arabs held to be ‘daughters of god’, together with the angels (who were likewise considered feminine) — were worshipped in most of pre-Islamic Arabia, with several sanctuaries in the Hijaz and in Najd. The cult of Al-Lat was especially ancient and almost certainly originated in southern Arabia; she may have been the prototype of the Greek demigoddess Leto, one of the wives of Zeus, mother of Apollo and Artemis.
[2] הקוראן (HaKuran), translated from the Arabic (into Hebrew) by Uri Rubin, Tel Aviv University, La'Or ed., reads:
מה תחשבו על אללאת, אלעזי, (כ) ומנאת, האליל השלישי
‘What do you think of Allāt (אללאת, Allāt), al-ʿUzzā (אלעזי, al-ʿUzzā) (כ) and Manāt (ומנאת, Manāt), the third idol (האליל השלישי, ha-elil ha-shelishi)?’
Zvi Hayim explains in note number 1749 that these names are the names of the three female idols:
שמות שלוש אלילים נקבות, אשר פסיליהן נעבדו בהיכל הקאאבא לעת בוא מחמד ‘Names of three female idols, whose carved images (פסיליהן, pesilehen) were worshipped in the sanctuary (היכל, heikhal) of the Kaʿba at the time of Muhammad's coming.’
Cf. Reckendorf, Anonymous / Zvi Hayim Herman. ‘The Qur'an’ (הקוראן, ha-Qur'an) [original text in Hebrew]. Ben-Yehuda Project. 2012-05-13. https://benyehuda.org/read/1648 Cf. ‘Al-Qurʾān (אלקוראן, al-Qurʾān) or the Scripture (המקרא, ha-Miqra), translated (נעתק, neʿtaq) from the Arabic language (מלשון ערבית, mi-leshon ʿarvit) into the language (ללשון, le-lashon) [sic] and explained (ומבואר, u-mevoʾar) by Zvi Hayim Reckendorf (צבי חיים רעקענדארף, Tzvi Chayim Reʾkendarf). Germany, Wolfg[ang] Gerhard, 1857 [original text in Hebrew]’. p. 307.
[3] Gharānīq is the plural of ghurnūq, a long-necked white bird (crane or swan). According to the traditional explanation, the pagans compared their idols to those birds that rise into the sky, because they believed that they brought them closer to G-d and that they interceded on their behalf. The text of the phrase varies according to the transmitter. According to the compilation of al-Albānī (Naṣb al-Majānīq li-nasf qiṣṣat al-gharānīq, 3rd ed., Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1996) and that of the Mawsūʿa al-ḥadīthiyya of Dorar, the principal forms are: (a) the briefest, from Ibn ʿAbbās: أنهنَّ الغرانيقُ العُلى (‘They are the exalted gharānīq’), by three routes, all weak; (b) from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr (mursal): تلك الغَرانيقُ العُلى وشفاعتُهنَّ تُرتَجى (‘These are the exalted gharānīq, and their intercession [with Allah] is to be hoped for’), a form that is also attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās; (c) from Ibn ʿAbbās, according to al-ʿAynī (ʿUmdat al-qārī): تلْكَ الغرانيقُ العلى منْهَا الشَّفاعةُ تُرْتَجَى (‘These exalted gharānīq, from whom intercession [with Allah] is to be hoped for’); (d) the most widespread: تلكَ الغَرانيقُ العُلَى وإنَّ شفاعتَهُنَّ لتُرتَجى (‘…, and their intercession is indeed to be hoped for’), attributed, among others, to Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, to Ibn ʿAbbās and to Abū Bashīr al-Anṣārī (in Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī). There are, in addition, minor variants: Abū al-ʿĀliya adds ومثلُهنَّ لا يُنسى (‘and the likes of them are not forgotten’), al-Suddī uses shafāʿatuhā in the singular, and ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr the masculine: وإنَّهنَّ لمن الغرانيقِ العلَى ، وإنَّ شفاعتَهم لتُرتجَى (‘and they are indeed among the exalted gharānīq, and their [masc.] intercession is to be hoped for’). The variant of Qatāda ibn Diʿāma, with a sound chain as far as him but mursal or muʿḍal, reads:
إنَّ الآلهةَ التي تُدعَى ، إنَّ شفاعتَهنَّ لَتُرتَجى ، وإنها لَلغَرانيقُ العُلى (‘The gods who are invoked — their intercession [with Allah] is indeed to be hoped for, and they are the exalted gharānīq’).
In his account, Muhammad ‘desired’ that Allah should not censure the gods of the idolaters, and Satan then introduced those words. The expression إنَّ الآلهةَ التي تُدعَى has as its equivalent in Hebrew "האלים הנקראים" (ha-elim ha-niqra'im, ‘the gods who are called’), which would clearly imply an idolatrous verse. None of these versions appears in the Ṣaḥīḥ collections of al-Bukhārī or of Muslim, which transmit only the joint prostration on the recitation of sura 53 (according to Ibn ʿAbbās, that of ‘the Muslims, the idolaters, the jinn and men’). The phrase is transmitted in works of Sīra and Tafsīr, such as al-Ṭabarī's commentary on 22:52 (Jāmiʿ al-bayān, ed. al-Turkī, Hajr, vol. 16, pp. 603–604). Guillaume translates the phrase of Ibn Isḥāq as ‘whose intercession is approved’ (turtaḍā). Al-Ṭabarī gives that form on the authority of Ibn Isḥāq (Watt–McDonald, vol. 6, pp. 107–112) and turtajā on that of Abū Maʿshar, so that both readings are documented in the same work. For Ibn Saʿd, Haq's translation is vol. I, pp. 237–238.
