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Muḥammad ibn Maslama's Role in the Assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2021
Abstract
Muḥammad ibn Maslama was a prominent companion of the Prophet Muḥammad who belonged to the Ḥāritha clan of the Medinan tribe of Aws. He played a key role in the events leading to the defeat of the three Jewish tribes of Medina and participated in the assassination of the Jewish leader Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf. Muḥammad ibn Maslama was connected to the Jews in various ways, as is evident, for example, from accounts claiming that he was Kaʿb's maternal nephew, and that his clan, the Banū Ḥāritha, lived in the predominantly Jewish oasis of Khaybar for nearly a year in the pre-Islamic period. Muḥammad ibn Maslama's role in Kaʿb's assassination has recently been argued to be of dubious historicity. This article offers a reassessment of this conclusion by placing the accounts of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's ties with the Jews, on the one hand, and those that depict him as their enemy, on the other, in the broader context of the change in the attitudes of some of the Anṣār towards the Jews during the Prophet's Medinan period. It argues that this change of attitudes is an attested historical pattern and, accordingly, that the fact of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's participation in the assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf can be deemed reliable.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society
Footnotes
I am grateful to Michael Cook and Michael Lecker for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.
References
1 On Kaʿb's assassination, see Kister, M. J., “The Market of the Prophet”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 8 (1965), pp. 272–276CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rubin, Uri, “The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, Oriens 32 (1990), pp. 65–71Google Scholar; Lecker, Michael, “Wāqidī's Account on the Status of the Jews of Medina: A Study of a Combined Report”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54, no. 1 (1996), pp. 15–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lecker, Michael, Muḥammad and the Jews (Jerusalem, 2014), pp. 87–112Google Scholar (in Hebrew).
2 He may have become a client of the ʿAbd al-Ashhal as a result of a struggle between them and his own clan, the Ḥāritha. For more on this struggle, see al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ al-wafā bi-akhbār dār al-Muṣṭafā, (ed.) Qāsim al-Sāmarrāʾī (London and Jedda, 2001), i, p. 346. See also William Montgomery Watt, Muḥammad at Medina (Oxford, 1956), pp. 160–161.
3 Note the accounts that claim that he was tax collector also during the Prophet's lifetime; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, (ed.) Muḥibb al-Dīn Abū Saʿīd ʿAlī ibn Gharāma (Beirut, 1998), lv, p. 270.
4 On Muḥammad ibn Maslama, see Lecker, Muḥammad and the Jews, pp. 96–97; Cook, Michael, “Muḥammad's Deputies in Medina”, al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 23 (2015), pp. 28–29Google Scholar.
5 Roohi, Ehsan, “The Murder of the Jewish Chieftain Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf: A Re-examination”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31, no. 1 (2021), pp. 103–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar (published online in October 2020).
6 Ibid., p. 110.
7 Ibid., “The independent reports we possess concerning the inclinations of Kaʿb's murderers towards Judaism are apparently contradictory to the bitter hostility they purport to show against the Jews in the story of Kaʿb's assassination”. See also page 120: “Lasting into the Islamic period, Ibn Maslama's Jewish affiliation appears irreconcilable with his purported implacable opposition to the well-known Jewish chieftains. It all points to the conclusion that the ubiquitous presence of Ibn Maslama in the heroic struggles with the leading Arabian Jews is nothing but a literary topos”.
8 Cf. Ibn Maslama's refusal to convert to Judaism in a conversation which allegedly took place between him and the Jews of the Banū l-Naḍīr before the Prophet's arrival in Medina; al-Wāqidī, Kitāb al-maghāzī, (ed.) Marsden Jones (Beirut, 1984), i, p. 367. See also Uri Rubin, “Ḥanīfiyya and the Kaʿba: An Inquiry into the Arabian Pre-Islamic Background of dīn Ibrāhīm”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990), p. 88.
9 See Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, (ed.) ʿAbd Allāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta (Beirut, 2002), iv, p. 275.
10 See Lecker, Muḥammad and the Jews, pp. 110–111; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, (ed.) ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bāz, Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, and Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb (Cairo, n.d.), vii, p. 338: li-anna Abā Nāʾila akhūhu min al-riḍāʿa wa-Muḥammad ibn Maslama ibn ukhtihi. Compare Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, (ed.) ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar (Cairo, 2001), iii, p. 408, where Muḥammad ibn Maslama's mother is said to have been from the tribe of Khazraj.
11 Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, vii, pp. 338, 339; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, I.2, (ed.) Yūsuf al-Marʿashlī, Bibliotheca Islamica, 28a/2 (Beirut, 2008), p. 935; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh, (ed.) Abū l-Fidāʾ ʿAbd Allāh al-Qāḍī (Beirut, 1987), ii, p. 39. Cf. Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, p. 107.
12 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, iii, p. 408.
13 On the Banū Zaʿūrāʾ, see Lecker, Michael, “Muḥammad at Medina: A Geographical Approach”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 (1985), pp. 44–46Google Scholar.
14 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, x, p. 316; Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, pp. 114–115 (read Thubayta instead of Thabīta; see al-Dāraquṭnī, al-Muʾtalif wal-mukhtalif, [ed.] Muwaffaq ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir [Beirut, 1986], pp. 211–212, who also provides several variants of her name). Other sources claim that he wanted to marry her (see al-Suhaylī, al-Rawḍ al-unuf fī tafsīr al-Sīra al-nabawiyya li-Ibn Hishām, [ed.] ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Wakīl [Cairo, 1967], vi, p. 434), but do not say that they were in fact married. See also Ibn Qudāma, al-Istibṣār fī nasab al-ṣaḥāba min al-anṣār, (ed.) ʿAlī Nuwayhiḍ (Beirut, 1972), p. 226, where it is said that Muḥammad ibn Maslama used to “chase after her in order to take a look at her when he wanted to marry her”: wa-hiya llatī kāna Muḥammad ibn Maslama yuṭāriduhā li-yanẓurahā ḥīna arāda nikāḥahā. Cf. al-Dāraquṭnī, al-Muʾtalif wal-mukhtalif, p. 211: fa-jaʿala yuṭāriduhā bi-baṣarihi, i.e. he merely followed her with his eyes as she passed by. Note also that Thubayta is not reported to have borne any children to Muḥammad ibn Maslama, and that she is not listed among the wives that he is reported to have had in Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, iii, pp. 408–409.
15 That al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Khalīfa may have been a former Jew is evident, for instance, from claims in the sources that he used to visit the synagogue; see Lecker, Michael, Muslims, Jews and Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina (Leiden, 1995; reprint Piscataway, 2017), pp. 41–42Google Scholar. Al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Khalīfa was reportedly also one of the individuals who “are said to have been gravely concerned at the fate of Qurayẓah”. See Watt, Muḥammad at Medina, p. 214.
16 See Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba fī tamyīz al-ṣaḥāba, (ed.) ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ (Beirut, 1995), iii, p. 384; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Tamhīd li-mā fī l-Muwaṭṭaʾ min al-maʿānī wa-l-asānīd ([Rabat], 1980), x, pp. 226–227. One account concerning al-Ḍaḥḥak's daughter and Muḥammad ibn Maslama (see note 14 above) claims that the latter was at his house (fī dārihi), looking at her while she was on a flat roof (ijjār), thus further suggesting that the two were neighbours. See Ibn al-Qaṭṭān al-Fāsī, Iḥkām al-naẓar fī aḥkām al-naẓar bi-ḥāssat al-baṣar, (ed.) Idrīs al-Ṣamadī (Damascus, 2012), pp. 473–474.
17 Lecker, Michael, “Zayd B. Thābit, ‘a Jew with Two Sidelocks’: Judaism and Literacy in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib)”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56, no. 4 (1997), p. 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, p. 116.
18 Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ al-wafā, i, p. 346. Roohi takes this to indicate that Muḥammad ibn Maslama lived in Khaybar, but there is no explicit evidence for this in the sources. See Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, p. 122; see also p. 118, n. 112.
19 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, x, p. 305; Michael Lecker, “Were There Female Relatives of the Prophet Muḥammad among the Besieged Qurayẓa?”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 136, no. 2 (April–June 2016), p. 399, n. 12. It is perhaps no accident that Umm ʿAlī and Abū Nāʾila's brother, Salama ibn Salāma ibn Waqsh, is reported to have asked Saʿd ibn Muʿādh to show mercy to his allies, the Banū Qurayẓa; see al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, ii, p. 511 (wa-qāla Salama ibn Salāma ibn Waqsh: yā Abā ʿAmr aḥsin fī mawālīka wa-ḥulafāʾika).
20 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, x, p. 303.
21 The work has been attributed to Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), but this attribution is wrong. Regarding this work, see Delfina Serrano Ruano, “Al-Imāma wa-l-siyāsa, ‘On Legitimate Political Leadership and Governance’”, in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, volume 1 (600–900), (ed.) David Thomas and Barbara Roggema (Leiden, 2009), pp. 741–742, and the references given there.
22 Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, pp. 110–111. Roohi refers to this account several times throughout the article; see pages 115, 118, and 120. The account that claims that Muḥammad ibn Maslama was Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf's maternal nephew is not mentioned in Roohi's article.
23 Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imāma wal-siyāsa, (ed.) Ṭāhā Muḥammad Zaynī (Cairo, 1967), i, p. 53: wa-dhanbī ilā Muḥammad ibn Maslama annī qataltu akhāhu yawm Khaybar: Marḥab al-Yahūdī.
24 The implication being that Muḥammad ibn Maslama would rather have exacted vengeance himself. See, e.g. al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, ii, p. 655.
25 Al-Iskāfī, al-Miʿyār wa-l-muwāzana, (ed.) Muḥammad Bāqir al-Maḥmūdī (Beirut, 1981), p. 108: wa-ammā Muḥammad ibn Maslama fa-dhanbī ilayhi annī qataltu qātil akhīhi Marḥaban yawm Khaybar. See also al-Ṭūsī, Kitāb al-amālī, (ed.) Baharād al-Jaʿfarī and ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī (Tehran, 2001), p. 991, where this statement is attributed to ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir: wa-ammā Muḥammad ibn Maslama fa-dhanbuka ilayhi annaka qatalta qātil akhīhi Marḥaban (“As for Muḥammad ibn Maslama, your crime against him is that you killed his brother's killer, Marḥab”).
26 See al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, ii, pp. 645, 700.
27 Ibn Kathīr, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, (ed.) Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Wāḥid (Beirut, 1976), iii, pp. 356–357; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, xlii, p. 105.
28 Ibn Shabba, Taʾrīkh al-Madīna al-munawwara, (ed.) Fahīm Muḥammad Shaltūt (n.p, n.d.), ii, pp. 466–467. The accounts that claim that Maḥmūd ibn Maslama was killed by a Quraẓī woman confuse him with Khallād ibn Suwayd of the tribe of Khazraj; al-Bayhaqī, al-Sunan al-ṣaghīr, (ed.) ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Amīn Qalʿajī, (Karachi, 1989), iii, p. 386.
29 Al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, ii, pp. 656–658.
30 Ibid., ii, pp. 655–656. See also the version according to which ʿAlī captured Marḥab and handed him over to Muḥammad ibn Maslama, who killed him; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, xlii, p. 123. The conflicting accounts of Marḥab's death are also discussed in Buhl, Frants, Das Leben Muhammeds, (trans.) Schaeder, Hans Heinrich (Heidelberg, 1955), p. 293, n. 84Google Scholar.
31 Cf. Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, p. 119: “The story of Kaʿb's assassination, as is related by the sources, does not fit into the context, and the Jewish affiliations of the supposed assassins render their involvement in the murder of a Jewish nobleman very implausible”.
32 Regarding this expedition, see Harald Motzki, “The Murder of Ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq: On the Origin and Reliability of Some Maghāzī-Reports”, in The Biography of Muḥammad: The Issue of the Sources, (ed.) Harald Motzki (Leiden, 2000), pp. 170–239.
33 See Lecker, Michael, “ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm al-Anṣārī and Qurʾān 2,256: ‘No Compulsion Is There in Religion’”, Oriens 35 (1996), p. 64Google Scholar, who also argues that in the context of this sentence, umm (“mother”) should not be taken to mean biological mother. See also Motzki, “Murder of Ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq”, p. 209.
34 Some accounts also claim that he was sent to Khaybar beforehand to collect intelligence for this expedition; al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, ii, p. 566.
35 Al-Rūyānī, Baḥr al-madhhab fī furūʿ al-madhhab al-Shāfiʿī, (ed.) Ṭāriq Fatḥī al-Sayyid (Beirut, 2015), iii, p. 105; vii, p. 117; Ibn Shabba, Taʾrīkh al-Madīna, i, p. 179. I am currently preparing a separate study on the alternative identifications of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rawāḥa's mother.
36 See Michael Lecker, “The Assassination of the Jewish Merchant Ibn Sunayna According to an Authentic Family Account”, in The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, (ed.) Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh, and Joas Wagemakers (Leiden, 2011), p. 188: “Muḥayṣṣa was acting against his own interest (and that of his brother) by killing a business partner and benefactor”. For the vocalisation of the brothers’ names, see ibid., p. 183, n. 6.
37 Watt, Muḥammad at Medina, p. 15; Yaara Perlman, “The Assassination of the Jewish Poetess ʿAṣmāʾ bint Marwān”, Peʿamim 132 (Summer 2012), p. 157 (in Hebrew).
38 He is reported to have embraced Islam at an unspecified point; see Ibn Ḥajar, Iṣāba, i, p. 563. Some accounts claim that the Prophet granted him all the domestic animals of Khaybar or, alternatively, only the domestic animals in the Naṭāt fortress (al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, ii, p. 700), and others ascribe to him a verse which was recited concerning Naṭāt during this expedition (Ibn Ḥajar, Iṣāba, i, p. 563). Although these accounts might suggest that Jabal ibn Jawwāl switched his loyalties and became an ardent supporter of the Prophet, it may actually be that they confuse him with Ibn Luqaym al-ʿAbsī, who presumably was also a member of the tribe of Ghaṭafān. See Ibn Hishām, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya li-Ibn Hishām, (ed.) Muṣṭafā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, and ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ al-Shalabī (Cairo, 1955), ii, pp. 340–341.
39 Ibn Hishām, Sīra, ii, p. 273; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, vii, p. 415.
40 Meter: al-wāfir. For the meaning of the sentence qidr al-qawm ḥāmiya tafūru, see Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, p. 652: “The people's cooking-pot is hot, boiling: meaning the people are mighty, strong, or invincible, and vehemently impetuous in valour”.
41 See Lecker, Muḥammad and the Jews, pp. 77–78.
42 For the manner in which the contradictions in the accounts of Kaʿb's assassination can contribute to our understanding of this event, see Lecker, “Wāqidī's Account”, pp. 28–29: “[I]t must be emphasized regarding Islamic historiography in general and the sīra literature in particular that a thorough analysis of the disparate and, at times, conflicting evidence concerning the assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf will no doubt provide a sound foundation for historical reconstruction of this event. Of course, the details will have differing degrees of probability—an aspect of the study of early Islam which modern researchers have to accept and tolerate. Paradoxically, contradictions in our sources have their benefits. They not only highlight the matters which the early Islamic community considered worth disputing, but they often provide us with information which, because it is shared by otherwise conflicting sources, has a strong claim to historical veracity”.
43 On the role of family traditions in the accounts of Kaʿb's assassination, see ibid.; Lecker, Muḥammad and the Jews, pp. 100–110. Several other accounts of assassinations of Jews during the Prophet's Medinan period were likewise family traditions, such as some of the accounts concerning the assassinations of ʿAṣmāʾ bint Marwān (see Perlman, “ʿAṣmāʾ bint Marwān”), of Ibn Sunayna (see Lecker, “Ibn Sunayna”), and of Sallām ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq (see Motzki, “Murder of Ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq”).
44 Roohi quotes one of Harald Motzki's conclusions from his study on the assassination of Sallām ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq, according to which “[i]t does not make sense to assume that someone would have invented such a story at a time when many eyewitnesses of the Prophet's Medinan period were still alive”. Roohi then argues that “if this was the case for the murder of Ibn Abī al-Ḥuqayq, one cannot hold the same opinion as to the story of Kaʿb's murder. For such a view overlooks the works of contemporary propagandists whose major tasks were to distort the historical truths in favour of the fervent supporters of the caliphal system, conceal their faults and magnify their achievements. This happened to Ibn Maslama, who remained steadfastly loyal to ʿUmar and ʿUthmān”. See Roohi, “Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, p. 123. Note, however, that some of the assassins of Sallām ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq were likewise supporters of the caliphal system, and specifically of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. Thus, one of the assassins of Sallām ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAtīk, is said to have died in the battle of Yamāma, but according to another opinion, he fought on ʿAlī's side in the battle of Ṣiffīn (Ibn Ḥajar, Iṣāba, iv, p. 144). Another assassin, Abū Qatāda, reportedly participated in all of ʿAlī's wars and served as one of his governors over Mecca (ibid., vii, p. 274; Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, Taʾrīkh Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, [ed.] Akram Ḍiyāʾ al-ʿUmarī [Riyadh, 1985], p. 201). It is also noteworthy that al-Aswad ibn Khuzāʿī and Masʿūd ibn Sinān, two clients of the Banū Salima who were likewise involved in the assassination, both accompanied ʿAlī to Yemen on an expedition which the latter headed during the Prophet's lifetime (al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, iii, pp. 1079–1080. See also Ibn Ḥajar, Iṣāba, i, p. 223, where rajul mudajjaj [رجل مدجج ] should be corrected to rajul min Madhḥij [رجل من مذحج ]). In a similar vein, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAtīk and Abū Qatāda were reportedly granted various responsibilities during ʿAlī's expedition to destroy al-Fals, which was an idol worshipped by the tribe of Ṭayyiʾ (al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, iii, p. 988). The accounts of the assassinations of Sallām ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq and Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf are not free from political interests and tendentious claims. However, this should not lead us to cast doubt on the details upon which they largely agree, namely the general outline of the events and the identities of their participants.