- In 610 CE, after years of torturous oppression
by the Byzantine Christians,
the Jews of the Arabian Peninsula were living
in relative safety as respected craftsmen,
metalworkers, and jewelers.
At the same time, in a cave near Mecca,
Muhammad, the founder of Islam
claimed he had received regulatory visions.
Visions that indirectly would impact Jewish life,
for better and for worse, forever.
Muhammad ibn Abdullah was born in 570
in the Arabian town of Mecca.
He had a difficult childhood.
His father died before he was born
and he lost his mother when he was only six.
So he was ultimately raised by an uncle,
a merchant who taught Muhammad many tricks of the trade.
Muhammad learned quickly.
And by the time he was a teenager,
he had earned the nickname El Amin,
the one you can trust.
As he grew older,
Muhammad became aware of the moral deficiency
of his fellow Meccans.
They worshiped idols,
neglected women in the poor and were materialistic.
He was increasingly disturbed by this reality
and began to spend more and more time alone,
meditating and fasting.
According to Muslim tradition,
it was during this period that Muhammad received
a life-changing revelation
in the form of the angel Gabriel.
Gabriel commanded Muhammad to spread the belief in one God,
or Allah, in Arabic,
and recite divine verses that would eventually be included
in the Qur'an, Islam's central religious text.
Three years later,
Muhammad set out to share his vision.
But while the minority Jews and Christians
believed in a singular God,
most of the surrounding Arabs were polytheists and did not.
This didn't deter Muhammad, however.
In the beginning, he managed to convert around 40 people
in spite of opposition
from the merchants of Mecca who's trade
depended on the city's pagan rights
and religious sites.
In 622, an assassination threat forced Muhammad
and his small band of followers,
known as "the companions" or "believers" to flee to Medina,
a city almost 300 miles away.
The people of Medina responded more favorably
to Muhammad's message,
perhaps because of their contact
with the many monotheistic Jewish tribes
who had lived in the region for generations.
Muhammad believed in the same attributes of God,
the Jews did, and even adopted many Jewish customs.
He and his followers prayed toward Jerusalem,
fasted on the Jewish day of atonement,
and adhered to dietary laws that shared striking resemblance
to Judaism's dietary laws, Kashrut.
He also adopted the Jewish ritual of circumcision.
Muhammad assumed that because of these similarities,
the Jews would look favorably upon Islam
and be willing converts, but he was wrong.
The Jews put up a strong resistance
to Muhammad's claims of prophecy.
For starters, Muhammad claimed to be a prophet centuries
after the end of the Jewish era of prophecy.
Malachi, the last Jewish prophet
had died some 1000 years earlier,
and according to Jewish tradition,
the seal of prophecy was only to be reopened when the Jews
were able to return to their spiritual center of Jerusalem
at the end of days.
It was also unacceptable to the Jews
that Muhammad viewed Jesus as a prophet.
In addition to conflicting religious beliefs,
the Jews were concerned that, like Jesus,
Muhammad would be deify,
and they would once again experience terrible persecution.
As time went on, relations devolved further.
Muhammad and his believers levied accusations
of treachery against the Jews,
and they fought and massacred many.
When they laid siege on the forts
of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza,
all of the men were beheaded,
and the women and children enslaved.
Who survived?
The few who agreed to convert.
Muhammad reportedly said, had only 10 Jews
or 10 rabbis followed me,
every single Jew on earth would have followed me.
In 628, Muhammad's now 700 followers attacked Khaibar,
the largest Jewish community of the Arabian Peninsula
and burned down their date palm groves,
destroying their main source of livelihood.
The Jews were then forced to surrender
and give up 50% of their harvest as a form of taxation.
This tax, known as the Jizya Tax, was a means of humiliation
and discrimination that would endure for centuries
in Islamic law.
After his death, Muhammad's followers
continued to conquer the Middle East,
both militarily and ideologically.
Within 10 years, they conquered the Land of Israel,
then known as Palestine,
Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia.
They advanced across North Africa, and in 711,
conquered Spain.
By the middle of the eighth century,
90% of the world's Jews were living under Muslim rule.
In Islam, the Jews had a new adversary,
but no generalizations can be made about Jewish life
under Islamic rule.
It was as varied as the rulers that rained.
Although Jews were allowed to practice their religion,
they were always treated legally as second class citizens,
officially designated dhimmi status,
and subject to strict rules.
If the Jews kept their heads down
and paid the heavy annual tax,
they could generally live without fear of forced conversion,
massacre, or expulsion.
And while the system occasionally broke down,
this relative freedom enabled the flourishing
of Jewish thought and set the stage
for some of Judaism's most influential scholars
and philosophers.
- Up next, 200 years later,
one man in Egypt saves the Jewish people
from splitting in two.