Isra'iliyat

In hadith studies, Isra'iliyyat (اسرائیلیات "of the Israelites") is the body of narratives originating from Jewish and Christian traditions, rather than from other well-accepted sources that quote the Islamic prophet Muhammad. These narratives are found mainly in works of Qur'anic commentaries and history compilations. They contain information about earlier prophets mentioned in the Bible and the Qur'an, stories about the ancient Israelites, and fables allegedly or actually taken from Jewish sources.

Muslim scholars generally classify the narratives of the Isra'iliyyat into three categories:

Often included under the designation Isra’iliyyat are qisas al-anbiya or ‘tales of the prophets.’ These tales have been divided into the following three categories by Tilman Nagel: 1) legends about the creation, 2) legends about the prophets, 3) stories of the “Israelite people and their rulers from the death of Moses to their entry into the promised land” or, Isra’iliyyat.

The term Isra’iliyyat was originally a descriptive term without any larger tags indicating legitimacy or illegitimacy. Marc Bernstein asserts that Isra’iliyyat was encouraged or at least condoned among Muslim scholars through the Umayyad and early Abbasid period. The acceptance of Isra’iliyyat traditions may have been strengthened by a widely known hadith cited by al-Shafi’i stating that the Prophet said, “Narrate [traditions] from the Children of Israel for there is nothing objectionable in that.” Despite the early acceptance of Isra’iliyyat stories and traditions, the term came to have a negative, even pejorative connotation. Toward the end of the eighth century and the period of canonization, “the ulama (religious scholars) began to forbid the transmission of traditions that were considered to be of foreign origin.” Despite such prohibition many of the stories held wide popular appeal. Because such stories were largely not relevant to Islamic law (al-shari’ah), they were not subjected to focused elimination by authorities, and thus remained ubiquitous in folk culture.

There is no clear evidence regarding the exact manner by which biblical and Talmudic themes entered Islamic literature. Arabic sources indicate a number of individuals who converted to Islam from Judaism among the first generations of Muslims and were transmitters of Isra’iliyyat. These include such names as Ka’b al-Ahbar and Abd Allah b. Salam. Some sources also suggest that “Muslims studied with practicing Jews,” though the nature and extent of such coeducation is not clear. Biblical events and exegetical commentaries of Jewish origin may also have entered Islamic tradition via educated Christians of Eastern churches such as those of Abyssinia and/or through various local populations of Jews in the Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.

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