Demographics and History of Medina eps 27/ Jew Origin tangent

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala Rasulillah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. Amma ba'd. So last Wednesday we had talked about the blessings of Medina or the city of Yathrib and the fada'il, the ahadith, the specialities that Allah Azza wa Jal and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam have mentioned about the city of Medina. Today we're going to continue on. And talk about the demographics of Medina. Who lived there and can we have any population estimate? The demographics of Medina. We all know that there were two major ethnic groups living in Medina. The Jewish tribes and the Arab tribes. So the first question we need to ask ourselves, where did these Jews come from? What are they doing in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula? And then the second question, which Arabs are these? How are they related to the other Arabs? And what is the relationship between the Yahud and the Arabs in Yathrib, in Medina? Realize, before we even begin, that this issue is a very politicized, very... polemical one. It causes a lot of debate. And that is because the accusation that non-Muslims give of our religion, amongst many other accusations, one of them is that it is anti-Semitic. And anti-Semitic means that the accusation is the religion is racist against the Jewish people. And that the Prophet ﷺ had certain inclinations to disregard the Jewish people or to treat them in a negative manner. This is the accusation, right? And the way that the three Jewish tribes were treated, the Banu Quraidah, the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nazir, the way that these three Jewish tribes were treated one after the other, this is their basis for this accusation. Okay? So this is a very sensitive topic. And it is one that whenever, if you ever give da'wah to... Non-Muslims, eventually this comes up. Number of things, the process of marrying multiple women, the age of Aisha, and then one of the most important things, how he dealt with the Yahudi tribes. So when we talk about it in this context, especially in North America, we need to understand clearly what happened. without being apologetic by now all of you know me that inshallah you have no doubt inshallah I'm not an apologetic I'm not an apologist what is an apologist? somebody who wishes to water down Islam and make it compatible or palatable to all the enemies of Islam I don't care what people criticize Islam if it is true we will have to defend it and we have to believe it and if it's not true then we tell them it's not true right? so if they say that you guys do XYZ XYZ is what we do we say yes we do this whether you like it or not this is our religion you Right? And if they lie about us, then we say, no, this is not true. And if it is true, then we also have to explain. So, did the Prophet ﷺ have multiple wives? Yes, he did. Then we need to explain the rationale. There's wisdom behind it. And in explaining this, we are not watering Islam down. We're simply defending and we're simply explaining that people should not be critical. So, this is one of those topics. I'm just talking about it for the first time. But do realize that throughout the next few weeks and the next few years, because the Madani Sira is three times the Makki Sira, inshallah, if Allah gives us life, we'll continue this. I will have to go into a lot of detail into these Jewish relationships because it is important for American Muslims to be aware of the details of what happened, some of which sound politically very incorrect and some of which have no problems with. Our basis is not political correctness. Our basis, did the Prophet ﷺ do it? If he did, what is the wisdom? That's what our methodology is going to be. So before we even go on this tangent, today we need to discuss a very important question that will contextualize the rest of this dimension. And that is, where did these Jews come from? And what are our sources for the stories about the Prophet ﷺ and the Jews? Now realize, one of the biggest problems that we face is that non-Islamic sources, have no mention of these Jewish people at all. So the only reference we have to these tribes is from within the Islamic tradition. As of yet, we have not discovered any history, any chronicle that mentions the tribes in Medina. Now, there are references to Jews in Arabia, in other sources. But from the Islamic sources, We get all of the details. Now, this is considered problematic by non-Muslims. For us, it doesn't really matter that much. By non-Muslims, it's considered problematic. Why? They say, these sources are biased. They all have an agenda. And what is the agenda to defend the Prophet ﷺ, no matter at what cost? Because they're all Muslims, so they're not gonna be fair and balanced. That's only one network. is fair and balanced right otherwise the muslims can never be fair and balanced right because according to them they will have this bias to defend the prophet so we'll never know the full story anybody who opposes the process and according to them will be painted in a negative light and can you believe there are articles that i have read myself that defend abdullah ibn abu ibn salool as being a noble man as being a leader. Why? Because, again, the point is anybody who opposes the process of Moses painted negatively, he must have been a good person. So they flip the entire narrative around. And they make the leader of the munafiqeen the real true gentleman and nobleman of Medina. And the same applies to the other stories as well. So we need to be very cautious and careful about how we're going to interpret the sources. We begin by saying there are a number of theories about where these Jewish tribes came from. Some of these theories were simply said by the early scholars and some are propounded by later scholars. The first theory is that these tribes were sent by the Prophet Musa alayhi salam himself. That the Prophet Musa alayhi salam sent a small group... to the land of Hijaz. Why? Because he knew that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ would come from that land and so he wanted a group of his followers to believe in him and welcome him. This is a theory that one finds in... early Islamic sources, and Allah Azza wa Jalla knows best, it does seem a bit strange to be honest. And it doesn't seem very sound. Why would Musa alayhi salam send some of his followers when he is the prophet of that time, and the people should remain with him? And he knows that there's going to be another prophet, Isa, between him and the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and Allah knows, but he probably knew that the other prophet will come after a long time. And that's over 2-3 thousand years. Allahu'alam, this is one theory that some Muslims have. Another theory, which seems more reasonable, and this actually might have some references in non-Islamic sources as we'll mention. Another theory is that the Jews of Medina settled in Medina after they were expelled from Jerusalem. Now, let's pause here. Everyone should know that once upon a time, Sulaiman, once Sulaiman was the king, and Sulaiman was the prophet, all the of course were in Jerusalem. Obviously that is very true, we don't deny this. It's obvious, they were there. And Sulaiman had built the big temple, the, he had built the big temple of Sulaiman. Now, over the course of the next hundreds and thousands of years, the power of that state collapsed, The Romans became in charge and then the Christians and at times even the Persian emperor was in charge of Jerusalem. So over the course of the next 1,500 years until Umar ibn al-Khattab conquered Jerusalem, Jerusalem was in between many different people. It was controlled by pagan Romans. Pagan Romans, they hated the Christians as well. It was controlled by the Persians at times and at times it was controlled by Christian Romans. So different groups had controlled it. Now, There were two major expulsions of the Jews. And according to the majority of scholars of Islam, it is these two expulsions that are mentioned in the Quran in Surah Al-Isra. If you read the first page of Surah Al-Isra, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions two expulsions and two punishments sent upon them. The majority of Quranic scholars consider these two to have been the ancient two of the past. And I should just add as a footnote, some modern scholars of the Qur'an, and I don't, I haven't really studied and I don't have an opinion myself, some modern scholars say that this reference in Surah Al-Isra is to a future event and not a past one. And if you understand Surah Al-Isra, this changes the whole dynamics of what the Surah is talking about, right? And that is a tangent that is not relevant to this class. But there is a new group of scholars that is saying, Surah Al-Isra... is not history, it is prophecy. Surah Al-Isra is not the past, it is the future. And that changes the entire dynamics if you understand the surah and what is being mentioned. But that is one theory. The majority of scholars in our history have always understood Surah Al-Isra as being history. I.e. the two expulsions. What are these two expulsions? The first expulsion... took place in 587 BC, before the Christian era. 587 BC. And this was when Nebuchadnezzar, who was an evil tyrant rule, Bukhtanasar in Arabic, Nebuchadnezzar surrounded Jerusalem, and for the first time in the history of the Jewish Empire, destroyed the Haykal of Sulaiman, the original Haykal. The actual temple that Sulaiman had built, and this was considered to be one of the wonders of the world. Why? Because the jinn built it, obviously. It was a structure the likes of which man had never seen. It was massive and beautiful, it was a feat of architecture, it was considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You might have heard of the seven wonders of the ancient world, seven, if you like, creations of man that were just unparalleled. One of them was reputed to be... Reputed to be the haikal of Sulaiman. And of course we as Muslims, we believe the reason why was because he had the jinn building him. Allah says in the Quran, right, that the jinn are banna'in wa ghowas, right? That they were banna', architects and ghowas, diving deep into the water to get what they needed. So they're doing things in the water. What did they get from the water? What pearls? What beautiful exquisite treasures? And Banat, they're building structures. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that Sulaiman was given this. So the Haykal of Sulaiman was an amazing structure that stood solid for four or five hundred years, untouched. And then Allah azza wa jal will that. The first of the destructions occur. And this is, as I said, in 587 BC. And this was when the original temple was destroyed. This temple, when it was destroyed, it was the first time the Jews had to flee. It is called the Diaspora. And the Jews are known throughout history for having many diasporas. They call themselves the Wandering People. The Wandering Peoples. Why? Because since that time, they've never had a unified land up until as we know 1947. So they have always been in different lands. That was the beginning, the first diaspora. And it was at that diaspora that large groups left for many lands. We know for a fact they went, the majority of them went to Iran. And they stayed there for many decades or hundreds of years until finally King Cyrus allowed them to come back. And so many of them came and many of them remained. And Iranian Jews therefore are considered to be of the most ancient of the Jews. And there are plenty still in the world. If you go to Los Angeles, there is a whole area of Iranian Jews over there. An entire area over there where you can see their restaurants and their stores and what not. And they're well known. This is perhaps one of the largest groups of Jews in the Middle East before the creation of Israel. That was in Iran. So that's one area they went. Also they went to areas of Iraq. And we know that Iraq had a lot of Jews in the time of the Umayyads. Early Umayyads was full of Jews. Baghdad as well. Kufa and Baghdad. Where did they come from this first diaspora? It is also said that some went to Yemen. But it appears that the majority of the Yemenite Jews are from the second expulsion. And Allah knows best. Do they go back that ancient or not? We know that Yemen had a lot of Jews in it. We know this. Up until now, you know, they were Jews until 1947. And the Yemeni Jews and the Fallasha of Ethiopia are, of course, related. They are, in fact, the same branch. So from Yemen, they then went to Habash or Ethiopia. So those two are also the branch of the Yahud. So there is one theory that a small group of Jews in 587 BC emigrated to Hijaz. This is a theory. There is no architectural evidence. There's no... you know, records. This is one theory. Personally, I doubt this because that is taking the presence of the Yahud back a thousand years before the Prophet ﷺ. And that seems too early. Allahu a'lam. It seems too early for the entrance of the Yahud. But this is one theory. Now this was the first expulsion, the first diaspora. The second destruction of the temple. So eventually, the future emperor becomes kind and he builds the temple again. But of course, he builds it. So it's his structure, not Suleiman's structure, right? So it's a fake imitation, a cheap imitation of the real structure. Nonetheless, it is a magnificent structure from his perspective. In other words, he does a good job, right? So he, one of the emperors, basically took some kindness on them and built a massive temple for them. This as well was about to be destroyed in a few decades. And this is the second destruction according to the majority of scholars. Allah Azza wa Jal sent upon them. And this happened after the coming of Isa ibn Maryam. After the coming of Jesus Christ, under the Emperor Titus in 70 CE. Under the Emperor Titus in 70 CE, there was a second destruction of the temple. And this led to a second diaspora. A second time that the Yahud fled in many different areas. And there was a third, not destruction of the temple, but a third major diaspora when In 132 CE, a group of Jews decided to rebel against the ruler because the ruler forced them to, I believe, don't quote me here, I think that they were forced to commit shirk. I think the ruler wanted them to sacrifice a pig to an idol or something, so they revolted against this, right? So it was sacrilegious, and obviously our sympathies are with them in this revolt. They revolted against the emperor with an armed revolt. And the emperor brutally... slaughtered hundreds and thousands of them. He surrounded the city. He just basically massacred them. And this is the Emperor Hadrian. The Emperor Hadrian in 135. He didn't destroy the temple, but he slaughtered hundreds and thousands of Jews. And so they fled once again. It is said, and this seems to be, Allahu'alam, the one that makes the most sense, that this wave of immigrants, some of them running and fleeing Helter and Skelter, some of them wander down. south into the Arabian Peninsula because Jerusalem is due north. And they're just wandering down and they come across this fertile ground that has lots of date palms. There are no inhabitants there at the time. And they settle down over there. And this is the original Yathrib then, right? So the Yehud are the ones who actually found Yathrib, according to this narrative. And one group settles in Yathrib, another settles in Khaybar. And Yathrib and Khaybar are... Relatively close to each other, okay? One group settles in Yathrib and Al-Khaibar, and it is also said another group continues down, and the largest of them continues down until they reach Yemen, right? And the Yemeni Jews were the largest quantity of Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, right? In fact, when the Prophet ﷺ sent Mu'adh ibn Jabal to Yemen, what did he tell Mu'adh? He said, you're going to go to a land that is Jews and Christians. Ahl al-Kitab, right? And that is because in Yemen, there was a Christian Himyarite kingdom, and they were Christians because Abraha had conquered parts of Yemen, and he had installed a governor there, a lot of people converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. And the Jews were there from this expulsion. So Yemen was a land where there were a lot of Christians and Jews, only Yemen, the only land in Arabia that had Christians and Jews. Yathrib, as we said, One theory, these people who worked their way down to Yemen, one group of them settled in Yathrib and then the rest continued down. This is one theory. Yet another theory is the exact opposite. Well, not the exact opposite, modified. And that is that the people of Yathrib are actually, the Jews of Yathrib are actually from the Jews of Medina. The first theory has it that the people from Jerusalem are wandering down and small pockets remain in Yathrib and the bulk goes to Yemen. Right? The other theory has it the other way. And that is that from... Yemen small pockets emigrated and they worked their way up and so they some of them ended up in Yathrib now in either case and this is an interesting point it establishes some type of relationship between Yemen and the Yehud Correct? Either case. Because the first batch, the first theory, they would have eventually found out that their relatives migrated to Yemen. Correct? And the second theory, they are the descendants of the Yemeni Jews. Correct? So both of these theories... link them to Yemen and in my humble opinion this makes complete sense as we're going to come to now. This makes complete sense and it fits in perfectly as we're going to come to now. A tangent here, some modern researchers say, looking at the reports of the Jews in Medina and seeing what they had of institutions and trying to find phrases that are found in Arabic that the Jews used right this is a very meticulous research you're trying to reconstruct who these Jews were so some researchers have a theory that the Jews of Medina were not from the sects of mainstream Judaism They were from a very ancient sect called the Karaites. K-A-R-A-I-T-E. Karaites. Pause here. You should be aware that Judaism has many sects, as we all know. We in America are only used to three of them. The conservative, the reformist, the radical. And And Orthodox. The Hasidics are a branch of the Orthodox. The conservative, their form, and the Orthodox. These three sects are completely modern. They go back a hundred years in America. Has nothing to do with classical Judaism. So we can ignore all of this for classical Judaism. Classical Judaism, we don't want to talk about the sect of Judaism, that's a different class altogether. But realize there were two main streams once upon a time. Two main streams. The first stream is the Christian one. The first of them was called Rabbinic Judaism. And all of the Jewish groups in our times go back to Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism, look at it as the Jews who are required to follow the Rabbis. rabbinic so the rabbis interpret the law and they follow the rabbis the second group of Judaism of Jews and this is the theory that this group is from that second group are the Karaites by the way in In our times, the Karaites are only 40,000 in the whole world. They are very minuscule. And I have never met one in my life. They're a very small group. They're still around. The Karaites reject the authority of the rabbis. And they say, we need to follow the Torah directly. Okay. We're not going to have the intermediary of the rabbis. We're going to follow the Torah directly. Now this is a bit simplistic, but the point is that there is something called Rabbinic Judaism, which has call it, look at it this way, books. of fiqh. The rabbinic Jews are going to follow books of fiqh. They're not going to go back to the Quran and Sunnah. I'm being equivalent here. The Karaite Jews reject these books. This is not the original sharia. The actual sharia is the kitab and sunnah. The Quran and sunnah. So they're going to go back directly to the Quran and sunnah. This is Karaite Judaism. Now, the point being, some scholars have tried to research this and it appears that the Jews in Medina were Karaites. If this is the case, then we can say that the theory that they emigrated when they were expelled from Jerusalem makes sense because that was the time when Karaite Judaism was predominant. Rabbinic Judaism began around 400-500 CE and the expulsion took place in 70-120 CE. You see why we're interested in what type of Jews they are. Because Rabbinic Judaism, after 400 CE, the bulk of Jews are Rabbinic Jews. So these Jews have nothing to do with Rabbinic Judaism. So therefore they arrived in Yathrib before 400 CE. Therefore this adds weight to the fact that they are from the expulsion of Hadrian and Titus. You guys following me? I'm going on a totally different tangent. But this is the introduction to a very important series of topics afterwards. Now... Allahu A'lam, I also have an opinion and may Allah Azawajal forgive me for daring to have an opinion but at the same time with all humbleness and modesty, very few people try to study the seerah also looking at other sources like western sources, roman sources, greek sources, other sources that we can find things about And this is unfortunately one of the problems that very few people are doing it in this manner. You either have people who are not Muslim, who reject the Qur'an and Sunnah, and rely completely on these sources. And then you have Muslims who are not even aware of the other sources, and they completely rely on this. We have a lot of information from other sources, and we're trying to piece together a picture. Allahu'alam, I have a little bit of a theory in this regard. Take it or leave it. And that is that. The question is very interesting. There were three famous Jewish tribes of Medina. You should memorize these names, they're going to keep coming up over and over again. The Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nazir, and the Banu Quraida. Okay? Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nazir, Banu Quraida. Okay? Question. Jews do not divide themselves into these types of tribes. Jews don't have tribes. This is an Arab phenomenon. Jews do not have tribes. They were considered... Now if somebody says the 12 tribes of Israel, that was ancient. This is now long gone. Even in the time of the expulsions, there weren't these tribes anymore. That was ancient in the time of Dawud, in the time of Musa and Harun. Yes, they had the 12 tribes of Bani Israel, right? But this, they just merged together, they did not continue that tradition. And they became one nation, one ethnic group, right? So the question arises, is this... How did these Jews of Yathrib get divided up into three tribes, when, if the story is correct, they're all coming from one area and settling in Yathrib? It doesn't make sense for them to be three separate tribes, and these three tribes were having battles with each other in the wars of Buath. In other words, there's a civil war taking place between the... Arabs and between the Jews. In this civil war, the Aus is on one side, the Khazraj is on the other. And the Jewish tribes themselves are divided and fighting each other. You see the problem here, right? If there were one unit, one group of people, how come they're divided into tribes and how come there's a civil war? You understand the question here, right? So, the theory that I have and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows best is that when the Jews were divided into tribes, There's an element of truth in more than one of these stories. And these three tribes represent three different emigrations of the Yehud to Yathrib. Three different time zones. And therefore when each time, when each new group arrives, they're not considered part of the old one because this is now completely broken away. Right? And so, this is one theory, and again I don't know anybody who has suggested this, but... But there is very little discussion in the Islamic sources of the origin of these tribes anyway. If you look at Ibn Ishaq, no mention at all where these Jews come from. So this is not something that people are thinking about where all of these people come from. Nonetheless, this is one theory and Allah knows best. And we're never going to know unless we find external information. But it does make sense that there must be some reason why these three tribes were separate from one another. That's the theory I have. Now, this is the first group of people, the Yahud. The second group of people are the Arabs. The Arabs were themselves two tribes. Now, alhamdulillah, we know the Arab tribes. The Arab tribes, their lineage is mapped out. And by the way, some modern groups of scholars, they actually even denied that they were real Jews in Medina. Some modern non-Muslim scholars, they denied this. Why? Many reasons, but perhaps some of them felt embarrassed that this happened to the Jews. So they said, these weren't real Jews. Who were they? They were Arab converts to Judaism. They weren't, you know, in the Jewish religion, you have to be... ethnically, your mother has to be a Jew, right? For you to be considered a Jew. So if you're a convert, then most orthodox groups of Judaism don't consider you, in fact all of them, don't consider you really to be a Jew. So there is a theory that these Jewish tribes were not actually Jewish, that they were Arab converts to Judaism. This is a ridiculous theory for one simple reason. If they were Arab converts, we would know their lineage. We would know where they're coming from. The Arabs, whatever they did, they preserved their lineage. And these three tribes appear out of nowhere. There is no connection with Adnan and Qahtan at all. So when there's no connection, we have connections with every single Arab tribe to Adnan or Qahdan. Remember we talked way back about the two main founders of the Arabs, right? Adnan and Qahdan. We have every single tribe you can think of. The Kindah, the Kinana, the Thaqif, the Quraysh. We can trace it all the way back. As for the Qaynu, even the names by the way, Qaynu, Qa'and Qurayza. These are not names that are familiar to the Arabs. They're not, they're... Jewishized Arab names. So, the theory that they are converts holds no weight because there's no lineage. And all Arabs have a lineage to these two. Now, the original settlers, therefore, in this land were Yahud. Where did the Arabs come from and who are the Arabs? The Aus and the Khazraj. The Aus and the Khazraj, we know much more about them because they're Arabs. So, when we're talking about Arabs, we can map out the lineage. The Aus and the Khazraj, they are descendants... Of Qahtan. Qahtan, Adnan is the Prophet's ancestor. Remember, go all the way back, there were two major founders of what we now call Arabs, Adnan and Qahtan. And generally speaking, Qahtan... was more southern, and Adnan was more central, generally speaking. And, Ismail's descendants, mixed with Adnan, and his descendants. And so, the Prophet ﷺ, and the Quraysh are called Adnanis. And Qahdan is, the other major tribe. Now, the bulk of Middle Arabia, Hijaz, is Adnani. Quraish is Adnan, Thaqif is Adnan, all of these tribes are Adnani. In fact, the only group of Qahtani Arabs in the whole region is in Yathrib. And as I said last Wednesday, clearly, again we cannot be 100% sure, we don't speak on behalf of Allah, but it does appear that this was what Allah Azza wa Jalla intended. that the Qahtani and the Adnani tribes would merge together in early Islam to show the real unity, that there would be no more animosity between Qahtani and Adnani, that anybody who opposed the Muslims could not do so on ethnic grounds. And this was the precursor to unite all of the Arabs, right? Out of all of the tribes, the Prophet ﷺ is Adnani, and he settles in Qahtani, and the two come together under the banner of Islam, it seems more than just a coincidence is the point. It seems Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala intended this. Where did these Qahtani come from? What are they doing here if they live in Yemen? Here we go back to the story of Qahtani Arabs. Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you too much. If this is boring personally, I find this very interesting, but people are different. Some people don't like this ancient history. Qahtanis, the people of Yemen if you like, the Aws and the Khazraj go back to the city of Ma'rab. And Ma'rab is the people of Saba. people of Saba. You know Saba is mentioned in the Quran, there's a surah in the Quran, Surah Saba, right? The people of Saba, Allah mentions them in the Quran and Allah mentions one thing about them that is an amazing feat that the whole world knows about them and that is they were the first human beings ever to build a dam. Never before had a dam been built. And, by the way, that dam still stands to this day. It is, what, 2,000, 3,000 years old. Not all of it, but you see, still to this day, outside the city of Ma'rab, you will still see the dam. And this dam was a feat of engineering. It blocked up the waters so that there could be rivers flowing. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions in the Qur'an, لَقَدْ كَانَ لِلسَّبَأٍ فِي مَسْكَنِهِمْ آيَةٍ جَنَّتَانِ عَنْ يَمِينٍ وَالشِّمَالِ كُلُوا مِنْ رِزْقَ رَبِّكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لَهِ بَلْدَةٌ طَيِّبَةٌ وَرَبٌ غَفُورٌ Allah blessed them like He hardly blessed anybody else at that time. And Allah mentions this in the Qur'an. And they had rivers flowing from this dam, and the rivers gave them beautiful gardens. جَنَّتَانِ عَنْ يَمِينٍ وَالشِّمَالِ You know, there were gardens on the right and the left of the city, and it was a beautiful place. And then Allah punished them. How did He punish them? The dam collapsed. فَأَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ سَيْلَ الْعَرِيمِ This is Sayl al-Arim. Sayl al-Arim is the Arim dam collapsing. Sayl is the water flowing, right? Sayl al-Arim. So because of their insolence and their arrogance, They were punished and the dam collapsed and this led to again hundreds and thousands of people dying many villages destroyed and many other Yemenis had to migrate away and This occurred most likely around 300 CE most likely around 300 CE so around three centuries before the coming of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam 250 years before the coming of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam the Ma'rab dam collapses And Allah references in the Quran, say, لَلْعَلِمْ And so... Groups of Yemenites have to emigrate now here is where I go back to what I initially said Some of them, Aus and Khazraj were cousin tribes. They literally go back to the same person. Aus and Khazraj were cousin tribes So there is some blood relationship so we can understand why the two are together So Aus and Khazraj they end up in Yathrib Why Yathrib? Again, nobody knows but this is all theory again take it or leave it But there's no nothing wrong with giving theories and Allah knows the truth If we say that the Yahud of Medina had relationships with Yemen, it makes complete sense for the Yemeni Qahtanis to be aware of an established relationship. settlement that has nothing to do with the Adnanis because remember there's animosity between Adnan and Qahtan. There always was tension up until the time of the Prophet there was tension in fact even the Hilfah al-Fudool that took place it was a war between Adnanis and Qahtanis up until that time they were still fighting right so if there was some relationship between Yemen and those yahood and I gave the theory that there is Then it makes complete sense that the Aus and the Khazraj would have known, again some travelers would have known of a group of Jews, they would have felt comfortable being with them because they're already comfortable with Jews in Yemen. Perhaps even there was some trading, Allah knows, again this is who's going to have records in 300 CE. Who's gonna have... This is all theories that we're gonna have. But the question still, and it's an unanswered question. Why Yathrib? How did the Aws and Khazraj end up in Yathrib? And there's already a Yehud over there. Unless there was some type of relationship beforehand. You see my theory here, right? Some type of knowledge beforehand. So, the Aws and the Khazraj settled down. in Yathrib and the two of them benefited each other. The two of them benefited each other. How so? The Yahud were skilled in agriculture, in weaving. Of course, they were businessmen. The Arabs had knowledge of war. The Arabs had knowledge of the language. And so the Arabs Arabized the Jews, i.e. the language became theirs. right the culture became theirs they're living in arabia so all of the jews began speaking fluent Arabic. Now they still spoke Hebrew by the way. We know this from the Sira. We know this from the Sira and obviously it's understood. I mean any minority retains its language for many generations, you know, especially when you're in the middle of the desert. So they retained their Hebrew but they spoke fluent Arabic as well. And they took on the culture of the Arabs and the language of the Arabs and the dress of the Arabs with some you know, Yahudi as well influence but they kept much of their culture and they adopted Arab culture. So when the Qahtanis, the Yemenis, the Aus and the Khazraj arrived in Yathrib it appears that they didn't arrive together and again this is a theory nobody was an eyewitness writing chronicles of 300 CE i.e. 200 before the Hijrah, right? 250 before the Hijrah. Who's gonna be recording this? The theory goes as follows. Now we know for a fact that the Aus had asked permission from the Banu Qurayza and the Banu Nadir, the two Jehudi tribes, and formed an alliance with them. And the Khazraj had taken permission from the Banu Qaynuqa. So the question once again arises, how come these two Jewish tribes, sorry, these two Arab tribes, have different Jewish alliances? The theory... The two of them didn't arrive at the same time, maybe 10-15 years apart, or a few years apart. That the first tribe arrived, and that is the Aus. And the Aus got the alliances and took some protection from the largest of the Yahudi tribes, and that is the Banu Quraitha and the Banu Nadir. And this also explains why the Aus were richer. Because the Aus were richer than the Khazraj, and the Aus had a higher... income, they were socio-economically better off, and they occupied the better land of Medina. Because in those days, land was also tribal. Your house was where your tribe was. It's not like in our time, anybody buys any, no. You lived where your tribe was for protection, for safety. So the Aus had the best plots in Medina, the most luscious gardens of Medina, and the Khazraj had the lower territories, the ones that were not as luscious. So therefore, it appears that the Aus arrived before And one theory goes, the Yehud needed manual labor. They needed people to basically farm the land. It's too large for them. And so they allowed the os, the opportunity to basically, what's going to be a good word here, not rent to own, not lease to own, but basically fraction it out. You take charge of the land, you give us a fraction, and you take the rest, right? It's basically, you do the manual labor, and you give us a percentage. of the produce, and you can basically man the land and take charge of it. So, the Aus and the Khazraj therefore settled down in this manner, and over the course of the next 150-200 years, this solidified the relationship. The Aus and the Khazraj had their alliances with the Yahud, and each of them had wars with each other, and therefore when the civil wars took place, and I said the civil wars lasted for more than 100 years. The civil wars lasted for more than 100 years. The worst of them was the Bu'ath war, which took place 5 years before the hijrah of the Prophet ﷺ. And it is also known that the Jewish tribes financed the Aus on the one side, the Banu Nazir and the Banu Qaynuqa financed the... Khazraj on the other side. So they actually were involved in the civil war. Right? Did they actually fight or not? We don't have references. But there was clearly a divide between the Jewish tribes. And the two Jewish tribes were helping different sides, the Aus and the Khazraj. Now, question arises. The number of people living in Medina, how many? Very difficult. There was no census. Nobody's going to go house to house and see how many people, right? But we can kind of sort of get a glimmer. Kind of sort of. How so? Well, by looking at the battles of Badr and Uhud and Khandaq, seeing how... slowly but surely the city is growing. The total population of the three Jewish tribes seems to have been around 2,000 men. We get this by doing a tally of Banu Nazir, Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Qura. each time something happens, we have a number roughly of men. Adding all of these men together, 2,000 men. Multiply that by 3 for women and children, you get 6,000 Jews, roughly, in Yathrib. When the Prophet system emigrates, roughly 6,000. We also know that in the conquest of Mecca, the Ansar had around 4,000 to 5,000 men participating in the conquest. Right? So, 4 to 5 thousand multiplied again by average of 3, you have 12 to 15 thousand Arabs. So, quantity wise, the Arabs seem to be double the Jews. But the Jews had the power because they had the money. And because they had the land. And because they had fortresses. The Aus and the Khazras did not build fortresses. The Jews did not live in... Medina proper. They lived outside. And they had fortresses. Each of these three. And so a rough quantity we get of the people of Medina, roughly around 20,000 people. And this is a relatively large town. It's not a small town. For the time to have 20,000 people seems to be a very good number. And we already said that the Jews were more, sorry, the Arabs were more than the Jews. We just have one narration we have time for and then it is time for Dr. Bashar to make a presentation. And Dr. Bashar, we can go late because Isha is just starting in 10 minutes so you can go for 20 minutes, inshallah. Not a problem, inshallah. And the final thing that we're just going to mention here is we talked about the demographics and I need to now basically... Go back to where we left off from the story of the Sira, connect the demographics in Medina to the story of the Sira, and the next lesson we start talking about the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's first few days in Medina. And so we conclude today by talking about the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's arrival in the city of Yathrib. That when we had already talked about Suraqa ibn Malik, we had talked about the story of Umm Ma'bad, we had talked about the number of people who converted along the way, and now... the news has spread that the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam is about to arrive. And so every single day, the Ansar would go outside of the city towards what is now Quba, waiting for the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam to come because they know it's only a matter of time now. And every day they would go there in the morning and wait until around 10-11 o'clock when the sun got too hot. And then they would have to go back and go to sleep because it was too hot. And so one day they went in the morning waiting and nothing happened and they came back by 10-11 o'clock. And in the distance the Prophet ﷺ appeared but there were no Ansar there because they were already back home in their houses. And it so happened that one of the Yahud, Because they were the ones on the outskirts and because they were the ones who had that plot of land. One of the Jewish men was on the top of the tree plucking the dates. So he was the first to see in the distance the Prophet ﷺ coming. And the excitement of waiting for the Prophet ﷺ was so immense that it had even affected the Jews. I mean it's an exciting thing, it's about to happen. And this is the case in any community, that anything is happening, everybody feels happy about it. So the Jew became so happy, he cried out at the top of his lungs, that, O Arabs, your king has arrived. Notice, he knows that they have adopted, quote-unquote, the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam, as their king. Or, O Arabs, your king has arrived. And he too is excited, and notice he says, your kings. Because from the beginning, they did not expect the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam to be their, forget, prophet even ruler and there was going to be tensions to come because he didn't say my king he said your king has a right he's excited because everybody's waiting but he doesn't ascribe it to himself because that's not he they they felt that till until this point they always felt that that's their business we have our business they will not interfere in our business but slowly but surely that did happen and so uh the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when the news spread you The Ansar rushed out in hordes, hundreds and hundreds of them. And the Prophet ﷺ entered, according to one report, on the 2nd of Rabi'al-Awwal, according to another on the 12th of Rabi'al-Awwal, on a Monday, in the 14th year of the Da'wah, which was to become the first year of the Hijrah. And Al-Bara'ibn Azim narrates in Sahih Muslim, that I saw the Ansar all dressed up coming out. In other words, as soon as they heard the Prophet ﷺ, they actually dressed up in good clothes to come and to greet him. And over 500 men came outside. All of them armed, meaning as a welcoming committee, armed and dressed. And they accompanied the Prophet ﷺ. The women climbed up onto the houses. The children are thronging around to see. And the Prophet ﷺ is surrounded by literally hundreds, if not thousands of people, all of whom believe in him, all of whom are happy that he is coming. And for the first time, we get a glimmer of hope. Change is in the air. It's not like Mecca, where he's persecuted. where he's tortured, for the first time there's excitement, there's buzz, there's a freshness happening, that for the first time people in the hundreds and thousands are thronging to welcome him, to greet him. We can sense the joy, the vibrancy, the change in the air. We can sense that a new tide is coming, that the change has begun, that the blessings of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will signal a new era. And this is the seed of the first Islamic nation. And the story of its nurturing and its expansion and its flourishing will insha'Allah ta'ala be the story of the Madani's seerah, the Madani seerah. And that insha'Allah ta'ala we will resume in our next seerah class. I will now hand over to Dr. Bashar. One final point. I will not be here next Wednesday. I will be abroad. So the Sira class will be resumed two Wednesdays from now. So we'll get an email and then inshallah two Wednesdays from now we'll resume the Sira class. Dr. Bashar, the floor is all yours. We already announced the Isha timing from the 1st of April will be 9pm. Isha from the 1st of April, 9pm inshallah. We can take a couple of questions until we set up. Oh, okay. Any questions while they set up the PowerPoint? Do you have any announcements as well? Yeah, sure. Whatever you want to do. Any questions? All of this will come. I don't want to be hasty. Banu Nazir, Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Quraida. one of them has a long story. And we need to be very careful and cautious. We need to explain the details and rationale. So when the time comes. There's no clear indication that the Jews were allowed No, the Quran itself references they're waiting for the next prophet. Yes, the Quran references this. But they expected that prophet to be one of their own. They didn't expect him to be someone else. The Quran references this. Surah Baqarah. وَكَانُوا مَنْ قَبْلُ يَسْتَفْتِحُونَ عَلَىٰ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا I think it's verse 130, 140 something. It's in that area. that Allah says they were expecting a victory over the Aus and the Khazraj. And the Aus and the Khazraj say that whenever we had a war, right, the Yahud would tell us that it's only a matter of time before our prophet comes and will massacre you. So they're waiting for a prophet. According to our legends and sources, they are waiting for a prophet. Does it answer your question? Yes, in Medina. They're waiting for a prophet in Medina. Yes. Yes. this is the theory that is given and that is that Just like Salman al-Farsi knew that one of the signs of the Prophet is what? That he's going to come in a land of dates, right? So this knowledge was known. We know this for a fact, it was known. Why shouldn't these Yahud have it as well? They probably also had it. And so, again, it doesn't negate the theory that when they're fleeing from Hadrian or from Titus, they settle in a land of dates because they know that the Prophet will come in a land of dates, right? Inshallah. Yes. What was the relationship between Dibar and Medina and Dibar and Madina? One of the specialities of the people of Medina is that they had never been conquered by any tribe, even though two or three times this was attempted. Okay. But they had never been conquered by any tribe. So there was a relationship of izzah. People would come, trade, and leave. There was never a conquering. So the Aws and Khazraj were independent in spirit. Jazakumullahu khair. We will continue inshaAllah, not next Wednesday, two Wednesdays from now inshaAllah.

Who lived there and can we have any population estimate? The demographics of Medina. We all know that there were two major ethnic groups living in Medina.

The Jewish tribes and the Arab tribes. So the first question we need to ask ourselves, where did these Jews come from? What are they doing in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula?

And then the second question, which Arabs are these? How are they related to the other Arabs? And what is the relationship between the Yahud and the Arabs in Yathrib, in Medina?

Realize, before we even begin, that this issue is a very politicized, very... polemical one. It causes a lot of debate.

And that is because the accusation that non-Muslims give of our religion, amongst many other accusations, one of them is that it is anti-Semitic. And anti-Semitic means that the accusation is the religion is racist against the Jewish people. And that the Prophet ﷺ had certain inclinations to disregard the Jewish people or to treat them in a negative manner. This is the accusation, right?

And the way that the three Jewish tribes were treated, the Banu Quraidah, the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nazir, the way that these three Jewish tribes were treated one after the other, this is their basis for this accusation. Okay? So this is a very sensitive topic.

And it is one that whenever, if you ever give da'wah to... Non-Muslims, eventually this comes up. Number of things, the process of marrying multiple women, the age of Aisha, and then one of the most important things, how he dealt with the Yahudi tribes.

So when we talk about it in this context, especially in North America, we need to understand clearly what happened. without being apologetic by now all of you know me that inshallah you have no doubt inshallah I'm not an apologetic I'm not an apologist what is an apologist? somebody who wishes to water down Islam and make it compatible or palatable to all the enemies of Islam I don't care what people criticize Islam if it is true we will have to defend it and we have to believe it and if it's not true then we tell them it's not true right?

so if they say that you guys do XYZ XYZ is what we do we say yes we do this whether you like it or not this is our religion you Right? And if they lie about us, then we say, no, this is not true. And if it is true, then we also have to explain.

So, did the Prophet ﷺ have multiple wives? Yes, he did. Then we need to explain the rationale. There's wisdom behind it. And in explaining this, we are not watering Islam down.

We're simply defending and we're simply explaining that people should not be critical. So, this is one of those topics. I'm just talking about it for the first time. But do realize that throughout the next few weeks and the next few years, because the Madani Sira is three times the Makki Sira, inshallah, if Allah gives us life, we'll continue this. I will have to go into a lot of detail into these Jewish relationships because it is important for American Muslims to be aware of the details of what happened, some of which sound politically very incorrect and some of which have no problems with.

Our basis is not political correctness. Our basis, did the Prophet ﷺ do it? If he did, what is the wisdom?

That's what our methodology is going to be. So before we even go on this tangent, today we need to discuss a very important question that will contextualize the rest of this dimension. And that is, where did these Jews come from?

And what are our sources for the stories about the Prophet ﷺ and the Jews? Now realize, one of the biggest problems that we face is that non-Islamic sources, have no mention of these Jewish people at all. So the only reference we have to these tribes is from within the Islamic tradition. As of yet, we have not discovered any history, any chronicle that mentions the tribes in Medina. Now, there are references to Jews in Arabia, in other sources.

But from the Islamic sources, We get all of the details. Now, this is considered problematic by non-Muslims. For us, it doesn't really matter that much.

By non-Muslims, it's considered problematic. Why? They say, these sources are biased. They all have an agenda.

And what is the agenda to defend the Prophet ﷺ, no matter at what cost? Because they're all Muslims, so they're not gonna be fair and balanced. That's only one network. is fair and balanced right otherwise the muslims can never be fair and balanced right because according to them they will have this bias to defend the prophet so we'll never know the full story anybody who opposes the process and according to them will be painted in a negative light and can you believe there are articles that i have read myself that defend abdullah ibn abu ibn salool as being a noble man as being a leader. Why?

Because, again, the point is anybody who opposes the process of Moses painted negatively, he must have been a good person. So they flip the entire narrative around. And they make the leader of the munafiqeen the real true gentleman and nobleman of Medina. And the same applies to the other stories as well. So we need to be very cautious and careful about how we're going to interpret the sources.

We begin by saying there are a number of theories about where these Jewish tribes came from. Some of these theories were simply said by the early scholars and some are propounded by later scholars. The first theory is that these tribes were sent by the Prophet Musa alayhi salam himself. That the Prophet Musa alayhi salam sent a small group...

to the land of Hijaz. Why? Because he knew that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ would come from that land and so he wanted a group of his followers to believe in him and welcome him.

This is a theory that one finds in... early Islamic sources, and Allah Azza wa Jalla knows best, it does seem a bit strange to be honest. And it doesn't seem very sound.

Why would Musa alayhi salam send some of his followers when he is the prophet of that time, and the people should remain with him? And he knows that there's going to be another prophet, Isa, between him and the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and Allah knows, but he probably knew that the other prophet will come after a long time. And that's over 2-3 thousand years.

Allahu'alam, this is one theory that some Muslims have. Another theory, which seems more reasonable, and this actually might have some references in non-Islamic sources as we'll mention. Another theory is that the Jews of Medina settled in Medina after they were expelled from Jerusalem.

Now, let's pause here. Everyone should know that once upon a time, Sulaiman, once Sulaiman was the king, and Sulaiman was the prophet, all the of course were in Jerusalem. Obviously that is very true, we don't deny this. It's obvious, they were there. And Sulaiman had built the big temple, the, he had built the big temple of Sulaiman.

Now, over the course of the next hundreds and thousands of years, the power of that state collapsed, The Romans became in charge and then the Christians and at times even the Persian emperor was in charge of Jerusalem. So over the course of the next 1,500 years until Umar ibn al-Khattab conquered Jerusalem, Jerusalem was in between many different people. It was controlled by pagan Romans. Pagan Romans, they hated the Christians as well.

It was controlled by the Persians at times and at times it was controlled by Christian Romans. So different groups had controlled it. Now, There were two major expulsions of the Jews.

And according to the majority of scholars of Islam, it is these two expulsions that are mentioned in the Quran in Surah Al-Isra. If you read the first page of Surah Al-Isra, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions two expulsions and two punishments sent upon them. The majority of Quranic scholars consider these two to have been the ancient two of the past. And I should just add as a footnote, some modern scholars of the Qur'an, and I don't, I haven't really studied and I don't have an opinion myself, some modern scholars say that this reference in Surah Al-Isra is to a future event and not a past one. And if you understand Surah Al-Isra, this changes the whole dynamics of what the Surah is talking about, right?

And that is a tangent that is not relevant to this class. But there is a new group of scholars that is saying, Surah Al-Isra... is not history, it is prophecy.

Surah Al-Isra is not the past, it is the future. And that changes the entire dynamics if you understand the surah and what is being mentioned. But that is one theory. The majority of scholars in our history have always understood Surah Al-Isra as being history.

I.e. the two expulsions. What are these two expulsions? The first expulsion...

took place in 587 BC, before the Christian era. 587 BC. And this was when Nebuchadnezzar, who was an evil tyrant rule, Bukhtanasar in Arabic, Nebuchadnezzar surrounded Jerusalem, and for the first time in the history of the Jewish Empire, destroyed the Haykal of Sulaiman, the original Haykal.

The actual temple that Sulaiman had built, and this was considered to be one of the wonders of the world. Why? Because the jinn built it, obviously. It was a structure the likes of which man had never seen.

It was massive and beautiful, it was a feat of architecture, it was considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You might have heard of the seven wonders of the ancient world, seven, if you like, creations of man that were just unparalleled. One of them was reputed to be... Reputed to be the haikal of Sulaiman. And of course we as Muslims, we believe the reason why was because he had the jinn building him.

Allah says in the Quran, right, that the jinn are banna'in wa ghowas, right? That they were banna', architects and ghowas, diving deep into the water to get what they needed. So they're doing things in the water. What did they get from the water?

What pearls? What beautiful exquisite treasures? And Banat, they're building structures. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that Sulaiman was given this. So the Haykal of Sulaiman was an amazing structure that stood solid for four or five hundred years, untouched.

And then Allah azza wa jal will that. The first of the destructions occur. And this is, as I said, in 587 BC. And this was when the original temple was destroyed.

This temple, when it was destroyed, it was the first time the Jews had to flee. It is called the Diaspora. And the Jews are known throughout history for having many diasporas. They call themselves the Wandering People.

The Wandering Peoples. Why? Because since that time, they've never had a unified land up until as we know 1947. So they have always been in different lands. That was the beginning, the first diaspora. And it was at that diaspora that large groups left for many lands.

We know for a fact they went, the majority of them went to Iran. And they stayed there for many decades or hundreds of years until finally King Cyrus allowed them to come back. And so many of them came and many of them remained. And Iranian Jews therefore are considered to be of the most ancient of the Jews. And there are plenty still in the world.

If you go to Los Angeles, there is a whole area of Iranian Jews over there. An entire area over there where you can see their restaurants and their stores and what not. And they're well known.

This is perhaps one of the largest groups of Jews in the Middle East before the creation of Israel. That was in Iran. So that's one area they went.

Also they went to areas of Iraq. And we know that Iraq had a lot of Jews in the time of the Umayyads. Early Umayyads was full of Jews.

Baghdad as well. Kufa and Baghdad. Where did they come from this first diaspora? It is also said that some went to Yemen.

But it appears that the majority of the Yemenite Jews are from the second expulsion. And Allah knows best. Do they go back that ancient or not? We know that Yemen had a lot of Jews in it. We know this.

Up until now, you know, they were Jews until 1947. And the Yemeni Jews and the Fallasha of Ethiopia are, of course, related. They are, in fact, the same branch. So from Yemen, they then went to Habash or Ethiopia.

So those two are also the branch of the Yahud. So there is one theory that a small group of Jews in 587 BC emigrated to Hijaz. This is a theory. There is no architectural evidence. There's no...

you know, records. This is one theory. Personally, I doubt this because that is taking the presence of the Yahud back a thousand years before the Prophet ﷺ. And that seems too early. Allahu a'lam.

It seems too early for the entrance of the Yahud. But this is one theory. Now this was the first expulsion, the first diaspora.

The second destruction of the temple. So eventually, the future emperor becomes kind and he builds the temple again. But of course, he builds it. So it's his structure, not Suleiman's structure, right?

So it's a fake imitation, a cheap imitation of the real structure. Nonetheless, it is a magnificent structure from his perspective. In other words, he does a good job, right?

So he, one of the emperors, basically took some kindness on them and built a massive temple for them. This as well was about to be destroyed in a few decades. And this is the second destruction according to the majority of scholars.

Allah Azza wa Jal sent upon them. And this happened after the coming of Isa ibn Maryam. After the coming of Jesus Christ, under the Emperor Titus in 70 CE. Under the Emperor Titus in 70 CE, there was a second destruction of the temple.

And this led to a second diaspora. A second time that the Yahud fled in many different areas. And there was a third, not destruction of the temple, but a third major diaspora when In 132 CE, a group of Jews decided to rebel against the ruler because the ruler forced them to, I believe, don't quote me here, I think that they were forced to commit shirk. I think the ruler wanted them to sacrifice a pig to an idol or something, so they revolted against this, right? So it was sacrilegious, and obviously our sympathies are with them in this revolt.

They revolted against the emperor with an armed revolt. And the emperor brutally... slaughtered hundreds and thousands of them. He surrounded the city.

He just basically massacred them. And this is the Emperor Hadrian. The Emperor Hadrian in 135. He didn't destroy the temple, but he slaughtered hundreds and thousands of Jews. And so they fled once again. It is said, and this seems to be, Allahu'alam, the one that makes the most sense, that this wave of immigrants, some of them running and fleeing Helter and Skelter, some of them wander down.

south into the Arabian Peninsula because Jerusalem is due north. And they're just wandering down and they come across this fertile ground that has lots of date palms. There are no inhabitants there at the time.

And they settle down over there. And this is the original Yathrib then, right? So the Yehud are the ones who actually found Yathrib, according to this narrative.

And one group settles in Yathrib, another settles in Khaybar. And Yathrib and Khaybar are... Relatively close to each other, okay? One group settles in Yathrib and Al-Khaibar, and it is also said another group continues down, and the largest of them continues down until they reach Yemen, right?

And the Yemeni Jews were the largest quantity of Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, right? In fact, when the Prophet ﷺ sent Mu'adh ibn Jabal to Yemen, what did he tell Mu'adh? He said, you're going to go to a land that is Jews and Christians.

Ahl al-Kitab, right? And that is because in Yemen, there was a Christian Himyarite kingdom, and they were Christians because Abraha had conquered parts of Yemen, and he had installed a governor there, a lot of people converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. And the Jews were there from this expulsion. So Yemen was a land where there were a lot of Christians and Jews, only Yemen, the only land in Arabia that had Christians and Jews. Yathrib, as we said, One theory, these people who worked their way down to Yemen, one group of them settled in Yathrib and then the rest continued down.

This is one theory. Yet another theory is the exact opposite. Well, not the exact opposite, modified. And that is that the people of Yathrib are actually, the Jews of Yathrib are actually from the Jews of Medina.

The first theory has it that the people from Jerusalem are wandering down and small pockets remain in Yathrib and the bulk goes to Yemen. Right? The other theory has it the other way. And that is that from...

Yemen small pockets emigrated and they worked their way up and so they some of them ended up in Yathrib now in either case and this is an interesting point it establishes some type of relationship between Yemen and the Yehud Correct? Either case. Because the first batch, the first theory, they would have eventually found out that their relatives migrated to Yemen.

Correct? And the second theory, they are the descendants of the Yemeni Jews. Correct? So both of these theories...

link them to Yemen and in my humble opinion this makes complete sense as we're going to come to now. This makes complete sense and it fits in perfectly as we're going to come to now. A tangent here, some modern researchers say, looking at the reports of the Jews in Medina and seeing what they had of institutions and trying to find phrases that are found in Arabic that the Jews used right this is a very meticulous research you're trying to reconstruct who these Jews were so some researchers have a theory that the Jews of Medina were not from the sects of mainstream Judaism They were from a very ancient sect called the Karaites.

K-A-R-A-I-T-E. Karaites. Pause here. You should be aware that Judaism has many sects, as we all know. We in America are only used to three of them.

The conservative, the reformist, the radical. And And Orthodox. The Hasidics are a branch of the Orthodox. The conservative, their form, and the Orthodox. These three sects are completely modern.

They go back a hundred years in America. Has nothing to do with classical Judaism. So we can ignore all of this for classical Judaism.

Classical Judaism, we don't want to talk about the sect of Judaism, that's a different class altogether. But realize there were two main streams once upon a time. Two main streams. The first stream is the Christian one.

The first of them was called Rabbinic Judaism. And all of the Jewish groups in our times go back to Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism, look at it as the Jews who are required to follow the Rabbis.

rabbinic so the rabbis interpret the law and they follow the rabbis the second group of Judaism of Jews and this is the theory that this group is from that second group are the Karaites by the way in In our times, the Karaites are only 40,000 in the whole world. They are very minuscule. And I have never met one in my life.

They're a very small group. They're still around. The Karaites reject the authority of the rabbis. And they say, we need to follow the Torah directly.

Okay. We're not going to have the intermediary of the rabbis. We're going to follow the Torah directly.

Now this is a bit simplistic, but the point is that there is something called Rabbinic Judaism, which has call it, look at it this way, books. of fiqh. The rabbinic Jews are going to follow books of fiqh.

They're not going to go back to the Quran and Sunnah. I'm being equivalent here. The Karaite Jews reject these books. This is not the original sharia. The actual sharia is the kitab and sunnah.

The Quran and sunnah. So they're going to go back directly to the Quran and sunnah. This is Karaite Judaism. Now, the point being, some scholars have tried to research this and it appears that the Jews in Medina were Karaites. If this is the case, then we can say that the theory that they emigrated when they were expelled from Jerusalem makes sense because that was the time when Karaite Judaism was predominant.

Rabbinic Judaism began around 400-500 CE and the expulsion took place in 70-120 CE. You see why we're interested in what type of Jews they are. Because Rabbinic Judaism, after 400 CE, the bulk of Jews are Rabbinic Jews.

So these Jews have nothing to do with Rabbinic Judaism. So therefore they arrived in Yathrib before 400 CE. Therefore this adds weight to the fact that they are from the expulsion of Hadrian and Titus. You guys following me?

I'm going on a totally different tangent. But this is the introduction to a very important series of topics afterwards. Now...

Allahu A'lam, I also have an opinion and may Allah Azawajal forgive me for daring to have an opinion but at the same time with all humbleness and modesty, very few people try to study the seerah also looking at other sources like western sources, roman sources, greek sources, other sources that we can find things about And this is unfortunately one of the problems that very few people are doing it in this manner. You either have people who are not Muslim, who reject the Qur'an and Sunnah, and rely completely on these sources. And then you have Muslims who are not even aware of the other sources, and they completely rely on this. We have a lot of information from other sources, and we're trying to piece together a picture. Allahu'alam, I have a little bit of a theory in this regard.

Take it or leave it. And that is that. The question is very interesting. There were three famous Jewish tribes of Medina.

You should memorize these names, they're going to keep coming up over and over again. The Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nazir, and the Banu Quraida. Okay? Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nazir, Banu Quraida.

Okay? Question. Jews do not divide themselves into these types of tribes. Jews don't have tribes. This is an Arab phenomenon.

Jews do not have tribes. They were considered... Now if somebody says the 12 tribes of Israel, that was ancient.

This is now long gone. Even in the time of the expulsions, there weren't these tribes anymore. That was ancient in the time of Dawud, in the time of Musa and Harun. Yes, they had the 12 tribes of Bani Israel, right? But this, they just merged together, they did not continue that tradition.

And they became one nation, one ethnic group, right? So the question arises, is this... How did these Jews of Yathrib get divided up into three tribes, when, if the story is correct, they're all coming from one area and settling in Yathrib?

It doesn't make sense for them to be three separate tribes, and these three tribes were having battles with each other in the wars of Buath. In other words, there's a civil war taking place between the... Arabs and between the Jews.

In this civil war, the Aus is on one side, the Khazraj is on the other. And the Jewish tribes themselves are divided and fighting each other. You see the problem here, right? If there were one unit, one group of people, how come they're divided into tribes and how come there's a civil war?

You understand the question here, right? So, the theory that I have and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows best is that when the Jews were divided into tribes, There's an element of truth in more than one of these stories. And these three tribes represent three different emigrations of the Yehud to Yathrib. Three different time zones.

And therefore when each time, when each new group arrives, they're not considered part of the old one because this is now completely broken away. Right? And so, this is one theory, and again I don't know anybody who has suggested this, but...

But there is very little discussion in the Islamic sources of the origin of these tribes anyway. If you look at Ibn Ishaq, no mention at all where these Jews come from. So this is not something that people are thinking about where all of these people come from.

Nonetheless, this is one theory and Allah knows best. And we're never going to know unless we find external information. But it does make sense that there must be some reason why these three tribes were separate from one another.

That's the theory I have. Now, this is the first group of people, the Yahud. The second group of people are the Arabs. The Arabs were themselves two tribes. Now, alhamdulillah, we know the Arab tribes.

The Arab tribes, their lineage is mapped out. And by the way, some modern groups of scholars, they actually even denied that they were real Jews in Medina. Some modern non-Muslim scholars, they denied this. Why? Many reasons, but perhaps some of them felt embarrassed that this happened to the Jews.

So they said, these weren't real Jews. Who were they? They were Arab converts to Judaism.

They weren't, you know, in the Jewish religion, you have to be... ethnically, your mother has to be a Jew, right? For you to be considered a Jew. So if you're a convert, then most orthodox groups of Judaism don't consider you, in fact all of them, don't consider you really to be a Jew.

So there is a theory that these Jewish tribes were not actually Jewish, that they were Arab converts to Judaism. This is a ridiculous theory for one simple reason. If they were Arab converts, we would know their lineage.

We would know where they're coming from. The Arabs, whatever they did, they preserved their lineage. And these three tribes appear out of nowhere.

There is no connection with Adnan and Qahtan at all. So when there's no connection, we have connections with every single Arab tribe to Adnan or Qahdan. Remember we talked way back about the two main founders of the Arabs, right? Adnan and Qahdan.

We have every single tribe you can think of. The Kindah, the Kinana, the Thaqif, the Quraysh. We can trace it all the way back.

As for the Qaynu, even the names by the way, Qaynu, Qa'and Qurayza. These are not names that are familiar to the Arabs. They're not, they're...

Jewishized Arab names. So, the theory that they are converts holds no weight because there's no lineage. And all Arabs have a lineage to these two. Now, the original settlers, therefore, in this land were Yahud. Where did the Arabs come from and who are the Arabs?

The Aus and the Khazraj. The Aus and the Khazraj, we know much more about them because they're Arabs. So, when we're talking about Arabs, we can map out the lineage. The Aus and the Khazraj, they are descendants... Of Qahtan.

Qahtan, Adnan is the Prophet's ancestor. Remember, go all the way back, there were two major founders of what we now call Arabs, Adnan and Qahtan. And generally speaking, Qahtan... was more southern, and Adnan was more central, generally speaking. And, Ismail's descendants, mixed with Adnan, and his descendants.

And so, the Prophet ﷺ, and the Quraysh are called Adnanis. And Qahdan is, the other major tribe. Now, the bulk of Middle Arabia, Hijaz, is Adnani. Quraish is Adnan, Thaqif is Adnan, all of these tribes are Adnani. In fact, the only group of Qahtani Arabs in the whole region is in Yathrib.

And as I said last Wednesday, clearly, again we cannot be 100% sure, we don't speak on behalf of Allah, but it does appear that this was what Allah Azza wa Jalla intended. that the Qahtani and the Adnani tribes would merge together in early Islam to show the real unity, that there would be no more animosity between Qahtani and Adnani, that anybody who opposed the Muslims could not do so on ethnic grounds. And this was the precursor to unite all of the Arabs, right?

Out of all of the tribes, the Prophet ﷺ is Adnani, and he settles in Qahtani, and the two come together under the banner of Islam, it seems more than just a coincidence is the point. It seems Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala intended this. Where did these Qahtani come from?

What are they doing here if they live in Yemen? Here we go back to the story of Qahtani Arabs. Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you too much. If this is boring personally, I find this very interesting, but people are different.

Some people don't like this ancient history. Qahtanis, the people of Yemen if you like, the Aws and the Khazraj go back to the city of Ma'rab. And Ma'rab is the people of Saba.

people of Saba. You know Saba is mentioned in the Quran, there's a surah in the Quran, Surah Saba, right? The people of Saba, Allah mentions them in the Quran and Allah mentions one thing about them that is an amazing feat that the whole world knows about them and that is they were the first human beings ever to build a dam.

Never before had a dam been built. And, by the way, that dam still stands to this day. It is, what, 2,000, 3,000 years old.

Not all of it, but you see, still to this day, outside the city of Ma'rab, you will still see the dam. And this dam was a feat of engineering. It blocked up the waters so that there could be rivers flowing. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions in the Qur'an, لَقَدْ كَانَ لِلسَّبَأٍ فِي مَسْكَنِهِمْ آيَةٍ جَنَّتَانِ عَنْ يَمِينٍ وَالشِّمَالِ كُلُوا مِنْ رِزْقَ رَبِّكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لَهِ بَلْدَةٌ طَيِّبَةٌ وَرَبٌ غَفُورٌ Allah blessed them like He hardly blessed anybody else at that time. And Allah mentions this in the Qur'an.

And they had rivers flowing from this dam, and the rivers gave them beautiful gardens. جَنَّتَانِ عَنْ يَمِينٍ وَالشِّمَالِ You know, there were gardens on the right and the left of the city, and it was a beautiful place. And then Allah punished them.

How did He punish them? The dam collapsed. فَأَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ سَيْلَ الْعَرِيمِ This is Sayl al-Arim.

Sayl al-Arim is the Arim dam collapsing. Sayl is the water flowing, right? Sayl al-Arim. So because of their insolence and their arrogance, They were punished and the dam collapsed and this led to again hundreds and thousands of people dying many villages destroyed and many other Yemenis had to migrate away and This occurred most likely around 300 CE most likely around 300 CE so around three centuries before the coming of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam 250 years before the coming of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam the Ma'rab dam collapses And Allah references in the Quran, say, لَلْعَلِمْ And so... Groups of Yemenites have to emigrate now here is where I go back to what I initially said Some of them, Aus and Khazraj were cousin tribes.

They literally go back to the same person. Aus and Khazraj were cousin tribes So there is some blood relationship so we can understand why the two are together So Aus and Khazraj they end up in Yathrib Why Yathrib? Again, nobody knows but this is all theory again take it or leave it But there's no nothing wrong with giving theories and Allah knows the truth If we say that the Yahud of Medina had relationships with Yemen, it makes complete sense for the Yemeni Qahtanis to be aware of an established relationship.

settlement that has nothing to do with the Adnanis because remember there's animosity between Adnan and Qahtan. There always was tension up until the time of the Prophet there was tension in fact even the Hilfah al-Fudool that took place it was a war between Adnanis and Qahtanis up until that time they were still fighting right so if there was some relationship between Yemen and those yahood and I gave the theory that there is Then it makes complete sense that the Aus and the Khazraj would have known, again some travelers would have known of a group of Jews, they would have felt comfortable being with them because they're already comfortable with Jews in Yemen. Perhaps even there was some trading, Allah knows, again this is who's going to have records in 300 CE. Who's gonna have...

This is all theories that we're gonna have. But the question still, and it's an unanswered question. Why Yathrib? How did the Aws and Khazraj end up in Yathrib? And there's already a Yehud over there.

Unless there was some type of relationship beforehand. You see my theory here, right? Some type of knowledge beforehand. So, the Aws and the Khazraj settled down.

in Yathrib and the two of them benefited each other. The two of them benefited each other. How so?

The Yahud were skilled in agriculture, in weaving. Of course, they were businessmen. The Arabs had knowledge of war. The Arabs had knowledge of the language. And so the Arabs Arabized the Jews, i.e. the language became theirs.

right the culture became theirs they're living in arabia so all of the jews began speaking fluent Arabic. Now they still spoke Hebrew by the way. We know this from the Sira.

We know this from the Sira and obviously it's understood. I mean any minority retains its language for many generations, you know, especially when you're in the middle of the desert. So they retained their Hebrew but they spoke fluent Arabic as well. And they took on the culture of the Arabs and the language of the Arabs and the dress of the Arabs with some you know, Yahudi as well influence but they kept much of their culture and they adopted Arab culture. So when the Qahtanis, the Yemenis, the Aus and the Khazraj arrived in Yathrib it appears that they didn't arrive together and again this is a theory nobody was an eyewitness writing chronicles of 300 CE i.e. 200 before the Hijrah, right?

250 before the Hijrah. Who's gonna be recording this? The theory goes as follows.

Now we know for a fact that the Aus had asked permission from the Banu Qurayza and the Banu Nadir, the two Jehudi tribes, and formed an alliance with them. And the Khazraj had taken permission from the Banu Qaynuqa. So the question once again arises, how come these two Jewish tribes, sorry, these two Arab tribes, have different Jewish alliances? The theory...

The two of them didn't arrive at the same time, maybe 10-15 years apart, or a few years apart. That the first tribe arrived, and that is the Aus. And the Aus got the alliances and took some protection from the largest of the Yahudi tribes, and that is the Banu Quraitha and the Banu Nadir.

And this also explains why the Aus were richer. Because the Aus were richer than the Khazraj, and the Aus had a higher... income, they were socio-economically better off, and they occupied the better land of Medina. Because in those days, land was also tribal.

Your house was where your tribe was. It's not like in our time, anybody buys any, no. You lived where your tribe was for protection, for safety.

So the Aus had the best plots in Medina, the most luscious gardens of Medina, and the Khazraj had the lower territories, the ones that were not as luscious. So therefore, it appears that the Aus arrived before And one theory goes, the Yehud needed manual labor. They needed people to basically farm the land.

It's too large for them. And so they allowed the os, the opportunity to basically, what's going to be a good word here, not rent to own, not lease to own, but basically fraction it out. You take charge of the land, you give us a fraction, and you take the rest, right?

It's basically, you do the manual labor, and you give us a percentage. of the produce, and you can basically man the land and take charge of it. So, the Aus and the Khazraj therefore settled down in this manner, and over the course of the next 150-200 years, this solidified the relationship.

The Aus and the Khazraj had their alliances with the Yahud, and each of them had wars with each other, and therefore when the civil wars took place, and I said the civil wars lasted for more than 100 years. The civil wars lasted for more than 100 years. The worst of them was the Bu'ath war, which took place 5 years before the hijrah of the Prophet ﷺ.

And it is also known that the Jewish tribes financed the Aus on the one side, the Banu Nazir and the Banu Qaynuqa financed the... Khazraj on the other side. So they actually were involved in the civil war. Right? Did they actually fight or not?

We don't have references. But there was clearly a divide between the Jewish tribes. And the two Jewish tribes were helping different sides, the Aus and the Khazraj.

Now, question arises. The number of people living in Medina, how many? Very difficult. There was no census. Nobody's going to go house to house and see how many people, right?

But we can kind of sort of get a glimmer. Kind of sort of. How so?

Well, by looking at the battles of Badr and Uhud and Khandaq, seeing how... slowly but surely the city is growing. The total population of the three Jewish tribes seems to have been around 2,000 men.

We get this by doing a tally of Banu Nazir, Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Qura. each time something happens, we have a number roughly of men. Adding all of these men together, 2,000 men.

Multiply that by 3 for women and children, you get 6,000 Jews, roughly, in Yathrib. When the Prophet system emigrates, roughly 6,000. We also know that in the conquest of Mecca, the Ansar had around 4,000 to 5,000 men participating in the conquest.

Right? So, 4 to 5 thousand multiplied again by average of 3, you have 12 to 15 thousand Arabs. So, quantity wise, the Arabs seem to be double the Jews.

But the Jews had the power because they had the money. And because they had the land. And because they had fortresses.

The Aus and the Khazras did not build fortresses. The Jews did not live in... Medina proper. They lived outside.

And they had fortresses. Each of these three. And so a rough quantity we get of the people of Medina, roughly around 20,000 people.

And this is a relatively large town. It's not a small town. For the time to have 20,000 people seems to be a very good number.

And we already said that the Jews were more, sorry, the Arabs were more than the Jews. We just have one narration we have time for and then it is time for Dr. Bashar to make a presentation. And Dr. Bashar, we can go late because Isha is just starting in 10 minutes so you can go for 20 minutes, inshallah. Not a problem, inshallah. And the final thing that we're just going to mention here is we talked about the demographics and I need to now basically...

Go back to where we left off from the story of the Sira, connect the demographics in Medina to the story of the Sira, and the next lesson we start talking about the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's first few days in Medina. And so we conclude today by talking about the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's arrival in the city of Yathrib. That when we had already talked about Suraqa ibn Malik, we had talked about the story of Umm Ma'bad, we had talked about the number of people who converted along the way, and now... the news has spread that the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam is about to arrive.

And so every single day, the Ansar would go outside of the city towards what is now Quba, waiting for the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam to come because they know it's only a matter of time now. And every day they would go there in the morning and wait until around 10-11 o'clock when the sun got too hot. And then they would have to go back and go to sleep because it was too hot.

And so one day they went in the morning waiting and nothing happened and they came back by 10-11 o'clock. And in the distance the Prophet ﷺ appeared but there were no Ansar there because they were already back home in their houses. And it so happened that one of the Yahud, Because they were the ones on the outskirts and because they were the ones who had that plot of land.

One of the Jewish men was on the top of the tree plucking the dates. So he was the first to see in the distance the Prophet ﷺ coming. And the excitement of waiting for the Prophet ﷺ was so immense that it had even affected the Jews.

I mean it's an exciting thing, it's about to happen. And this is the case in any community, that anything is happening, everybody feels happy about it. So the Jew became so happy, he cried out at the top of his lungs, that, O Arabs, your king has arrived.

Notice, he knows that they have adopted, quote-unquote, the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam, as their king. Or, O Arabs, your king has arrived. And he too is excited, and notice he says, your kings. Because from the beginning, they did not expect the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam to be their, forget, prophet even ruler and there was going to be tensions to come because he didn't say my king he said your king has a right he's excited because everybody's waiting but he doesn't ascribe it to himself because that's not he they they felt that till until this point they always felt that that's their business we have our business they will not interfere in our business but slowly but surely that did happen and so uh the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when the news spread you The Ansar rushed out in hordes, hundreds and hundreds of them. And the Prophet ﷺ entered, according to one report, on the 2nd of Rabi'al-Awwal, according to another on the 12th of Rabi'al-Awwal, on a Monday, in the 14th year of the Da'wah, which was to become the first year of the Hijrah.

And Al-Bara'ibn Azim narrates in Sahih Muslim, that I saw the Ansar all dressed up coming out. In other words, as soon as they heard the Prophet ﷺ, they actually dressed up in good clothes to come and to greet him. And over 500 men came outside. All of them armed, meaning as a welcoming committee, armed and dressed. And they accompanied the Prophet ﷺ.

The women climbed up onto the houses. The children are thronging around to see. And the Prophet ﷺ is surrounded by literally hundreds, if not thousands of people, all of whom believe in him, all of whom are happy that he is coming.

And for the first time, we get a glimmer of hope. Change is in the air. It's not like Mecca, where he's persecuted. where he's tortured, for the first time there's excitement, there's buzz, there's a freshness happening, that for the first time people in the hundreds and thousands are thronging to welcome him, to greet him.

We can sense the joy, the vibrancy, the change in the air. We can sense that a new tide is coming, that the change has begun, that the blessings of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will signal a new era. And this is the seed of the first Islamic nation.

And the story of its nurturing and its expansion and its flourishing will insha'Allah ta'ala be the story of the Madani's seerah, the Madani seerah. And that insha'Allah ta'ala we will resume in our next seerah class. I will now hand over to Dr. Bashar. One final point.

I will not be here next Wednesday. I will be abroad. So the Sira class will be resumed two Wednesdays from now.

So we'll get an email and then inshallah two Wednesdays from now we'll resume the Sira class. Dr. Bashar, the floor is all yours. We already announced the Isha timing from the 1st of April will be 9pm.

Isha from the 1st of April, 9pm inshallah. We can take a couple of questions until we set up. Oh, okay.

Any questions while they set up the PowerPoint? Do you have any announcements as well? Yeah, sure.

Whatever you want to do. Any questions? All of this will come. I don't want to be hasty. Banu Nazir, Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Quraida.

one of them has a long story. And we need to be very careful and cautious. We need to explain the details and rationale. So when the time comes.

There's no clear indication that the Jews were allowed No, the Quran itself references they're waiting for the next prophet. Yes, the Quran references this. But they expected that prophet to be one of their own. They didn't expect him to be someone else. The Quran references this.

Surah Baqarah. وَكَانُوا مَنْ قَبْلُ يَسْتَفْتِحُونَ عَلَىٰ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا I think it's verse 130, 140 something. It's in that area. that Allah says they were expecting a victory over the Aus and the Khazraj.

And the Aus and the Khazraj say that whenever we had a war, right, the Yahud would tell us that it's only a matter of time before our prophet comes and will massacre you. So they're waiting for a prophet. According to our legends and sources, they are waiting for a prophet.

Does it answer your question? Yes, in Medina. They're waiting for a prophet in Medina.

Yes. Yes. this is the theory that is given and that is that Just like Salman al-Farsi knew that one of the signs of the Prophet is what?

That he's going to come in a land of dates, right? So this knowledge was known. We know this for a fact, it was known. Why shouldn't these Yahud have it as well? They probably also had it.

And so, again, it doesn't negate the theory that when they're fleeing from Hadrian or from Titus, they settle in a land of dates because they know that the Prophet will come in a land of dates, right? Inshallah. Yes.

What was the relationship between Dibar and Medina and Dibar and Madina? One of the specialities of the people of Medina is that they had never been conquered by any tribe, even though two or three times this was attempted. Okay.

But they had never been conquered by any tribe. So there was a relationship of izzah. People would come, trade, and leave.

There was never a conquering. So the Aws and Khazraj were independent in spirit. Jazakumullahu khair.

We will continue inshaAllah, not next Wednesday, two Wednesdays from now inshaAllah.

Transcript for:Demographics and History of Medina eps 27/ Jew Origin tangent

Transcript for:
Demographics and History of Medina eps 27/ Jew Origin tangent