The Story of Prophet Muḥammad's encounter with a Jew, a Christian and a Samaritan : The version from Abū al-Fatḥ's Kitāb al-Tārīkh and Its Context
Abstract
In the year 756/1355 Abū l-Fatḥ ibn Abī l-Ḥasan al-Sāmirī al-Danafī wrote the Samaritan chronicle Kitāb al-Tārīkh, "one of the principal fruits of the 14th century Samaritan renaissance," which concludes with a cycle of legends narrating the rise of Islam. Their narrative focuses on the story of the prophet Muḥammad's encounter with three astrologers, representatives of three monotheistic religions: a Samaritan called Ṣarmāṣa, Kaʿb al-Aḥbār, a Jew, and ʿAbd al-Salām, a Christian monk.
Abū l-Fatḥ's narrative presents a unique Samaritan version of a polemical story that was widespread among the Christians and Jews in the Middle Ages. The tale shows how easily themes and texts could travel from one community to another.
First, the lecture compares the Samaritan version of the story with the Christian and Jewish ones. Second, it sets the story of Muḥammad's pact with the Samaritans into the context of the mid-fourteenth century Mamlūk society and the Samaritans' position in it.
My thesis is that the Samaritan version responds to the increasing social and religious pressure of Islamic society directed towards the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam and the expropriation of their houses of worship.