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Literary. A theological discourse in Judaeo-Arabic, in the form of a dialogue with a Muslim ruler (amīr al-mu'minīn). Discusses the books of Esther and Maccabees.

"The Tale of the [Jewish] Companions of Muḥammad" also known as "The Tale of Baḥira." Relating how 10 Jewish sages, somehow related to a stylite named Baḥira, made a subterfuge of joining themselves to Muḥammad but actually sought to corrupt the Quran in order to protect the Jewish people. They allegedly included a secret acrostic within the Quran that reads כך יעצו חכמי ישראל לאלם הרשע ("Thus did the wise men of Israel counsel the dumb wicked man," אלם being a reference to Isaiah 56:10.) The fabricated Quranic verses that spell out this phrase are listed on verso. The 10 sages are named, including characters well-known from Islamic literature (e.g., Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and the father of Muḥammad's Jewish concubine Ṣafiyya) and characters that are not otherwise attested and have quite unusual epithets (e.g., al-Munhazim ilā l-Janna). Information in part from Krisztina Szilagyi's description on FGP. See also the (faulty) edition in J. Leveen, "Mohammed and His Jewish Companions," The Jewish Quarterly Review , Apr., 1926, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Apr., 1926), pp. 399- 406. ASE

Polemical composition narrating the story of the exilarch Bustanay. For a parallel text and fuller description, see PGPID 6078.

Polemic against the house of the exilarch. Dating: 1040–41 CE. After a disagreement between Kafnai, Bustanay's father, and his father in law, the head of the Yeshiva, the entire family of the exilarch dies (and King David appears to the head of the Yeshiva in a dream). Bustanay is only surviving descendant of King David. The head of the Yeshiva raises him and occupies his place among the elders of Baghdad, but refuses to cede the position when Bustanay turns 16. The case comes before the caliph ʿUmar Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who is impressed that Bustanay does not flinch when a mosquito bites him. The caliph appoints Bustanay as exilarch and marries him to a daughter of the King of Persia, who had been captured in battle. She bears children to Bustanay but is never manumitted and never converts to Judaism. The point of the polemic: all the descendants of Bustanay are compromised, and the true house of King David will be revealed only in messianic times. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, p. 4) Join: Moshe Gil. In the hand of Sahlān b. Avraham (per Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, p. 4), copied in the following circumstance: Daniʾel b. ʿAzarya, who was a nasi (from the house of the exilarch), had arrived from Iraq in Palestine and supported the gaonate of Shelomo b. Yehuda. Followers of the rival gaʾon, Natan b. Avraham, including members of the Iraqi congregation in Fustat, among them Sahlān b. Avraham, cast aspersions on Danʾiel b. ʿAzarya presumably also against Shelomo b. Yehuda. (Rustow, Heresy, 314) For a parallel text, see PGPID 35180.

Literary. Catalogued as a 15th-century copy of Sefer Teshuva, the polemical work against the Rabbanites by Yefet al-Barqamānī (13th c.).

Popular literature. Muslim anti-Christian polemic, Ḥadīth Wāṣil al-Dimashqī. Written in Judaeo-Arabic. "This short tract claims to be the account of a debate on religion which took place among Wāṣil (a Muslim prisoner in Byzantium), Bashīr (a Muslim convert to Christianity), and Christian priests in Byzantium. See also Griffth and Miller, "Bashīr/Beser: Boon Companion of the Byzantine Emperor Leo III: The Islamic Recension of his Story in Leiden Oriental MS 951(1)," Le Museon 103 (1990), pp. 293–327. Information from Krisztina Szilagyi, "Christian Books in Jewish Libraries," Ginzei Qedem (2006), 107–62.