Muḥammad ibn Maslama's Role in the Assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf

Abstract

Muḥammad ibn Maslama was a prominent companion of the Prophet Muḥammad who belonged to the Ḥāritha clan of the Medinan tribe of Aws. He played a key role in the events leading to the defeat of the three Jewish tribes of Medina and participated in the assassination of the Jewish leader Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf. Muḥammad ibn Maslama was connected to the Jews in various ways, as is evident, for example, from accounts claiming that he was Kaʿb's maternal nephew, and that his clan, the Banū Ḥāritha, lived in the predominantly Jewish oasis of Khaybar for nearly a year in the pre-Islamic period. Muḥammad ibn Maslama's role in Kaʿb's assassination has recently been argued to be of dubious historicity. This article offers a reassessment of this conclusion by placing the accounts of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's ties with the Jews, on the one hand, and those that depict him as their enemy, on the other, in the broader context of the change in the attitudes of some of the Anṣār towards the Jews during the Prophet's Medinan period. It argues that this change of attitudes is an attested historical pattern and, accordingly, that the fact of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's participation in the assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf can be deemed reliable.

Introduction

The assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf, who was one of the leaders of the Jewish tribe of Banū l-Naḍīr, was a major event in the politics of Medina.¹ The accounts of this assassination differ on significant details pertaining, for instance, to chronology and to the part played by each of the individuals involved. However, they agree on the general outlines of the event, as well as on the affiliation of the assassins with Nabīt, which was one of the branches of the tribe of Aws.

One of the main individuals reported to have participated in Kaʿb's assassination was Muḥammad ibn Maslama, a member of the Ḥāritha clan who was a client (ḥalīf) of the ʿAbd al-Ashhal (the Ḥāritha and the ʿAbd al-Ashhal were both clans of Nabīt).² Aside from his role in Kaʿb's assassination, Muḥammad ibn Maslama was tasked with various missions related to the three Jewish tribes of Medina during the Prophet's lifetime. For example, he was responsible for seizing the property of the Banū Qaynuqāʿ after their expulsion from Medina; he was involved in the expulsion of the Banū l-Naḍīr from Medina; and he was charged with binding the prisoners of the Banū Qurayẓa with ropes following the tribe's surrender. Muḥammad ibn Maslama's loyalty to the Prophet also earned him a place in the early Islamic administration. Thus, after the Prophet's death he served ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who appointed him a tax collector³ and delegated to him responsibility for “sensitive matters” in the provinces.⁴

In a recent article in the JRAS, Ehsan Roohi cast doubts on the role played by Muḥammad ibn Maslama and his companions in the assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf.⁵ In his view, the accounts of the assassination “contain apparent discrepancies and cannot be taken at face value”. Roohi contends that “[t]he obscurities of Kaʿb's story go beyond the contextual inconsistencies”, and he argues that we should moreover hold an even more sceptical view of the authenticity of the reports of his assassination in light of “the Jewish affiliations of Muḥammad b. Maslama and his alleged co-conspirators”.⁶

In what follows, I offer an alternative explanation to what might at first sight seem like a contradiction between Muḥammad ibn Maslama's close ties with the Jews, on the one hand, and his harsh treatment of the Jews, on the other.⁷ I show that Muḥammad ibn Maslama's divided loyalties are part of a significant pattern involving several members of the Anṣār, and in so doing, I argue that his participation in Kaʿb's assassination is a detail that merits strong confidence.

Muḥammad ibn Maslama's connections with the Jews

Muḥammad ibn Maslama's close ties with the Jews are indisputable.⁸ He is said to have been Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf's milk brother,⁹ and some accounts even claim that he was Kaʿb's maternal nephew.¹⁰ It ought to be noted, however, that there appears to be some confusion regarding the identity of the assassin who shared a milk kinship with Kaʿb, as Abū Nāʾila Silkān ibn Salāma, ʿAbbād ibn Bishr, and al-Ḥārith ibn Aws ibn Muʿādh, three members of the Aws who likewise took part in the assassination, are also reported in different accounts to have been Kaʿb's milk brothers.¹¹

Muḥammad ibn Maslama's connections with the Jews are also apparent from his marriage ties. He was reportedly married to a woman of the Zaʿūrāʾ (on whom more below),¹² a Jewish clan incorporated into the ʿAbd al-Ashhal,¹³ and possibly also to the daughter of al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Khalīfa of the ʿAbd al-Ashhal clan,¹⁴ who may have been a former Jew.¹⁵ It is noteworthy in this context that Muḥammad ibn Maslama and al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Khalīfa are likely to have lived close to one another in Medina, as the sources speak of a dispute over irrigation between them which took place during the reign of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.¹⁶

Further evidence of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's ties with the Jews can be found in accounts claiming that he was literate, as literacy in pre-Islamic Medina was taught by the Jews,¹⁷ and in accounts indicating that his clan, the Banū Ḥāritha, lived in Khaybar, an oasis with a Jewish population, for nearly a year preceding the advent of Islam.¹⁸ Lastly, there are reports of a marital connection between Muḥammad ibn Maslama's family and that of the wife of Asad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Saʿya, a member of the Banū Hadl, who were clients of the Jewish tribe of Qurayẓa. The sources preserve two variant opinions regarding the nature of this connection. According to the first opinion, Asad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Saʿya's wife was Umāma bint Bishr of the Banū Zaʿūrāʾ, who was the sister of ʿAbbād ibn Bishr and at some point, was also married to Muḥammad ibn Maslama's brother Maḥmūd (see Fig. 1). According to the second opinion, Asad ibn ʿUbayd's wife was Umāma's cousin Umm ʿAlī bint Salāma ibn Waqsh.¹⁹ The latter was the sister of Abū Nāʾila Silkān ibn Salāma and of Umm ʿAmr bint Salāma, who was Muḥammad ibn Maslama's wife from the Banū Zaʿūrāʾ (see Fig. 2).²⁰

Fig. 1. Asad ibn ʿUbayd's wife's relation to Muḥammad ibn Maslama (first opinion)

Fig. 2. Asad ibn ʿUbayd's wife's relation to Muḥammad ibn Maslama (second opinion)

Were Muḥammad ibn Maslama and Marḥab the Jew “brothers”?

It is worthwhile looking more closely at an account in the Kitāb al-imāma wal-siyāsa,²¹ which Roohi treats as “[t]he most definite indication of Ibn Maslama's close association with the Jews”.²² The account, which revolves around Muḥammad ibn Maslama's and other individuals’ refusal to give allegiance to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, has the latter saying: “My crime against Muḥammad ibn Maslama is that I killed his brother (قتلت أخاه ), Marḥab the Jew, during the expedition to Khaybar”.²³ ʿAlī's statement creates the impression that Muḥammad ibn Maslama was very close to Marḥab, perhaps even his biological or milk brother, but the account is in fact garbled. As is evident from other sources, the correct rendering of ʿAlī's statement is that he has killed the killer of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's brother: “As for Muḥammad ibn Maslama, my crime against him is that I killed his brother's killer (قتلت قاتل أخيه ),²⁴ Marḥab, during the expedition to Khaybar”.²⁵ Indeed, Marḥab is said in numerous sources to have killed Muḥammad ibn Maslama's brother Maḥmūd in Khaybar,²⁶ and according to some accounts, Marḥab himself was killed during this expedition by ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.²⁷

As is typical of accounts concerning events in the Prophet's lifetime, there is no unanimity in the sources about the specifics. Thus, some accounts claim that Maḥmūd was killed not by Marḥab, but by Kināna ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq;²⁸ others say that Marḥab was killed by Muḥammad ibn Maslama,²⁹ or that Muḥammad ibn Maslama wounded Marḥab and ʿAlī was the one to kill him.³⁰ We may not be able to know the precise circumstances of Maḥmūd ibn Maslama's death, or what particular roles were played by ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Muḥammad ibn Maslama in Marḥab's death. However, the fact that Maḥmūd and Marḥab were both killed during the Khaybar expedition—a detail upon which the conflicting accounts largely agree—should be deemed trustworthy.

The “change of hearts” among the Prophet's companions

Do the accounts concerning Muḥammad ibn Maslama's connections to the Jews contradict those that portray him as fiercely opposed to them, or is there a deeper logic within the sources? I argue that in the case of Muḥammad ibn Maslama—as well as in the cases of several other Medinan companions of the Prophet—the sources are telling us a complex but coherent story.

Muḥammad ibn Maslama's and his companions’ close ties with the Jews do not render their involvement in Kaʿb's assassination implausible, and in fact they fit well into the context of the Prophet's Medinan period.³¹ It is no coincidence that in several other instances the Anṣārī men who had the closest links to the Jews were the ones who ended up turning their backs on them. As the first example, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAtīk of the Salima subdivision of the Khazraj, who participated in the expedition sent by the Prophet to kill Abū Rāfiʿ Sallām ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq in Khaybar,³² reportedly had a Jewish (milk) mother living in Khaybar who had suckled him (wa-qad kānat umm ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAtīk yahūdiyyatan bi-Khaybar arḍaʿathu).³³ Second, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rawāḥa of the Banū l-Ḥārith branch of the Khazraj, who reportedly headed an expedition to Khaybar in 6/628 to kill the Jewish leader Usayr ibn Rizām,³⁴ is said in some sources to have had a mother or a wet-nurse from Khaybar.³⁵ Third, the Jewish merchant Ibn Sunayna, who was a business partner of the two brothers Ḥuwayṣṣa and Muḥayṣṣa of the Banū Ḥāritha of the Aws (Muḥammad ibn Maslama's clan), was reportedly assassinated by Muḥayṣṣa.³⁶ Fourth, the Jewish poets ʿAṣmāʾ bint Marwān and Abū ʿAfak were both assassinated by individuals with whom they shared a close tribal connection: ʿAṣmāʾ was married to a man of the Banū Khaṭma clan of the Aws, and her assassin, ʿUmayr ibn ʿAdī, was likewise of the Banū Khaṭma, and Abū ʿAfak and his assassin, Sālim ibn ʿUmayr, were both members of the ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf branch of the Aws.³⁷ It may be added that Saʿd ibn Muʿādh of the ʿAbd al-Ashhal was scolded in a poem by the Jewish poet Jabal ibn Jawwāl al-Thaʿlabī of Ghaṭafān³⁸ for his decision to execute the men of the Banū Qurayẓa even though they were his allies, and that one of the verses of this poem suggests that by so doing, Saʿd was acting against his own tribe's interest:³⁹

Muḥammad ibn Maslama's attitude towards the Jews may be exemplified by the statement “Hearts have changed” (taghayyarat al-qulūb), which is attributed in the sources both to him and to ʿUbāda ibn al-Ṣāmit of the Khazraj, who played a decisive role in the expulsion of the Qaynuqāʿ tribe from Medina. The majority of Medina's population had contacts of various types with the Jews, but as the examples above illustrate, after the beginning of the conflict between the Prophet and the Jews, several chose to abandon these connections. Indeed, the fact that some of the Anṣār severed their relations with the Jews, thus leaving the latter with no allies, was the key to the Prophet's success in his struggle against the Jews of Medina.⁴¹

The “change of hearts” pattern leads to the conclusion that there is no contradiction between the accounts that depict Muḥammad ibn Maslama and his companions as close to the Jews and those that depict them as their bitter enemies, and it follows that there is no reason to think of these individuals’ role in the assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf as fundamentally unhistorical. Of course, plenty of questions remain about the accounts of Kaʿb's assassination. Some concern the discrepancies between the accounts,⁴² which can in part be explained as resulting from competing family traditions;⁴³ others pertain to the potential influence of political biases.⁴⁴ But such questions are pervasive in relation to our sources for early Islamic history.