After the destruction of the Temple, the Jews fled to Arabia

Long before the Arab conquest, as a British Member of Parliament pointed out in 1939,

a thousand years before the Prophet Mohammed was born, the Jew, already exiled, sitting by the waters of Babylon, was singing: "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning."¹

The Reverend Parkes says that the theme that "gives to Jewish history characteristics which begin by being unusual and end by being unique" is that "the religion which was developing into a universalistic ethical monotheism never lost its root in The Land."²

... Jewry has nowhere established another independent national centre; and, as is natural, the Land of Israel is intertwined far more intimately into the religious and historic memories of the people; for their connection with the country has been of much longer duration -- in fact it has been continuous from the 2nd millenium B.C.E. up to modem times.... The Land therefore has provided an emotional centre which has endured through the whole of their period of "exile", and has led to constant returns or attempted returns, culminating in our own day in the Zionist Movement."³

Israel had already become a nation about 1220 B.c.-nearly two thousand years before the first Arab invasion began.⁴ The Jews' persistent presence on the land survived periodic attempts to extinguish them throughout their history. Around the first century,

Many Diaspora Jews observed the commandments of pilgrimage, and on the High Holidays in Jerusalem one might have met Jews from such different lands as Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia Minor, I'hrygia, Pamphylia, Cyrene, Crete, Rome and Arabia.⁵

By the time of the Roman conquest of Judea the Jews were considered "turbulent and troublesome people to deal with," according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,⁶ when they stubbornly refused to surrender their country to Roman rule.

The Emperor Hadrian, "determined to stamp out this aggressive Jewish nationalism," ruled that henceforth Jewish traditions such as circumcision, the Sabbath, reading of the law-in fact, the beliefs of Judaism itself-were illegal and "forbidden."⁷ Hadrian was "determined to convert the still half-ruined Jerusalem into a Roman colony." After the Jews' Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the revolt of Jewish leader Bar Kochba-who had "200,000 men at his command" -- recaptured Jerusalem and many "strongholds and villages throughout the country." The "full-scale country-wide war ... raged with fierce bitterness for four years, the Romans having to bring in legion after legion of reinforcements to suppress the insurgents."⁸

Although the Romans ultimately regained political reign, "sacked the city [of Jerusalem] ... and expelled the bulk of the Jewish survivors from the country"⁹ the cost of victory was shattering -- "It is said that as many as 580,000 men were slain!" -- Romans as well as Jews. It was after the debacle that Hadrian changed the name of the city of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, ordered the building of a temple of Jupiter on the Jewish Temple site and "forbade any Jew, on pain of death, to appear within sight of the city."¹⁰

But in the same way that the name Judea did not disappear, neither did the Jews abandon their land. A number had obstinately remained, and many others quickly returned to rebuild their world. Some Jews, however, fled the Roman conquest for other points -- including Arabia, where they formed some new settlements and in many instances joined Jewish Arabian communities established at the time of release from the captivity in Babylon or existing even before then. Thus evolved the flight of the first "Palestinian" refugees-the Judeans, or Jews.

The Haven in Arabia

A look at the haven where these "Palestinian" or "Judean" Jewish refugees from the Romans found sanctuary is important to understanding the "heart of the matter" in the Middle East today -- the conflict between Arab and Jew. The circumstances of the Arabian Jewish communities in the Arabian Peninsula -- both before and after the Arab Conquest-bear importantly upon Arab-Jewish relationships until this day, because the pattern that developed in Arabia established a tradition that has been followed ever since.

According to Arabist scholar Alfred Guillaume, Jews probably first settled in Arabia in connection with the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C.:

...it is almost certain that the self-contained Jewish military colony in Aswan and upper Egypt, about which the world knew nothing until a few years ago, was founded just after the fall of Samaria, and consequently it is not impossible that some Jewish settlements in Arabia were due to fugitives fleeing from the old northern capital of the Hebrews.

Guillaurne is certain that "in the first and second centuries A.D., Arabia offered a near asylum" to the Jews who had been victimized by the "utterly ruthless" Romans.¹¹

In the Arabian land considered by many to be "purely Arab," the land which would spawn Islam many centuries later,

Numbers of Jewish and Christian settlements were established in different parts of Arabia, both spreading Aramaic and Hellenistic culture. The chief southern Arabian Christian centre was in Najran, where a relatively advanced political life was developed. Jews and Judaised Arabs were everywhere, especially in Yathrib, later renamed Medina. They were mainly agriculturists and artisans. Their origin is uncertain and many different theories have been advanced.¹²

Although the fact is little recognized, more than one historian has affirmed at the Arab world's second holiest city, Medina, was one of the allegedly "purely Arab" cities that actually was first settled by Jewish tribes." Bernard Lewis writes:

The city of Medina, some 280 miles north of Mecca, had originally been settled by Jewish tribes from the north, especially the Banu Nadir and Banu Quraiza. The comparative richness of the town attracted an infiltration of pagan Arabs who came at first as clients of the Jews and ultimately sucqeeded in dominating them. Medina, or, as it was known before Islam, Yathrib, had no form of stable government at all. The town was tom by the feuds of the rival Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, with the Jews maintaining an uneasy balance of power. The latter, engaged mainly in agriculture and handicrafts, were economically and culturally superior to the Arabs, and were consequently disliked.... as soon as the Arabs had attained unity through the agency of Muhammad they attacked and ultimately eliminated the Jews.¹³

Guillaume reports that the anti-Jewish attack at Khaibar was fiercely fought off, but "though the inhabitants fought more bravely here than elsewhere, outnumbered and caught off their guard, they were defeated."¹⁴ Those who somehow survived constituted the formula for Islam's future successes. Some of the Jews, "non-Muslims" or infidels, "retained their land," at least until Muslims could be recruited in sufficient numbers to replace the Jews. Meanwhile, the Arabian Jews paid a fifty-percent "tribute," or tax, for the "protection" of the new plunderers. As Professor Lewis writes, "The Muslim victory in Khaibar marked thefirst contact between the Muslim state and a conquered non-Muslim people and formed the basis for later dealings of the same type."¹⁵

Other Jewish colonies succumbed in much the same way: "Jews were allowed to keep their land on condition that they surrendered half the produce to Medina." But, "the arrangement did not last long Virtually all of Khaibar's and Medina's surviving Jews -- along with "all the other Jews and Christians in the peninsula" -- were dispossessed and expelled through the Prophet Muhammad's edict, zealously implemented by his caliph Omar.¹⁶

Much of the wealth of the country which had been concentrated in the hands of the Jews had now been seized by the Muslims, who were no longer indigent immigrants but wealthy landowners, men of substance, owning camels and horses and their own weapons.... Muhammad's fame spread far and wide, and the bedouin flocked to him in thousands.¹⁷