What can the Qur’an teach us about Arabian Jews at the beginning of Islam?

The Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge

John Bennett Memorial Lecture 2026

Holger Zellentin

University of Tübingen

What can the Qur’an teach us about the Arabian Jews at the beginning of Islam?

Thursday 5th March 2026, 5.30pm

The Ferguson Nazareth Room, Dolby Quarter,Pembroke College, Cambridge

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception

In 1979, Meir and Menahem Kister used Muslim sources to illuminate the unique character of Arabian Jews at the dawn of the Islamic era. The Kisters’ work revealed that these Arabian Jewish communities were rabbinic, with a distinctly Late Roman Palestinian identity.

Since then, the academic landscape has shifted considerably. Divergences and interactions between the Jewish communities of Palestine and Iraq have been further explored, as have the history of the Qur’an and early Islam. Furthermore, recent and forthcoming studies have shown that Palestinian traditions are essential for understanding the Qur’an’s relationship to rabbinic Judaism, with examples ranging from the Mishna and Midrash to the Jerusalem Talmud, and from piyyut to Toledot Yeshu.

This talk provides a summary of recent research and seeks to confirm the Kisters’ hypothesis based specifically on the qur’anic evidence for the Jews of Yathrib (Medina, in West Arabia). Thereby, it opens a new chapter in the study of the Jews of Yathrib, while simultaneously providing a new perspective on Palestinian rabbinic culture at the turn of the seventh century CE.

Holger Zellentin

Holger Zellentin (PhD Princeton, 2007) is a scholar of Late Antiquity who combines literary, legal, and historical approaches to the Late Antique Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultural traditions. He currently holds an ERC Consolidator Grant, The Quran as a Source for Late Antiquity (2020-2026). After holding established academic posts in Berkeley, Nottingham, and Cambridge, he joined the University of Tübingen in 2019.