Tayma’s Jewish Warrior Poet

COURTESY OF THE SYNDICS OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY/T-S 6KA1.1 RECTO

Additional evidence for Jews in Arabia comes from early Muslim writers, who praise the pre-Islamic Jewish poet Samuel ibn Adiya, who lived in Tayma during the sixth century. Samuel wrote exquisite battle poetry, and nine of his poems have survived in the collection of the great Arabic philologist Niftawayh (858‒935).

One more poem (see photo) was possibly identified among the documents of the Cairo Geniza, found in the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo during the late 19th century.^a The text bears the heading qaṣida li-l-samawal, “An Ode by Samawal,” which Hartwig Hirschfeld, the first to identify and publish the document, understood to refer to the famous Samuel ibn Adiya. His conclusion was challenged by others, who argued that the Samuel of the Cairo Geniza document must be a later poet who simply bore the same name. Although the debate has never been settled, especially with no new evidence to support either position, no one doubts the importance of the Jewish poet and warrior Samuel ibn Adiya in Tayma approximately a century before the rise of Islam.