About

This project is gratefully supported by the prestigious NWO VENI grant ”Jews to Muslims: Digitally Tracing the Legacies of the Banū Qurayẓa in the Formation of the Islamic Tradition.”

In the year of 627, amidst the upheavals of early Islam, the adult males of the Banū Qurayẓa, the last major Jewish tribe in Medina, were executed for treason. This tribe, which had coexisted in an uneasy alliance with the emerging Muslim community, was henceforth only survived by - some accounts - thousand converts, women, and adolescents. The shadow of this dark day in history has continued to intrigue historians. However, what has long been overlooked by researchers is its aftermath in terms of the fate of these survivors, their absorption in the Islamic community, and their subsequent influence and mark on Islam. Legacy of Q aims to employ computational techniques to recover, map, and study the testimonies of Banū Qurayẓa survivors as reflected in later Islamic literature. This project will explore how these accounts influenced subsequent interpretations and practices in Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic theology, and jurisprudence, paying close attention to the interplay of their Jewish background in this historical development.