Barakat Ahmad

Ahmad says that to the best of his knowledge, he is the first Muslim scholar to deal with the Jews of Yathrib in the spirit of independent study and research. Ahmad further argues that the account given by Ibn Ishaq cannot possibly be accurate, as, for example, states that the beheading and burial of 600-900 men would have been physically too colossal an undertaking for a small city like Medina,. He also writes that the corpses would have constituted an obvious menace to public health. To support his thesis, Ahmad also points to Jewish sources' silence about the alleged atrocity. Harold Kasimow, in a 1982 review for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion wrote: Dr. Ahmad has carefully considered all the early Islamic sources and the Jewish writings dealing with the period...Although I was not totally convinced by the evidence presented, there were moments during my reading when Dr. Ahmad did create doubt in my mind about the accuracy of the traditional history of the time. And that, after all, was his intent. == Bibliography ==