A Christian Muhammad legend and a Muslim
Ibn Tümart legend in the 13th Century
Gerard Salinger, Berkeley
The post-war period has witnessed a renewal of interest in the pole¬
mical activities of medieval western writers concerned with encouraging
resistance to the religious and military onslaught of Islam, and with
keeping alive among Christians the aggressive mood of the Crusades.
Their written utterances reach in scope from relatively objective inqui¬
ries and translations of Muslim texts, and well thought out refutations,
to highly emotional outbursts, bolstered by exaggerations and even out¬
right inventions.
The few texts which have been chosen for consideration in this paper
belong to one single strain in that particular complex of anti-Muslim
propaganda which Alessandro d'Ancona has very conveniently named
the "Western Muhammad Legend." The "story of the well" already
known, enables us to add a small feature to our previous knowledge of
the ways in which these legends were elaborated. It has been shown long
ago that the latter contained distortions of genuinely Muslim material,
including the Qur'än, as well as mere inventions of diverse provenance,
Byzantine, Near Eastern Christian and Western. This paper attempts to
show that, in one particular case, a very special kind of Muslim material
has been used : a story directed against the Mahdi Muhammad b. Tümart
(died 1130), was ironically enough turned by Christians, most probably
in Spain, to use against another Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam him¬
self. It seems extraordinary that this point has not attracted the atten¬
tion of scholars since Victor Chauvin already knew about the relation¬
ship in question. It is true that he never expressly dealt with it. We have,
however, the following notice in his bibliography (Vol. XI, p. 213): "Un
complice cache dans un puits confirme ces r6v61ations. Mahomet fait
combler ce puits sous pretexte de pröserver k l'avenir de toute souillure
ce lieu ainsi sanctifie." This is followed by a footnote: "Cf. ... DozY,
Essai sur l'histoire de l'islamisme, 374. ..." The passage quoted from
Dozy's work which Chauvin himself had translated from Dutch into
French in 1879, contains precisely the "well story" with Ibn Tümart aa
its hero.
Since consultation of N. A. Daniel's "Islam and the West" is taken for granted, such figures as "Sergius," "the renegade," "the cleric," and
"the cow" will not be explained in this paper.
A few years ago my colleague, R. Algar, found oral versions of the
"well story" to be still alive among Armenian and Assyrian (Nestorian)
Christians in Northern Persia. An Armenian tradition (oral?) has been
paraphrased by K. J. Basmadjian in Revue, de l'Orient Chritien, 1910,
p. 340, Note 1. The accomplice there is called "Serge de Boukhara." I in
my turn found in 1946 or 1947 at the Bibliotheque Nationale an Amharic
manuscript of the 20th century which contains among other things a
few fragmentary stories belonging to the Christian Muhammad legend,^
the "well story" being represented by the following rather allusive pas¬
sage: "Thereafter they [i.e., 'Mahamad,' the renegade monk and the
'destroyer of the faith' mentioned in preceding passages of the text]
induced [the people] into error by saying about the Qur'än : 'As for the
Book, it has come down from heaven.' They died a bad death. The
destroyer of the faith having entered a well, stones were piled upon
him."
The story is still known, or at least was known in the first decades of
this century, in the Balkans. [A curious vulgar Greek form of the story
from the 17th Century is to be found in Delatte, pp. 343—345, where
the accomplice who dies in the well is called "'0 'Pou^iJ-Ti^av Bapxa?" i.e.,
"the monk [ruhhän) Waraqa" (b. Nawfal).] Mr. Algar has drawn my
attention to the following text which is to be found in, of all places, the
biography of Tito by K. Zilliacus (pp. 53 and 54). The author doubtless
heard this report from Tito himself with whom he "spent a four weeks'
summer holiday in 1950" (Zilliacus, p. 7). The Yugoslav dictator in
his turn probably heard the story in his native village in Croatia, where
he "eagerly absorbed the folk-songs and legends passed on from genera¬
tion to generation among a peasantry still almost wholly illiterate"
(Ibid., p. 18). During the Russian civil war he was forced to take refuge
with a Kirghiz tribal group in Western Siberia. One day he had the
singular idea of treating his Muslim hosts to the following tale :
Mohammed was a young shepherd who got tired of minding other
people's sheep and thought he would like to have a lot of his own.
He had a friend, another shepherd, who felt the same. Nearby
there was a great hole in the ground, an old quarry or something
of the sort. Mohammed spread rumours that he had been in con¬
verse with Allah who had told him that he was going to send him
divine laws that would fall from heaven at that place at a certain
time.
1 See now S. Stbelcyn's Catalogue des Manuscrits Ethiopiens (Collection
Griaule), Tome IV (Paris, 1954), p. 168: Ethiopien 577 (Griaule 269).
("Histoire de Mahomet, ... D'apres les camets de la MDD., le manuscrit a
6t6 vendu ..., k Gondar, le 3 novembre 1932.") 22»
320 Gebärd Salingeb
Great crowds arrived and stood around the quarry to see this
miracle happen. Meanwhile, Mohammed had instructed his friend to
hide at the bottom of the quarry with a parchment copy of a book
he had made, containing the text of what is now known as the
Koran. Up above, Mohammed had an identical copy but with blank
pages. This parchment scroll he attached to a rope and lowered it
down, telling the crowd that God would miraculously and instant¬
aneously fill it with His word, which he, Mohammed, would then
draw up and give to the people, Mohammed's friend changed the
scrolls quickly as instructed, so that when Mohammed pulled up
his scroll of parchment, lo and behold! it was closely written from
end to end with a code of conduct for good Mohammedans.
Then Mohammed told the crowd that God had further revealed
to him that the place where this had happened was too holy ever to
be trodden by human foot and therefore they must, through their
united efforts, roll a great black rock that was standing by into the
hole to fill it up, so as to protect it for ever from human desecration.
This the crowd did, and so Mohammed's friend perished and was
unable ever to give him away.
Essentially the same story appears in a book by Michel Febvre (pseudo¬
nym of the Capuchin missionary Justinien de Neuvy) entitled ThiAtre
dela Turquie (Paris, 1682), -p. 3-^:
Pour achever de les confirmer dans cette pensee, Sergius fit
publier par toute l'Arabie que I'archange Gabriel s'estoit apparu k
Mahomet et qu'il lui avoit commandö de la part de Dieu de se
trouver avee tout le peuple en un certain endroit du desert et que
lä il leur donneroit une loy de grace, de douceur et d'amour ... Cette
publication estant faite il se rendoit un nombre infiny de peuple
au lieu assign^ pour voir ces pretendues merveilles. II y avoit lä un
puits fort profond, mais ä sec qui devoit servir de thöätre pour
jouer leur farce. ... Mahomet et Sergius y avoient fait descendre
secretement un certain ren6gat participant de leur secret avec
I'Alcoran qu'ils avoient nouvellement 6crit et compose, et portoient
avec eux un autre livre de mesme grandeur et couleur que cet
Alcoran et semblable k luy en tout et par tout quant ä I'ext^rieur,
mais blanc au dedans et sans Ecriture. lis le montrörent au peuple
en leur faisant accroire qu'il devoit estre 6crit en un moment, par les
doigts du Tout-Puissant qui y prescriroit la Loy qu'il vouloit estre
observ^e par ses fideles serviteurs. Cela dit, ils le descendirent avec
une corde dans le puits et le ren6gat qui estoit cach6 au fond, k
I'insceu du peuple le d^tacha et lia I'autre qui estoit ecrit, en sa
place. Chaeun attendoit avec ardeur et impatience de voir ce beau
prodige et d'entendre la lecture de cette nouvelle Loy; ils ne furent
pas longtemps dans cette attente qu'on retira le livre de cet antre
... II ordonna avant que de partir du lieu ... de combler ce puits,
de crainte (disoit-il) qu'a l'avenir ce pretendu Sanctuaire ne vint ä
estre prophane par la cheute de quelque animal immonde ou autre¬
ment ... Chaeun prit des pierres pour jetter dans ce puits, de sorte
que le malheureux renegat qui y estoit cache, y demeura enseveli
et fut le premier qui fraya le chemin de I'Enfer ä tous les autres.
Did the author who had passed eighteen years of his life in the Near
East, cull his text from oral tradition or rather from some written source,
Eastern-Christian or Western ?
Our next text comes from the Franciscan Thomas of Pavia's (alias
Thomas Tuscus) Historia Imperatorum et Pontificum written in 1278.^
There was in that place in the desert a well, deep and dry, in which
the cleric was hidden. Maumet appears in the middle of the people
assembled and calls upon them to pray to God that He may deign
to show to them what law they should adopt and keep. Now from
the depth of the well a voice spoke to all the listeners, saying they
should believe Maumet and adopt and observe this law which God
was going to give him in the view of all. Therefore he [i.e., M] went
in the view of all to the place where the cow was wont to come, he
sits down as he used to do, and after the customary signs had been
given, the cow made her appearance carrying between her horns
the written law which the cleric himself had dictated and then tied
up between the cow's horns. The cow, then having reached him,
bent her knees as she was used to do and put her head oij Maumet's
lap, begging for the food she was used to have. He then untied
the leaves from between her horns, read from them before all
and ordered them to be preserved.
Praise mounts toward the skies from every direction and they
decide unanimously that whoever should falsely deny the divine
origin of this event, should be executed without a hearing. Then
Maumet, returning to the well, announces that it should be dedi¬
cated to G!od and withheld from any further human use, since from
it God had answered them through the angel. He therefore ordered
that everybody should throw one stone into the well until it be
filled up to the top. When this was done, as he had said, the cleric,
sole accomplice of such a great evil, perished ... This I have read
concerning Maumet in some extraordinary liistory which I dis-
" Monumenta Oermaniae Historica. Scriptores, Vol. 22, pp. 492—493. On
the author see: G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa
e delV Oriente Francescano, Vol. 1, p. 309 (Quaracchi, 1905).
322 Gebabd Salinger
covered in a very old book in the sacristy of a church in Bologna.
(The inconsistencies of tense are in the Latin text).
The "well miracle" which in this text is coupled with the "cow miracle"
(the latter going back to an older tradition within the Christian Muham¬
mad legend) appears here as far as one can say today, for the first time
in full in a preserved Christian record. It is apparent that the two com¬
ponents of the story could stand each on its own merits. Who combined
them and why? One can at least prove that neither Thomas nor any
other anti-Muslim writer is to be credited with the invention of the
well story. It goes indeed back to Muslim circles where it had served a
different purpose.
The following Arabic text is taken from Ibn al-Athir (died 1234^).
There we find the well story alone, obviously intended to expose Ibn
Tümart to hatred and contempt and to explain the extraordinary
patience shown by his followers at the occasion of the well known
bloody purge which he had directed against their friends and fellow
tribesmen.
Then the Commander of the Muslims* sent a strong army against
them which encircled them in the mountains, blocked them and
cut them off from their provisions. Therefore the Mahdi's companions
lacked food to such a degree that bread was non-existent. ... There¬
fore the notables of the people of Tinmallal got together and decided
to seek peace with the Commander of the Muslims. But the Mahdi
Ibn Tümart received information of these happenings. Now there
was with him a man called Abü 'Abdallah al-Wansharishi (p. 404,
line llff.).
This is followed by a "miraculous" deed allegedly accomplished by
al-Wansharishi, which the latter explains by the fact that an angel had
cleansed his heart* during the preceding night whereupon God had
granted him sudden theological knowledge.
He then told them: "Alläh the most high has granted me a light
through which I am able to know the people of Hell from those of
Paradise. God orders you to kill the people of Hell, but to spare
the people of Paradise. He has sent angels down to the well which
is in such and such a place that they should bear witness to my
» Ed. C. J. Tornberg, Vol. 10, p. 404f. (year 514H = 1119—1120 A.D.).
The version in an-Nuwayri's Nihäya (ed. Gaspar Remiro, Vol. 2, p. 156)
is almost identical. Ibn Khallikän hints that he knows the story, but he
does not tell it.
* Official title of the Almoravide ruler.
* Muslim tradition tells this of the Prophet.
truthfulness." The Mahdi and the people with him, in tears, pro¬
ceeded to the well in question, and the Mahdi, standing close to it,
performed a salät and exclaimed: "Oh angels of Alläh, Abü 'Abdal¬
lah al-Wansharishi has affirmed such and such a thing." Those
who were in the well answered: "He has spoken the truth." He
[i.e., the Mahdi] had indeed placed men into the well that they
should bear witness concerning this affair. After these words had
come out of the well, the Mahdi declared: "This well has been
purified and sanctified through the coming of the angels into it.
Therefore it is fitting that it should be filled up in order to prevent
things impure or forbidden from falling into it." They thus threw
stones and earth into it to fill it up (p. 405, line 9ff.).
After this proof of al-Wansharishi's truthfulness, he is put in charge of
directing the purge of the unreliable elements, the "people of Hell."
It is certainly true that in the Ibn Tümart legend, differing on this
point from the Muhammad legend, the one directly concerned is not the
principal hero but a henchman of his. In the last resort, however, it is
really Ibn Tümart who profits from the trickery which he has himself
devised in order to give an ostensible sanction of divine approval to the
massacre which his aide, al-Wansharishi, is going to carry out. The
framework, however, is identically the same in all these stories, notably
the "miracle" coming out of the well and the immediate "liquidation"
of the accomplice or accomplices under the seemingly logical pretext of
preserving the purity of the well which has once and for all been sancti¬
fied by the alleged supernatural presence. The Christians have simply
adapted this characteristic framework to their own purpose.
I have pointed out that Thomas' work gives the oldest preserved
version of the Christian well story. There exists, however, a Latin text
which, it is true, contains another tale, the underground story (a variant
of the grave story which we will have to mention later). But this under¬
ground story has one detail which requires elucidation in the present
context. This detail indeed seems to have been borrowed from a version
of the well story which was in existence before the time of Thomas. The
text in question is a "Vita Mahometi" found in a manuscript of Un-
castillo in Aragon and edited by Sebeano y Sanz." In this manuscript
the "Vita" follows immediately upon an epistle against the Jews which
the editor shows to have been written in 1222. Both writings are the
work of the same author. (See also MillAs Vallicbosa, pp. 4—5 and
p. 10, line 13—15). The manuscript in question has been assigned by the
editor to the middle of the 13th Century.
• Emdicion Ibero-Ultramarina, Ano II (1931), pp. 372, 390, n. 1; 393.
E. Cbbulli II "Libro delta Scala. .. ," p. 331.
324 Gebabd Salinoeb
As for the story, it goes as follows: Muhammad puts four wise men
(sapientes) into an underground passage dug out for this purpose after
instructing them how to act. Having gone there with the Arab notables
("cum melioribus Arabum") he addresses the men he has hidden under¬
ground in these words: "Oh you dead ones who have been buried"
("Insepulti:" for "insepelire" with the meaning of classical "sepelire"
see the etymological dictionaries of Bloch - von Waetbueg and Ga-
MILLSCHEG, S.V. "ensevehr"), "say concerning God what has been pre¬
scribed to you." They answer that there is one God, Creator of heaven,
without companion and who assigns the good people to paradise and
the evil ones to hell, and that "Mahomet" is a true prophet sent by the
Creator. Then Muhammad tells the beUevers to bring each ten pounds
(or "ten loads") of earth ("pax terre", "pa" being an abbreviation for
"pondera" and "X" representing the figure ten?) and heap it upon the
men in the underground passage. For this action they would obtain
God's pardon.
The detail I have referred to concerns the way in which the embarras¬
sing accomplices are removed. This action of the people throwing earth
on the hidden men was evidently borrowed from a version of the well
story. (The replacement of stones by earth does not seem to make any
difference.) This fact shows that the latter was in existence at or even
before the time of the "Vita Mahometi." We shall soon see what mode
of execution must have been mentioned in an older form of the "under¬
ground story."
But at present we have to deal with still another avatar of the well
story. Al-Mufaddal ibn AbPl Fadä*il,' a Christian author who finished
his history of the Mamluks in 1358 gives us the following information:
They also told that in the year 698 [698 H = 1298/99 A.D.] a person
named Shaykh Muhammad with the kunya Abü 'Abdallah stood
up in the land of Abyssinia and that many people gathered around
him. He told them that the angels came and talked to him, and
that they had ordered him to conquer Abyssinia. About 200,000
men joined him. At that, the Amharä, lord of Abyssinia, having
assembled all his armies, about 400,000 horsemen and foot soldiers,
went out to meet the shaykh Abü 'Abdallah in battle. The Amharä
entered into a secret correspondence with the companions of the
' E. Blochbt (ed.), Moufazzal Ibn Abü-Fazail, Histoire des sultans
nuimlouks. Texte arabe publii et traduit en francais, HI (Paris, 1928), p. 66—
58. E. Cebulli, "L'agitatore musulmano Sayh Muhammad Abü 'Abdalläh e la
sua lotta col negus Wedem Ra'ad" in : Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, sett.-dic.
1943, p. 281f. ("il pittoresco episodio del pozzo ne e la rappresentazione piü
popolare.") J. Spenoeb Triminoham, Islam in Ethiopia (London, 1952),
p. 70.
Shaykh trying to corrupt them with money. So the chiefs of those
who had raUied to him went to see him, saying: "we want clear
proof of your claim to sainthood in order that our hearts be at
peace and we may be able to go to battle under your eyes with our
hearts at ease." He answered them: "Yes, I shall call upon the
angels to talk to you from such and such a well." When they had
left him he ordered one of his retainers to descend into the well and
dig into its wall a hole where to hide, and as soon as his companions
would come to him, and he would say: "Oh Gabriel, am I truth¬
ful ?" the man should say: "Yes." When the work was completed,
the shaykh had the leaders of his companions fetched, those who
had asked for clear proof of his sainthood, together with a great
number of members of his community. When they had arrived, the
shaykh advanced toward the well and said: "Oh you angels of my
lord" or "Oh Gabriel, am I not truthful?" and that man answered
him out of the well: "Yes." Then he gave him commands and pro¬
hibitions and talked to him with great insistence for quite some
time, while the people were listening. When he recognized that
their hearts were at ease concerning him, he asked them for their
opinion and they assured him: "Your truthfulness has clearly
appeared to us." Then he asked them whether they would execute
his orders. Having received an affirmative answer, he said: "I order
you to fill in this well immediately." All of them went to work and
filled it in immediately, up to the level of the soil.
This story of Abü 'Abdallah Muhammad is told in essentially the same
way by the Muslim Ibn ad-Dawädäri (pp. 60—61, Robmeb. Ibid., p. 61,
1. 1 read I^L-oi instead of I^JLjI ; p. 61, 1. 12 read 'c^^.j'j instead of
A comparison of Ibn ad-Dawädäri p. 57, line Iff.; p. 60, line 1
with al-Mufad^al p. 49, 1. 7 through p. 50, 1. 3; p. 56 lines 1—3 shows
that the story was allegedly brought from Yaynan by Kärimi merchants.
[Concerning the Kuwayk family mentioned in this connection see J.
Sublet, in: Arabica 9 (1962), pp. 193—196. Mr. Ira Lapidus has brought
this article to my attention. See also W. Fischel in: Analcda Orientalia
14 (1937), p. 69 and G. Wiet, in: Cahiers d'Histoire Egyptienne, May
1955, pp. 107, 109, 110, 112. The veracity of this Kärimi report seems
now very doubtful, to say the least. Or was it fraudulently attributed to
that source ?] The historical event itself, without any fabulous embel¬
lishment is mentioned by Maqrizi, Svluk, I, 3, p. 916 (Ziyäda). The
question of the immediate source or sources of our three authors or of
a possible relationship between the three of them remains open.
I confess that this tale seems to resemble the Christian Muhammad
story even closer than does the Ibn Tümart story. In the latter, indeed.
326 Gerard Salinger
it is not the principal hero whose veracity is directly "confirmed" by the "miracle." But chronological considerations exclude any idea that
the tale of the Shaykh and the Negus could have been the source of the
Christian Muhammad story. In any case, the solution suggested in this
paper seems to me the most probable at present. It is, in any case,
impossible that this complicated story should have been invented several
times independently.
The grave story, mentioned before, affords another example of connec¬
tion between the Muslim Ibn Tümart legend and the Christian Muham¬
mad legend. We have already encountered a variant of it in the "Vita
Mahometi" edited by Serrano, The grave story proper belongs to the
Ibn Tümart circle and is preserved by Ibn Abi Zar' in his Rawd ai-
Qirtäs^ completed in 1326. He reports that Ibn Tümart buried some
of his companions alive, but enabled them to breathe by leaving open¬
ings on their graves. Having instructed them how to act, he then led
the headmen of the Almohads to the graves and addressed the buried
men as follows: "Oh you Martyrs, tell me what you have encountered
on the part of God ?" They answered, "we have encountered with God
what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what has not occurred
to man's heart." [Compare, in the Bible, Is. 64, 3—4; especially I Cor.
2, 9. Also Baydäwi (Fleischer), p. 281, 1. 24. — O. Pautz, Muham-
meds Lehre von der Offenbarung. (Leipzig, 1898), p. 213, n. 8. See also
Cerulli, II "Libro della Scala ...," p. 385 ("Summula brevis" in Peter
the Venerable's Collectio Toletana).] He later returns to the graves in
order to stop up the openings so that the buried accomplices perish. It
is this execution by the principal hero himself which must originally
have existed in the Spanish Christian "Vita Mahometi." In the latter
this motif would then have been replaced by the corresponding one from
the well story in which the execution is performed by the believers
throwing stones into the well. How and why this change has occurred is
another question, not to be dealt with here. It seems, however, that this
infiltration from the well story can hardly have occurred among the
Muslims, and one is thus entitled to the conclusion that the Christian
story of Muhammad and the well must have existed before Thomas
Tuscus' time. The latter, therefore, tells the truth when mentioning a
"very old book" as his source.
Both the well story and the grave story were taken over by the
Christians on Spanish soil, perhaps through the intermediary of Moz-
arabs. Ihn al-Athir says that he got his well story concerning Ibn Tümart
from Maghribine Muslims.* On the other hand, we have now seen that
« Bd. C. J. Tornberg, I, p. 118.
• Ibn al-Athir. Vol. 10, p. 405, 1. 4 from bottom.
the grave story (or the underground story) exists in the Qirtäs as well as in the Spanish "Vita Mahometi." It is of course possible that in the final
analysis the grave story is only a variant of the well story as DaniblI"
believes, yet both of them, at any rate, existed among the Muslims as
well as among the Christians.
It is scarcely necessary to point out that the suggestion advanced in
this paper does not depend, for its validity, upon a direct connection
between the specific texts we have reviewed. There must have existed
many other versions, oral as well as written, some of which may still be
discovered in the future, in libraries as well as in oral tradition. At any
rate, the whole circle of Muhammad legends including the very small
part which has been dealt with in this paper awaits, in spite of much
work done up to now, a more detailed investigation. (See E. Cerulli,
II "Libro della Scala ...," p. 504, n. 4) The still extant oral versions
should be systematically collected before it is too late. Manuscript
collections in the East and in the West should be searched. One should
try, if possible, to separate cold-blooded propaganda fabrications by
Uterary men, later taken over by the people, from creations of popular
imagination adapted by writers to their purpose of ideological attack
and defense. The same requirements exist, of course, concerning the
Muslim Ibn Tümart legend. One may hope that other written versions
of this latter will still be discovered. For examples see: 1) B. Kathir
(701/1301—774/1373), K. al-Bidäya wa-n-nihäya (Cairo), Vol. XII,
p. 186. 2) Henri Laoust, "Une fetwd d'Ibn Taimiya sur Ibn Tümart,"
in : Bulletin de I'institut Francis d'Archiologie Orientale, tome 59 (1960),
pp. 157—184, on pp. 163—164 and 170—171. (According to p. 160 the
feiwä was handed down in the year 709/1310.) It does not seem, however,
very probable that many oral versions will still be found, given the fact
that Ibn Tümart and his movement are today no longer a matter of
controversy. (It is true that E. Doutte [Doutt:^, pp. 124—127] visiting
in 1901 Tinmallal, Ibn Tümart's old residence, found there some vague
memories of the "Imäm al-Mahdi," whose proper name had been for¬
gotten among the people who remembered him as a religious charlatan
and trickster. Perhaps a new inquiry there would give some results.)
1» Dauibl, p. 329, n. 61. He there speaks of the "Vita Mahometi" as
including a variant of the well story. He also mentions the fact that the story
of Muhammad and the well "was not popular during the Middle Ages, but is
still alive today in Oriental circles of little discrimination that are hostile
to Islam." A version of the Muslim grave story was known to the Abbe
Prövost. (Oeuvres Choisies de VAbbd Privoat, tome 35 (Amsterdam, 1784),
pp. 570—572: "trait curieux de politique.") In what source did he find it ? ^—
It has been long known that these stories are distortions of the story of the
well of Badr preserved, e.g., by Ibn Hishäm (Wüstenfeld, p. 453ff.).
328 Gebard Salingeb, A Christian Mühammad legend
Since the purpose of this article has been exclusively to point out the
evident relationship between these tales about Ibn Tümart and Muham¬
mad respectively, I did not speak of the significant changes which the
Christian Muhammad tale underwent between Thomas Tuscus and
Tito. In this regard, however, the few specimens quoted may be safely
left to speak for themselves.
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(Spoleto, 1965), pp. 577—602.
A. d'Ancona, "La leggenda di Maometto in Occidente," in: Giornale Storico
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aus der Berliner Turfan-Sammlung
Von Michael Weiers, Bonn
1. Allgemeines zum Text.
Die mongolischen Turfantexte sind bis heute verschiedentlich bearbei¬
tet worden. Die ersten Übersetzungs- und Datierungsversuche gehen da¬
bei bis auf G. Ramstedt zurück^. Doch erst die Veröffentlichung hand¬
schriftlicher und gedruckter mongolischer Texte aus Turfan durch Erich
Haenisch'' hat der Forschung das gesamte bekannte Material zugänglich
gemacht. Seitdem hat das Interesse für diese Texte in mehreren Ver¬
öffentlichungen seinen Niederschlag gefunden. Einen Überblick über die
bisher erfolgten Bearbeitungen der Turfantexte nach dem Stand von
Ende 1962, sowie mongolische Schreiben^ und Kalenderfragmente* hat
Herbert Franke veröffentlicht. Deswegen sei hier nur noch auf ein
leider nur in wenigen vervielfältigten Exemplaren verbreitetes Werk von
Lajos Ligeti hingewiesen*, worin sich die gesamten bekannten uiguro-
mongolischen Texte des 13. u. 14. Jhdts., darunter auch die Turfantexte,
in diplomatischer Umschrift finden.
Das im folgenden zu behandelnde mongolische Fragment TM 40' aus
der Turfan-Sammlung wird von Walther Heissiq' zu Recht als ,, Frag¬
ment einer Hymne" bezeichnet, jedoch ohne daß es genauer einem be¬
stimmten Werk zugeordnet werden konnte. Im Zuge einer grammatika¬
lischen Auswertung der uns überlieferten Texte des XIII. — XVII. Jhdts.
1 Ramstedt G., Mongolische Briefe aus Idiqut Schähri bei Turfan, Sit¬
zungsberichte der Kgl. Preuß. Akad. d. Wsschft. 32, 1909, S. 838—848.
ä Haenisch E., Mongoliea der Berliner Turfan-Sammlung. II, Mongolische
Texte der Berliner Turfan-Sammlung in Faksimile, Abh. d. Dtsch. Akad. d.
Wsschft. zu Berlin, Klss. f. Sprachen, Lit. u. Kunst, Jhrg. 19.59, Nr. 1, Berlin 1959, 59 Seiten.
" Franke H., Zur Datienmg der mongolischen Schreiben aus Turfan,
Oriens XV, 1962 (Festschrift für Helmut Ritter).
* F'b.anke H.. Mittelmongolische Kalenderfragmente aus Turfan, Bayr.
Akad. d. Wsschft., philos.-hist. Klss., Sitzungsberichte, Jhrg. 1964, Heft 2,
München 1964, 45 Seiten + 5 Tafeln.
» L.TCETI L., Preklasszikus Emlökek I, XIII — XIV Szäzad, Mongol Nyel-
vemlöktar I, Budapest 1963.
« Haenisch E., Mongoliea II, S. 17, Nr. A8.
' Heissig W. (unter Mitarbeit von Sagaster K.), Verzeichnis der orienta¬
lischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Band I, Mongolische Handschriften,
Blockdrucke und Landkarten. Wiesbaden 1961, S. 227/228, Nr. 402.
