Khaybar

Bronze Age

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2025)

Pre-Islamic

Before the advent of Islam in the 7th century CE, indigenous Arabs and Jews made up the population of Khaybar, but when Jewish settlement in northern Arabia began is unknown.^{[note 2]} In 567, Khaybar was invaded and purged of its Jewish inhabitants by the Ghassanid Arab Christian king Al-Harith ibn Jabalah. He later freed the captives upon his return to the Levant. A brief account of the campaign is given by Ibn Qutaybah,^[1] which may also be mentioned in the sixth-century Harran inscription.^[2][3]Khaybar Oasis was completely surrounded by a massive wall in pre-Islamic times, similar to other large walled oases in northwestern Arabia and dates back to the Bronze Age, between 2250 and 1950 BCE it would have been needed for protection against surrounding nomadic groups of populations from the desert, potentially carrying out raids on oasis settlements.^[4]

7th century

As late as the 7th century, Khaybar was still inhabited by Jews, who pioneered the cultivation of the oasis.^[5]

Military campaigns of Muhammad

Expulsion of Jews

During the reign of Caliph Umar (634–644), the Jewish community of Khaybar was transported alongside the Christian community of Najran to the newly-conquered regions of Syria and Iraq. Umar also forbade non-Muslims to reside in the Hejaz for longer than three days.^[11] Since then, the Jews of Khaybar travelled around many areas throughout the Islamic Empire as artisans and merchants and they are still referred to in documents from the Middle Ages.^[12]

Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin of Tudela was a Jew from Tudela, in the Kingdom of Navarre, who travelled to Persia and Arabia in the 12th century. He visited and described Khaybar and neighboring Tayma sometime around 1170 and mentioned those places as Jewish habitations.^[13]

Folklore

Khaybar is referred to in various traditions outside the Hejaz. The Makhamra family, a Palestinian extended family who lives in the city of Yatta, in the southern Hebron Hills, claims ancestry from the Jews of Khaybar. Over the years, there have been reports of locals in Yatta and its vicinity continuing to observe various Jewish rituals. In the late 19th century, peasants from Meithalun, present-day northern West Bank, associated a nearby ruin locally known as Khirbet Kheibar with an unnamed Jewish king and his daughter who, according to their tradition, resided in the area. Some scholars have suggested tying those two traditions to the expulsion of Jews from Khaybar and their settlement in the region.^[14]

Contemporary antisemitic use

The tale of the Jews of Khaybar being vanquished and driven out has been revived in recent decades by the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas, who have used it as a political slogan in its propaganda against Israel.^[14] The slogan has also been used by some at pro-Palestine protests and other anti-Israel events, as well as online.^[15][16]