Isra'iliyyat: Ka'b al-Ahbar, Wahb ibn Munabbih, and the Stories That Filled the Tafsir Books

A Demon on the Throne of a Prophet

Surah Sad, verse 34, reads in full: "And We certainly tried Solomon and placed upon his throne a body; then he returned." Two lines. No names, no details. Now open the same verse in the Jami' al-Bayan of al-Tabari (d. 310 AH), the commentary later generations called the mother of tafsir. There, carried on chains of transmission, a story spreads across the pages: Solomon's kingdom lives in his ring; a demon seizes the ring, takes the prophet's form, and rules from his throne for forty days, while Solomon himself wanders unrecognized, begging for food. Trace the chains and they do not end at the Prophet of Islam. They end at names like Wahb ibn Munabbih — and behind such names, at the lore of the People of the Book.

The tradition gave this material a technical name: al-Isra'iliyyat — the reports of the Children of Israel. Two men stand at the head of the file. Ka'b al-Ahbar (d. ca. 32 AH), a Jewish scholar of Yemen who accepted Islam after the Prophet's death and came to Medina in the caliphate of Umar. And Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. ca. 110 AH), a Successor of Sanaa celebrated for his knowledge of the earlier scriptures. Wherever the Qur'an touches creation, the prophets, or the unseen, these names recur through the classical commentaries — above all Tabari's. Four centuries after Tabari, Ibn Kathir (d. 774 AH) filled his own tafsir with warnings about this very material — while still transmitting much of it.