Mi Yodeya is a question and answer site for those who base their lives on Jewish law and tradition and anyone interested in learning more. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The Quran records interactions between Muhammad and Jews, and according to historical accounts, he lived in places with Jewish communities, in addition to conquering some.
The earliest Torah source quoted by Wikipedia would seem to be the Rambam (Maimonides) and his contemporaries. However, there's a 500 year gap between Muhammad's death and Maimonides' birth.
Are there any Torah references in between? If not, why not?
Very few references to Muhammad exist in Jewish literature, especially before Maimonides.
That being said, Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer contains several references to the rise of Islam, and some indirect references to Muhammad. They are actually crucial in dating PRE accurately: for example in chapter 30, they list 15 stages of Islamic rule that will lead to the End of Days ( חמשה עשר דברים עתידין בני ישמעאל לעשות בארץ באחרית הימים), including the building of the mosque of Omar on the Temple Mount (in 692 CE) and the minting of Muslim dinars (695 CE) — thus we know that (at least some of) PRE was composed around the beginning of the 8th century CE. There are other interesting passages, such as the description of Jacob's "night journey" from Haran to the "Foundation Stone" of the Temple Mount and back (drawing, obviously, on Muhammad's miraj).
Further analysis of the references to Islam in PRE can be found in Rachel Adelman's thorough and articulate thesis, Poetics of Time and Space in the Midrashic Narrative: the case of Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer (one could do a search for "Islam" or "Muhammad" if one didn't want to read all 433 pages). This book also discusses rabbinic portrayals of Ishmael, and argues that they draw on rabbinic responses to Islam and Islamic rule, so that may be an interesting read as well.
In the Targum Yonatan to Genesis 21:21, there is an indirect reference to Muhammad, expressed as a statement regarding Yishmael:
וְיָתִיב בְּמַדְבְּרָא דְפָּארָן וּנְסֵיב אִתְּתָא יַת עֲדִישָׁא וְתֵרְכָהּ וּנְסִיבַת לֵיהּ אִמֵיהּ יַת פְּטִימָא אִתְּתָא מֵאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם
The original verse says:
וַיֵּשֶׁב בְּמִדְבַּר פָּארָן וַתִּקַּח-לוֹ אִמּוֹ אִשָּׁה מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
The plain translation of that is:
And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.
But Targum Yonatan adds the names of two wives:
And he dwelt in the wilderness of Faran, and took for a wife 'Adisha, but sent her away. And his mother took for him for a wife Fetima, a woman of Egypt.
Adisha seems like a variant on Aisha, which was the name of a wife of Muhammad. Fatimah was the name of his daughter.
