Abstract
This article explores the relationship between two tales from the Arabian peninsula in the high middle ages, in both of which the protagonist declares that he will prove his identity by coming back to life after being decapitated. One is the tale of Bu-Saʿid of Lahsa in Nasir Khusraw’s Book of Travels (11th cent.), and the other is the tale of the Yemen messiah as told by Maimonides.
In late 1045 Nasir Khusraw (1004–?), an Ismaʾili poet and philosopher of Qubadiyan, in the Khurasan province of eastern Iran, quit his job as a government clerk and embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca, accompanied by his brother and a servant. In a journey of nearly seven years, he traversed Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia. He later recorded his experiences in a Persian travelogue entitled Safarnama (Book of Travels), detailing his route and providing abundant information about cities and sites he visited and people he encountered.1
Mecca is, of course, Khusraw’s primary destination, which he visits four times during his voyage. On May 7th, 1051, he finally quits Mecca and heads northeast through the Arabian desert in the direction of Bahrain and home. After tarrying four months in Falaj waiting for a caravan, in late November he reaches Lahsa (or al-Ahsa, today’s Al-Hofuf), which he reports is located seven leagues (about 30 kilometers) from the sea. On December 28th he arrives in Basra and returns to his native region the following October.2
The Safarnama contains an expansive description of Lahsa, rich in details of its walls, military might, government, and economy. Khusraw expresses interest in the local religious life, and explains that although the Lahsans believe in Muhammad and his prophecy, they do not pray or fast; the people explain that their ruler, Bu-Saʿid, instructed them to abstain from doing so. Khusraw’s portrayal of this charismatic leader culminates in the following tale, which is the focus of our particular interest:
A horse outfitted with collar and crown is kept always tied close by the tomb of Bu-Saʿid, and a watch is continually maintained day and night for such time as he should rise again and mount the horse. Bu-Saʿid said to his sons, ‘When I come again among you, you will not recognize me. The sign will be that you strike my neck with my sword. If it be me, I will immediately come back to life.’ He made this stipulation so that no one else could claim to be him.3
Khusraw’s explanatory coda does not rule out the possibility that Bu-Saʿid would perform the miracle he promised, but Khusraw implies that Bu-Saʿid portrayed himself as uniquely capable of such a feat, and from Khusraw’s account it would seem that the Lahsans did not challenge his conviction.4
With Khusraw’s anecdote in mind, we turn to Yemen, which lies south of the vast Arabian desert. A century after Khusraw, Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, written in 1173/74, mentions that country’s messianic pretender:
You wrote that a certain man in one of the cities of Yemen pretends that he is the Messiah. As I live, I am not surprised at him or at his followers, for I have no doubt that he is mad, and a sick person should not be rebuked or reproved for an illness brought on by no fault of his own.5
Why Maimonides diagnosed the messianic pretender as mad is unclear, for by the time Maimonides wrote the Epistle his claim to messianic status had not yet been tested nor his followers disillusioned.
Maimonides returns to the saga of the Yemen messiah in a letter to the Jews of Montpellier, written over 20 years after the events described. This letter provides a great deal of additional information about the pretender’s claims and deeds, and, unlike the Epistle to Yemen, here Maimonides explains that the pretender did not claim to be the messiah, but rather a messenger sent to prepare the way for the messiah, whom the pretender maintained was already in Yemen.6 Maimonides notes that he was informed of miracles allegedly performed by the impostor, and adds that he instructed the Yemenites to warn him ‘lest he be lost.’ He then reports the story’s denouement:
After a year he was seized (…) The king of the Arabs who had seized him asked him: ‘What have you done?’ He replied: ‘What I have done is true, and according to God’s word.’ Then he said: ‘What is your proof?’ He replied: ‘Chop off my head and I shall immediately live.’ He said to him: ‘You [could] have no greater sign than this. Certainly, I and the whole world shall believe and know that my forefathers have bequeathed a falsehood’ [Jer. 16:19]. At once they killed the poor fellow.7
Maimonides seems to have successfully predicted the impostor’s downfall, although perhaps not, as he penned his words to Montpellier after the fact. The messiah’s prediction that he would survive decapitation also seems to confirm Maimonides’ diagnosis of insanity, although in the letter to Montpellier Maimonides characterizes him as poor, ignorant, and god-fearing, rather than mad. On the other hand, the decapitation offer was predicated upon the premise that ordinarily natural law would preclude such an outcome, which is true and therefore sane. Moreover, the king’s enthusiastic reply suggests that he was not convinced a priori that the impostor could not possibly survive, a view possibly based on the reports of the marvels he had already demonstrated. The belief in supernatural occurrences, then, seems to be the only basis for regarding the messiah as mad, a notion to which Maimonides would not have subscribed.
Another interpretation of the impostor’s thinking also militates against the insanity diagnosis. It may be that following his incarceration, the impostor anticipated that his execution was inevitable, and made the offer of proof as a way to take control of a fate he could not prevent, and possibly also spare himself from being tortured by the authorities for rebelling against Islam.8 This course of action may or may not be deemed heroic, but it is hardly insane.
The decapitation of the Yemen messiah truncates the drama of his messianic, or proto-messianic, career, and thus immediately rivets our attention, as beheadings have done across cultures throughout history.9 However, the focus of the story is actually resurrection, which is what the pretender promises. As Judaism defers resurrection to the End of Days, his decapitation offer may signify that he intended to inaugurate the messianic era with his own resurrection. If so, his intention and action are perfectly sane; he was simply unsuccessful.10
Bu-Saʿid, too, insists that he will return, and by ordering the decapitation of anyone claiming to be him he implies that he, and only he, could accomplish the miraculous feat. The theme of resurrection following decapitation is thus common to both tales, and raises the question of the relationship between them.
Perhaps both were inspired by a common source. Folktales in which a protagonist comes back to life after being decapitated exist in European folklore, but they are Christian and German and no such folktales circulated in the historical ambient common to both stories.11 A more likely common source is the Islamic tradition that martyrs are revived immediately after they are killed.12 This seems a fitting backdrop to Bu-Saʿid’s promise to return and may have been known to Jews as well as Muslims.
If so, the two anecdotes are tightly interwoven, both constructed against a common, Islamic, cultural backdrop, with a genetic link from Bu-Saʿid’s tale to that of the messianic pretender. Khusraw composed his work a century before the appearance of the Yemen messiah, and thus the Lahsa tradition could easily have reached Yemen and become known not only to Muslims but also to Jews, including the pretender. Although Lahsa is situated considerably north of Yemen, both locations are within the Arabian peninsula and the chronological gap between the two tales is a mere century. The conjunction of space and time offers sufficient grounds for contemplating the possibility that Bu-Saʿid’s tale indirectly left its mark on the episode of the Yemen messiah in Maimonides’ second telling.13
C. Schefer, trans., Sefer Nameh: Relation du voyage de Nassiri Khosrau … (Paris 1881); H. Ethé, Nâṣir bin Khusraus: leben, denken und dichten (Leiden 1884); E.G. Browne, ‘Nasir-i-Khusraw, Poet, Traveller, and Propagandist,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1905) 313–352, esp. 331–333; Y. el-Khachab, Nāṣir-È-Ḫosraw, son voyage, sa pensée religieuse, sa philosophie et sa poésie (Cairo 1940); W. Ivanow, Nāṣir-i-Khusraw and Ismailism (Bombay 1948); idem, Problems in Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Biography (Bombay 1956); A.C. Husberger, Nasir Khusraw, The Ruby of Badakhshan: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveller, and Philosopher (London 2000); E.E. Bertels, ‘Nāṣir-i-Khusraw,’ EI 3:869–870; A. Nanji, ‘Nāṣir-i-Khusraw,’ EI2 7:1006–1007; D. de Smet, ‘Nāṣir-i Khusraw,’ EI3 Online.
Khusraw relates that he spent nine months in Lahsa: W.M. Thackston, ed. and trans., Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels [Safarnāma] (Albany, NY 1986; Costa Mesa, CA 2001) 115. However, the precise dates that he supplies of his departures and arrivals contradict this statement, and additionally, he does not explain what could have motivated him to remain there for such a length of time.
Thackston, Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels, 112–113.
Whether Bu-Saʿid believed himself capable of surviving decapitation is uncertain, although if he did not, by implication neither did he believe in his return, in which case the entire scenario seems pointless.
A. Halkin, trans., Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides (Philadelphia, PA 1985) 123. On Maimonides and the Yemen messiah, see M.A. Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy (Jerusalem 2002) [Hebrew].
The pretender’s offer of proof is understandable if, indeed, he identified himself with the Messiah ben Joseph—see below, and see Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy, 134–135.
R. Lerner and M. Mahdi, eds., Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (New York 1963) 235; I have slightly modified the translation. See also L.D. Stitskin, ‘Maimonides on Refuting False Notions: A Letter to the Jews of Montpellier,’ Tradition 11 (1971) 101–102. On this text, see A. Marx, ‘The Correspondence between the Rabbis of Southern France and Maimonides about Astrology,’ Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926) 311–358; R. Lerner, ‘Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology,’ History of Religions 8 (1968) 143–158.
Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy, 132, citing Solomon ibn Verga, Shevet Yehudah, ed. Azriel Shohat (Jerusalem 1947) 77.
R. Janes, Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture (New York 2005); L. Tracy and J. Massey, eds., Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination (Leiden 2012).
This is another point of contact between the Yemen messiah incident and Maimonides’ career, for Maimonides became embroiled in controversy over the suspicion that he, personally, did not hold the eschatological belief in resurrection, and he was responsible for establishing resurrection as a fundamental creed. Nonetheless, Maimonides’ treatment of the incident ignores this aspect of the story, and focuses on the doctrine of the messiah.
S. Thompson, Motif Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends (Helsinki 1932–1936).
E. Kohlberg, ‘Martyrdom and Self-Sacrifice in Classical Islam’, Peʿamim 75 (1998) 11–12 [Hebrew], cited by Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy, 133 n. 133.
The Hebrew translation of this article is published in TEMA 22 (2025) 51–55.
