Silencing the Jews: His Conversion to Islam

My father was called Rāb Yehūda Ibn Abūn and was of the city of Fās in Morocco; Rāb being a title, not a name, and its meaning—a Rabbi. He was the most learned man of his time in Torah studies, and the most gifted and prolific stylist and exquisite extemporizer in Hebrew poetry and prose. Among the Arabic-speaking people he was known as Abū-l-Baqā’ Yaḥyā ibn ‘Abbās al-Maghribī. For most of the distinguished people among the Jews have an Arabic name distinct or derived from the Hebrew name, even as the Arabs, who have name and surname separately.

He married my mother in Baghdad. She came from Basra and was one of three distinguished sisters well-versed in Torah studies and Hebrew writing, daughters of Isḥāq Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Baṣrī al-Lewi, i.e., of the tribe of Levi, a tribe of good lineage, for Moses sprang from it. This Isḥāq was a man of learning and taught in Baghdad. Their mother was Nafīsa, the daughter of Abū Naṣr al-Dāwudī, one of their well-known dignitaries whose progeny still dwell in Egypt to this day.

My mother was named after the mother of the Prophet Samuel. This prophet was born after his mother had been barren, childless, and had not conceived for a number of years, not until she prayed to the Lord requesting a son who would become a devotee of God. A pious man, a spiritual leader by the name of Eli, blessed her, and she gave birth to Samuel the prophet. All this is described in the beginning of the Book of the Prophet Samuel. Now my mother had been with my father for some time, childless, until she was filled with fear of her barrenness, and saw a dream in which she was reciting the prayer of Hannah, mother of Samuel, to the Lord. She then vowed that if she had a son she would name him Samuel, as her name was the name of Samuel’s mother. It came to pass that after that she conceived and I was born; she called me Samuel, which in Arabic is Samau’al. My father called me Abū Naṣr which was the Kunya of my grandfather.

My father had me learn Hebrew writing, and then study the Torah and the commentaries until, by the age of thirteen, I had mastered this knowledge. Then he introduced me to the study of Indian reckoning and the solution of equations under Shaykh Abū-l-Ḥasan Ibn ad-Daskarī, and the study of medicine under the philosopher Abū ’l-Barakāt Hibat-Allāh Ibn ‘Alī, and the observation of current surgical operations and the treatment of diseases as practiced by my maternal uncle Abū-l-Fatḥ Ibn al-Baṣrī. As to Indian reckoning and astronomical tables, I mastered them in less than a year, by the age of fourteen, and at the same time continued to study medicine and to observe the treatment of diseases. [ . . . ]

My passion and love for these studies were so strong that I would forget food and drink when pondering on some of them. I secluded myself in a room for a time and analyzed all those books and expounded them; I refuted their authors wherever they committed mistakes; demonstrated the errors of their compilers; and undertook to verify or correct where other authors had failed. I found Euclid’s arrangement of the figures in his book faulty for by rearranging them I could dispense with some as superfluous; this—after the book of Euclid had been considered the acme by the other geometricians, so much so that they had introduced nothing new either by changing Euclid’s set of figures or by eliminating any of them. All this I achieved in that year, namely, by the age of eighteen. Since that year my writings in these sciences followed one another continuously down to the present. God has revealed to me much that had been withheld from my predecessors among the eminent scholars; all this I put into shape for the benefit of whomever it might reach.

During that time my only source of income was from the practice of medicine. In this, I enjoyed a great measure of success for, with divine support, I was able to distinguish a curable disease from an incurable. I never treated a patient but with the result that he recovered. Whenever I felt disinclined to treat a patient, all the other physicians would fail to cure him and would give up his case. [ . . . ]

Before I took up these sciences, that is, in my twelfth and thirteenth years, I was fascinated by records of the past and by stories, and was eager to learn what had happened in ancient times, and to know what had occurred in ages past. I therefore perused the various compilations of stories and anecdotes. Then I passed on from that stage to an infatuation with books of entertainment and long tales. [ . . . ]

Thus, trenchant proof convinced me of the prophethood of Jesus and of Muhammad, and I believed in them. For some time, out of consideration for my father, I held this belief without performing the Muslim rites. For he loved me intensely, could hardly live without me, and was very much attached to me. He was careful about my upbringing, occupying me since my early youth with disciplines based on logical demonstration, and training my thought and mind in arithmetic and geometry, the two disciplines whose mind-developing quality was praised by Plato.

For a long time I was not granted divine guidance, and this uncertainty, i.e., the consideration for my father, did not abandon me until travels separated me from him and my abode became distant from his. Yet I persisted in my respect for him and in the effort to avoid distressing him on my account.

And the time of divine guidance arrived. The divine call reached me in a vision of the Prophet, in a dream, the night of Friday, the ninth of Dhū-l-Ḥijja in the year 558. This was in Marāgha in Adharbayjān. [ . . . ]

I wrote a letter to my father who was then in Aleppo, whilst I was in Ḥiṣn Kayfā, and I explained to him in that letter a number of arguments and proofs which I knew he would not deny and could not refute. I informed him also of the two dreams. He set out for Mosul in order to meet me, but in Mosul he was suddenly stricken with a disease, and died.