Treatise Refuting the View That the Jews Have Altered the Torah

This brief text denies the Muslim claim that Jews altered the text of revelation originally provided to Moses, a claim referred to as taḥrīf. It survives in a codex that contains several Karaite philosophical and polemical works, all written in Arabic script. The codex, now held in the British Museum, was owned for a long period by a Karaite synagogue and contains ownership marks in Hebrew characters. ‘Alī ibn Sulaymān cited verses from the Qur’ān in an effort to show that Islamic revelation itself testifies to the Pentateuch’s authenticity, a common line of attack in these kinds of polemics. The charge of taḥrīf appears in many Muslim texts of this period and many Jews responded, regardless of their affiliation within the Jewish community.