Islam has always had ambivalent relations with Judaism and Christianity, as also with Jews and Christians. The awkwardness of their character has been accentuated by the creation and perpetuation, on all sides, of partial and ill-intentioned images during the middle ages and by political developments in the modern period. Since the beginning of serious modern study of Islam in the west, these relations have found an important place in scholars' interest, partly because many of those in the west who have studied Islam have been Jews, with a natural attraction to an interest in those topics which affected Jews and other minorities in the Islamic environment. In this volume, we have tried to assemble a collection of papers which reflect something of the diversity of the problems offered by this range of relations. We have also attempted to reflect, in the variety of the papers and the topics discussed in them, the rich variety of approach adopted by scholars over the last century and a half of such study. Israel Oriental Studies has ceased publication with volume 20.

This volume comprises articles dealing with qur'anic and post-qur'anic aspects of the Prophet Muhammad's image and religious environment. The pieces in the first section analyse Muhammad's prophecy as reflected in the Qur'an and the post-qur'anic sources of sira (Muhammad's biography), tafsir (Qur'an exegesis), ta'rikh (historiography) and hadith (Muslim tradition). They reveal aspects of the manner in which the post-qur'anic sources have elaborated on the relatively modest qur'anic image of Muhammad for polemical needs as well as due to natural admiration for the prophet of Islam. Articles in the second section study Muhammad's prophetic experience. By concentrating on specific events in Muhammad's life further light can be shed on the post-qur'anic image of Muhammad as developed by the Muslims of the first Islamic era. The articles that comprise the third section look at Muhammad's Arabia, specifically the traditions about Mecca and the Ka`ba as well as at the pre-Islamic Arabian roots of some qur'anic and post-qur'anic ideas and rituals, including the pre-Islamic sacred status of the Ka'ba in relation to that of Jerusalem.