A Jewish Legend about the Prophet Muhammad: A New Edition and Turkish Translation of Ma’ase Mahmat

There is a common understanding in Jewish tradition that certain Jewish rabbis around the Prophet Muhammad had contrived a plot to manipulate him and most importantly to dictate the Qur’ān to the prophet. There have been a large number of mythic narratives produced by Jews to that effect. In this article, a short anonymous story of this same sort about the prophet Muhammad is edited along with a new Turkish translation of it. The Hebrew manuscript, which according to its catalogue records was written in the 18th century Italy, was first edited by edited by Boaz Cohen with the title ‘Une Légende Juive de Mahomet’ and was translated into Turkish by Nuh Arslantaş. A check against the original text revealed that the Cohen edition has a number of misread words and skipped lines. We therefore decided that a new edition of the manuscript and a new Turkish translation thereof should be made, which we present in this article.