A New Muslim’s Refutation of Judaism: Risālat Ilzām al-Yahūd fī mā Za‘amū fī’t-Tawrāt min Qibel ‘Ilm al-Kalām

As in previous Muslim states, the Ottoman community was a multi-lingual and multi-faith community. For this very reason followers of these religions wrote numerous texts (raddiyas) with the intention of criticizing one another. However, for many reasons, the raddiyas of the Ottoman period remained unstudied for a long period of time. Nevertheless, starting from the 2000s, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian raddiyas began to be subjected to studies by different academic circles. The subject of the present study is Risālah of the Andalusian Jew Abdulallām who lived in late 15th and the early 16th century. It was written after his conversion along with an explanation of the reason for his conversion, with the intention of demonstrating that the good tidings of the coming Prophet Muhammad were foretold in Jewish holy scriptures, and that Jewish claims of the everlastingness of their religion were unsound. In this article, in addition to the context where it was written, and the issues it dealt with, its translation and manuscript are presented. In addition to restating similar topics and related Bible texts in previously compiled raddiyas, Abdulallām both manifests new evidence and seems to effect subsequent anti-Jewish raddiya authors.