In his role as a “Judeo-Muslim”, Kaʿb al-Aḥbār appears in Islamic tradi- tion as providing Islamic sacred history with Biblical foundations that add to its messianic glory (Chapter 1).

In the following lines, yet another example of Kaʿb's role as provider of Biblical links designed to anchor the history of the Islamic umma in a divine scheme will be analysed. This time the links do not pertain to the conquests but rather to the Islamic state. Kaʿb turns the caliphs into leaders whose emergence takes place according to a predestined Biblical scheme. However, the Biblical link is now established not merely to glorify the caliphs, but also and mainly to warn the Muslims of an impending calamity. Kaʿb's apocalypse will be examined below together with other traditions predicting the emergence of the caliphs, and this analysis will show yet another instance of tension between Bible and Qurʾān.

Bible: the Ishmaelite Link

The Biblical link of the Islamic caliphs comes out in an apocalypse recorded in Kitāb al-fitan of Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād, in which Kaʿb predicts the emergence of twelve leaders among the Muslims. The apocalypse has its origin in Ḥims, and its earliest versions were circulated by Ismāoil ibn “Ayyash (Ḥimṣi, d. AH 181) on the authority of “trustworthy masters” whom he does not mention by name. In one of these versions, Kaʿb utters the apocalypse in response to a question posed to him by a person called Yashū who elsewhere is described as a Christian hermit (rāhib), well versed in holy scriptures, who acquired his knowledge before the emergence of the Prophet. In the present version, Ismāilʿibn Ayyash says:

This tradition obviously alludes to Genesis 17:20, in which God promises Abraham as follows:

This passage inspired many Islamic traditions of annunciation in which the clause “great nation” (goy gadol) was interpreted as predicting the emergence of Muḥammad as nabiyy ummi.