From Miṣbāḥ al-Umma to Iqāmat al-Shuhūd: An Historico-Literary Analysis of Muḥammad Riḍā Jadīd al-Islām’s Refutation of Judaism

Abstract The Iranian Jewish scholar Rabbi Mullā Āqā Bābā (d. 1849), who converted to Twelver Shiʿi Islam in 1822, is known to modern scholars solely through a posthumous lithograph version of his refutation of his former religion, which was published in 1875 under the dual title Manqūl al-Riḍāʾī and Iqāmat al-shuhūd fī radd al-Yahūd (“The sayings transmitted by Riḍāʾī” and “The stand of the witnesses to refute the Jews”). This article aims to shed new light on this book and its author(s) by studying two hitherto unstudied manuscripts of the work, which predate the lithograph version. It also seeks to highlight the role of later editors in transmitting Mullā Āqā Bābā’s writings to subsequent generations under different titles and in variant forms. Through a literary comparison of the manuscripts and the lithograph version, we try to distinguish the urtext from several layers of modifications made by later scribes and editors.