Ananites Abroad


 * Ananites Abroad
 * by Jonathan I. Edelstein
 * 10 October 2001

Ananite Dispersal ... The Ananites arrived in India during interesting times. Overextended and plagued by constant border warfare in Sindh, the tottering Pratihara Empire was threatened by Pushtuns to the north, Palas to the east and Rashtrakutas to the south. The final blow to the Pratiharas -- the fall of Kanauj after a three-year Rashtrakuta siege -- occurred in SE 98 [870 CE], which is coincidentally the first occasion on which B'nei Mikra appear in Indian records. An account of the siege, written in the early third century SE, refers to a "teacher of the one God and the Book," who was evidently also a merchant bringing goods into the city through a Rashtrakuta blockade.

Neither this unnamed merchant nor the Pratihara kingdom survived the conquest of Kanauj. Within two years of the city's fall, the Pratihara king was murdered, leaving rival factions to sort out the succession in a bloody civil war. The border provinces broke away from the kingdom soon after, and by SE 110 [882 CE], the empire had collapsed into a multitude of warring successor states.

In this atmosphere of things falling apart, the messianic teachings of the B'nei Mikra found fertile ground. Much as early Christianity had appealed to Roman slaves, the Ananites -- with their radical message of equality under God -- acquired a following among the lower castes. Women, as well, were attracted by the high status their gender held within B'nei Mikra theology, and many of the more prominent Indian teachers were female.

Generally speaking, the Ananites made few inroads into the higher castes, but there was one notable exception -- the Rajputs. The Rajput clans were themselves recent immigrants from Central Asia who had been absorbed into the Pratihara kingdom as warriors and garrison troops. In the anarchy that followed the fall of the Pratiharas, the Rajputs seized control of many of the successor kingdoms, particularly in the area that came to be known as Rajputana. FN1 Some of the Rajput clans found the asceticism and self-discipline of the Ananite faith attractive, and also seized upon it as a means of differentiating themselves from the Hindus they ruled...

... By SE 140 [912 CE], the B'nei Mikra accounted for a tenth of the population of Sindh and Gujarat and were beginning to spread southward into Maharashtra. There, they encountered the Bene Israel, a pre-existing Jewish community of uncertain origin whose traditions were primarily pre-rabbinic. As such, they adapted relatively easily to the Ananites' theology; never having embraced the Oral Law, they had no difficulty rejecting it...

... In the kingdoms of Rajputana, nearly a third of the people had adopted Ananism by SE 150 [922 CE], and B'nei Mikra formed local majorities in certain petty kingdoms and cities. It was here, as well, that the first Ananite warrior orders were founded as an outgrowth of the Rajput clans. They were not monks in the Christian sense -- among other differences, only married men were permitted to join -- but they were highly disciplined, lived in communities dedicated to faith, and fanatically defended their homeland from Christian and Hindu alike...

Jews, history of ... Much has been written about the "holy wars" between rabbinic Jews and Ananites, but it must be kept in mind that these "wars" took place primarily in Babylonia and the Levant where both were minorities. The "wars" were, in reality, riots of the kind that frequently pitted Christian against Christian, Ananite against Ananite and, occasionally, Christian against Jew.

For all that, however, the battles between B'nei Mikra and orthodox Jews were bitter and intractable. Although the Ananites were fanatical about their own theological autonomy, they were often less tolerant of those who did not share their beliefs. Rabbinic Jews, for their part, regarded Ananites as heretics and blamed them -- with some justice -- for the increase in persecution by Levantine Christians.

In Babylonia, where the two sects were evenly matched during the late first century SE, the battles were the fiercest of all, and they were to have far-reaching consequences for rabbinic Judaism. In SE 85 [857 CE], particularly heavy intercommunal rioting resulted in the destruction of the academies of Sura and Pumbaditha by Ananite mobs. All at once, the centers of scholarship for the scattered rabbinic community were closed, and there were no new academies to replace them. FN2 Instead, Jewish learning from the second century onward was dominated by local schools whose philosophies quickly diverged...

Ananites, literary influences ... The literary genre most identified with early Ananism is the book of personal prayers. These works began to gain currency during the early second century as an outgrowth of the freedom granted to B'nei Mikra worshipers to interpret the Torah in their own fashion.

... By the last decade of the first century, most B'nei Mikra congregations conducted much of their services in silence. Silent prayer was not entirely foreign to Judaism -- certain scriptures, such as the Amidah, had traditionally been read silently -- but the B'nei Mikra expanded the practice beyond anything previously known. Other than a few standard readings and songs, the entire service was left to each worshiper to call upon God as he saw fit.

As the trend toward silent worship increased, Ananites began to publish and circulate their prayers so that others could be inspired by them. The literary value of most of these works can charitably be described as negligible, but the B'nei Mikra contained the same percentage of poets as any other community. The paeans of the Rajput warriors and the lamentations of the oppressed communities of the West both found their way into lyric prayers that were carried from one Ananite community to another...

... Perhaps the greatest of the New Psalmists, as the Ananite poets came to be called, was a woman known only as al-Mu'alima, or "the Teacher." As her title suggests, she was a scholar of note who apparently served as hazan -- cantor -- for the Ananite community in Alexandria during the early second century. By SE 150, her verses had circulated throughout the far-flung Ananite world, and some were even being repeated by rabbinic Jews and Christians ignorant of their origin. This was far from unique -- many B'nei Mikra prayers found their way into rabbinic or Christian ritual -- but few Ananite poets equaled al-Mu'alima's influence on secular literature. As one of the few B'nei Mikra scholars in the Christian world, she was also not without impact on the developing theology of Submission...

Ananites, theology of ... By the middle of the second century, it was no longer possible to speak of a single Ananite faith. The dispersion of the community and the widely disparate experiences of Ananites in different lands accented theological differences that were already magnified by the autonomy of B'nei Mikra worshipers. The B'nei Mikra had become a meta-religion in the same sense as Christianity -- Ananites throughout the world shared certain texts, rituals and fundamental doctrines, but held quite different beliefs. If anything, the Ananites were even more diverse than the Christians, because they held political power in relatively few countries and thus had no means of enforcing an orthodoxy.

The most enduring ideas to emerge from this diversity came from an entirely unexpected place...