This Noble House. Arnold E. Franklin

the way Jews perceived the Davidic line is no less evident in the characterization of the Davidic family as a pure and prophetic family. Abraham al-Raḥbī invokes both of these notions as well, when, in lauding his subject, he refers to the latter’s “prophetic, Davidic” ancestry and describes his own affection for the “pure and unsullied [al-ṭāhir al-zakkī] house.”⁹⁴ The purity of the Davidic line is also a central theme of the Bustanay story, where, however, the idea is roundly contested. The narrative’s insistence that Bustanay irreparably sullied the purity of the royal line should perhaps be read against the background of a growing tendency to view members of the Davidic family in precisely the terms suggested by al-Raḥbī.⁹⁵ The conception of the Davidic line as a prophetic family is invoked by the author of the Geniza letter discussed above, who writes of his happiness at learning that his addressee had met with Nafīs the elder, someone he refers to as “a branch of the prophetic, Davidic family.”⁹⁶

      And the same idea can also be found in a fragmentary text missing both its beginning and end, which has been described by its editor as “verses of praise” in honor of the exilarch Ḥisday ben David (fl. early twelfth century).⁹⁷ Made up of a series of scriptural passages celebrating the Davidic family followed by a string of encomia to Ḥisday in particular, the text appears to be a panegyric introduction to a sermon given by the exilarch, for connecting the two parts is the formula “Hear what he explains, and heed what he says,” a declaration that a number of medieval sources depict as the formal opening to addresses by important communal officials.⁹⁸ Ḥisday is eulogized in some fairly predictable ways; the text refers to him as, for instance, “the crown of our heads,” “our king,” and “our nasi.” But it also employs a less-than-obvious formulation when at one point it describes him as “the diadem of the nesiʾim and the offspring of prophets.”

      In the Islamic tradition David is, of course, a prophet. But when medieval Jews referred to the Davidic dynasty as a “prophetic family,” more was involved than simply the recasting of the Jewish David in an Islamic mold. That, to be sure, is part of the story; but the real point of reference was undoubtedly Muḥammad, whose descendants constitute the prophetic family par excellence in Muslim society. The Jews’ characterization of the Davidic line as prophetic thus entailed a double transposition: reassigning David a role that matched his status in the Islamic tradition, but thereby ultimately setting up an equivalence between his family and that of the Prophet Muḥammad.