Kaʿb al-Aḥbār

For example, the Jewish convert Kaʿb al-Aḥbār brought much of the Isrāʾīliyyāt—narratives said to originate from Jewish sources—into Islamic tradition. Later on, the mystics’ commentaries expressed some gnostic (a dualistic viewpoint in which spirit is viewed as good and matter as evil) and Hellenistic concepts, of which the Hellenistic idea…