Uzair

Uzair (عزير, ʿUzayr) is a figure who is mentioned in the Quran, Surah At-Tawba, verse , which states that he was revered by the Jews as "the son of God". Uzair is most often identified with the biblical Ezra and according to some with the Egyptian deity Osiris. Modern historians have described the reference as "enigmatic", since such views have not been found in Jewish sources. Islamic scholars have interpreted the Quranic reference in different ways, with some explaining that it alluded to a specific group of Jews. According to Ibn Kathir, Uzair lived between the times of King Solomon and the time of Zachariah, father of Yahya Some Quranic commentators viewed Uzayr as a learned scholar who sought to teach the people the forgotten laws of God. He is sometimes identified as the protagonist in the Quranic story of the man who slept for a hundred years (2:259). Some Islamic scholars held Uzayr to be one of the prophets. Although there is a hadith that reports that God expunged Uzayr from the list of prophets because he refused to believe in qadar (predestination), but this hadith is considered da'if (weak) and is rejected by most Islamic scholars.Ibn Hazm, al-Samaw'al and other scholars put forth the view that Uzair (or one of his disciples) falsified the Torah, and this claim became a common theme in Islamic polemics against the Bible. Many aspects of later Islamic narratives show similarity to Vision of Ezra, an apocryphal text which seems to have been partially known to Muslim readers. Classical Muslim scholars who were aware of Jewish and Christian denials of belief in the sonship of Ezra, explained that it was only one Jew or a small group of Jews who worshipped Uzayr, or that the verse refers to the extreme admiration of Jews for their doctors of law. Authors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia viewed the Quranic reference as a "malevolent metaphor" for the reverence accorded to Ezra in Judaism. Some modern historians have favored the theory that a Jewish sect in Arabia venerated Ezra to the extent of deifying him.