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Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages

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This volume surveys the diversity of Islamic legal thought and practice, a 1500 - year tradition that has been cultivated throughout the Islamic world. It features translations of Islamic legal texts from across the spectrum of literary genres (including legal theory, judicial handbooks, pamphlets) that represent the range of temporal, geographic and linguistic contexts in which Islamic law has been, and continues to be, developed. Each text has been chosen and translated by a specialist. It is accompanied by an accessible introduction that places the author and text in historical and legal contexts and explains the state of the relevant field of study. An introduction to each section offers an overview of the genre and provides a useful bibliography. The volume will enable all researchers of Islamic law - established academics, undergraduate students, and general readers - to understand the tremendous and sometimes bewildering diversity of Islamic law, as well the continuities and common features that bind it together.
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Worlds of Byzantium offers a new understanding of what it means to study the history and visual culture of the Byzantine empire during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Arguing that linguistic and cultural frontiers do not always coincide with political ones, it suggests that Byzantine studies should look not only within but also beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire and include the history of Christian populations in the Muslim-ruled Middle East and neighbouring states like Ethiopia and Armenia and integrate more closely with Judaic and Islamic studies. With essays by leading scholars in a wide range of fields, it offers a vision of a richly interconnected eastern Mediterranean and Near East that will be of interest to anyone who studies the premodern world.
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A strong case can be made that the concept of naskh, “abrogation” or “annulment”, was the most potent weapon in the arsenal of Muslim polemicists seeking to convert Jews (Burton‘s Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān is highly informative but deals almost exclusively with naskh in its internal Islamic contexts, e.g., hermeneutics and legal theory). Naskh did not necessarily involve any rejection of Jewish scripture or tradition as fraudulent or corrupt. It rested on the simple premise, explicitly confirmed by the Qur’an, that the deity may alter or replace His legislation over the course of time. In the first part of this paper, I will briefly review the topic, adding some texts and observations that, to the best of my knowledge, have not appeared in the academic literature (comprehensively surveyed in Adang’s Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, 1996; also in Adang and Schmidtke’s Polemics (Muslim-Jewish) in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, 2010). The bulk of this paper will consist of a fairly detailed summary of an unpublished tract on naskh written by Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī (RD) (1247–1318), himself a Jewish convert to Islam and a monumental politician, cultural broker, historian, and author.
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From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia , the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis. Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule.
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Kafka explores many elements in ‘Jackals and Arabs’ that are found in the Judeo-Christian tradition of Gog and Magog, the Alexander Romance, and the Qur’anic story of Dhu’l-Qarnayn. A comparative analysis of these works reveals Kafka’s criticism of the Zionist movement. Kafka rejects Zionist exceptionalism and separatism through the narrator’s rejection of the jackals’ cause. Kafka’s jackals are compared to Gog and Magog, who are portrayed as corruptors of the land in the aforementioned texts. The categorisation of corruptors of the land is significant because this reverses Zionist claims of a profound connection to the land, which Kafka, likewise, reverses when the jackals claim that the desert is their home from which the Arabs should be removed. Zionist avowals of Arab backwardness are countered by Kafka as he makes the Arabs superior, which is also how the indigenous population are depicted in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions since they are contrasted with the barbarity of Gog and Magog. Finally, the Zionist trope of the European Jewish hero who flees persecution is inverted by Kafka who confers on the narrator a quasi-prophetic/royal status similar to that of Dhu’l-Qarnayn and Alexander the Great.
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The aim of this article is to focus on the views of modern Western scholars regarding the authenticity of the Document of Medina and its unity in relation to its date and preservation, rather than on the debates over its content. The focus is on their rationale for defending its authenticity despite the limited number of aḥadīth they date back to the first Islamic century. Additionally, considering the fact that many other reports with the characteristics of the document are not considered authentic, the question is raised whether it is the “sunna” of their predecessors that is actually decisive, since the testimony has been considered authentic since Julies Wellhausen on the same grounds.
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The Jewish presence in the Iranian world is well attested from the advent of Islam up to the rise of the Safavids in the early sixteenth century. The vast area stretching from modern Iran in the west to China in the east, and from the Central Asian Steppes in the north to the shores of the Persian Gulf in the south, was home to multiple Jewish communities, Rabbanite and non‐Rabbanite alike. While retaining their religious identity through their practices and ties to the main spiritual centers of Judaism, Iranian Jews formed part and parcel of Iran's social fabric. This is particularly evident given their high degree of involvement in the political sphere and their acculturation to the Perso‐Islamic environment during the Ilkhanid and early post‐Mongol periods.
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This article tackles the issue of Jewish Andalusi identity and the notion of Sephardi exceptionalism, promoted by several Jewish Andalusi scholars from the tenth century onwards. It does so by examining the way Jewish Iberian immigrants identified themselves, or were identified by their contemporaries, in their new locales. The basic corpus for this study is the documentary Cairo Geniza, which enables an examination of every-day experiences of these Iberian immigrants, as opposed to literary compositions which have been the main source for the study of the notion of Sephardi exceptionalism. The period examined is the late tenth through the thirteenth centuries, considered the “classical Geniza period” and equivalent to a period of major shifts in Iberian Jewry. Using digital tools and secondary literature, a database of 161 manuscripts which include identifications of Iberian immigrants was assembled. An analysis of these identifications reveals, on the one hand, a growing use of the new Hebrew identifier “Sepharadi” as a geographical and probably cultural marker. On the other hand, it frames it in a historical reality in which identification as a Sephardi was not an obvious choice with a clear cultural meaning, but rather just one out of a spectrum of possible identifiers.
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In this book, Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history—that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood based on agriculture and move into urban crafts and long-distance trade. Here, he presents an alternative account that reveals the complexity of interfaith relations in early Islam. Using Jewish and Islamic chronicles, legal materials, and the rich documentary evidence of the Cairo Geniza, Lieberman demonstrates that Jews initially remained on the rural periphery after the Islamic conquest of Iraq. Gradually, they assimilated to an emerging Islamicate identity as the new religion took shape, sapping towns and villages of their strength. Simultaneously, a small, elite group of merchants and communal leaders migrated westward. Lieberman here explores their formative influence on the Jewish communities of the southern Mediterranean that flourished under Islamic conquest.
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The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture is a comprehensive and engaging overview of Jewish life, from its origins in the ancient Near East to its impact on contemporary popular culture. The twenty-one essays, arranged historically and thematically, and written specially for this volume by leading scholars, examine the development of Judaism and the evolution of Jewish history and culture over many centuries and in a range of locales. They emphasize the ongoing diversity and creativity of the Jewish experience. Unlike previous anthologies, which concentrate on elite groups and expressions of a male-oriented rabbinic culture, this volume also includes the range of experiences of ordinary people and looks at the lives and achievements of women in every place and era. The many illustrations, maps, timeline, and glossary of important terms enhance this book's accessibility to students and general readers.
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The interpretation of death’s theme in the Qur’an immediately stagnated when mufassir discuss it in eschatolical topic. It can be talked again in academic discourse by starting to look for the maqasid behind a verse by reading the context and the historical relations that surround it. Therefore, this study will apply tafsir maqasid as a theory to interpret the verses of death related with escatological theme, in this case QS. Al-Baqarah/2: 154 and QS. Ali ‘Imran/3: 169. Most mufassir commented on these verses according to explicit text whitout trying to identificate to other interpretation; that the Believers who fight for Allah will live in other world. Through this research, it is found other alternative interpretation; that these verses are not only explain about how syuhada live after die but also state indicate the importance of protecting religion even sacrificing one’s life. Besides that, it is also conluded that death is a part of God’s pleasure.
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Publication of a seal of rock crystal in London (British Museum), with an inscription in Aramaic and Hebrew naming the bearer, one Solomon b. Azariah, as grandson (or perhaps son) of an exilarch. An identification of the bearer as Solomon, son of the Jewish exilarch Azariah b. Solomon ( c . 975) and grandson of the exilarch Solomon b. Josiah ( c . 951–3), is considered, as is the alternative possibility that the grandfather was the exilarch Solomon b. Hisdai ( c . 730–58).
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After the emergence of Islam in the early seventh century, the Arabic language saw its rapid expansion and eventually become a theological language as well. Non-Muslim theologians living in the Islamic world began to express themselves in Arabic and wrote polemical literature against their adversaries from different religions and religious denominations. Of special importance were also Jewish theologians who wanted to demonstrate the correctness of their own religious beliefs and the ill-foundedness of Christian and Muslim doctrines. This paper is dedicated to the Arabic speaking Jewish theologian Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ (the 9th century A.D.), whose work Twenty Chapters (ʿIšrūn maqāla) is the earliest extant summa theologiae in Arabic, i.e., a work which aims to address the totality of theological teachings of a certain religion. The eight chapter of this work contains a critique of the Christian doctrine that God is three, while the tenth chapter refutes the Christian teachings that the Son is from eternity begotten by the Father and that God was incarnated in reality. This paper places Dāwūd’s critique in the broader context of trans-confessional polemic in the medieval Islamic world with special attention to Judeo-Arabic tradition.
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When the Jews first settled in Central Asia is uncertain, but circumstantial evidence clearly indicates that this happened at least two and a half thousand years ago. In the first millennium AD, the Jews lived only in cities no farther than 750 km east of the Caspian sea (in the eighth–eleventh centuries the sea was called Khazarian). Only later did they migrate to the central part of the region, to cities like Samarkand and Bukhara. It is possible that Jews from Khazaria joined them, since they already had tight trade connections with Central Asia and China. There is no trace of evidence regarding the existence of Jews in the entirety of Central Asia in the early sixteenth century. At the very end of the sixteenth century Bukhara became the new ethnoreligious center of the Jews in that region. In the first half of the nineteenth century, thanks to European travelers visiting Central Asia at that time, the term “Bukharan Jews” was assigned to this sub-ethnic Jewish group. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary source materials, this article aims to prove that the presence of Jews in Central Asia was not continuous, and therefore the modern Bukharan Jews are not descendants of the first Jewish settlers there. It also attempts to determine where Central Asia’s first Jewish population disappeared to.
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This chapter analyses the position of Jews and Judaism from a new dialogic perspective. The first part defines Qur’anic terms that were frequently used to describe the Jewish population in Mecca and Medina. This part is followed by a discussion of the political and social circumstances that caused considerable tension between the Muslims and Jews in Medina. The chapter highlights the fact that the verses about Jews, like the other Qur’an verses, must be understood within the particular context, since all the verses were revealed in response to the existing circumstances at the time of their revelation. Based on those verses, together with other sources, including the Constitution of Medina, it is clear that the Muslims accepted and respected their Jewish neighbors and welcomed them into their community. In fact, as the chapter points out, some of the verses speak directly to the Jews, reminding them of their promise to accept God’s messages. The chapter ends with an examination of their shared history, particularly in Medina. It reveals that Muslims and Jews supported, enriched and learned a lot from one another, and that the tensions that emerged between them resulted for the most part from their religious similarities and close proximity in Medina. The chapter concludes with an examination of the present-day significance of the Qur’anic verses for Jewish-Muslim relations in the European context.
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Despite the tendency of Christian sources to “silence” conversions to Judaism, some of them are well documented, such as that of “Obadiah the Proselyte,” a Norman nobleman born around 1070 in Southern Italy. I study here the stages of his conversion and the itinerary that led him from Italy to the Middle East. His conversion was marked by many signs and omens, starting with the adoption of a new name and his circumcision. There are other conversions, less well-known now but notorious at the time, such as that of Andrea, archbishop of Bari, a few years before that of Obadiah and in the same region. The apostasy of Christianity entailed the departure of the convert, even if, as is the case of Obadiah, he did not express a brutal rejection of his culture of origin and of Christianity. Such conversions seemed scandalous to Christians, and the hostility of the political power towards them largely determined what happened to the converts.
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Christianity in Fifteenth-Century Iraq - by Thomas A. Carlson September 2018
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We trace two logical ideas further back than they have previously been traced. One is the idea of using diagrams to prove that certain logical premises do—or don’t—have certain logical consequences. This idea is usually credited to Venn, and before him Euler, and before him Leibniz. We find the idea correctly and vigorously used by Abū al-Barakāt in 12th century Baghdad. The second is the idea that in formal logic, P logically entails Q if and only if every model of P is a model of Q. This idea is usually credited to Tarski, and before him Bolzano. But again we find Abū al-Barakāt already exploiting the idea for logical calculations. Abū al-Barakāt’s work follows on from related but inchoate research of Ibn Sīnā in eleventh century Persia. We briefly trace the notion of model-theoretical consequence back through Paul the Persian (sixth century) and in some form back to Aristotle himself.
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Jews in Arabia at the Dawn of IslamJews in the Arab EmpireJewish Communal Organization in the Abbasid CaliphateSectarian and Freethinking ChallengeSa'adya Gaon and the Triumph of Rabbinic JudaismThe Rise of Other CentersThe Decline of the Later Middle AgesFurther reading
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Die Form des Gedichts, seit jeher der individuellen Empfindung vorbehalten und von Musikalität und lebendiger Bildhaftigkeit geprägt, spiegelt in besonderem Maß die Schwierigkeiten einer stark kollektivistischen und in ihrer Vorstellungswelt reglementierten Kultur wider, einen schöpferischen Ausdruck für das Individuelle und Eigenwillige zu finden-daher die Verspätung, mit der in der Moderne authentische hebräische Lyrik zum Vorschein kam. Die Geschichte der modernen hebräischen Lyrik ist bis in die Gegenwart hinein durch die beiden Dichter Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) und Saul Tschernichowski (1875–1943) geprägt, die auf ganz unterschiedliche Weise die Geburt eines neuen jüdischen Individuums zum Ausdruck brachten.
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Digitized text repositories (such as al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr, al-Maktaba al-Shāmila and Maktabat Ahl al-Bayt) open new horizons in the study of early Islamic history. By employing them it was found that ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd had at least four courts, two in Kūfa and two in Medina, and at least two estates cultivated by sharecroppers, one in Rādhān near Kūfa and another in Saylaḥīn near Qādisiyya. His situation is comparable to that of a member of the pre-Islamic Sassanian landed aristocracy of absentee landlords. He also had three households in three different places. The desire for control and worldly assets is human, and those who lack it never make it to the highest echelons of power. Put differently, hagiography should not be mistaken for historiography. Whether or not Ibn Masʿūd's Rādhān should be linked with the Rādhānite Jewish merchants remains an open question.
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The past few decades have witnessed increasing calls in modern scholarship for revisions of the portrayal of early Islamic rule history. Such calls not only challenge older historiographic paradigms but also encourage historians to seek answers in sources hitherto neglected. Accordingly, in recent years there has been a dramatic proliferation of studies offering new historical conceptions, many of which are indebted to new kinds of source material, including coinage, official documents, inscriptions, and material artifacts, alongside more conventional forms of data like historiographic treatises, biographical dictionaries, apologetic literature, theological essays, and scriptural texts. Assembled together, new and older historical materials were now being processed, synthesized, and analyzed through the lenses of fresh paradigms and often in collaboration with other disciplines, especially the social sciences and comparative literature. The present contribution offers further support of this latter approach by highlighting the utility of legal sources for discussing the process of conversion to Islam in the early Islamic period. Following a brief historical survey, the discussion turns to address one of the central, yet highly elusive, episodes in early Islamic history – the process of conversion to Islam. The goal of this sample analysis of legal sources is twofold – to provide new historiographic insights, but also, from a methodological perspective, to underscore the remarkable utility of these sources for historians.
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Goitein's A Mediterranean Society is widely praised but often misread. It is regarded as a monumental accomplishment of compilation and organization, but a book that is only a compendium of details without an argument. This article shows that it is instead a collection of brilliant syntheses and hypotheses, and that the absence of an over-arching thesis reflects not a lack of interest or thought, but tensions in the author's arguments and counter-arguments, particularly about the nature of Jewish-Muslim interaction. The article closes with suggestions for how to read or re-read the work to appreciate both richness and contradiction.
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