Synopses & Reviews
Did Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages cohabit in a peaceful "interfaith utopia?" Or were Jews under Muslim rule persecuted, much as they were in Christian lands? Rejecting both polemically charged "myths," Mark Cohen offers a systematic comparison of Jewish life in medieval Islam and Christendom--the first in-depth explanation of why medieval Islamic-Jewish relations, though not utopic, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West.
Review
"Cohen's is a polemical text in the best sense of the word: it tries to open debate, not stifle it, and asks questions where they are traditionally shouted away. . . . A reassuringly balanced and judicious assessment of Jewish life in the Middle Ages."
--Andre A. Aciman, New York Newsday
Review
"Cohen advances our knowledge through a fine treatment of the huge literature and the application of social anthropological theory. Scholars will welcome the sound synthesis; general readers will appreciate the lucid style."
--Library Journal
Review
"Cohen's concern in this important new book is with a historiographically far more interesting and useful question [than the debate over the Jewish experiences in the medieval worlds of Christendom and Islam]: why the difference? . . . Cohen's argument is buttressed with an impressive range of evidence drawn from both Jewish and non-Jewish sources in the Islamic and Christian worlds."
--David Wasserstein, The Times Literary Supplement
Review
Winner of the 1994 National Jewish Honor Book in Jewish History
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1994
Synopsis
The exacerbation of Arab-Israeli conflict at the time of the Six-Day War in 1967 gave birth in some quarters to a radical revision of Jewish-Arab history. At stake was the longstanding, originally Jewish, "myth of the interfaith utopia" in which medieval Muslims and Jews peacefully cohabited in Arab lands - a utopia that many Arabs claimed had continued until the emergence of modern Zionism. Some Jewish writers challenged this notion with a "countermyth of Islamic persecution", suggesting that Jews fared not much better socially and politically under Islamic rule than they did under Christendom. Full of implications for Jewish, Islamic, and European historians, both myths form the backdrop of this provocative book aimed at enriching our understanding of medieval gentile-Jewish relations. Addressing general readers and specialists alike, Mark Cohen offers the first in-depth explanation of why medieval Islamic-Jewish relations, though not utopic, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West. Cohen presents a systematic comparison of the legal, economic, and social situations of Jews in medieval Islam and Christendom, offering particularly fresh insights on issues of hierarchy, marginality, and ethnicity and on the topic of persecution and collective memory. His analysis includes differences in theology that helped influence the way Muslims and Christians treated Jews. Written for a broad audience, this book draws on many salient primary sources, which let the voices of medieval Islam, Christendom, and the Jews speak for themselves.
Table of Contents
| Preface and Acknowledgments | |
| Note on Transliteration | |
| Introduction | |
Ch. 1 | Myth and Countermyth | 3 |
Ch. 2 | Religions in Conflict | 17 |
Ch. 3 | The Legal Position of Jews in Christendom | 30 |
Ch. 4 | The Legal Position of Jews in Islam | 52 |
Ch. 5 | The Economic Factor | 77 |
Ch. 6 | Hierarchy, Marginality, and Ethnicity | 107 |
Ch. 7 | The Jew as Townsman | 121 |
Ch. 8 | Sociability | 129 |
Ch. 9 | Interreligious Polemics | 139 |
Ch. 10 | Persecution, Response and Collective Memory | 162 |
| Conclusion | 195 |
| Notes | 201 |
| Index | 271 |