Reviewed by Sasha R. Goldstein-Sabbah, Leiden Institute for Religious Studies

Jacob Lassner’s monograph Jews, Christians, and the Abode of Islam: Modern Scholarship, Medieval Realities is a highly readable, well written volume synthesizing the history and the current state of scholarship on Islam.  The volume also provides an overview of the history of Jews and Christians in the Muslim World spanning the advent of Islam up until the early modern period.   Although ordered and presented as one volume the book should really be considered as two separate extended essays each divided into chapter based subsections.

The first half of the book refers to the first part of the subtitle Modern Scholarship, focusing on how the West has studied Islamic civilization and conversely how modern Islamic society has studied and perceived the West.

In the first two chapters of the first section the focus is largely how Western scholars have studied Islam.  In these chapters Lassner outlines the evolution of the field such as the transition from the missionary come scholars to the contemporary academics. He summarizes the various schools of research which have emerged such as the Jerusalem school which he sees as a living link to pre-WWII European scholarship or the SOAS school and their revisionist approach to Muslim foundational myths.  And he recounts some of the more explosive publications of the past few decades such as Christophe Luxenberg’s The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran and Michael Cook and Patricia Crone’s Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World.  This allows the reader to undersand  the issues without having to read the volumes and gives some insight into the current state of academia.

Lassner is not shy about viewing his opinions for example in the first chapter entitled the Orientalists he criticizes the “Eurocentric outlook of Jewish Studies” in American academia.  And later deftly points out the flaws of Edward’s Said’s now classic Orientalism, citing many critical reviews.  He also ventures to explain why Jews have been so prominent in the field of Islamic studies in Europe suggesting a perceived link between the Jewish “golden age” of Muslim Spain and the period of Jewish emancipation and enlightenment which occurred in 19th century Europe.  This explanation sets up a reoccurring theme of comparison that is used to demonstrate the inherent difference between the minority experience in Europe with that of the Jew or Christian in the Islamic world.

In the concluding chapters of this section Lassner, citing the earlier works of Margalit and Buruma, develops the idea of the Occidentalist.  In Lassner’s definition the Occidentalist refers to the Muslim and how he or she perceives the West.  Lassner is careful not to present this concept as a clash of civilizations with the Orientalists but instead to present Islamic society’s interest, or lack thereof, of the West and how the Occidentalists both historically and in the modern period have perceived the Orientalists and European society.  Charming anecdotes includes his mention of Idrisi, the twelfth century geographer who chronicled the European continent all the way to the British Isles with help from European informants and later the twentieth century University of Baghdad professor who proposed, based on Idrisi’s description of the British Isles, that Shakespeare could have in fact been Sheikh Zubayr, a man of Muslim extraction whose plays were inspired from the medieval Islamic World.

Part Two of the volume is more straightforward and less innovative.  Entitled “Jews and Christians”, it offers a summary of the relationship between the Muslim majority and the Jewish and Christian minorities from the advent of Islam until the end of the Medieval Period.  The first chapter of the section gives a concise synopsis of the Jews of Medina and their untimely fate as a result of Mohammed’s consolidation of power.  Although the summary does not present any new material or provide any new insight into this period it presents an elegant and concise account which still manages to discuss the historiography and inherent pitfalls of trying to reconstruct such a period, in short a perfect summary to be used in a classroom environment.

In this section Lassner also takes the time to clarify concepts such as what is meant by tolerance in medieval Islamic society in comparison to how tolerance is defined in the West today and he highlights concepts central to the understanding of Islamic society such as the ummah and the importance of communal identity.  Clarifying that the historic ummah should not be confused with the modern state.  He also juxtaposes phenomena in European history with those in Islamic history as a contextualization tool to show the limits of what can be known of the Medieval Islamic world.  One example of this is his comparison of individual Jews converting to Christianity in Great Britain and the Continent during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century so as to integrate into gentile society with that of Jews who converted to Islam during the Middle Ages so as to ascend the higher echelons of the civil service.

In summary the book is a very enjoyable read for the intellectually curious non-specialist wishing to gain a basic understanding of the main actors, ideas, and themes of both the history of Islamic Studies as a field and the historical triangular relationship between the three Abrahamic religions, to quote from the introduction of the volume.   This book is also ideal for the academic wishing to gain a quick refresher on the major debates in the field or a non-politicized historical account.    The one caveat for the latter group being the lack of footnotes which while completely understandable given Lassner’s focus on the former group was at times frustrating.  That being said, the selected bibliography at the end of the volume is organized thematically by chapter and is useful for further reading.  However it should be noted that the author has consciously decided to limit the references of foreign language publications and it is therefore best suited to non-specialists and students.   Lassner’s book is a major accomplishment in that he is able to present a complicated and highly politicized field in a nuanced and evenhanded manner and for that he should be lauded.  This volume will undoubtedly by of great use to both specialist and student alike.

Reviewed by Judith L. Goldstein, Vassar College (goldstein@vassar.edu)

The essays in Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas provide a comparative perspective in which  “each Sephardic piece” is understood to be “part of a transnational diaspora” (p. xiii). The edited volume, by gathering the regional studies in one place, unites them into something greater, yielding a collectivity that can then be compared further with Sephardi communities in Israel and with other transnational diasporas. Divided into three sections—“Sephardim in the Americas:  Community and Culture,” “Ideological Divergence:  Zionism, Religion, and Transnationalism,” and “Culture in Transition:  Language, Literature, and Music”—the book succeeds in its aim of using a global perspective to “call for a new definition of the boundaries between the different Sephardic groups and new interpretations of their culture” (p.xxii).

The great diversity in terms of places of origin and places of settlement of the Sephardim in the Americas makes it easy to see why thus far they have been largely documented through separate regional studies. “The Sephardic population in the Americas is formed by a large number of small groups, divided according to communities of origin in the Iberian Peninsula, the Middle East, and North Africa, and dispersed among English-, Spanish-, Portuguese-, and French-speaking societies” (p. xiii). Or, to begin from the perspective of a city, Buenos Aires, for example, contains four distinctly organized Sephardi groups:  “the Spanish-speaking Moroccans, the various Ladino-speaking Jews, including the Turks, the Greeks, and people from the Balkan countries; the Syrians of Aleppo, together with others whose mother tongue was Arabic, generally from Egypt and Jerusalem and the Syrians of Damascus, together with those coming from Lebanon” (Brauner, p. 90). Reading the essays together lets readers see how the different representations of this diversity—whether academic, or literary; whether from within the community or from outside it—are in conversation with each other

The occasion to review Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas for a journal dedicated to the study of Muslim-Jewish relations foregrounds a particular contribution it makes that may not be considered in other review contexts: that of redrawing, or of enlarging the maps of “Middle Eastern” Jewish migrations. Elsewhere, Israeli author Amnon Shamash introduces readers to his family’s geographies, both imagined and experienced.  Shamash writes of his Aleppan extended family: “Each Jew has his America.  Our America was Mexico.  Like many Jewish families from the Old World, ours was also torn between the land of boundless possibilities and the land of impossible boundaries…Many uncles and aunts, their descendants and descendants’ descendants populate the capital of Mexico today…with the taste of Aleppo in their mouths, the love of Zion on their tongues and both feet planted firmly in the soil of America” (Shamash, Amnon.  My Sister the Bride.  Massada 1979, pp. 25-26). Shamash in Israel thought not only of the past Aleppo of his childhood, but of the present Mexico City of others in his extended family.

Instead of taking the more familiar approach to immigrant studies that focuses mainly on double homes—the country of origin and the country of settlement—the essays in the book remind us that in some cases the place of settlement may be the most recent on a path of migrations that are better seen as having three or more stops. While this remapping is not the main intent of an already very full and interdisciplinary book, it shows the productiveness of the book’s emphasis on transnationality.

When thinking of his family, Shamash considered together Syria, Israel and Mexico. In turn, this book on Sephardim in the Americas reminds us that when we look at “Cuban” Jews in Miami, we may be looking at Jews whose descendants went from Spain to Turkey to Cuba, and then from Cuba came to the United States. Sephardic migrations were not just those of Old World Spanish-speaking Jews to New World countries in which Spanish is the dominant language, but also those of Old World Arabic- and Turkish-speaking Jews who came to the Americas. In the latter case, as some of the authors in the volume show, some Arabic and Turkish-speakers who came from communities in which spoken Ladino had all but disappeared, have been introduced or reintroduced in New World countries to a Ladino past.

All the essays make valuable contributions. Of particular interest to readers of Intertwined Worlds would be those case studies on religious revival among Syrian Jews in Buenos Aires (Susana Brauner), religious movements among Jews from Aleppo, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans in Mexico (Liz Hamui Halabe), and the history of migrations from Turkey to Cuba to Miami of Turkish Jews (Margalit Bejarano). An essay on contemporary literary uses of Ladino shows how different pasts can be creatively layered in the present. In this essay, Monique Balbuena gives the examples of writers, some from Ladino speaking families, and one from a European (Askhenazi) background, whose uses of Ladino serve different symbolic purposes in their writing. In the case of writers such as Clarisse Nicoidski and Margalit Matitiahu who heard Ladino spoken when they were young, the language can be both a mother tongue as well as the words of their mothers. In the example of writer Juan Gelman whose heritage was not Ladino, his “Self-Sephardization” enabled him reposition his personal and national identities. Ladino became the language that best represented his exile from Argentina. Nonetheless, in all cases, the writers’ works contribute to the “afterlife” of Ladino.

The longing expressed in the quote cited earlier from Shamash—“each Jew has his America”– is sometimes buried under the inevitably less poetic academic discourses about identity that fill the book. The discussion about identity is about inclusion in the present while keeping something of the past. It is about how to enter fully into larger national and communal entities while retaining that which makes each community specific. What would it mean to take longing seriously, to see more fully the contours of the imaginations of people living transnationally?  But there is time and opportunity for more analyses, both poetic and academic. Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas is a wonderful addition to the literature and a catalyst for further work.

Reviewed by Silvia Pasquetti, University of Cambridge, sp638@cam.ac.uk

In In Your Eyes a Sandstorm Arthur Neslen takes readers on a journey through “the many layers of Palestinian experience” (p.4) by way of fifty interviews with ordinary as well as more renowned Palestinians living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. He starts with the viewpoints of Palestinians in their teens and ends with the memories of those who experienced the cataclysmic events of the Nakba (catastrophe)—the destruction and dispersal of Palestinian society in 1948—and, before then, of the defeated Palestinian revolt against British rule in 1936. The title of the book comes from a poem by Tawfiq Ziad and refers to the different ways in which Palestinians have resisted displacement and dispossession, thus remaining as a “sandstorm” in the eyes of powerful forces, which have attempted to silence them. Neslen also uses the expression when he presents the goals of the book. He states that the book aims to show how his interviewees are normal human beings dealing with difficult individual and collective situations. He hopes that this focus on the basic human qualities of his interviewees helps “to remove some sand from the eyes” (p.11) of the readers pushing them to go beyond the tendency to approach Palestinian lives from within the Jewish Israeli national narrative or, by contrast, as mere individual reflections of the collective Palestinian history.

Neslen’s deep empathy, exceptional listening and communicative skills, and magnificent mastery of the writing craft make the journey engaging, at times surprising, often distressing due to the palpable suffering that exudes from the text. I suspect this is the case for both the well-informed readers, including, I am sure, those with a personal involvement in Palestinian society, and those for whom the book is a first-time “encounter” with ordinary Palestinians beyond the news headlines. This is an impressive achievement especially given that Neslen does not speak Arabic and conducted his interviews in English or more often with the help of translators. Neslen’s genuine attempts to connect with his interviewees and overcome distance, distrust, and language barriers truly come alive when he negotiates moments of tension as in the interview with Huda, a Hamas media liaison, or when he interviews ordinary Palestinians including villagers, fishermen, drug-dealers, students, artists, and even a taxidermist and zoo curator.

The strength of the book also lies in its organization. The decision to move from the youngest to the eldest generation instead of the more typical progression from the past to the present gives dynamism to the collection of interviews. It foregrounds the human qualities of the interviewees as they speak about their day-to-day concerns, frustrations, hopes, and traumas while offering a present-day perspective on the memories and experiences of the older generations. The decision to group interviewees according to age range rather than place of residence also renders the book particularly vital, often highlighting the stark contrast between the life trajectories of differently situated Palestinians. This is for example evident when one juxtaposes the interview with the two militants of the Islamic Jihad in their early thirties living in the Jenin refugee camp, who have practically come to embody political activism and who are uncomfortable speaking about other things to a stranger, with the interview that follows with two renowned Palestinian comedians of the same age living inside Israel, who speak about their gradual discovery of Palestinian identity. The interludes that summarize key historical events are helpful in orienting the readers through the many changes in Palestinian history and sensitizing them to the interviewees’ repeated exposure to traumatic situations of war, dispossession, and displacement. Finally, the decision to add the author’s perspective to the myriad of opinions and viewpoints that emerge from the interviews adds a sense of authenticity to the book. More or less explicitly, Neslen extends his interest in and understanding of human suffering and resistance against oppression to a connection between the Palestinian experiences of marginalization, ghettoization, and stigmatization and the predicament of oppression historically experienced by the Jewish population.

While Neslen often uses poignant quotes from the interviews to convey a vivid sense of how different segments of Palestinians think and feel about their lives, the quotes are typically brief and I was left wanting to hear more stories and comments directly from the interviewees. The length of the book (306 pages) and the goal of offering a tapestry of voices across time and space justify the use of short quotes. Yet, longer quotes might have deepened our understanding of the different experiences of the Palestinians that Neslen interviewed, especially those who, as he puts it, might not be interviewed again in their lives. Another criticism relates to what is not included in the book: the voices of the many Palestinians living in other areas of the world, for example, the Gulf, the United States, and Europe. Their inclusion would have enriched this already brimming account of “ways of being Palestinian,” especially as their relationships with Palestinian identity and history are salient for some of the Palestinians that Neslen interviewed. For example, Abdul, an artist in his mid-twenties living in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, commented about the Palestinians living in Europe and America: “We lose more than them if we neglect them” (p.41).

But these are minor criticisms. The original materials offered in this book are quite compelling in showing how the interviewed Palestinians are themselves on both a personal journey and a national one, both journeys being punctuated by recurrent traumas from loss of land to violent death, from physical displacement to imprisonment and torture. Three themes are particularly central to the varied “ways of being Palestinian” discussed in this book: 1) the embodied dimension of suffering under the constraining and at times immobilizing pressure of the Israeli state, its legal system, and its coercive agencies; 2) the search for respect, dignity, and value; and 3) the orientations towards other segments of Palestinians. The embodiment of oppression is cogently captured by the collapse and hospitalization of Nuri, a Bedouin activist in his mid-sixties, after a string of state-initiated actions against him ranging from his expulsion from the Negev, where he was born and owns land, to his arrest for opening a garage without license. It is also well captured by the words of a young homosexual Palestinian living in Ramallah and hoping to move to Europe when he explains that he needs to keep in mind the Shabak’s (the Israeli main security agency’s) practice of recruiting informers as he negotiates his intimate and affective life. The search for respect and value runs through many if not all the interviews but is paired to different things, most prominently to the connection with the land but also to “the street” in the case of the drug-dealer in East Jerusalem and to a dangerous activity as in the case of the tunnel engineer in Gaza. The interviews often include references to Palestinians with a different background especially those living across borders. For example, Tamer Nafar, a member of a renowned Israeli Palestinian hip-hop group from Lyd emphasizes that they are “superstars” when they play in Ramallah or Bethlehem (p.71) while Diana Buttu, a lawyer whose family comes from Nazareth, though she grew up abroad and now lives in Ramallah, complains that Palestinians in the West Bank “think they’re more nationalistic than people [Palestinians] inside Israel” (p.89). While Neslen states that reconnecting the different segments of Palestinians “may prove akin to piecing back together the shell of a shattered egg” (p. 16), I think that the stories that he includes in his book offer a complex image of a society surely traumatized and fragmented and yet, one still capable of generating positive energies and perhaps a renewed language of in-group solidarity.

This book fits well on a shelf with other recently published interview-based works on ordinary Palestinian lives including Dina Matar’s What It Means to be Palestinians and Fatma Kassem’s Palestinian Women. It also complements Nesler’s Occupied Minds, his previous interview-based study of Jewish Israeli society. My hope is that this book will inspire other scholars to pay more attention to the everyday lives of ordinary Palestinians, to excavate their social histories, and to cross borders to draw comparisons and make connections between Palestinians living in different places.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,800 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

REVIEW: Jessica L. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean:  The Geniza Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012), hardcover, xxi + 426 pp.

Reviewed by Julie L. Mell, North Carolina State University, jlmell@ncsu.edu

This book is a careful study of the richest set of commercial documents from the Cairo Geniza. These documents, principally merchant letters, have long been recognized as invaluable for the history of medieval economic institutions, Islamic trade, and Jewish life in the Fatimid caliphate. They were first extensively studied by S. D. Goitein in his monumental A Mediterranean Society (Berkeley, University of California Press: 1967), and have since received repeated study, most recently by Avner Greif in Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy (New York: Cambridge, 2006). But Goldberg carries the interpretation of this Geniza material to a new level. Acutely aware of the fragmentary, selective, and random character of documents discarded in the Cairo Geniza, Goldberg grounds her study in a close analysis of the letters and their makers. She reconstructs the cultural and institutional conditions defining the production and use of mercantile letters in the eleventh-century Fatimid caliphate. She attends closely to the limits of their representative quality for historical analysis, and she creatively adapts prosopographical and statistical analysis to accommodate the fragmentary quality of her sources. The result of her tightly controlled focus on the eleventh-century corpus is an innovative study of Geniza merchants’ trade, institutions, and geographic networks with broad significance not only for Jewish history and Islamic studies, but for the history of economic institutions and the Mediterranean Sea as well.

The study focuses on 990-1080 C.E., the period with the densest concentration of commercial documents. From roughly 900 documents, two networks of merchants can be identified: the Ibn ‘Awkal group comprising 150+ merchants and the Nahray group comprising 400 merchants. These networks, Goldberg emphasizes, were not closed sub-groups defined by descent from the “Maghibīs” of North Africa, as has been recently suggested by Greif. The Geniza merchants were not the elites in the Jewish community, but a “middling sort” who formed “the professional, commercial, legal, administrative, and communal backbone of the Jewish communities in which they lived” (p.45). They resembled their Islamic counterparts in status, reputation, and family structures, and often collaborated with them. Their Jewishness marked them, but it was only one among a range of factors that might have aided a merchant in creating a trade network. The most important factors were a merchant’s reputation, knowledge, and connections.

Relationships of reciprocal agency, known as suḥba, stood at the heart of the Geniza merchants’ trade networks. Two merchants would designate each other as an unpaid agents for particular goods as often as they liked, with the understanding that the service would be repaid with a like service within a finite period of time. Previous scholars have contrasted the suḥba with European partnerships, particularly the commenda, describing the first as informal and communal, and the latter as formal and individualistic. Goldberg rejects this representation, noting that the suḥba was ‘informal’ only in that it was unwritten and unremunerated only in that it did not receive monetary pay. Each transaction was legally binding on an agent, upheld by both Jewish and Islamic courts, and necessitated reciprocal services. The network itself also ‘informally’ reinforced the system of reciprocal services through the high value placed on reputation. Geniza merchants also used partnerships and junior associates to manage their business. But, Goldberg argues, Geniza merchants found reciprocal agency a more effective institution for managing labor and compensation, because they retained full property rights at all times and had legal protection against agent misconduct.

Goldberg devotes a full chapter to the forms and functions of eleventh-century mercantile letters. Emphasizing that Geniza letters do not provide accurate information on price trends, profit margins, scale of trade, or proportions of local to long distance trade, Goldberg uses the letters to determine what merchants did and how they did it. In regard to the latter, Goldberg shows how merchants’ letters were not formal legal documents, but substitutions for direct speech, which allowed merchants to project their authority over goods and money across space. Half of all business letters concerned direct engagement with commodities and payments. Roughly 20% of letters concerned the behavior of business associates and 10%, business news. Above all, the letters confirm the significance and sophisticated role of reciprocal agency in the merchants’ trade: for letters were the “main mechanism for negotiating compensation and enforcing the informal labor contract of suḥba through reputation” (p.145). But one is left wondering whether the letters, because they were the principal mode for negotiating suḥba, may over represent the importance of reciprocal agency.

The letters also attest to what merchants did. The Geniza merchants traded in a wide range of goods, as one expects of medieval merchants: textiles, spices, food, basic household items (soap, wax, building materials), coins, as well as metals, books, and paper. But their routine activities contrast sharply with the traditional image of the Islamic merchant as a middleman, purveying pepper and pearls, gold and spices. Geniza merchants traded predominantly in the staples of agricultural produce, not luxury goods, and they acted as economic organizers, integrating sectors of the production process. Through a close study of the flax market, Goldberg demonstrates merchant involvement at every stage in the production process from the purchase of raw materials to semi-processed and processed goods. Merchants had a welter of choices to make about whether, when, and how to enter the production process, although their main task remained the transportation of regional materials to central markets, and to a lesser extent, the redistribution of goods from central markets back to secondary towns within the Islamic world. They helped “to create and maintain a vertical organization of regional economy around the central cities” and thereby sustained a “buoyant Islamic commercial economy in the Mediterranean” (p.339). They did bring extra-Mediterranean products from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean into the Islamic Mediterranean. However, they rarely transported goods into Byzantium and never into “Latin” Europe. The reasons for this limitation lie in the role that legal and political institutions played in Islamic trade.

While Goldberg sketches the institutions structuring trade in Part I, she traces in Part II the shifting geographies of information, commodities, and individuals across the eleventh-century Mediterranean.  Goldberg tracks itineraries both for individual merchants and for Geniza merchants as a whole. She argues that the Geniza merchants strategically reduced their trade with Al-Andalus and the central Mediterranean in the later eleventh century as a result of the increasing political instability in the central Mediterranean. One wishes that Goldberg had elaborated on the political background to the shift in eleventh-century trade for the non-specialist, and had as deftly and deeply discussed the role of political institutions in trade as she did the legal institutions. But her findings on networks and the shifting geography of networks reinforce a central argument in the text countering presumptions that minority religious identity naturally fosters cross-cultural agency: “personal connections were central to long-distance trade, and hence individual agency must be at the heart of understanding both the nature and possibility of change” (p.333). Goldberg has transformed scholars’ vision of the medieval merchant in the Islamic world and made an important contribution to the field of Geniza scholarship, the history of Jews in Islamic lands, and the economic history of the Islamic Mediterranean and the Fatimid caliphate.

Goldberg’s study of the Geniza merchant also has important ramifications for Mediterranean Studies, European economic history, and Jewish Studies. Classic studies of the Mediterranean have focused on its ecology — its ecological unity in Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditeranéen, (Paris: A. Colon, 1966), and its ecological diversity in Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Goldberg, in contrast, emphasizes the place of culture and institutions in shaping regions within the Mediterranean. Her work brings out the distinctive nature of the Islamic Mediterranean based on legal and cultural institutions, which spanned a diversity of ecological microspheres. She attempts thereby to counter the erasure of Egypt and Muslims in constructs such as Braudel’s ecologically unified Mediterranean of “wheat, olives, and grapes.” In place of ecological and cultural sameness, which denies a necessity for internal exchange, Goldberg posits a shared consumer desire spanning ecological diversity.  Egyptians, for example, could not plant olive groves, but Egyptians ‘needed’ olive oil. In place of Horden and Purcell’s model of micro-economies founded on micro-ecologies, which has no place for long distance trade, Goldberg substitutes zones of macro-economy. In a macro zone like the medieval Islamic Mediterranean, local and long-distance exchanges were meshed through trade networks, sustained by cultural, legal and political institutions.

The medieval commercial revolution has typically been described as a European phenomenon driven by Italian merchants and their investment partnerships. Islamic merchants have primarily been used, Goldberg rightly complains, as a foil for European developments. Goldberg moves scholarship beyond the simplistic economic models that contrasted the Geniza merchants of the Islamic world to the Italian merchants of the Latinate Christian world: Italian merchants did not drive Geniza merchants out of the Mediterranean in a zero-sum game, as Goitein proposed. Nor did Italian merchants have a monopoly on individualistic pursuit of profit or institutions that guaranteed trust. Individualism and institutionally based trust were present in the Islamic Mediterranean as well, but configured differently. The key difference, Goldberg argues, was between the political structures of empires and city-states, and the position of merchants within them. Italian merchant guilds were the political elites of their city-states and therefore controlled the means of violence; their ships were used equally to trade, make war, and prey upon other Mediterranean ships. Conversely they lacked a legal infrastructure beyond their own city-state. Islamic merchants were not part of the political elite and had no control over the state’s monopoly on violence. But they could rely on a legal infrastructure that spanned the Islamic Mediterranean. These differences explain Italian preference for partnership (commenda) and Islamic preference for reciprocal agency (suḥba).

In regard to Jewish history, Goldberg corrects inflated notions of Jewish dominance in long-distance trade and presumptions of religious cohesion in cross-cultural trade. Unlike the early modern European Jewish merchants of Livorno studied recently by Trivellato in The Familiarity of Strangers, (New Haven: Yale, 2009), the Geniza merchants were not cross-cultural agents, but embedded in their local Islamic environment. They did not forge ties with Jews in Latin Europe, because they relied upon Islamic institutions. Their Jewishness was but one factor among others that may have aided them in making business connections within the Islamic environment. But it neither predetermined nor ensured such ties, and it played no role beyond the Islamic Mediterranean. Goldberg conversely deals a deft blow to those who would dismiss the Geniza documents as irrelevant for Islamic history. Her work establishes the relevance of the Geniza documents for understanding the economic institutions of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean. Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean is a path-breaking study, which should be widely read by Islamists, Europeanists, and Jewish studies scholars.

Arnold E. Franklin

320 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus.

Cloth Sep 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4409-0 | $65.00s | £42.50

Reviewed by Geoffrey Herman

In the 11^th century, the Jewish community of Palestine was shaken by a scandal. According to a fragmentary letter found in the Cairo Geniza penned shortly after the incident, a certain individual had passed himself off as a nasi, one descending from the family of King David. He had “acquired for himself a good reputation and had in his possession a genealogy (a list of his ancestors)”. With these he had achieved a position of power and many submitted to his authority. After two years it became known that his lineage was inaccurate. And yet, as the author of the letter bemoans, even after it became known that his lineage was fictitious, “they were not ashamed or embarrassed to honour him, saying that he was (nevertheless) a sage”. He was not, however, allowed to maintain his position for long and “those who fear God” forcibly removed him from the city of Tiberias, exiling him to the “Lands of Edom.”

This can be compared with another story, this time from a Muslim milieu. A renowned 12^th century Shī‘ī genealogist by the name of Muḥammad ibn al-As‘ad al-Jawwānī visited Aleppo. He was met by a local man, sharīf Idrīs ibn al-Ḥasan al-Idrīsī. The latter sought public confirmation of his distinguished lineage. The title he bore, sharīf, indicates his claim to be an ‘Alid, a direct descendant of the Prophet’s grandson al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Alī. Al-Jawwānī, it turns out, was unconvinced by his genealogical claims, and far from verifying his lineage, discredited him, viewing him as a genealogical pretender.

These two stories together, which Franklin discusses in his book, encapsulate, to my mind, its main premise. This is a book that demonstrates the value of distinguished (Davidic) lineage in medieval Near Eastern Jewish society. Furthermore, it reveals the extent to which it parallels developments in Muslim society.

Franklin, in his well-written and attractively produced volume, changes the way we perceive Near Eastern Jewish society in the Middle Ages. The shift he urges is conceptual. He reveals the centrality of genealogy to a society that we thought had long since preferred alternative criteria for social and political advancement. His argument is compelling. Covering a large swath of time – some five centuries, Franklin thoughtfully guides his reader through a sometimes unfamiliar world. The source material sustaining this study is mostly documents drawn from the Cairo Geniza. Typically, these are not the redacted editions of the study house, but rather jottings, lists, panegyric poems, letter-drafts, and personal copies of satirical broadsheets. They are inscribed in the animated ebb and flow of daily life, in the midst of political struggles and for the cause of aspiring egos.

The book includes five main chapters, a handful of images, and two appendices. The first appendix provides the source and translation of Halper 462, one of the more interesting genealogies; and the second lists the biographical details of 107 Davidic dynasts datable between 950 – 1450 CE.

Franklin’s first chapter outlines a genealogical shift that occurred in Jewish society. By the tenth century Jews and, indeed, Muslims, had come to view the Davidic family as distinguished by its noble ancestry. This was a Jewish resonance of the importance of ancestry in Arab-Islamic society in general, and in particular, of the special status acquired by members of Muḥammad’s family. There is a pre-Islamic rabbinic legacy but its evolution in medieval society is not predictable. While there were Jewish leaders in the pre-Muslim era who claimed Davidic descent and enjoyed a degree of distinction as a result, the role played by Davidic descent in the Muslim era was quantitatively and qualitatively different. Rabbinic sources do not deal with demonstrating the veracity of Davidic lineage claims, but now we encounter attempts to provide a chain of lineage to prove the connection to biblical forebears in the form of detailed and complete genealogical lists. In the Muslim period the social value of Davidic lineage expanded. In the pre-Islamic era, Davidic lineage claims were tied to particular authority structures within the Jewish community —  the exilarchate and the patriarchate —  but with the rise of Islam this no longer obtained. While the exilarchate (the exclusive domain of the House of David) continued, we now find the term nesi’im to be used in this period for members of the Davidic clan. Many nesi’im had positions of authority, yet most such communal offices were not formally limited to members of the Davidic clan. Furthermore there was a numerical growth. The nesi’im are a group, al-ṭā’ifa al-dāwūdiyya, (the Davidic faction). There was also a geographical development: the Davidic faction began to expand westward by the tenth century, no longer being confined to Babylonia and its environs. On the whole, Franklin’s book is more interested in the shoots of David — the nesi’im — than in the trunk — the Baghdad-based exilarchate.

The second chapter describes the public display of ancestry and the need to demonstrate a complete pedigree. Thus it delves deeper into the evolution of these genealogical lists. The earliest list, according to Franklin, is the Aramaic Seder ‘olam zuṭa.[1] He shows how lists of “exilarchal rule” evolved into more individualized genealogies of Davidic families. One way was to reverse the order, starting not with the biblical ancestor but with the current incumbent and working backwards. Such genealogical lists, consisting of many dozens of names, might be appended to a signature or a letter. Priests, Levites, and others also produced detailed pedigree lists. Indeed, Franklin observes that “Davidic genealogies were part of a much broader preoccupation with biblical ancestry in Jewish society”.

The public performance of genealogy might involve a poem composed in honour of an individual, where reference would be made to members of the biblical line of David, thereby putting into poetry what the lists accomplished in prose. These lists, that took the incumbent as far back as possible, are also a model that was central to Islamic society’s construction of Muḥammad. The Muslim lists came first, and like Jewish ones, would typically result in a round number, such as forty of fifty generations to the critical biblical personage.

Franklin argues that “competition for communal authority was a critical arena in which respect for the noble lineage of members of the House of David was mobilized,” and the third chapter focuses on the political uses of royal genealogy — “like their Muslim neighbours Jews had come to regard genealogy as a crucial means of legitimizing religious and political authority.”

The sources reveal the central role that genealogy played in communal struggles over authority that need have had nothing to do with lineage. Whether it is the right to determine the religious calendar or leadership over the Geonic academies, both ostensibly academic pursuits, the arguments offered in support of one candidate or to denigrate another invariably would focus on ancestry.

And yet the ‘House of David’ was not alone at the pinnacle of medieval Jewish society. It was more of a diarchy than a monarchy. Priests, the “sons of Aaron”, contend with equal energy, and indeed no less success, in staking their claim to privilege. Most of the sources described in this chapter, in fact, portray priests and Davidic dynasts in some manner of political conflict. Franklin observes how the contemporary “political disputes could be conceptualized as rivalries between biblical dynasties”. The tenth century Karaite exegete Yefet ben ‘Eli would observe that ancient genealogies dating back to biblical times are only found with “the priests and the kings” (i.e. Davidic dynasts). This, he says, “is on account of their nobility among the Jewish people”.

Each of these two lineage-nobility groups makes similar claims, and manipulates both biblical verses and rabbinic sources to assert its exclusive right to leadership and to undermine the other. This distinctive form of medieval mud-slinging is a reminder of the unique character of the material available from the Cairo Geniza and the vivid portrait of society that it allows. It makes for entertaining reading. Was the covenant between God and the House of David eternal or had it been nullified already in antiquity? One is accused of being a descendant of proselytes; a priest of being the “son of gravediggers”. Is a member of the Davidic dynasty to be compared to David and Solomon, or perhaps to Ahaz and Manasseh.

They can be particularly creative. One author has combed the classical rabbinic sources for the entire register of denigrating judgements against priests. These are presented in 24 stanzas, evoking the 24 priestly courses which traditionally served in the temple. It focuses on the genealogical blemishes indicated by certain unbecoming behaviour traits but it is actually the product of a quarrel between two priestly clans over the leadership of the Palestinian yeshiva. A composition in the style of the epic seder ‘avoda liturgical poem begins as expected only to dramatically switch midway to glorify Judah and his descendants in place of Aaron. This poem co-opts the classical liturgical locus for the elevation of the priesthood, and was actually composed by a somewhat unscrupulous priest.

Not only does one find Davidic dynasts usurping the priesthood’s seder‘avoda genre for their cause, but also developing their own association with the Jerusalem Temple, more typically seen as an exclusively priestly domain. On the other hand, one curious story about the Karaite Solomon ha-kohen, a man of priestly descent, suggests that the pendulum might swing the other way too. He would appear to have been appropriating the messianic role that is associated with the House of David when he claimed that he was the Messiah. His assertion greatly puzzled our informant on this messianic pretender, Obadiah the Norman proselyte, who met him in 1121 CE.

The fourth chapter explores messianism as a backdrop to Near Eastern Jewish society’s profound interest in the descendants of King David. The prevalence of Davidic dynasts offered rich soil for the flowering of messianic sentiments and actions. While earlier scholars have recognized the heavily messianic rhetoric which infuses Near Eastern medieval Jewish discourse, it has not yet been linked to the families who actually claimed Davidic descent.

Here Franklin provides a succinct and informative overview of messianic themes in Near Eastern medieval Jewish society. An intense anticipation of the advent of the messianic era is reflected in religious, legal, liturgical, and popular literature of the times, and also in the active efforts to predict its arrival. Much of this finds an outlet in active messianic agitation, pretenders and heralds, who appear and stir up political troubles that threaten to overturn the delicate position of the Jews in the Muslim world.

Here, too, there is a vital Islamic context to be addressed: Islamic traditions on the mahdī, a saviour figure, usually held to stem from the Prophet’s family. The Jews often employ the very same terms of reference for their redeemer as the Muslims do for their own.

One naturally wonders about the relationship between such messianic feelings and the nesi’im who were so overtly identified with the family of David. Were the heightened messianic feelings intensified by the visibility of such mortals possessing the required genealogical credentials, and were such hopes pinned directly on specific individuals? Indeed, as Franklin observes, one does occasionally encounter messianic hopes affixed to prominent figures. They appear as rhetorical flourishes in letters and more explicitly in panegyric works. Furthermore, opponents were concerned that people might associate messianic possibility with actual political contenders. They sought to pre-empt and undermine such claims. The Judeo-Arabic Bustanay satire demonstrates the contamination of the Bustanay line from which almost all members of the Davidic dynasty claimed descent. Another approach asserts that the messiah was already born on the day when Jerusalem was destroyed. By situating the actual messiah in the mythical past, this approach aimed to neutralize messianic excitement attached to contemporary members of the Davidic line.

Notwithstanding such concerns there is no evidence of nesi’im being involved in messianic agitation. They revelled in the glory of the past and in the latent future promise, but presumably were cautious enough not to gamble their present position of honour for an uncertain hope.

In the final chapter Franklin broadens the discussion to encompass the claims to distinguished genealogy among non-Arab peoples living within the Muslim orbit. He argues that in its concern with biblical lineage medieval Jews in the Near East were “participating in a process of redefinition that affected other minority groups in the Islamic world as well.” Indeed all “embraced nasab as a way of laying claim to legitimacy.”[2] Christians could also have been added here. For instance, patriarchal lists for the eastern Syriac church emerge in this period and Bagratuni Armenians claim Davidic descent.

The shu‘ūbiyya, largely understood as a cultural literary movement, had a genealogical component, too. Non-Arab Muslims were among the leading scholars in developing ilm al-nasab, the science of genealogy, and it would soon be evident that “genealogy had become an important discursive battleground for ethnic and cultural competition between Arabs and non-Arabs.”[3]

Some stressed the existence of a class of nobles in every people. Others fabricated a distinguished Arab nasab, or such that improved on them. Persians claimed descent from Isaac (a claim aimed to evoke the slave origins of the Arabs descended through Hagar); Berbers sought Ansari or Himyar descent.

Still others asserted no less distinguished lineage among the non-Arab nations. Of particular interest were the claims to Persian historical or mythical figures from the pre-Islamic past. Thus we encounter members of the landed nobility, dehqans, and other dynasts claiming descent from Sasanian kings. Typically the claims were not supported by detailed lists of descendants, but in at least one case, for the Būyids, al-Bīrūnī provides a list of 14 generations linking the incumbent to the Sasanian king Warahrān Gūr.

Davidic descendants were a source of national pride for the Jews as a whole. They derived a kind of “collective, vicarious legitimization from the biblical lineages we have been documenting”.[4] We encounter enthusiasm for biblical lineages by those with little or nothing to gain from them. Jews sought proximity to Davidic dynasts and welcomed their visits.

This pride was refracted off the Muslims. It was important how the Muslims related to them. As Benjamin of Tudela points out, the exilarch was greeted by the Muslims in Baghdad with the cry: “make way for our lord, the son of David”. In this way the Jews experienced “a kind of collective ennoblement through their proximity to members of their own noble, pure, and prophetic lineage”.[5]

One reservation that I have relates to the place of the priests in this picture. As Franklin fully recognises, in communal politics they shared centre-stage with the Davidic dynasty. But in the scheme of this book they have been largely consigned to the margins. Furthermore, the continuity from pre-Islamic times is a little more pronounced with respect to the priesthood than Franklin explains. Polemical contestation between Davidic dynasts and priests appears in the post-Mishnaic rabbinic literature.[6] Jewish society also seems have been cultivating a preference for priestly lineage in its communal leadership offices and elsewhere already in the pre-Islamic era.[7] Although Franklin has preferred a monarchical model, focusing on the pre-eminence of the Davidic line in imitation of the ‘Alids, the fundamentally diarchical character of Jewish politics deserves more consideration.

In sum, this erudite and highly readable volume is impressive in its mastery and exposition of such diverse and complex sources. More significantly, in its genealogical shift it makes a vital contribution to our understanding of Near Eastern medieval Jewish society, and particularly to our appreciation of the depth of the Jewish-Arab symbiosis.

Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa.

Edited by Emily Benichou Gottreich and Daniel J. Schroeter. Bloomington

Indiana University Press, 2011. pp. 372.

Reviewed by Aomar Boum

There are few classic edited works on Jewish-Muslim relations, Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa could be one not only because of its clarity, depth and resourcefulness but also scientific contribution to the field of North African historiography. It not only rethinks moments of North African Jewish history and questions of historiography, but does it both through the eyes of Western scholars and local North African historians. This approach puts this edited volume in a unique position compared to previous works written mostly from the perspectives of scholars who no longer reside in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Equally important, unlike other academic conferences on Jewish-Muslim relations generally held in France, Israel or the United States, the fact that Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian scholars, largely historians, could attend and present academic talks on the Jews of their homeland in a North African context is an important token that gives meanings to the book. Therefore Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa breaks a few taboos by allowing Israeli, North American and North African scholars to sit around the same table cognizant of the Arab Israeli conflict but still able to have an academic conversation based on mutual respect.

Each article in this collection raises new questions, revises old categories and challenges longstanding views. However, most of the themes largely revolve around social, political, cultural, linguistic and economic contexts of Jewish-Muslim encounters. The collection is divided into a number of sections including the origins, diasporas, identities; communities, cultural exchange and transformations; Sol Hachuel in Moroccan Jewish memory; gender, colonialism and the Alliance Israélite Universelle and North African Jews and political change in the late colonial and postcolonial periods. Despite these diverse themes Jewish-Muslim rapport, disengagement, symbiosis, conflict, and corporation underline all of them.

From a historiographical perspective, the majority of the contributions rely on linguistic, anthropological, literary, historical and literary approaches to rethink the existing scholarship on different aspects of Jewish-Muslim relations. Although the articles are grounded in previous theoretical and thematic approaches on North African Jewries during the colonial and postcolonial periods, they also enter uncharted terrains not only in terms of regional focus but also archival and ethnographic data. Abdellah Larhmaid uses legal Islamic documents to describe the complex relations that existed between Jews and Muslims by focusing on Jewish land ownership in southeastern Morocco. Aomar Boum invites the scholars of North African Jews to take advantage of colonial and postcolonial sources as well as local archives to formulate a better account of the deep historical connections between Jews and Muslims. Given the absence of major studies in the colonial period about the Jews of the countryside and the silence of nationalist historiographies about Jewish communities, Mohammed Kenbib suggests that a focus on one source of historical writing limits our understanding of the nuanced levels of relations between both communities.

The majority of the contributions focus on the degrees of social and cultural exchange that took place in urban centers between Jews and Muslims. These articles trace the Jewish-Muslim encounters both in colonial and postcolonial contexts in religious, education, urban and economic environments. In Fez, Tangier, and Oran, Susan Gilson Miller, Stacey Holden, and Saddek Benkada describe moments of isolation and partnership highlighting the level of fragmentation and coexistence between Jews and Muslims. These interactions would shrink as historical moments of political and social anxieties began to shape Muslim-Jewish relations especially as European powers began to extend their segregating colonial laws regarding Jews and Muslims. Fayçal Cherif’s study exemplifies this trend of simmering tensions about the question of Palestine, Jewish role in the nationalist struggle and their relationship with colonial powers. These emerging internal struggles would usher a new era of mistrust leading many Jews to leave North Africa and resettle in Israel and Europe. For Jamaa Baida, this migration movement has not only disrupted the historical connections between Jews and Muslims in North Africa, but led to the introduction of a new concept of national identity which tends to delegitimize Jewish North African identity in postcolonial local discourse. Other contributions used musical and cultural expressions as well as religious experiences and historical moments as sites to highlight moments of friendship and animosity between both communities. Belcacem Mebarki and Oren Kosansky take the reader through postcolonial Algerian and Moroccan cases to show aspects of religious pluralism, which symbolizes ongoing dimensions of Judeo-Muslim coexistence and religious tolerance despite the physical absence of Jews in today’s North Africa.

This volume is a very important contribution to Judaic Studies in particular and North African Studies in general. It is unique in its sources, diversity of the discipline of its contributions and the research agenda it set for other scholars to expand their research and raise new questions. One of the most important aspects of the volume is the growing awareness among North African historians of the importance to look at issues of minorities in general and Jewish identity in particular. The volume is not only well-edited and written, but it is also accessible to a diversity of academic and non-academic audiences. It would provide an excellent textbook to students in disciplines such as history, anthropology, religious studies, sociology, and ethnic studies.

A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews Under Early Islam

Uriel I. Simonsohn

Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 306 pp. Cloth $79.95

Reviewed by Luke B. Yarbrough, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, The University of Pennsylvania

A Common Justice is hardly the first study to concern itself with Christians and Jews in Muslim courts, a fact that its author documents with considerable care (p. 218, n. 1 and passim). It seems, however, likely soon to become—and long to remain—a standard work on legal pluralism and its consequences in first four centuries after the rise of Islam. At once theoretically sophisticated and philologically meticulous, A Common Justice offers compelling answers to familiar questions, brings new problems to the fore, and builds a stable platform for comparative work by historians in adjacent and cognate fields.

The book owes its motivating tension to a sociohistorical phenomenon that, though far from unique to the Near East in the four centuries following the rise of Islam, has hitherto been insufficiently recognized as characteristic of that period. The phenomenon arises from the range of judicial and quasi-judicial venues available to litigants, especially non-Muslims, who could often choose to take their disputes to either Muslim courts or their own communal authorities, both religious and otherwise. When Jews and Christians exercised their ability to choose, however, elites within their communities often responded in ways calculated to reinforce their own prerogative to hear cases and thereby to retain or attract social power in its various forms. Some of their responses took shape as text; these, which include geonic responsa and the records of Christian synodical assemblies and canon law, furnish Simonsohn’s richest source material, though he also makes judicious use of chronicles, papyri, and Geniza documents, among other sources. Historians have tended to take the textual record of elite responses to forum-shopping, at face value, as confirmation that non-Muslim communities in early Islam were in fact autonomous entities, proto-millets demarcated in accordance with the formal regulations that rabbinic and ecclesial leaders promulgated. Simonsohn, by contrast, reads these sources against the grain, arguing that the textually encoded responses of religious elites to the “forum-shopping” of their coreligionists should be interpreted as “demands for legal exclusiveness within their respective communities,” coupled with a strategic “willingness to modify their own legal orders while recognizing the advantages offered by competing orders” (p. 213).

The author lays groundwork rather deliberately in the first four chapters before proceeding to analyze his key source material in the final two (though this material is far less strictly quarantined than the preview on pp. 19-21 lets on). Readers who are not well versed in the history of the period or the literature on legal pluralism (most notably the works of Caroline Humfress and Gerhard Lenski) may be grateful for this approach. Experts will find Simonsohn’s prolegomenal accounts of Late Antique and early Islamic legal pluralism (Chs. 1-2) and Jewish and Christian religious hierarchy (Chs. 3-4), though frequently reliant upon secondary studies, to be fresh and provocative. If those experts raise objections to the accuracy of his accounts, these are most likely to arise in connection with the generalizations that the project’s broad temporal and geographical scope makes inevitable. To consider just one section in the third chapter, for example, this reviewer would have benefitted from a fuller explanation of how (and which of) al-Ghazālī’s works functioned as the “primary source” for “civil law” in Bar Hebraeus’ Nomocanon (p. 112). Still more beneficial would have been a thorough discussion of the degree to which the deep antinomian streak in Pauline theology set the Christian heritage apart from Islam and Judaism when it comes to the place of law in religious practice (hinted at most directly on p. 109).

On the whole, however, these chapters serve effectively as settings for Simonsohn’s signal contribution, and in fact constitute stimulating contributions in their own right. Chapter 1 anchors an important premise for the project: legal pluralism, defined as a context of “multiple, overlapping legal orders,” was endemic in the Near East prior to the Islamic conquests. Already here (pp. 52-60) the author begins to present the responses of Christian and Jewish confessional leaders to the plural setting in which they sought to gain and keep adherents. Chapter 2 documents pluralism’s persistence into the Islamic period, taking issue with the tendency of foregoing scholarship to view the Islamic judiciary as thoroughly formalized and hierarchical in its function (and not merely in jurists’ idealized descriptions of it); instead, for Simonsohn “personalism and a multiplicity of overlapping institutions continued to dominate the judicial setting” (p. 88). Here he sees the covert survival of pre-Islamic Arabian custom, both as a feature of the Islamic judiciary and in the form of parallel institutions. He might have foreshadowed here a significant conclusion that comes much later: “the notable development under Islamic rule was less the intensification of legal pluralism than the growing demands for judicial exclusiveness” (p. 212).

Chapters 3 and 4 deal with “the state of ecclesiastical and rabbinic judicial organizations in the context of Christian and Jewish public life,” and then compare the two. The overview provides a compact, up-to-date account of the communal leadership of Jewish and Eastern Christian communities that will be especially useful to students. The comparative exercise bears fruit; for example, while Christian confessional elites competed for judicial authority with Christians outside the ecclesiastical establishment, their Jewish counterparts found ways to avoid conflict by integrating Jewish “laymen” into the judicial framework. A common theme, meanwhile, is the inability of either group to enforce their decisions and their consequent reliance upon their communities’ compliance and occasionally upon the support of Muslim authorities. One would like to know more about how far their predicament differed from that of contemporary Muslim judicial authorities.

The final two chapters carry the book’s payload; it is not possible to do them justice here. The account of Christian and Jewish recourse to “nonecclesiastical judicial institutions” and “Islamic courts” (respectively) is magisterial, particularly as it reveals the author’s deep acquaintance with two very different bodies of source material. A particularly striking theme that emerges is the way in which evolving Islamic judicial practices and institutions elicited from Christian and Jewish elites not only resistance and rejection (though there was plenty of this) but also accommodation and imitation, at times to make their own judicial fora more attractive to their coreligionists and at others to provide for the enforcement by Muslims of their own rulings. There were differences, as well; we do not find among Jews the notion that seeking judicial redress for a wrong was itself to be frowned upon (cf. Christian views, e.g., p. 164), or among Christians the rigorous adherence to precedent that characterized geonic discussions of Jews’ recourse to Islamic courts. The Conclusion, though at times densely worded, does a remarkably thorough job of recapitulating the central themes.

The author comes down firmly on two very large debates among historians of pre-modern Islamicate societies. In the running engagement between proponents of formalism and realism in the understanding of how prescriptive discourses were generated and how they affected the conduct of individuals, the author settles in the latter camp; prescription is shot through with political, social, and personal elements. The historical subject, too, is enmeshed in an intricate web of social claims and obligations that cut frequently cross religious boundaries. This view contrasts with a traditionally prevalent one according to which non-Muslim communities were largely self-contained, autonomous entities in which religion, if it did not quite count for everything, can be made to account for most things, above all in the law and in social life. The choice of an issue that by its very nature involved bypassing communal elites and crossing religious boundaries does a certain amount of work for the author in establishing each of these positions.

Simonsohn’s source-rich analysis opens (at least) two avenues for further research. These may be presented as questions. What were the historical aftereffects of rhetoric composed by confessional elites in order to promote judicial exclusivism? The author has made a cogent case that the engine of this rhetoric was competitive self-interest, but has done less to study how it was received and the degree to which it succeeded in constituting discursively the power relations it advocated. If the sources do not yield ready answers to these questions at present, it is nevertheless important that they be held in mind for a day when we hit upon new sources or approaches. The second avenue for further research that Simonsohn has opened, and which has the greatest potential one day to affect his own arguments, leads toward Muslim views on judicial pluralism. Muslim views deserve further attention as they relate both to this particular issue (How, if at all, was the qāḍī to judge among non-Muslims? What were the effects of relevant Muslim policies or tendencies on non-Muslim litigants’ cost-benefit calculations when shopping for a forum, and thus, indirectly, on Christian and Jewish elites’ responses thereto?) and to the larger climate of legal pluralism that the author sketches (How did the madhhabs and other competing loci legal of legal authority contribute and adjust to this climate?). There is much more salient material scattered across the Arabic sources than has yet been brought to light. The scholar(s) who studies this material will have the distinct advantage of learning from Simonsohn’s achievement in A Common Justice.

History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean

Joseph V. Montville

Lanham and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2011, hardcover, xv+192 pp.

Reviewed by Maya Soifer Irish, Rice University, maya.s.irish@rice.edu

The Middle Ages is a magnet for advocates of interreligious tolerance, which has proved to be surprisingly elusive in the age of rapid globalization and the Internet. With confessional divisions still arousing strong passions, and the expectations for a more religiously cohesive world largely disappointed, our attention is drawn to a few enclaves within a similarly divided geo-religious world where the ideal of coexistence was ostensibly realized. These examples of toleration are so incongruent with the popular perception of the Middle Ages as a period of violence and backwardness, that we tend to focus on them almost to an obsessive degree, fetishizing the positive aspects of interfaith relations, and filtering out its inconveniently negative aspects. We ask ourselves: if even in the Middle Ages coexistence was possible, why can’t we match and even surpass our medieval ancestors in toleration? In the new volume of collected works, History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean, the editor, Joseph Montville, argues that this sharpened focus on the past examples of peaceful coexistence is not only justified, but can help heal deep historical wounds. Montville, a professional diplomat with experience in the Middle Eastern and North African affairs, calls his approach “political psychology,” and construes it as an effort to resolve ethnic conflicts by engaging representatives of rival groups in something resembling collective therapy sessions – “dialogues of discovery of painful memory, wounds to collective self-esteem, justice denied, and justice demanded” (vii-viii). As the present volume is meant to be “a major contribution to the Israeli-Arab peace process,” all of the articles highlight some major aspect of medieval “Jewish-Arab respectful Convivencia” (ix), which Montville envisions as a precedent and a model for the future of the war-torn region. Potential critics of this attempt to marry a political manifesto to scholarship may be assuaged by Montville’s stellar selection of contributors. The volume contains articles by seven well-respected scholars: Mark Cohen, Thomas Glick, Raymond Scheindlin, Ahmad Dallal, Kathryn Miller, Olivia Remie Constable, and Diana Lobel.

The introduction reflects the editor’s earnest belief that the articles he has commissioned present nothing but unvarnished “historical facts” of peaceful relations between Jews and Arabs in the medieval Mediterranean that propagandists on both sides have done their best to deny (ix). But the volume has a clear polemical slant. Since the articles have been selected on the principle that they advance the peace process, all of them make a case for a Jewish-Muslim symbiosis in the Middle Ages. One could argue that an inclusion of studies analyzing instances of conflict and violence would have made the volume methodologically stronger and the idea of “history as prelude” more compelling. It would also dovetail with Montville’s psychopolitical strategy of achieving conciliation by having the antagonists work through painful historical memories. But the greatest limitation to the book’s intended impact is the lack of a clear audience. The articles seem to target different readerships, with some making use of scholarly jargon and requiring specialized knowledge of the subject, and others being more expository in style and content. If a lay reader may feel lost in the steady stream of unfamiliar names and terms, an academic reader will find little new scholarship in the volume, as the majority of the articles reiterate previously published material.

Cohen’s contribution, “Jewish and Islamic Life in the Middle Ages: Through the Window of the Cairo Geniza” serves as a prelude to the volume, introducing the argument that despite periodic persecutions, the Jews enjoyed a great deal of toleration in the medieval Islamic Mediterranean, fully participating in its economic life and sharing in its rich intellectual culture. This is an argument that will be familiar to many readers from Cohen’s Under Crescent and Cross–already practically a classic–on which the chapter is based. Cohen frames the chapter with an engaging and lively account of the discovery of the Cairo Geniza, and an overview of the Geniza historiography in the Arab world. Cohen’s introduction to the Geniza material is particularly helpful, since most of the articles in the volume draw on it in one way or another.

The first chapter is followed by Glick’s contribution, “Sharing Science: Jews, Muslims, and Practical Science in the Medieval Islamic World.” It is a succinct introduction to Judeo-Arabic scientific culture, whose “common Aristotelian framework created a space for intellectual discourse that was neutral with respect to religious ideology” (p. 29). The chapter is thematically organized, with subsections dedicated to individual topics, such as “Number Systems,” “Bookkeeping,” “Astronomy,” “Astrology,” and “Chess.” For specialists, it is a good refresher on the subject and help in lecture preparation, but the overabundance of transliterated Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew terms and titles may prove disorienting for a lay reader. Some names are mentioned casually, without a proper introduction. What will someone with little knowledge of medieval Iberian history know about Alfonso the Wise, to whose name and treatise (Libro de ajedrez) Glick alludes in the section on chess (p. 45)?

The next chapter, Scheindlin’s “The Battle of Alfuente’ by Samuel the Nagid,” includes a full translation and literary-historical analysis of the Nagid’s poem. Describing the poem as an artifact of Jewish-Arabic coexistence and evidence of the thoroughness of the Jews’ acculturation in Muslim Spain, Scheindlin also strikes a discordant note, arguing, not quite in keeping with the volume’s dominant theme, that the poem shows “the ambiguity of the Jews’ position and their continuing outsider status” (p. 61). Early in the chapter, Scheindlin briefly mentions the fourteenth-century synagogue in Córdoba, unintentionally counteracting the argument repeatedly made in the introduction to the volume, that the Jews experienced “more or less constant … terror” in Christian lands (p. xi). The famous synagogue was built in Christian Córdoba, in the so-called mudéjar–Muslim-Christian–style, and it is odd that Scheindlin would list it as an example of Judeo-Arabic symbiosis.

Dallal’s contribution, “On Muslim Curiosity and the Historiography of the Jews of Yemen,” argues against a particular school of historiography that in the author’s view has understated the degree of cultural integration between the Jews and Muslims of Yemen. The article seems out of place in the volume, and not only because it is a stretch to view Yemen as part of the Mediterranean. A shorter version of a previously published article, the chapter retains its scholarly orientation, with little attempt to make the argument more accessible to a non-specialist historian–let alone a non-academic audience. Dallal’s discussion focuses on the response of a nineteenth-century Muslim scholar, Muhammad Ali al-Shawkani, to the writings of Maimonides and other Jewish religious sources. Perhaps due to inattentive editing during the trimming of the article to its present length, Dallal plunges into a discussion of Shawkani’s work without ever introducing him to an uninitiated reader. Even the volume’s editor is under the impression that al-Shawkani lived during the Middle Ages, in the thirteenth century (p. xiii; Montville may have meant the thirteenth century of the Islamic calendar, but this seems unlikely from the context).

The next two articles–Miller’s “Doctors without Borders: Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean World,” and Constable’s “Merchants and Cross-Cultural Commerce in the Medieval Mediterranean World”–are the most engaging chapters in the volume that best meet the goal of bringing the scholarship on Jewish-Muslim relations to a wider audience. Miller’s contribution discusses collaboration and partnership between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim medical scholars, both on the intellectual and personal levels. Religious distinctions mattered less to these scholars, Miller argues, than the shared aim of maintaining their profession’s standards and transmitting the achievements of Arabic medicine to the next generations. Constable arrives at a rather different conclusion. She argues that while the Mediterranean was the scene of a continuous commercial contact between Jewish, Muslim, and Christian merchants, it was still a sectarian world, with most partnerships established “within the boundaries of each individual religious community” (p. 143).

Diana Lobel’s contribution, “Sufism and Philosophy in Muslim Spain and the Medieval Mediterranean World,” uncovers the influence of Sufi spirituality on the work of Muslim and Jewish philosophers steeped in Neo-Platonism. This shared spiritual culture, characterized by an intense “longing for union with a personal God,” transcended individual religious traditions and attracted such scholars as Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, Judah Halevi, and Bahya ibn Paquda (p. 157). Lobel argues that even the work of the medieval Jewish rationalist thinker par excellence, Moses Maimonides, bears the mark of Sufi themes and terminology, which become prominent in the writings of his son, Abraham Maimonides, and his descendants. Lobel’s piece is lucidly argued, but one may question the need for a large number of philosophical terms, in transliterated Arabic, in a volume intended for a broad audience.

While History as Prelude could benefit from a firmer editorial oversight and a clearer articulation of its intended audience and purpose, it remains a useful contribution to the growing literature on Jewish-Muslim relations, and to a bookshelf of anyone teaching or studying religious coexistence in the Middle Ages.

Reciting the Qur’ān and Reading the Torah: Muslim and Jewish Attitudes and Practices in a Comparative Historical Perspective (pages 369–380)
Daniella Talmon-Heller

Protecting the Wife’s Rights in Marriage as Reflected in Pre-Nuptials and Marriage Contracts from the Cairo Genizah and Parallel Arabic Sources (pages 381–389)
Amir Ashur