Noam (Norman) A. Stillman
Middle Eastern Jewry: The First Four Centuries of Islam: One of the Best Periods in Diaspora History

Noam (Norman) A. Stillman - Middle Eastern Jewry: The First Four Centuries of Islam: One of the Best Periods in Diaspora History

- [Host] Thank you everyone for joining today’s lecture. We are fortunate to have Norman, or Noam Stillman providing today’s talk. He is a Schusterman-Josey Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, and an internationally-recognized authority on the history and culture of the Islamic world, and on Sephardi and Oriental Jewry. He’s the executive director of the award-winning “Encyclopaedia of Jews in the Islamic World.” He is chair of the Academic Council of the Association for the Study of Middle East and Africa, and sits on numerous boards of academic organisations, think tanks and journals. He is the recipient of many awards, including Distinguished Humanist Award from Ohio State University, and he delivered the prestigious Momigliano lectures for the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought and the Sherman lectures for the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He came to Israel permanently in 2016, and teaches each spring semester at the Hebrew University. Today, Noam is speaking to us about “Middle Eastern Jewry: The First Four Centuries of Islam: One of the Best Periods in Diaspora History.” Thank you so much for being here, and please begin when you’re ready.

• All right, thank you very much for that introduction. I’m sure that everyone viewing this session at Lockdown University is keenly aware that this is not an ideal time in Muslim-Jewish relations or history. And although most serious historians today don’t believe in the romanticised notion of golden ages of any sort, and one does, in some popular Jewish history, talk about the Golden Age of Islamic Spain and so on, they do recognise that there were relatively good periods, indeed flourishing ones, and the first few centuries of the newly-established Islamic Empire in the Middle Ages was just such a flourishing period in world history, not just for the dominant majority population, but also for the Jews who lived there, and indeed for Jewish history generally as well, as we shall see. And it is about this significant period in Jewish history that I want to talk to you this evening, or at least it’s this evening where I am. Now, Islam was born in the early seventh century in the Arabian desert antropo of Mecca. Could I have the first slide, please? Which was over here in Mecca, where the prophet Muhammad, who was a, what shall I say, serious figure, while contemplating one night had a vision in which the angel Gabriel appeared to him and said to him in the new poetic language that had just evolved in the century before of Arabic, , “Recite in the name of your Lord, who created man from a clot of blood.” Like by the way, most good prophets in most religions don’t say, “Lord, you got the right guy.” He runs home, he thinks he’s gone crazy, but however, he has a supportive wife.

And she tells him, “No, you heard a divine voice.” And soon this first revelation, and he continued to have them for the rest of his life. Could I just have the next slide, please? Here is what we think Mecca looked like. It it was not only a commercial centre, but it was a pagan pilgrimage centre as well. And the Kaaba in the centre is still, next slide please, is still the holiest site in the Islamic world, to which every believing Muslim should, if possible, make a pilgrimage at least once in his or her life. Now, Muhammad was a merchant, and he had travelled with caravans throughout the Middle East to the neighbouring Byzantine and Sasanian Persian empires. And he met Jews and Christians who very often, probably we believe, acted as amateur missionaries, not only selling their products, but also talking about their religious faith, quoting stories from their scriptures, and so on. And he wondered how is it that these people had received revelations from God, while his people, the Arabs, still remained in pagan darkness? And the revelations he received were then, came one after the other for the rest of his life, and were set down. He, and according to Muslim tradition, didn’t write them down, but dictated them to others. In fact, in Muslim belief, he did not know how to read or write, which we find hard to believe. But in any case, could we just have the next slide, please?

Was set down actually in its present form after his death as the Muslim scripture, the Quran. And one of the things that the Quran does, is it shows many elements from both Christian and Jewish Midrashic lore. And sorry, that’s my New York accent, lore with R, but it’s very hard for me to say words ending in R. In any case that many, many, many stories that are not actually from the Bible, but from homiletics. And by the way, the near Eastern Christians, in their Aramaic also called the commentaries, and homiletic commentaries on the Bible, Midrash, Midrashic, they’re Aramaic. And these probably reflect sermons, popular sermons that he heard in the marketplaces. And in the early years of his mission, the Quranic revelations had many positive references to both Jews and Christians as people who were People of the book, Ahl al-kitab, who had received a divine book from heaven. But this begins to change when Muhammad and his followers immigrated from Mecca to the city of Medina. The pagans in the city were not happy with his preaching. They thought it would hurt the pilgrimages coming there. And could we just go back to the first map in the first slide? And he goes up here about 250 kilometres to the north, to the Medina. This is by the way, the beginning of the Muslim calendar, the year 622, the year of his immigration, the Hijrah. And there in Medina, he’s invited in by people who have converted to his new faith, but there he encounters a large Jewish population, and unlike perhaps some who he met in marketplaces who may have encouraged him, “Yes,” you know, “you’re on the right track,” and so forth. Instead, they corrected some of the things that he claimed as scripture, but even worse, mocked him. And the later references in the Quran to Jews and Christians are mostly negative.

But the Quran is not put together in historical order. It’s put in order artificially from longest to shortest passages, and so you have a mix of both these positive and negative things. However, there is ways of telling what comes when. And usually references to Jews, both in his own time and historically that are positive, they’re referred to as the Children of Israel, the Bani Isra'il. And later, and there are much fewer of them, when they’re referred to as yahud, Jews, they’re almost entirely negative. I would point out by the way that in polite Arabic, all through the ages, Isra'ili, Israelite, was the polite word to refer to a Jew. And that only changed with the founding of the state of Israel, and for the most part was dropped. But I remember years ago, back some 50 years ago, I was working in a small Moroccan city, which had once, was 50% Jewish almost, and in which still had a Jewish community. I wrote a book about its special Jewish dialect, and so on. And of course everybody, my late wife had family there. Everyone in town knew that we were there with the Jewish community. And I went into a grocery store and the grocer said to me, , “You’re an Israelite,” or Israeli. And I panicked and I said, “No, no, no, I’m an American.” He said, “Yes, you are an American Israelite.” And then I realised, of course, it was a traditional town, and it was his way of being polite. In any case, Muhammad expelled two of the Arab Jewish tribes from Medina, and finds a casus belli, and exterminates the third. But when most of the Arab peninsula comes under his aegis, and most pagan Arabs convert to Islam during the last two years of his life, Jews and Christians were tolerated because they were People of the Book, people of scripture. And they had valid religions, no longer in their pristine form, but still valid religions. And the Quran specifically says, , there is no compulsion in religion, which means, of course, real religion. If you’re a pagan, you either convert or you die. And as long as Jews and Christians, and later Zoroastrians, accepted Islamic suzerainty, paid tribute, which is called and evolves in later times into a head tax, and remain humble, then as long as they do that, they are entitled to the freedom of their religion.

And indeed, we’ll see a lot more freedoms as well. And when the Arab Muslims poured out of Arabia after Muhammad dies in 632, this becomes the basic policy. So much of the Middle East where the majority of Jews lived, can we jump down to the next map, please? There we go. Most of the Jews in the world at this time still lived in the Levant. The great centres were over here, in the, what were the Jews called Babel, today Iraq, Babylonia in ancient times. And they had great centres in Sura and Pumbeditha, we’ll talk about that presently. And over here, even after the Romans put down the Jewish rebellions and massacred large numbers, you still had large Jewish community over here in the land of Israel, over here in Egypt, and indeed throughout this entire region. And within the next 15 years or so, much of the Middle East where they lived, came under Muslim rule. And the Byzantine provinces, all of this, which you see with the blue lines around it, that was ruled by Byzantium. And all of this over here in this red area, was ruled by the Sasanian Persian empire. This being the, here in the Near East, the birthplace and heartland of Christianity, and the Persian empire, which had been around since Cyrus the Great, simply disappears from history. And in fact, many Jews and Christians welcomed the coming of the Muslims, because both Jews and near Eastern Christians, the Christians of the Near East are mostly Monothecites, believing in the one nature of Christ. Whereas Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic, the main churches of Europe, are Diathecite, that Christ had two natures. And both Jews and Near Eastern Christians, the Nestorians, the Copts, and many of the others, faced persecution and discrimination in the Byzantine Empire from the official Greek Orthodox Church.

In fact, the emperor of Byzantium, Heraclius, had just around this time, before the Muslims come in, ordered the Jews of the empire to convert to Greek Christianity. And they could make orders at that time. This was not like ancient Rome or like modern times where you had, the government had the power to really enforce things, especially in these great empires. But still in all, Jews felt under pressure. And now it’s interesting, Jews didn’t write history at this time, but a number of religious texts, what we call , or redemption homilies, like , “The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai”, who lived hundreds of years earlier. In these texts, the Metatron, the throne angel from heaven, tells Rabbi Simon, “Don’t be afraid, because the Almighty is sending the Ishmaelites,” that is the Arabs, “to punish the wicked kingdom of Edom,” that is the Byzantines. And in some places we know from Arab historical sources that local Christians and Jews even aided the invaders. One of the Arab histories of the conquest written about a century afterwards, that I might add, says that it was a Jew who showed the conquering Muslim armies how to penetrate the walls around Caesarea, which was the Roman capital earlier, of the land of Israel, after the fall of Jerusalem. And by the way, later in Spain, almost a hundred years later in 711, 712, the Muslim army by, that’s the far end of the empire, was very small that invaded.

And what the Muslim general Tariq ibn Ziyad did, was to, in each city that they conquered, take the local Jews and set them up as a defence force to hold the towns, while they moved on, the Islamic armies, to conquer the next one. But you’ll be hearing more about that, because I know you have an upcoming talk on Islamic Spain. Now the basic rule of governance, which eventually becomes codified in Islamic law, and by the way I would point out, Islam is much like Judaism. It’s a religion based with a religious law. And by the way, the law in Islam, like the law in Judaism, is called the Path you Follow. In Judaism it’s called Halakha, and in Arabic it’s called Sharia. And in both cases it just means the way. And this basic rule of governance becomes codified in a treaty or writ of protection between the second Caliph Omar, and the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius. This is the so-called Pact of Omar. And while it only mentions, there are no Jews, Jews had been banned from Jerusalem ever since the Bar Kokhba Rebellion, they could come once a year, stand outside of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives and mourn the destruction of their homeland on Tisha B'Av. But other than that, Jews were forbidden to come into Jerusalem. And this treaty of surrender and writ of protection is known as the Pact of Omar, the And while it only mentions Christians, Christian institutions, it talks about churches, it talks about monasteries, and so on and so forth.

Could I have the next slide, please? This text, although it only mentions Christians, in fact is taken for, as the rule, the basic constitutional document, if you will, of protection for all non-Muslim proteges. Non-Muslims who surrender to Islam become protected subjects, they’re called , is the act of protection. And of course that only goes to people of the valid religions, Jews, Christians, and later Zoroastrians as well. And what’s interesting, Sophronius, the bishop, asks Omar not to let Jews come back to Jerusalem, and Omar in fact does, and this is the beginning of the return of Jews to live in Jerusalem, which continues of course then throughout history, except for during the, when the Crusaders take it in 1099, and kill all the Jews living there. And by the way, the Muslims, and many of the Christians. And this writ of protection, as I state, is then modified over time, but basically all the way up to modern times is the, and can be interpreted more stringently or less so, but is the basic document governing people of the three accepted religions under Islam. And basically, as long as they paid their taxes and comported themselves as humble subjects, they were entitled to practise their religion unmolested, have internal communal autonomy with their own leaders and institutions, which were recognised by the Islamic authorities, by the state, and no less significantly, the freedom of economic endeavour. Now this business of communal autonomy, can we go now to the map?

No, the the one we had, there we go. Ever since antiquity and the exile of the Royal House of David by the Babylonians, there had been descendants of the house of David in Babylonia, now becoming Iraq. And in Persian times, one of the descendants of David was called the Reish Galuta, the head of the exile, the head of the diaspora, and he was, we believe, the governor of Jewish affairs in the great Persian empire. And when the Arabs come in, they recognise the head of the diaspora, he’s called, we usually use the term exilarch in English. And in fact, the Caliph gives him the daughter, or one of the many daughters, of the last Persian Shah to be one of his wives. This later on causes problems, as who is going to inherit this position. But in any case for Muslims, King David was a prophet, and they therefore, anyone who is supposedly a descendant of King David, like a descendant of Muhammad, which is called a Sharif, is someone to be respected. And the exilarch, this prince of the exile, who lived in Iraq, and then when the centre of the empire moves to Baghdad, which is built by the second Muslim dynasty of Caliphs, the exilarch becomes the, as you may say, the Minister of Jewish Affairs at the Caliphal court. And we have descriptions both from Jewish sources and from Muslim sources, that he’s treated as royalty in a certain sense.

And again, this sets the stage for what we’re going to see later on in Muslim history, where leaders of Jewish communities are officially recognised, and by the way, this also goes for Christian communities, and receive a certificate from the Muslim authorities that they are the head of their community in the various places. In any case, we said also with communal, talking about communal autonomy, that these conquered centres over here in Sura and Pumbeditha, two of the most famous, over in Tiberius, over here in the land of Israel, these were the places where, after the fall of the second temple in the early rabbinic period, that Judaism comes to be formulated and crystallises in the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, and in a great deal of rabbinic writing. But this had not spread throughout the Jewish world. Jews living in the far corners of the Jewish world had not received this kind of material yet. And now in the Islamic Empire, with this consolidation, and also the heads of the great academies here originally in Sura and Pumbeditha, but they moved to Baghdad afterwards, these people known as the Geonim become the recognised religious heads, the recognised legal authorities, if you will, for the Jewish communities throughout the Muslim world. And Jews in the Muslim world turn to them, and this is when the Talmud begins to spread. And when communities have questions, queries on, how do you do this, that, or the other, they send , queries, and get back , answers. And this now becomes standard throughout the period we are talking about. And the Yeshivat, the , these institutions of higher learning now become in a sense the universities, the Supreme Court, and the legislatures of the Jews in the mediaeval Islamic world, in the period we’re talking about.

And because there are these two centres, the one in the land of Israel, and the one in Iraq, Babylonia, then you still have two brands of Judaism in the Islamic world, the Palestinian version, which by the way, they called themselves , Assyrian, ‘cause that was Greater Syria, and the Babylonian, that out of Iraq. But the one which not only today is the standard, even then became the largest by far, was the Iraqi. And we’re going to see that, for example, and by the way, in Jewish terminology, they said that the Geonim , they ruled, and they were the ones who basically establish or categorise Jewish law, 'cause the Talmud is an open discussion. And furthermore, we will see that the, we’ll talk about the Commercial Revolution in a moment, that well-to-do Jews, merchants, community leaders, and so on, sent their sons to study for shorter or longer periods of time, in these institutions. And we know a great deal about them, and they then return to their communities and become leaders as well. Now, this is a time of the growing urbanisation. The Islamic world sees the greatest flowering of urbanisation that this entire region had seen, the whole Mediterranean basin and the Near East, all the way up to India, that it had seen since the time of Alexander, who of course built lots of cities in his conquests, named 16 after himself, one after his favourite horse who died.

But in any case, this is when the Jews complete the process of going over to being an urban people. And with the, as things settle off, it takes a good 50, 70 years, but as things begin to settle, there begins to become great freedom of movement within this world. And one of the things we see, is what we call the Commercial Revolution. You know, everyone knows the Industrial Revolution, but in Islam there is a great flowering of commerce. The Arabs conquer this huge empire, huge amounts of gold and silver that were locked up in treasuries now come back into circulation, that had gone out in the Roman period. And also Islam, and this sets it totally apart from Christian Europe, not just in the Middle Ages, but even coming into early modern times, Islam highly valued commerce. Remember, the prophet Muhammad was a merchant, and in fact Islam, in Europe already the Romans looked down upon commerce. If you became a, either through the army or through government, if you became well-to-do you then had a farm. You had people who worked for you. And this was true in Europe, all the way up until the Industrial Revolution. And even then, high society were property owners. Even in 19th century Britain, one would say of the new wealth, the nouveau riche who had made their money during the Industrial Revolution, “They made their money in trade.” But in the case of Islam, as I said, commerce is highly regarded. And one of the wishes that was given to pilgrims going off on the Hajj to Mecca was, , “May your pilgrimage be accepted, may your sins be forgiven, and may your merchandise not go unsold.” And there develops at this time a great credit economy. Can I have the next slide, please? Next one.

Oh by the way, just going back to the scene of the temple Mount, the Temple Mount all through, from Roman through Byzantine times, was an open garbage dump, as a sign of what had happened to the Jews. A Jewish convert to Islam shows it, go back one please. A Jewish convert to Islam shows it to the conquering Caliph, to Omar. Tells them that this was not only the site of the Temple, but was the navel of the world, which was believed by Jews, Christians and others. Actually the rock over here in the Dome of the Rock was believed to be the, in popular belief, the navel of the world. And neither this shrine, nor the Aqsa Mosque over here, which is now the third-holiest site in Islam, neither of them were built at the time of the concourse. They only get built in the 680s by the Umayyad Caliph. This was cleaned up, and became an outdoor prayer area for Muslims during this early period. In any case, go ahead. We know a great deal about what happened at this time. And I, by the way might also add, that the Jews, Christians took an active part in the new commerce. In fact, the Muslim historians, 'cause we don’t have anything about it from the main Jewish sources, talk about a guild of Jewish merchants from near Baghdad, from the town of Radhan called the Radhanites, who carried on trade to India, to China, and then throughout the Islamic world, and westward all the way to the land of the Franks, and were highly, highly regarded. And we know a great deal about this period, thanks to what is basically the most valuable source for mediaeval history ever discovered, and that is the so-called Cairo Geniza.

This is, as you know, or you may know, Jews are not supposed to throw away or destroy any written documents that have the name of God. They’re to be first of all, collected, saved, and then buried, just as you give a deceased human a respectful burial. And we have Genizat all over the Jewish world, but most of them are buried prayer books, buried old copies of sacred books, the Talmud, this, the Midrash, et cetera. But in old Cairo, in the synagogue, which you see here, the Ben Ezra Synagogue, in the 19th century, there was discovered a Geniza, a holding place for documents, which was unlike any other in quality and in size. Approximately a quarter of a million documents. We have nothing, by the way, from any mediaeval archive of Europe or the Islamic world of that quantity of material. And it contained not only the regular religious material that you’d expect, but also business correspondence, shopping lists, books that had nothing Jewish about them, and so on. It was a place where for some reason or another, perhaps they thought maybe it would have, some of these things had, and didn’t check and so on. But that’s clearly not the reason. Could I have the next one please? And here’s one of these documents, and this, I said that you have this, that the Jewish official community is recognised by the Muslim state. The leaders are recognised as the authorities within their communities by the state. And for example, this is a letter from the to the Jewish community in Egypt, from the Cairo Geniza. Have the next one, please.

This one I’m always fond of, because this is a child’s textbook for learning to read Hebrew from the 11th century. And the method, I can tell you maybe some of you who had gone to Hebrew school as well, basically we used to call it the bor-ba-bu method. And it’s just each letter with vowel combinations under it, and then later several letters together and so on. And as I said, this is from the 11th century. Have the next one please? Ah, yes. Now another thing the Geniza has, is a great deal of business correspondence. And by the way, during this Commercial Revolution, the dinar, the Muslims introduced, the Byzantine Empire used gold as its standard, the Persian empire used silver, and the Muslim state used gold and silver with an exchange, an exact exchange rate, how much silver to how much gold. And in any case, this period was a free enterprise, and I said, fixed exchange. And this coin that you see here, the dinar, was called by the great American economic historian, Roberto Sabatino Lopez, who was at Yale for many years, the dollar of the Middle Ages, because even as far up as Scandinavia this was, and in Christian Europe, a number of states made their coins at least at some sort of an exchange with this money. And this was a, Jews take an active role in this free enterprise system. Can I have the next one please? And here, also from the Cairo Geniza, one of the things was, this was a very, the Arabs added zero to the number system.

And basically what we use now is the Indian-Arab, from India originally through the Arab world, numeral system, which is far better than the Roman numerals. Far easier to use, far more exact. And one of the things that developed at this time was a credit economy. And at first the Christians are the big bankers, but Jews quickly get into the act. And what you’re looking at here, people didn’t, unlike Europe, where you had to carry sacks of gold and silver with you wherever you went, in the Islamic world there was a credit system, and people had bankers in other cities, and so did not always have to send large amounts of hard currency when they went to do business somewhere else. And this is from the Cairo Geniza, it’s in the Hebrew script of the time, and it is the forerunner of the modern check. In fact, the word for this was, it had two names, , which was Persian word, or , and is probably the origin of our word, in western languages, of check for this kind, and this is basically, this is to someone’s banker from, this is sent from Cairo to the banker in Baghdad and saying, “Please extend this much cash to my representative, who’s going to be there on business.” Now, can I have the next one please? That’s another thing, Jews go over to, the Arabic language becomes the universal language of Jews throughout this great empire, which is going to extend from Spain all the way over to the borders of India and China. And although Jews as everywhere wrote their Arabic among themselves in Hebrew characters, we call it Judeo-Arabic, just as the Jews from Christian Spain with Latino wrote old Spanish in Hebrew characters, and so on.

But they also, many of them knew standard Arabic. And here from the Geniza, we have no explanation why it’s there, but this is a book of famous fables. It’s based on an Indian book called “The Bidpai Tales.” And as you can see this, this also gets stored in the Geniza for no reason that we can understand. Have the next one, please. Now, the world conquered by the Arabs had also, remember, been conquered by Alexander, and the great centres of Hellenism were in fact in Egypt. Alexandria remember was the home of the great Library of Alexandria, which had long since been destroyed. Christian legend is that the Arab conqueror sees it, asks what it is, and they tell him a library. He said, “What’s in a library?” “Books.” And he says, “Destroy it, because if they’re not the Quran, they’re not worth saving.” Greeks in their fighting within the city, had set by accident the the library on fire hundreds of years earlier. But in any case, other great libraries of Greek science, philosophy, were also in the Middle East in, in fact in what we call Iraq. And in this period, starting in the late seventh, early eighth century, the Islamic world, and Jews along with them, begin to undergo a new form of Hellenism, an Islamic Hellenism, if you will. And of course, this was not the Hellenism of Hellenistic Jews in late antiquity, but it was a, in fact it was referred to by the great SD Goitein, as the intermediate civilization, intermediate between the very secular Greco-Roman world and between the, and completely religious mediaeval European world, and between the Renaissance in Europe and the antiquity.

And what the Muslims undergo, can’t explain it exactly why, but the Islamic state embarks on a programme to translate all of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic. And the Caliph al-Ma'mun in Baghdad, reigned from 813 to 833, establishes a place called the Bayt al-Hikmah, the House of Wisdom, in which all of this material is to be translated. And basically Plato, Aristotle, all of their commentators, the Greek scientists, Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates, Euclid and so on, all get translated into Arabic. And most of this is done by Christians, who can either read Greek or Syriac translations, but also by Jews. There’s a Jewish astronomer and economist named Mashallah, who does of some of the work as well. And this becomes a period, which unfortunately ended in the Muslim world several centuries later, a period rationalism, a period when contact of people from different faiths, even intellectual contact was possible. And where rationalist theologians approached religion as something that had to be explained rationally, logically. The dominant Islamic theology was one, it was called the Mu'tazila, that said anything that’s in the scripture that goes against science or common sense or morality has to be explained allegorically, and this gets to be picked up by Jews as well. And this is the time when Jewish philosophy, the last time you had had a Jewish philosopher, in the theology in the philosophical sense, was back, Philo of Alexandria.

He disappears from Jewish history. He’s preserved by Christians, but Jews had no more interest in him. But in the world of the great Yeshivas of Baghdad, and also in the land of Israel, but particularly in Baghdad, Jewish philosophy now is born. And one of the great heads, the Geonim of the yeshiva, Saadia Gaon, in the ninth and early 10th century, writes the first basic philosophical description of what Judaism believes, and it’s the “Book of Doctrines and Beliefs.” It’s later translated to Hebrew, and survived as a classic later on. He also, by the way, did the, as I said, this is a time of consolidation. He also does the first prayer book, the first siddur. And again, it’s very, very, it contains explanations, how you do this, that, and the other. And it has, as diaspora prayer books often do, translation for those who want to know, what does the Hebrew say, and what should you be doing at the same time? He also, by the way, wrote a commentary on the Bible, which doesn’t come into Western Europe because it’s not translated from Arabic. It remains with Jews of the Islamic world. But in many ways, parts of it do continue because the Spanish biblical commentator, ibn Ezra sometimes cites him, and when he cites him, it’s to disagree with him. But he very often cites him without citing him. He just takes over from him. And we know that Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu intellectuals met in Baghdad and in other places, and held discussions. And we have the description, actually a Spanish Muslim before Spain becomes a sophisticated place, comes to Baghdad. He said, “I went to one of these halls where the intellectuals of different religions met, and one of them started to quote from his scriptures, and the others hooted him down and say, 'Look, you don’t accept our scripture, we don’t accept yours.

Here we argue on the base of science and reason.’” And this continues for the next few hundred years, again unfortunately, to be replaced by a much more narrow type of religious approach, which has been dominant in the Muslim world since the 11th century. In any case, this is a time when Jews, throughout this part of the world, the communities flourish, they grow, and it becomes the time for one of the best periods in diaspora history. And you’ll be, as I said, hearing, it’s not right after this, but I know it’s on your programme, from my colleague Hillary Pomeroy, who will be talking about Spain, where this then flowers as well. But in any case, let me turn to some of the questions and oh, maybe just slide down with the slides a little bit more. Yes, this is a, I have a manuscript here showing you the House of Wisdom, and a philosopher teaching his students, next. This is one of the great libraries that was established, and it shows you people sitting, and someone lecturing to them as they’re reading some text, go on. And this is a Jewish scholar giving a talk to his Jewish pupils on the nature of the universe, you see the heavens above him, and he’s holding an astrolabe, which was used for various types of calculation, as well as for navigation, go on. And this, this is a Jewish mathematical text. Again, this is a time, when basically much later, Maimonides, the greatest of all Jewish philosophers and theologians said, “If it weren’t for Saadia and the intellectual revolution there, Judaism may well not have survived.” That can be argued, but certainly it was much appreciated. Now let’s see.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Yes, one of the first question, a little bit, not directly with this, but have I heard of Moredchai Kedar? And, and if so, oops, where where did it go? There. What is his opinion as a scholar of Arab culture?

A: He is a scholar of the modern Arab culture, which I said, has gone in a very different direction from the period that I’m talking about.

Then the next one, “You ought to tell what happened in Yathrib, early name of Medina. Also mention the condition of the Medina. I did mention that Muhammad expelled two tribes, and he found a casus belli to wipe out the third tribe. But again, that was there because of the, what he encountered, but to his credit, that didn’t change the basic attitude that Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had valid religions. They could not be forced to convert to Islam, as pagans had to be. And that yes, they had, as proteges, as , protected persons, they had to observe certain standards of humility. But during this period, a great deal of this wasn’t enforced, the more regulatory, and for the simple reason, just as a social historian, when things are prosperous, you really don’t care about the next person as long as you have it good. Later on, as the Muslim world comes under pressure, as it begins to decline, as Europe rises, then the stricter elements of the Pact of Omar, which again, which is modified over time, come into effect. Wearing special clothing, a whole variety, but that is not in force, from what we can see, at this time. And if you ever want to discuss that in another course, I can talk about that as well. But I must tell you, having to do a great deal of webinars here from Israel, ever since October 7th, explaining Hamas and its ideology and so on, I wanted, I had to speak somewhere and decide, I told them that this was just an invited lecture. I want to do something upbeat, and I talked about, I said the title was, "There Were Better Times.” And this also.

Q: Now the question, “How do we know that Jews mocked Muhammad? Is it from Jewish writings or from Islamic writings?”

A: And the answer is, we have only the Islamic writing, we have the biography of the prophet Muhammad, “The Sirah.” We don’t have anything from this time. However, that doesn’t seem, so we do have poems by Jewish poets in Arabia, who did mock him. And by the way, later on they get put to death as well, when he conquers all of Arabia. One of the jobs of poets are either to praise their patron or to mock his enemies. And when you get to Spain, you will see that that becomes a great Jewish art form, in Hebrew, but taking on Arab rhyme metre and style. And some of the greatest poetry actually in mediaeval Hebrew literature is of that sort. But from Arabia, these were the Arab tribes of the time. Where did we, where did it go? There it is.

Q: “Now, you mentioned an angel of the throne. Are you saying that the name Metatron, above or beyond the,” there we go, “thought to be an angel, to be a rival to the power of God?”

A: No, yes it is a Greek name and so on, but it merely was a title of someone who, an angel who is serving God. It is not the original meaning, in that sense.

Q: “What actually,” ah, actually a good question. “What actually caused Islam to turn inward?”

A: A variety of things, but mainly there, in the 10th century already there’s a theologian who comes up against all of this rationalism and so on. His name is al-Ash'ari. His work is not accepted for another hundred or so years, but he basically writes everything in the Quran and in the hadith has to be accepted , without asking why. And this is the very opposite, of course, of this rational period. And also the Islamic world, and again, this is outside the scope of our talk of this flourishing era, but comes more and more under pressure from slave soldier Praetorians, mostly Turks, from invasions by the Franks with the Crusades, and later the Mongols and so on. And basically there’s a hunkering down, and a hardening of Islam.

And then I have a question, again, this is quoted so often. In hadith you have this line that at the end of days that Muslims will be fighting against Jews, Muslims will kill them, but some Jews will hide behind trees and stones, and the trees and the stones will say to the Muslim that, “There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Like the Talmud, Islam says both negative and positive things. The Babylonian Talmud says that, “The righteous among the nations have their place in the world to come.” The Jerusalem Talmud says, “Even the best of Gentiles deserves to die.” Luckily, Judaism finally takes the position of the Babylonian, not the Palestinian. But again, these hadiths, which now of course are quoted by Hamas, Hamas quotes this very one in its charter, the hadiths are the size of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica.” You have five orthodox hadiths, one of which is about six or seven volumes, of quarto volumes and so on, and they say many things. And during good periods, one can find the good things, and when you want to in the bad periods, you can find the negative. And as I said, this hadith, which Mitzi has sent to me, is quoted all the time today. It was not quoted all the time, it was not quoted at all in this period. It does get, as times go down, and again, I can give you a talk of how things change, but that was not what our topic was today.

And, “The picture of the library, the books looked like modern books rather than scrolls.” Yes, you’re absolutely right. The Muslims, by the way, by the way, the Muslims had paper and they had books, did not use scrolls. They had bound books. We have bound books, they were in leather envelopes that folded over, they were not set straight up. As you saw on the shelves, they’re lying down. And that became, that was the standard form of Arabic book all the way through the 19th century. I had a very fine collection of them myself, which now you can see at the Stillman collection at Ben-Gurion University Library.

Q: And, “How many Jews converted to Islam of their own free will in this period? Thinking of a large percentage of Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity after 13, 909.”

A: Let me just say winners, obviously always will have people who come to them. But most of the people who converted to Islam were the Christians of the Near East, and the Zoroastrians especially. Jews in much smaller numbers. And by the way, just might add as a final word, Jews did best and worst under heterodox Muslims, why? Because a heterodox Muslim can either, doesn’t have to accept anything, he can do what he wants. And so under some Muslim, it forced conversion of Jews, like by the Almohads, that is against Islamic law. But here, and I just give you now with Maimonides, let’s end with him. Maimonides was one of the forced converts, a rabbi in Europe who of course, Jews on the Rhine River who were in the path of the Crusaders, killed their wives and children and then themselves, rather than be forcibly baptised to Christianity, which they considered idolatrous. Jews in Spain and North Africa, when the Almohads come in, in the 12th century, and force everyone, Christianity disappears in North Africa, in the home of the great fathers of the Christian Church, of Augustine and so on, Christianity disappears forever. Jews for the most part became Marranos, secretly practising Judaism, while outwardly practising Islam. A rabbi in Europe said, “They’ve lost their place in the world to come.” And Maimonides and his father, Rev Maimon HaDayan, both write letters of comfort, , in which they say, “Converting to Islam outwardly to save your life is not going against, because Islam is not idolatry. If you still practise Judaism secretly,” and Maimonides and his family were such people, “you should of course get the heck out of there as soon as you can,” which he did, and then they went to the Middle East, “but you have not lost your place in the world to come, because Islam is not idolatrous.” And this is the Rambam, this is Maimonides himself, writing. In any case, again, those are other topics for a completely different talk.

And I got a nice note of thanks from Rhonda. Thank you Rhonda, very much. And I hope that this, I realise, especially today, and I said everyone is aware, this is not the greatest period by any means in Jewish-Islamic history, but there was a better time. And believe me, I’ve worked in the Muslim world over the past 50 years and so on, there are voices of reason. Unfortunately, they have to keep their heads down for the most part, due to this change that took place in the later Middle ages, and in modern times, especially with the Islamist movements. But again, that’s another topic. So I think we have, yes, we’ve gone over our time, so thank you very much. And I assume our hostess will be calling, and bringing things to a close.

• [Host] Yes, thank you so much for joining us today. What a wonderful lecture.

• Thank you very much. Believe me, with what goes on right now, I’m happy to talk about better times.

• [Host] Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for coming today.