Noam (Norman) A. Stillman
The Long Twilight
Noam (Norman) A. Stillman | The Long Twilight | 05.22.24
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- Good evening, good evening or afternoon to everyone, depending where you are. At our last session, we talked about the Jews of the Islamic world during the early centuries of Islam, which was a flourishing period in world history and civilization, not just for the dominant Muslim population but also for the Jews who lived there. And indeed, it was one of the really best periods in Jewish diaspora history generally as well. And the Dar al-Islam, the domain of Islam as Muslims refer to their world, extended from the borders of India and China in the east, as you see from this slide, to the Pyrenees and the Iberian Peninsula in the west. And could I just have the second slide as well? And here you see the eventually the Christians began pushing down. We’ll talk about that presently, but there you see Islamic Spain at its height. And the Islamic world had a flourishing, laissez-faire economy in which Jews actively participated. And the gold dinar, could I have the next one, please?
Became as the great economic historian, Robert Sabatino Lopez dubbed it, the dollar of the Middle Ages. It was the currency on which all other currency in mediaeval England, in the, even in Scandinavia, was based upon upon the gold dinar. And indeed, we have a clear picture of these better early centuries, thanks to the rich documentation of the Cairo Geniza document. And if I could just have the next slide, please. Here, I showed last time. This is the forerunner of the modern check. In fact, the word check comes from in Arabic. And rather than carrying gold and silver across borders and facing bandits and pirates and so on, you had a credit economy. And this is a money order that was sent from Cairo to Baghdad in the 11th century. In addition to the flourishing economy in which Jews played an active role, we also said that this was a period of intellectual and scientific development, which the great Swiss historian Adam Mez has dubbed the Renaissance of Islam, (indistinct) .
And in it, Jews again actively participated, played an active role in philosophy. Could I have the next one, please? Here you see a philosopher speaking to his students from a mediaeval manuscript. The next one also, and here is a class in a library. The first real libraries, as we know them, come from the mediaeval Islamic world during these early centuries. In medicine and in astronomy, remember of course the great Jewish physicians of the Middle Ages from Hasdai ibn Shaprut to Moses Maimonides. And if I could just have the next slide, please. Here you see a Jewish philosopher speaking to his students and holding up an astrolabe, which was the tool that was used for measuring the heavens and for navigation in the, in this period. It was a Greek, from the Greeks. And the dominant theology at the time was a rational and generally tolerant one and under this Jewish life flourished as well as sharing elements with the general culture as well. And if I could just have the next please. And here you see what the Jews called a . They used the Hebrew term.
The Muslims called it . And these were sessions, in this case, garden party, in which musicians played music, in which you had philosophers reciting their latest ideas and people having debate, intellectual debates. This began in mediaeval Spain, but also took place in mediaeval Cairo and Baghdad and many other places as well. And some Jews even attained, as we had mentioned, high positions in government service. I mentioned Hasdai ibn Shaprut, who was famous for these garden sessions when he was the chief advisor to the Caliph in Cordoba, Samuel ha-Nagid, who became the chief advisor and led armies in the field for the Berber King of Granada. And if I could just have the next slide. Here of course is the famous Court of the Lions in the Alhambra. And the German architectural historian, Frederick Bargebuhr has hypothesised that this actually, the Alhambra is a whole series of palaces. It’s a huge complex, but that this, that we don’t have these lion figures in normal Islamic architecture. And he hypothesises that this was the famous castle on the hill of the Jewish Vizier of the King of Granada, at least at this part of it.
But all of this begins to change in the late 11th century and takes a dramatically downward turn in the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th centuries. The spiritual, the social and the economic climate of the Islamic world underwent a profound transformation during the period we’re talking about now. And Islamic civilization was on the defensive everywhere. In Spain, there was the ongoing Reconquista, which took on a new momentum. That map I showed you in the beginning, as you can see already they were by the ninth, 10th century. They were good-sized Christian kingdoms in the north, and they kept pushing down. And by 1264, all that was left of Islamic Spain was Granada itself, which fell to Ferdinand and his Isabella in December of 1491. And at the end of the 11th century, the crusaders you’ll recall came into the Middle East and remained in the Holy Land for nearly two centuries. Also at the end of the 11th century, Muslims, remember, remember the Muslims ruled Sicily for several centuries in the high period that we talked about last time. But at the end of the 11th century, it was conquered by the Normans. And again, that was the end of the Islamic high period there.
On February 28th of, February 10th of 1258, Hulegu Khan, the grandson of the great Genghis Khan who conquered China, conquered Baghdad. And he put to death the Caliph al-Musta'sim and most of the Abbasid Caliphal family, and put an end to the great Abbasid caliphate in which the renaissance of Islam had been born and flowered. And now all of that is finished. By the way, the Mongols had a tradition that you don’t shed royal blood. So the Caliph and his family were covered with carpets, and then the Mongol cavalry rode over them. And that was how they were eliminated. But already before these attacks from without, there were important changes that were taking place from within in the Islamic world. For several centuries, the Caliphs in the East had been bringing in slaves as soldiers to protect their rule on the theory of everyone knows the famous statement that’s always attributed to the Arab world. I and my brother against my cousin, my brother and cousin and I against the world. In reality, brothers and cousins came to be looked upon as potential rivals by people in power. And the idea at least was, the theory, that to protect their rule, the, and this was not just the Caliphs.
Other Muslim rulers were to do this as well, that since the members of their family were potential rivals, foreigners brought in as slaves would be dependent upon them and loyal only to them. These, they were called Mamluks. It was, of course, we will talk about the famous Mamluk Empire later on in the Middle Ages. But these slaves were brought in, they were trained in military conduct. And then they were given their, they were given their freedom. They were no longer slaves, but they were basically freed slaves in the service of the ruler. And in the Middle East, these were primarily Central Asian Turks. Could I have the next slide, please? Here’s a scene of, a battle scene of, they were known as fierce warriors. Next one, please. And they’ve in Spain, they were not Turks, but Slavs brought in from Eastern Europe, which was still pagan and therefore Christian slave dealers could buy them, bring them to Southern France. The some of them were emasculated and turned into, to be servants in the house. But the strong ones were made into soldiers. But like the Praetorian guards of the Roman Caesars, this became a case of who is going to guard the guardians? And this soldier caste comes to have more and more power.
And with the decline and fall of the Caliphate, these non-Arab soldier castes like the Mamluks who ruled Egypt and the Levant, imposed a social, political and economic order, which we might call with some justification just as Mez called the high period the Islamic Renaissance, we could call this Oriental or Islamic feudalism. Here you have a picture of one of these, one of these Turkic officers putting on a royal robe. And you see the people standing around him, Arabs to his left and right, and then these people who look Chinese. You have to understand that the, that the original Turks are cousins of the Mongols and they come out of Central Asia. And the people in Turkey today are a great mixture of different ethnic and racial background, racial backgrounds, some more Asian looking than others. For example, President Erdogan is more Asian looking than many Turks. And here you see him putting on his royal robe in front of courtiers of the different ethnicities.
But one the things that happens now, and we could, and why we call it a form of Oriental or Islamic feudalism, is society becomes extremely hierarchical. And on top you have what are called the , the men of the sword. And these are only members of this soldier caste. No one else can join or come and be part of it. And just below them is another caste, if you will. The , the masters of the pen. And these were bureaucrats, sometimes the children of some of these, the soldier castes. By the way, big Mamluks couldn’t have little Mamluks. Once they were in the military, they were, when they retired or died, they were replaced by new ones who were brought in fresh from Central Asia. You, as I said, big Mamluks didn’t have little Mamluks, but the, but their offspring, who were now raised in the local cultures, they could go and become bureaucrats and religious functionaries along with members of the, of the elite, existing elite. They could become civil servants. And these people were trained in madrasas, in special schools, which had an official doctrine of strict, strictest, if you will, high Islamic orthodoxy.
This is not the rational, Mu'tazilite school of Islam that was the official form of Islam during the heyday of the Caliphate, which we talked about last time, but a theological school called the Ash'ari or Asharite School. And this school insisted upon, and it was its motto, acceptance without asking why. Everything had to be taken literally, no rational explanations or commentary. And this now becomes, this becomes the dominant form of Islam. And the graduates of these fundamentalist schools, and I guess we could say they’re fundamental, it’s a form of fundamentalism, when they entered government bureaucracies began to squeeze out the dhimmi, that is the Jews and Christian, the non-Muslims, who up until this time very, had served in considerable numbers in government bureaucracies. And they’re squeezed out of the civil service eventually, almost completely.
But also this new and brewing cadre of officials who are trained in strict Islamic orthodoxy, they ensured the, and this is of course of particular importance for us in this series of talks. They ensured the application of the letter of Islamic law, of the Sharia, in many, many areas. And this included the strictest enforcement of the Pact of Umar, the dhimmi code, which is based upon the surrender agreement of Jerusalem in 630, 638, 639, between the Christian Patriarch and the Caliph, the Caliph Umar, but then is developed in legal fashion over the following centuries. And one of the things now that was observed on and off throughout the early centuries of Islam are the laws of , of differentiation. And these included sumptuary laws which are now strictly and consistently enforced. And for example, Jews and Christians sometimes had to wear, and this was, as I said, on and off already from the early centuries of Islam, had to wear special patches, the origin, by the way, of the badge identifying Jews, on their turbans and cloaks.
This only comes into Europe in the 13th century with the, oh, I can’t think of the church council right now, but the, with the, with the church, the Catholic Church ruling on this. But the idea from it already comes from the Islamic world. It also had existed to some extent in the Byzantine world, even before. And in 1301, the Mamluks, who are a Turkic regime of the soldier caste who rule Egypt and the Levant, they require Jews to wear yellow turbans, Christians to wear blue ones, and Samaritans, there were still a good number of Samaritans in the both Egypt and in the Levant, to wear red ones. Women had to wear outer wraps dyed the colour of their men’s turbans. In North Africa, Jews who were the only non-Muslims left after the Almohad persecutions. They had to wear black garments. Can I have the, it’s I think two down. We added it in. This, the new slide. Oh, that’s one more. Here’s one more of, one of the Turkic rulers. Can I have the next one please? And the one after this, there we go.
In North Africa, the sumptuary laws that went into effect were for Jews because no Muslims were, no Christians were left after the Almohad persecutions. That picture of the veiled Berber you saw on the camel as we were coming to this, North Africa didn’t get these Turkish slave soldiers, nor did it get the Slavic ones that came into Spain, but rather was taken over by Berbers from the, from both Sub-Saharan Africa and from the Atlas. And they, one of these sects, which was particularly, particularly strict, forced all non-Muslims, it’s against by the way, is the, it’s against the Quran and Islamic law, to convert or die. And this was the end of Christianity in North Africa. It completely disappears, even though it was the home of some of the great church fathers like Augustine and so on. Jews on the other hand rode out the storm, many converting outwardly to Islam but inwardly practising Judaism.
And when they could, returning to the Jewish faith. I would just mention that my, that a rabbi in Europe, remember during the crusade on the way to the crusades, when the crusaders marched down the Rhine and were forcing Jews to convert or die, many Jews not only committed suicide, but parents killed their children, men their wives, and then themselves not to be baptised. And a rabbi in Europe writes that all these Jews in North Africa have lost their place in the world to come. And Maimonides, who himself underwent, and his father, Maimon ha-Dayyan, who themselves went, underwent this persecution, and who probably, clearly, although it’s never really said, but acted as Muslims, wrote famous epistles of comfort in which they said no, that it’s outward conversion to Islam is not like conversion Christianity. It is not a pagan religion and it is not idolatrous. And of course, those who do it should practise in private and should get to safety where they can openly become Jews again, which is what Maimonides and his family did when they left, when they left the Middle East.
But now there are only Jews left in North Africa. And here the rulers insisted that Jews be dressed entirely in black as opposed to set them off from the Muslims’ white. And this remained in effect in North Africa all the way up to modern times and was only done away with with the coming of colonialism, Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1884 and Morocco in 1912. This was the law in all of these countries, and some, I must say, some Jews, I worked in Morocco during the 1970s, taught there and did research there and so on. And sometimes Jews of the older generation, especially on Shabbat, would go to the synagogue dressed in black, black tunic and black robes because it had become, after five centuries in practise, this was traditional Jewish garb. In any case, this color-coded sumptuary law was enforced from time to time from the first century of Islam on.
In a sense, it didn’t have to really enforce it at first because non-Jews, non Muslims dressed differently in any case from Muslims. But now it is enforced consistently. And we have handbooks for inspectors of the marketplaces, the, they’re called treatises. They’re little books for basically police officers. And these market handbooks, these treatises, emphasise the need to strictly enforce the dhimmis’ code of dress and of conduct, one of which of course was to be humble. And for example, Jews and Christians could never ride on horseback in Muslim countries from the time of the Conquest on, that’s already in the Pact of Umar. But now they were not even allowed in many places to ride on donkeys in the towns and cities as part of this humility. Only when in the countryside could they do that. And of course, another thing is they had to ride side saddle, not on regular saddles since again, that was something, a sign of honour and so on. And now they were forbidden to do that.
Also, Jews in some places had to walk barefoot in the streets when they passed a mosque. Muslims take off their shoes in a mosque. But outside on the street now, if a Jew was walking in a street, or a Christian, and passing a mosque, he had to take his shoes off as well as a sign of his humility. Jews who had to appear in Muslim courts as a general rule, Christians and Jews avoided going to Muslim courts. They had, it’s, remember under the system, each religious group had their own courts and were ruled by their own laws within their community. But in cases where they had to go to a Muslim court, say, because of dealings with Muslims or dealing with the state and so on, they were now required to recite a humiliating and ludicrous oath before giving testimony. This of course reminds us of the terrible oath, More Judaico, which was in Christian Europe almost to the, almost into modern times.
In fact it was the great Adolphe Crémieux, the first Jewish and leading Jewish figure in France and first Jewish member of the parliament who finally got them to take it off the books. And just to give you an example of what a Jew had to say if he came into a Muslim court, before he could say anything, and he would go, I swear by God, by God, the Almighty, everlasting, unique Lord, as of old, the one and only, if what I say isn’t true, may I be enslaved to Pharaoh and Haman, may I be detached from Israel and brought into the religion of Christianity that I may declare the truth of Mary and her claim and acknowledgement that Joseph, the carpenter, was innocent. May I deny the divine message, may I approach Mount Sinai with foul deeds. And it goes on and on, it’s extremely long. It’s about, it would take about five to seven minutes just to recite this. And may I abandon Judaism for another faith.
May I consider camel’s flesh, fat and intestines, and that which is mixed with bone as permissible. May I interpret that someone who enjoys the use of something forbidden is not considered as someone who enjoys the forbidden thing itself. And it goes on and on and on. May I say what the people of Babylon said about Abraham. So you can imagine this. You had to recite this. And as I said, the, I just read little excerpts from it. One had to recite this just to be able to give testimony before Muslim, before Muslim judges. The restrictions on non-Muslim housing, that it can’t be higher than those of Muslim ones, now comes back into force. And the upper floors of some buildings are actually torn down either by the authorities or by mobs. And so too illegal synagogues. Under Islamic law, churches and synagogues may not be built after the coming of Islam. You only can use earlier ones that existed before.
Of course, since many of the cities, of the great cities of the Islamic world were only built after the coming of Islam, it was clear to everybody that the churches and synagogues were built afterwards. And every now and then, even in the good period, someone would point this out and then they would pay a fine to keep the building from being torn down. But now these are torn down either by the authorities or by mobs. And so too, as I said, the illegal synagogues. And for this reason, we have from this period on the spread of what we call conventicles. They’re little private synagogues, usually in the home of wealthy people. And I must say, I mentioned I worked in Morocco in the 1970s, they were still in the homes of, I remember of one wealthy, Jewish businessman in Fez. And I there one Sabbath when I was in Fez, and they have a beautiful synagogue at that.
But these were small, small, small shrines that could seat maybe at a maximum, at the very biggest 40, 50 people if that. And these now become widespread. The famous, those of you who’ve been to Jerusalem, the famous Nachmanides synagogue, which was built in the 1400s, was later confiscated and turned into a warehouse and only became a synagogue again in modern times after East Jerusalem became, was taken by Israel in the 1967 war. Another thing that we see at this, during this period is a marked increase in urban violence from the poor, Arab, Muslim masses who were treated with contempt by the polo-playing Turkic rulers. And could I just have the last slide in the batch please. We will go backwards one more time, to the very end. There we go. The Turks, non-Muslims, by the way, Muslims, Arabs, the native population were not allowed to dress like the ruling elite.
They were not allowed many of the privileges of the elite. And one of the things of course was the soldier caste were great players of polo, which comes in from Central Asia. You do know that the original game played by the Turks and the Mongols was done with the skulls of people that they killed in war. But these, as you see, are already playing in a sports version of it with balls and so on. But in any case, they were totally divorced from the general population and as I said, treated them with utmost contempt. And the poor masses vent their frustrations on the non-Muslims, on the dhimmis, who are, who under Islamic law are their inferiors. Now these people are feeling as inferiors. And one of the things I often tell students in class when things are going well, one doesn’t really care how the next person is doing, but when things are going badly, one wants to know that if I have it bad, there are people who have it worse. And that psychological frame of mind very much describes what the feelings of the Muslim masses.
And by the way, this, we’re only talking about this long twilight, but I would just point out that in modern times when Christians and Jews began to benefit from the education of European and American do-gooders who came into the Middle East, most for the Christians, mainly missionaries, for the Jews, the Alliance Israélite Universelle and opened modern schools, modern clinics, gave them new advantages of opportunity with the modern education. The, and then they could then become part of the new world economy, which was penetrating the Middle East. The Muslim masses again looked upon this with great anger and frustration and this, but this is a different period of history, but the sentiment was very much, very much the same. And as I said, they vent their frustrations on the Jews and Christians who are their inferiors, at least under the, under Islamic law. And many of the anti-dhimmi attacks are carried out by urban gangs.
That’s another thing. This is a period when among the Arab masses there are criminal gangs with colourful and I might add suggestive names like the , the whoremongers, in Fez, the in Cairo. And the , the new guys in Damascus, and these gangs in particular are, vent their violence on non-Muslims. In 1276, there is a massacre of Jews in Fez, the major city of Morocco. In 1301, there are bloody riots that take place in Cairo. And by the way, one of the things that happens at this time is that many members of the Christian and Jewish economic elites convert to Islam after centuries, of course, of having remained in their ancestral faith. And we believe that in fact it’s only at the, during this period that Copts become the original Egyptians. The name Copt means Egyptian it comes from , Copt in Arabic, that many of Coptic figures convert and Copts become a minority in Egypt only at this time. We can’t know for sure because we don’t have censuses.
But this is widely, widely felt by historians. And travellers from Europe bear witness to the degradation of the non-Muslim minorities. Friar Felix Fabri, who visits the, he’s on his way to a pilgrimage like many of these Europeans eventually to Jerusalem. But he comes to Alexandria because of course, sailing the Mediterranean, you got off at Alexandria and then took a caravan up to the Middle East. And one of the things he describes in his memoirs are his shock at the Christian prostitutes and pimps in Alexandria. He notes that Muslims wouldn’t let their daughters do such things. And in fact, sadly prostitution very often is a product of poverty and of inequality and oppression. And all the way up to the 20th century, Jewish women were the majority of prostitutes in places like Morocco and Tunisia and Algeria. In my book, “Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times”, I have a report written by a soldier in the American army who’s there in World War II and his great, he’s Jewish, and his great shock at the Jewish prostitutes that were in Morocco at the time.
On the other hand, I might add that Friar Felix Fabri notes that the Muslims do have brothels for . And sadly, I can also add from personal experience, not that I ever went in, but when I was walking through Fez with a, one of my teaching assistants, who was a prince, an Alaoui prince. And he points out a place which, where I see all these little boys in the courtyard, and it was a house of prostitution for little boys. Rabbi Obadiah de Bertinoro, the, or as we, Bertinoro, we usually say in Hebrew, but it’s, he’s Rabbi Obadiah Bertinoro, who also is in the Middle East at the same time on a pilgrimage in, he’s there in 1487, four years after Felix Fabri. And he describes to his chagrin Jewish officials selling off synagogue objects to foreigners, namely to Jews as souvenirs, but even to Gentiles. And he mentions that the shammash, the beadle of the venerable Ben Ezra synagogue, which is the home of the Cairo Geniza, sells a Torah scroll for 100 dinars. And then of course when the community finds out, he promptly converts to Islam to escape punishment. Another thing that takes place at this time is ghettoization.
Now, there were no enforced quarters for non-Muslims during the classical age that we talked about in our last session. Jews and Christians lived mainly in neighbourhoods where they were the majority of the population. They had, why? Because much any of you who know Western European communities, England, France, the United States, Canada, know for example Jews very often live in neighbourhoods where they’re the overwhelming majority, feeling of course more at home, also being able to walk to synagogues on Sabbath and so on, and having their own institutions. I mean, I grew up in a suburb of New York which was 90-plus percent Jewish and all the rest, by the way, were Italian. And these, in the Muslim world, most Jews and Christians were in such neighbourhoods where they had their own schools, their own houses of worship, their own courts. Remember, they were autonomous entities in the classical Islamic world. And even in this later bad period, they had their own courts and so on and other facilities, mikveh, for example, the ritual bath for Jews, and butchers and ritual slaughterers who could provide them with kosher meat.
Another thing living in their own neighbourhoods, Jews in particular, was that these should be, have convenient access to the cemetery because Islamic law, the Pact of Umar, forbade public religious ceremonies. You had freedom of religion in private, in your house of worship, in your home, but not in public. And the especially Middle Eastern funerals, which have a great deal of women breastfeeding and wailing and professional wailing women and so on and so forth, this was considered a public show. And all the way up into the modern times when they had to go through Muslim streets, people would not only jeer, but sometimes throw stones and so on. And so neighbourhoods were very often with nearby access to the cemeteries, but they were not hermetically sealed neighbourhoods. And you could have neighbours of different faiths living there as well. But this changes now in the Middle Ages. The first of these ghettos is the famous Mellah of Fez. Can you go back please? One more, there we go.
This is the main street of the Mellah of Fez, which is built in 1438. One of the things you will know, any person who knows the Islamic world well would recognise this as a non-Muslim neighbourhood. Why? Because of the open balconies, although many of them are being covered up because now it’s entirely Muslim who live there. But Muslims did not allow, Muslim houses had, if they had balconies at all, it was toward the inner courtyard or the roof balconies themselves, which were also where people slept during the hot weather and so on, and which had a wall around them. But no Muslim home where women were in the harem, the harem as it gets called in English, would allow such a thing. And this one is interesting because it’s built on the model of the in Spain.
It is in the New City of Fez, new also being mediaeval, but it also is next to the Royal Compound. And that was because even when not treated well, Jews and Christians were considered to be protegés of the ruler. They’re paying the jizya tax, they’re being humble in exchange for protection. And therefore this was, this is built right next to the Royal Compound. But now these like European ghettos, the gates are locked at night. People cannot leave without special permission. And these begin to spread throughout much of the Muslim Middle East. You have the in Yemen, the Mahalleh in Iran and the, and various and sundry others with such names in the various countries. And of course they also were for protection because on the one hand when they’re open, they, Muslims could come in, but at night, as I said, they were closed.
One of the other things that one sees at, and again, these remained in force all the way up to the 19th century in the Middle East. And for example in Morocco, up until the coming of the French in 1912. This is also a time when anti-dhimmi rumours and scares begin to spread stories that Jews put wine into the lamp reservoirs of mosques, they blaspheme Islam, doctors poisoning Muslim patients, and various and sundry folk tales about malevolent dhimmis. I would just point out though, one thing also that is happening in this period, the Black Death comes into the Middle East in 1348 on its way to Europe and it causes depopulation and famine. And unlike Europe, people don’t flee it, and it becomes a Malthusian cap on the population, comes back time and time again.
But one of the things we don’t see is the accusation that Jews are poisoning the wells the way we do in Europe. I would just say that, look, there were times and places when and where the darker side of this long twilight was mitigated. When the Mongols take over Baghdad, they persecute the Sunni Muslims and they actually are treating well Shiite Muslims, Christians and Jews, but the Mongol rulers, the Ilkhanates who stay there, convert to Islam in less than a generation and then become, all the anti-dhimmi rules go into effect. And basically what we’ve described continues down to the 19th century when a new chapter in the history of the Jews of the Middle East begins.
But that’s another story for another time. Meanwhile, let’s see, we have some questions already here.
Q&A and Comments
Q: Unrelated query, is your family from near Kamenets-Podolsk and Khotyn? A: My family is from the Ukraine, from Shepetovka and and Polonne as it’s called today on one side and on the other side is from Galicia from . So I’m not exactly sure my geography is much better for the Middle East and North Africa than it is for Eastern Europe. But it’s the kind of thing that you could look up. Let’s see, Shelly Shapiro.
Q: Why did the Mongols and Central Asians convert to Islam? Was it to be avoid being enslaved like pagan Slavs were? A: No, it probably was simply being there and also the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population were Muslim and there was a great deal of anti-Mongol sentiment among the Sunni majority that converting, converting to Islam among the elite, especially the ruler. If the ruler does it, then so does everybody else. Was probably done as much for political reasons as any, because one of the things about the Mongols, they were pagans, but many of the Mongol leaders had Christian wives and perhaps that they had a rather, what shall I say? Practical view when it came to religion in any case. So I think that that’s more than any, more of the reason.
And ah, and hello from Sid and Hazel in Toronto. Nice to know that you’re there and thank you Stuart Sidal for your kind words. I would by the way just point out that one of the comments on the last talk, I don’t know if the person is here now, but the person sent me a query.
Q: Why don’t you mention the Hadith? A: The, it’s, and it’s an orthodox Hadith that at the end of time, Muslims will kill the Jews and those Jews that survive will hide behind trees and rocks and the rocks and trees will say, “There’s a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” And as I pointed out, in the period I talked about before, yes, this existed in among tens of thousands of Hadiths, but you don’t see it quoted at the time. The period we’re talking about now, this I’m sure would’ve been quoted far more frequently and sadly enough today with the Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood and so forth, Hamas, it’s cited all too frequently, but this is the period of transition coming towards modern times when that period of the Islamic Renaissance completely goes by the boards.
Any other queries or comments, I’ll be happy. I don’t know how much time we have left, but I think it’s only a few moments. I’ll be happy to answer them. Well, if that is the case, ah, by the way, one of the other pictures was the, was another one of the, sorry. It says sometimes as you get into the things one jumps over it. The picture right after the Mellah of Fez with those buildings was from the Mellah or Jewish Quarter of Sefrou, which is the so-called Jerusalem, the Little Jerusalem of Morocco, a famous walled town from the Middle Ages which was famous for its Jewish community and scholars, and where I lived and worked for doing research for a book actually on the, on that community and it’s Judeo-Arabic language.
Q: And again, oh, what percentage of Jews converted? As many as in Spain who converted to Christianity? A: No, that’s not the case. Most of those who converted were either of the, and this was certainly not all, but were members of the upper economic class who felt pressure, who felt pressured to do so. And sometimes people to escape poverty did so as well. But no, the vast majority of Jews in the Islamic world did not convert to Islam, perhaps because they were, even at the worst of times, they were still better off in many ways than were Jews in parts of Christian Europe. And also because they shared many elements of the culture with them. And I do think that it, they did not feel as totally foreign to those around them as remember even the language that they spoke till the coming of the Sephardim who brought in Ladino, Judaeo-Spanish, the majority of the Jews of the Islamic world spoke the same language. Yes, they wrote it in Hebrew characters. They added in Hebrew words as their Muslim neighbours. And I would just point out that in places where there were large numbers of Jews, just, and I make a comparison with modern times with New York, just as any person from New York knows what chutzpah is and so on, so I remember in Morocco the first time when I heard Muslims in Sefrou, which had a 40% Jewish population until the mass exodus in the 1950s, ‘60s and '70s. And I remember hearing Muslims saying, “Do what you want.” And how did they say it? Hebrew for welcome. So again, I’m sure Jews in Eastern Europe did not hear Cossacks or other non-Jews saying things in Yiddish. That’s it. And again, thank you for the various, and we can’t know in any case on percentages because there were no censuses or population statistics. The first people to take censuses for which we do have statistics were the Ottomans in the end of the 15th century. And but they did it by households, not by individuals. So we still have to estimate somewhat, but we know the Jewish population of places like Constantinople and Salonica and so on because of that. Because of that. Yes, and Ladino was, someone just mentioned Ladino was one of the languages in the Netherlands. Absolutely, absolutely.
[Host] Noam, did you see the question that said it was just a bit above, it said do you feel that this decay in relations is inevitable?
Ah, I didn’t see that question. Where is that?
So if you just scroll up, it’s above Adrian.
Q: It just says, do you feel that this decay in relations is inevitable when Jews are a minority? A: Well, obviously being a minority, they were always a minority. But the, there was, Islam had its own anti-Jewish, it’s anti-Jewish prejudices and so on. But these were tempered by the positive side. And in good times, the negative side could be avoided. This, and even Muslims could see that Jews had far more in common with them, say, than did Christians. And the anti-Jewish sentiments of modern times are in part and perhaps one day, one day I’ll give a talk on that, on the coming of what we, of antisemitism, we use the term for the modern versions of anti-Jewish prejudices and so on. And the Christian prejudices such as the blood libel never existed in the Islamic world until they were brought by Catholic missionaries. And the famous of course first example is the Damascus Affair of 1830, which was by the way pushed by the French consul, an antisemite himself, in Damascus, the Comte de Ratti-Menton. And this had no headway at all with Muslims throughout the 19th century, but Arab newspapers were founded by Christians who got the education in missionary schools, either Protestant ones or Catholic ones. They spread it with the newspapers. And again, it didn’t find many buyers until we get to the 20th century. But that’s a whole nother story. But these things were always tempered and that on an individual level, Muslims and Jews were able to have cordial relations in many periods of time. But again, there were these definite differences and when times were bad, that exacerbated the need to show the differences. I hope that answers the question, is this something just because they’re a minority? The answer I don’t believe is so. I think far more it has to do with all these other factors that play into it. Being a minority also doesn’t, obviously doesn’t help when times aren’t good, especially an outside minority. Any other questions?
[Host] I think that’s all the questions, just having a read through. Yeah, that’s all, wonderful.
So thank you very much. And as people commonly say now all the time, it’s interesting. Jews from Islamic countries always said at the end of anything serious comes from the grace after meal, from the grace after meals, may we hear good tidings. And now here in Israel, I must say that every five minutes in public, anyone leaving the counter after paying a bill, instead of saying just goodbye will say good tidings. And everybody in hearing distance answers, “Amen, Amen.” Double, double Amen. So I hope that we do have good tidings and thank you for joining.
[Wendy] Thank you, Noam. Thank you, that was outstanding. So informative and get to today. Thanks so much, bye-bye.
[Noam] Bye-bye.