Medieval Iberian Jewry under Muslim and Christian Rule

Home » Course Search »
Level: 
Master's
CEU credits: 
2
ECTS credits: 
4
Academic year: 
2009/2010
Semester: 
Fall
Start and end dates: 
8 Sep 2009
Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]: 
Department of History
Department of Medieval Studies
Nationalism Studies Program
Religious Studies Program
Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area: 
Culture, Religion and Intellectual History in a Comparative Perspective
CEU Instructor(s): 
Carsten L. Wilke
Additional information: 
The course parts from the still popular narrative of 19th century liberal historiography, which hinges on the commonplaces of Moorish tolerance, inquisitorial Christianity, and Jewish diaspora's proverbial golden age. While following loosely the chronological order, sessions are distributed thematically between a set of problems raised by the processes of religious diversification, interaction, and unification. It will point out how ethnic and religious pluralization following the Muslim conquest of 711 relieved the minority of pressure and created social niches for inter-communal and inter-cultural intermediaries, and how this favorable position was progressively eroded by the race towards homogenization engaged by Muslim and Christian rulers alike. Alongside Sephardi Jewry's political, economical, and social history, the course will also study its intellectual creativity, its legal and liturgical traditions, its internal organization, and its influential elitist self-image.
Learning Outcomes: 
The participants should acquire a processual understanding of Iberian religious history and deconstruct essentialist notions concerning the three religions' respective approaches to power. The course shall exemplify the extraordinary cultural creativity of the margins of both the Christian and of the Islamic world, and encourage possible comparisons with Eastern European environments. Late medieval unification strategies, peaceful as well as violent, are to be understood against the larger background of the theological currents of European Christianity and the different intra-communal conflicts.
Assessment : 
As it is customary in most Medieval Studies courses, your grade will be an equal combination of class participation (including short in-class presentations) and a term paper, which may deal with the interpretation of a chosen source, with a context of political, social or intellectual history, or with the reception of a Sephardic medieval topic in the modern era. All readings will be in English; but students who read an Iberian or Semitic language are invited to work on primary sources.
Full description: 

I. Introduction

1. Ibero-Jewish Myths: Origins, Golden Ages, Black Legends

 Américo Castro, The structure of Spanish history, transl. by Edmund L. King, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 221-229. [Internet Resource] [savepdf]

"Jewish Populations in Europe", in: Haim Beinart, Atlas of medieval Jewish history, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, p. 82 [CEU Library]. [savepdf]

 Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy”, in: Schorsch, From text to context: the turn to history in modern Judaism, Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994, p. 71-92. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

André Stoll, "Segregation, Migration and Recuperation of the Orient in Mediterranean Europe during the First Modernity: The Case of Semitic Spain", in: Anthony Molho et al. (eds.), Finding Europe: discourses on margins, communities, images, ca. 13th – ca. 18th centuries, New York: Berghahn Books, 2007, p. 55-88, extracts to read: p. 55-61, 76-79. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

Simon Schwarzfuchs, "Spain", Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007, vol. 19, p. 67-83. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

2. Pre-Islamic Spain: the temptations of theocracy

a) Source reading

"The Council of Elvira, about 300", in: Jacob Rader Marcus, ed., The Jew in the Medieval World: a source book, 315-1791, Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press, 1999, p. 113-114. [ELTE Medieval/CEU Libraries] [savepdf]

"The Jews of Spain and the Visigothic Code, 654-681", ibid., p. 22-26. [savepdf]

b) Studies

Yitzhak Baer, A history of the Jews in Christian Spain, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1966, vol. I, p. 15-22. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400-1000, London: Macmillan, 1983, 2nd ed. 1995, p. 128-143 "Outsiders and the Law". [ELTE Medieval Library]  [savepdf]

Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in medieval Spain: cooperation and conflict, Leiden: Brill, 1994, p. 7-8, 21 [ELTE Medieval Library]. [savepdf] [savepdf]

c) Map

"Distribution of Jews, Middle of the Sixth Century", in: Beinart, Atlas, p. 14-15. [savepdf]

II. Muslim Spain

3. Political and legal status under Islam

a) Source reading

"Islam and the Jews 600-1772", in: Marcus, p. 14-21. [savepdf]

b) Studies

Maria Rosa Menocal, The ornament of the world: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in medieval Spain, Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 2002, p. 84-90. [savepdf]

Mark R. Cohen, ed., Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton 1994, p. 3-11, 203-210. [savepdf]

Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims, p. 73-127. [savepdf] [savepdf]

4. Convivencia: interaction between members of three religions

a) Source reading

"Samuel ha-Nagid, Vizir of Granada", in: Marcus, p. 335-339. [savepdf]

b) Studies

Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Muslim Spain, 2 vols., Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973, vol. I, p. 264-289. [savepdf]

Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims (v.s.), p. 129-149.

Jonathan Ray, "Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Our Approach to Medieval Convivencia", Jewish Social Studies 11.2 (2005), p. 1-18. [savepdf]

c) Map

"Muslim Spain: Economy and centers of Jewish settlement", in: Beinart, Atlas, p. 35. [savepdf]

5. "Golden ages" of literary and scientific culture

a) Sources

"The Story of the Four Captives", in: Gerson D. Cohen (ed.), The Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-Qabbalah) by Abraham ibn Daud, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967, p. 63-67.

Peter Cole (ed. and trans.), The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 86-87, 146, 156, 162-164. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

b) Studies

Raymond P. Scheindlin, "The Jews in Muslim Spain", in: Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed.), The legacy of Muslim Spain, Leiden: Brill, 2000, p. 188-200. [CEU Library]

Jonathan P. Decter, "Literatures of Medieval Sepharad", in: Zion Zohar (ed.), Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times, New York: New York University Press, 2005, p. 77-100, read 77-86. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

Menahem Ben-Sasson, "Al-Andalus: The So-Called 'Golden Age' of Spanish Jewry – a Critical View", in: Alfred Haverkamp et al. (eds.), The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2004, p. 123-137. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

III. The Christian kingdoms in the Reconquest period (12th - 14th cent.)

6. Political elites and communities (Castile, Portugal)

a) Source

"Medieval Spanish law and the Jews: Las siete partidas, 1265", in: Marcus, ed., The Jew in the Medieval World, p. 38-45. [savepdf]

b) Studies

Baer, vol. I, p. 177-185.

Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, "Castile: an Overview (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries)", in: Alfred Haverkamp et al. (eds.), The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2004, p. 151-162. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

David Abulafia, "The King and the Jews – the Jews in the Ruler's Service", in: Alfred Haverkamp et al. (eds.), The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2004, p. 43-54. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic frontier: the "reconquista" and the Jewish community in Medieval Iberia, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2006, p. 6-9, 176-179 [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

c) Map

"Jewish Communities in Spain and the Reconquest: Thirteen and Fourteenth Centuries", in: Beinart, Atlas, p. 49.

7. Jews in urban society (Aragon, Catalonia)

a) Source

Robert I. Burns, Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p. 114-117, 138-139 [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

b) Studies

Yom Tov Assis, "The Crown of Aragon", in: Haim Beinart (ed.), Moreshet Sepharad. The Sephardi Legacy, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992, vol. I, p. 44-102. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

Elka Klein, "Barcelona", in: Norman Roth (ed.), Medieval Jewish Civilization: an encyclopedia, New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 79-82. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

c) Map

"The Collecta Organization", in: Beinart, Altas, p. 51.

 8. The mendicants' campaign for Christian unity

Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: the evolution of medieval anti-Judaism, Cornell University Press, c1982, p. 13-16, 242-264 [ACLS Humanities e-book], [savepdf]

Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: the Jews of Medieval Europe, Cambridge, Mass. 1992, p. 230-241, 295-302. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

Robert Chazan, "Proselytizing, conversion, and resistance", in Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 247-283 [CEU Library] [savepdf]

 9. Warfare between philosophy and kabbala in medieval Judaism

a) Sources

"The Ban of Solomon ben Adret, 1305", in: Marcus, ed., The Jew in the Medieval World, p. 214-218. [savepdf]

b) Studies

Yitzhak Baer, "Mysticism and Social Reform", in: Baer, vol. I, p. 243-305.  [savepdf]

Moshe Idel, "Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah in Spain", in: Zion Zohar (ed.), Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times, New York: New York University Press, 2005, p. 120-142. [savepdf]

 IV. The Fifteenth Century (1391-1497)

10. The conversos: christianization by violence and assimilation

b) Studies

Haim Beinart, "The Great Conversion and the Converso Problem", in: Beinart (ed.), The Sephardi Legacy, Jerusalem 1992, vol. I, p. 346-382. [savepdf]

Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1995, p. 198-201. [savepdf]

Moises Orfali, "Jews and Conversos in Fifteenth-Century Spain: Christian Apologia and Polemic", in: Jeremy Cohen, ed., From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1996, p. 337-360. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

c) Map

"The Riots of 1391", in: Beinart, Atlas, p. 56.

11. Jewish Reconstruction

a) Sources

Synod of Castilian Jews in Valladolid, 1432 [link]

Joseph ibn Shem Tob, "Sermon on Abot 3:15-16", in: Marc Saperstein (ed.), Jewish Preaching 1200-1800: An Anthology, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 167-179. [ELTE Medieval Library] [savepdf]

b) Studies

Baer, History, vol. II, p. 259-270. [savepdf]

Mark D. Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

c) Map

"Spanish Jewish Communities", in: Beinart, Atlas, p. 75.

12. Expulsion

 a) sources

"Text and translation of the edict of expulsion", in: Haim Beinart, The expulsion of the Jews from Spain, transl. by Jeffrey M. Green, Oxford: Littman Library, 2002, p. .49-54. [CEU Library] [savepdf]

"The Expulsion from Spain, 1492 [a Jewish account]", in: Marcus, ed., The Jew in the Medieval World, p. 59-64. [savepdf]

b) Studies

Haim Beinart, "Order of the Expulsion from Spain: Antecedents, Causes, and Textual Analysis", in: Benjamin R. Gampel (ed.), Crisis and creativity in the Sephardic world, 1391-1648, Mew York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 79-94. [CEU] [savepdf]

Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquistion, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1995, 2nd edition 2002, p. xi-xv, 285-297. [savepdf]