The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem


Book Description

This is the story of the Jewish community in Palestine from the Crusader conquest in 1099 until the fall of the Latin Kingdom in 1291. Drawing on a wealth of documentation, much of it largely unknown to western scholars, Professor Prower examines the working of the community's internal organization within the framework of the Crusader Kingdom's institutions; their attitude to the Crusader conquerors, as well as to the neighboring Muslim rulers; contacts between the rulers and members of the community: and in rare instances, cases of interfaith relationships.




A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations


Book Description

The first encylopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world This is the first encyclopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book features more than 150 authoritative and accessible articles by an international team of leading experts in history, politics, literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Organized thematically and chronologically, this indispensable reference provides critical facts and balanced context for greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims. Part I covers the medieval period; Part II, the early modern period through the nineteenth century, in the Ottoman Empire, Africa, Asia, and Europe; Part III, the twentieth century, including the exile of Jews from the Muslim world, Jews and Muslims in Israel, and Jewish-Muslim politics; and Part IV, intersections between Jewish and Muslim origins, philosophy, scholarship, art, ritual, and beliefs. The main articles address major topics such as the Jews of Arabia at the origin of Islam; special profiles cover important individuals and places; and excerpts from primary sources provide contemporary views on historical events. Contributors include Mark R. Cohen, Alain Dieckhoff, Michael Laskier, Vera Moreen, Gordon D. Newby, Marina Rustow, Daniel Schroeter, Kirsten Schulze, Mark Tessler, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and many more. Covers the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today Written by an international team of leading scholars Features in-depth articles on social, political, and cultural history Includes profiles of important people (Eliyahu Capsali, Joseph Nasi, Mohammed V, Martin Buber, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Edward Said, Messali Hadj, Mahmoud Darwish) and places (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Baghdad) Presents passages from essential documents of each historical period, such as the Cairo Geniza, Al-Sira, and Judeo-Persian illuminated manuscripts Richly illustrated with more than 250 images, including maps and color photographs Includes extensive cross-references, bibliographies, and an index




The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 5, Jews in the Medieval Islamic World


Book Description

Volume 5 examines the history of Judaism in the Islamic World from the rise of Islam in the early sixth century to the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth. This period witnessed radical transformations both within the Jewish community itself and in the broader contexts in which the Jews found themselves. The rise of Islam had a decisive influence on Jews and Judaism as the conditions of daily life and elite culture shifted throughout the Islamicate world. Islamic conquest and expansion affected the shape of the Jewish community as the center of gravity shifted west to the North African communities, and long-distance trading opportunities led to the establishment of trading diasporas and flourishing communities as far east as India. By the end of our period, many of the communities on the 'other' side of the Mediterranean had come into their own—while many of the Jewish communities in the Islamicate world had retreated from their high-water mark.




Knights of the Holy Land


Book Description




Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050–1614


Book Description

An innovative study which explores how the presence of Muslim communities transformed Europe and stimulated Christian society to define itself.




Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem


Book Description

This fascinating study examines the customs, legal codes, and socioeconomic mechanisms that evolved from the initial Christian-Muslim encounter on Crusader battlefields. It pinpoints changes in European mentality, and conduct of war, tracing acculturation processes in Frankish society in the Levant. These changes emerged from the need to redeem captives, making payment of ransom to the infidel conceivable and acceptable. The book pays special attention to the story of the vanquished, to the situation of women, to the behavior of the Military Orders toward captives, and to the image of the captive in Crusader literature, in the context of making war and peace.




Tolerance and Intolerance


Book Description

This wide-ranging collection explores the issue of tolerance during the period of the Crusades through the treatment of prisoners, the ransom of captives, and the problems faced by many groups. One of the central issues revolves around the attitudes of the participants. There were significant differences between Latin and Eastern Christians as well as between Christians and Muslims and among Christians, Muslims, and Jews. But, too, an exaggerated emphasis on the religious roots of intolerance has oversimplified the ways in which ideas of tolerance developed. The essays explore these relationships in their complexity in order to penetrate those generalizations that have often distorted more than enlightened. Tolerance and intolerance therefore are terms that can obscure as much as enlighten. What the reader discovers in this collection is that these attitudes play an important role in the shaping of international relations. Cross-cultural cooperation was not rare—not entirely surprising given the diversity of groups involved.




Fear and Loathing in the North


Book Description

Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, there has until now been little work on either the perception of or encounters with Muslims and Jews in medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region. The volume provides the reader with the possibility to appreciate and understand the complexity of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval North. The contributions cover topics such as cultural and economic exchange between Christians and members of other religions; evidence of actual Jews and Muslims in the Baltic Rim; images and stereotypes of the Other. The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.




Storia della storiografia


Book Description




Sanctifying the Name of God


Book Description

How are martyrs made, and how do the memories of martyrs express, nourish, and mold the ideals of the community? Sanctifying the Name of God wrestles with these questions against the background of the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland during the outbreak of the First Crusade. Marking the first extensive wave of anti-Jewish violence in medieval Christian Europe, these "Persecutions of 1096" exerted a profound influence on the course of European Jewish history. When the crusaders demanded that Jews choose between Christianity and death, many opted for baptism. Many others, however, chose to die as Jews rather than to live as Christians, and of these, many actually inflicted death upon themselves and their loved ones. Stories of their self-sacrifice ushered the Jewish ideal of martyrdom—kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's holy name—into a new phase, conditioning the collective memory and mindset of Ashkenazic Jewry for centuries to come, during the Holocaust, and even today. The Jewish survivors of 1096 memorialized the victims as martyrs as they rebuilt their communities during the decades following the Crusade. Three twelfth-century Hebrew chronicles of the persecutions preserve their memories of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, tales fraught with symbolic meaning that constitute one of the earliest Jewish attempts at local, contemporary historiography. Reading and analyzing these stories through the prism of Jewish and Christian religious and literary traditions, Jeremy Cohen shows how these persecution chronicles reveal much more about the storytellers, the martyrologists, than about the martyrs themselves. While they extol the glorious heroism of the martyrs, they also air the doubts, guilt, and conflicts of those who, by submitting temporarily to the Christian crusaders, survived.