Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages - Softcover

Cohen, Mark R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069101082X ISBN 13: 9780691010823

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Did Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages cohabit in a peaceful "interfaith utopia?" Or were Jews under Muslim rule persecuted, much as they were in Christian lands? Rejecting both polemically charged "myths," Mark Cohen offers a systematic comparison of Jewish life in medieval Islam and Christendom--the first in-depth explanation of why medieval Islamic-Jewish relations, though not utopic, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West.

About this title

About the Author

Mark R. Cohen is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His books include Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt and The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi, both published by Princeton University Press.

From Kirkus Reviews

A thorough comparative study of the conditions of medieval Jewish life in Christian and Muslim lands. Cohen (Near Eastern Studies/Princeton) explores and explodes the recently resurrected myth of Arabs and Jews living in an ``interfaith utopia,'' especially during the centuries of Islam's ascendancy. This fantasy of a tolerant Golden Age in Spain before 1492 (when Jews were expelled) is (European) Jewish in origin, but it gets a lot of spin from propagandists trying to show that Muslims can be anti-Zionists but have never been anti-Jewish. Among the scores of primary sources quoted here is a letter from Jewish philosopher-physician Maimonides (d. 1204), who writes that ``none has matched [Islam] in debasing and humiliating us.'' Cohen modifies such statements and battles the ``countermyth'' of Arab savagery held by contemporary Sephardic Jews, who he views as competing with their Holocaust-surviving Ashkenazic counterparts. Before the 17th century, the frequency and harshness of both Christian and Muslim persecution is about equal, but Cohen deftly differentiates between the behavior of these two hosts by studying the particular economic and social conditions of various Jewish communities under different caliphs and kings. He analyzes all the decrees (Jews had to rise in the presence of Muslims) and restrictions (Jews could not own Christian land) with condiderable historical and theological insight. Early Christians, facing life- and-death competition with Jews in the Roman empire, developed an adversarial faith that ``fulfilled'' Judaism and ``demonized'' Jews. Consequently, treatment of Jews in Christendom ranged from serfdom to expulsion. Mohammed's minions had no ongoing struggle with Arabia's quickly subjugated Jews, hence Christian and Jewish ``people of the book'' were ``second-class subjects'' but allowed some occupational diversity. For an academic study of the Middle Ages, remarkably accessible and timely. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 069101082X
• ISBN 13: 9780691010823
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304