Abrahamic coexistence in the twelfth-century Middle East? Jews among Christians and Muslims in a travel account by a Navarrese Jew, Benjamin of Tudela

Abstract Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts with complete vocalisation are rare, a problem which makes reconstructing the pronunciation of the medieval language challenging. This study presents an edition of a Judaeo-Arabic translation of Ecclesiastes from the Cairo Genizah with full Tiberian vocalisation. This manuscript exhibits noteworthy features of dialectal medieval Arabic and a palaeographic style which places it in twelfth-century Egypt-Palestine. The transcription system provides specific evidence for the pronunciation of a type of medieval Judaeo-Arabic, while the translation offers a window into the culture of popular Bible translations and scribal activity in the medieval Middle East.

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The Realm of the Imām the Faṭīmids in the tenth century

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x00030585 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 59 (3) ◽

pp. 431-449

Author(s):

Michael Brett

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Twelfth Century ◽

North Africa ◽

Tenth Century ◽

Modern History ◽

The Third ◽

Islamic Tradition ◽

History Of ◽

The Middle Ages

Despite their period from the tenth to the twelfth century, at the height of the Middle Ages; despite their position in Egypt, at the centre of the civilization of the Near and Middle East; and despite their prominence as the third Caliphate of Islam, the Fāṭimids lack a satisfactory modern history of their dynasty. This is partly because of the length of their life, which covers the histories of so many hundreds of years; partly because of the span of their empire from North Africa to Egypt and Syria, stretching across the histories of so many regions; and finally because, at the level of Islam itself, their empire was divided between their dawla or state and their daՙwa or doctrine. The doctrine, which focused on the Fāṭimid Imām as the quṭb or pole of faith, gave the dynasty its peculiar strength and endurance. The failure of that doctrine to supersede the Islam of the schools, however, left the Fāṭimids increasingly isolated and ultimately vulnerable. Standing outside the mainstream of Islamic tradition, the dynasty's own version of its history was disregarded. Instead, its components passed out of their original context to be incorporated into the regional or universal histories of subsequent authors. Maqrīzī was alone in compiling his Ittiՙāẓ al-ḥunafā' as a history of the dynasty in Egypt, introduced by a miscellany of information on its origins and previous career.

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The life of Aq-Sunqur al-Bursuqi: some notes on twelfth-century Islamic history and thirteenth-century Muslim historiography

Turkish Historical Review ◽

10.1163/187754611x570927 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 39-56

Author(s):

Alex Mallett

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Thirteenth Century ◽

Twelfth Century ◽

Wide Region ◽

Islamic History

AbstractThis article examines the career of the Turkish emir Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqi, who was active across a wide region of the Middle East in the first half of the twelfth century. In so doing, it highlights important aspects of the Crusades and Counter-Crusade more widely during this period. It also analyses the presentation of al-Bursuqi in the historical chronicles which form the basis of studying the early twelfth century, in order to further understanding of the late-sixth/twelfth and early-seventh/thirteenth century societies in which they were written.

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From Farmers to Merchants, 750–1150

The Chosen Few ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691144870.003.0007 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Maristella Botticini ◽

Zvi Eckstein

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Twelfth Century ◽

Comparative Advantage ◽

Jewish Population ◽

Jewish People ◽

Second Temple ◽

Contract Enforcement ◽

Urban Populations ◽

Enforcement Mechanisms

This chapter studies how literate Jewish farmers abandoned farming and became small, urban populations of skilled craftsmen, shopkeepers, traders, money changers, moneylenders, scholars, and physicians. The literacy of the Jewish people, coupled with a set of contract-enforcement institutions developed during the five centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, gave the Jews a comparative advantage in occupations such as crafts, trade, and moneylending—occupations that benefited from literacy, contract-enforcement mechanisms, and networking. Once the Jews were engaged in these occupations, they rarely converted, which is consistent with the fact that the Jewish population grew slightly from the seventh to the twelfth century. Subsequently, the establishment of the Muslim caliphates during the seventh and eighth centuries, and the concomitant vast urbanization and growth of manufacture and trade in the Middle East, acted as a catalyst for the massive transition of the Jews from farming to crafts and trade.

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Performance and Competition of Kingship and Court in Le Voyage de Charlemagne à Jerusalem et à Constantinople

In the Presence of Power ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479879366.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Evelyn Birge Vitz

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Twelfth Century ◽

High Culture ◽

Remarkable Degree ◽

East Jerusalem ◽

What Matters

This chapter shows how, in the twelfth-century French epic Le Voyage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem et a Constantinople, courts of the Middle East—Jerusalem and Constantinople—were fantasized and even joked about; the geography itself is largely imaginary. This work also reflects (occasionally tongue-in-cheek) a warrior and Crusader mentality: what matters for a monarch and a court is not wealth or learning or high culture. Rather, this epic focuses, to a remarkable degree, on people and things—kings, knights, women, palaces, God, and relics—as performing their power, which is indeed performative.

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