AP/RLST 3918 6.00

Sephardi Jews Of Muslim Lands

The meeting between Jews and Arabs in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict is famous. Less familiar is the encounter between Muslims and Jews in Muslim lands. This course explores Jewish life under Islam from the rise of Islam until modern times, with a special focus on Sephardi Jews. Setting the stage is an overview of the religious, political, communal, material and intellectual settings of the Judeo-Muslim experience during the Middle Ages, when a large majority of the Jewish people subsisted under Muslim rule. The second part explores such themes as cultural cross-pollination, the Jews' legal status under Islam in theory and practice, interfaith polemics and religious unorthodoxy as arenas of interaction and the parameters of Jewish communal autonomy in Islamic lands. The third part explores how this culture was affected by regional and international political and economic change with the advent of modernity and European colonialism. Emphasis is placed on classroom analyses of the translated primary source material, informed by background readings.

RELIGIOUS TRADITION(S) COVERED: Judaism

Cross-listed as AP/SOSC 3918 6.00.

Course Category: Self, Society and Other