Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to Twelfth Century (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures)

212 Pages·2007·1.11 MB·English

by  Esperan Alfonso

ISLAMIC CULTURE THROUGH JEWISH EYES
From the tenth to the twelfth century, a Jewish elite living in al-Andalus – the
area under Islamic control in the Iberian Peninsula – created a culture that would
be later conceived in Jewish imagination as a Golden Age.
This book brings under analysis the construction of Andalusi Jewish identity
by examining the representation of, and attitudes toward, Muslims and Islamic
culture in a variety of Jewish sources. Sources used include introductions to
grammatical and lexicographical work, large poetry collections, ethical and
philosophical treatises, chronicles, treatises on poetics, and letters sent to various
communities or exchanged among individuals.
Esperanza Alfonso’s thorough reading of this wide range of sources will
make the book appealing not only to specialists in medieval Hebrew and Arabic
literatures but also to scholars and researchers of comparative literature and cul-
tural studies.
Esperanza Alfonso, Ph.D. (1998) in Hebrew Studies, Universidad Com-
plutense, is currently a Research Fellow at the Universidad Complutense, Spain.
ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN
LITERATURES
Editors
James E. Montgomery
University of Cambridge
Roger Allen
University of Pennsylvania
Philip F. Kennedy
New York University
Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures is a monograph series devoted
to aspects of the literatures of the Near and Middle East and North Africa both
modern and pre-modern. It is hoped that the provision of such a forum will lead
to a greater emphasis on the comparative study of the literatures of this area,
although studies devoted to one literary or linguistic region are warmly encour-
aged. It is the editors’ objective to foster the comparative and multi-disciplinary
investigation of the written and oral literary products of this area.
1 SHEHERAZADE THROUGH 7 IBN ABI TAHIR TAYFUR
THE LOOKING GLASS AND ARABIC WRITERLY
Eva Sallis CULTURE
A ninth-century bookman in Baghdad
2 THE PALESTINIAN NOVEL Shawkat M. Toorawa
Ibrahim Taha
8 RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES
3 OF DISHES AND DISCOURSE IN MODERN MUSLIM AND
Geert Jan van Gelder JEWISH LITERATURES
Edited by Glenda Abramson and
4 MEDIEVAL ARABIC PRAISE Hilary Kilpatrick
POETRY
Beatrice Gruendler 9 ARABIC POETRY
Trajectories of modernity and
5 MAKING THE GREAT BOOK tradition
OF SONGS Muhsin J. al-Musawi
Hilary Kilpatrick
10 MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIAN
6 THE NOVEL AND THE COURTLY CULTURE IN THE
RURAL IMAGINARY IN MEDITERRANEAN
EGYPT, 1880–1985 Three ladies and a lover
Samah Selim Cynthia Robinson
11 WRITING AND 16 ARAB CULTURE AND THE
REPRESENTATION IN NOVEL
MEDIEVAL ISLAM Genre, identity and agency in
Muslim horizons Egyptian fiction
Julia Bray Muhammad Siddiq
12 NATIONALISM, ISLAM 17 LITERARY MODERNITY
AND WORLD LITERATURE BETWEEN MIDDLE EAST AND
Sites of confluence in the writings of EUROPE
Mahmûd al-Masadî Textual transactions in
Mohamed-Salah Omri nineteenth-century Arabic, English
and Persian literatures
13 THE ORAL AND THE Kamran Rastegar
WRITTEN IN EARLY ISLAM
Gregor Schoeler 18 POPULAR CULTURE AND
Translated by Uwe Vagelpohl NATIONALISM IN LEBANON
Edited by James Montgomery The Fairouz and Rahbani nation
Christopher Stone
14 LITERATURE,
JOURNALISM AND THE 19 CONTEMPORARY ARAB
AVANT-GARDE FICTION
Intersection in Egypt Innovation from Rama to Yalu
Elisabeth Kendall Fabio Caiani
15 THE THOUSAND AND ONE 20 ISLAMIC CULTURE
NIGHTS THROUGH JEWISH EYES
Space, travel and transformation Al-Andalus from the tenth to
Richard van Leeuwen twelfthcentury
Esperanza Alfonso

ISLAMIC CULTURE
THROUGH JEWISH EYES
Al-Andalus from the tenth to twelfth century
Esperanza Alfonso
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2008 Esperanza Alfonso
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-94621-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-43732-6 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-94621-9 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-43732-5 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-94621-3 (ebk)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 Attitudes toward language: Hebrew vis-à-vis Arabic 9
2 Transmitting and producing knowledge: Jewish and Muslim
intellectuals 34
3 Living in the present: the concepts of exile and domicile 52
4 Waiting for the Messiah: Self and Other in the journey
toward the end of time 83
Afterword 111
Glossary 115
Notes 118
Bibliography 162
Index 198
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research and writing of this book has gone through two different stages sep-
arated by a six-year time span, two languages, and two continents.
I carried out the bulk of the research from 1993 to 1998, when the project
was at the doctoral dissertation stage, thanks to a fellowship I received from the
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) in Spain. In 2005, after more than
five years in the US, and thanks to a research grant from the School of Graduate
Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was fortunate to spend two
semesters as a visiting scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at
Cornell University. The attendant reduction in the teaching load gave me some
much needed time to do further research, to thoroughly rework my manuscript,
this time in English, and to bring the project nearer to completion.
Although most of the work for this book was undertaken in those two
periods, the months I spent as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic
Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998–99 proved crucial for the
development of the project as a whole. My most sincere gratitude goes to Martin
Gruss, who graciously endowed my fellowship, to David Ruderman, director of
the center, and to all the fellows that year. I am indebted to them all.
Ideas and texts included in Chapter 3 of this book have been previously dis-
cussed in: “Constructions of Exile in Medieval Hebrew Literature: Between
Text and Context” (in Hebrew), Mikan: Journal for Hebrew Literary Studies 1
(2000): 85–96 and “The Uses of Exile in the Poetic Discourse: Some Examples
from Medieval Hebrew Literature,” in Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish
Culture: From al-Andalus to the Haskalah, eds Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliffe
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 31–49.
I am particularly grateful to Mercedes García Arenal and Ángel Sáenz-
Badillos, my two thesis advisors, as well as to Ross Brann, who oversaw my
postdoctoral work, for their ongoing support at all stages of this project. All
three have offered invaluable suggestions and corrections, and have had the
patience to read and comment on various versions of the manuscript. Several
other scholars have also provided invaluable advice throughout the years.
Among them, I wish to express my appreciation to Camilla Adang, Jonathan
Decter, Maribel Fierro, Manuela Marín, Tova Rosen, Judit Targarona, Shawkat
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Toorawa, F. Javier Fernández Vallina, María Jesús Viguera, and David Wasser-
stein. My students at Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and the Universidad Complutense, in Madrid, have greatly contributed to the
sustenance of my passion for what I do.
On the editorial side, a special note of gratitude is due to Roger Allen, one of
Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literature’s editors, and to Joe Whiting and
Natalja Mortensen, commissioning editor and editorial assistant of the Rout-
ledge Middle East Studies series. Thanks go as well to Clinton Moyer, who has
been of great assistance in making my English sound a little less Spanish.
As a final personal note, my family and my colleagues, Heather Ecker and
Javier del Barco, have been unfailing sources of encouragement and support. As
for those who have been close to me at different times in the last few years, I am
sure they all are aware of my gratitude and will excuse my omission of their
names.
ix