The Jews of Medieval Islam, Community, Society, Identity: Proceedings of an International Conference held by the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College, London, 1992.

• Author: FIRESTONE, REUVEN
• Position: Review

Edited by DANIEL FRANK. Etudes sur le judaisme medievale, vol. 16. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1995. Pp. xiv + 357. HF1 163, $105.

Cultural historians seek to integrate social, religious, and intellectual history in their quest to understand the continually shifting cultural identities of their subjects. Those seeking to understand the cultural history of the Jews ask such questions as how Jewish identity is constructed; where and how the boundaries are established between Jews and non-Jews; how Jewish cultures interact on all levels with the cultures of the surrounding non-Jewish world; what the relationships are between elite and popular culture; and what roles "marginal" groups such as women play in Jewish culture.

The work in question here consists of a collection of articles presented at a conference held by the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College in London in June of 1992, that, as a whole, treat the cultural history of the Jews of medieval Islam. The collection is of exceptionally high quality overall and well edited by Daniel Frank. As an added bonus, most of the scholars represented derive from Israeli institutions and typically write in Hebrew - making this volume of particular importance to the non-Hebrew-language world.

The book is divided into three sections, following a prologue by Norman Stillman that discusses the urbanization of most of the Jewish world of Islam as part of the urbanization of the Islamic world in the wake of the Conquest. Examining the close proximity of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in urban settings sets the tone for the following three sections.

Part one, "Communities and Their Leaders: Iraq and Spain," opens with Menahem Ben-Sasson's examination of inter-communal relations during the Geonic period. Because the Jewish communities west of Egypt became important only after the exilarchate and gaonate(s) of Babylonia-Iraq and the Land of Israel had divided up the Islamic world into its four domains of Jewish control (rashuyot), they were able to establish a voluntary rather than obligatory relationship with the central Jewish authorities, thereby creating a complicated and dynamic relationship between the outlying regions and the center and between the various authorities represented by the center. Moshe Gil follows by assembling and evaluating the often contradictory accounts of the exilarchate in order to place the names and dynasties in historical order and relate them to known historical...