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    Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain
    Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain
    Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain
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    Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain

    By Sarah Stroumsa

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    An integrative approach to Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus

    Al-Andalus, the Iberian territory ruled by Islam from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, was home to a flourishing philosophical culture among Muslims and the Jews who lived in their midst. Andalusians spoke proudly of the region's excellence, and indeed it engendered celebrated thinkers such as Maimonides and Averroes. Sarah Stroumsa offers an integrative new approach to Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus, where the cultural commonality of the Islamicate world allowed scholars from diverse religious backgrounds to engage in the same philosophical pursuits.

    Stroumsa traces the development of philosophy in Muslim Iberia from its introduction to the region to the diverse forms it took over time, from Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism to rational theology and mystical philosophy. She sheds light on the way the politics of the day, including the struggles with the Christians to the north of the peninsula and the Fāṭimids in North Africa, influenced philosophy in al-Andalus yet affected its development among the two religious communities in different ways.

    While acknowledging the dissimilar social status of Muslims and members of the religious minorities, Andalus and Sefarad highlights the common ground that united philosophers, providing new perspective on the development of philosophy in Islamic Spain.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateOct 15, 2019
    ISBN9780691195452
    Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain
    Author

    Sarah Stroumsa

    Sarah Stroumsa is the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she currently serves as rector. Her books include Freethinkers of Medieval Islam.

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      Andalus and Sefarad - Sarah Stroumsa

      ANDALUS AND SEFARAD

      Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World

      EDITED BY MICHAEL COOK, WILLIAM CHESTER JORDAN, AND PETER SCHÄFER

      A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.

      Andalus and Sefarad

      ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS HISTORY IN ISLAMIC SPAIN

      Sarah Stroumsa

      PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

      PRINCETON & OXFORD

      Copyright © 2019 by Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press

      41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

      press.princeton.edu

      All Rights Reserved

      LCCN 2019935974

      ISBN 9780691176437

      eISBN 9780691195452

      Version 1.0

      British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

      Editorial: Fred Appel, Thalia Leaf, and Jenny Tan

      Production Editorial: Natalie Baan

      Jacket Design: Chris Ferrante

      Production: Erin Suydam

      Publicity: Nathalie Levine and Kathryn Stevens

      Copyeditor: Hank Southgate

      To Laura Stroumsa, née Saporta,

      and in memory of Jacques Stroumsa

      CONTENTS

      Preface · xi

      Acknowledgments · xv

      Abbreviations · xix

      Transliteration and Dates · xxi

      Introduction1

      Al-Andalus: Territory, Chronology, and Identity1

      The Linguistic and PhilosophicalKoinēof the Islamicate World4

      Intellectual Contacts7

      Religious Communities12

      The Philosophers’ Community18

      Philosophical Schools and Speculative Thought19

      Toward an Integrative Intellectual History of al-Andalus22

      The Politico-Religious Map of al-Andalus25

      CHAPTER 1 Beginnings27

      Books and Libraries28

      Censorship31

      Scholars and Thinkers34

      Ibn Masarra and His Books34

      Searching for the True Knowledge of Divine Unity41

      Ibn Masarra’s Jewish Connections48

      The Persecution of the Masarrīs57

      CHAPTER 2 Theological and Legal Schools61

      Muʿtazila: The Footprints of a Phantom61

      Muʿtazila61

      Muʿtazila in al-Andalus63

      Literalism and Scripturalism73

      Karaites73

      Ẓāhirīs77

      CHAPTER 3 Intellectual Elites81

      Golden Ages81

      Courtiers82

      Poets85

      Philosophers87

      The Philosophical Curriculum90

      The Solitude of the Engaged Philosopher94

      Philosophical Friendships96

      CHAPTER 4 Neoplatonist Inroads102

      The Two-Pronged Philosophical Trajectory in al-Andalus102

      Pseudo-Empedoclean Neoplatonism115

      Hybrid Philosophers120

      CHAPTER 5 Aristotelian Neo-Orthodoxy and Andalusian Revolts124

      Aristotelian Shift124

      Almohads and Almohad Education128

      The Almohads and Philosophy134

      The Philosophers and the Almohads141

      The Almohad Impact on Philosophy146

      Principles and Fundamentals147

      Andalusian Revolts151

      The Andalusian Aristotelian School155

      Conclusion162

      Moving Out162

      The Common Ground167

      References · 171

      Primary Sources · 171

      Secondary Sources · 176

      Index · 213

      PREFACE

      A MONOGRAPH IS a narrative that connects myriad dots of disjointed data. The present monograph seeks to tell the story of speculative thought as it developed in the Iberian peninsula between the fourth/tenth and the sixth/twelfth century. Like all tales, this one can be told in more than one way. Let us begin at the beginning. The terms Andalus and Sefarad in the book’s title appear to indicate, respectively, the Muslim and Jewish cultures of the medieval Iberian peninsula. Yet medieval Jews, like their Muslim peers, often referred to the Iberian territory dominated by Islam in which they lived as al-Andalus. Here is a first signal, then, of the book’s approach as well as of its main argument: as both Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus are integral parts of a single story, their history should be told as such. In this spirit, I resisted the temptation to structure the book around pairs of separately described Jewish and Muslim thinkers, presented as Plutarchian parallel lives of sorts—although doing so would have made the book easier to write, and probably simpler to read. Instead, the reader will find a more intricate inquiry, cross-sections that discuss both Jewish and Muslim philosophers, allowing their thinking to unfold in a unitary narrative.

      I have made a special effort to incorporate in each of the following chapters topics that are generally examined separately in the scholarly literature. On some level, therefore, the book claims to offer a corrective picture, more comprehensive and integrative than that which is commonly painted. At the same time, this work is not meant to be a complete history of philosophy and theology in al-Andalus. I thus offer this preface as an apologia of what this book is not. This is not a comprehensive and systematic history of philosophy in al-Andalus: it does not list all the thinkers and their works, it does not analyze all their characteristic ideas, and it leaves aside many subjects that are not only relevant, but sometimes tightly connected to the development of philosophy. Mysticism (but not mystical philosophy) remained, by and large, outside the book’s frame; so did scientific thought (except where it clarifies the development of philosophy) and legal thought, both Muslim and Jewish (except to the extent that it touches on theology and philosophy).

      In this book, the word philosophy refers broadly to systematic speculative thought. Under this heading, the following chapters will discuss Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thinkers as well as theologians, adepts of rational thought, and builders of mystical philosophical systems.

      The book mines two main kinds of source material: the medieval texts themselves, and modern scholarship on them. The topics discussed herein have by no means been overlooked in the scholarly literature. The current work stands on the shoulders of these scholars; even when my own views differ, at times considerably, from those proposed by other scholars, my debt to them is enormous. While I try to acknowledge their work, at least in the notes, I have deeply engaged only with those authors whose work bears profoundly on the work at hand. Occasionally, older scholarship may turn out to be more relevant, and be cited more often, than the newest additions to the scholarly bookshelf. Earlier modern scholars of medieval thought in al-Andalus, pioneers in the field, had very little original material to work with, compared to what is available now. One often observes with awe and admiration the depth of their understanding, although they frequently had to resort to speculation, glossing over lacunae in their information. This being said, some of their arguments are now obviously obsolete. In specific cases, where previously unknown material has come to light, it is fairly easy to revise the picture. Much harder, however, is rectifying patterns and attitudes that were set by these early scholars and have become entrenched track-lines on which modern scholarship continues to roll, such as the division into philosophical schools, the sociological concept of symbiosis as applicable to philosophy, and so on.

      It is sometimes possible to identify how the then-prevailing Zeitgeist contributed to shaping the initial mindset of these early scholars. For example, Spanish scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose works remain the cornerstone of the study of al-Andalus, were more often than not Christian Spanish nationalists—a fact that was reflected in their approach. In some, for example, one recognizes the belief in an Iberian genius that managed to engender a period of efflorescence even under Islam (which they regarded as a false religion) and under the Arabs or the Berbers (on both of whom many of them looked down).¹ Paradoxically, it may have been these prejudices that fostered the emergence of positive or even laudatory concepts to describe the Muslim period, like convivencia or the golden age. Notwithstanding the gratitude we owe these great scholars, in the following pages I will question the relevance of some of their patterns of thought.

      As will become clear shortly, the book primarily aims to integrate Jewish thought into the broader narrative, as this is the side that is regularly set apart from the main history of Andalusian speculative thought, and whose role in shaping it is markedly misunderstood. Scholars of medieval Jewish philosophy usually acknowledge that it developed under the massive influence of Islamic thought, whereas the relevance of Jewish thought to the history of Muslim philosophy is too often hardly recognized by historians of Islamic thought. Correcting this oversight is one of the major goals of this book, and the imbalanced scholarly picture is probably reflected in the distribution of my effort.

      I reiterate, then, that the present work is in no way designed as a comprehensive intellectual history of al-Andalus, such as I myself would be waiting to read. Rather, it has a more modest—though, in my view, crucial—goal: it strives to suggest a new way to tell the old story of Muslim and Jewish philosophy in al-Andalus.

      1. See Trend, Spain and Portugal, 1–5; Monroe, Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship, esp. 84–85, 246–51; and see chapter 4, pages 117–18; Catlos, Christian-Muslim-Jewish Relations, 1–3; Marín, "Revisiting Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship. On the inclusion of Muslims and the exclusion of Jews from this Spanish genius" by some, see Gabriel Martinez-Gros’s preface to Aillet, Les Mozarabes, ix; Aillet, ibid., 10–13.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      ALMOST TWO DECADES in the making, this book began its life humbly, as an inchoate thought. During these years, every class I taught and every presentation I made were opportunities to develop my ideas, and I am indebted to more people than I can possibly mention for helping me to do so. Acknowledging some of the assistance I received during this time has the added advantage of recapturing those years, if only for a moment.

      Until the year 2000, I was working mostly on the Islamic East. It was my daughter Rachel who first suggested that I turn my gaze to the Iberian peninsula, and my daughter Daphna who held my hand during my first excursions in Spanish territory. For their filial inspiration, I am immensely grateful.

      A Starr visiting professorship at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University, followed by a term spent at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, in Madrid, gave me the leisure, library access, and scholarly companionship necessary to turn westward. The scholars at the CSIC provided invaluable guidance. I am especially beholden to Maribel Fierro and Mercedes García-Arenal, founts of knowledge in everything Andalusian. Through our conversations, in which they generously shared their erudition, the daunting new endeavor became an exciting adventure.

      While active teaching is enormously enriching, it leaves little time for concentrated research; several sabbaticals and visiting positions made it possible for me to immerse myself in this project and advance in it. In 2002–3, I spent a year at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, as part of a group studying Judaism and Sufism. I wish to thank Sara Sviri for hours spent together in the company of Ibn Masarra, and David Wasserstein, who generously shared his abundant knowledge of al-Andalus. A grant of the Israel Science Foundation, accorded to Sara Sviri and myself in 2005–8, supported our study of Ibn Masarra. A fellowship, in 2006–7, at the Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia (the present Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania) enabled me to take stock of this project and rethink its format.

      Throughout these and other, shorter, wanderings, the Hebrew University remained my home base. Constant interactions with my colleagues at the Department of Jewish Thought and the Department of Arabic Language and Literature nourished my ideas, challenged my assumptions, and rectified my errors; I am deeply grateful to each and every one of them.

      Several years of administrative service, during which my attention was focused on contemporary issues, slowed this project considerably. I am thankful to Sabine Schmidtke, whose support greatly facilitated my return to the Middle Ages.

      I wish to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, whose generous Research Award enabled me to strengthen my cooperation with German colleagues and tap into new resources.

      A fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2014–15, buttressed by a sojourn there as a spouse in 2017, allowed me to delve into this project intensively. My warm appreciation goes to the WIKO’s library team, who made the books I requested magically materialize on my desk.

      A fall term at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2015, as the Louis and Helen Padnos Visiting Professor in Judaic Studies, and another fall term in the following year at the University of Chicago, as Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies, permitted me to discuss this project with many colleagues and benefit from their advice. Special thanks are due to Harry Eli Kashdan (Michigan) and to Yonatan Tzvi Shemesh (Chicago), my dedicated research assistants, who carved out time from their hectic schedules as graduate students to help me introduce some order into my notes as well as into my thinking.

      Several articles written during these years provided building blocks for this book. In particular, the introduction develops ideas first published in Thinkers of ‘This Peninsula’: Toward an Integrative Approach to the Study of Philosophy in al-Andalus, in Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World, edited by David M. Freidenreich and Miriam Goldstein, 44–53, 176–81 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Parts of chapter 1 are built on Ibn Masarra’s Third Book, in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Khaled el-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke, 83–100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); and chapter 2 incorporates reworked parts of The Muʿtazila in al-Andalus: The Footprints of a Phantom, Journal of Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 2 (2014): 80–100. I wish to thank the respective publishers of these articles—University of Pennsylvania Press, Oxford University Press, and E. J. Brill—for permission to use them. The references to these articles in the footnotes show the distance I have come since their first publication. I wish to acknowledge all the colleagues who read these articles and commented on them, both as drafts and after their appearance.

      To Godefroid de Callataÿ, who kindly read a draft of the fourth chapter and made important remarks, I would like to express particular gratitude.

      Fred Appel, executive editor of religion and anthropology at Princeton University Press, followed the gestation of this book for more than a decade; it was he who suggested, in 2006, that I accord the project the time that it deserved, and then he waited patiently for its ripening. That the book came to fruition is due, in no small measure, to him.

      The draft of this book was much improved by the perceptive comments of two anonymous readers; I am indebted to them for their astute observations.

      Sara Tropper’s cheerful editorial style made it a pleasure to stand corrected. I also wish to thank Hank Southgate for his meticulous copyediting.

      Of the countless conversations with Guy that marked my steps in this project, I wish to recall a distant stroll in Finisterre, where the Iberian peninsula tips into the Atlantic. His enthusiasm for my hesitant thought launched me on this voyage, and he accompanied it as he has always accompanied me, through thick and thin. I am fortunate, indeed, to have at my side his highly honed comparative instinct, his erudition, and his wisdom. But most of all, I am fortunate to have him beside me.

      This book is dedicated to my mother-in-law, Laura Stroumsa née Saporta, and to the memory of my father-in-law, Jacques Stroumsa. As they lovingly introduced me to the tastes, melodies, and proverbs of their Sephardic heritage, they made its legacy my own.

      ABBREVIATIONS

      Biblioteca de al-Andalus = Biblioteca de al-Andalus. Edited by Jorge Lirola Delgado and José Miguel Puerta Vílches. 10 vols. Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, 2004–17.

      Dalāla = Mūsā ben Maymūm, Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn. Edited by S. Munk and I. Yoel. Jerusalem: Janovitch, 1931.

      IAU = Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa. ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ. Edited by Nizār Riḍā. Beirut: Maktabat al-ḥayāt, n.d.

      Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba = Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba: The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker. Edited by C. Adang, M. Fierro, and S. Schmidtke. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

      Kuzari = Judah Halevi, Kitāb al-radd wa-’l-dalīl fī ’l-dīn al-dhalīl (Al-kitāb al-khazarī). Edited by David H. Baneth. Prepared for publication by Haggai Ben-Shammai. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1977; Abū al-Ḥasan Yahūdā bn. Ṣamuʾīl al-Lāwī, al-Kitāb al-Khazarī: Kitāb al-radd waʾl-dalīl fīʾl-dīn al-dhalīl, transliterated and edited by Nabīh Bashīr. Freiberg a. N.: Kamel, 2012. References to the Kuzari indicate both editions.

      Maimonides, Guide = Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed. References to the Guide indicate part and chapter, with a following reference, respectively, to Munk-Joel’s edition of the Judaeo-Arabic text of Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn (page and line) and to Pines’s English translation. For example, Guide, 3.27 (Dalāla, 371:17; Pines, 510), indicates The Guide of the Perplexed, part 3, chapter 27 (page 371, line 17 in Munk-Joel’s edition; page 510 in Pines’s translation).

      OHIP = The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy. Edited by Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

      Pines = Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

      TG = Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam. 6 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991–97.

      TRANSLITERATION AND DATES

      BIBLICAL HEBREW NAMES are generally rendered in their English form (e.g., Samuel rather than Shmu’el). Maimonides, Averroes, and Avicenna are usually referred to in this book in the Latin form of their names; all other thinkers are referred to in their Arabic or Hebrew names. Hebrew words within a Judaeo-Arabic quotation are set in bold.

      Dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar. When the dates concern Muslims or events that specifically relate to Muslim history, the Hijrī date is indicated first. Except when noted otherwise, translations in this book are my own.

      ANDALUS AND SEFARAD

      Introduction

      THE STORY TOLD in the present book, which begins in earnest only in the fourth/tenth century, tells the tale of speculative thought in the Iberian peninsula under Islamic rule. It would be impossible to give an accurate account of our topic, however, if we were to treat al-Andalus (or for that matter, any other region) as hanging in thin air, and its culture as a creation ex nihilo. Before moving to the story itself, then, we shall first set the scene with some background.

      Al-Andalus: Territory, Chronology, and Identity

      Within the Islamic world, al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) constituted a distinct cultural unit with its own unique characteristics. The borders of this territory changed over time, following the advance of the Christian conquests (the Reconquista in Christian parlance).¹ Toward the end of the second/eighth century, al-Andalus covered most of the peninsula (today’s Spain as well as Portugal), while in the eighth/fifteenth century, the shrunken Emirate of Granada alone, at the southernmost tip of the peninsula, remained in Muslim hands. Our period of interest extends mainly from the fourth/tenth to the sixth/twelfth century, when Jews living under Islam in the Iberian peninsula played a significant cultural role, and when philosophy flourished in al-Andalus.²

      At times, al-Andalus was politically an extension of Maghreban territory. This was clearly the case in the sixth/twelfth century, under Almoravid and Almohad rule. But even in periods when the Maghreb and al-Andalus constituted distinct political entities, Andalusian intellectual history remained tightly tied to the Maghreb and its culture. The borders of al-Andalus as a cultural and intellectual unit were thus dependent on its fluctuating territorial borders, although they were not always identical with them.

      The philosophy and theology that were produced in this cultural unit developed as a continuation of speculative thought in the Islamic East and remained in constant dialogue with it. Books and ideas were imported from the East, studied, and assimilated.³ Yet the philosophical and theological works of Andalusian authors are not servile replicas of Maghreban or Eastern sources.⁴ They have a distinctive character that, while showing their different sources, displays their originality and their Andalusian provenance.⁵ The Muslim writers themselves were quite conscious of the special quality of their region. The Cordoban Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), for example, attempted to spell out the merits of al-Andalus, while Ibn Rushd (Averroes to the Latin scholastics, d. 594/1198) included in his commentary on Plato’s Republic several observations concerning the nature of political regimes in what he calls our precinct. ⁶ In his commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology, Averroes also discussed the specific traits of the inhabitants of "this peninsula [hādhihi al-jazīra]."⁷

      Like their Muslim counterparts, Andalusian Jewish philosophical writings exhibit close connections with trends of thought in the Maghreb. Moreover, notwithstanding their strong dependence on the literary output of the Jewish centers in the East, they too developed their own characteristic traits. Jewish thinkers saw themselves as "the diaspora of Sefarad, and they cultivated their own local patriotism. Thus Moses Ibn Ezra (d. after 1138) extolled the literary and linguistic purity of the Jerusalemites who were exiled to Sefarad (Obad. 1:20) above all other Jewish communities, and he insisted that these exiled Jerusalemites, who were undoubtedly at the origin of our own exiled community, were more knowledgeable in the correct use of language."⁸ This strong sense of Andalusian identity was also shared by Maimonides (d. 1204), who, although exiled from al-Andalus as a young adolescent, continued to call himself ha-sefaradi.⁹

      In the study of Muslim theology, where regional differences often constitute the framework for historical studies, the particularity of Andalusian intellectual life is assumed as a matter of course.¹⁰ Students of Jewish philosophy, for their part, usually prefer a classification that links Jewish medieval thinkers with the relevant schools of Islamic thought (kalām, falsafa, or Sufism) rather than to geographical provenance.¹¹ The assumption underlying this rather reasonable approach is that the development of Jewish philosophy was, by and large, an integral part of a common Islamic culture. The problem is that the logical consequence of this perspective, which favors, for example, assigning Judah Halevi (d. 1141) to the Neoplatonic school, is to minimize the impact of the immediate intellectual environment on a given thinker.¹² Only if one claimed that Jews in al-Andalus lived a segregated intellectual life—a claim that no one has thus far made—would such an approach be justifiable.

      The strongly felt Andalusian identity of both Jewish and Muslim Andalusian intellectuals, and the close proximity in which these figures lived and worked, clearly calls for an integrated inquiry. Accordingly, this book perceives the various products of philosophy and theology in al-Andalus as components of a common intellectual history and as stages in a continuous trajectory. This region itself, however, was part of the greater Islamicate world. Before beginning the story of al-Andalus, then, some remarks on the broader context are in order.

      The Linguistic and Philosophical Koinē of the Islamicate World

      From the second/eighth century, Islam dominated for centuries a vast territory, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and from the Caspian Sea in the north to Yemen in the south. Notwithstanding differences between regimes and variants of religious denominations, the presence of Islam was the major cultural factor uniting these territories, to the extent that they can justly be called the world of Islam. Striving to do justice to the polyvalent nature of this world, Marshall Hodgson (d. 1968) coined the term Islamicate, which refers not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims.¹³ This term allows us to distinguish Islam as the dominant religion of a cultural world from the civilization identified with it, a civilization that encompassed multiple religious communities and was shaped by all of them. The lingua franca of the Islamicate world was Arabic. Religious and ethnic minorities living in this world retained their own legacy and often their own cultural language—Persian, Syriac, Coptic, Greek, or Hebrew—but Arabic came to be their primary language: the language in which they spoke and corresponded with members of other communities as well as with each other, and in which they discussed even their own religion.

      The linguistic and politico-religious unity of the world of Islam formed a unique, common cultural platform for thinkers of different religious and ethnic backgrounds. A comparison with the role of Latin in the European High Middle Ages may help us grasp this singularity. Latin, as the literary language of the elite, cultivated in monasteries and closely associated with Christianity, served as the scholarly vernacular of Christian intellectuals across Europe. At the same time, it functioned as a cultural barrier for the simple folk as well as for the Jewish minority, including its elite.¹⁴ By contrast, Arabic was used by the elite and the multitudes, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Arabic was not only an international communication language, as English is today; it came to be the mother tongue of all participants in significant parts of this vast area.¹⁵ Christians and Jews sometimes wrote Arabic in their own script: Christian Arabic in Syriac characters (known as Karshuni) or Judaeo-Arabic in Hebrew characters.¹⁶ The very existence of these hybrids, however, demonstrates the pervasive, all-encompassing nature of the Arabic language in this period.

      The significance of this linguistic commonality and the extent to which it facilitated cultural and intellectual exchange would be hard to overstate. The intellectual elites of all these religious communities received a similar formative initiation to nonreligious domains: philosophy and science. They read the same books, which were either translated into Arabic from Sanskrit via Persian, or from Greek, sometimes via Syriac, or composed by earlier Arabophone thinkers; and quite often, they read one another.¹⁷

      The cultural significance of the spread of Arabic was observed by the fourteenth-century Ibn Taymiyya, who wrote,

      Jews and Christians living in the central Arab lands speak Arabic just as well as the majority of Muslims do; in fact, many of them speak it even better than many Muslims.… Even the ancient books—those of the People of the Book as well as those of Persians, Indians, Greeks, Egyptians and others—were translated into Arabic. For most people, it is easier to access the knowledge of books composed in Arabic and [to understand] Arabic speech than to access the knowledge of books composed in other languages, for, although some people know Hebrew, Syriac, Latin and Coptic, more people know Arabic than those knowing any of these languages.¹⁸

      Since thinkers belonging to different religious communities also wrote in Arabic on issues pertaining to their respective religious traditions, there was easy access to the religious texts of the other communities. Consequently, even when these authors dealt with theological and religious matters, their technical and professional language—including approach, assumptions, ideas, and terminology—is remarkably similar, regardless of their specific religious affiliation. One finds a common technical language in the realms of philosophy and science, where many topics were not thought to require a particularistic religious statement. More striking since less expected is the common technical language that appears in theological and legal texts. It is not unusual to come across page upon page of theological Arabic texts that bear no identifying mark of the religious affiliation of their author. When such pages occur only as disconnected fragments, with no title (as is often the case in the Cairo Genizah), it is difficult indeed to identify their author as a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim. Furthermore, texts that do bear signs of their author’s religious identity are often remarkably similar to texts written by authors of another religion, where both authors employ the same building blocks to erect their different religious edifices.¹⁹

      These unifying characteristics spread across all the territories that came under Muslim dominion, beginning in the Fertile Crescent (where they made their first appearance) and advancing with the Muslim conquests. As they developed, they spurred vibrant cultural exchange in the Islamic East as well as in its far West.

      For intellectuals in this society, cultural assimilation was particularly pronounced. We may even speak of a cultural koinē or common language where texts, ideas, and concerns were fully shared and discussed (using the linguistic koinē, Arabic) by philosophers and scientists hailing from different religious communities.

      Intellectual Contacts

      Within such a high culture, it makes little sense to study one segment of this society—say, Jewish philosophers—and neglect its counterparts. It is not only lack of material, however, that would prompt one to avoid such wanton wastefulness. More definitively, the tight interconnection of this elite society pushes us to seek a reliable representation by drawing an integrative picture of the three relevant communities. In other words, a three-dimensional representation requires a multifocal approach.²⁰

      In principle, few students of Islamicate medieval intellectual history would contest this claim. Such an understanding has gained momentum in the past few years and is reflected in the research of a growing number of scholars. And yet, as mentioned above, scholars are still inclined to focus on one of the three religious communities and relegate the other two to the margins of their discussion. Furthermore, even when the pluralistic nature of Andalusian culture is recognized, one encounters a propensity to spotlight the big political entities, namely, Christianity and Islam, and leave the Jews as a footnote. Ranghild Zorgati, for example, who studies issues of identity and conversion in medieval Iberia, centers on Christian and Muslim legal sources since they represent the cultures that were in power and, therefore, could define the framework that regulated the relationships between the religious communities in the Iberian penisula.²¹ This statement, offered as a justification for the fact that, in her book, "[t]he voice of the Jewish community

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