so what did the muslims do for the jews ? these
days there's a great deal of bad blood between muslims and jews particularly over the
occupation of Palestine and the Middle East . but historically what did the muslims
do for the jews if anything at all ? and to answer this question i want to turn
to a jewish historian , a professor of history who specializes in the relationship between
jews and islam in the early centuries of islam . and he gave a fascinating lecture at SOAS
(the School of African Oriental Studies) here in london a couple of years ago . and i just
wanted to read you his lecture because this man is an expert on this subject . one of the few people
in the world who writes as a jew about jewry and had experienced the jews under islam in the
seventh eighth and ninth centuries . a lot of what he says would be very surprising and certainly
surprising to me when i first came across this lecture . so his name is David J. Wasserstein
if i pronounce it right . he's a professor now in the united
states of history and judaism . so he asks in his lecture : so what did the
Muslims do for the Jews ? he says : Islam saved Jewry . this is an unpopular discomforting claim in the
modern world but it is a historical truth . the argument for it is double . 1- in 570 CE
when the prophet Muhammad was born , the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion . and 2-
the coming of Islam saved them , providing a new context in which they not only survived but
flourished laying foundations for subsequent jewish cultural prosperity also in christendom
through the medieval period into the modern world . by the fourth century , Christianity had become the
dominant religion of the Roman Empire one aspect of this success was opposition to rival
faiths including Judaism along with massive conversions of members of such faiths sometimes by
force to Christianity . much of our testimony about jewish existence in the roman empire from this
time consists of accounts of these conversions . great and permanent reductions in numbers
through conversion between the fourth and seventh century brought with them a gradual
but relentless whittling away of their status rights social and economic existence of jews all
over the roman empire . a long series of enactments deprived jewish people
of their rights as citizens , prevented them from filling their religious obligations and
excluded them from the society of their fellows . this went along with a centuries-long military
and political struggle with Persia . as a tiny element in the christian world , the jews should not
have been affected by this broad political issue yet it affected them critically because
the persian empire at this time included Babylon . now Iraq at the time home to the
world's greatest concentration of jews and is also the greatest center of
jewish intellectual life . the most important single work of the jewish world
for over 3000 years apart from the bible was the talmud coming into being in Babylon . the
struggle between persia and byzantium in our period led increasingly to a separation between
the jews under Byzantine Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule . beyond all this , the Jews who
lived under christian rules seem to have lost the knowledge of their own culturally pacific
languages (Hebrew and Aramaic) and have taken on the use of Latin or Greek or other non-jewish
local languages . this in turn meant that they also lost access to central literary works of jewish
culture : the torah , mishna , poetry , midrash even liturgy . the loss of the unifying force represented
by language was a major step towards assimilation and disappearance . in these circumstances with
contact with the one place where jewish cultural life prospered in Babylon , cut off by conflict
with persia , jewish life in the christian world was simply a pale shadow of what it had been three
or four centuries earlier , it was doomed . had Islam not come along , the conflict with persia would have
continued . the separation between western judaism , battle christendom and babylonian judaism that
of mesopotamia would have intensified . jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance . and
jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult . but all this was prevented by the
rise of Islam . the Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world and did so a dramatic
wide-ranging and permanent effect for the jews . within a century of the death
of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 , Muslim armies had conquered almost the whole of
the world where jews lived , from Spain Eastward across North Africa and the Middle East as far
as the Eastern frontier of Iran and beyond . almost all the jews in the world were now ruled by islam .
this new situation transformed jewish experience , their fortunes changed in legal demographic , social ,
religious , political , geographic , economic , linguistic and cultural terms , all for the better .
first , things improve politically . almost everywhere in christendom where jews had
lived now form part of the same political space as Babylon , Cordoba and Basra lay in the
same political world . the old frontier between the vital center in Babylonia and the jews of
the Mediterranean basin was swept away forever . political change was partnered by change in the
legal status of the jewish population . although it is not always clear what happened during the
muslim conquest one thing is certain , the result of the conquest was by and large to make the
jews second-class citizens . now this should not be misunderstood , to be a second-class citizen was
a far better thing than to be not a citizen at all . for the most part these jews (second-class
citizenship) represented a major advance . in Visigothic Spain for example : shortly before
the muslim conquest in 711 , the jews had seen their children removed from them and forcibly converted
to christianity and had themselves been enslaved . in the developing islamic societies
of the classical and medieval periods , being a jew meant belonging to a category defined
under law . enjoying certain rights and protections alongside various obligations . these rights and
protections were not as extensive or as generous as those enjoyed by muslims and the obligations
were greater but for the first few centuries the muslims themselves were a minority and the
practical differences were not at all that great . along with legal near equality came social and
economic equality , jews were not confined to ghettos either literally or in terms of economic
activity . the societies of islam were in effect open societies . in religious terms too jews enjoyed
virtually full freedom . they might not build many new synagogues in theory and they might not
make too many public professions of their faith but there was no really significant
restriction on the practice of their religion . along with internal legal
autonomy , they also enjoyed formal representation through their leaders of
their own before the authorities of the state imperfect and often not quite as rosy as this
might sound , it was at least the broad norm . the political unity brought by the new
islamic world empire did not last but it created a vast islamic world civilization similar to the
older christian civilization that it replaced . within this huge area , jews lived and enjoyed
broadly similar status and rights everywhere . they could move around , maintain
contacts and develop their identity as jews . a great new expansion of trade from the 9th
century onwards brought the spanish jews like the muslims into touch with the jews and the
muslims even of India . now he continues here with some comments on the linguistic side of their
experience where the arabs moved over to arabic very rapidly he says and how that brought
the jews into more direct contact with the islamic civilization and he says the jews of the
islamic world developed an entirely new culture which differ from their culture before
islam in terms of language and cultural forms . and instead of being concerned primarily with
religion , the new jewish culture of the islamic world mixed the religious and the secular to a
high degree and he talks about how like their neighbors the jews wrote in arabic as well as
their own kind of arabic jewish language as well a kind of judeo arabic came into being . and he talks
about some of the greatest poetry written in hebrew since the bible comes from that period .
he mentions Maimonides (the great Maimonides) and many more people . and then he goes on to
talk about the patronage of jews by the muslim rulers , and then how this period of great
cultural success for the jews and the arab muslims effectively came to a close by the year 1300
he says . and then i'll just read what he says in conclusion : jewish cultural identity in the middle
ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim , Arabic cultural prosperity . when Muslim
Arabic culture thrived so did that of the Jews . when muslim arabic culture declined (which it
did obviously) so did that of them (of the jews) . in the case of the jews however , the cultural
capital thus created also served as the seed bed of further growth elsewhere in Christian
Spain and in the Christian World more generally . he's alluding there of course to the
direct influence on the european renaissance of the jewish and islamic culture . something that's
not really being acknowledged in the west the indebtedness of the western renaissance to
jewish and islamic learning particularly in Spain . and he concludes : the islamic world was not
the only source of inspiration for the jewish cultural revival that came later in the christian
Europe but it certainly was a major contributor to that development . its significance cannot be
overestimated . so we cannot overestimate the significance of the islamic world for the jewish
cultural revival and what came later in christian europe . so that is 90 percent of the lecture .
David J Wasserstein is a professor of jewish studies and history at vanderbilt university . and
that's from his lecture at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) a couple of years ago . so contrary to our current experience
of antagonism and even hatred and violence between zionist jews and many muslims which has now
affected us all globally . historically the jews found a home and not just to practice their faith
but to flourish economically and culturally and reach great heights in poetry and other writing
particularly in Islamic Spain and this propelled northwards and ignited the European renaissance
and of course the rest is history . so what did the muslims do for the jews ? well they saved jewry .
without islam according to this professor , judaism was doomed . and this is a fact of history
that we need to remember particularly in the serious nastiness and conflict that has
only really come about in the last less than 100 years because of
political events in the middle east . so i hope you found that as interesting
as i did . and until next time
