Transfer and Religion: Interactions Between Judaism, Christianity and Islam from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Sapientia Islamica) 9783161562419, 9783161569845, 3161562410

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Sapientia Islamica Studies in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism Edited by

Lejla Demiri (Tübingen) Samuela Pagani (Lecce) Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui (Doha) Editorial Board

Ahmed El Shamsy, Angelika Neuwirth, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Dan Madigan, Frank Griffel, Joseph van Ess, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Olga Lizzini, Rotraud Hansberger, and Tim J. Winter

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Transfer and Religion Interactions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century Edited by

Alexander A. Dubrau, Davide Scotto, and Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino

Mohr Siebeck

Alexander A. Dubrau, born 1978 (received his PhD in Talmudic Studies from the Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg. He is a research fellow in Judaic Studies at the University of Tübingen) orcid.org/0000-0002-9840-2803 Davide Scotto, born 1983 (received his PhD in Medieval and Humanistic Studies from the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Florence, now part of the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. He is a research fellow at the Goethe University Frankfurt) orcid.org/0000-0001-8212-3124 Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino, born 1979 (received his PhD in Islamic Studies from the University Aix-Marseille. He is Professor for Hadith Studies at the University of Tübingen) orcid.org/0000-0001-9132-7006

ISBN 978-3-16-156241-9 / eISBN 978-3-16-156984-5 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-156984-5 ISSN 2625-672X / eISSN 2625-6738 (Sapientia Islamica) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020  by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen, printed by Gulde Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgements The background ideas and the research outcomes of this book have been discussed during a series of lectures and seminars organized within the framework of the research group “Rationalität und Vernunft im Leben und Denken der Muslime im globalen und pluralen Kontext. Konzeptionen islamischer Theologie”, at the Center for Islamic Theology (ZITh), University of Tübingen, 2013–17, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). We are grateful to the colleagues who participated in the Tübingen meetings, as well as to those who generously accepted the offer to join the book project at a later time. We express our heartfelt gratitude to Micaela Pattison, Aziza Spiker, and Esra Yüksel for their substantial help in the editing of the book. Our special appreciation goes to the coordinators of the research group, Lejla Demiri and Stefan Schreiner, for the many ideas, projects, and European routes we have fruitfully shared through our time in Tübingen.

Table of Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V

Introduction Alexander A. Dubrau, Davide Scotto, Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino Religious Transfer in the History of the Abrahamic Religions. Theoretical Implications and Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1

Polemical Responses and Intercultural Mediation. The Making of Religious Transfer in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times Daniel Boušek Entangled Arguments. A Survey of Religious Polemics between Judaism and Islam in the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Tzvi Langermann Moses Maimonides (d. 529/1204) and al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (d. 596/1200), his Friend and Patron. Between Islam and Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Nadjet Zouggar Aspects de la polémique antiphilosophiquede Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (m. 728/1328). La critique d’un transfert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Ana Echevarría Arsuaga Neue Moscheen in christlichen Ländern. Die Debatte im Mittelalter . . . . . . 103

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Davide Scotto Translation in Wartime. Disseminating the Qur’an during the Crusades (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Irina Synkova and Michail Tarelka ‘Whence Have the Idols Arrived?’. A Monument of Religious-Polemic Literature from the Tatar Manuscript Heritage of the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Andrea Celli The Early Modern Invention of ‘Abrahamic Religions’. An Overview of Baroque Approaches to the Hagar Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 2

Models of Knowledge and the Impact of Secularization on Interfaith Coexistence. Implications of Religious Transfer in Modern Times Ottfried Fraisse Modernisierung des Judentums durch Wissenschaft und der Rekurs auf den Islam. Moritz Steinschneider, Ignác Goldziher, Shlomo Pines . . . . . 221 Enas Aly Ahmed From Polemical Discourse to Cultural Transmissionin Spanish Arabism and European Orientalism. The Case of Miguel Asín Palacios’s Study of al-Fiṣal by Ibn Ḥazm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Alexander A. Dubrau A Jewish Orthodox Response to the Hostility Towards the Morality of Jewish Lawand the Jewish God at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century in Germany. Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann (1843–1921) on the Relationship between Jews and Gentiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Alon Segev Religion, Race, and Politics. Gerhard Kittel and the Jewish Question . . . . . . 305 Ulli Roth Das Konzil und der christliche Blick auf den Islam. Gemeinsame Impulse des Basler Konzils und des II. Vaticanums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

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Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino Secularisation and Conflicting Images of the Prophet in Contemporary Islam. The Critical Meaning of Prophetology according to ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd (1910–78) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Notes on the Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

Introduction

Religious Transfer in the History of the Abrahamic Religions Theoretical Implications and Case Studies Alexander A. Dubrau, Davide Scotto, Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino From a semantic-historical perspective, the concept of transfer harks back to the act of transferring or moving ideas, texts, or objects from one context to another. The two involved contexts – geographical, political, cultural, or religious – interact in ways and on hierarchical scales that are distinct, thus representing a matter of debate. The transfer process can imply cultural dynamics of reproduction and transformation, resonance and imitation, hybridization and syncretism, innovation and preservation, misinterpretation and interpolation. At the same time, the aims of transferring and the reactions of the recipients of transfer are various. Transferring can indeed stem either from negative, defensive and disruptive purposes, or from positive, constructive, enriching scopes, as can the reactions to transfer or attempts at transferring. Overcoming the limits of comparativism,1 cross-cultural and transepochal scholarship of cultural transfer has recently suggested – in an obvious yet incontrovertible way – that transfer as a phenomenon is controversial and disputed by definition. Hartmut Kaelble keenly noted that the same existence of a transfer can be questioned by scholars. The evidence of a transfer can be either neglected despite its manifest reality, or overstated although it lacks compelling proofs. As a concept and an object of study, transfer originated in European history and in particular in the history of European expansionism involving interactions and conflicts with non-European cultures. Thus, it has become an enticing subject of intercultural and postcolonial reflections.2 1 On the methodological implications of scholarship on transfers, see Stefanie Stockhorst, “Cultural Transfer through Translation: A Current Perspective in Enlightenment Studies”, Cultural Transfer through Translation. The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by means of Translation, ed. Stefanie Stockhorst, Amsterdam NY: Rodopi, 2010, pp. 7–26: pp. 19–22. 2  See, for instance, Michel Espagne and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (eds.), Transferts de savoirs sur l’Afrique, Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2015.

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It was noticed that transfer often materializes in a framework of unequal interchange in either political, social, or economic terms, reflecting the nonhomogeneity of the two societies or cultures which provide the backdrop and conditions for transferring. An intriguing question related to the definition of cultural transfer is whether this phenomenon is to be regarded as mutual and multilateral: mutual, as it can imply influences by and upon both cultures in contact; multilateral, as it can develop beyond bilateral exchanges, involving a third mediating or intermediate culture whereby the transfer process is in fact enacted, hence the fruitful idea of a chain or a sequence of transfers.3 Given this increasing scholarly attention to transfer, it is not surprising that Jörg Feuchter has somehow defiantly claimed that cultural interconnectedness should be taken as a factor of history, pointing to a well-established trend which regards cultural contacts as ultimately intrinsic to history, and recalling Peter Burke’s provocative suggestion that cultural hybridization is in fact historically ubiquitous.4 This assumption is not far from stating – as Lutz Musner did regarding the transferring of architectural patterns – that culture itself might be interpreted as transfer.5 This seems to suggest that the time has come for scholars to analyze global challenges and to rewrite history – from cultural to religious history – as a constellation of hidden transfers which have long awaited being finally disclosed. In the last decade, several methodological purposes stemmed from this theoretical assumption. Cases of cultural transfer lie behind the concepts of connected history, histoire croisée, Transfergeschichte, which have been discussed recently by scholars of different disciplines and chronological interests. This is the case of Michel Espagne’s investigations of the cultural relations between France and Germany in modern times, or Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmer’s critique of the concept of hegemonic influence (Einflussgeschichte), which they suggested replacing by focusing on the role of neighbouring cultures and peripheral zones as central to the understanding of transcultural history.6 At the same time, the historical dynamics of transfer are at the core of the recent research approach labelled entangled history, which originated in the controversial debate on the 3 See Hartmut Kaelble, “Forward: Representations and Transfers”, Cultural Transfers in Dispute. Representations in Asia, Europe and the Arab World since the Middle Ages, ed. Jörg Feuchter, Friedhelm Hoffmann, and Bee Yun, Frankfurt: Campus, 2011, pp. 9–13. 4 Jörg Feuchter, “Cultural Transfer in Dispute: An Introduction”, Cultural Transfers in Dispute, pp. 16–7; Peter Burke, Cultural Hybridity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009, pp. 1–9. 5  Lutz Musner, “Kultur als Transfer. Ein regulationstheoretischer Zugang am Beispiel der Architektur”, Ent-grenzte Räume. Kulturelle Transfers um 1900 und in der Gegenwart, ed. Helga Mitterbauer, Wien: Passagen-Verlag, 2005, pp. 173–93. 6 Michel Espagne, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands, Paris: PUF, 1999; Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28/4 (2002), pp. 607–36; Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, “Deutsch-Französischer Kulturtransfer im 18. und 19. Jh.: Zu einem neuen interdisziplinären Forschungsprogramm des C. N. R. S.”, Francia, 13 (1985), pp. 502–10.

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spatial turn raised by global history and the re-assessment of modern history through postcolonial studies.7 While with regard to cultural transfer, these and other critical observations are intriguing and compelling – and today even self-evident – they are not so obvious nor necessarily pertinent to a type of transfer that specifically involves religion. It is only in the last five years that research outcomes and editorial initiatives have shown that the debate on entangled history and cross-cultural history can play an influential role in the renovation of disciplines such as religious studies (Religionswissenschaft), comparative history of religions, theology, and the interfaith history of the premodern Mediterranean. Cross-disciplinary and epistemological achievements in this regard are also particularly relevant to the present book.8 Describing transfer in terms of global mobility, Manuela Rossini and Michael Toggweiler have remarked that the process of transfer involves ‘words, concepts, images, persons, animals, commodities, money, weapons, and other things’, triggering interdisciplinary research on cultural mediation on a broader level.9 This volume intends to add to this telling list of movable or moved elements implicated by transfer a further and in many respects overlooked aspect, namely the transferring of knowledge, ideas, objects, texts, and customs of a religious character, which affect religious life on an individual or community level. To this type of transfer – which can be defined as religious transfer – and to a series of case studies concerning its enactment amongst Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Mediterranean and in Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, this collection of essays is devoted. Historians of interfaith encounters are well aware that the intellectual space in which religions interact, through exchanges, mutual influences, or conflicts, may be characterized by a series of hindrances and barriers which are due to lack of knowledge of the other religion, doctrinal recalcitrance, and legal or political opposition stemming from the existence, implementation and dissemination of distinct religious laws.10 Religious transfer operates within this space of interaction between faiths leading either to the building of bridges or to the  7  Sönke Bauck and Thomas Maier, “Entangled History”, InterAmerican Wiki: Terms – Concepts – Critical Perspectives, 2015, www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/wiki/e_Entangled_History.html (download 30. 12. ​2018).  8  We allude in particular to the journal Entangled Religions, founded in 2014 and published by the Center for Religious Studies and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe at Ruhr-Universität Bochum; all contributions are available through open access: https://er.ceres.rub.de/index.php/ER/issue/archive. And, regarding medieval history, to the Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies, coordinated by Matthias M. Tischler (editor-in-chief ) and published with De Gruyter.  9  Manuela Rossini and Michael Toggweiler, “Cultural Transfer: An Introduction”, Word and Text. A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 4/2 (2014), pp. 5–9: p. 5. 10  See Ana Echevarría, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, and John Tolan (eds.), Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies. Between Theory and Praxis, Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.

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exacerbation of contrasts. One of the most engaging challenges behind religious transfers is indeed the self-affirmation, inner development, and intellectual expression of a religion through close interaction with other religions or theological worldviews. The book is divided into two parts, pointing to both a chronological and a critical watershed in the history of religious transfer concerning the so-called Abrahamic faiths or Abrahamic religions.11 The mutual interactions between Judaism, Christianity and Islam cannot but be dated to as early as the birth and the expansion of Islam as a religion at the dawn of the seventh century CE/first century AH. Since then the binary relation between Judaism and Christianity on the level of theological thinking and religious practices, so essential to shaping the later history of both religions,12 became tripartite and properly Abrahamic. Focusing respectively on the interaction of Judaism with Islam, Christianity with Islam, and Judaism or Islam with the secularized space descending from Latin Christendom, we suggest looking at the (from a European perspective) so-called Middle Ages and early modern times as the laboratory for the making of religious transfer with its peculiar dynamics and patterns. Over the course of the development of the three Abrahamic religious systems in the Middle Ages – Rabbinical Judaism, medieval Christianitas and classical Islam – through peaceful and conflictual coexistence, crossing of borders, and intellectual confrontation, the enactment of religious transfers played a pivotal role. Tackling the one-directional or mutual dimensions of transfer, and the bilateral or multilateral dynamics they imply, the contributions in this book help the reader to detect types of religious transfer and the distinct reactions displayed by the recipients of transfer. Referring to encounters and confrontations of an intercultural character, Hartmut Kaelble affirmed that transfer can function either as a disruptive factor or as a benign acceleration of a process, entailing consequences which are regarded by historians either as positive, such as cultural innovation and transformation, or negative, such as forms of social oppression and decline.13 This is equally apparent in the cases of religious transfer discussed in this book. A long-term historical perspective on the implementation of transfers involving the doctrines, rites, and customs of the Abrahamic religions in the Mediterranean 11  On the potentials of a history of the Abrahamic religions, see Garth Fowden, Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions. An Inaugural Lecture by the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths given in the University of Cambridge. 4 December 2013, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015; Adam J. Silverstein, Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), and Moshe Blidstein (associate editor), The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 12  See Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; Guy G. Stroumsa, La fin du sacrifice. Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive, préface de John Scheid, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005. 13  Kaelble, “Forward: Representations and Transfers”, p. 9.

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and Central Europe allows us to assess the shifting reactions to transferring, ranging from polemical purposes to intercultural mediation or forms of conciliation between faiths. Case studies from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries show that the shift from theological polemics to interfaith mediation cannot be regarded as chronologically predetermined: these two aspects of transfer are not mutually incompatible.14 Forms of cultural mediation and religious conciliation were already attested in the medieval Mediterranean,15 as shown by Tzvi Langermann’s study of the controversial conversion to Islam of Maimonides (532–600/1138–1204) and the underlying role of his Muslim friend, who acted as a trigger for a religious experience based on double-identity and transdoctrinal perspectives. At the same time, conciliatory purposes behind religious transfer emerged in early modern Europe after the inner division within Christianity caused by the Reformation, as Andrea Celli’s study of the reception of the Biblical narrative of Hagar and Ishmael in the Baroque clearly demonstrates. In fact, the shift from polemics to conciliation is not one-dimensional nor definitive or unchangeable throughout time. In his investigations currently underway on the Hagar narrative, Celli underlines how the persistency of medieval polemical tropes on Hagar and Ishmael coexists with a new, constructive understanding of this narrative based on compassion and piety for the exile. This allows for unexpected proximity between the Christian and the Islamic world through interfaith common ground consisting of shared origin narratives and proximate theological sensitivities. The act of translating texts has long been investigated as a self-evident case of knowledge transfer. The impressive increase of research on the history of translations, especially the important achievements of the last years regarding the translation of the Qur’an into Latin and neo-Latin languages,16 has shown how the translation of scriptural writings functions as a special observatory for the 14  A critically relevant discussion of the cultural dynamics and religious implications of interfaith polemics in medieval and early modern Mediterranean contexts is provided by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, “Introduction”, in Polemical Encounters. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, pp. 1–21. 15  Meaningful case studies of cross-cultural interaction (travels, conversions, dissemination of books) are collected in Identity and Religion in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean, ed. John Jeffries Martin, special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 41/3 (2011). 16  We allude to the outcomes of the international research groups Islamolatina, coordinated by José Martínez-Gázquez and based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe (CHASE), coordinated by Charles Burnett and Alastair Hamilton, and based at the Warburg Institute, London; Corpus Coranicum. Text Documentation and Commentary on the Quran, coordinated by Angelika Neuwirth within the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences; and the recently launched ERC Project EuQu, Synergy Grant, dedicated to The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150–1850, coordinated by Mercedes García-Arenal (Madrid), Roberto Tottoli (Naples), Jan Loop (Kent), and John Tolan (Nantes).

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history of interfaith relations. Translating the Scriptures of the other religion can imply either harsh polemical claims and even military purposes, ways to come to terms with the doctrines of the other religion, or plans to convert its believers through intellectual strategies.17 Tackling the relation between Qur’anic translations and the Crusades, Davide Scotto shows how the translations of the Qur’an into Latin or vernacular produced in Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries did not respond to a pure linguistic interest, but were rather a result of the spiritual militancy of the commissioners and translators of the texts. The three complete translations of the Qur’an from the Middle Ages shed light on the thorny theological implications of transferring doctrinal contents from an Islamic to a Christian context. They display three different aims that are related to crusade propaganda in either a supportive or an opposing way: to make fully available the Qur’anic contents to Christian readers as a remedy to WesternChristian ignorance and a stronghold against the dissemination of Islam; to polemicize against the Qur’an to intellectually support military endeavours against Muslim kingdoms enacted through the Crusades; and to disseminate new translations of the Qur’an among both a Christian and an Islamic readership to achieve the peaceful conversion of Muslims in the long run. Besides translations, theological and legal debates on religious law help to clarify the polemical reactions to knowledge transfers of a religious nature and to highlight the underlying reasons for such reactions. Four of the essays in this book tackle cases of distinctly defensive reactions to the dissemination or imposition of doctrines and religious practices by one religion towards the other. In his extensive survey of Jewish responses to Islamic anti-Jewish polemics, Daniel Boušek delves into three main topics of this debate, all of them reflecting potential concerns behind transferring knowledge from a Jewish to an Islamic context: the misinterpreation or distorsion of the Hebrew Bible; references to Muḥammad in the Bible and Muḥammad’s prophethood in particular; and the abrogation of Jewish law. Although limited in number and all written in Iberia between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Jewish polemics against the Qur’an prove to be a refined intellectual tool aimed at avoiding transfer and contamination affecting essential doctrinal claims on which Judaism based its religious identity. Boušek’s essay demonstrates how Islamic doctrine raised enticing challenges to the Jewish and Christian religious identities in the context of the Muslim dominance in medieval Iberia and North Africa.

17 See Thomas J. Heffernan and Thomas E. Burman (eds.), Scripture and Pluralism. Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Leiden: Brill, 2005; Lejla Demiri, Muslim Exegesis of the Bible in Medieval Cairo. Najm al-Din al-Tūfī’s (d. 716/1316) Commentary on the Christian Scriptures, Leiden: Brill, 2013; Ryan Szpiech (ed.), Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference. Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean, New York NY: Fordham University Press, 2015.

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Polemical reactions to religious transfer are attested in the theological or legal thinking of all three Abrahamic religions impacting European society in the Middle Ages and beyond.18 Switching from Jewish to Islamic theological literature, Nadjet Zouggar’s study copes with a cutting Muslim critique against the transfer of Greek philosophical legacy – identified as a group of participants in a foreign cultural or a speculative theological system – to the Muslim world. According to the Muslim authors examined by Zouggar, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) in particular, the merging of Islamic doctrines and Greek philosophical thought (falsafa) gives birth to an unnatural alliance, which must be strenuously opposed on an intellectual level. As a further case in the trajectory of Islamic reactions to non-Islamic theological claims, Irina Synkova and Michail Tarelka analyze a series of polemical writings against idolatry excerpted from the Tatar manuscript heritage of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In their philological contribution, they show how Tatar literature makes careful use of quotations from both the so-called Old and the New Testaments as a reaction to the spread of both Jewish and Christian thinking. While sometimes omissions, interpolations, and changes in the original scriptural quotations occur accidentally during the copy process, they are often deliberately made by Tatar-Muslim authors for ideological, exegetical, or stylistic reasons. Tatar manuscripts outline some of the most challenging theological claims coming from the Jewish and the Christian polemical legacy – transferred to Central Europe also through the missionary efforts of the Jesuits in particular19  – which the Tatar-Muslim minority communities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania harshly rejected as idolatry. In the framework of a broader project on Muslim Minorities in the Iberian Peninsula: The Challenge of the Convivencia Model, Ana Echevarría suggests a groundbreaking perspective on the legal and theological debate on the building of mosques in Christian lands of late medieval Iberia by examining canon and civil Christian laws concerning non-Christian religious buildings.20 While in principle mosques and synagogues should not have been built in the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, Echevarría shows that Islamic prayer halls in fact existed after the Christian conquest of former Islamic territories, having been moved inside medieval cities according to the needs of subjected minorities. 18 See, for instance, Gerard A. Wiegers, “Polemical Transfers: Iberian Muslim Polemics and their Impact in Northern Europe in the Seventeenth Century”, After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 229–49. 19  See Stefan Schreiner, “Anti-Islamic Polemics in Eastern European Context. Translation and Reception of ‘Western Writings’ on Islam in Polish Literature (16th-18th Centuries)”, Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’Islam nell’Europa mediterranea (secoli XVI–XVIII), ed. Andrea Celli and Davide Scotto, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 51/3 (2015), pp. 541–84. 20  For the impact of this debate on present policies towards religion in Europe, see Stefano Allievi, Conflicts over Mosques in Europe. Policy Issues and Trends, London: Alliance Publishing Trust, 2009.

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Through the permission or the tacit acknowledgement of Christian authorities, Muslims in the non-frontier areas of Castile and Aragon could establish or decorate mosques in places where previously they did not exist. Though Muslims could not undertake any new construction work, they could lease extant buildings for devotional purposes. This is a telling example of a reaction to religious transfer of a devotional and architectural nature which to contemporary eyes might appear ambivalent or even contradictory. The buildings of mosques in Christian lands was forbidden by law to avoid the dissemination of Islamic practices and its ostentation in the public sphere, but Muslims living among Christians were in fact allowed to keep or renew mosques or prayer halls, even beside Christian churches. This discrepancy between theory and praxis clearly reflects the model of peaceful yet legally unequal coexistence between the Christian ruling majority and Islamic communities in Spain (aljamas), which was largely adopted in Castile from the thirteenth century  – especially after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) – to the first years after the Christian conquest of Muslim Granada (897/1492), the last Islamic kingdom of Europe. The phenomenon of fluctuation and the coexistence of polemical and conciliatory dynamics behind transfers between Abrahamic religions is also detectable throughout so-called modernity, implying distinctions with respect to premodern times mainly due to the secularization processes affecting society, and the increasingly central role of non-confessional forms of knowledge and science within this process. Several case studies collected in the second part of the book tackle the confrontation – by means of transfer of texts or intellectual patterns – of religious and theological stances of the Jewish or Islamic tradition with secular paradigms stemming from former Western or Western-Christian models of society. The examination of historical contexts, in which cultural and political ideas related to the construction of modernity come to light, reveals new models of religious transfer, which are mainly triggered by tendencies towards the secularization of previous religious paradigms. Between the eighteenth and the twentieth century, transfers between religions hardly contribute to the formation of new patterns of religious knowledge related to the three religions, but they are rather used to redefine or reenact well-established religious patterns in relation to other religions and secular worldviews, ideologies, and institutions. This intellectual tension creates new ground for religious transfer, brings transfer beyond a tripartite or Abrahamic religious scheme, and thus opens unprecedented perspectives for interfaith coexistence. Religious traditions from the eighteenth century onwards are confronted with a wholly new type of challenge represented by the secularization of political discourses, social practices, and moral values. This challenge gives rise to the emergence of a series of unprecedented phenomena: non-confessional scientific approaches (Wissenschaft) to religious facts; political ideologies founded on nationhood and nationalism, and their connection to new waves of colonialism;

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the bourgeoisification of knowledge and the vulgarization of Enlightenment philosophies; the ideologization of antijudaism through anthropological theorization of the concept of race; and the social competition between religious and secular institutions. On the one hand, these phenomena lead to conflicts with traditional religious paradigms, and on the other hand, they give birth to new dynamics of transfer with to some extent unexpected results in terms of coexistence. With the passage from the medieval and early modern times to the socalled Secular Age,21 transfer of religious knowledge was necessarily conceived in relation to or in contrast with the dynamics of modernity and a range of new policies – based on nationalist and secularizing stances – towards the presence of religious groups within political and legal contexts where the role of religion was diminished, contested, or denied. If the impact of secularism unveiled a considerable difference between religious transfers in premodern times and those regarding modern scenarios, there simultaneously exist parallel features between the two timespans. This bridge between eras is well exemplified by Ulli Roth’s comparatist study of the Christian attitudes towards Islam in the Council of Basel (1431–1437) and in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Inquiring into how both Councils reflected and encouraged the theological engagement of Christianity with Islam, Roth detects four aspects which make visible the analogies and continuity between the two. Both Councils share a certain self-perception and the way in which this influences their engagement with Islam; they show analogies in their respective historical contexts and the role that contact with Muslims played within it; they draw on similar models for their attitude towards Islam; and finally, they preconize similar ideas concerning the concrete ways of engagement with Muslims and their religion. Nonetheless, secularism in contemporary Europe and the rise of the debate on religious pluralism also explain some of the differences between the two conciliar experiences. The distinction between religious mission and the modern concept of interreligious dialogue, which was explicitly accepted only at the time of the Second Vatican Council, is a paradigmatic example of this shift. A case study reflecting the way in which the transfer of secularized approaches to knowledge and literature challenged contemporary Islam is discussed in an article by Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino. Arguing that rationalist prophetology, Hadith scepticism and modern Sīra writing are the symptoms of an intellectual and cultural crisis in modern Islam and the result of the influence of Orientalism, the Azhar scholar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd developed a theological critique of 21 See Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007; Adrian Pabst, “The Paradox of Faith: Religion beyond Secularization and De-secularization”, The Deepening Crisis: Governance Challenges after Neoliberalism, ed. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derlugian, New York City NY: New York University Press, 2011, pp. 157–81; John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order. The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons and Blackwell, 2013.

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Muslim reformism and of the de-theologization of the representation of the Prophet Muḥammad in contemporary Islamic thought. In the context of the modernization of religious education and the public debate about the role of Islam and Azhar scholarship in modern Egyptian society and culture, Maḥmūd intends to show that the transfer of secularized approaches to the prophetic tradition in fact dissolves the Muslims’ personal attachment to their Prophet. Against reformist tendencies in contemporary Egypt, Maḥmūd argues that it is only though this personalist approach to the figure of Muḥammad that it is possible to make Islam intelligible to the modern middle class and thus to overcome the current crisis in Islamic thought and culture. If the secular study of religion represented a challenge to Islamic scholarship in the modern period, the history of transfers between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages equally challenged the Eurocentric vision of modern Western historiography. Within the debate about the relationship between Orientalism and Colonialism, initiated by Edward Said’s much-debated work,22 Enas Aly Ahmed analyzes the knowledge-making processes of Spanish Arabists by situating the ideas of one of Spain’s most prominent Arabists, Miguel Asín Palacios (1871–1944), in the context of intellectual tendencies that marked both European Orientalism and Spanish Arabism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.23 Taking as a key case study Palacios’s study of Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal, Ahmed evaluates the engagement of the Spanish Arabist with the phenomenon of cultural transmission between Islam and Christianity. Contemporary Spanish Orientalists deemed this chain of transmission and the circulation of ideas it implied to be a crucial element for their scientific understanding of the Middle Ages. Through a new understanding and rewriting of past interactions between Christianity and Islam, national historiography and the underlying construction of political identity were explicitly or implicitly fostered. A close examination of the relation between Wissenschaft and religion is also to be found in nineteenth-century European Judaism. As Ottfried Fraisse points out, Jews in the nineteenth century increasingly refer to Islam with the aim of modernizing their own tradition. The culturalization and historicization of their own and the other religion in Judaism and Islam at the turn to the twentieth century, contributes to the development of new theologies that escape the dominant concepts of Western history and culture of that time, which were deeply rooted in cultural homogeneity and self-referential universalism. The critical distance from the prevailing Western-Christian understanding of history and 22 Edward

W. Said, Orientalism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.  On the relation between European and Spanish Orientalism and the historiographic controversy on the exceptionalism of the latter, see Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla and Carlos Cañete, “Spanish-Maghribi (Moroccan) Relations beyond Exceptionalism: A Postcolonial Perspective”, The Journal of North African Studies, 24/1 (2019), pp. 111–33. 23

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culture allows Jewish and Muslim thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to build up a creative ambivalence or hybridity of modern secular and religious knowledge. At the same time, the defence of religious doctrines and practices emerged in Judaism against new forms of secular and theological antisemitism established in the nineteenth century. The criticism of Judaism, which culminated in the devaluation of the Jewish concept of God, was confronted with various strategies by Jewish-German thinkers, relying on common religious values and the transfer of religious knowledge between Judaism and Christianity. Alexander Dubrau exemplifies this discourse by examining Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann’s (1843–1921) writings on the relationship of Judaism to Christianity from a halakhic point of view. Hoffmann’s expert report for the trial against the anti-Semitic agitator Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933) for the Leipzig court in 1912–1913 formed an integrative response to the accusation that Jewish law and religion from a Jewish orthodox-halakhic perspective was directed against non-Jews. A further example of the transfer of political theologies within religious doctrines is the inner-Protestant struggle with the Christian conception of salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) and ‘the Jewish question’, which was hotly discussed in Germany before and during the Second World War. Dealing with Gerhard Kittel’s (1888–1948) writings on Judaism, Alon Segev points out how Kittel’s metaphysical thinking about Christianity and Judaism is connected to political concepts which, according to Kittel, are historically realized with Hitler’s seizure of power. A crucial question that, implicitly or explicitly, appears in the case studies of the second part of the book is related to the borderline between religious knowledge or theology, and secular science or academia: who is legitimized to draw this line and where is it to be drawn? With the implementation of religious studies in modern and secular universities, the figure of the academic introduced to the public sphere a new form of expertise in matters of religion. The resulting configurations of religious authority lead to new dynamics of the production of religious thought and of its engagement with society. An Azhar scholar like Maḥmūd needed his academic background in order to appeal to an Egyptian middle class educated in modern or even Western institutions and attracted to a westernized way of life. Recent studies of social anthropology have already alluded to this development, showing that its relation to transfer merits further examination.24 New forms of religious authority involve distinctive epistemologies, relativizing the importance of transmission and highlighting other ways of conferring legitimacy and authority to religious expertise. Transfers imply actors who represent and implement these unprecedented models of 24  See, for instance, Hatsuki Aishima and Armando Salvatore, “Doubt, Faith, and Knowledge. The Reconfiguration of the Intellectual Field in Post-Nasserist Cairo”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15 (2009), pp. 41–56.

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grounded religious expertise. Today, that secularism constitutes a major factor of mobilization and change, academics and intellectuals coping with the study of religions appear as major agents of religious transfers in modern societies. The second part of this book tackles the engagement with secularism in its various manifestations, showing how it has uncovered new intellectual and discursive resources for the discussion about Abrahamic religions. If a principal defensive stance towards non-confessional approaches to religion can be observed, secularized ideas, methodologies or discourses nonetheless inspired or influenced representatives or even scholars of religions in their endeavour to make sense of their respective religious identities in a context where religious institutions and practices increasingly lost their social and political visibility and relevance. Paradoxically, transfers which reinforce secularization do not only lead to conflicts with religious traditions and to the formation of reactionary attitudes; if such cases are well documented, as in the example of modern Salafism or fundamentalist Christians,25 this volume shows that transfers equally lead religious traditions to a dynamic engagement with the diverse intellectual, social, and political preconditions and challenges that characterize modern societies. Ultimately, transfers reveal the remarkable flexibility of the three religious traditions and show how their internal pluralism or their tolerance of ambiguity26 provides them with the ability to constructively enact transfers of knowledge in order to confer intelligibility onto their teachings and practices in a diverse context. The renewed recourse to scriptural sources and interpretative traditions, such as the Talmud, Sufism, or Church councils, either by re-interpreting, criticizing or further developing them, opens various options from a simple attempt of revival of religious discourses using alternative means of communication and performance, to their actual revision through the assimilation of other intellectual cultures or social practices. Whether a transfer affected only the external self-expression of a religion, or its internal structure or content as well, in all these cases, transfer triggered a dynamism which was felt by the religious actors themselves as a crisis or a critical moment for their religion and their communities. 25  See the stimulating study by Olivier Roy, Holy Ignorance. When Religion and Culture Part Ways, trans. Ros Schwartz, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. In his new study L’Europe est-elle chrétienne? (Paris: Seuil, 2019), the same author shows how the reference to Christianity and to the Christian-Jewish roots of the Occident as an identity-marker against Islam in recent public discourse in the West is related to the massive secularization and culturalization of Christian identity. 26  Thomas Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität. Eine andere Geschichte des Islams, Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011. For a fruitful discussion of this important book, see Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, “Compte rendu: Die Kultur der Ambiguität von Thomas Bauer”, Arabica, 64 (2017), pp. 87–128.

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Bibliography Aishima, Hatsuki and Armando Salvatore, “Doubt, Faith, and Knowledge. The Reconfiguration of the Intellectual Field in Post-Nasserist Cairo”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15 (2009), pp. 41–56. Allievi, Stefano, Conflicts over Mosques in Europe. Policy Issues and Trends, London: Alliance Publishing Trust, 2009. Bauer, Thomas, Die Kultur der Ambiguität. Eine andere Geschichte des Islams, Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011. Boyarin, Daniel, Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Burke, Peter, Cultural Hybridity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009. Demiri, Lejla, Muslim Exegesis of the Bible in Medieval Cairo. Najm al-Din al-Tūfī’s (d. 716/1316) Commentary on the Christian Scriptures, Leiden: Brill, 2013. Echevarría, Ana, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, and John Tolan (eds.), Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies. Between Theory and Praxis, Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Espagne, Michel and Michael Werner, “Deutsch-Französischer Kulturtransfer im 18. und 19. Jh.: Zu einem neuen interdisziplinären Forschungsprogramm des C. N. R. S.”, Francia, 13 (1985), pp. 502–10. Espagne, Michel and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (eds.), Transferts de savoirs sur l’Afrique, Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2015. Espagne, Michel, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands, Paris: PUF, 1999. Fernández Parrilla, Gonzalo and Carlos Cañete, “Spanish-Maghribi (Moroccan) Relations beyond Exceptionalism: A Postcolonial Perspective”, The Journal of North African Studies, 24/1 (2019), pp. 111–33. Feuchter, Jörg, “Cultural Transfer in Dispute: An Introduction”, Cultural Transfers in Dispute. Representations in Asia, Europe and the Arab World since the Middle Ages, ed. Jörg Feuchter, Friedhelm Hoffmann, and Bee Yun, Frankfurt: Campus, 2011, pp. 16–7. Fowden, Garth, Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions. An Inaugural Lecture by the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths given in the University of Cambridge. 4 December 2013, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Gerard Wiegers, “Introduction”, Polemical Encounters. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, pp. 1–21. Heffernan, Thomas J. and Thomas E. Burman (eds.), Scripture and Pluralism. Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Leiden: Brill, 2005. Kaelble, Hartmut, “Forward: Representations and Transfers”, Cultural Transfers in Dispute, pp. 9–13. Martin, John Jeffries (ed.), Identity and Religion in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean, special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 41/3, 2011. Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine, “Compte rendu: Die Kultur der Ambiguität von Thomas Bauer”, Arabica, 64 (2017), pp. 87–128. Milbank, John, Beyond Secular Order. The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons and Blackwell, 2013.

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Musner, Lutz, “Kultur als Transfer. Ein regulationstheoretischer Zugang am Beispiel der Architektur”, Ent-grenzte Räume. Kulturelle Transfers um 1900 und in der Gegenwart, ed. Helga Mitterbauer, Wien: Passagen-Verlag, 2005, pp. 173–93. Pabst, Adrian, “The Paradox of Faith: Religion beyond Secularization and De-secula­ri­ zation”, The Deepening Crisis. Governance Challenges after Neoliberalism, ed. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derlugian, New York City NY: New York University Press, 2011, pp. 157–81. Rossini, Manuela and Michael Toggweiler, “Cultural Transfer: An Introduction”, Word and Text. A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 4/2 (2014), pp. 5–9. Roy, Olivier, Holy Ignorance. When Religion and Culture Part Ways, trans. Ros Schwartz, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. – L’Europe est-elle chrétienne?, Paris: Seuil, 2019. Said, Edward W., Orientalism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Schreiner, Stefan, “Anti-Islamic Polemics in Eastern European Context. Translation and Reception of ‘Western Writings’ on Islam in Polish Literature (16th-18th Centuries)”, Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’Islam nell’Europa mediterranea (secoli XVI–XVIII), ed. Andrea Celli and Davide Scotto, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 51/3 (2015), pp. 541–84. Silverstein, Adam J. and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), and Moshe Blidstein (associate editor), The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Stockhorst, Stefanie, “Cultural Transfer through Translation: A Current Perspective in Enlightenment Studies”, Cultural Transfer through Translation. The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by means of Translation, ed. Stefanie Stockhorst, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010, pp. 7–26. Stroumsa, Guy G., La fin du sacrifice. Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive, préface de John Scheid, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005. Szpiech, Ryan (ed.), Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference. Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean, New York NY: Fordham University Press, 2015. Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age, Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Werner, Michael and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28/4 (2002), pp. 607–36. Wiegers, Gerard A., “Polemical Transfers: Iberian Muslim Polemics and their Impact in Northern Europe in the Seventeenth Century”, After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 229–49.

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Polemical Responses and Intercultural Mediation The Making of Religious Transfer in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Entangled Arguments A Survey of Religious Polemics between Judaism and Islam in the Middle Ages* Daniel Boušek The polemics between Christianity and Judaism played a very important role in the process of religious self-definition within Christianity from its very beginnings. As Amos Funkenstein pertinently put it, ‘Judaism and Christianity were confrontational cultures […]. The conscious rejection of values and claims of the other religion was and remained a constitutive element in the ongoing construction of the respective identity of each of them.’1 These mutual bonds of aversion and fascination found their expression in hundreds of Jewish-Christian polemical treatises.2 However, as Jacob Katz observed, ‘the antagonism between Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages […] is that of conflicting exponents of the same tradition.’3 In comparison, medieval Islam’s debate with Judaism, and vice versa, stood at the periphery of both Muslim and Jewish theologians. The polemics against Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, although present in the Qurʾan and in Hadith and Sīra literature, are far less abundant and were never really considered important by Muslim authors. Judaism and Islam were less interested in each other, or, in Funkenstein’s words: ‘Judaism and Islam were not confrontational cultures.’ Jewish-Islamic polemics differ from those of Christianity not only in quantity but also in character. While at the centre of Christian-Jewish polemics stood * This article was researched and written as a part of a project supported by a Czech Science Foundation grant, ‘The Reflection of Interreligious Relations in Medieval Aragon in the Works of Solomon ibn Adret and Profiat Duran’ (15–09766S). 1 Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1993, p. 170. 2 For a general overview of the Jewish anti-Christian polemic see, for example, Samuel Krauss and William Horbury, The Jewish-Christian Controversy. From the Earliest Times to 1789, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008, and Jeremy Cohen, “Towards a Functional Classification of Jewish anti-Christian Polemic in the High Middle Ages”, Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992, pp. 93–114. 3  Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 4.

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the exegesis of the Hebrew Bible – the Holy Scripture of both sides of the dialogue – Muslims did not only target interpretations of the Script, but the Script itself – both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament – which they do not consider in their present form to be God’s revealed word. The Muslim polemicists tried, on the basis of verses from the Qurʾan, to prove in a variety of ways that throughout the course of their history the Jews and Christians had not only tampered with their Scripture, but had also effaced all mention therein of the advent of the ultimate prophet, Muḥammad. At the centre of the medieval Islamic polemics against Judaism thus stands the text of the Hebrew Bible. Herein lies what is perhaps the most important difference between the ChristianJewish and Muslim-Jewish polemics. In the first case, a commonly shared divine text is expounded in different ways; in the second, the text itself is subjected to polemical scrutiny.4 This essay offers a survey of Muslim-Jewish polemical literature and its key themes and polemical strategies from the period of early Islam through to the fifteenth century. While Muslim-Jewish polemics have been extensively studied starting from Moritz Steinschneider’s seminal Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden,5 the Jewish side of the polemical discourse has remained at the periphery of scholarly attention. Steinschneider’s book, to which he added an appendix (one hundred and forty pages long) on all medieval Jewish literature mentioning Arabs, Muslims, or Islam, might be in some sense justifiably viewed as the first and still the only monographical treatment of the subject. In spite of several studies discussing particular polemical aspects or polemical tracts, a general survey of Jewish anti-Islamic polemics is still lacking. This essay will therefore focus mainly on Jewish responses to Islamic anti-Jewish polemic, while keeping in mind that those responses can be rightly evaluated only when juxtaposed with Islamic anti-Jewish polemic. In fact, the Jewish polemical discourse is mainly an apologetic.

4  See Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds. Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 8–9. 5  Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1877. His research subsequently enriched and contextualised Ignác Goldziher, “Über muhammedanische Polemik gegen Ahl al-kitāb”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 32 (1878), pp. 341–87; Martin Schreiner, “Zur Geschichte der Polemik zwischen Juden und Muhammedanern”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 42 (1888), pp. 591–675; Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 1957, vol. 5, pp. 86–102; Moshe Perlmann, “Polemics between Islam and Judaism”, Religion in a Religious Age, ed. Shelomo D. Goitein, Cambridge MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974, pp. 103–38; and some parts of the above-mentioned Hava Lazarus-Yafeh book.

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1. The Main Themes of Islamic Anti-Jewish Polemics The phenomenon of Muslim polemics against Judaism and its adherents is as old as Islam itself. The Qurʾan represents the very first source. Its suras, especially those from the period of Muḥammad’s preaching in Medina, encapsulate, whether explicitly or implicitly, almost all of the themes of medieval Muslim polemics against Jews, Judaism, and the Hebrew Bible that later generations of Muslims would develop further and reformulate. Leaving aside the question of its historicity,6 it is clear that the traditional Islamic narrative accounts for illwill between the Prophet Muḥammad and the Jewish tribes by pointing to the latter’s unwillingness to accept Muḥammad’s message. Evidence of this narrative can be found in both the Qurʾan and the Prophet’s biography, Sīra, in which the Jews are presented as unreliable, treacherous, stubborn and ungrateful toward God.7 They are ‘strongest in enmity to the believers’ (Q 5:78–82) and hostile to the Prophet, just as the Israelites had been to the messengers sent by God to their nation. The Qurʾan dissolves the distance between past and present by directly associating Muḥammad’s Jewish contemporaries with the misdeeds of their Biblical ancestors. A similar picture of the Jews, albeit more elaborate and hostile, emerges from the Hadith literature.8 Yet, despite the intensity of Muslim-Jewish strife in the Medinan stage of Islam, classical Islam directed its polemics mainly against Christianity.9 These decidedly antagonistic statements formed the underpinnings of antiJewish expressions and became topoi in Islamic polemical and theological works, Qurʾanic exegesis, and adab literature, throughout the centuries.10 More numerous and important, however, are the arguments that concern the very foundation of the Jewish faith, namely the Torah. According to the Qurʾan, this earlier scripture, revealed by God to Moses and now superseded by a new dispensation, contains references to the mission of the Prophet Muḥammad. However, the Torah is said to have been tampered with and falsified by the Jews. Thus, Islam’s polemical discourse with Judaism was from the very beginning – and, to some extent, still is – centred on three partially contradictory and mutually overlapping postulates: that the Hebrew Bible was subjected to textual  6  See, for example, Gordon D. Newby, “The Sīrah as a Source for Arabian Jewish History: Problems and Perspectives,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 7 (1986), pp. 121–38.  7  See Hartwig Hirschfeld, “Historical and Legendary Controversies between Mohammed and the Rabbis,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 10 (1898), pp. 100–16.  8  Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Jew-Hatred in the Islamic Tradition and the Koran Exegesis,” Antisemitism Through the Ages, ed. Samuel Almog, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988, pp. 161–70.  9 For Islamic anti-Christian polemics, see Erdmann Fritsch, Islam und Christentum im Mittelalter. Beiträge zur Geschichte der muslimischen Polemik gegen das Christentum in arabischer Sprache, Breslau: Müller & Seiffert, 1930. 10 See, for instance, William M. Brinner, “The Image of the Jew as Other in Medieval Arabic Texts,” Israel Oriental Studies, 14 (1994), pp. 227–40.

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and/or interpretative alteration (taḥrīf, tabdīl); that the Hebrew Bible contains references to Muḥammad’s mission (aʿlām al-nubuwwa); and that Muḥammad’s revelation has abrogated Jewish Law (naskh).11 The following pages expatiate upon these postulates. Among the medieval Muslim authors whose polemical works had the greatest influence on the development of these arguments and the genre overall, the Ẓāhirī (i. e. literalist) law school theologian Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. 456/1064), and a Jewish convert to Islam from Baghdad, Samawʾal al-Maghribī (d. 571/1175), warrant particular attention. Ibn Ḥazm expounds his opinions about Jewish and Christian scriptures mainly in two works. The first is his monumental heresiology, Al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal (Book of Distinctions of Religions, Sects, and Heresies).12 Written between 418/1027 and 421/1030, the work incorporates material from another, now lost, work refuting Judaism and Christianity: Iẓhār tabdīl al-yahūd wa-l-naṣārā li-l-Tawrāt wa-l-Injīl (Exposure of Jewish and Christian Falsifications in the Torah and Gospels).13 Ibn Ḥazm’s second noteworthy work is al-Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Naghrīla al-yahūdī wa-rasāʾil ukhrā (Refutation of Ibn Naghrīla the Jew, and other letters),14 a sharply polemical diatribe directed against Ismāʿīl ibn Naghrīla, or Samuel ha-Nagid (993–1056), the great Hebrew poet and statesman of Granada, whom the author charges with writing a pamphlet exposing alleged inconsistencies and logical contradictions in the Qurʾan.15 Ibn Ḥazm is rightly considered the real founder of Muslim polemics against 11  The modern Muslim anti-Jewish polemic enriched these three claims with several novel arguments based on Biblical criticism, quotations from the Talmud, and anti-Semitic slurs that are reminiscent of past infamous blood libels. The polemics are harnessed in anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli pamphlets for political gain in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. See Livnat Holzman and Eliezer Schlossberg, “Fundamentals of the Modern Muslim-Jewish Polemic,” Israel Affairs, 12/1 (2006), pp. 13–27. 12  On Ibn Ḥazm’s polemic, see particular chapters in Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, Leiden: Brill, 1996; Theodore Pulcini, Exegesis as Polemical Discourse. Ibn Ḥazm on Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1998. 13 On the incorporation of the earlier into the later work, see Moshe Perlmann, “EleventhCentury Andalusian Authors on the Jews of Granada”, Preceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 18 (1948–1949), p. 270. 14  Ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-‘Urüba, 1960; Emilio García Gómez, “Polémica religiosa entre Ibn Ḥazm e Ibn al-Nagrīla”, Al-Andalus, 4 (1936), pp. 1–28. 15  On the discussion for and against the existence of such a pamphlet and for a different hypothesis of whose arguments Ibn Ḥazm actually refutes, see David J. Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings. Politics and Society in Islamic Spain 1002–1086, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 199–205; Sarah Stroumsa, “From Muslim Heresy to Jewish-Muslim Polemics. Ibn al-Rāwandī’s Kitāb al-Dāmigh”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 107 (1987), pp. 767–72; Maribel Fierro, “Ibn Ḥazm and the Jewish Zindīq”, Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba. The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker, ed. Camilla Adang, Maribel Fierro, and Sabine Schmidtke, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 497–509; and Ross Brann, Power in the Portrayal. Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Islam, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 75–90

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the Hebrew Bible, as his knowledge of the text is unprecedented in medieval Muslim literature. He was also the first to paraphrase or cite extensive parts of the Bible. His polemics were resumed by Samawʾal al-Maghribī, who, after his conversion in 1163, wrote a slanderous and polemical pamphlet, Ifḥām alyahūd (Silencing the Jews).16 Ifḥām al-yahūd has undoubtedly exerted the most significant influence on the polemics, both Islamic and Jewish.17 Each of the three groups involved in the polemical dialogue, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, had its traditional weak point that served as a clear target for the other two groups. Christian and Muslim anti-Jewish polemics focused on the accusation of the falsification of the Torah and on the abrogation of the Mosaic Law. At the centre of the Jewish and Muslim anti-Christian polemics stood the concepts of God’s Unicity and of the Trinity. The key theme of the anti-Muslim polemics of both the Jews and Christians was the prophecy, or more precisely, the question of Muḥammad’s prophethood. The accusation that Jews and Christians had adulterated and falsified their Scriptures (taḥrīf) is the most basic Muslim argument against both the Old and New Testaments. This polemical motif, used in pre-Islamic times by sectarian and traditional authors including Samaritans, Hellenistic pagan authors and Christians,18 is used in the Qurʾan to explain away the contradictions between the Bible and the Qurʾan, and to establish that the advent of Muḥammad and the rise of Islam was predicted in the uncorrupted true Bible. The abuse of ‘scripture’ was thus a polemical notion adduced in support of the Muslim claim that God’s salvific design had been achieved only with the revelation granted to Muḥammad. Since the Qurʾan, however, does not state explicitly who affected this alleged tampering with the Torah – or, how and when – the Muslim exegetes and polemicists propounded a wide range of different interpretations of the relevant verses. If the Jews really cannot find the Prophet’s name in their Scripture, it is 16  Moshe Perlmann (ed. and trans.), Samawʾal al-Maghribī, Ifḥām al-Yahūd. Preceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 32 (1964). For the earlier recension, see Samaw’al al-Maghribī (d. 570/1175), Ifḥām al-yahūd. The Early Recension, ed. Ibrahim Marazka et al., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006. 17 Maimonides polemicized against Ifḥām al-Yahūd in his Letter to Yemen, as well as Saʿd ibn Kammūna, the author of Tanqīḥ al-abḥāth li-l-milal al-thalāth, and an anonymous Jewish author from the fourteenth century. See Haggai Mazuz, “The Identity of the Apostate in the Epistle to Yemen”, Association for Jewish Studies Review, 38/2 (2014), pp. 363–74; Bruno Chiesa and Sabine Schmidtke, “The Jewish Reception of Samawʾal al-Maġribī’s (d. 570/1175) Ifḥām alyahūd. Some Evidence from the Abraham Firkovitch Collection I”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 32 (2006), pp. 327–49. Samawʾal’s polemic could also be found in Josef Sambari’s chronicle Divrei Yosef (1672). 18 William Adler, “The Jews as Falsifiers. Charges of Tendentious Emendation in Anti-Jewish Christian Polemic”, Translation of Scripture (Jewish Quarterly Review Supplement), Philadelphia PA: Annenberg Research Institute, 1990, pp. 1–27; Irven M. Resnick, “The Falsification of Scripture and Medieval Christian and Jewish Polemics”, Medieval Encounters 2 (1996), pp. 344– 80; Edmund Stein, “Alttestamentliche Bibelkritik in der späthellenischen Literatur”, Collectanea Theologica, 16 (1935), pp. 1–48.

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because they either misinterpreted it (taḥrīf al-maʿnā), or distorted its text (taḥrīf al-naṣṣ). Muslim religious authorities present divergent opinions on this question. According to Ibn Ḥazm, the Torah’s text has undergone so many alterations and distortions in the course of history that it should no longer be regarded as a true expression of divine will. This is proved by highlighting passages to show that the Hebrew Bible is replete with chronological, historical, and geographical inaccuracies; theological impossibilities, including anthropomorphisms, and stories that attribute preposterous behaviour to Biblical personalities including patriarchs and kings considered by Muslim theologians to be prophets, and thus infallible. Ibn Ḥazm proclaims, therefore, that the ‘damned and counterfeit book called by Jews al-ḥumāsh’ has nothing in common with the Torah handed down by God to Moses.19 The Jews might have found cold solace in the fact that Ibn Ḥazm and some other polemicists considered Injīl to be even more corrupted than Tawrāt.20 These theoretical considerations had practical consequences. Adherents of taḥrīf al-maʿnā considered it their duty to honour these books as they contain God’s revelation. Thus the Shāfiʿite jurist al-Nawawī (d. 677/1278) charges those who impugn and revile the Torah and Gospel with committing the same sin as that of disparagement of the Qurʾan.21 Contrariwise, the followers of taḥrīf alnaṣṣ make it their religious duty to condemn the adulterated Scriptures authored not by God but by a falsifier or falsifiers, declaring that Muslims ought not to study them. It is therefore no wonder that, when the exegete al-Biqāʿī decided to use the Bible as a proof text to interpret the Qurʾan in 1456, his move caused outrage among Muslim religious intellectuals. At the centre of the ensuing dispute, which proved to be one of the major religious controversies of late Mamlūk Cairo, stood the question of whether Muslims were allowed to quote and use the Bible for religious purposes. Luckily for us, al-Biqāʿī wrote a polemical treatise defending his revolutionary decision, al-Aqwāl al-qawīma fī ḥukm al-naql min al-kutub al-qadīma (The Just Words on the Rule regarding Quotations from the Ancient Books), the most extensive discussion of the status of the Bible in Islam.22 19  Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal, ed. Aḥmad Shams ad-Dīn, Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiya, 1328 AH (2007), vol. 1, p. 181. 20 See Alfred Morabia, “Ibn Taymiyya, les Juifs et la Torah”, Studia Islamica, 50 (1979), pp. 84–5; Sidney A. Weston (ed.), “The Kitāb Masālik an-Naẓar of Saʿīd ibn Hasan of Alexandria”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 24 (1903), p. 340. 21  Goldziher, “Über muhammedanische Polemik gegen Ahl al-kitāb”, pp. 366–7. Cf. Camilla Adang, “A Fourth/Tenth Century Tunisian Muftī on the Sanctity of the Torah of Moses”, The Intertwined Worlds of Islam. Essays in Memory of Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, ed. Nahem Ilan, Jerusalem: Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 2002, pp. VII–XXXIII. 22  See Walid A. Saleh, “A Fifteenth-Century Muslim Hebraist: Al-Biqāʿī and his Defence of Using the Bible to Interpret the Qurʾān”, Speculum, 83/3 (2008), pp. 629–54. Walid A. Saleh is also the author of the edition, In Defence of the Bible. A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise, Leiden: Brill, 2008.

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Intertwined with the theme of the Torah’s corruption is the question of the absence of tawātur, the lack of reliable transmission. The purpose of this argument was to prove that the invasions and assaults that devastated Biblical Israel, the subsequent exiles and persecution experienced by the Jewish people during their history, and even the deliberate burning of the scrolls of the Torah and deletion of parts of its text – especially those containing the references to Muḥammad – by some of the sinful kings of Israel, had irreparably impaired the transmission of their holy text, which therefore could not be regarded as reliable. The question of tawātur plays a key role in Ibn Ḥazm’s polemic. He asserts that Ezra the Scribe, identified with the enigmatic person of the Qurʾanic ʿUzayr, falsified the Hebrew Bible. The origin of this charge may lie in the Rabbinic interpretation, according to which Ezra was in some sense a second Moses who had set out to spread the Torah after it lapsed into disuse (BSukkah 20a). In the tenth century, the Qaraite author al-Qirqisānī expressed concern that such stories had become known to Muslims: ‘Were the Muslims to learn of this, they would need nothing else with which to revile and confute us.’23 It was due to Ibn Ḥazm that Ezra, who until then had been presented mainly in a very positive light in Islamic literature, came to be seen as a falsifier.24 It was he who altered the original version of the Biblical text of which only one exemplar was preserved in the Temple, which was later destroyed or forgotten by the Israelites following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the subsequent Babylonian exile. According to Ibn Ḥazm, in Ezra’s text,25 concocted from memory and held in possession by the Jews until his time, only fragments of the original text remained, namely verses preserved by God in order to testify to Muḥammad’s prophethood and to the corruption of the Torah. The second most common argument against the Bible deals with aʿlām or dalāʾil al-nubuwwa – ‘Signs’ or ‘Proofs of Prophethood’ which, according to interpretations of several verses in the Bible, announce the coming of Muḥammad

23  Al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-anwār, I.3.3; trans. Bruno Chiesa and Wilfried Lockwood, Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī on Jewish Sects and Christianity. A Translation of “Kitāb al-Anwār”, Book I, with two Introductory Essays, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984, pp. 105–6. Cf. Geoffrey Khan, “Al-Qirqisānī’s Opinions concerning the Text of the Bible and Parallel Muslim Attitudes towards the Text of the Qurʾān”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 81 (1990), pp. 59–73. 24  See Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds, pp. 41–7, 50–74. Martin Whittingham argues that ‘Ibn Ḥazm was not the originator of the Ezra motif amongst Arab Muslims, though he was to be its chief publicist’, “Ezra as the Corrupter of the Torah? Re-Assessing Ibn Hazm’s Role in the Long History of an Idea”, Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 1 (2013), pp. 253–71. 25 Ibn Ḥazm’s younger contemporary in the east, ʿAbd al-Malik Al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), even knows that Ezra wrote this corrupted Torah copy 545 years before the coming of Jesus. See Michal Allard, Textes apologétiques de Ǧuwainī, Beirut, 1968, pp. 44–57; for an English translation see Francis E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam, Princeton N J: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 161–4.

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and Islam.26 This argument is based on the Qurʾan’s claim (Q 61:6) that Jesus brought to his people good tidings about a prophet who would come after him, named ‘Aḥmad’. Since the Qurʾan did not give any specific indication as to where in the Bible these tidings or allusions should be located, the task was left for the next generations of Muslims. It is usually assumed by Islamicists that, because of limited knowledge of the Biblical text during the first century or so of Islam, no serious attempts were made to substantiate the Qurʾanic claim. However, Uri Rubin has convincingly argued that Muslim reliance on the Bible had already been demonstrated in early biographical sources and Hadith compilations.27 Still, it was primarily the polemical encounter with Christian arguments that the Hebrew Bible contained explicit references to Jesus, but not to Muḥammad, that forced Muslims to repay their critics in kind. While, in the middle of the eighth century, John of Damascus speaks in his anti-Islamic polemic about Muslims’ fecklessness when called upon to present specific reference to Muḥammad in the Bible (‘they are surprised and at a loss’),28 from the second half of that century we encounter, in Muslim literature, the development of a specific literary genre called ‘Signs’ or ‘Proofs of Prophethood’.29 Three of the earliest texts of this kind were composed in the ninth century by al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869), ʿAlī ibn Rabban alṬabarī (d. around 251/865), and Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889).30 The authors tried to show that Muḥammad’s unique personality, the miracles he performed, and the worldly success of his message prove the authenticity of his prophethood. The books typically contain a section with verses from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that purportedly foretold the coming of Muḥammad and rise of Islam. One of the traditional ways of detecting references to Muḥammad was to interpret names, as well as adjectives and verbs from the root ḥ-m–d in the Arabic translation of the Bible, as representative of the verb ‘to praise’. 26 Elijahu Ashtor (Strauss) published an (incomplete) list of Biblical verses used in Muslim polemics, “Methods of Islamic Polemics” (Hebrew), Memorial Volume for the Vienna Rabbinical Seminary, Jerusalem: Ruben Mas, 1946, pp. 182–97. 27 Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder. The Life of Muḥammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, Princeton N J: Darwin Press, 1995, pp. 21–43. 28  Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam. The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites”, Leiden: Brill, 1972, p. 135. 29  Sarah Stroumsa, “The Signs of Prophecy. The Emergence of an Early Development of a Theme in Arabic Theological Literature”, The Harvard Theological Review, 78 (1985), pp. 101–14. 30  See David S. Margoliouth, “On the Book of Religion and Empire by ʿAlī b. Rabban alTabari”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 14 (1930), pp. 165–82; Ibn Qutayba, Dalāʾil alnubuwwa, in Carl Brockelmann, “Ibn Ğazī’s Kitāb al-wafāʾ fī faḍāʾil al-Muṣṭafā nach der Leidener Handschrift untersucht”, Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 3, Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1898, pp. 2–59. Gérard Lecomte, “Les citations de l’ancien et du nouveau testament dans l’œuvre d’Ibn Qutayba”, Arabica, 5 (1958), pp. 34–46; Georges Vajda, “Judaeo-Arabica 1. Observation sur quelques citations bibliques chez Ibn Qotayba”, Revue des études juives, 99 (1935), pp. 68–80; Camilla Adang, “Medieval Muslim Polemics against the Jewish Scriptures”, Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions. A Historical Survey, ed. Jacques Waardenburg, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 145–7.

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Consequently, all passages with the words muḥammad, ḥamd, maḥmūd, aḥmad, and so on were interpreted as explicit references by name to the Prophet. It seems that the information required to sustain this interpretation was supplied by Christian and Jewish converts to Islam, who, unlike Muslims, had ready access to the original scriptures. Additionally, Christian converts to Islam could make use of ready-made collections of Messianic passages, called Testimonia,31 and the Christological interpretation of a Biblical verse simply transferred from Jesus to Muḥammad. The aforementioned Ibn Rabban,32 a Nestorian convert to Islam, devoted the bulk of his Kitāb al-dīn wa-l-dawla (The Book of Religion and Empire) to more than sixty Biblical testimonies, covering almost all of the books of the Bible. At the beginning of the book, where Ibn Rabban claims that the People of the Book had hidden Muḥammad’s name and altered his portrait in their Scripture, he boasts that he was better equipped than his predecessors to ‘demonstrate this, disclose its secret, and withdraw the veil from it, in order that the reader may see it clearly and increase his conviction and his joy in the religion of Islam.’33 The ‘Proofs of Prophethood’ that form a stock ingredient of Muslim-Jewish polemics were Genesis 17:20 and Deuteronomy 18:18 and 33:2. 1. ‘And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and I will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation’ (Gen. 17:20). It is no surprise that Arabs, i. e. Muslims, who were by universal agreement considered descendants of the Biblical Ishmael, took this passage – and the entire cycle of stories about Hagar and Ishmael, son of the bondwoman, ben ha-amah – as a direct reference to a future mighty Islamic community. Using a typically Jewish technique of computation known as Gematria (ḥisāb al-jumal) to combine the numerical value of letters, Muslims identified another reference to the coming of Muḥammad. In this case, the allusion is found in the Hebrew expression bimeʾod meʾod ‘exceedingly’. The numerical value of the consonants contained in the expression amounts to 92, which, in turn, equate to the numerical value of the letters of the Prophet’s name – M-Ḥ-M-D.

31 The Church fathers devoted a large part of their oeuvre to proofs from prophecy, using Old Testament ‘proof-texts’ to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, that the ritual commandments in the Law are no longer obligatory, and that the Church, not the Jews, is now the people of God. The Apologists, such as Justin Martyr, Melito of Sardis, and Tertullian, worked out a great amount of the Testimonia, which was eventually assembled in collections such as Cyprian’s Testimonia ad Quirinum (d. 258). 32  ʿAlī Ibn Rabban, Al-Dīn wa-l-dawla fī ithbāt nubuwwat al-nabī Muḥammad, Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīda, 1402 AH (1982); Alphonse Mingana, The Book of Religion and Empire. A SemiOfficial Defence and Exposition of Islām Written by Order at the Court and with the Assistance of the Caliph Mutawakkil (A. D. 847–861) by ʿAli Ṭabari, Manchester: The University Press, 1922. 33  ʿAlī Ibn Rabban, al-Dīn wa-l-dawla, p. 35; The Book of Religion and Empire, p. 3.

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2. ‘The Lord came from Sinai, He shone upon them from Seir, He appeared from Mount Paran’ (Deut. 33:2–3). Muslims have taken the statement as prophecy of the rise of three religions in three successive revelations: Sinai symbolises Judaism, Seir Christianity, and Paran Islam.34 3. ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people like me […]. I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself ’ (Deut. 18:15–18). According to Muslim exegesis, the words ‘from among their own people’ allude to the descendants of Ishmael. Although the traditions about miracles filled the biographies of Muḥammad and dalāʾil al-nubuwwa literature, and Muslim dogmatists stressed the importance of the miracle as a tool for proving the authenticity of prophecy, the only miracle unanimously accepted by all Muslims was the Qurʾan’s miraculous inimitability (iʿjāz al-Qurʾān).35 The third main theme of Muslim polemics against the Hebrew Bible and Judaism is that of naskh, or abrogation of the Mosaic law. The concept of abrogation – the supersession of one revealed law by another – did not appear in interreligious polemics upon the arrival of Islam, but had been at the centre of Christianity’s polemics against Judaism for centuries. In Islam it is based primarily on Q 2:106: ‘Such of Our revelations as We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, we bring (in place) one better or the like thereof.’36 The original intention of this verse was to explain the contradictions between various verses of the Qurʾan or between the Qurʾan and Prophetic tradition (sunna). Upon these foundations, Muslim scholars built a sophisticated system through which to determine which verse had been revealed at a later date and thus represented a legally binding standpoint.37 Muslim authors applied this exegetic rule of Islamic jurisprudence to their polemics against earlier religions and their Scriptures in order to explain why God later replaced his revelations to the Jews and Christians with Islam. In their polemics, Muslims strained to convince Jews of the principle of abrogation by pointing out the fact that the Torah allowed for this concept as 34  Mount Paran is taken to stand for Mecca, because Ishmael is said in Gen. 21:21 to have dwelled in Paran, and according to Q 2:119 in Mecca. 35 See Abdul Aleem, “ʿIjāzu’l-Qur’ān”, Islamic Culture, 7 (1933), pp. 64–82, 215–33. 36  According to Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. An Explanatory Translation, London: A. A. Knopf, 1930. 37  John Burton, “Naskh”, The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition, Leiden: Brill, 1960– 2002 (below EI2), pp. 1009–12. The hermeneutic principle of abrogation played an important role primarily within the exegesis of the Qurʾān, holy traditions (ḥadīth), and scholarship on the four (or five) sources of Islamic jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh). John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies. Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, New York NY: Prometheus Books, 2004, pp. 192–202; David S. Powers, “The Exegetical Genre nāsikh al-Qurʾān wa mansūkhuhu”, Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān, ed. Andrew Rippin, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, pp. 117–38.

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well, given that Mosaic Law had replaced the earlier, divergent Law of Jacob. At the same time, however, they emphasized that abrogation did not imply God changing his mind (badāʾ) – a notion rejected by both Sunni Islam and Judaism. Within the polemical context, this meant that, prior to the arrival of Islam, God had assigned each religion a previously defined period of validity – ‘for every age there is a Book revealed’ (Q 13:38). Christianity had abrogated Judaism (sharīʿat Mūsā) at its appointed time, and Islam (sharīʿat Muḥammad) – God’s last and final revelation to mankind (Q 33:40) – nullified and replaced both prior revelations. The oldest records of literary debates between Muslims and Jewish theologians on the subject of abrogation appear from the second half of the ninth century, with the first documented debate taking place between the Muʿtazilite theologian Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām (d. 221/836), and an otherwise unknown Jew named Manasseh ibn Ṣāliḥ.38 By the tenth century, defence or rejection of the concept of abrogation had become the primary expression of Jewish-Muslim polemics. Discussions of naskh are a fixed ingredient in kalām tracts and may also be found in works informing readers of the varied positions held on the matter by the Rabbanites, Qaraites, Samaritans, and the ʿĪsāwiyya sect.

2. Polemics against Rabbinical Literature While Christian anti-Jewish polemics first dealt systematically with Rabbinical literature in the Dialogi contra Iudaeos (1110) of the Spanish Jewish convert to Christianity Petrus Alfonsi,39 it appeared much earlier in Muslim literature. The Rabbinical concept of unwritten revelation, the oral Torah, was already known to the authors of early Islam, who viewed it as a damnable precedent that should be avoided in Islam. Their readiness to condemn the concept was probably motivated by their hope of diminishing the authority of the ever-growing Hadith literature, or of preventing it from being written down. Several aḥādīth discussed by Ignác Goldziher40 elucidate the word mathnāt – the Mishnah – as meaning

38 Louis P. Cheikho (ed.), Trois traités anciens de polémique et de théologie chrétiennes, Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1923, pp. 68–70; English translation by A. S. Tritton, “‘Debate’ between a Muslim and a Jew”, Islamic Studies (Karachi) 1 (1962), pp. 60–64; and John Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu. Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 110–2. 39 Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews, trans. Irven M. Resnick, Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. See also Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law. Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity, Berkeley: California University Press, 1999, pp. 201–18. 40  Ignác Goldziher, “Kämpfe um die Stellung des Ḥadīt im Islam”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 61 (1907), pp. 860–72, especially pp. 865–9.

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‘a book wilfully composed by Jewish rabbis’. Ibn al-Nadīm’s bibliographical lexicon Fihrist, written in 987, defines al-mishnā as a part of the Hebrew Bible written by Moses, ‘from which the Jews derive the science of the law, with religious ordinances and judgments. It is a large book, its language being Kasdānī and Hebrew.’41 The principal reason for polemical Muslim literature employing Talmudic aggadic material was to bolster the claim that Judaism’s perceptions of God were primitive and anthropomorphic. Samawʾal al-Maghribī ascribes the present form of Judaism and its Rabbinical jurisprudence to the social conditions of exile and the rabbis’ policy of non-assimilation of the Jews into the majority society by segregation. Their laws are incorporated in the Mishnah (al-mishnā) and the Talmud (al-talmūd) and have a negative influence upon Jewish life and the position of Jewish society as intentionally segregated. The rule of Talmudic jurisprudence and the Jews’ dispersion in exile, through which they load upon themselves ever newer burdens and limitations beyond the demands of Moses’ Torah, make their lives more difficult and prevent them from reflecting critically on their religion and integrating into the majority society. In their efforts to preserve the religious identity of the Jews by segregating them, the rabbis deviated from Biblical law by prohibiting mixed marriages with non-Jews and banning the consumption of meat slaughtered by them. Thus, according to Samawʾal, the cause of the Jews’ suffering in exile is not only the constant institutional humiliation and persecution caused by the majority society, but the unreasonable legislation imposed by the rabbis and enshrined in Rabbinical literature. Both factors prevent them from realizing the absurdity of their adherence to an outof-date and irrational religion and accepting Islam.42 Ibn Ḥazm was the first Muslim author to give a rather more detailed, albeit somewhat misleading, account of the Rabbinical literature. If the Hebrew Bible is a wholly falsified book in Ibn Ḥazm’s understanding, the Talmud is worse still, a genuine heresy composed by the rabbis. While Ibn Ḥazm does not mention the Mishnah, he defines the Talmud as the ‘[Jew’s] trusted pillar in questions of their jurisprudence, rules, religion, and law, and it contains sayings of their rabbis as all unanimously agree.’ Despite this definition, Ibn Ḥazm’s notion of the Talmudic canon seems to have been somewhat vague. He erroneously (based on al-Qirqisānī) identifies the Shiʿur Qomā (The Measure of the [Divine] Body)  – a mystical work from Late Antiquity dealing with secret measures 41 Gustav Flügel (ed.), Kitāb al-Fihrist, Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, 1871, vol. 1, p. 23; Bayard Dodge (ed. and trans.), The Fihrist of al-Nadīm. A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 1970, vol. 1, pp. 43–44. However, it is entirely possible that he was referring to the Book of Deuteronomy, which al-Bīrūnī (d. 441/1048) calls almuthannā. Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb al-āṯār al-bāqiya ‛an al-qurūn al-khāliya. Chronologie orientalischer Völker von Albērūnī, ed. C. E. Sachau, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1878, p. 19. 42  Moshe Perlmann (ed.), Ifḥām al-yahūd, pp. 71–85 (Arab.), pp. 64–70 (Eng.).

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of the Godhead  – as a part of the Talmudic corpus. Ibn Ḥazm speaks of the anthropomorphic portrayal of God in this mystical tract with utmost horror and disgust and calls into question Jewish monotheism itself.43 Another book that Ibn Ḥazm identifies as part of the Talmud is the Mishnaic tractate Sāder nāshīm (Seder nashim). Ibn Ḥazm quotes a story in which God is served by an angel called Sandalphon while wearing a ring on his finger and a crown on his head.44 While he typically recounts various anthropomorphic stories without stating their source, he asserts that all of these sayings are part of the Talmud. As stated above, Ibn Ḥazm attributes the authorship of the Talmud to ‘heretical rabbis’. They are the true creators of Judaism as they deformed the original religion of Moses beyond recognition, invented beliefs, and instituted all kinds of practices that have no basis in Scripture, including prayers and religious institutions like the synagogue. According to Ibn Ḥazm, the rabbis simply invented a new religion. Jewish liturgy, rituals, and commandments are not based on the Hebrew Bible, but on a different nova lex, the oral Law recorded in the Talmud. Moreover, they think themselves higher than God and the prophets, and consider the Talmud, their own invention, to be of greater value than God’s revelation in the Torah. Ibn Ḥazm’s judgement thus closely echoes Peter the Venerable’s remarks a century or so later that the Jews ‘prefer’ their doctrines to God.45 Critics of these Rabbinical inventions applied the term mawḍūʿāt to them, which can be translated as ‘invented traditions’. Unsurprisingly, the Qaraites used the term with the same meaning.46 Camilla Adang has convincingly argued47 that it was probably the Qaraites of Talavera or Toledo who provided Ibn Ḥazm with the anti-Rabbanite passages of Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī’s (d. c. 328/940) systematic legal compendium, Kitāb al-anwār wa-l-marāqib (The Book of Lights and Watchtowers),48 or Salmon ben Yeroḥam’s Milḥamot ha-Shem (Wars of the 43  Ibn Ḥazm’s anti-Talmudic polemic was treated for the first time by Ignác Goldziher, “Proben muhammedanischer Polemik gegen den Talmud I”, Jeschurun, 8 (1872), pp. 76–104. 44  The debate about the crown on the Creator’s head is not found in Seder Nashim but in bChag 13b. 45 Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, p. 191. 46  See Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community. The Jews of the Fatimide Caliphate, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2008, p. 113. 47 Camilla Adang, “Éléments karaïtes dans la polémique anti-judaïque d’Ibn Ḥazm”, Diálogo filosófico-religioso entre cristianismo, judaísmo e islamismo durante la edad media en la Península Ibérica, ed. Horacio Santiago-Otero, Turnhout: Brepols, 1994, pp. 419–41. Karaite origin of Ibn Ḥazm’s diatribes had already been established by Ignác Goldziher, who was the first to publish this text of Ibn Ḥazm’s together with a German translation. See his “Proben muhammedanischer Polemik gegen den Talmud I”, p. 102, n. 16. 48  Chiesa, B. and Lockwood W. (trans.), Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī on Jewish Sects and Christianity, pp. 124–33.

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Lord), c. 955.49 These authors studied the Talmud and the Shiʿur Qomā with the express purpose of picking out objectionable aggadot and holding them up to ridicule in order to prove the theological backwardness of the Rabbanites.50 Also Alfonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudaeos draws inspiration from these sources of antiTalmudic and anti-Rabbinic polemics, as well as al-Kindī’s al-Risāla (Treatise).51 However, while growing awareness among the Christian theologians of the existence of an extensive body of post-Biblical Jewish literature – especially of the Talmud and Midrashic literature  – radically changed the content and the function of medieval Christian anti-Jewish polemics from the twelfth century onwards, the same does not hold true with regard to Muslim medieval polemical literature, where it played a rather marginal role.52 It is possible to point to a further divergence between Christian-Jewish and Muslim-Jewish medieval polemics. In Muslim countries, accusations against the Jews and Judaism remained confined to literary polemics. Volumes of the Talmud or other forms of Rabbinical literature were never condemned for blasphemy and thrown into the bonfire after public dispute between representatives of both religions, as was the case in Paris in 1242, in Toulouse in 1319, in Rome in 1553, or in Venice in 1586.53

3. The Mamlūk Period: Fatwas and Polemics Against Dhimmīs The Muslim world underwent a profound transformation during the thirteenth century. The Crusaders intruded into the Middle East and remained there for nearly two centuries (1098–1291), and most of Spain was lost to the armies of the Reconquista. By the close of the eleventh century, all of Sicily had submitted to 49 Salmon ben Yeruḥim, The Book of the Wars of the Lord, ed. Israel Davidson, New York NY: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1934, pp. 108–32. 50 Another plausible source for Ibn Ḥazm’s arguments could have been the pre-Kabbalistic work Sefer Raziel, where the angel that binds the phylacteries on God’s head is called Sandalphon, and not Michael or Metatron, as by al-Qirqisānī. See Saul Liebermann, Shkiin. A Few Words on Some Jewish Legends, Customs and Literary Sources Found in Karaite and Christian Works, Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1970, pp. 11–4. 51  See Barbara Hurwitz Grant, “Ambivalence in Medieval Religious Polemic: The Influence of Multiculturalism on the Dialogues of Petrus Alphonsi”, Languages of Power in Islamic Spain, ed. Brann Ross, Bethesda MD: CDL Press, 1997, pp. 156–77. 52  Amos Funkenstein, “Basic Types of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages”, Viator, 2 (1971), pp. 373–82 (this article appeared in an extended form in Hebrew, Zion, 33 (1968), pp. 126–44). 53 Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 9, pp. 62–71. The same is true with regard to the censorship of Hebrew books, which is never mentioned in the Muslim literature or practised, yet was a widespread practice in Christian Europe from the thirteenth century onward. The sole call for censorship is found in a polemical pamphlet penned by a Jewish convert to Islam from fourteenth-century Morocco. See below. Moshe Perlmann, “ʿAbd al-Ḥaḳḳ al-Islāmī: A Jewish Convert”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 31 (1940–1941), p. 177.

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the Normans. The Mongol horde swept across Asia and took Baghdad, putting an end to the caliphate. Under threat, Islam responded by highlighting religious and social boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims. Amidst waning tolerance and deterioration of the social, economic, demographic, and legal positions of dhimmīs – ‘the protected people’ – during the Mamlūk period in Egypt and Syria (648–923/1250–1517), a flood of Muslim polemical literature emerged, targeting Jews and, in particular, Christians.54 This literature is eclectic and only seldom presents new polemical motifs. This is true especially of al-Qarāfī’s (d. 684/1285) Kitāb al-ajwiba al-fākhira ʿan al-asʾila al-fājira (The Glorious Answers to Wicked Questions) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s (d. 751/1350) Hidāyat al-ḥayārā fī ajwibat al-yahūd wa-l-naṣārā (Guide of the Perplexed in Reply to the Jews and the Christians).55 It is a telling fact that until the late Middle Ages, Islamic legal books do not include the equivalent of De judies, a section devoted to Jewish law in the Latin canon law. It was only in the Mamlūk period that Muslim lawyers felt the need to delineate the social and religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims. Thus, it is no coincidence that the jurist Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, author of the aforementioned polemical tract, also authored the most comprehensive lawbook dealing with the more general Islamic law for dhimmīs: Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma (The Laws Pertaining the Protected People).56 The whole period was indelibly marked by the ongoing debate of jurists concerning the legality of the construction, repair, or continuance of the sacral buildings of non-Muslims in the realm of Islam. Taqī al-Dīn ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), an influential Syrian Ḥanbalī jurist and Ibn Qayyim’s teacher, penned several formal legal opinions (fatwā, pl. fatāwā) ordering the closure of synagogues and churches (Masʾala fī l-kanāʾis).57 Further legal opinions were authored by scholars such 54  See Eliyahu Ashtor (Strauss), “The Social Isolation of Ahl Adh-Dhimma”, Etudes orientales à la mémoire de Paul Hirschler, ed. Ottó Komlós, Budapest: J. Kertész, 1950, pp. 73–94; Doran Arad, “Being a Jew under the Mamluks: Some Coping Strategies”, Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Middle Islamic Period. Jews in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Sultanates (1171–1517), ed. Stephan Conermann, Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2017, pp. 21–40. 55  See Jon Hoover, “The Apologetic and Pastoral Intentions of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Polemic against Jews and Christians”, The Muslim World, 100 (2010), pp. 472–489. For his indebtedness to Samawʾal al-Maghribī see Moshe Perlmann, “Ibn Qayyim and Samau’al AlMaghribi”, Journal of Jewish Bibliography, 3 (1942), pp. 71–4. 56  Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma, ed. T. Saʿd, Beirut: Dār al-Kutub alʿIlmiyya, 1423 AH (2002). Similar treatises, however, were also written by Maghrebian jurists. See Georges Vajda, “Un traité Maghrébin «Adversus Judaeos»: «Aḥkām ahl-Ḏimma» du Sayḫ Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Maġīlī”, Études d’orientalisme dédiées a la mémoire de LéviProvençal, Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962, vol. 2, pp. 805–813. 57 Fritsch, Islam und Christentum im Mittelalter, pp. 25–33; Alfred Morabia, “Ibn Taymiyya, les Juifs et la Torah”, Studia Islamica, 49 (1979), pp. 91–122; 50 (1979), pp. 77–107; Martin Schreiner, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der theologischen Bewegungen im Islām”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 52 (1898), pp. 559–60. For his polemic against Christianity, see David Thomas, “Apologetic and Polemic in the Letter from Cyprus and Ibn

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as Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq (14th/7th c.),58 Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 754/1353),59 Ibn Ḥajar (d. 846/1442),60 Ibn ʿUbayya (d. 879/1474) regarding the so-called Ramban synagogue in Jerusalem,61 and Najm al-Dīn ibn al-Rifʿa (d. 709/1310).62 Sermons, polemical and theological works, and legal opinions of contemporary Muslim jurists and theologians inveighed against the benevolent behaviour of Muslim elites towards protected minorities (dhimmīs) and their employment in the administration and called for the destruction or closure of their houses of prayer. These treatises aimed to influence public opinion and especially the governing elites whose responsibility it was to supervise enforcement of the document called Shurūṭ ʿUmar, which summarized the principles and rules that Muslims applied to the dhimmīs under their rule.63 Although Christian and Jewish prayer houses attracted the attention of Muslim jurists, their legal expertise was primarily used to tackle the question of the lawfulness of the employment of dhimmīs. Complaints about the perceived ubiquity of Jews and especially Christians in administration began appearing from the mid-eleventh century in both Andalusia and in Fatimid Egypt. Tradition held that it was a violation of God’s order because Muslims should exercise authority over non-Muslims, and not vice versa.64 However, it was only during the Mamlūk period that the socially-rooted religious animosity was translated from poems into theological writings. The stance of Muslim jurists of the period is epitomized in al-Nawawī’s fatwā (thirteenth century) responding to the appointment of a Jew as an inspector of coins in the treasury of the Muslims. According Taymiyya’s Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-Masīḥ”, Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, ed. Yossef Rapoport et al., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 247–68. 58  Martin Schreiner, “Contribution à l’historie des Juifs en Égypte”, Revue des études juives, 31 (1895), pp. 212–21. 59 Seth Ward, “Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī on Construction, Continuance, and Repair of Churches and Synagogues in Islamic Law”, Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions II, ed. William M. Brinner and Stephen D. Ricks, Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1989, pp. 169–88. 60  Richard Gottheil, “Dhimmīs and Muslims in Egypt”, Old Testament and Semitic Studies in Memory of William Rainer Harper, ed. Robert Francis Harper et al., Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1908, vol. 22, pp. 353–414. 61  Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Ibn ʿUbayya’s book on the destruction of the Synagogue of the Jews in Jerusalem in 1474”, Zion, 13–14 (1948–1949), pp. 18–32 (Hebrew). 62  Seth Ward, “Ibn al-Rifʿa on the Churches and Synagogues of Cairo”, Medieval Encounters, 5/1 (1999), pp. 70–84. Much later al-Damanhūrī even collected legal opinions of the four Islamic legal schools regarding churches in Cairo (1739). Moshe Perlmann, Shaykh Damanhūrī on the Churches of Cairo, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1975. 63 See Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire. From Surrender to Coexistence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 64  See, for example, Bernard Lewis, “An Anti-Jewish Ode. The Qasida of Abu Ishaq against Joseph ibn Naghrella”, Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume, ed. Saul Lieberman, Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974, vol. 22, pp. 657–668, and al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn almuḥāḍara fī taʾrīkh Miṣr wa-l-Qāhira, ed. M. Ibrāhīm, Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1968, vol. 2, p. 201.

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to al-Nawawī’s reasoning, such an appointment was unlawful. It promises the ruler God’s reward if he dismisses and replaces the Jew with a competent Muslim. Al-Nawawī’s reasoning lay in the dhimmīs’ a priori untruthfulness and enmity toward the Muslims: ‘they will not refrain from anything which is in their power to cause you harm, damage, or injury.’65 Perhaps the most comprehensive fatwā was that written by the Mālikī jurist Ibn al-Naqqāsh.66 Typical examples of this sort of pamphlet are Asnāwī’s tract against Christian officials,67 written during the reign of the Mamlūk sultans Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ṣāliḥ (d. 658/1260) and Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Ḥasan (d. 762/1361), published amidst a wave of anti-dhimmī propaganda; and Ghāzī ibn al-Wāsiṭī’s ‘An Answer to the Dhimmis’,68 written around the turn of the fourteenth century. Muslim polemical tracts also target Jewish physicians. Here they are portrayed as individuals whose only aim is to harm Muslims with false or poisonous drugs, and who deprive Muslim physicians of work. A telling example is the thirteenthcentury polemical treatise by al-Jawbarī, Kitāb al-Mukhtār fī kashf al-asrār (The Best Collection Disclosing the Secrets).69 The fifth chapter presents extravagant allegations against the Jews and ‘discloses the fraudulence of the Jewish men of learning’. The author depicts Jews as ‘the most cunning creatures, the vilest, most unbelieving and hypocritical. While ostensibly the most humble and miserable, they are in fact the most vicious of men. […] If they remain alone with a man, they destroy him. They offer him sleep-inducing food, they slay him’. Al-Jawbarī describes further how Jewish physicians mix their drugs in order to 65  Ignác Goldziher, “Usages juifs d’après la littérature religieuse des musulmans”, Revue des études juives, 28 (1894), p. 94; English translation by Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muḥammad to the Capture of Constantinople, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1987, vol. 22, pp. 228–9. The thirteenth century fatwā titled ‘The Employment of Dhimmīs by Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mālikī’ also attempts to prove, on the basis of tradition and passages from the Qur’an, that dhimmīs cannot be employed; neither as official scribes, tax-gatherers, or as executive officers in general, nor as money-changers or butchers. Richard Gottheil, “A Fetwa on the Appointment of Dhimmis”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 26 (1912), pp. 203–14. 66  François Belin, “Fetoua relatif à la condition des Zimmis”, Journal Asiatique, 18 (1851), pp. 417–516; 19 (1852), pp. 97–140. 67  Published by Moshe Perlmann, “Asnawi’s Tract against Christian Officials”, Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume, ed. Samuel Löwinger et al., Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1958, vol. 22, pp. 172–207; Moshe Perlmann, “Notes on Anti-Christian Propaganda in the Mamlūk Empire”, Bulletin of the School for Oriental and African Studies, 10 (1940–1942), pp. 843–61. 68  Richard Gottheil, “An Answer to the Dhimmis”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 41 (1921), pp. 383–457. 69 See Moritz Steinschneider, “Gaubarî’s ‘entdeckte Geheimnisse’: Eine Quelle für orientalische Sittenschilderung”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 19 (1865), pp. 562–577; Moshe Perlmann, “Notes on the Position of Jewish Physicians in Medieval Muslim Countries”, Israeli Oriental Studies, 2 (1972), pp. 315–9. Cf. Paulina B. Lewicka, “Healer, Scholar, Conspirator. The Jewish Physician in the Arabic-Islamic Discourse of the Mamluk Period”, Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Middle Islamic Period. Jews in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Sultanates (1171–1517), ed. Stephan Conermann, Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2017, pp. 121–43.

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harm, overpower, and eventually kill their patients. Variations of al-Jawbarī’s accusations are repeated time after time in various Muslim polemical treatises of the Mamlūk period, reflecting and at the same time fashioning the image of Jews. This literature offers variations of stories suggesting that ‘if they [the Jews] stay alone with Muslims, they try to kill them’; ‘the Jew always cheats the Muslim’; ‘if two Jews meet, [they do so] only in order to plot to kill Muslims’; and that Jews sought on several occasions to assassinate the prophet Muḥammad. While the ‘golden age’ of such stories was undoubtedly the Mamlūk period, they had already begun to appear in the literature of Ayyūbid Egypt.70

4. Jewish Converts to Islam and the Anti-Jewish Polemics Converts play a prominent role in the production of anti-Jewish polemics. In addition to Samawʾal al-Maghribī, a significant place is occupied by Saʿīd ibn Ḥasan of Alexandria with his work written in 1320, Kitāb Masālik al-naẓar fī nubuwwat sayyid al-bashar (Path of Investigation about the Prophethood of the Master of Mankind);71 ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī’s Al-Sayf al-mamdūd fī l-radd ʿalā aḥbār al-yahūd (The Outstretched Sword in Refutation of the Jewish Sages),72 written around 797/1395 by the convert from Ceuta, in Morocco; and Taʾyīd almilla (The Fortification of Faith), a work probably written by a Mudejar of midfourteenth-century Aragon as a manual for Muslims who wished to debate with Jews face to face.73 ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī’s pamphlet, influential and popular in the Maghreb until recent times, has a clear penchant for Gematria. Naturally, it was mostly Jewish converts to Islam who worked with this essentially Jewish hermeneutical technique. Samawʾal al-Maghribī was the first to use it in connection with the aforementioned expression bi-meʾod meʾod, meaning ‘exceedingly’ (see above). However, it was ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq who worked with Gematria in the most 70  See Joseph Sadan, “Some Literary Problems Concerning Judaism and Jewry in Medieval Arabic Sources”, Studies in Honour of David Ayalon, ed. Moshe Sharon, Leiden: Brill and Hebrew University, 1986, pp. 365–70. 71  Ignác Goldziher, “Saʿid b. Hasan d’Alexandrie”, Revue des études juives, 30 (1895), pp. 1–23. The edition, together with the English translation, was prepared by Sidney A. Weston (ed. and trans.), “The Kitāb Masālik An-Naẓar of Saʿīd Ibn Hasan of Alexandria”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 24 (1903), pp. 312–83. 72  ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī, Al-Sayf al-mamdūd fīʾl-radd ʿalā aḥbār al-yahūd (Espada extendida para refutar a los sabios judíos), ed. and trans. Esperanza Alfonso, Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 1998. 73 Leon J. Kassin (ed. and trans.), A Study of a Fourteenth-Century Polemical Treatise Adversus Judaeos, Ann Arbor MI: Columbia University, 1969. For polemical treatises from the Ottoman period, see Joseph Sadan, “A Convert in the Service of Ottoman Muslim Scholars Writing a Polemic in the Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries”, Peʿamim, 42 (1990), pp. 91–104 (Hebrew).

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‘creative’ way, presenting dozens of computations revealing references in the Hebrew Bible to Muḥammad, Islam, Mecca, or Islamic rituals.74 Converts’ Jewish background does not necessarily mean that these authors possessed a better or more original arsenal of polemical arguments than Muslims of non-Jewish origin, or that their citations from the Hebrew Bible conformed more closely to the original wording; in fact, the opposite is true. On many occasions, they wilfully distort the Biblical text or add a word (typically the names Muḥammad and Ishmael) in order to back up their claim. This is particularly the case in the works of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq and Saʿīd ibn Ḥasan. Nevertheless, some drew on their Jewish education and enriched Muslim polemics with new arguments by discussing themes relating to Rabbinical lore. Moreover, they shed light on the inner life of converts, with most concluding their tracts with accounts of the circumstances that accompanied their conversion and the reasons for it.75 Probably the most famous case is that of Samawʾal al-Maghribī, whose conversion was triggered by a dream vision of the Prophet Muḥammad. Iberian Muslims also seemed concerned with polemics against Christianity and Judaism. This was increasingly the case as the so-called reconquest ensued. Notable examples include the fourteenth-century work Kitāb miftāḥ al-dīn wal-mujādala bayna l-naṣāra wa-l-muslimīn (The Key of Religion and the Disputation between Christians and Muslims) by Muḥammad al-Qaysī, a religious scholar of Tunisian origin who lived as a prisoner of war in Catalonia at the beginning of the fourteenth century;76 and the aforementioned anti-Jewish polemic, Taʾyīd al-milla. These works were promptly glossed and adapted to Aljamiado in order to serve the broader audience of Mudejars in defence of their faith. The widespread dissemination of these polemics attests to their popularity.77

74 See Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “The Contribution of a Jewish Convert from Morocco to the Muslim Polemic against the Jews and Judaism”, Peʿamim, 42 (1990), pp. 83–90 (Hebrew); Perlmann, “ʿAbd al-Ḥaḳḳ al-Islāmī”, pp. 171–91. 75  Ryan Szpiech discusses these conversion stories in his book Conversion and Narrative. Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemics, Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, pp. 180–200; Sarah Stroumsa, “On Jewish Intellectuals Who Converted”, The Jews of Medieval Islam. Community, Society, and Identity. Proceedings of an International Conference held by the Institute of Jewish Studies, London 1992, ed. Daniel Frank, Leiden: Brill, 1995, pp. 179–198. 76 Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld and Gerard A. Wiegers, “The Polemical Works of Muḥammad al-Qaysī (Fl. 1309) and their Circulation in Arabic and Aljamiado among the Mudejars in the Fourteenth Century”, Al-Qantara, 15 (1994), pp. 163–99. 77  See David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today, Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, pp. 31–3; David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence. Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 196–9.

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5. ‘These Arguments have been Rehearsed so often that they have become Nauseating’. The Jewish Response Understandably, Jewish apologetic responses rejected each of the claims raised against Judaism in Muslim polemics. Surprisingly, though, the number of books by Jewish authors exclusively dedicated to polemic against Islam is small. Until recently, scholars could point to only two Hebrew works written, somewhat paradoxically, by authors who belonged not to the cultural milieu of Islam, but to Christian Spain: Maʾamar ʿal Yishmaʿel (Treatise against the Muslim) by the Barcelona rabbi Shlomoh ibn Adret (c. 710/1310) and Qeshet u-magen (Bow and Shield) by Shimʿon ben Ṣemaḥ Duran of Algiers (d. 848/1444). However, the ongoing study of manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah has expanded this modest corpus of Hebrew polemics to include works produced by Jews living under Islam and written in Judaeo-Arabic. These all stem from the cosmopolitan urban environment of Baghdad intellectual society’s multi-confessional salon-like sessions (majlis al-kalām, pl. majālis), in which religious and theological questions were discussed.78 Within this intellectual environment, Jewish religious leaders followed their Muslim counterparts in adopting a philosophical defence of religion. They often did so in response to challenges raised by freethinkers such as Ḥiwi ha-Balkhī, who came from within the Jewish fold, or Ibn al-Rāwandī and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, who emerged from the Muslim community. Majlis sessions were also celebrated in Fāṭimid Jerusalem79 and in Cairo, where Saʿadya Gaon’s siddur, or prayer book, was subject to ridicule in the majlis of the chief minister Yaʿqūb ben Killis (d. 371/991), a Jewish convert to Islam.80 The authors of these Arabic-language polemics, preserved in varying conditions, are the Qaraites Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī),81 and Yūsuf al-Baṣīr (d. around 78  See David E. Sklare, “Responses to Islamic Polemics by Jewish Mutakallimūn in the Tenth Century”, The Majlis. Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, ed. H. Lazarus-Yafeh et al., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999, pp. 137–61. The intellectual atmosphere of Baghdad at this time and the humanistic culture among certain parts of Baghdadi society have been described by Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam. The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age, Leiden: Brill, 1986. 79  Samuel M. Stern, “Fāṭimid Propaganda Among Jews According to the Testimony of Yefet b. ʿAlī the Karaite”, Studies in Early Ismāʿīlism, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University; Leiden: Brill, 1983, pp. 84–95. 80  Mark Cohen and Somekh Sasson, “In the Court of Yaʿqūb ibn Killis. A Fragment from the Cairo Genizah”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 80 (1990), pp. 283–314; Mark Cohen and Somekh Sasson, “Interreligious Majālis in Early Fatimid Egypt”, The Majlis. Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh et al., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999, pp. 128–136. The most recent treatment of Saʿadya to date is Robert Brody’s Saʿadyah Gaon, Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013. 81  Chap. 15 of the third maqāla of Kitāb al-Anwār wa-l-marāqib is devoted to a response to the Muslims (ed. Leon Nemoy, New York NY: Publications of the Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1940, vol. 222, pp. 292–301). Al-Qirqisānī states there (pp. 284, 292, 301, 304) that

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431/1040),82 and the Rabbanite, Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon (d. 403/1013).83 The treatises capture the atmosphere of dispute at these sessions, which among other issues addressed the abrogation of the law and the miraculous inimitability of the Qurʾan (iʿjāz al-Qurʾān). From the descriptions of Samuel ben Ḥofni and Yūsuf al-Baṣīr, it is evident that Muslim debaters’ argumentation managed to shake the convictions of those who took part. In order to prevent the conversion of co-religionists, these leaders felt obliged to write up manuals or aids containing answers to the Muslims’ arguments for the potential participants in these debates. Scholars have offered several explanations as to why Jews refrained from composing books refuting Islam. Firstly, Jews were reluctant to offend the Muslim majority among which they lived with the status of dhimma in a context in which it was punishable for members of the dhimma to criticize Islam, its prophet, and the Qurʾan or to proselytize.84 To openly criticize Islam was unthinkable due to the possibility of reprisals.85 A second and perhaps more important reason was the lack of common ground for a meaningful polemical discourse that could arise from belief in the holiness of the same Scripture. While Christians in general accepted the holiness of the Old Testament and simply accused the Jews of misunderstanding its meaning by reading it literally where it should be read allegorically, Muslims did not accept the text of the Torah as divine. For this reason Maimonides, when asked whether teaching non-Jews the Torah was allowed, issued a responsum prohibiting the teaching of the Jewish he had written a book concerning the prophecy of Muḥammad. The text was first published by Israel Friedlaender, “Qirqisānī’s Polemik gegen den Islam”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 26 (1912), pp. 77–110. 82  On Yūsuf al-Baṣīr, see David E. Sklare, “Yūsuf al-Baṣīr: Theological Aspects of his Halakhic Works”, The Jews of Medieval Islam. Community, Society, and Identity, ed. Daniel Frank, Leiden: Brill, 1995, pp. 249–70. 83  On Samuel ben Ḥofni see David E. Sklare, Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon and his Cultural World. Texts and Studies, Leiden: Brill, 1996. 84  See the discussion of the eleventh-century jurist al-Māwardī, Al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wal-wilāyāt al-dīniyya, Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2006, pp. 258–60, 262. The ban on nonMuslims studying the Qurʾan was included in the “Pact of ʿUmar” by al-Ṭurṭūshī in his Sirāj al-mulūk (written in 1122), ed. M. Fatḥī Abū Bakr, Cairo: Al-Dār al-Miṣriyya al-Lubnāniyya, 2006, vol. 22, p. 542, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma, vol. 2, p. 114. On the question of the punishment for denigrating the Prophet, see Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam. Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 149–52. 85 Maimonides speaks quite explicitly about this concern at the end of his Epistle to Yemen, in which he responded to Muslim claims: ‘Read it (the Epistle) at public gatherings […]. Take adequate precautions lest its contents be divulged to the Gentiles by an evil person and mishap overtake us. When I began writing this letter I had some misgivings about it, but they were overruled by my conviction that the public welfare takes precedence over one’s personal safety.’ (Translation by B. Cohen in Abraham Halkin [ed.], Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, New York NY: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1952, xx).

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Scriptures to Muslims, yet allowing it to Christians. He did so on the basis that the latter accept the basic truth of the Torah, whereas the former vigorously deny its authenticity, and thus do not accept it as evidence in a disputation.86 In addition to these arguments, there was another reason for allowing Christians but not Muslims to be taught the Torah. The person of Muḥammad is of significance to Muslims for the very reason that it affects his status as the Prophet, whereas Jesus is regarded by Christianity as not merely a prophet but as a unique incarnation of God. While the Jews addressed questions regarding the authenticity of Muḥammad’s prophecy, there was no call to address the claims of divine status, Davidic descent, virgin birth, or other such claims made in the case of Jesus. While the reasoning described above may explain the scarcity of polemical writings against Islam by the Jews of Islamic lands, it does not suggest that they were prevented from polemicising literarily with Islam. Jewish polemic can be found as early as in the oldest Muslim literature – the Qurʾan and the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad. The same holds true for the oldest surviving Jewish literature to have been written under Islamic rule, including the thirtieth chapter of The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer (eighth century), The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿon ben Yoḥai (first half of the second/eighth century),87 and Maʿase Daniel (around 328/940). From that time on, anti-Islamic polemic found its way into most works of Judaeo-Arabic medieval literature, with explicit or implicit regard to the barbs of Islamic polemics, beliefs, notions, and institutions. It can be found across a whole range of literature, including Biblical exegesis, poetry,88 history, theological works such as Judah ha-Levi’s Kuzari, pilgrimage accounts and guidebooks, responsa, and exegetical and halakhic works.89 Furthermore, 86  Jehoshua Blau (ed.), R. Moses b. Maimon. Responsa, Jerusalem: Ruben Mas, 1986, vol. 1, pp. 284–5 (no. 149). For an English translation see Albert van der Heide, “Their Prophets and Fathers Misled Them: Moses Maimonides”, The Three Rings. Textual Studies in the Historical Trialogue of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Barbara Roggema, Marcel Poorthuis and Pim Valkenberg, Leuven: Peeters, 2005, p. 45. For the discussion in later centuries see H. J. Zimmels, Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Their Relations, Differences, and Problems as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa, London: Oxford University Press, 1958, pp. 276–8. 87  See Moise Ohana, “La polémique judéo islamique et l’image d’Ismaël dans Targum Pseudo-Jonathan et dans Pirke de Rabi Elieser”, Augustinianum, 15 (1975), pp. 367–87; Gordon D. Newby, “Text and Territory. Jewish-Muslim Relations 632–720 CE”, Judaism and Islam. Boundaries, Communication and Interaction. Essays in Honor of William M. Brinner, ed. Benjamin H. Hary et al., Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 82–96. On the history of the text, see Bernard Lewis, “An Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History”, Bulletin of the School of the Oriental and African Studies, 13 (1950), pp. 308–38. 88 See Norman Roth, “Polemic in Hebrew Religious Poetry of Mediaeval Spain”, Journal of Semitic Studies, 36/1 (1989), pp. 153–77. 89  See Sarah Stroumsa, “Jewish Polemics against Islam and Christianity in the Light of Judaeo-Arabic Texts”, Judaeo-Arabic Studies. Proceedings of the Founding Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb, Amsterdam: Psychology Press, 1997, pp. 242–4, 246–7.

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the number of books written by Jews against Christianity in Arabic is not substantially larger than the number of books directed against Islam.90 While in confrontation with two politically and numerically dominant religions, Jews in the Islamic countries primarily directed their polemical energy towards the internal debate – that is, Rabbanites vs. Qaraites. Their apologia were thus intended exclusively for Jewish readers in order to strengthen their theological position and prevent conversions to the religion of the majority.91 Certain aspects of Muslim anti-Jewish polemics were addressed by Rabbanites including Saʿadya, the Gaon of the Sura Academy in Baghdad during 928–942, Jehuda ha-Levi, Abraham ibn Dāwūd, Maimonides, Nethanel ibn Fayyūmī and Ibn Kammūna; and also by Qaraites such as Yūsuf al-Baṣīr, Daniel al-Qūmisī (around 287/900), and Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī. Of the two groups, the latter reacted to Islam more explicitly and vigorously than the former.92 As stated above, Jewish authors did not respond to all three of the main Muslim polemical claims in the same measure. For example, Maimonides (d. 600/1204) rebuts the claims of taḥrīf and aʿlām al-nubuwwa only briefly in his Epistle to Yemen: They (Muslims) could find nothing stronger than this ignominious argument, the falsity of which is easily demonstrated to one and all by the following facts. First, Scripture was translated into Syriac, Greek, Persian, and Latin hundreds of years before the appearance of Muḥammad (pasul). Secondly, there is a uniform tradition as to the text of the Bible both in the East and the West, with the result that no differences in the text exist at all, not even in the vocalisation, for they are all correct. Nor do any differences affecting the meaning exist. The motive for their accusation lies, therefore, in the absence of any allusion to Muḥammad in the Torah.93

Muslims themselves, opines Maimonides, realise how fallacious the foretellings are and for that reason ‘were compelled to accuse us, saying, “You have altered 90 See Daniel J. Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages”, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 57 (1990–1991), pp. 121–53. 91 For internal debate within Judaism, see Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 91–99. For the later period, see Leon Nemoy, “Ibn Kammūnah’s Treatise on the Differences between the Rabbanites and the Karaites”, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 36 (1968), pp. 107–65. 92  See Haggai Ben-Shammai, “The Attitude of Some Early Karaites towards Islam”, Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky, Cambridge MA: Harvard ­University Press, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 3–40; Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, pp. 116– 20. 93 Translation by B. Cohen in Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, p. viii. For Maimonides’ attitude to Islam, see Stefan Schreiner, “Irrtum, Torheit oder falsche Religion – Christentum und Islam nach dem Urteil Moshe b. Maimons”, Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge, 32 (2005), pp. 23–52; David Novak, “The Treatment of Islam and Muslims in the Legal Writings of Maimonides”, Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions, ed. William M. Brinner and Stephen D. Ricks, Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1986, pp. 233–50.

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the text of the Torah, and expunged every trace of the name of Muḥammad therefrom.”’94 In his The Exalted Faith, Abraham ibn Dāwūd responded to Ibn Ḥazm’s charge that Ezra the Scribe wrote a ‘new Torah’ after the Babylonian exile. He argues that the Torah could not have been altered during the period of the kings and the prophets with the people’s consent. Throughout the Babylonian exile, the Jews had access to the Torah in every place where they settled. Even if Ezra had altered the Torah, then: [H]ow could the people have agreed? How could the people, whether they were near to or far from the mountains of Mesopotamia and Persia and those who remained in the land of Israel and [the people] who journeyed to Egypt and Africa, listen to him without dispute and protest against [Ezra’s version of the Torah]? … But [on the contrary] we find [that] the Torah is generally acknowledged in a single version in which there is no difference among [the copies possessed by any of the] communities of Israel, which [extend] from the end of India to the end of Spain and the west throughout the length of [human] settlement. From the end of the borders of Africa, Ethiopia, and Yemen in the south to the end of the cities of [the] Zoroastrians who are by the sea that encompasses the north there is no difference [among any of the copies of the Torah in any detail, including] the three small [letter] nuns that were placed in the first copy and similarly are found in all of the copies of the Torah that are commonly acknowledged in the world. How could it be true of Ezra [that he altered the Torah] when he made [all of ] the people together listen to him [when] he drew them into his covenant? Indeed, this [perversion] would have been impossible. Therefore, it is false [to claim] that there is a change in [the Torah], and it is false [to claim] that [the Torah] was altered.95

The argument of the textual unity of the Hebrew Bible shared by all Jewish communities scattered around the world is echoed by practically all Jewish polemicists who tackled the question of taḥrīf.96 However, sometimes the Jewish authors gave back to Muslims what they dished out, suggesting that it was not the Torah but the Qurʾan that was tampered with. They did so either within discussions of the inimitability and the integrity of the Qurʾan by touching on sensitive issues regarding its codification, divergences between the recensions, and contradictions in meaning amongst certain verses97 or, by retelling the so-called 94  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, viii. Cf. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “Taḥrīf and Thirteen Torah Scrolls”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 19 (1995), pp. 81–8. 95 Norbert M. Samuelson and Gershon Weiss (eds. and trans.), The Exalted Faith. Abraham Ibn Daud, Rutherford NJ: Associated University Presses, 1986, pp. 180b15–181a11. I deviate slightly from this translation. 96  Cf. Jehuda ha-Levi, Sefer Kuzari, 1:48–50, 3:31–33; Ibn Kammūna’s Examination of the Three Faiths, trans. Moshe Perlmann, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1971, pp. 50–4. Mention should be made of a very short work against taḥrīf written by the Qaraite ʿAlī Ibn Sulaymān, who lived in Jerusalem and Cairo at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century. It was published by Hartwig Hirschfeld, “Ein Karäer über den Muhammed gemachten Vorwurf jüdischer Torahfälschung”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 26 (1912), pp. 111–3. 97  See, for example, Ibn Kammūna’s Examination of the Three Faiths, pp. 106–14, or Sklare, “Responses to Islamic Polemics”, pp. 157–8.

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‘Story of Muḥammad’s Jewish Companions’.98 The story relates that the Qurʾan was actually written by ten Jewish sages from Mecca who had converted to Islam in order to prevent Muḥammad or the monk Baḥīrā from harming Israel. They began to write the Qurʾan, interpolating their names at the beginning of the Suras without anyone noticing, and inserting a secret Hebrew sentence affirming their authorship within the text itself to prove Jewish authorship of the Qurʾan. Included among the ten Jewish sages were ʿAbdullah ibn Salām, the learned rabbi from Medina who converted to Islam and became the Prophet Muḥammad’s adviser; and the rightly-guided caliphs Abū Bakr (the son of an exilarch, resh galuta), ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and ʿAlī. The story of the sages – similarly to the seventh-century (?) Sefer Toldot Yeshu (Narrative of the History of Jesus) – is a form of counterhistory, defined by Funkenstein as a story that ‘employs the sources of the adversary in order to turn [in this case Islamic] memory on its head.’99 Concerning taḥrīf, the Jewish polemicists reject the old argument of alleged Biblical prophesies of the coming of Muḥammad and Islam. In addressing this question, al-Qirqisānī divides the Muslims into the lay public and ‘people of learning and speculative thinking’. The former accuse the Jews of lying when they deny that the Torah mentions Muḥammad, and the latter suggest that either the text of the Torah is a falsification (taḥrīf al-naṣṣ), or that it has been misinterpreted (taḥrīf al-maʿānī), and proclaim that the Torah speaks of Muḥammad in intimations. Al-Qirqisānī rejects these arguments, suggesting instead that all references to prophecies of Muḥammad’s coming cited by Muslims were either fulfilled prior to the emergence of Islam, or will be fulfilled during the Messianic Age. A sign of this age is the Israelites’ return from exile to the Land of Israel.100 Naturally, the Jewish interpretation of the so-called ‘Signs of Prophethood’ differed from that of the Muslims. Maimonides starts his apologetic response in The Epistle to Yemen with a refutation of the three Biblical verses most often adduced by Muslims, or, in his words, ‘these arguments [which] have been rehearsed so often that they have become nauseating’ (Gen. 17:20; Deut. 33:2; 18:15). 1. Whereas Muslims suggest that the words ‘I will make of him a great nation’ in Gen. 17:20 apply to their prophet, Maimonides suggests that they imply neither prophecy nor a Law, but merely refer to a large number of Muslims. Maimonides dismisses the argument that bi-meʾod meʾod (exceedingly) is demonstrated by

 98  The text was edited by Jacob Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work”, Hebrew Union College Annual, 12–13 (1937–1938), pp. 411–59. Cf. Simon Shtober, “Present at the Dawn of Islam. Polemic and Reality in the Medieval Story of Muḥammad’s Jewish Companions”, The Convergence of Judaism and Islam, ed. Michael M. Laskier et al., Gainesville FL: University Press of Florida, 2011, pp. 64–88, where there is further relevant literature.  99  Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, p. 39. 100  Al-Qirqisānī, Anwār, III.15.9.

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Gematria to be equivalent to M-Ḥ-M-D (Muḥammad = 92), by pointing to the fact that the name mentioned in the Qur’an is A-Ḥ-M-D (Aḥmad = 53).101 2. According to Muslim exegesis, the verse ‘The Lord came from Sinai, He shone upon them from Seir, He appeared from Mount Paran’ (Deut. 33:2–3), symbolises three successive revelations. Maimonides rejects this for linguistic reasons. First, he argues that if the verb ‘he appeared’ (hofiaʿ) points to Muḥammad, then it would have to be used in a future tense. And second, the verse describes the revelation at Mount Sinai. In Maimonides’ understanding Seir and Paran are mountains near Sinai, Seir being nearer and Paran further away.102 3. According to Maimonides, God’s promise to Moses to raise ‘a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself ’ (Deut. 18:15–18) did not announce the coming of a new prophet bringing a new law, but a prophet sent to relieve the Israelites of the need to turn to diviners and astrologers in order to arrive at foreknowledge of the future.103 Other Jewish exegetes most often identified this prophet with Jehoshua or Samuel.104 However, this does not mean that Rabbanite and Qaraite commentators would deny that Islam was referred to in the Hebrew Bible; it was the last of the four kingdoms that subjugated Israel, according to the Book of Daniel (chapter 11), or ‘the little horn’ (Daniel 7:8). Redemption will come when this kingdom ends.105 In accordance with the Jewish and the Christian exegesis, Maimonides also identifies the little horn’ with Muḥammad, against whom Daniel’s prophecy warns that:

101 Moses

Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, p. ix. Maimonides refers to Sura 61:6, where Jesus announces to the children of Israel that after him will come a messenger ‘whose name shall be Aḥmad’. The gematria of this verse was first employed by Samauʾal al-Maghribī, Silencing the Jews, pp. 31–4. 102 Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, p. ix. Somewhat different reasoning was proposed by Saʿadya Gaon, who considers them merely distinct appellations for Mount Sinai, which towers over three neighbouring countries that each name it differently. The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, p. 165. Abraham ibn ʿEzra, when commenting on this verse, wrote: ‘Those lacking faith said that ‘from Seir’ refers to the religion of Edom (i. e. Christianity), and Paran is the religion of Ishmael, and they are wrong.’ Cf. The Exalted Faith. Abraham Ibn Daud, 178b–179a. 103  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, ix–x. In MT Hilkhot ʿovde kokhavim u-mazalot 9:2 Maimonides explains the verse differently: ‘He is not coming to establish a [new] faith, but rather to command the people [to fulfil] the precepts of the Torah and to warn against its transgression.’ 104 For exegeses of this verse by Qaraites, see Daniel Frank, Search Scripture Well. Karaite Exegetes and the Origins of the Jewish Bible Commentary in the Islamic East, Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 234–47. According to the author of Taʾyīd al-milla, by this the Jews mean the prophet Job and other prophets. Kassin, A Study of a Fourteenth-Century Polemical Treatise, p. 330. 105  For ‘the little horn’ (qeren zeʿira) in the Hebrew literature see Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur, pp. 308–310. For other derogatory nicknames for Islam in the usage of the Qaraites see Ben-Shammai, “The Attitude of Some Early Karaites”, pp. 8–12.

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[I]n some future time a person would appear with a religion similar to the true one, with a book of Scripture and oral communications, who will arrogantly pretend that God had vouchsafed him a revelation, and that he held converse with Him. The person will found a new religion similar to the divine law and make claims to a revelation of a Scripture, and to prophecy. He will furthermore endeavour to alter and abolish the Law.106

The prophet Daniel not only foresaw the coming of Islam, but also alluded to Israel’s humiliation and degradation ‘suffered only at the hand of the Arabs, may they be speedily vanquished.’107 The Arab conquests were nothing more than a harbinger of the end; the final, brutal kingdom that announces the messianic fulfilment of time. In Jewish theological writings intended for internal consumption, numerous polemical allusions shower contempt on the most sacred concepts of Islam in highly abusive terms. The most characteristic of these are Hebrew puns on Arabic expressions that might not be immediately clear to a non-Jew. Just as Jesus is called ‘that man’, the medieval Hebrew or Judaeo-Arabic literature commonly uses the terms ‘madman’ (meshuggaʿ)  – derived from Hos. 9:7: ‘The prophet was distraught, the inspired man driven mad [meshuggaʿ]’ – or pasul (unfit) – a pun on the Arabic rasūl (messenger) – as substitutes for the name Muḥammad. Obviously, the rhetorical function of these invectives is to deny true prophethood to anyone after the last of the Hebrew prophets. In a similar vein, the holy city of Mecca is referred to in Hebrew as makkot (plague), and the Holy Book of Islam is dubbed the qalon (shame).108 Neither did the Muslim dogma of the miraculous inimitability of the Qurʾan remain without a response from Jewish authors. While some treated it only cursorily, others rejected it in detail: Yūsuf al-Baṣīr tackled the issue in a small book;109 al-Qirqisānī’s treatment of it in his Kitāb al-anwār is presumably a précis of his lost polemic against Islam;110 and Ibn Kammūna’s section on the inimitability of the Qurʾan covers almost half of his chapter on Islam in Examination of the Three Faiths.111 Closely connected with iʿjāz al-Qurʾān are the accusations 106  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, iv–v. For ‘the little horn’ in the Christian exegesis see John V. Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 45. 107  Epistle to Yemen in Epistles, p. 127. 108  See Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur, pp. 302–3, 316; Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 6, p. 94, 333, n. 17, 410, n. 65; Paul B. Fenton, “Jewish Attitudes to Islam: Israel Heeds Ishmael”, The Jerusalem Quarterly, 29 (1983), pp. 91–3; Yishak Avishur, “Hebrew Derogatories for Gentiles and Jews in Judaeo-Arabic in the Medieval Era and their Metamorphoses”, Hadassah Shy Jubilee Book: Research Papers on Hebrew Linguistics and Jewish Languages, ed. Yaakov Bentolila, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1997, pp. 97–116 (Hebrew). 109  Sklare, “Responses to Islamic Polemics”, pp. 150–61. 110  Nemoy (ed.), vol. 222, pp. 298–300. 111  For Ibn Kammūna’s anti-Islamic polemics, see Barbara Roggema, “Epistemology as Polemics: Ibn Kammūna’s Examination of the Apologetics of the Three Faiths”, The Three

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of the abrogation of Jewish Law,112 perceived by Jewish polemicists as the biggest challenge, as demonstrated by the space the issue occupies in the polemical works. By the mid-tenth century, abrogation was a widely discussed topic within Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theological discourse. Jewish authors of course knew about the Christian and Muslim claims to the abrogation of the previous revelation. In his commentary on the Book of Daniel, the Qaraite Yefet ibn ʿEli (10th century) writes that Christianity and Islam agree on one thing: that ‘the Torah has been abrogated (qad nusikhat) and replaced by a different law (sharʿ); that is, by a religion that will no longer be abrogated by any other [religion]. When Islam rose, [the Muslims] proclaimed of the Torah the same as the Christians, namely that the book of their lord [i. e. Muḥammad] had replaced (qad nasakha) the Christian religion with another.’113 Using intellectual arguments and verses from the Hebrew Bible, Jewish authors defended the eternal validity of the Torah and the concordance between its teachings in the past and present time. Saʿadya Gaon was the first Jewish thinker to engage in a systematic polemic with Islam, although he never wrote an independent treatise on the subject. Dominated by the subject of abrogation, his polemic appears across many of his works, though primarily in his interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, and in his philosophical/theological treatise, Kitāb al-amānāt wa-l-iʿtiqādāt (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions), chapter III.7–10. A very similar set of arguments and counter-arguments is raised in Samuel ben Ḥofni’s Treatise on Abrogation of the Law (Kitāb Naskh al-sharʿ),114 several chapters in al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Anwār,115 Nethanel ibn Fayyūmī’s Bustān alʿuqūl (The Garden of Wisdom), and various works by Maimonides. Maimonides had already taken a stance against the Muslim concept of abrogation in his Commentary on the Mishnah, where the authenticity and irrevocability of the Torah appear as the subject of the eighth and ninth articles of his ‘Thirteen Principles of the faith’. He states: ‘The Ninth Fundamental Principle is the authenticity of the Torah, i. e. that this Torah was precisely transcribed from God and no one else. To the Torah, oral and written, nothing Rings. Textual Studies in the Historical Trialogue of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Barbara Roggema, Marcel Poorthuis, and Pim Valkenberg, Leuven: Peeters, 2005, pp. 57–68. 112  The medieval Hebrew usually translates the Arabic naskh as temura, heʿeteq, or biṭul. 113 David S. Margoliouth (ed.), A Commentary on The Book of Daniel by Jephet ibn Ali the Karaite, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, pp. 125 (Arabic), 65–6 (English). 114 See Sklare, Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon, pp. 28–9; Sklare, “Responses to Islamic Polemics”, pp. 137–161. We learn from Moshe ibn ʿEzra that this book refuted the inimitability of the Qurʾan as well. Moshe bn ʿEzra, Kitāb al-muḥāḍara wal-mudhākara. Liber Discussionis et Commemorationis (Poetica Hebraica), ed. and trans. Abraham S. Halkin, Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1975, p. 36:40–38:3. 115 Al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-Anwār, III.15. For discussion of his views, see Adang, Muslim Writers, pp. 202–10.

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must be added nor anything taken from it, as it is said, ‘You must neither add nor detract’ (Deut. 13:1).116 Naturally, all the Jewish authors rejected the possibility that Judaism could be replaced by another religion, including Islam. Of fundamental importance for his doctrine of the irreplaceability of Mosaic Law or the written and oral Torah (Torah she-bi-khtav and Torah she-be-ʿal peh) is the uniqueness of the Torah of Moses, and of Moses’ status as a prophet in relation to other prophets and laws; nobody on a lower spiritual level can come up with a better law that might abrogate Mosaic Law. ‘Moses is God’s prophet and spokesman, and the greatest and most perfect of the seers. To him was vouchsafed by God what has never been vouchsafed to any prophet before him, nor will it be in the future. The entire Torah was divinely revealed to Moses […]. It will neither be abrogated nor superseded, neither supplemented nor abridged.’117 Another cornerstone of the uniqueness of the Torah and its irreplaceability is the revelation on Mount Sinai and the public nature of Moses’ miracles. Saʿadya,118 Jehuda ha-Levi,119 Maimonides,120 and Abraham ibn Dāwūd121 (who relies heavily on Saʿadya) unanimously agree on the fact that, while Moses performed miracles publicly before the eyes of his entire people, Muḥammad prophesied only before a handful of believers. The same applies to his miracles.122 The public nature of his prophecies and miracles guarantees the reliability of accounts and bolsters the argument of uninterrupted transmission and unanimous agreement. Muslim polemicists usually associated with the abrogation and taḥrīf of the Torah an argument that the people of Israel were no longer the chosen people, and that the Muslims had taken their place. They often cited Genesis 49:10 (‘The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet’) – which also holds an important position in Christian-Jewish polemics123 – in order to demonstrate that the Jews’ loss of national sovereignty, political inferiority, 116  Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, New York NY: Behrman House, 1972, pp. 420–1; cf. Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot melakhim, 11:6, and The Guide of the Perplexed II, chap. 39. 117  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, p. vi. 118  Saʿadya Gaʾon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Introduction, pp. 29–30; cf. Eliezer Schlossberg, “R. Saadia Gaon’s Attitude Towards Islam”, Daʿat: Periodical of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, 25 (1990), pp. 21–51 (Hebrew). 119  Kuzari, 1:86–9. 120  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, p. vi. 121  The Exalted Faith. Abraham Ibn Daud, 181b–183a. Cf. Resianne Fontaine, “Abraham ibn Daud’s Polemics against Muslims and Christians”, The Three Rings. Textual Studies in the Historical Trialogue of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Barbara Roggema, Marcel Poorthuis, and Pim Valkenberg, Leuven: Peeters, 2005, pp. 22–9 and 32–3. 122 Elijah of Genazzano used the same argument, but this time with Christianity, against Francesco of Aquapendento during their disputation held in Orvieto between 1472 and 1489. Elijah contrasts this with the private teachings of Jesus to his disciples. Judah Rosenthal, Meḥḳarim u-Meḳorot, Jerusalem: Mass 1967, pp. 440–1. 123  Bernard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental 430–1096, Paris: Université de Paris, 1960, pp. 227–37; Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds, pp. 98–100; Baron, Social and Religious History, vol. 5, pp. 125–30; Sbath, Vingt traités, pp. 31–2.

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and subjugation by a foreign power were evidence of God’s wrath at his chosen people for refusing to accept the new religion, and a sign of the abrogation of his religion.124 On the basis of a literal interpretation of key Qurʾanic verses dealing with the Jews,125 Muslims believed that God had forever cursed Jews, and decreed upon them perpetual abasement and poverty.126 In Muslim (and Christian) polemical literature, the destruction of the Jewish kingdom and the expulsion of the Jews from their homeland are often presented as evidence of the abrogation of their religion which requires them to adopt a new law  – the Islamic or the Christian law. Al-Qirqisānī presents a different interpretation, suggesting that their misfortune resulted from their neglect and violation of God’s commandments in the Torah. Through the prophets, God told the Israelites that the renewal of their state, the coming of the Messiah, and the rebuilding of the Temple (foreseen by the prophet Ezekiel) depended upon their willingness to repent. ‘A man may repent only for something that he has neglected in his insubordination. This is the opposite of the Muslims’ claim that Mosaic Law was nullified and made invalid and that it was therefore necessary to adopt a different one.’ Instead of adopting a new law, the Jews should return to observation of the Torah.127 Moreover, al-Qirqisānī launches a counter-attack proclaiming that all nations  – Christian and Muslim included  – will accept the laws of the Torah (including the Sabbath), the pilgrimage on the Feast of Tabernacles, and the celebration of Passover as stipulated in Isaiah 66:23 and Zechariah 14:18. Jewish apologists concur that the political inferiority and subjugation of the Jews are not reflections of their relations with God. Nathanael ibn Fayyūmī of Yemen states that, despite all appearances, God did not forsake the Jews or condemn them to perdition. On the contrary, they suffer because they are God’s chosen people. As a father reproaches his son, so God chastises Israel in order to purify it from its sins: But we recognize full well that the Creator has imposed greater responsibilities upon us than upon others, and that He deals with us more severely than with them. Our punishment He determines, theirs not. In this manner God shows His love for us, by this means does He ennoble us […]. Since He regards us as pre-eminent, He holds us to strict account in this present fleeting life […]. He hastens to chastise us that He may purify us 124  Ibn Ḥazm mentions precisely this argument in his polemic against Judaism: ‘If they argue that the Torah says that Mosaic Law is valid for all ages, we respond that this is an unacceptable interpretation, for the Torah also says: “They shall inhabit this land for all ages”, and we can see with our own eyes that they have left it.’ Ibn Ḥazm, Kitāb al-Fiṣal, p. 129. 125  In this context the Islamic tradition most often mentions Q 2:61: ‘And abasement and poverty were pitched upon them, and they were laden with God’s anger; that because they had disbelieved the signs of God and slain Prophets unrightfully; that because they disobeyed and were transgressors.’ 126  See Ben-Shammai, “Jew-Hatred”, pp. 161–70. 127  Al-Qirqisānī, Anwār, III.15.9.

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from our sins just as the intelligent and affectionate father promptly administers bitter medicine to his son against the boy’s will, in order to purge his body of deleterious waste. The father certainly knows better than the boy what is for his good. It is therefore incumbent upon us to accept His chastisement cheerfully that ours may be the reward. He imposes severe penalties upon us in order to make our portion beautiful, for it is written, ‘Whomsoever the Lord loveth, he chastiseth.’128

Ibn Fayyūmī stresses that the Hebrew Bible abounds in promises of Israel’s salvation and perpetuity. Its very survival despite the persecutions is undeniable evidence of God’s protection. The existence of Israel and its Law are mutually interdependent: ‘Israel’s indestructibility is the result of a Divine pact betokened by the perpetuation of the Torah in our midst.’129 In sum, God’s blessing – the status of chosen people – belongs not to Ishmael (the Muslims), but Isaac (the Jews). The response of medieval Jewish authors to the discrepancy between the claim of Israel as God’s unique, chosen nation, and its present powerlessness is the same as the response of the authors of the Hebrew Bible: its very powerlessness was proof of God’s power, which manifests itself through the use of the world powers as ‘the rod of his anger and the staff of his indignation’ (Isa. 10:5) to chastise and purify Israel. With their blind urge for power, the nations of the world – whether Biblical Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, or Edom and Ishmael – unknowingly serve a higher design.

6. Muḥammad – Prophet, or Imposter? The question of Muḥammad’s prophethood was of crucial importance in medieval Jewish polemics. While Muḥammad’s contemporaries, the Jews of Medina, responded according to Muslim sources predominantly in the negative, later generations were not so unequivocal. For the most part, Jewish thinkers oscillated between an attitude of refusal and one of receptivity towards the new religion – either denying Muḥammad the status of a prophet, or admitting that he was a real prophet, but insisting that his mission was intended solely for the idolatrous and uncouth Arabs, given that each nation was due a divine revelation in accordance with its specific language and requirements. The latter perspective was primarily advocated by sects on the fringes of Rabbinical Judaism or communities particularly exposed to pressure from the Muslim society, such as the Yemenite Jews.130  Nathanael ibn al-Fayyūmī, The Garden of Wisdom, pp. 114–5 (Eng.), pp. 72–3 (Arab.).  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, vii. 130  For a general assessment of the Jewish perspective on Muḥammad, see Norman Solomon, “Muḥammad from a Jewish Perspective”, Abraham’s Children. Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conversation, ed. Norman Solomon et al., Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2006, pp. 132–9. 128 129

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Willingness to acknowledge Muḥammad as a prophet is evident in the example of the ʿĪsāwiyya, the oldest known Jewish messianic movement in Islamic times. The movement was named after its founder, Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī, who was active in the reign of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān ibn Muḥammad (744–50). A self-proclaimed prophet and a forerunner of the Messiah,131 Abū ʿĪsā admitted that Jesus and Muḥammad were God’s true messengers to the people. It was therefore recommended – though not obligatory – that Jews study the Gospels and the Qurʾan, despite the fact that the laws contained within them were not binding for them.132 Strangely, Abū ʿĪsā’s followers were not entirely repudiated by the bulk of the Jewish people. While their writings have not survived, their influence is discernible in the aforementioned Jewish apocalypse, The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿon bar Yochai, which stems from early ʿAbbāsid times. The text describes Muḥammad as a prophet sent by God to the Ishmaelites – the Muslims/Arabs  – in order to save Israel from the wickedness of the kingdom of Edom (Rome). It seems that such opinions were not rare among the Jews. The Muslim jurist Shaybānī wrote around 800 that ‘today the Jews in the areas of Iraq recognize that there is no god but God and Muḥammad is the prophet of God, but they claim that he was sent as a prophet only to the Arabs, and not to the Jews.’133 Acknowledgment of Muḥammad’s prophethood was not limited to Jewish sects, but could also be found in the works of the authors associated with the mainstream of Rabbinical Judaism, including Nathanael ibn Fayyūmī, whose The Garden of Wisdom quotes profusely from the Qurʾan to support its author’s arguments. The views of this leader of Yemenite Jewry (who died around 560/1165) bear traces of the teachings of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity), including their tendencies to harmonize the different religions,134 and equates religions with different medicaments, useful to specific nations. God sent mankind prophets both before the Sinaitic revelation and afterwards. Muḥammad is one of them, but the Jews are not the intended audience of his Arabic furqān. Muḥammad’s mission is to the pagans, who are ignorant of the one God. As stated in the Qurʾan (14:4), God sends a prophet to every people, according to their language. ‘Consequently,’ suggests Ibn Fayyūmī, ‘had He sent a prophet to us, he would surely have been of our language.’ God promotes His will in the history of humankind, and: 131  See Steven M. Wasserstrom, “The ʿῙsawiyya Revisited”, Studia Islamica, 75 (1992), pp. 57–80; Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew. The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 71–89. 132  Al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-Anwār, III.13.1–2; cf. al-Bāqillānī, Kitāb al-tamhīd, ed. Richard J. McCarthy, Beirut: Librairie Orientale, 1957, pp. 161, 189–90. 133  Goldziher, “Usages juifs d’après la littérature religieuse des musulmans”, p. 91. 134  Ronald C. Kiener, “Jewish Ismāʿīlism in Twelfth Century Yemen: R. Nethanel ben alFayyūmī”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 74/3 (1984), pp. 249–66; Salomon Pines, “Nathanaël ben al-Fayyūmī et la Théologie Ismaëlienne”, Revue de l’Historie Juive en Égypte, 1 (1947), pp. 19–22.

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He therefore sends prophets in every age and period that they might urge the creatures to serve Him and do good, and that they might be a road-guide to righteousness. […] It is incumbent, then, upon every people to be led aright by what has been communicated to them through revelation and to emulate their prophets, their leaders and their regents. Not one people remained without a law, for all of them are from one Lord and unto Him they all return. All call unto Him, all turn their faces unto Him, and every pious soul is translated to Him. […] But Muḥammad’s message was to a people whose fathers had not been warned and who had no Divine Law through which to be led aright.135

Ibn Fayyūmī advances a theory  – propounded by several medieval Jewish thinkers  – that presupposes a progressive unfolding of human moral nature. According to this notion, the non-Jewish faiths, particularly Christianity and Islam, fulfil an essential role in refining human nature and promoting the moral advancement of the world. They do so by eradicating idolatry and paganism and spreading a purer idea of God, which will culminate in the appearance of the Messiah. Thus, behind the spread of Christianity and Islam lies the hand of Providence.136 According to Reuben Ahroni, Ibn Fayyūmī’s ‘concession’ with regard to the role of Muḥammad ‘is no more than a mere tongue-in-cheek acquiescence’ intended to provide Yemenite Jews with a way out of the predicament of religious propaganda produced by Yemenite Muslims.137 As is made clear in the following pages, the Jewish religious leaders generally perceived this ‘interconfessional spirit’ as dangerous, and protested against it.138 As already mentioned, Christian theologians soon formulated within their polemics against Islamic prophetology a set of ‘negative attributes’ of the true prophecy.139 The Jewish polemic took up this Christian concept of ‘negative attributes’. An intermediate role was played by Dāwūd ibn Marwān alMuqammaṣ, the ninth-century author of the first Jewish theological work, Twenty Chapters (ʿIshrūn maqāla).140 In the fourteenth chapter of ‘Twenty’ he cites an unidentified Christian source to include ten ‘negative attributes’ of the true faith, reinterpreted to favour Moses and Judaism.141 He uses these attributes  Nathanael ibn al-Fayyūmī, The Garden of Wisdom, pp. 108–9 (Eng.), pp. 69–70 (Arab.).  This argument became common in the Yemenite polemics. See, for example, the seventh chapter of Zachariā al-Ẓāhirī’s Sefer ha-Musar (16th century), ed. Yehuda Ratzaby, Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1965, pp. 124–7. 137 Reuben Ahroni, “From Bustān al-ʿuqūl to Qiṣat al-batūl. Some Aspects of Jewish-Muslim Religious Polemics in Yemen”, Hebrew Union College Annual, 52 (1981), pp. 327–8; Reuben Ahroni, “Some Yemenite Jewish Attitudes towards Muḥammad’s Prophethood”, Hebrew Union College Annual, 69 (1998), pp. 49–99. 138  See, for example, al-Qirqisānī’s critique, Ben-Shammai, “The Attitude of Some Early Karaites”, pp. 25–6. 139  Stroumsa, “The Signs of Prophecy”, pp. 101–14. 140  Stroumsa, Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammiṣ’s Twenty Chapters (ʿIshrūn maqāla), Leiden: Brill, 1989, pp. 262–9. 141  Cf. similar arguments propounded by Abraham ibn Dāwūd in Fontaine, “Abraham ibn Daud’s Polemics”, pp. 32–3. 135 136

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to conclude that, unlike Moses, Muḥammad cannot be considered a true prophet. Although Al-Muqammaṣ did not state this explicitly, he did not have to, as his readers  – Jews, Christians, and Muslims  – would have understood the barbs aimed at the Muslim polemical claims. First, insistence that the Prophet’s first victory over his enemy at Badr was achieved by preternatural, heaven-sent aid rather than by warfare seemed to undermine the notion of Islam’s military success. Second, the argument that the Prophet’s tradition should not be transmitted from a single direction, but rather from every corner of the earth, undercuts claims of the Torah’s corruption; the Torah, indeed, exists in a variety of languages unlike the exclusively Arabic Qurʾan. Third, the rejection of claims of piecemeal collection of evidence and traditions from various individuals undermined the notion that Muslims travelled for the purpose of collecting traditions. Finally, the requirement that a Prophet’s book must record stories about the Prophet’s preternatural deeds revealed a ‘weak point’ of the Qurʾan, which does not mention Muḥammad’s miracles. Al-Muqammaṣ subsequently shows that all these requirements, and others, are instead met in the case of Moses.142 While al-Muqammaṣ excludes Muḥammad from being a prophet more or less indirectly, early Qaraite authors such as Daniel al-Qūmisī, Salmon ibn Yeroham (d. 344/955), Yefet ibn ʿEli (d. c. 394/1004), and al-Qirqisānī do so openly and often unscrupulously, combining complaints about the hardships of life in ‘the Exile of Ishmael’ with derogatory nicknames for the religious institutions of Islam and its prophet. The attitude of early Qaraites toward Islam, especially in the case of the Jerusalem community, was very negative and more aggressive than that of their Rabbanite counterparts. Al-Qūmisī was not only the first to coin pejorative nicknames for Muḥammad such as meshuggaʿ, but also formulated the polemical attitude of early Qaraism towards a variety of Islamic rituals, including prayer, fasting during Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. In doing so, he accused Islam of superficial monotheism and secret idolatry. Al-Qirqisānī was the only one of the Qaraite authors who used arguments from rational theology in his polemics against Islam. In the chapter of his Kitāb al-anwār, titled ‘The refutation of the Muslims and those who have affirmed Muḥammad’s prophethood’, al-Qirqisānī invalidates Muḥammad’s prophethood, arguing that illogical and contradictory statements in the Qurʾan and the Muslim oral tradition prove Muḥammad’s message untrustworthy and counterfeit.143 Mark Cohen sees in Qaraism’s more aggressive response to Islam, which it was close to with regard to some of its practices, a tendency ‘to dissuade Qaraites from taking the similarity too far’.144  See Adang, Muslim Writers, pp. 162–5; Stroumsa, “The Signs of Prophecy”, pp. 112–3.  Al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-Anwār, III.15,1–16; Ben-Shammai, “The Attitude of Some Early Karaites”, pp. 15, 26–28. 144  Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross. The Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 157. 142 143

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Maimonides’ view on Islam was also very influential. His attempts at undermining Muḥammad’s status as a true prophet bringing God’s revelation must be understood as part of his campaign to refute the Muslim argument of abrogation. He has the same goal in mind when, in the Guide (II.35), he places Moses’ miracles above those of the other prophets. In II.40, Maimonides differentiates between divine religions and conventional religions.145 In principle, both come from God, yet only divine religion – by which he means the religion of Moses – can offer its followers spiritual consummation. Another difference between divine and conventional religions rests in the prophet-lawgiver, who is distinguished from a false prophet by several criteria, which Maimonides presents at the conclusion of the chapter: The way of putting this [the claim of someone to prophetic revelation] to the test is to consider the perfection of that individual, carefully to examine his actions, and to study his way of life. The strongest of the indications you should pay attention to is constituted by his renunciation of, and contempt for, the bodily pleasures, for this is the first of the degrees of the people of science, and all the more, of the prophets. In particular, this holds good with regard to the sense that is a disgrace to us – as Aristotle has set forth – and especially in what belongs to it with regard to the foulness of copulation.146

Although Maimonides illustrates his words by referring to the false prophets Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah, and Ahab, son of Kolaiah (Jeremiah 29:21– 23), when he exhorts his readers at the end of the chapter to ‘know who I have in mind’, they undoubtedly understand these references as allusions to Muḥammad’s numerous wives and inclinations to earthly delights – factors that, in Maimonides’ eyes, disqualify him as a prophet.147 Zachariā al-Ẓāhirī of Yemen (d. c. 997/1589), Maimonides’ great admirer, roundly says that the meshuggaʿ cannot be a prophet since ‘he fornicated every day’.148 Maimonides conceived of both Christianity and Islam as superficial copies and imitations of Judaism, thus inevitably distortions of the original form that they strive to imitate. 145 This distinction between conventional and divine religions is also made by Yehuda haLevi, Kuzari, 1:81; 2:48; 3:7–9, 51, 97–98, 124–25. 146  Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, vol. 2, p. 384. The Prophet’s qualities are described in detail in II.36: ‘He will have detached his thoughts from, and abolished his desire for, bestial things  – I mean the preference for the pleasures of eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and, in general, of the sense of touch, with regard to which Aristotle gave a clear explanation in the Ethics, saying that this sense is a disgrace to us’, p. 371. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics iii.13.1118a–b. 147 See Shamir Yehuda, “Allusions to Muḥammad in Maimonides’s Theory of Prophecy in his Guide of the Perplexed”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 64 (1973–1974), pp. 212–24. Quotes from the medieval commentators on Guide of the Perplexed who identified these allusions as referring to Muḥammad can be found in Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain, Leiden: Brill, 1994, pp. 220, 320. 148 Zachariā al-Ẓāhirī, Sefer ha-Musar, p. 127.

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All of these men [Jesus and Muḥammad] purposed to place their teachings on the same level with our divine religion. But only a simpleton who lacks knowledge of both would liken divine institutions to human practices. Our religion differs as much from other religions for which there are alleged resemblances as a living man endowed with the faculty of reason is unlike a statue which is ever so well carved out of marble, wood, silver or gold […]. Likewise a person ignorant of the secret meaning of Scripture and the deeper significance of the Law, would be led to believe that our religion has something in common with another if he makes a comparison between the two […] The tenets of the other religions which resemble those of Scripture have no deeper meaning, but are superficial imitations, copied from and patterned after it.149

If Muḥammad, as Maimonides suggests, is not a prophet and Islam a mere superficial imitation of Judaism, what, then, is its role in God’s plan for humankind? Despite his critique of Islam and especially Christianity in Mishne Torah (Hilkhot Melakhim 11:4), Maimonides accords to Christianity and Islam a positive historical function in God’s plan of redemption, which he locates in the dissemination of monotheistic knowledge of the Scriptures and the notion of God’s commandments among nations that would not have otherwise received them. Islam, with its pure monotheism, but denial of the absolute authority of the Scriptures; and Christianity, with its acceptance of the Scriptures – despite wrong exegeses  – and its idolatry, function in the world as praeparatio messianica. They plant seeds that will reach fruition in the messianic era, when the pure monotheistic doctrine of Judaism will be universally accepted. Maimonides sees Christianity and particularly Islam as ‘contributing factors to the universal rejection of overt idolatry, which is required as an historical precondition for the future Messianic era.’150 As in the case of other questions, on this matter Maimonides probably followed Jehuda ha-Levi,151 who, in Kuzari (4:23) likens Israel suffering in exile to a seed which falls onto the ground and is transformed into its elements and thus produces a tree resembling that from which it had been produced: ‘These religious communities [the Christians and the Muslims,] are only a preparation and prelude to the awaited Messiah, who is the fruit [of this process]. All of them will come to be his fruit when they acknowledge him, and the tree will also become one.’152 149  Moses Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, p. iv. The same idea of seeing in Christianity and Islam only unsuccessful ‘imitations’ (tashbīhāt) of Judaism was expressed before Maimonides by Jehuda ha-Levi in Kuzari, 3:8–9; 2:30–32. 150 David Novak, The Image of the non-Jew in Judaism. An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws, New York NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1983, pp. 141–2; see also Eliezer Schlossberg, “The Attitude of Maimonides towards Islam”, Peʿamim, 42 (1990), pp. 38–60 (Hebrew). 151  On the possibility of these influences, see Howard Kreisel, “Judah Halevi’s Influence on Maimonides: A Preliminary Appraisal”, Maimonidian Studies, ed. Arthur Hyman, vol. 2, New York NY: Yeshiva University Press, 1991, pp. 95–121. 152  The quotation follows the as yet unpublished translation of Barry S. Kogan and Lawrence V. Bernan. Cf. Sarah Stroumsa, “Islam in the Historical Consciousness of Jewish Thinkers of the

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The view of Christianity and Islam as exercising a positive role in the process of the evolution of mankind from idolatry to monotheism took root in Judaism. It is restated in the seventh chapter of the Sefer ha-Musar (Book of Instruction) of the aforementioned Zachariā al-Ẓāhirī, according to whom God sent mankind Christianity and Islam only to clear the way for the Messiah. In the first stage, Jesus (Yeshuaʿ) diverted idolaters from worshipping idols to worshipping God in the form of statues, and in the next stage Muḥammad (meshuggaʿ), although making false claims to be a prophet, ‘brought them a little bit out of the darkness’ by teaching them not to worship statues, but ‘God in their heart.’ At the end, however, the Muslims will confess: ‘Our fathers have inherited nought but lies’ (Jer 16:19). And although Christianity and Islam today prevail over Judaism, in the event they are doomed to fall.153 Echoing Jehuda ha-Levi and Maimonides, al-Ẓāhirī reversed the successionist claims of both Christianity and Islam, which perceived themselves as being the true fulfilment of (initial) Judaic monotheism and the final embodiment of God’s revelation to mankind.

7. ‘Treatise Against the Muslim’ and ‘Bow and Shield’. Two Polemics from Spain As Shelomo ibn Adret and Shimʿon ben Ṣemaḥ Duran were the only Jewish authors to dedicate books in Hebrew exclusively to a polemic against Islam, it is worthwhile to briefly consider their contributions to anti-Islamic polemics. The work of the former draws mainly from the Jewish anti-Islamic polemical tradition, while the latter is heavily indebted to the Christian anti-Muslim tradition. Ibn Adret’s Maʾamar ʿal Yishmaʿel (Treatise against the Muslim)154 is of special import in our context because of its direct response to Ibn Ḥazm’s anti-Jewish polemics in his Book of Distinctions on Religions, Sects and Heresies. What did prompt a rabbi living in Catholic Barcelona at the beginning of the fourteenth century – specifically, Dhū l-Ḥijja 703/July 1304 – to write a tract refuting antiJewish arguments written in Arabic over two hundred years earlier? Surely the Jews of his time had to confront Christian rather than Muslim polemics. Camilla Adang and Bezalel Naor suggest the possibility that Ibn Adret was invited to Arab Middle Ages”, The Intertwined Worlds of Islam. Essays in Memory of Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, ed. Nahem Ilan, Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ben-Zvi Institute, 2002, pp. 443–58 (Hebrew). Cf. Schreiner, “Irrtum, Torheit oder falsche Religion”, pp. 46–52. 153 Zachariā al-Ẓāhirī, Sefer ha-Musar, pp. 125–7. 154 Joseph Perles, R. Salomo ben Abraham ben Adereth. Sein Leben und seine Schriften, nebst handschriftlichen Beilagen, Breslau: Verlag der Schletter’schen Buchhandlung (H. Skutsch), 1863, Appendix, pp. 1–24. From Perles’ edition the text was re-edited by Bezalel Naor (ed.), Maʾamar Al Yishmaʿel. Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret, Spring Valley NY: Orot, 2008, and Ḥajim Z. Dimitrovsky (ed.), Teshuvot ha-Rashbaʾ le-rabenu Shelomo b. r. Avraham ben Adret, Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, vol. 4, 1990.

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write the Treatise by coreligionists living in the Muslim part of Spain or in the Maghreb.155 Harvey Hames offers a different opinion, suggesting that the Treatise should be read through the prism of the Christian anti-Jewish polemics, as the real reason for its composition was the necessity to square up to the challenges posed to Judaism by such personalities as the learned Dominican friar Ramon Martí (d. c. 1285/90) and Ramon Llull (d. 1315).156 Ibn Adret knew the men personally and debated polemical topics with both on several occasions.157 Ibn Adret responded to the polemical arguments of Martí’s Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Iudaeos (Dagger of Faith against Moors and Jews) in his commentaries on Talmudic aggadot (Perushei aggadot),158 which also targets the attempts at conversion of Ramon Llull. Pugio fidei, completed in Barcelona in 1278, is a collection of both real and fancied citations from the Talmud and midrashic literature that purportedly confirm Christian doctrines. Martí also charged the Jews with tampering with the text of some passages of the Hebrew Bible. Harvey Hames infers that, since Ibn Adret did not know Arabic,159 it was probably Ramon Martí who introduced him to Ibn Ḥazm’s Biblical criticism in his Book of Distinctions. However, we should not forget that both Aragon and New Catalonia had extensive Muslim populations. In Catalonia there were roughly 6,000 Mudejars around 648/1250 and in Aragon, Mudejars made up around 35 per cent of the total population.160 Hence, Muslims were the neighbours of the Jews in Catalonia and Aragon and thus the latter may have felt the need to have a vade mecum for their discussions with their Muslim interlocutors. Therefore, while Ibn Adret may have had in mind the contemporary Christian polemic as well while writing the Treatise against the Muslim, I suggest that the Treatise should be read primarily as a direct response to Islamic polemics. In any case, the arguments of both polemics overlapped and became entangled at many points. Since the Treatise is an apologetic response to Ibn Ḥazm’s Book of Distinctions, it is Ibn Ḥazm who sets its agenda: the falsification of the Hebrew Bible 155  Camilla Adang, “A Jewish Reply to Ibn Ḥazm. Salomon b. Adret’s Polemic against Islam”, Judíos en tierras de Islam. Judíos y musulmanes en al-Andalus y el Magreb, ed. Maribel Fierro, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2002, pp. 181–2. Naor, Maʾamar Al Yishmaʿel, p. 32, n. 57. 156  Harvey J. Hames, “A Jew amongst Christians and Muslims. Introspection in Solomon ibn Adret’s Response to Ibn Hazm”, Mediterranean Historical Review, 25 (2010), pp. 203–12. 157 See Harvey J. Hames, The Art of Conversion. Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 251–71, 289–92; Charles Touati, “Rabbi Salomon ben Adret et le Philosophe-Missionnaire Catalan Raymond Lulle”, Revue des études juives, 155 (1996), pp. 185–9; Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews. The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1984, pp. 156–163; Jeremy Cohen, “The Christian Adversary of Solomon ibn Adret”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 71 (1980), pp. 48–55. 158 Perles, R. Salomo ben Adereth, Appendix, pp. 24–56. 159  Joseph ben al-Fawwāl says so in the introduction to his Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, Seder Moʿed (Venice, 1546, see fol. 2a) quoting Ibn Adret’s alleged words. 160  See Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, pp. 23–6.

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and the abrogation of the Mosaic Law. Ibn Adret treats the taḥrīf in roughly four thematic circles: Biblical stories of incest, the numbers of Israelites after their exodus from Egypt, the unreliability of the transmission of the Biblical text, and the insufficiency of the testimony of one witness. Ibn Adret dismisses each of these claims as baseless, although he admits that the Hebrew Bible does contain narratives of incest and fornication involving the forefathers of the nation. However, he assures his readers that there must be a reason for their inclusion, even if the meaning of such narratives is not immediately apparent., Even though the reason for some of its stories and commandments may be concealed from the unlearned, the authority of the Torah is unshakable. Thus, it is not important to know the reasons for them, but to simply obey them. For Ibn Adret, the aim of some of these rather puzzling narratives is to educate. In other cases, he simply explains away their plain Biblical meanings in favour of their Talmudic exegesis. If morally damnable stories about the forefathers of David’s royal dynasty served Ibn Ḥazm as evidence for the falsification of the Torah, Ibn Adret uses them to prove the contrary. To be sure, no royal dynasty would tolerate in its Holy Scriptures stories that besmirch its founders if it did not hold the Scripture as revealed; that is, untouchable. Ibn Adret responds to the accusation that the number of Israelites leaving Egypt was overplayed by arguing that the interest of a would-be falsifier would be, on the contrary, to downplay their numbers in order to enhance the wonder that ‘such an inconsiderable nation conquered the country of twenty-three kings.’ Ibn Adret calls into question Ibn Ḥazm’s accusation of unreliable transmission of the Biblical text with arguments that are common in the stock of Jewish apologetics, that the public revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai had provided ample tawātur for it, and that the very fact that Jews in different parts of the world, as well as Christians, had shared and used the same text of Scripture for hundreds of years guaranteed its authenticity, whereas Ibn Ḥazm, in pointing to the existence of one scroll of the Torah stored in the Temple, hints that throughout Israel’s history it was liable to manipulations and falsifications perpetrated by sinful priests and kings. The author of the Treatise against the Muslim, on the other hand, sees in this carefully preserved copy an exemplar serving to fix prospective errors introduced by scribes. In addition, even if kings damaged parts of the Torah, it does not mean that they damaged the whole Torah. It is not in men’s power to destroy all the copies of the Torah all over the world. Furthermore, the Torah has been translated into many languages so that other nations might also learn from it. It is clear that Ibn Adret’s arguments align with the polemical tradition established by Abraham ibn Dāwūd and Maimonides. Having defended the infeasibility of falsifying the Torah, Ibn Adret turns to the abrogation of the Mosaic Law, which he rebuts with an argument very much in accord with that of Saʿadya Gaon.

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The Treatise against the Muslim testifies to the importance that the Muslim heritage still had in Christian Spain. Ibn Adret might have seen a special challenge in Ibn Ḥazm’s reasoning and in the continuing tradition of Muslim anti-Jewish polemics in Christian Spain, particularly within a context in which double-sided conversions were not uncommon. On the other hand, the Treatise itself probably had little impact on the Jewish anti-Islamic polemic, since it was preserved in just one manuscript – Saraval’s collection – unfortunately lost amidst the Nazi pillaging of the library of the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary.161 A specifically Spanish context can be also assumed for the composition of the anti-Islamic polemic of Shimʿon ben Ṣemaḥ Duran (762–848/1361–1444), who had fled his native Majorca after the anti-Jewish riots of 793/1391. He travelled to Muslim Algiers, where, from 811/1408, he served as the chief rabbi.162 That Duran’s refutation of Islam is rooted in the Christian-Jewish polemic is discernible from his writing of a dual polemic against Christianity and Islam, part of his commentary on the Mishnaic tractate Avot, titled Magen avot (Livorno, 1199/1785). In its separately printed form, the polemical tract bears the title Bow and Shield (Qeshet u-magen, Livorno, 1199–1205/1785–1790).163 Its first part is a defence of Jewish law against the Christian accusation that Jesus abolished the Torah.164 The themes of distortion and abrogation of the Hebrew Bible are introduced in the second part, an anti-Islamic polemic. At the beginning of the chapter dealing with Jewish responses to Muslim anti-Jewish polemics, Duran names several reasons for the scarcity of Jewish polemical works. At the end of his polemics against Islam, he claims that he was not aware of antecedents, ‘except the little material found in the Kuzari’165. In his understanding, the reason for this lies both in the weakness of the Muslim arguments – which are not worth answering – and in the dangers involved in disputing them. Perhaps because of this self-proclaimed awareness of the paucity of the Jewish anti-Islamic polemical tradition, Duran had to fall back on the 161  For information about the manuscript, see Perles, R. Salomo ben Abraham ben Adereth, p. 83, n. 5. 162  See Martin Jacobs, “Interreligious Polemics in Medieval Spain. Biblical Interpretation between Ibn Ḥazm, Shlomoh ibn Adret, and Shimʿon ben Ṣemaḥ Duran”, Gershom Scholem (1897–1982). In Memoriam, ed. Joseph Dan, Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 2007, vol. 2, pp. 35–57. 163  Moritz Steinschneider (ed.), Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 8 (1881), Hebrew part, pp. 1–35; a German translation M. Steinschneider, Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 7 (1880), pp. 1–48. New edition with English translation prepared by Prosper Murciano, Simon ben Zemah Duran, Keshet u-Magen. A Critical Edition, microfilm publication, Ann Arbor MI, 1975. 164 In most of his arguments on Christianity, he seems to be indebted to Profayt Duran’s Kelimat Ha-Goyim. See Eleazar Gutwirth, “History and Apologetics in XVth Century HispanoJewish Thought”, Helmantica, 107 (1984), pp. 238–9. 165 Duran recounts ha-Levi’s arguments against the miraculous character of the Qurʾan (Kuzari I:6).

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reservoir of Christian anti-Islamic polemical motifs and techniques. It offered him a colourful image of the prophet Muḥammad as a false prophet and of the Qurʾan as a wholly contradictory and irrational book.166 Duran’s polemical agenda differs from that of Ibn Adret, whose polemic he did not know. Whilst the latter bases his polemic primarily upon the exegesis of Biblical and post-Biblical material, the former uses arguments based on on the writtings of Muslim philosophers. Duran does not defend the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic tradition, but rather attacks the rationality of Islam. The main objective of his polemic is to prove that the irrational and imperfect teachings enshrined in the Qurʾan cannot abrogate the consummate Torah. To achieve this, Duran scrutinizes the Qurʾanic sayings that contradict the Biblical narrative and logic; Muḥammad’s moral integrity and trustworthiness; the Qurʾan’s content and form; its teachings concerning God’s existence; theodicy; the miraculous inimitability of the Qurʾan; its ambiguities, incoherence and contradictions, and the triviality of the Qurʾan’s teachings about nature and the soul. Duran, however, admits that he had only read a small part of the Qurʾan himself, and that most of his information concerning its teachings and aḥādīth were gathered from the Hebrew translation of Ibn Rushd’s Al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla fī ʿaqāʾid al-milla (The Exposition of the Methods of Proof Concerning the Beliefs of the Community).167 Duran’s selection of the book was not accidental, as it fit in perfectly with his polemical design. The goal of the book is to examine the religious doctrines expounded by the different sects and to decide if any of them were the intention of the lawgiver.168 According to Duran, the diverse or opposing views held by different Muslim thinkers, or Islamic theological and philosophical schools, on fundamental theological questions, resulted directly from the muddled and contradictory sayings of the Qurʾan, testifying to its unrevealed nature. God’s message to mankind ought not to sow discord and schism. In this regard, Duran’s polemic is very different from that of his predecessors and rather follows the Christian polemical patterns. Duran’s labelling of Islam as an irrational and materialistic religion and his depiction of the Qurʾan as a composition rife with confusion whose contents contradict logic is a well-known 166  Joseph Sadan writes about a common reservoir of the polemical techniques of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval Spain: “Identity and Inimitability. Contexts of Inter-religious Polemics and Solidarity in Medieval Spain, in the Light of Two Passages by Moše ibn ʿEzra and Yaʿaqov ben Elʿazar”, Israel Oriental Studies, 14 (1994), pp. 325–47. 167  Moshe of Narbonne mentions in the colophon of the Leiden manuscript of the Hebrew translation of al-Kashf that the manuscript was written in 1347. Al-Kashf was, therefore, translated some time before this date. See Silvia Di Donato, “Il Kitāb al-kašf ʿan manāhiğ di Averroè nella traduzione ebraico-latina di Abraham de Balme”, Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 41/3 (2002), pp. 5–36. 168  Ibn Rushd polemicizes in particular against the Ashʿarites, Muʿtazilites, the sufis and the ‘literalists’ claiming that they have all distorted the scriptures and developed innovative doctrines that are not compatible with Islam.

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topos of Christian anti-Islamic polemics, particularly those of the Mozarabs, which draw heavily on Ps. al-Kindī’s Arabic Risāla or the anonymous Liber denudationis.169 There is no doubt that Duran was indebted to the text. He follows the Risāla in arguing that a number of Islamic beliefs and rituals have their roots in Judaism, such as prayer, fasting, notions of purity and impurity, pilgrimages to Mecca, and dietary laws. Besides religious practice, Duran also sees the influence of Judaism on Islam in the realm of religious beliefs, namely monotheism, God’s incorporeity, the creation of the world etc. Duran turns the accusation of anthropomorphism upon Islam, arguing that the Qurʾan itself uses corporeality when describing God. Duran also pays due attention to the Muslim idea of heaven, which plays a central role in Christian anti-Islamic polemics, though not in Jewish ones. The Qurʾan, Duran says, offers only material images: the righteous enter paradise, where they will enjoy eating, drinking, and having intercourse with virgins, whereas the sinners will stay forever in hell, a place of burning fire. The majority of Muslim religious leaders, claims Duran, accept these images literally. The Qurʾan does not allude at all to spiritual delight. To Duran, these notions are indicative of the imperfection of the Qurʾan since they are the source of difference of opinion inside the Muslim community: while theologians and the common people accept them literally, some Muslim sages, such as Ibn Sīna, al-Fārābī, al-Ghazālī, and Ibn Rushd, are ‘ashamed of them’ and either present them as allegories of spiritual matters, or ‘do not believe in them’. By his claim that Muslim philosophers are ashamed of and contradict the teachings of the Qurʾan, Duran again emulates the strategy of his Christian counterparts. These polemical motifs are just a few from many that Duran took over and introduced into Jewish literature.170 In taking over Christian polemical motifs, Duran did not swerve from the polemical tradition of Jews and Muslims living in Christian Spain. Muslim 169  See Thomas E. Burman, Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050–1200, Leiden: Brill, 1994; Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 86–8, 167. The Risāla was known among the Mozarabs from the eleventh century. It also influenced the anti-Islamic polemics of the Jews, who transcribed it into Hebrew letters. See Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, “La Apologia de al-Kindi en la España del siglo XII: Huellas toledanas de un ʽanimal disputax’”, Estudios sobre Alfonso VI y la Reconquista de Toledo, Toledo: Instituto de estudios visigótico-mozárabes, 1989, pp. 107–29. 170  Al-Kindi’s Risāla or Liber denudationis were not Duran’s sole sources of inspiration. Though he does not expressly state it to be the case, he may well have taken the concept of cultural borrowings and influences from Maimonides. He even admits that Islam professes monotheism (see Marc B. Shapiro, “Islam and the Halakhah”, Judaism, 42 (1993), pp. 332–43), though unlike Maimonides, he charges Islam with retaining vestiges of a pagan past, specifically in connection to the pilgrimage to Mecca. See Gerald R. Hawting, “Širk and ‘Idolatry’ in Monotheist Polemic”, Israel Oriental Studies, 17 (1997), pp. 107–26; cf. Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue against the Jews, pp. 157–9; Bernard Septimus, “Petrus Alfonsi on the Cult at Mecca”, Speculum, 56 (1981), pp. 517–33.

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authors did the same, as is the case in the anti-Jewish tract from Huesca, Fortification of Faith (761/1360). Muslims and Jews, minority communities of Christian Spain, polemicized against each other by making use of arguments from the polemical literature of the majority Christian society. That shows that the polemical agendas of both Treatise against the Muslim and Bow and Shield are rooted in the specific cultural milieu of medieval Spain, where all three traditions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – permeate and become entangled in the polemical genre. Moreover, if it is unlikely that Ibn Adret’s polemic exerted an influence on subsequent Jewish thinking about Islam or the way the Jews wrote about Islam, the same cannot be said about Duran’s Bow and Shield, whose reception in Jewish literature is attested in both polemical and historical writings. It appears in abridged form in Abraham Farissol’s (856–935/1452–c. 1528) anti-Christian polemical treatise, Magen Abraham (Shield of Abraham), although it was not the author who attached it to the book, but a later anonymous copyist.171 Nevertheless, its inclusion testifies to the authority of Bow and Shield among the Jews. Furthermore, passages and quotations from Bow and Shield – specifically those about Islam’s borrowings from Judaism  – figure in Sefer Divrei Yosef (1083– 4/1672–3), by the Egyptian historian Joseph Sambari.172

8. Conclusions The present survey would seem to confirm Amos Funkenstein’s claim, presented in the introduction, that ‘Judaism and Islam were not confrontational cultures’. We should not be misled by the size of the body of polemical literature surveyed here. Despite this essay’s rather lengthy presentation of a seemingly substantial body of polemical literature, we should be conscious that such works constitute only a fraction of the literary output of Islamic and Jewish cultures. Though polemics against the Jews and Judaism play a prominent role in the canonical texts of Islam, in later periods it became a marginal topic, with the main brunt of Muslim polemical energy now being borne by the Christians. Islamic anti-Jewish polemical discourse right from its beginning revolved around a relatively constant set of polemical claims and motifs based on the Qurʾan and its exegesis (taḥrīf, aʿlām al-nubuwwa, naskh), the veracity of which polemicists tried to prove with the help of a set of verses culled from the Bible. 171 For details, see David Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew. The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol, Cincinnati OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981, pp. 57–84 (Ruderman mistakenly ascribes the authorship of Qeshet u-magen to Profayt Duran). 172  See the discussion in Martin Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte in jüdischen Chroniken. Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, pp. 176–8.

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This discourse was later augmented by a rather succinct and superficial discussion of the Rabbinical literature; nevertheless, it did not usher in new and original polemical motifs and techniques. While, from the twelfth century onwards, Christian anti-Jewish polemics were marked by the employment of the Talmud or Jewish oral tradition to corroborate Christian arguments, Muslim polemics did not do so in their own efforts to demonstrate that the Jewish sages of antiquity had already recognised Muḥammad’s prophethood. They used the Rabbinical literature only with the intention of bolstering the claim of taḥrīf and naskh. In other words, in the Muslim literature we do not find an equivalent of Ramon Martí’s Pugio fidei, a major sourcebook for anti-Jewish treatises. Later polemicists hardly went beyond the polemical discourse established by Ibn Ḥazm, Samawʾal al-Maghribī, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. While Muslim polemicists left behind several books and treatises, this was not the case for their Jewish counterparts. Although the Jews – as we have seen – do polemicize against Islam, the number of books dedicated fully to polemics is meagre. The Jews generally refrained from composing books refuting Islam; and, if they did so, the refutation was mainly incorporated into works dealing more generally with theological themes. Moreover, Jewish authors did not respond to all three polemical claims in the same measure, paying more attention to claims of falsification of the Torah and especially its abrogation. The central theme was the question of Muḥammad’s prophethood, that is, whether his prophecy was intended for all mankind, or just for Arabs? Naturally, the Jewish authors typically defended the latter, which provided them with a way out when pressed by their disputants. Jewish apologetical discourse was very quickly standardized and widely restated. This was certainly the case with Ibn Adret’s Treatise against the Muslim. Only Duran’s Bow and Shield deviates from standard Jewish anti-Islamic polemics in that, to a large extent, it takes up narratives and techniques of Christian anti-Islamic polemics, which revolve around the question of the rationality of the teachings of the Qurʾan and Islam and Muḥammad’s moral integrity. This takeover and reuse in Jewish anti-Islamic polemics presents a potentially fruitful path for future research, building on the research started some one hundred and forty years ago by Steinschneider, the editor and translator of Duran’s Bow and Shield, and the author of Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden.

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Moses Maimonides (d. 529/1204) and al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (d. 596/1200), his Friend and Patron Between Islam and Judaism* Tzvi Langermann 1. Moses Maimonides and his Forced and Feigned Conversion Moses Maimonides, the famed philosopher, physician, legist, and communal leader, experienced several major turnabouts in the course of his lifetime. Born in Cordoba to a family and community steeped in the Judaeo-Arabic culture of al-Andalus, he spent most of his adult life in Egypt. As a committed Jew, for years he feigned a Muslim identity in the Maghreb, before he was able to reestablish his public Jewish identity at the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean basin.1 Maimonides’ past life as a Muslim, at least outwardly so, was revealed in perilous circumstances. The report of Ibn al-Qifṭī, Maimonides’ contemporary and an acquaintance of his disciple, Yosef ben Yehuda, has been available to scholars for well over a century. The report details: When the order [to convert to Islam] came into force, those with little property departed, while those with much property remained, being chary of family and wealth, professing Islam openly while harboring unbelief. Mūsā ibn Maymūn was one of those who did this, remaining in his country [Maghreb]. When, at that time, he feigned the distinguishing signs of Islam, he also adhered to its specific [rituals], including study of the Qurʾan and prayer. Towards the end of his life, [Maimonides] was harassed by a man from Andalusia, a jurist named Abū l-Aʿlā ibn Muʿīsha, who came to Fustat, met and accused him of having * An earlier version of this article was presented at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem, 23 August 2012. I thank Gad Freudenthal for inviting me to talk, and the participants – especially Joseph Shatzmiller – for their comments. 1 The issue of Maimonides’ forced conversion, or alleged forced conversion, has divided scholarship for over a century. Conflicting accounts, with references to primary sources and earlier scholarship, can be found in recent biographies written by two senior scholars: Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides. The Life and World of one of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, New York NY: Doubleday, 2008, pp. 116–24, and Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides. The Man and his Works, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 14–28 and passim. The present essay leans heavily towards Kraemer’s interpretation.

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converted to Islam in Andalus, defaming him, intending to cause him harm [by having him executed]. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAlī al-Fāḍil prevented this, claiming that when a man is forcibly converted to Islam, the conversion is not legitimate.2

The quotations are provided by Joel Kraemer, who also offers thorough review of resistance to the story of Maimonides’ conversion on the part of some Jewish historians, as well as a survey of additional medieval sources. I have nothing to add to Kraemer’s comprehensive account, and will turn instead to Maimonides’ own Letter on Apostasy (Iggeret ha-Shemad), which more or less confirms Ibn al-Qifṭī’s report.3 The similarity between the two sources should not come as a surprise: Ibn al-Qifṭī’s report may well have been based, at least in part, on information that he received from Jewish refugees from the Almohad persecutions. In this letter, Maimonides intervenes in an exchange between an unnamed contemporary and someone ‘who claims to be one of the men of wisdom, and who did not experience that which befell most of the Jewish communities in this apostasy, May God annul it!’4 For the purposes of this paper, it is worth noting that Maimonides frequently employs the first person plural when discussing the matter, for example: ‘But we lie in our shame, covered by our disgrace, for we have sinned to our Lord God, we and our fathers’.5 Most readers probably suppose that he assumes the authorial ‘we’ in order to identify with the sins and suffering of his kinfolk. However, one cannot dismiss seeing here a personal confession: he himself was one of those who underwent the disgrace of feigned conversion and dissimulation. Maimonides’ account tallies very well with that of Ibn al-Qifṭī. He twice mentions that the profession of Islam by Jews was insincere, and that this was no secret: ‘They know for a fact that we do not believe it by any means, and that we deceive the king by it, ‘They appeased him with their mouths and lied to them with their tongues’ [paraphrasing Ps. 78:36].’6 ‘This victor who compels [conversion on us] does not require anyone to do anything, beyond speech [reciting  Kraemer, Maimonides, p. 118. (Transcription of the names by the author).  An English translation is available in Abraham Halkin (trans.) and David Hartman, Epistles of Maimonides. Crisis and Leadership, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985, pp. 15–34. The Hebrew text (a translation from an Arabic original that is no longer extant) was published by Joseph Kafih (ed. and trans.), Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). Iggerot, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1987, and Isaac Sheilat (ed. and trans.), Letters and Essays of Moses Maimonides, Maale Adumim: Maaliyot, 5748/1988, in their respective editions of Maimonides’ shorter treatises: Davidson translates the title as Letter on Religious Persecution and classifies it as ‘probably misattributed’; see his Maimonides, pp. 501–9. I respond to the doubts he raises concerning its authenticity in an appendix to this essay. My late mentor, Rabbi Yosef Qafih, tended to doubt the authenticity of any Maimonidean writing whose Arabic version was not extant; yet he voiced no doubts about the authenticity of Iggeret ha-Shemad. 4  All translations are my own, from the edition of Sheilat, Moses Maimonides, here p. 30. 5  Sheilat, Moses Maimonides, p. 43. 6  Sheilat, Moses Maimonides, p. 41. 2 3

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the shahāda]. They truly know that we do not believe that speech, and the one who recites [the shahāda] does so only in order to save himself from the king, to assuage him by [acknowledging] the superiority of his faith.’7 The Letter on Apostasy is a seething document, not least because of the unidentified Jewish legist’s assertion that the Jews in the Maghreb ought by law to have chosen martyrdom over conversion to Islam. The uncharacteristic anger that percolates throughout Maimonides’ essay reveals his personal slant on the story. How could someone who never experienced that terrible predicament dare preach to those who have? Yes, Maimonides also has legal arguments against the position of his rival, but these are dwarfed by his fury at being scolded by someone who has no idea of what Jews suffered in this violent persecution. The Letter on Apostasy, which I take to be an authentic Maimonidean work, could only have been written by someone who personally endured the forced, faked conversion described therein.

2. Al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, Friend of Maimonides Let us now return to the dangerous discovery of Maimonides’ Muslim past, and his rescue. Who was ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAlī Fāḍil, the man who prevented Maimonides’ execution? His full name was ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Baysānī al-ʿAsqalānī, though he was better known as al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil. At the time he was likely the most powerful man in Egypt, someone to whom even the great Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin, 1137–93) had to defer. Indeed, the Qāḍī even forced Ṣalāḥ alDīn to vow not to wage war against Muslims.8 Formally speaking, he headed the chancellery (dīwān al-inshāʾ), an office that functioned ‘as a sort of combined ministry of foreign affairs and interior’.9 However, as we shall see, he too had experienced religious persecution, and perhaps even practised dissimulation himself. This personal background may have contributed to his decision, which was of course firmly rooted in the Quranic verse (Q 2:256) cited by al-Qifṭī. I shall argue that the personal bond between Maimonides and the Qāḍī, and the views that they held in common concerning strict monotheism and traditional religions, contributed decisively to the friendship enjoyed by the two leaders, and may well have influenced the Qāḍī’s decision to spare Maimonides’ life. The agreement between Judaism and Islam on fundamental theological issues played a key role. Just as Maimonides’ feigned conversion was by no means,  Sheilat, Moses Maimonides, p. 53.  Malcolm Cameron Lyons and David Edward Pritchett Jackson, Saladin. The Politics of the Holy War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 246. 9  R. Stephen Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols. The Ayyubids of Damascus 1193–1260, Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1977, p. 19. 7 8

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even superficially, a repudiation of his Judaism, so too his return to Judaism did not necessarily mean a complete rejection of Islam: with regard to the belief in one, immaterial deity, and the duty of the leader to impose this belief upon his community, or at least to suppress its public denial – on these two fundamental points Maimonides, and I think the Qāḍī as well, saw an identity of purpose between Judaism and Islam. Al-Qāḍī Fāḍil was born in Ashkelon, now very close to Israel’s border with Gaza, but in 1135, when he was born, a fortress city on the border between the Fāṭimid state in Egypt and the Crusader states to the north.10 Because of its location between these hostile entities, the city attracted refugees of many backgrounds, most of them, like the Qāḍī’s family, Sunnis, who were in an unfavourable position under the Fāṭimids. The Qāḍī’s father, and the Qāḍī himself, found positions in the Fāṭimid chancellery, though they may have had to hide their Sunni affiliation.11 The Qāḍī was a gifted administrator. He rose through the ranks of the chancellery, then joined Saladin’s Sunni rebellion, eventually becoming the de facto administrator of all Egypt. Along with many, much needed, fiscal and other reforms, the Qāḍī instituted a very strict Sunnism. He seems to have been particularly antagonistic towards Christians – not just on religious grounds, it seems, but also because he wished to reduce his administration’s dependence on Christian employees – but also instituted restrictive measures against Jews.12 Maimonides was one of the physicians that the Qāḍī kept on retainer. Maimonides had studied medicine very seriously when he was in the Maghreb, but in Egypt, he did not practice at first; instead he joined a group of investors in the prospering India trade. Maimonides’ brother David was charged with undertaking the actual voyage to India. However, around the year 1170 (we do not know the precise date) he was lost at sea on one of his business trips. 10  The most thorough and accessible study of the Qāḍī is still the dissertation of Hadia Ragheb Dajani-Shakeel, Al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil. His Life and Political Career, PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, 1972. There is a good, critical account, making use of much recent research, in Yaacov Lev, Saladin in Egypt, Leiden: Brill, 1999, pp. 14–24. See now the note by Bogdan C. Smarandache, “Can Doctoral Dissertations Disappear?”, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā, 23 (2015), pp. 126–8, describing the multivolume dissertation of Ibrahim al-Hafsi on the correspondence of al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, completed in 1979 under the supervision of Charles Pellat. Smarandache adds a brief reference to the project now underway to edit and publish the Qāḍī’s letters at the Orient Institut Beirut, directed by Stefan Leder, Sabine Dorpmüller, and Muḥammad Helmy. 11  In one of his poems, the Qāḍī praises the Fāṭimids and denounces the ʿAbbāsid caliphs. Dajani-Shakeel (Al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil. His Life and Political Career, p. 53) characterizes this as a piece of ‘Machiavellian sagacity’; cf. Hannes Möhring and David S. Bachrach (trans.), Saladin. The Sultan and his Times. 1138–1193, Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2008, p. 38. The poem refers only to the political success of the Fāṭimids and has no theological content. 12  On the Qāḍī’s repressive measures against Christians, see Gary Leiser, “The Madrasa and the Islamization of the Middle East. The Case of Egypt”, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 22 (1985), pp. 29–47, on p. 44. Dajani-Shakeel reports that the Qāḍī purged Copts and Jews who had held positions in the Fāṭimid bureaucracy.

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Maimonides then experienced another major upheaval in his life; from a life of relative leisure, having almost all of his time free for study and living off his trading investments, he now had to turn to the practice of medicine.13 In a letter to his translator, Samuel ibn Tibbon (c. 1150–c. 1230), he describes how he had to travel to court every day, and even if no one in the Qāḍī’s family or retinue was ill, his duties still required him to waste a good part of the day away from home. Upon returning home, he would find his waiting room full; after taking his only meal of the day, he would receive patients while reclining on his couch, since he did not have the strength to sit up.14 We do not know precisely when Maimonides and the Qāḍī first met. Clearly, Maimonides’ role as the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt would have brought the two together. However, Maimonides was also part of the retinue of physicians in the service of the Qāḍī. In any event, it is clear to me that their relationship blossomed far beyond that of politics or a doctor-patient relationship. The Qāḍī has left behind a voluminous amount of correspondence, mostly unstudied. It is to be hoped that eventually some references to Maimonides will be found there. The late Franz Rosenthal was, to the best of my knowledge, the only scholar to date to look for such information. He found only one tantalizing mention of a lengthy disputation in which the famous poet, Ibn Sanāʿ al-Mulk (1155–1211), a certain al-Sharīf Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥalabī (very likely a Shi’ite scholar), and Maimonides all participated. Unfortunately, we have no record at all of what transpired at that meeting.15 However, we do have two very rich documents that testify to mutual feelings of respect and admiration; I would go so far as to call it a true personal friendship. The first, penned by Maimonides, is of undisputed authenticity, but it has as yet to be integrated fully into Maimonides’ biography. The other is a report written some time after the demise of both Maimonides and the Qāḍī; its reliability has been questioned, but I think it to be eminently credible. The close relationship between Maimonides and the Qāḍī was doubtlessly a personal one. However, I believe that is generally instructive with regard to the shared religious and political views that facilitated the friendship and the fruits that it bore on the personal and communal level.

13 Maimonides describes in very poignant terms the effect his brother’s death had upon him; among other afflictions, he was bedridden for a year. See Y. Tzvi Langermann, “L’oeuvre médicale de Maïmonide, un aperçu général”, Maïmonide Philosophe et Savant (1138–1204), ed. Tony Lévy and Roshdi Rashed, Leuven: Peeters, 2004, pp. 275–302, at pp. 300–1. 14  An English translation with full source references is available in Kraemer, pp. 440–1; and see Davidson, pp. 69–70, for an abbreviated version, discussion and further references. 15  Franz Rosenthal, “Maimonides and a Discussion of Muslim Speculative Theology”, Jewish Tradition in the Diaspora. Studies in Memory of Professor Walter J. Fischel, ed. Mishael Maswari Caspi, Berkeley CA: Magnes Memorial Museum, 1981, pp. 109–12.

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3. Maimonides’ Praise for the Qāḍī in his Manual on Toxicology The high esteem in which Maimonides held the Qāḍī emerges soundly and in detail from the epistle dedicatory with which Maimonides prefaced his manual of toxicology, written at the behest of the Qāḍī and dedicated to him.16 To be sure, the praise lavished by court physicians on their patrons should usually be taken with several lumps of salt. Indeed, Moritz Steinschneider was of the opinion that the introduction was an allegory whose true and hidden meaning was an encomium to the Qāḍī for saving Maimonides’ life.17 However, there is no need for such an interpretation. The achievements of the Qāḍī recounted by Maimonides are for the most part substantiated by the historical record; and the praise for the Qāḍī’s jihad on behalf of monotheism are, as we shall see, very much in line with Maimonides’ notion of the ideal ruler. I shall now cite Maimonides’ own words: The conduct of our master, the most honorable and eminent judge (al-Qāḍī al-Ajall alFāḍil), is well-known in our time and in our country, and even in some other countries […] With his charity, he satisfies the needs of the poor indigent, raises orphans and redeems prisoners, builds houses of study in the cities, and increases [the number] of scholars and students with his eloquent and pure speech […] he prevents kings and rulers from mostly [judging according to] their natural inclinations […] He has inclined their hearts to behave in a noble, moral way, and thus he has saved highly esteemed people from death, and not only certain individuals, but many groups and large cities. He has watched over people to guard their riches from soldiers […] He has protected women against those who seize power. And how many fires of feuds have broken out between the believers and he has extinguished them, and how many fires of wars against the polytheists he has lighted and kindled until he opened their minds, and the word of God’s Unity spread through all their countries, and the holy cities were cleaned from uncleanness and the word of God’s Unity spread in them. All this was accomplished by him through God’s will with his tongue and pen …18

Maimonides praises the Qāḍī’s justice, compassion, and peacemaking among Muslims, but also his initiative in taking the fight to the Crusaders and liberating Jerusalem. The Qāḍī’s concern for the financial welfare of Egypt – not just its government, but its inhabitants as well – is well documented. He warned Saladin of the social and economic cost of overtaxing the Egyptians in order to feed his war chest.19 The Qāḍī set up pious endowments to support students of Islamic 16  See the new edition and translation of Gerrit Bos (ed. and trans.), Maimonides. On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs, Provo UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2009. This treatise was called al-Maqālat al-Fāḍiliyya on account of its dedication to al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil. 17  Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters, meist nach handschriftlichen Quellen, Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1893, p. 764. 18  Bos (ed. and trans.), Maimonides, pp. 1–2. 19  See especially Möhring and Bachrach (trans.), Saladin. The Sultan and his Times p. 80, regarding taxation.

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law and for the ransoming of prisoners.20 The Fāḍiliyya madrasa, named after its patron, had a large study hall, an impressive library, and a school for orphans; the Qāḍī himself resided in the complex.21 So too we are informed about his successful efforts to end some intra-Muslim conflicts. Dajani-Shakeel notes poetry and prose of the Qāḍī that was directed to ‘Muslim religious and political unity and the jihad.’ Finally, Maimonides’ remark concerning the role of the Qāḍī’s pen calls to mind a statement attributed to Saladin himself, that he owed his mastery over Egypt to the pen of al-Qāḍī Fāḍil.22 Two incidents may serve to illustrate the Qāḍī’s zero tolerance of aberrations from the Sunna on the part of Muslims. Shortly after Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn seized power, a conspiracy on the part of some Shia merchants to reinstate Fāṭimid rule was uncovered. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn favoured leniency, but the Qāḍī overruled him, insisting that they be executed; and that was done.23 The Qāḍī also appears to have played a critical role in ensuring the execution of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (1154– 91), a maverick philosopher who had found patronage in Aleppo, then ruled by one of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s relatives.24 To be sure, each of these cases has its own legal technicalities and political context that certainly figured in the Qāḍī’s decision; the same has already been said with regard to his acquittal of Maimonides. Nonetheless, I submit that the historian is entitled – perhaps it is even incumbent upon him – to take a step backward, and observe the severity of the Qāḍī with regard to straying Muslims, and to contrast that with his leniency towards Maimonides.

4. The Qāḍī Pays a Sick Call to Maimonides Clearly, Maimonides held the Qāḍī in high esteem. Do we have any evidence of the Qāḍī’s respect for Maimonides; something more than the verdict which saved Maimonides’ life, but which, of course, was also legally sound? In fact, we do: it is found in a story recorded by Ghāzī ibn al-Wāsiṭī (d. 1312), written many decades after Maimonides’ demise. Al-Wāsiṭī’s book, al-Radd ʿalā ahl al-dhimma (The Repudiation of the Dhimma People) – dhimmis are members of tolerated religious minorities in Islam, mainly Christians and Jews, tolerated though far from accepted, as the title of al-Wāsiṭī’s book indicates – is unusually virulent,  Lev, Saladin in Egypt, p. 24.  Lev, Saladin in Egypt, p. 128. 22  Lev, Saladin in Egypt, p. 92. 23 The full train of events, and the precise reasons why some were put to death and others not, are analyzed closely by Lev, 86–94. Though some features of the story remain unclear, I believe that the Qāḍī’s stringency to the pockets of pro-Fāṭimid sentiment is plain enough. 24  Hossein Ziai, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī. Founder of the Illuminationist school”, History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, London: Routledge, 1996, p. 435. 20 21

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even for the genre of religious polemics. This passage was first published by Richard Gottheil, and was studied subsequently by Eliyahu Ashtor, Leon Nemoy, and Norman Stillman.25 Gottheil did not notice that ‘the physician Mūsā’, about whom the story is told, is none other than Moses Maimonides. Nemoy dismissed the story as ‘scurrilous’. For my part, I see no reason not to believe the report, which, according to al-Wāsiṭī, comes from reliable sources. I cannot see how alWāsiṭī would have simply invented it; and, even if that were the case, he would likely have exploited Maimonides’ widely known close association with the Qāḍī for his story. So, one way or another, the tale looks to provide solid evidence for their friendship, which is the feature that interests us the most. Here he is what al-Wāsiṭī has to tell us: I received from reliable sources that when the physician Mūsā took ill, al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil came to visit him. The physician was a learned and upright individual. He said to al-Fāḍil, ‘Your fine manners have induced you to visit me. I would advise you not to let any Jewish physician treat you, because, by us, whoever desecrates the Sabbath warrants capital punishment.’ As a result, the Qāḍī forbade Jews to practise medicine, and did not take them into his service.26

What can we learn from this report? First, note that the de facto ruler of Egypt, the power behind Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn himself, paid a visit to Maimonides, who may well have been on his death-bed. The Qāḍī must then have held Maimonides in high regard. The root from which the word that I have translated ‘I would advise you’, ūṣīka, is used to construct wiṣāya, which means something like ‘last will and testament’. Maimonides makes his dying wish to the Muslim Qāḍī, in part because the Qāḍī had the means to carry it out. Nonetheless, this indicates to me that their relationship was one of close personal friendship. I further observe that Maimonides asked the Qāḍī to intervene in an internal Jewish matter, namely, the observance of the Sabbath. This surprising request calls for further analysis. As we have seen, upon seizing power in 1171, the Qāḍī had dismissed Jews and Copts from the civil service in Egypt. His motive may have been primarily one of budget cutting, yet he also took into account the distaste of the Egyptian public for those officials, as well as his own suspicion that those employees harboured pro-Fāṭimid sympathies.27 Bans on Jewish physicians were promulgated both under the Fāṭimids, before the

25 Richard Gottheil, “An Answer to the Dhimmis”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 41 (1921), pp. 383–457; Eliyahu Ashtor (Strauss), History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1944, vol. 1, pp. 104–16, (Hebrew); Leon Nemoy, “A Scurrilous Anecdote concerning Maimonides”, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 62 (1972), pp. 188–92; Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1979, pp. 71–2. 26  My translation from the text published by Richard Gottheil, “An Answer to the Dhimmis”, p. 397. 27  Dajani-Shakeel, Al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil. His Life and Political Career, p. 73.

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rise of the Qāḍī, and in the period after Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s seizure of power.28 Nonetheless, there is no outside evidence to confirm al-Wāsiṭī’s report that a ban had been put in place by the Qāḍī. All in all, I think it entirely plausible that Maimonides would have made a request of this sort. He certainly favoured enforcement of Jewish practice. Moreover, Sabbath observance may have been a mere pretext: Maimonides’ true concern could have been the social pressure to convert, to which physicians serving those in power were particularly susceptible.29 Taken at face value, alWāsiṭī’s report is very instructive concerning religious tolerance and intolerance in this unusual historical setting. Tolerance  – perhaps one can even speak of full acceptance  – clearly existed between the leaders of the two faiths. Concurrently, there was a very strict lack of tolerance on the part of each leader for any deviations within his community. Of course, Jewish ‘tolerance’ of Muslims was not an issue at the time. There was no question that Islam was the dominant faith, the faith of the rulers, and that the Jews were a tolerated minority. Nonetheless, I believe that there was more to Maimonides’ request for the Qāḍī’s assistance in enforcing Jewish law than simply taking advantage of the Qāḍī’s political authority. I believe that Maimonides felt that the Qāḍī would fully agree with the need to rigidly enforce the Sabbath ordinances within the Jewish community. At the heart of this concordance was the notion of a single, eternal, universal truth: the truth of one, immaterial divine being who communicates to humans by way of prophets, and whose communications include binding law codes. In principle, then, Jews and Muslims could and should coexist, each living according to the code of their respective revelations and traditions. On the other hand, there was no 28 The literature on the attitude of Muslim rulers, especially under the Ayyūbids, is reviewed in a very rich note to Lev, 190 n 17. Under the Mamlūks in particular there was an additional restriction on medical practice, namely the need for a license to practise from the head of the physicians’ ‘guild’, the raʾīs al-aṭibbāʾ. I believe that this is the reason behind the hesitation of the Jewish oculist to treat the sufi leader al-Shādhilī, reported by Paul Fenton, “Juifs et soufis en Égypte mamelouke”, Le développement du soufisme en Égypte à l’époque mamelouke, ed. Richard J. A. McGregor and Adam Sabra, Cairo: IFA0, 2006, p. 124. 29 Joel L. Kraemer, “The Andalusian Mystic Ibn Hud and the Conversion of the Jews”, Israel Oriental Studies, 12 (1992), pp. 59–73, esp. p. 62. The sixteenth century Jewish physician Naṣr Allāh Ibn al-Miʿmār al-ʿIbrānī, working in Jerusalem and probably a Qaraite, included a section on polemics in his medical handbook, presumably because the physician would stand in special need of this because of his frequent association with Muslims; see Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Some New Medical Manuscripts from St Petersburg”, Korot. The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science, 13 (1998–99), pp. 9–20. I suspect, though I cannot prove, that Maimonides’ own son Abraham, who served in a government hospital, came close to converting. I believe that Maimonides is hinting at his own son’s close brush with conversion in his letter to Ibn Ḥisdai, concerning which see Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Rambam’s Epistle to R. Ḥisdai. A New Textual Witness, and Additional Thoughts about its Authenticity”, Ta-Shma. Studies in Judaica in Memory of Israel M. Ta-Shma, ed. Avraham (Rami) Reiner et al., vol. 2, Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press, 2011, pp. 533–9 (Hebrew).

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room for any deviation within the communities. Shortly after arriving in Egypt, Maimonides had taken drastic actions to suppress Karaite practices.30 Now, at the end of his life, he asked for the Qāḍī’s help in enforcing the Jewish Sabbath by means of even more drastic action.

5. Four ‘Models’ for Maimonides’ Experience of Islam Let us now take a step or two backwards and broaden our field of vision. What was Maimonides’ attitude, or attitudes, towards Islam? The attitude that a person develops towards a different faith, or a different faith community, is invariably shaped both by personal experience and bookish study. For lack of a better term, I suggest that Maimonides experienced four different ‘models’ of an Islamic state, two in the western Mediterranean and two in the east. He was born into the ‘convivencia’ of Andalusian Jewry’s golden age, but then experienced the trauma of the Almohad invasions, destruction, and forced conversion. He experienced a third model upon relocation to Fāṭimid Egypt, with its magnificent libraries, and policies that wavered between liberal tolerance and brutal intolerance. Finally, he experienced a fourth model amidst the Sunni revolution spearheaded inter alia by al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, who would become his friend and patron. Of these four models, we are best informed about the second and the fourth. As for the second model, at least some of Maimonides’ critical and formative years as a young man were spent as a crypto-Jew who had feigned conversion to Islam. However fraudulent, Maimonides’ conversion earned him a steeping in Islamic tradition that would not ordinarily have been available to a Jew. His deep knowledge of Islamic sources is evident in his masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed, not only through his intimate knowledge of the kalām, but also in his mastering of the theological idiom of Arabic writing, including the insertion of Quranic words and phrases. Moreover, it seems likely, though there is no evidence, that Maimonides’ ability to converse with astronomers and physicians in the Islamic west was made possible, or at least facilitated, by the suppression of his Jewish identity. On the other hand, it was also likely to have spurred him to develop robust Jewish responses to Islamic missionary pressures. This seems to me to explain certain emphases in his famous formulation of the thirteen fundamental tenets of Judaism. The sixth principle, prophecy in general, is very short. By contrast, the seventh principle, whose topic is the uniqueness of Moses’ prophecy, is long and detailed, as is the eighth, which expounds the direct and complete transmission of the Torah to Moses. These are followed by the ninth, which rejects naskh, the abolition of the Torah taught by Islam. Clearly, 30 See Davidson, Moses Maimonides. The Man and his Works, pp. 48–9. Maimonides appears to have mollified his attitude later on; see Kraemer (ed.), Maimonides, pp. 273–5.

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these four principles form an ordered subset of the thirteen, and the attention which they receive is readily understood when we recall that Maimonides wrote most of his commentary to the Mishnah – in which the thirteen principles are embedded – while still in Morocco.31 As for the fourth model, the one in place during the height of Maimonides’ career, I believe there are muted jabs at some Islamic practices in Maimonides’ writings, and will exhibit some examples hereafter. Overall, however, I believe that Maimonides advances a very strict monotheism, which, in its theological core, is very close to the strict Sunnism advanced by al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil.

6. Maimonides and the Wider Community of Monotheists In the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides recognizes several communities or families (maʿshar) to whom he (rhetorically) addresses his remarks, or in whose name he speaks. These references usually occur near or at the end of chapters or sub-chapters, as part of the crescendo of Maimonides’ arguments. The one exception is the remark at the beginning of III, 20; a chapter that opens with a statement of a ‘general consensus’ of mutasharriʿīn (see below) that includes even those who believe in divine attributes.32 The widest is the family of man, maʿshar al-adamiyyīn (I, 10). Maimonides also speaks of the community of intellectuals, literally ‘people of speculation’, maʿshar ahl al-naẓar (II, 15). Each of these appears just once in his Guide.33 By contrast, there are two appeals to the monotheists, maʿshar al-muwaḥḥidīn (I, 53 and 78), and four more to maʿshar al-mutasharriʿīn, the possessors of a legal code or, as Pines translates, ‘those who adhere to a Law’ (I, 17, and III, 16, 20, and 21).34 I believe that these six references must be directed primarily at Muslims. However, the appeal is once again rhetorical; Maimonides did not want his Guide to be read outside of the Jewish community. Three of them are found in book three and concern the very touchy issue of divine knowledge. Indeed, in the last of these (III, 21), Maimonides sums up: ‘No demonstration at all can be obtained with regard to 31  In another part of the commentary, the introduction to Avoth (Eight Chapters), Maimonides addresses a critique of asceticism directly at ‘some of our nation who have likened themselves to the nations’ [p. 15]. He clearly has in mind Jews who have adopted sufi practices; however, this phenomenon seems to have been the free choice of some Jews, rather than a response to conversion pressures. 32 Shlomo Pines (ed. and trans.), Moses Maimonides. The Guide of the Perplexed, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press,1963, p. 480. 33 In subsequent discussion of the issue of creation, he mentions the ‘family of the followers of Moshe Rabbeinu and Avraham’ and ‘the family of those who believe that the world was created’. 34  Pines capitalizes Law, presumably to indicate that Maimonides is speaking of a divinely revealed code. Strictly speaking, this is not necessarily the case, since in Guide II, 40 (translation Pines, pp. 383–384), Maimonides instructs us how to determine if a given sharī’a is revealed or not. Nonetheless, I think that Pines is correct in his interpretation.

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these great and sublime notions, either for our opinion – that of the community of those who adhere to a Law – or for the opinion of the philosophers’.35 Elsewhere, Maimonides expresses himself differently, even anticipating (dare I say) the modern academic designation, ‘Abrahamic’; once more at the end of a chapter of his Guide (II, 13): For the purpose of every follower of the Law of Moses and Abraham our Father (maʿshar tabbāʾī Moshe Rabbeinu we-Avraham Avinu) or those who go the way of these two is to believe that there is nothing eternal in any way at all existing simultaneously with God; to believe also that the bringing into existence of a being out of nonexistence is for the deity not an impossibility, but rather an obligation, as is deemed likewise by some of the men of speculation.36

I think that these examples sufficiently illustrate Maimonides’ recognition of a community of monotheists encompassing Jews and Muslims, and furthermore, all those sharing certain critically important doctrinal convictions.

7. The Qāḍī: An Ideal Jewish King? Another important point of contact between Maimonides and the Qāḍī was the strict intolerance of sectarianism within each faith community. We have already mentioned the Qāḍī’s merciless treatment of pro-Fāṭimid rebels, as well as his active role in the silencing of Suhrawardī. Shortly after his arrival in Egypt, Maimonides spearheaded a successful movement to force Jewish women to follow Rabbinic norms with regard to ritual baths, instead of the Karaite practices that had taken hold.37 In his Epistle to Yemen, a letter addressed to a community that sensed a clear and present danger of forced conversion to Islam, he claimed that Karaism was a greater danger to the small Yemenite community than Muslim religious persecution.38 In that important document he proudly reports of the successful countering of the Karaites in Egypt: ‘This land, as you know, is a land of scholars, students, and academies, and their word is widespread. We frequently take them to task for their errors, inventions, and foolishness.’39 By way of conclusion, I think it fair to suggest that Maimonides saw in the Qāḍī’s imposition of a just theocracy something resembling the exercise of the ideal ruler. For this reason, I detect traces of the image of the Qāḍī in  Guide III, 21 (trans. Pines), p. 485.  Guide II, 13 (trans. Pines), p. 285. 37  See Davidson, Moses Maimonides, pp. 48–9 and notes; Kraemer (ed.), Maimonides, pp. 286–8. Kraemer further observes (pp. 274–5) that in a responsum Maimonides urges that Qaraites be treated with respect; in his major halakhic writings, though, he brands them heretics. 38  Davidson, Moses Maimonides, p. 491. 39 My translation from the edition of Rabbi Yosef Qafih, p. 39; see further note 23 for Rabbi Qafih’s view on Maimonides’ shifting attitude towards the Qaraites. 35 36

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Maimonides’ description of the kings of Israel in his legal code, the Mishneh Torah.40 Maimonides surely awaited the Jewish messiah and the restoration of Jewish kingship. This did not however, take place in his time. In any case, I think that he saw in the Qāḍī’s justice, care for the welfare of the populace, repression of religious deviance and wars against the Franks – all issues that he mentioned favourably in the dedicatory preface to his monograph on toxicology – a fairly good approximation to what he expected of a King of Israel. Compare the final paragraph of the fourth chapter in Laws of Kings and their Wars: With regard to everything his actions should be for the sake of heaven, and the thoughts and initiative of the king ought to be to promote the true religion, to fill the world with justice, to break the arm of the wicked, and to fight the wars of the lord. For there is no reason prima facie to appoint a king, if it is not for making justice and war, as it says, ‘And our king will judge us, and go before us and fight our war’. [I Samuel 8:20]

Appendix In this appendix, I respond systematically to Herbert Davidson’s arguments for classifying the letter on apostasy as ‘probably misattributed’: 1) Some passages, duly noted in note 76 on p. 502, are nearly identical to passages in the Epistle to Yemen. Maimonides does not give the cross-reference, though he ‘often referred to places where he treated subjects similar to the one before him at the moment.’ RESPONSE: This is not entirely true; some entire passages repeat themselves verbatim in his medical works, without any crossreference. See, for example, Maimonides. On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art, ed. and trans. Gerrit Bos and Y. Tzvi Langermann, Provo: Brigham Young, 2014, pp. 34–40. 2) The Hebrew translations refer to Muḥammad as meshugga’; if the Arabic reads majnūn, ‘the author could hardly have been living under the oppressive conditions he describes’ (see p. 502). RESPONSE: I believe that we can be quite sure that the original used the Hebrew meshugga’; in the Arabic original of the Epistle to Yemen (a tract which demanded at least the same degree of caution, if not more, than the Epistle on Apostasy), Maimonides uses the Hebrew word meshugga’, not majnūn. He does so not out of fear, but rather because he has in mind the biblical usage (II Kings 19:11; Hoseah 9:7), where the word signifies unusual behavior, and not necessarily madness. See the very long discussion, with all the biblical sources clearly exhibited, in note 36 of Rabbi Joseph 40  Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law. Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2002, offers a penetrating discussion of Maimonides’ views on religion and politics as seen in Mishneh Torah, but he doesn’t consider the possibility that Maimonides may have seen a real-life exemplar of the just ruler who spreads monotheism in al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil.

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Qafih’s edition and translation (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). Iggerot, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, second printing, 1987, 22). What is truly extraordinary is that Rabbi Qafih, the ‘ultra-orthodox’ Yemenite who knew no Greek (and didn’t presume to) cites Plato’s Phaedrus; whereas Professor Davidson, an expert in Greek philosophy who has made important contributions to the study of Philoponus, somehow misses this. Prophecy (in its outward physical concomitants) is indeed a form of mania! See also the Epistle on Apostasy, ed. Shilat, p. 37, bottom line, where the word meshugga’ appears again. In this passage, Maimonides cites the opinion of the ‘minim’ (heretics, I would think that Maimonides used here the Hebrew even in the original, since it is a halakhic category), according to which someone who involves himself with the religious obligations is meshugga’; here the word probably does translate majnūn – and it obviously is not a reference to Muḥammad. 3) Throughout his discussion, Davidson is careful to acknowledge both the arguments for and against authenticity. Thus, on p. 503, he suggests that the unnamed opponent of epistle is a straw man or caricature, yet at the end of the paragraph he admits that quotations are ‘consistent with its [the responsum of the opponent, not extant] being an actual document and not a literary fiction’. RESPONSE: Davidson himself admits that this is not a strong argument against the document’s authenticity. 4) I am gratified to see that on p. 504 Davidson observes, as I do, that Maimonides writes as one of those who had suffered that persecution; and that, if the epistle is genuine, ‘It would buttress the case for his having himself acknowledged the apostleship of Muḥammad when he dwelled in the lands of the West’. However, Davidson does not point – as I have – to the close similarity between the accounts of Ibn al-Qifṭī and the epistle. Interestingly, Davidson, in his elegant style, writes that the author of the epistle ‘lets slip that they henceforth had to attend services in the mosque’ (p. 505). However, this is precisely what Ibn al-Qifṭī states, when he maintains that although the conversion was insincere, Maimonides did pray with Muslims, or as a Muslim (how can anyone but God tell the difference?). Maimonides describes the prayer of the forced converts (anusim): as follows (ed. Sheilat, 32): [W]hen one of the anusim enters their house of prayer, in order to pray there, even if he does not say anything […] someone who enters a house which is thought to be for the purpose of glorifying God, and neither mentions there nor says anything that is any way opposed to the [Jewish] religion, and in any case he is compelled to enter therein […].

The ‘conversos’ thus either said nothing at all, or, said things that do not contradict the Jewish religion – indeed most or perhaps all of standard Islamic prayer has nothing absolutely unacceptable for the Jewish worshipper, and compulsory phrases such subḥān yā ʿAlī are perfectly compatible with Jewish worship.

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In sum, Davidson is careful not to avoid being too emphatic in claiming that the epistle is a forgery. He writes ‘that there are very strong, although maybe not conclusive, grounds for rejecting the authenticity of Maimonides’ authorship’ (p. 509). I find the arguments that he is able to muster against its authenticity to be entirely unconvincing.

Bibliography Ashtor (Strauss), Eliyahu, History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1944, vol. 1, pp. 104–16 (Hebrew). Bos, Gerrit (ed. and trans.), Maimonides. On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs, Provo UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2009. Cameron Lyons, Malcolm and David Edward Pritchett Jackson, Saladin. The Politics of the Holy War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Dajani-Shakeel, Al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil. His Life and Political Career, PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, 1972. Davidson, Herbert A., Moses Maimonides. The Man and His Works, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. Fenton, Fenton, “Juifs et soufis en Égypte mamelouke”, Le développement du soufisme en Égypte à l’époque mamelouke, ed. Richard J. A. McGregor and Adam Sabra, Cairo: IFA0, 2006, pp. 121–36. Gottheil, Richard, “An Answer to the Dhimmis”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 41 (1921), pp. 383–457. Halkin, Abraham (trans.) and David Hartman, Epistles of Maimonides. Crisis and Leadership, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. Humphreys, R. Stephen, From Saladin to the Mongols. The Ayyubids of Damascus 1193– 1260, Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1977. Kafiḥ, Joseph (ed. and trans.), Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). Iggerot, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1987. Kraemer, Joel L. (ed.), “The Andalusian Mystic Ibn Hud and the Conversion of the Jews”, Israel Oriental Studies, 12 (1992), pp. 59–73. – Maimonides. The Life and World of one of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, New York NY: Doubleday, 2008. Langermann, Y. Tzvi, “Some New Medical Manuscripts from St Petersburg”, Korot. The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science, 13 (1998–99), pp. 9–20. – “L’oeuvre médicale de Maïmonide, un aperçu général”, Maïmonide Philosophe et Savant (1138–1204), ed. Tony Lévy and Roshdi Rashed, Leuven: Peeters, 2004, pp. 275–302. – “Rambam’s Epistle to R. Ḥisdai. A New Textual Witness, and Additional Thoughts about its Authenticity”, Ta-Shma. Studies in Judaica in Memory of Israel M. Ta Shma, ed. Avraham (Rami) Reiner et al., Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press, 2011, vol. 2, pp. 533–9 (Hebrew). Leiser, Gary, “The Madrasa and the Islamization of the Middle East. The Case of Egypt”, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 22 (1985), pp. 29–47. Lev, Yaacov, Saladin in Egypt, Leiden: Brill, 1999.

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Lorberbaum, Menachem, Politics and the Limits of Law. Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. Maswari Caspi, Mishael (ed.), Jewish Tradition in the Diaspora: Studies in Memory of Professor Walter J. Fischel, Berkeley, CA: Magnes Memorial Museum, 1981, pp. 109–12. Möhring, Hannes and David S. Bachrach (trans.), Saladin. The Sultan and his Times. 1138–1193, Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2008. Nemoy, Leon, “A Scurrilous Anecdote concerning Maimonides”, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 62 (1972), pp. 188–92. Pines, Shlomo (ed. and trans.), Moses Maimonides. The Guide of the Perplexed, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Rosenthal, Franz, “Maimonides and a Discussion of Muslim Speculative Theology”, Jewish Tradition in the Diaspora. Studies in Memory of Professor Walter J. Fischel, ed. Mishael Maswari Caspi, Berkeley CA: Magnes Memorial Museum, 1981, pp. 109–12. Sheilat, Isaac (ed. and trans.), Letters and Essays of Moses Maimonides, Maale Adumim: Maaliyot, 5748/1988. Smarandache, Bogdan C., “Can Doctoral Dissertations Disappear?”, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā, 23 (2015), pp. 126–8. Steinschneider, Moritz, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters, meist nach handschriftlichen Quellen, Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1893. Stillman, Norman A., The Jews of Arab Lands, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979. Ziai, Hossein, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī. Founder of the Illuminationist School”, History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 434–64.

Aspects de la polémique antiphilosophiquede Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (m. 728/1328) La critique d’un transfert* Nadjet Zouggar Le théologien juriste ḥanbalite Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya, né à Ḥarran en 661/1263 et mort à Damas en 728/1328, est l’un des auteurs les plus prolifiques de la période mamelouke. De son vivant ses idées étaient loin de faire l’unanimité, il a d’ailleurs été emprisonné à plusieurs reprises en raison de ses polémiques et de certaines de ses positions doctrinales. Pourtant, eu égard à son activisme politique et à son charisme en tant que prédicateur, Ibn Taymiyya a eu un impact important sur son époque. Depuis le XVIIIè siècle sa pensée a refait surface dans le monde musulman à travers des courants revivalistes prônant un retour à un islam fondé exclusivement sur le Coran, la tradition prophétique et l’exemple des trois premières générations de musulmans, les salaf. De sorte qu’aujourd’hui l’œuvre d’Ibn Taymiyya est indéniablement la référence principale du salafisme. Cet auteur a passé sa vie à critiquer la plupart des écoles de pensée de l’islam. Il procédait par cercles concentriques, suivant un axe temporel au centre duquel trônent le prophète et ses compag, suivis des deuxième et troisième générations de musulmans, puis du cercle des premiers compilateurs de traditions et de celui des fondateurs des quatre écoles canoniques de fiqh, etc. Plus les cercles s’éloignent du centre, moins les hommes qui les forment ont échappé à sa critique. Les adeptes des courants soufis spéculatifs lui inspirent une antipathie notoire et il en est de même pour les théologiens rationalistes. Quant aux philosophes, ils constituent sa cible favorite. En bon connaisseur de la philosophie avicennienne mais aussi de sa réception dans la théologie ashʿarite et shiʿite, Ibn Taymiyya a consacré une partie importante de son œuvre à critiquer la logique et la métaphysique élaborées par Avicenne et ses pairs. Sa critique du transfert de la philosophie grecque vers le monde musulman vise avant tout les acteurs de ce transfert : en première ligne, les philosophes, * L’essentiel de cet exposé est issu de ma thèse de doctorat intitulée Le Prophétisme dans la polémique antiphilosophique en islam sunnite : à travers l’œuvre de Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (m. 1328), soutenue à l’Université de Toulouse en 2008.

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identifiés comme un groupe adhérant à une culture étrangère qu’il s’agit de disqualifier de toute légitimité dans la Cité, et en second plan, les théologiens spéculatifs qui accueillent, même partiellement, cette étrangère dans leur système de pensée.1 En effet, à l’époque où Ibn Taymiyya sévit dans les milieux théologiens de Damas et du Caire, l’avicennisme a déjà fait un long chemin, ayant fécondé à la fois la théologie et la mystique musulmanes. Or pour notre auteur, cette union entre islam et falsafa est une alliance contre-nature qu’il faut absolument combattre. Pour ce faire, Ibn Taymiyya élaborera un discours antiphilosophique original, combinant avec un certain génie ses propres raisonnements avec des arguments empruntés subrepticement aux ouvrages de controverse entre philosophes.2 Les ouvrages de réfutation (radd) de la philosophie avaient fleuri dans les milieux théologiens lorsqu’est arrivé le tour d’Ibn Taymiyya de composer ce genre d’écrits. Mais la majeure partie de ses prédécesseurs, à l’instar de l’illustre théologien juriste ashʿarite al-Ghazālī (m. 505/1111), étaient des spéculatifs qui avaient fait un accueil favorable à l’introduction de la logique grecque dans le champ du savoir musulman et leurs réfutations portaient principalement sur les divinalia et la cosmologie enseignées par Avicenne et ses pairs.3 Dans le milieu des traditionnistes, il n’y pas eu de réfutation systématique de la philosophie, on y retrouve uniquement des prises de position contre l’enseignement de la philosophie et de la logique, la plus célèbre étant sans aucun doute la fatwā du traditionniste Ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī (m. 643/1245) qui condamne sans appel la pratique de la philosophie et l’adoption de la logique grecque.4

1 Ibn Taymiyya n’hésite pas à établir une différence de degré et non de nature entre ces deux groupes. Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd ʿalā l-manṭiqiyyīn, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Qayyima, 1949, p. 444. Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, Muḥammad Rashad Salim (éd.), vol. 1, Riyad: Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muḥammad Ibn Suʿūd, 2011, pp. 11–3. 2  En effet, la critique de la philosophie avicennienne que l’on retrouve chez le philosophe Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (m. 560/1165) dans son Kitāb al-Muʿtabar est une source dans laquelle Ibn Taymiyya a puisé amplement pour enrichir son argumentation. 3  Comme c’est le cas du livre que le théologien al-Shahrastānī (m. 548/1153) a consacré à cet effet: Muṣāraʿat al-Falāsifa (Struggling with the Philosopher: A Refutation of Avicenna’s Metaphysics), Wilfred Madelung et Toby Mayer (éd. et trad.), Londres: Tauris, 2001. Et la réfutation du théologien muʿtazilite Ibn al-Malāḥimī (m. 536/1141), Tuḥfat al-mutakallimīn fī l-radd ʿalā l-falāsifa, Hassan Ansari et Wilferd Madelung (éd.), Téhéran/Berlin: Iranian Institute of philosophy / Institute of Islamic Studies, 2008. 4  Ibn Ṣalāḥ, Fatāwā wa masāʾil Ibn Ṣalāḥ, Beyrouth: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1986, vol. 1, pp. 209–12. Ignaz Goldziher, « The attitude of Orthodox Islam towards the Ancient Sciences », Studies on Islam, Merlin L. Swartz (éd. et trad.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 185–215.

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1. Les falāsifa, des adversaires de choix Dans les écrits d’Ibn Taymiyya, le terme faylasūf signifie tant les philosophes grecs – parfois désignés comme étant les anciens (al-awāʾil) – que les philosophes de l’Islam. Par exemple, s’agissant du philosophe arabe Abū Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī (m. 256/873), Ibn Taymiyya le qualifie de « philosophe de l’islam » (faylasūf al-islām) en rectifiant immédiatement : […] je veux dire : ‹ le philosophe qu’il y a dans l’Islam ›, parce que les philosophes ne sont pas musulmans ; c’est comme lorsqu’on a dit à certains juges notables de notre temps : ‹ Ibn Sīnā fait partie des philosophes de l’islam › et que l’un [d’eux] répondit : ‹ l’islam n’a pas de philosophes ›.5

D’ailleurs notre auteur préfèrera le plus souvent l’adjectif verbal quadrilitère de deuxième forme mutafalsifa, c’est-à-dire « philosopheurs » qui peut être traduit par « prétendus philosophes » ou « pseudo-philosophes », des expressions qui conviennent au contexte critique dans lequel ces derniers sont généralement évoqués. On le verra parfois remplacer falāsifa par mashshāʾīn (péripatéticiens) : Aristote est le premier maître des adeptes de ces sciences, adeptes que l’on nomme les péripatéticiens. Ce sont les tenants de cette logique grecque élaborée par Aristote, des [sciences] du divin et de la physique qui la prolongent. Cependant, les falāsifa ne forment pas une communauté unique qui a un discours [unifié] sur les divinalia et la physique etc., ils constituent des catégories distinctes. Et il y a plus de différences entre eux qu’au sein d’une même religion telles que celles des juifs et des chrétiens. Et plus les gens sont éloignés des prophètes et des livres révélés plus il y a de différences et de divergences entre eux, et par conséquent, plus ils sont égarés.6

Bien qu’il soit conscient de la diversité qui caractérise ce courant, Ibn Taymiyya, appréhende généralement les philosophes comme un groupe homogène dans lequel il fait très peu de distinctions.7 Il leur attribue un certain nombre de croyances hérétiques communes en les comparant très souvent aux juifs ou aux chrétiens, voire aux Arabes de l’anté-islam, pour dire qu’ils sont encore plus éloignés de la vérité. Ce faisant, Ibn Taymiyya opère clairement une rupture entre  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 199.  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 332. 7  Yahya Michot interprète les nuances d’appréciation des falāsifa perçues au fil de l’œuvre taymiyyenne comme une possible évolution de la pensée d’Ibn Taymiyya, voir Yahya Michot, « From al-Maʾmūn to Ibn Sabʿīn via Avicenna: Ibn Taymīya’s historiography of falsafa », Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas, Felicita Opwis et David Reisamn (éd.), Leiden: Brill, 2011, pp. 455–6. Une thèse difficile à vérifier sur l’ensemble de l’œuvre d’Ibn Taymiyya, d’autant que l’on peut trouver des variations d’appréciation de tel ou tel philosophe au sein d’un même ouvrage. Ces nuances nous semblent plutôt être corrélées à l’objectif premier du discours dans lequel les protagonistes sont mentionnés, ce qui explique, comme le mentionne d’ailleurs Y. Michot, qu’Avicenne soit parfois présenté comme le pire de tous les êtres humains, et d’autres fois comme le plus acceptable des philosophes. 5 6

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les univers culturels du monothéisme biblique auquel il associe les polythéistes arabes, et le monde grec.8 Il convient cependant de mentionner la détestation particulière que notre auteur manifeste dans ses écrits vis-à-vis du philosophe shiʿite Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Tūṣī (m. 672/1274).9 Peu de temps avant la naissance d’Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ṭūsī avait été à la fois témoin et partie prenante des invasions mongoles. Étant entré au service de Hulagu et ayant vraisemblablement joué un rôle capital lors de l’invasion de Bagdad par les hordes mongoles, al-Ṭūsī incarne la figure du traître par excellence aux yeux d’un Ibn Taymiyya dont le destin familial, rappelons-le, avait été tristement marqué par ces invasions. Ainsi donc, al-Ṭūsī est présenté comme le promoteur du remplacement, dans l’élan de ces invasions, des sciences religieuses musulmanes par les sciences étrangères et la philosophie qui les parachève.10 Par conséquent, plus que tout autre philosophe musulman, il incarne une épistémologie étrangère et invasive qu’il s’agit pour Ibn Taymiyya d’expurger de la communauté musulmane. C’est principalement dans Al-Radd ʿalā l-manṭiqiyyīn (La réfutation des logiciens), œuvre dédiée à réfuter ‹ la prétention des adeptes de la logique grecque de détenir le seul outil permettant distinguer le vrai du faux ›, qu’Ibn Taymiyya adresse ses plus vives critiques aux philosophes.11 Outre les questions d’épistémologie où se situe une grande partie de la controverse, l’ouvrage comporte de nombreuses discussions, souvent digressives, dans lesquelles l’auteur réfute des éléments d’éthique et de métaphysique qu’il attribue à ses adversaires. Il est un autre ouvrage d’Ibn Taymiyya intitulé Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql (Le Rejet de la contradiction entre raison et Ecriture) que les spécialistes de sa pensée s’accordent à qualifier d’Opus Magnum, dans lequel  8  Notons que cette comparaison est un lieu commun du discours taymiyyen sur les philosophes. Par ailleurs cette rupture qu’Ibn Taymiyya opère semble être une manifestation de la fameuse guerre des univers intellectuels entre Jérusalem et Athènes, savamment esquissée par François Coppens, « Le philosophe et le prophète dans Droit naturel et Histoire », Léo Strauss: art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Texte de 1945, Laurent Jaffro et al. (éd.), Paris: Vrin, 2001, pp. 81–103.  9  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Furqān bayn al-ḥaqq wa-l-bāṭil, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ (éd.), Beirut: Dār al-Bayān, 1993, p. 133. Ibn Taymiyya, Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya, vol. 3, Muḥammad Rashād Sālim (éd.), Le Caire: Maktabat Ibn Taymiyya, 1986, pp. 445–51. 10  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Furqān, p. 133. Et al-Radd, p. 443. 11  L’argumentation de l’ouvrage est brillamment exposée dans Robert Brunschvig, « Pour ou contre la logique grecque chez les théologiens juristes de l’islam: Ibn Ḥazm, al-Ghazālī, Ibn Taymiyya », Etudes d’islamologie, vol. 1, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1976, pp. 303–27. Voir également le résumé de cet ouvrage par le polygraphe Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (m. 911/1505), traduit et annoté par Wael Hallaq: Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Anke von Kügelgen, « The Poison of Philosophy: Ibn Taymiyya’s Struggle For and Against Reason », Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Georges Tamer et Birgit Krawietz (éd.), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013, pp. 253–328. Khalid Rouayheb, « Theology and Logic », The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, Sabine Schmidtke (éd.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 408–35.

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de longs passages sont consacrés à la réfutation des philosophes en les citant la plupart du temps in extenso. L’objectif premier de cet ouvrage monumental est de réfuter la théorie herméneutique rationaliste enseignée par les ashʿarites. Mais en rangeant ladite théorie à côté de celles des falāsifa parmi les approches hérétiques de la révélation, et par là-même, de l’institution prophétique, Ibn Taymiyya en dénonce les représentations injurieuses du prophète.12 Ainsi, selon lui, les falāsifa affirment que les prophètes se sont adressés au commun des mortels avec des symboles et des images de sorte que ces derniers s’imaginent, par exemple, que Dieu est un corps immense, que les corps seront ressuscités et qu’ils auront une rétribution ou une punition sensibles, bien que ces philosophes pensent qu’il n’en est rien. Selon notre auteur, ces philosophes disent qu’il est dans l’intérêt (maṣlaḥa) de la foule que l’on s’adresse à elle de sorte qu’elle s’imagine que les choses sont ainsi, même si c’est un mensonge ; car ce mensonge sert l’intérêt de la foule, puisqu’il n’existerait d’autres moyens pour la guider vers le chemin du salut que celui de l’instruire par ce biais-là. Avicenne et ses semblables ont élaboré leur règle [d’interprétation de la révélation] en se fondant sur ce principe, tel qu’il en est de la loi qu’il a énoncée dans sa Risālat al-aḍḥawiyya. Ces gens-là disent que les prophètes ont employé ces mots dans l’intention [d’en faire saisir] le sens apparent (ẓawāhiruhā) afin que la foule en comprenne ce sens, même si ces apparences en elles-mêmes sont fausses, mensongères et contraires à la vérité. Leur visée étant d’instruire la foule avec mensonges et choses vaines par intérêt .13

Parmi les interprètes de la révélation qui s’inscrivent dans ce courant, Ibn Taymiyya distingue d’une part ceux qui enseignent que le Prophète ne connaissait pas la vérité comme la connaissent les philosophes et par conséquent, à l’instar d’al-Fārābī, préfèrent le Philosophe au Prophète, et de l’autre, ceux qui, tels Avicenne et ses disciples, affirment que le Prophète connaissait le sens profond de ce qu’il révélait, en laissant paraître autre chose à dessein.14 Cette typologie des approches hérétiques du texte coranique qui font concevoir aux philosophes un prophète soit ignorant soit menteur, lui sert d’argument rhétorique pour discréditer toutes les théories herméneutiques qui ne sont pas conformes à la sienne.15 Et nous y reviendrons plus amplement par la suite, mais il convient de noter que l’accusation de lèse-prophétie est un argument de choix dans la rhétorique antiphilosophique d’Ibn Taymiyya. 12  A ce sujet voir Yahya Michot, « A Mamlūk theologian’s commentary on Avicenna’s Risālā Aḍḥawiyya. Being a translation of a part of the Darʾ al-taʿāruḍ of Ibn Taymiyya, with introduction, annotation and appendices », Journal of Islamic Studies, 14/2 (2003), pp. 149–203 et 14/3, pp. 309–63. Et notre « Interprétation autorisée et interprétation proscrite selon le livre du Rejet de la contradiction entre raison et Écriture de Taqī al-Dīn Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya », Annales islamologiques, 44 (2010), pp. 195–206. 13  Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, vol. 1, pp. 8–9. 14  Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, vol. 1, pp. 9–10. 15  Voir Zouggar, « Interprétation autorisée », pp. 198–202.

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Notre auteur récuse la via philosophiae enseignée par les falāsifa parce qu’il la considère comme une concurrente directe avec la religion musulmane.16 En effet, la philosophie néo-platonicienne dont héritent les falāsifa ne se contente pas d’expliquer le monde, elle a également vocation à se traduire en pratique, par un mode de vie tourné vers la connaissance et la vertu. Rappelons que les falāsifa partageaient l’idéal de vie théorétique énoncé par Aristote à la fin de l’Ethique à Nicomaque. La conjonction avec « l’intellect agent » (al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl) étant le stade ultime du bonheur recherché par eux au travers du perfectionnement de leur intellect par l’acquisition du savoir et la pratique vertueuse. Ce stade réalise ce qu’ils appellent l’intellect acquis (al-ʿaql al-mustafād).17 De cette voie concurrente Ibn Taymiyya dénonce avant tout l’élitisme. Selon lui, les falāsifa se soustraient à l’obligation de pratiquer les rites religieux, au motif que leur utilité se limiterait à préparer l’âme, au plan moral, à cheminer vers la connaissance dans laquelle, selon eux, se réalise sa perfection ; et que ces pratiques religieuses seraient destinées à la foule, afin qu’elle accède au bonheur au sein de la Cité. En somme, nous dit-il, les falāsifa estiment que ces pratiques sont vaines pour ceux qui, comme eux, accèdent à cela autrement.18 Ibn Taymiyya dénonce aussi le fait que, selon leurs dires, Dieu n’étant ni omnipotent ni omniscient, Il ne peut pas plus entendre les prières qu’exaucer les vœux et par conséquent, Il ne peut distinguer un pratiquant d’un non pratiquant.19 Ibn Taymiyya réfute également la doctrine des falāsifa selon laquelle, en se pensant Lui-même, Dieu connaîtrait l’essence des innombrables espèces d’êtres qui procèdent de Lui de façon universelle, mais Il ne connaîtrait pas les particuliers, c’est-à-dire, les individus singuliers au sein d’une espèce : Selon eux, Dieu ne connaît pas l’individu Moïse ni Jésus ni Muḥammad ni rien d’autre des particuliers de ce monde ; sans parler de son ignorance des détails de ce qui se passa le jour de la bataille de Badr, ou de celle de Uḥud et de tous les événements que Dieu a décrit dans le Coran.20

2. De la concurrence culturelle Tout au long de sa Réfutation des logiciens, plusieurs développements montrent qu’Ibn Taymiyya argumente son rejet du transfert de la logique et de la philosophie grecques vers le monde musulman en mettant l’accent sur l’origine  Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, vol. 3, pp. 269–76.  Ibn Taymiyya connait cette théorie et est conscient de l’importance du concept d’intellect agent dans le système de ses adversaires : ‹ La finalité de l’âme, selon eux, est qu’elle se connecte à cet intellect agent qui est leur Dieu ›. Al-Radd, pp. 461–2. Voir aussi, al-Radd, pp. 475, 480–6. 18  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 144–5. 19  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 460–2. Thomas Michel, « Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of falsafa », Hamdard Islamicus, 6/1 (1983), pp. 3–14. 20  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 277. 16 17

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étrangère de ces savoirs. Cette attitude se traduit par la défense de la langue arabe, véhicule de la révélation islamique, contre l’élément étranger que représente la logique qui est prolongée par la philosophie. L’univers culturel grec est perçu, en quelque sorte, comme un concurrent dont il s’agit de montrer l’infériorité. Notre auteur considère qu’à force d’imiter leurs maîtres grecs, les falāsifa sont tombés dans l’écueil d’utiliser un langage à la fois indigent, compliqué et donc incompréhensible pour le commun des mortels ; pour illustrer ce propos, il cite l’exemple du philosophe al-Kindī, auquel il attribue des expressions alambiquées telles que : ‹en l’absence du manque de l’existence de ceci ›,21 ajoutant que parmi les philosophes de l’islam, ceux qui tel Avicenne avaient quelque éloquence, ont hérité cela des musulmans.22 Dans le même contexte, Ibn Taymiyya affirme que les savants intelligents (al-ʿuqalāʾ al-ʿārifūn) considéraient la logique comme une convention établie par un Grec et dont ne dépendent ni l’obtention ni l’expression de leur connaissance.23 Pour illustrer ce propos, il cite à la suite un certain nombre de termes grecs retranscrits en langue arabe en commentant que personne ne prescrit l’apprentissage de cette langue, de surcroît à ceux que Dieu a honorés de ‹ la plus noble des langues ›.24 Selon notre auteur, les connaissances rationnelles (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya) s’acquièrent par la prime nature (fitra) dont Dieu pourvoit les humains sous la forme de facultés de perception qui ne dépendent en aucun cas d’un outil tel que la logique.25 Pour ce qui est du domaine religieux, Ibn Taymiyya est encore plus catégorique, il énonce que la religion islamique (sharīʿat al-islām) et sa connaissance ne reposent sur aucune science étrangère à l’islam.26 En guise d’argument, et en s’appuyant sur le hadith attribué au prophète : ‹ Nous sommes une communauté illettrée, nous n’écrivons et ne calculons pas ›,27 il affirme la prévalence, au regard de la loi islamique, de la saisie par la vue du croissant de lune, sur le calcul arithmétique28 dans la détermination du début du mois de Ramadan.29 21 En

arabe: li-ʿadam faqd wujūd kadhā. Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 199. Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 199. 23 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 178. 24 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 178. 25  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 26. 26 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 257–8. 27  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 264; al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, « al-ṣawm », 1814. 28  Pourtant Ibn Taymiya semble marcher sur les pas de Ghazālī en mettant en garde les défenseurs de la religion de discréditer l’arithmétique et de renier systématiquement toutes les connaissances des tenants du calcul et des sciences physiques. Ce propos revient régulièrement dans son discours, notamment dans al-Radd, pp. 143, 274, 278, 225, 260. Cf. Ghazālī, al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl. Farid Jabre (éd.), Beirut: Libraire Orientale, 1969, p. 25. 29  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 264–5. Pour une étude de cette doctrine d’Ibn Taymiyya, Cf. YahyaMichot, « Nous sommes une communauté illettrée (ummiyya)… », Textes spirituels d’Ibn Taymiyya, n° XVII [en ligne]. Disponible sur http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/it/w​o​r​k ​s​/​I​T​ A​%​2​0​P​​​a​g​s​p​i​%​2​0​1​7​.pdf. [download 13.  08. ​2018]. 22 Ibn

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3. Une tradition de rejet du monde grec Plusieurs éléments indiquent qu’Ibn Taymiyya s’inscrivait de manière consciente dans une tradition de pensée érigée contre le transfert de l’hellénisme vers l’islam. En témoigne par exemple le fait qu’il ait mentionné la célèbre controverse qui opposa le grammairien Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (m. 368/979) au logicien Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus (m. 328/940), dans laquelle le grammairien qui représente la tradition culturelle arabo-musulmane a triomphé du logicien, adepte de la culture grecque. La portée édifiante de cette controverse a été maintes fois évoquée dans les études contemporaines, notamment par Elamrani-Jamal selon lequel elle porte en germes la tradition musulmane de polémique antiphilosophique : Vaincre Mattā Ibn Yūnus en rabattant ses prétentions, serait une victoire pour la religion. Rabaisser la logique, c’est dans l’ordre polémique s’opposer à un élément étranger à l’islam. L’autorité de la logique grecque dans le domaine de la pensée et la recherche de la vérité, est à combattre pour préserver l’autorité intellectuelle et spirituelle de l’islam. Ce niveau est celui qui a le plus souvent été signalé à propos de ce texte. En ce sens, cette controverse constitue une introduction aux grandes discussions qui auront lieu au cours des siècles suivants sur le statut de la philosophie en Islam, animées par Ghazālī, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Khaldūn, jusqu’à la condamnation de la logique par Ibn Ṣalāḥ, qui ne voyait en elle qu’une introduction à la philosophie, qui est un mal en soi .30

Selon Ibn Taymiyya, lorsque Mattā se prit à glorifier la logique et à prétendre que les savants en dépendent, Abū Saʿīd al-Sirāfī lui répondit qu’il n’y avait nul besoin de logique mais qu’il était nécessaire d’apprendre la langue arabe parce que les concepts (al-maʿānī) utilisés en logique sont innés (fiṭriyya), rationnels (ʿaqliyya) et ne requièrent pas une terminologie particulière (lā taḥtāj ilā isṭilāḥ khāṣṣ), contrairement à la langue qu’il faut apprendre afin de connaître les significations voulues.31 C’est pourquoi, conclut Ibn Taymiyya, l’apprentissage de l’arabe, qui permet de comprendre le Coran et le Hadith, est une obligation collective (farḍ ʿalā l-kifāya) contrairement à l’apprentissage de la logique. Quant à ceux qui prétendent que l’apprentissage de la logique est également une obligation collective, ou pire, une obligation individuelle, au dire d’Ibn Taymiyya, ils se fourvoient, ‹ parce que les valeureux de cette communauté, tels les Compagnons et les Suivants, ont parfait leur connaissance et leur foi, avant que la logique grecque ne soit connue des musulmans ›.32 Aussi répond-t-il à ceux de ses adversaires qui tentent d’identifier la notion coranique de ḥikma à la sagesse des philosophes grecs, que chaque nation a sa propre sagesse correspondant à sa religion et à son savoir, et que malgré leur 30  Abdelali Elamrani-Jamal, Logique aristotélicienne et grammaire arabe, Paris: Vrin, 1983, pp. 64–5. 31  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 178. 32  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 179.

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impiété, les Indiens, les Arabes de l’anté-islam et les Grecs ont eux aussi une sagesse qui leur est propre ; et bien que les sages de chaque nation soient les meilleurs de ces Nations, ils ne méritent pas d’être loués, car seuls les croyants musulmans méritent de l’être.33 Par ailleurs, Ibn Taymiyya dénonce ce qu’il qualifie de ruse chez certains philosophes, laquelle consiste à énoncer leurs théories en employant une terminologie et des catégories empruntées à l’islam. Selon lui, les auteurs de ce stratagème tentent de faire concorder religion et philosophie tout en étant capables d’altérer ce qu’ont transmis les prophètes afin d’en évacuer les aspects qui contredisent leurs doctrines ; de même qu’ils sont capables, ajoute-t-il, de modifier les discours de leurs maîtres, c’est-à-dire les philosophes, devant les musulmans, dans le but de dissimuler leur pensée véritable.34 Et enfin, Ibn Taymiyya assume en grande partie la critique que son prédécesseur, l’illustre théologien juriste ashʿarite al-Ghazālī, a formulée contre les philosophes dans son célèbre Tahāfut al-falāsifa (L’Incohérence des philosophes). En particulier, il revient souvent sur deux des trois thèses qui, selon Ghazālī, mènent les philosophes à l’impiété, à savoir : l’éternité du monde et la non connaissance par Dieu des particuliers. Mais selon Ibn Taymiyya, Ghazālī a mal estimé la portée du caractère hérétique de la théologie des falāsifa qui réside davantage, selon le premier, dans la négation de la puissance et de la volonté divines que dans la non connaissance des particuliers.35

4. Au renfort de la tradition prophétique L’enjeu majeur de la critique taymiyyenne contre la logique grecque est de défendre une épistémologie dans laquelle les connaissances acquises par informations à chaînes de transmetteurs multiples (al-mutawātirāt), source fondamentale de l’établissement du texte coranique (avant sa fixation dans l’écrit) mais aussi des traditions prophétiques, acquièrent le statut de connaissances nécessaires. Ce plaidoyer pour la défense de la connaissance ex auditu contre la raison critique se retrouve dans la plupart des discussions théologiques d’Ibn Taymiyya. Notons que l’information récurrente (al-tawātur) à laquelle Ibn Taymiyya fait allusion sans toutefois le préciser, renvoie à une conception particulière de cette notion, à savoir, al-tawātur al-maʿnawī qui est une transmission à chaine multiple de traditions exprimant un thème commun sans pour autant être identiques quant à leur énoncé. Cette forme diffère du al-tawātur al-lafẓī qui renvoie à une  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 447.  Ibn Taymiyya, Bughyat al-murtād fī ll-radd ʿalā l-mutafalsifal-wa-ll-qarāmiṭa wa-llbāṭiniyya ahl al-ilḥād min al-qāʾilīna bi-l-ḥulūl wa-ll-ittiḥād, M. al-Dawīsh (éd.), Medina: Maktabat al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, 2001, p. 23. 35  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 523. 33

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transmission à chaines multiples du même énoncé, ce qui, de l’avis même des traditionnistes, est vérifié par un nombre infime de traditions prophétiques.36 Selon notre auteur, certains logiciens enseignent que les propositions connues par information récurrente (al-mutawātirāt), par expérience (al-mujarrabāt) ou bien par intuition (al-ḥadsiyyāt) ne sont probantes que pour ceux qui les ont obtenues par ces biais-là et ne peuvent l’être pour autrui, contrairement aux autres types de propositions qui elles, sont communes (mushtaraka).37 Cette théorie est rejetée par Ibn Taymiyya au motif qu’elle ruine la valeur démonstrative des informations récurrentes qui remontent au prophète Muḥammad. Sa réfutation est élaborée autour d’un argument central, énonçant que le caractère commun ou particulier de ces connaissances est relatif. Plusieurs exemples sont donnés pour illustrer cette idée, notamment la vision du soleil et de la lune qui engendre une connaissance sensible commune entre les hommes alors que celle engendrée par le fait de voir une montagne, un fleuve ou une mosquée est particulière aux gens qui se situent non loin de ces objets. Partant et de la même façon, conclue-t-il, les connaissances obtenues par information récurrente (al-tawātur) peuvent être communes ou particulières.38 Pour illustrer ce propos notre auteur prend d’abord pour exemple la connaissance de l’existence de la Mecque et de contrées illustres que beaucoup de gens, pourtant, n’ont jamais vues par eux-mêmes ; il prend enfin l’exemple édifiant de la connaissance de l’existence de Moïse, de Jésus ou de Muḥammad ainsi que celle portant sur leur revendication d’être des prophètes et pose que les prédications de ces prophètes se sont transmises de manière récurrente dans toute l’humanité et que s’il se peut que certains n’en aient pas eu connaissance, c’est qu’ils se trouvent dans les confins de la terre.39 Dans ce domaine, la critique d’Ibn Taymiyya est élargie aux théologiens spéculatifs qui sont mis au même banc que les philosophes : les deux groupes sont accusés de démentir des traditions remontant au Prophète et à ses compagnons ; traditions, précise-t-il, qui sont pourtant validées par les tenants du Hadith et de la Sunna en vertu d’une transmission récurrente (mutawātira) depuis le Prophète et ses compagnons. Lorsque ces gens disent que ces traditions ne relèvent pas de la connaissance (ghayr maʿlūma), écrit-il, c’est parce qu’ils n’ont pas recherché la cause qui induit nécessairement cette connaissance, autrement dit, s’ils avaient 36  Voir W. Hallaq, « The authenticity of Prophetic Hadith: A Pseudo-problem », Studia Islamica 99 (1999), pp. 75–90. Cette typologie du tawātur a émergé chez les spécialistes en théorie légale mais elle fit son entrée dans le domaine du Hadith au XIIIe siècle par le biais du traditionniste al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (m. 463/1071). Pour une explication de sa portée et de son application à la prophétologie, voir Ibn Taymiyya, al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-masīḥ, Riyad: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1999, vol. 6, p. 350. 37  C’est à dire, les propositions sensorielles (al-ḥissiyyāt) et les propositions premières (al-awwaliyyāt). Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 92. 38  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 92. 39  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 92.

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lu et entendu ce qu’ont lu et entendu les traditionnistes ils auraient obtenus la même connaissance qu’eux.40 Ibn Taymiyya rappelle à cette occasion un de ses principes favoris : ne pas connaitre quelque chose ne revient pas à savoir que cette chose n’existe pas ; de même que ne pas saisir une existence (ʿadam al-wujdān) n’induit pas l’absence de cette existence (lā yastalzim ʿadam al-wujūd).41 Mais pour notre auteur il n’y a aucun doute que si ‹ certains démons (shayāṭīn) d’entre ces philosophes › disent que les informations récurrentes ne sont pas démonstratives, c’est afin d’y inclure ce qui fut transmis par les prophètes, et par là-même d’invalider toute religion monothéiste. Ibn Taymiyya de rétorquer que le caractère récurrent (tawātur), et donc nécessairement vrai, de la connaissance de l’avènement de Muḥammad sur terre est plus important que celui de la connaissance de l’existence de tous les philosophes.42 Il en veut pour preuve que les prophètes constituent des repères historiques au même titre que les grands événements qui adviennent dans le monde : ‹ Et aujourd’hui, si l’on veut parler de l’un de ces philosophes, il nous faut le situer avant Jésus ›.43

5. La métaphysique n’est donc pas démonstrative L’on retrouve chez Ibn Taymiyya l’argument central du Tahāfut al-falāsifa de Ghazālī, selon lequel, contrairement à ce que prétendent les falāsifa, la métaphysique qu’ils enseignent n’est pas plus démonstrative que les vérités fondées sur le Coran.44 En montrant que les sciences érigées par les philosophes en connaissances nécessaires se fondent elles aussi sur une saisie par les sens, laquelle devient une connaissance expérimentale (mujarraba), qui se transmet par la suite de génération en génération comme une information récurrente, Ibn Taymiyya développe une argumentation qui a pour but de ruiner la cosmologie des philosophes de l’islam. Pour les philosophes, écrit-il, la cosmologie (ʿilm al-hayʾa) est la plus importante des sciences théorétiques, Aristote l’ayant érigée en fondement (aṣl) des sciences philosophiques.45 Les tenants de cette science ont pu déterminer la position des planètes à partir de l’observation des éclipses en se fondant ensuite sur les observations (irṣād).46  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 100.  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 100. 42  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 392. 43  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 392. 44  Sur l’arrière plan épistémologique de la critique ghazalienne dans le Tahāfut, voir Frank Griffel, « Taqlīd of the Philosophers: Al-Ghāzālī’s Initial Accusation in the Tahāfut », Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal. Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, Sebastian Günther (éd.), Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 273–96. 45  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 388. 46  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 388. 40 41

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Pourtant, en sa qualité de connaissance expérimentale, écrit-il, la cosmologie ne saurait constituer un argument probant en cas de controverse. Car le fait que les planètes ainsi que leurs mouvements aient été saisis par l’expérience n’empêche que la plupart des gens ne les connaissent que par transmission ; sans compter que le caractère récurrent de ces transmissions est infime (wa-ltawātur fī-hādha qalīl) : tout au plus, ces expériences se transmettent-elles par quelques médecins ou mathématiciens,47 ce qui ne répond pas aux exigences de l’information récurrente (al-khabar al-mutawātir) mais se réduit bien plus souvent à une information émanant d’un rapporteur unique (al-khabar al-wāḥid) ; qui plus est, les observations en elles-mêmes sont souvent criblées d’erreurs.48 Cela étant posé, Ibn Taymiyya en vient au point focal de sa controverse ; il s’agit de démontrer que le système émanatiste enseigné par al-Fārābī, Avicenne et leurs pairs est fondé sur des conjectures : Lorsque les astronomes ont établi que les astres étaient mouvants, nous dit-il, les philosophes en ont déduit que ces derniers étaient dotés d’âmes qui les mouvaient intentionnellement. Ensuite, ils ont déduit le nombre de ces âmes, neuf, à partir du nombre des planètes. Puis ils ont déduit les dix intellects à partir de ces mêmes planètes, le dixième intellect étant la première émanation de l’Être nécessaire (wājib al-wujūd). Selon ces philosophes, l’astre se meut pour imiter la cause première (al-ʿilla al-ūlā) et le but même de la philosophie serait de ressembler autant que faire se peut à la cause première, ‹ Voilà donc [à quoi tient] la science du Divin (al-ʿilm al-ilāhī), la philosophie première (al-falsafa al-ūlā) et la sagesse suprême (al-ḥikmat al-ʿulyā) chez ces philosophes ›.49 Selon notre auteur, les philosophes ne peuvent, eux non plus, démontrer ce qu’ils sont les seuls à avoir expérimenté : ‹ Nous savons qu’ils ne disposent d’aucune démonstration décisive (burhān yaqīnī) pour la majeure partie de ce qu’ils qualifient de ‹ démonstratif › (burhānī) ›.50

6. La prophétologie des philosophes Certes, Ibn Taymiyya est conscient pour l’avoir étudié que le système de pensée des philosophes de l’islam leur fait concevoir un Dieu qui est en bien des aspects différent de celui des religions révélées. Pourtant, ses attaques les plus violentes sont celles qui portent sur leur prophétologie et en particulier, sur la théorie de la connaissance qui sous-tend leur représentation de l’institution prophétique. Notre auteur prête à ses adversaires un complexe de supériorité intellectuelle qu’il réprouve particulièrement lorsqu’il s’agit de se mesurer aux prophètes. Selon 47 Ibn

Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 388.  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 389. 49  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 389. 50  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 389. 48

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ses dires, les philosophes considèrent le prophète avec la même condescendance que les théologiens spéculatifs ont vis-à-vis des juristes. Il explique que si ces théologiens glorifient les maîtres és fiqh pour ce qui est du volet pratique de la religion (al-sharīʿa al-ʿamaliyya), ils les jugent incompétents en ce qui concerne la théologie et la doctrine religieuse.51 Ibn Taymiyya accuse systématiquement al-Fārābī de donner précellence au philosophe par rapport au prophète. Quant à Avicenne, dont il connaît bien mieux les écrits, il lui reproche de n’accorder au prophète qu’une connaissance pratique en octroyant aux philosophes l’exclusivité de la connaissance théorétique. Selon lui, ces philosophes considèrent la révélation comme un discours rhétorique et destituent par là-même le prophète de toute capacité à transmettre des vérités d’ordre théorétique. Et comme il a déjà été évoqué, Ibn Taymiyya prête à certains philosophes d’enseigner que le prophète connaissait le sens profond de ce qui lui était révélé mais qu’afin de préserver le bien commun, il ne le divulguait pas tel quel; et que d’autres philosophes, tels al-Fārābī, considéraient même que le prophète ignorait le sens de ce qu’il révélait, un sens que selon eux, seuls les philosophes étaient à même de connaître. Enfin, outre la réduction du rôle du prophète à la gestion de la vie terrestre de la multitude, c’est la simplification du phénomène de révélation en le classant dans la catégorie des songes52 et l’insertion du prophétisme dans leur système émanationniste qui disqualifient les philosophes au regard d’Ibn Taymiyya.53

7. Conclusion Il y a assurément chez Ibn Taymiyya une rhétorique originale que l’on ne retrouve pas chez les théologiens spéculatifs qui ont critiqué la philosophie : ce qu’il met en avant dans sa controverse ce ne sont pas des doctrines métaphysiques relatives à l’éternité du monde ou à la théodicée mais plutôt l’atteinte à l’institution prophétique et en particulier à la personne du prophète. C’est un argument plus accessible au commun des croyants et donc, plus efficace pour compromettre les philosophes.54 Par ailleurs, pour critiquer la philosophie comme le fait Ibn  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 444.  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Nubuwwāt, Le Caire: Dār Ibn Jawzī, 2006, p. 169. 53  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Nubuwwāt, p. 277. 54  Dans un de ses ouvrages intitulé Fayṣal al-tafriqa bayn al-islām wa-l-zandaqa al-Ghazālī avait disqualifié les philosophes de l’islam en se fondant sur le même critère, à savoir : ce qui distingue les musulmans des hérétiques repose sur le fait de juger vrai (taṣdīq) tout ce que le prophète a transmis, or en enseignant que le prophète a dit des choses qui ne sont pas vraies, les philosophes se classent parmi les hérétiques. Cf. al-Ghazālī, Fayṣal, Maḥmūd Bījū (éd.), Le Caire: n.p., 1993, pp. 56–60. Et Frank Griffel, « Al-Ghazālī’s concept of Prophecy: The introduction of Avicennan Psychology into Ashʿarite Theology», Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 14 (2004), pp. 101–44. Pourtant, ce que la postérité a retenu de la critique ghazalienne est 51 52

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Taymiyya il faut l’avoir étudiée, ce qui suppose de vérifier la validité de ses principes épistémologiques et de ses conclusions. Ibn Taymiyya considère que les théologiens qui ont fourni, avant lui, une critique systématique de la philosophie, tels Shahrastānī et Ghazalī, ont fait beaucoup trop de compromis avec les philosophes, notamment en validant le transfert de la logique aristotélicienne vers l’épistémologie musulmane. Si en critiquant de manière aussi ouverte ce transfert, Ibn Taymiyya se positionne comme le défenseur de l’orthodoxie qui a pour rôle de définir les frontières de la religion, il faut noter que ces frontières sont mouvantes et que les rôles d’hérésiologue et d’hérétique ne sont jamais distribué de manière définitive. En effet, notre auteur a suscité la critique de plus réfractaire que lui à la philosophie parmi ses propres disciples, notamment Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (m. 748/1348), chez lequel on peut lire que le Shaykh damascain est accusé d’avoir « de manière répétée avalé le poison des philosophes et de leurs œuvres, or le corps s’accoutume au poison lorsqu’il est souvent utilisé, de sorte qu’il y demeure, par Dieu ».55 En effet, dans plusieurs de ses raisonnements Ibn Taymiyya fait montre d’une relative ouverture aux thèses de ses adversaires. La dialectique qui formalise ses réfutations lui commande par exemple d’admettre l’hypothèse que l’intellect agent existe, que ce dernier connaît les particuliers, et que les âmes humaines se connectent à lui, autant de concessions, certes formelles, mais qui tranchent avec le traditionalisme de son école.56

Bibliographie Brunschvig, Robert, « Pour ou contre la logique grecque chez les théologiens juristes de l’islam: Ibn Ḥazm, al-Ghazālī, Ibn Taymiyya », Études d’islamologie, vol. 1, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1976, pp. 303–27. Coppens, François, « Le philosophe et le prophète dans Droit naturel et Histoire », Léo Strauss: art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Texte de 1945, Laurent Jaffro et al. (éd.), Paris: Vrin, 2001, pp. 81–103.

davantage la condamnation des philosophes qui figure dans le Tahāfut al-Falāsifa que celle du Fayṣal al-tafriqa. 55  al-Dhahabī, al-Naṣīḥat al-Dhahabiyya li-Ibn Taymiyya, Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (éd.), Damas: Maṭbaʿat al-tawfīq, 1928–29, p. 36. Cf. Yahya Michot, « Vanités intellectuelles … L’impasse des rationalismes selon le Rejet de la contradiction d’Ibn Taymiyya », Oriente Moderno, 19 (2000), p. 600. Et « A Mamlūk », p. 166 et notes. 56  Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 475 ; pp. 480–3. Des éléments de transfert plus importants ont été mis au jour par des études récentes mais il serait trop long d’en traiter ici ; il s’agit principalement d’emprunts directs à la pensée d’Avicenne et d’Averroès. Pour une vue d’ensemble de ces études, voir von Kügelgen, « The Poison of Philosophy », pp. 257–60.

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al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, al-Naṣīḥat al-Dhahabiyya li-Ibn Taymiyya, Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (éd.), Damas: Maṭbaʿat al-tawfīq, 1928–29. Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali, Logique aristotélicienne et grammaire arabe, Paris: Vrin, 1983. al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad, al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl, Farid Jabre (éd.), Beirut: Libraire Orientale, 1969. – Fayṣal al-tafriqa bayn al-islām wa-l-zandaqa, Maḥmūd Bījū (éd.), Le Caire: n.p., 1993. Griffel, Frank, « Al-Ghazālī’s concept of Prophecy: The introduction of Avicennan Psychology into Ashʿarite Theology », Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 14 (2004), pp. 101– 44. – « Taqlīd of the Philosophers: Al-Ghāzālī’s Initial Accusation in the Tahāfut», Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal. Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, Sebastian Günther (éd.), Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 273–96. Goldziher, Ignaz, « The attitude of Orthodox Islam towards the Ancient Sciences », Studies on Islam, Merlin L. Swaltz (éd. et trad.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 185–215. Hallaq, Wael, Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. – « The authenticity of Prophetic Hadith: A Pseudo-problem », Studia Islamica, 99 (1999), pp. 75–90. Ibn Ṣalāḥ, ʿUthmān ibn Ṣalāh al-Dīn al-Shahrazūrī, Fatāwā wa-masāʾil Ibn Ṣalāḥ, 2 vols., Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1986. Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd ʿalā l-manṭiqiyyīn, Bombay: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Qayyima, 1949. – Taqī al-Dīn, al-Furqān bayn al-ḥaqq wa-l-bāṭil, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ (éd.), Beirut: Dār al-Bayān, 1993. – Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya, Muḥammad Rashād Sālim (éd.), vol. 3, Riyad: Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muḥammad ibn Saʻūd, 1986. – al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-masīḥ, vol. 6, Riyad: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1999. – Bughyat al-murtād fī l-radd ʿalā l-mutafalsifa wa-l-qarāmiṭa wa-l-bāṭiniyya ahl al-ilḥād min al-qāʾilīna bi-l-ḥulūl wa-l-ittiḥād, M. al-Dawīsh (éd.), Medina: Maktabat al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, 2001. – al-Nubuwwāt, Le Caire: Dār Ibn Jawzī, 2006. – Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, Muḥammad Rashad Salim (éd.), Riyad: Jāmʿiat al-Imām Muḥammad Ibn Saʿūd, 2011. al-Khwārazmī, Rukn al-Dīn Ibn al-Malāḥimī, Tuḥfat al-mutakallimīn fī l-radd ʿalā l-falāsifa, Hassan Ansari et Wilferd Madelung (éd.), Téhéran/Berlin: Iranian Institute of philosophy/Institute of Islamic Studies, 2008. von Kügelgen, Anke, « The Poison of Philosophy: Ibn Taymiyya’s Struggle For and Against Reason », Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Georges Tamer and Birgit Krawietz (éd.), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013, pp. 253–328. Michel, Thomas, « Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of falsafa », Hamdard Islamicus, 6/1 (1983), pp. 3–14. Michot, Yahya, « Vanités intellectuelles … L’impasse des rationalismes selon le Rejet de la contradiction d’Ibn Taymiyya », Oriente Moderno, 19 (2000), pp. 597–617. – « A Mamlūk theologian’s commentary on Avicenna’s Risālā Aḍḥawiyya. Being a translation of a part of the Darʾ al-taʿāruḍ of Ibn Taymiyya, with introduction, annotation and appendices », Journal of Islamic Studies, 14/2 (2003), pp. 149–203 et 14/3, pp. 309– 63.

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– « From al-Maʾmūn to Ibn Sabʿīn via Avicenna: Ibn Taymīya’s historiography of falsafa », Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas, Felicita Opwis et David Reisamn (éd.), Leiden: Brill, 2011, pp. 453–75. – « Nous sommes une communauté illettrée (umiyya)… », Textes spirituels d’Ibn Taymiyya, n° XVII, http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/it/works/ITA%20P​a​g​s​p​i​%​2​0​ 1​7​.pdf. [download 16.  8. ​2018]. Rouayheb, Khalid, «Theology and Logic», The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, Sabine Schmidtke (éd.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 408–35. al-Shahrastānī, Tāj al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad, Muṣāraʿat al-Falāsifa (Struggling with the Philosopher: A Refutation of Avicenna’s Metaphysics), Wilfred Madelung et Toby Mayer (éd. et trad.), London: Tauris, 2001. Zouggar, Nadjet, Le Prophétisme dans la polémique antiphilosophique en islam sunnite: à travers l’œuvre de Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (m. 1328), Thèse de doctorat, Université de Toulouse, 2008. – « Interprétation autorisée et interprétation proscrite selon le livre du Rejet de la contradiction entre raison et Écriture de Taqī al-Dīn Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya », Annales islamologiques, 44 (2010), pp. 195–206.

Neue Moscheen in christlichen Ländern Die Debatte im Mittelalter* Ana Echevarría Arsuaga Nachdem im Rahmen des vierten Laterankonzils von 611/1215 ein entsprechendes Verbot erlassen wurde, hätten in den christlichen Königreichen der Iberischen Halbinsel eigentlich weder neue Moscheen noch Synagogen gebaut werden dürfen. Weil aber in den letzten Jahren dank neuer archäologischer Erkenntnisse und Quellenforschung belegt werden konnte, dass solche Gebetsräume tatsächlich existierten und dass ihre Platzierung innerhalb mittelalterlicher Städte an die Bedürfnisse der jeweiligen Minderheitenbevölkerung angepasst wurde, scheint es wahrscheinlich, dass sie von christlichen Machthabern letztlich geduldet wurden. Der Neubau von Moscheen ist in der jüngeren Vergangenheit zum kontroversen Thema einer Debatte geworden, „innerhalb der europäischen Gesellschaft, zugleich aber auch die Gesellschaft selbst thematisierend, weil hier ein Gefühl von Kontrolle über ein bestimmtes Territorium als kultureller und symbolischer Fakt impliziert wird.“1 Der Bau religiöser Gebäudes jedweder Glaubensrichtung ist historisch gesehen ein Zeichen von Herrschaft und Macht. Außerdem signalisieren auch Entscheidungen darüber, wo und wann Gebetshäuser anderer Glaubensgemeinschaften gebaut werden dürfen, ein bestimmtes Maß an Kontrolle. Dass die betreffenden Machthaber begonnen haben, sich mit diesem Thema zu befassen, könnte bedeuten, dass man sich zunehmend dessen bewusst wird – und zwar sowohl von Seiten der christlichen Mehrheit wie auch * Beim Schreiben dieses Aufsatzes habe ich sehr von einem Aufenthalt am Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamiken der Religionsgeschichte zwischen Asien und Europa im Herbst 2013, von meiner Beteiligung am Projekt „Los mudéjares y moriscos de Castilla (s. XI–XVI)“ (HAR2011– 24915) des Spanischen Ministeriums für Wissenschaft und Innovation, sowie von einem Forschungsaufenthalt am Kulturwissenschaftlichen Kolleg Konstanz profitieren können. In Seminaren an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum und an der Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen habe ich frühere Versionen vorgestellt. Ich bin dankbar dafür, von diesen Einrichtungen unterstützt worden zu sein. Ebenso danke ich für die erhaltenen hilfreichen Hinweise und Kommentare von Kollegen. Ich danke Eva Engels für die Übersetzung des Beitrags ins Deutsche. 1 Vgl. Stefano Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe. Policy Issues and Trends, London: Alliance Publishing Trust, 2009, S. 13, 20.

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der muslimischen Minderheit –, es mit einer dauerhaften Migration zu tun zu haben, die nicht länger mit einer Rückkehr in die Heimat verbundenen ist. Bis vor nicht allzu langer Zeit hielt man die im Mittelalter im Norden der Iberischen Halbinsel lebenden muslimischen Gemeinschaften für randständige Gruppen, die ihre religiöse Identität, ihre politische Macht und sogar ihre literarischen Traditionen verloren hatten. Doch in Quellen, die in den letzten Jahren für die Erforschung dieser Gemeinschaften nutzbar gemacht wurden, kann belegt werden, dass dem nicht immer so war. Muslime waren nicht Teil der ursprünglichen Bevölkerung Nordkastiliens, sondern tauchen erst in verschiedenen Städten auf, als König Alfons ihnen nach der Eroberung Toledos (477/1085) einen geschützten Status zusprach, und besonders während der Eroberungszüge der Almohaden im zwölften Jahrhundert, im Zuge derer lokale muslimische Gruppen verstärkt aus destabilisierten Kriegsgebieten in Richtung Norden flüchteten. Andere wurden von den Monarchen aus unterschiedlichen Gründen direkt umgesiedelt, was sowohl unter Ferdinand III. als auch unter Alfons X. geschah; am häufigsten handelte es sich dabei um Sklaven aus militärischen Feldzügen, die später freigelassen wurden oder sich mit eigener Arbeit freikauften. Wieder anderen, die frei waren, wurden eigene fueros gegeben, oder besondere Gesetze. Diese berechtigten sie, ihre Religion und ihr Rechtssystem beizubehalten, und somit auch ihre Gebetsräume, wenn diese bereits vorhanden waren. Im Norden Kastiliens überließ der König Muslime oft der Obhut der Kirche (etwa in Palencia) oder unterstellte sie der Verwaltung von Diözesen (etwa in Ávila, Segovia oder Valladolid), die dann für die Erhebung von Steuern und Bevölkerungskontrolle zuständig waren. Im zwölften Jahrhundert brachen in diesen Diözesen verstärkt Auseinandersetzungen über den Zehnt aus, weil Christen vermieden, ihn zu zahlen, indem sie das betreffende Land Muslimen überließen, die dazu theoretisch nicht verpflichtet waren. Muslime und Juden lebten im Norden Kastiliens und auch in Aragon nicht notwendig in abgesonderten Nachbarschaften, sondern verstreut unter den christlichen Stadtbewohnern. Ihre Moscheen und Synagogen waren alle neu, weil in den nach den Eroberungen im zehnten und elften Jahrhundert neugegründeten Städten keine entsprechenden Gebäude vorhanden waren.

1. Nicht-christliche sakrale Gebäude im Kirchenrecht und im Zivilrecht Erste christliche Gesetze, in denen der Bau von Gotteshäusern fremder Religionen verboten wurde, entstanden im späten römischen Reich unter Honorius und Theodosius II., die zwischen 415 und 438 widersprüchliche Gesetze erließen: Erst wurde der Bau von Synagogen eingeschränkt und befürwortet, sie an mittlerweile unbewohnten Orten zu zerstören, und dann wurde die Zerstörung alter

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Synagogen verboten. 438 hieß es schließlich in einer Novelle: „Gleichermaßen wohlbegründet verbieten wir, Synagogen als neue Gebäude zu errichten, erteilen aber Erlaubnis, alte, unmittelbar vom Zerfall bedrohte Synagogen wieder zu festigen.“2 Auf Seiten des islamischen Rechts wurde mit der Eroberung großer Teile des byzantinischen Reichs die Frage, ob der Neubau und die Restauration von Synagogen und Kirchen erlaubt werden sollte, unter Rechtsgelehrten, die sich mit dem Status von dhimmīs befassten, hitzig debattiert. Sogar innerhalb ein und derselben Rechtsschule – in al-Andalus folgte man gewöhnlich den Mālikiten – gingen die Meinungen weit auseinander, von einem grundsätzlichen Verbot auf der Grundlage des „Pakts von Umar“, über von den jeweiligen Kapitulationsvereinbarungen abhängige Einschränkungen, bis hin zur Zerstörung der Kirchen, die in den muslimischen Vierteln einer Stadt standen.3 In einer fatwā in ʿĪsā Ibn Sahls (gest. 486/1093) al-Aḥkām al-Kubrā, einem Kompendium von Rechtsurteilen, wird die Haltung zur Etablierung von Kirchen in den Stadtgebieten von al-Andalus mit dem Verbot von Synagogen in Gegenden mit islamischer Bevölkerung verglichen: Neubauten waren verboten, mit Ausnahme von Vororten, in denen nur dhimmīs lebten.4 Die Idee eines Bauverbots nicht-christlicher Gotteshäuser geriet dann im christlichen Römischen Reich über lange Zeit in Vergessenheit, um schließlich im Zuge der reformatorischen Wellen des zwölften Jahrhunderts im Kirchenrecht wieder aufzutauchen. Obwohl im Rahmen des dritten Laterankonzils (574/1179)5 und auch im vierten (611/1215),6 zusammengerufen von Papst 2  Codex Theodosianus 16.8.25, verfügbar über die Datenbank Relmin, unter [abgerufen am 22. Juni 2016]. In diesem Gesetz, das auf Honorius zurückgeht und und dann von Theodosius II weiterentwickelt wurde, werden Ausgleichszahlungen für konfiszierte Synagogen festgelegt und ein anschließender Neubau verboten. Vgl. Codex Theodosianus in der Datenbank Relmin. Vgl. für ein ähnliches Gesetz, in dem architektonischen, städtebaulichen und ästhetischen Überlegungen Vorrang vor möglichen religiösen Einwänden gegeben wird, John Victor Tolan, „The Rites of Purim as Seen by the Christian Legislator: Codex Theodosianus 16.8.18“, Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la Edad Media, hrsg. v. José Martínez Gázquez und John Victor Tolan, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013, S. 165–74; Marc Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, S. 34. Ich bedanke mich bei Prof. Alexandra Cuffel für ihre Unterstützung bei der Erforschung der gesetzlichen Vorschriften zu Synagogen. 3  Alejandro García Sanjuán, „La formación de la doctrina legal mālikí sobre lugares deculto de los dimmīes“, The Legal Status of Dimmī-s in the Islamic West, hrsg. v. John Victor Tolan and Maribel Fierro, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, S. 131–56, v. a. S. 143–5. 4  Jean-Pierre Molénat, „La Fatwā sur la Construction des Églises à Cordoue au IVe/Xe siècle“, The Legal Status of Dimmī-s in the Islamic West, hrsg. v. John Victor Tolan und María Isabel Fierro, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, S. 157–66, hier S. 159–62. 5  Johannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum Consiliorum Nova et amplissima collectio, Venice: Antonio Zatta 1778, Bd. 22, Sp. 209–468, Kanones 24–6. 6 In den Kanones 67–70 werden Synagogen mit keinem Wort erwähnt. Johannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum Consiliorum, Bd. 22, über Juden auf Sp. 1051–8.

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Innozenz III., repressive Gesetze im Hinblick auf Juden erlassen wurden, wurde dort nichts zu Synagogen oder zu Moscheen ausgesagt. Nichtsdestoweniger hatte Innozenz III. dieses Thema durchaus als problematisch im Blick und erklärte in der Bulle „Constitutio pro Judaeis“, dass Juden nur das erlaubt sein solle, was ihnen im Hinblick auf Synagogen vom Recht zugesichert werde.7 Papst Honorius III. hingegen betonte dem Erzbischof von Bourges gegenüber warnend, man müsse Juden daran hindern, Synagogen zu bauen: „Wir haben gehört, dass die in eurer Provinz lebenden Juden entgegen einer kanonischen Vorschrift gewagt haben, neue Synagogen zu bauen. Deswegen weisen wir euren Orden mit einem apostolischen Schreiben an, die Zerstörung dieser Synagogen zu veranlassen, wenn das der Wahrheit entspricht.“8 In einem Brief von Innozenz IV. an den Bischof von Córdoba (2 Muḥarram 648/13. April 1250) findet sich der gleiche Gedanke: Es ist uns zu Ohren gekommen, dass die Juden der Provinz Córdoba sich unbedacht anmaßen, eine neue, unnötig hohe Synagoge zu bauen, entgegen des Verbots unserer lieben Söhne, des Erzdiakons und des Kapitels von Córdoba, wodurch sie unter den frommen Christen Empörung hervorgerufen und der Kirche von Córdoba großen Schaden zufügt haben. Darum wurden wir untertänigst gebeten, uns gnädig dieser Sache besonders anzunehmen. Wir befehlen aufgrund dieser bedenklichen Vorgänge Eurem Orden, kraft eines apostolischen Schreibens, im Hinblick darauf den Juden gegenüber den Pflichten eures Amtes nachzukommen, und das, ohne euch mit einem Appell aufzuhalten.9

Ein weiteres Verbot des Neubaus von Synagogen war kurz zuvor im Rahmen einer Provinzsynode in Oxford (619/1222) ergangen, zusammengerufen von Stephen Langton, Erzbischof von Canterbury. Juden wurde dort untersagt, neue Synagogen zu bauen, Sklaven zu besitzen, und der Umgang mit Christen. Langton war im vierten Laterankonzil eine treibende Kraft gewesen und nun vom antisemitischen Geist desselben beseelt. De facto wurden die kanonischen Gesetze der Synode von Oxford nicht breitflächig durchgesetzt und das wäre in der Praxis auch überhaupt nicht möglich gewesen. Sehr wahrscheinlich fand das gleiche Verbot seinen Weg zu einer anderen Synode in Córdoba, da der Papst in seinem Schreiben vom Erzbischof und dem Kapitel erlassene Verbote erwähnt. Clemens IV. äußerte sich in seiner Bulle „Dampnabili perfidia iudaeorum“ an die Erzbischöfe und Bischöfe von Poitiers, Toulouse und der Provence zu dieser  7 „Sicut ergo judaeis non debet esse licentia in synagogis suis, ultra quam permissum est lege, praesumere, ita in his quae sunt illis concessa, nullum debent praeiudicium sustinere.“ Siehe „Innocentius III Regestorum sive Epistolarum (1198–1216)“, J. S.  Migne, Patrologia Latina, Bd. 214, Sp. 864–5. Verfügbar über [abgerufen am 19. 04. ​2016].  8  1. Mai 1221. Siehe Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, New York: Hermon Press, 1966, Bd. I, S. 169.  9  Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, Bd. I, S. 283.

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Frage, in der er erklärte, Juden sei nicht erlaubt, neue Synagogen zu errichten.10 Einige Jahre später ließ Nikolaus III. seine Schreiber die Bischöfe anweisen, den Juden den Abriss einer Synagoge zu befehlen, die ausgebaut und dabei höher gemacht worden war.11 Die gleichen Bedenken kommen auch in weiteren, ungefähr zeitgleich ergehenden päpstlichen Anordnungen zum Ausdruck. Dort wird spezifiziert, dass ihnen die Angst zugrunde liegt, Juden könnten, indem sie ihre Synagogen auf diese Weise attraktiver gestalten als die umliegenden Kirchen, in der christlichen Öffentlichkeit zu sehr ins Auge treten. In den folgenden Synoden wurden Rechtsvorschriften im Zusammenhang mit Synagogen immer weiter ausgearbeitet, etwa in Wien (665/1267), wo sie in direkte Beziehung zu anderen der jüdischen Bevölkerung auferlegten Limitierungen gesetzt wurden: Art. XIX. Über jüdische Synagogen. Wenn außerdem Juden den Christen unter irgendwelchen Vorwenden hohe und exzessive Wucherzinsen abverlangen, sollten letztere von allen Geschäften mit ihnen ablassen, bis sie für diese übermäßigen Kosten auf angemessene Weise kompensiert wurden. Wenn notwendig, sollen die Christen mit Hilfe kirchlicher Strafmaßnahmen dazu gezwungen werden, von allen solchen Handelsbeziehung abzusehen. Und wir fordern die Prinzen auf, die Christen in dieser Hinsicht nicht anzufeinden, sondern vielmehr die Juden von solchen unmäßigen Praktiken abzuhalten. Wenn es geschehen sollte, dass das Sakrament des Altars an den Häusern der Juden vorbeigetragen wird, dann sollten diese sich, wenn sie den Klang [der Glocken] hören, in ihre Häuser zurückziehen und ihre Fenster und Türen schließen. Am Karfreitag sollten sie dazu von den Prälaten der Kirche gezwungen werden. Sie sollen weder mit einfachen Leuten über die katholische Lehre reden, noch versuchen, die Söhne und Ehemänner von Jüdinnen, die zum christlichen Glauben konvertiert sind, bei sich zu halten. Sie sollen auch nicht Christen zum Judentum bekehren oder es dreist wagen, sie zu beschneiden. Juden sollen kranke Christen weder besuchen noch Medizin an ihnen praktizieren. Keine neuen Synagogen sollen gebaut werden und wenn doch eine errichtet wird, soll sie entfernt werden. Wenn alte Synagogen renoviert werden müssen, soll das erlaubt sein, aber nur so, dass sie dadurch nicht größer, prächtiger oder gar höher werden.12

Obwohl also wieder und wieder Warnungen im Hinblick auf die Juden Europas und ihren Synagogen ausgesprochen wurden, wurden die Moscheen der im Westen lebenden Muslime nicht verboten  – weder in Italien, noch auf der Iberischen Halbinsel, noch in Osteuropa.

 Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, Bd. II, S. 106–9.  Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, Bd. I, S. 137–9. Erlassen wurden diese Vorschriften am 12. Februar 1278. 12  Hervorhebung durch Verf., übers. v. Jerzy Mazur, „XIX. De synagogis Judaeorum“, Concilium Viennense; verfügbar über die Datenbank Relmin http://form-tei.irht.cnrs.fr/m​an ​ ​u​s​ c​r​i​t​/affiche/id/254719 (abgerufen am 02.  06. ​2016). 10 11

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2. Synagogen und Moscheen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel. Vom kanonischen zum königlichen Recht Im zwölften Jahrhundert wurden sowohl in Kastilien als auch in Aragon fern ab von der Front lebende muslimische Gemeinden als Ganze von Bistümern verwaltet.13 Einige dieser Muslime waren versklavte Gefangene aus Angriffen und Streifzügen gegen muslimische Armeen an der Front, die kirchlichen Institutionen als Spende überlassen worden waren. Von diesen wurden manche später freigelassen und blieben in den Städten wohnen, in denen sie auf Ländereien der Kirche als Feldarbeiter oder allgemein für Bauarbeiten eingesetzt worden waren. Andere waren Lehnsmänner der Bischöfe und Äbte, die als Pächter ihre Äcker bearbeiteten. Im dreizehnten Jahrhundert ließ sich erneut eine Welle muslimischer Zuwanderer im Norden der Iberischen Halbinsel nieder; sie waren Flüchtlinge oder Kriegsgefangene aus den Eroberungsfeldzügen in Andalusien und Valencia. All diese Gemeinden hatten keine Moschee aus der islamischen Periode Kastiliens, entweder, weil sie nördlicher lebten, als die Grenze von alAndalus je verlaufen war oder weil die muslimischen Machthaber bereits im elften Jahrhundert die entsprechenden Orte verlassen hatten, und deshalb alle Moscheen in Kirchen umgewandelt worden waren und die ehemalige muslimische Bevölkerung entweder fortgezogen oder konvertiert war. In Aragon hingegen waren ländliche Gemeinden vor Ort geblieben, hatten weiter ihre Religion ausgeübt und ihre Moscheen behalten, oder sie waren in den Städten zu Lehnsmännern des Königs geworden, mit mindestens einer Moschee pro Stadt. Das Gleiche geschah südlich vom Iberischen Scheidegebirge in Toledo; dort wurde in jeder Stadt mit muslimischer Bevölkerung die Beibehaltung einer Moschee erlaubt. In diesen Fällen wurde den Muslimen ihre Freitags-Moschee genommen, diese wurde zu einer Kathedrale oder Basilika umgewandelt, und für die islamischen Gottesdienste wurde eine der Nachbarschaftsmoscheen ausgewählt. Das Gleiche galt für die neu eroberten Gebiete von Andalusien und Valencia. Freie und unfreie muslimische Siedler hatten ein Recht auf Religionsausübung. Im vierzehnten Jahrhundert, nach einer in Verträgen und anderen Rechtsquellen nachverfolgbaren Welle von Freilassungen, wurden muslimische Gemeinden als aljamas oder morerías neu strukturiert.14 In vielen Gesetzbüchern der Gebiete, 13  Carlos Laliena und Philippe Sénac, Musulmans et Chrétiens dans le haut Moyen Âge. Aux origines de la reconquête aragonaise, Paris: Minerve 1991; Ana Echevarría, „La ‚mayoría‘ mudéjar en León y Castilla. Legislación real y distribución de la población (siglos XI–XIII)“, La España Medieval, 26 (2006), S. 7–30; Thomas W. Barton, „Constructing a Diocese in a Post-Conquest Landscape. A Comparative Approach to Lay Possession of Tithes“, Journal of Medieval History, 35 (2009), S. 1–33, sowie „Muslims in Christian Countrysides. Reassessing Exaricus Tenures in Eastern Iberia“, Medieval Encounters, 17 (2011), S. 233–320. 14  Wenn die über ihre Religionszugehörigkeit verbundene Gemeinschaft der Gläubigen ein Rechtssubjekt war, mit einer Reihe von Ämtern, die vom jeweiligen christlichen Herrscher

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in denen im dreizehnten Jahrhundert keine Muslime lebten, gab es keine rechtlichen Vorschriften im Hinblick auf dieselben  – da sie schlicht nicht präsent waren, als jene geschrieben wurden – und in vielen Fällen galt das Gleiche für Juden. Solche Rechtslücken erlaubten es diesen Bevölkerungsgruppen, in einer Reihe von Städten und kleineren Orten den Status von vecinos („Nachbarn“, im Sinne von Bürgern mit gewissen Rechten gegenüber der Stadtregierung) zu erlangen.15 Es gab also Moscheen in jeder Stadt, entweder aufgrund eines Übereinkommens oder aufgrund einer Rechtslücke, und, abhängig von lokalen Sonderrechten (sog. fueros), auch in vielen ländlichen Siedlungen. Der nächste Schritt auf dem Weg zur rechtlichen Anerkennung der Gebetshallen dieser zwei religiösen Gruppen, der Juden und der Muslime, wurde mit Las Siete Partidas getan, der ersten mittelalterlichen römischen Gesetzsammlung auf der Iberischen Halbinsel unter Alfons X., „der Weise“ genannt (671– 673/1273–1275). In den Partidas findet sich die komplexe Situation während und direkt nach einer Welle von Aufständen wiedergespiegelt, an denen das muslimische Emirat von Granada und in christlichen Herrschaftsgebieten lebende Muslime beteiligt waren. Von diesen Aufständen war sowohl Aragon als auch Kastilien betroffen: Sie begannen 645/1248 in Valencia, dann folgte 662/1264 Murcia und Andalusien, und 672/1274 wieder Valencia  – Orte mit einer signifikanten muslimischen Bevölkerung.16 Alle Friedensvereinbarungen waren gebrochen worden; und nach christlichem Recht waren damit alle Lehnsverträge aufgehoben. Die Folgen lassen sich deutlich am unterschiedlichen Umgang mit Synagogen einerseits und Moscheen andererseits im Ley IV, Partida VII, Tit. XXIV17 ablesen, das sich mit Juden befasst und in dem der Inhalt des kanonischen Rechts reproduziert wird: anerkannt wurden, wurde der Begriff Al-ğāmā’a (Spanisch: aljama) verwendet. Morería heißen kleine Gruppen von Muslimen, die unter christlicher Herrschaft lebten, und im Hinblick auf Steuern organisiert waren, denen aber die mengenmäßige Größe und die Bedeutsamkeit einer aljama fehlte, der sie typischerweise unterstellt waren. Im Lauf der Zeit wurde morería auch zum Wort für muslimische Viertel in Städten (bei denen es sich nicht notwendig um ghettos handelte). 15  Juden lebten in vielen italienischen Städten unter denselben Bedingungen, aber das konnte von Stadt zu Stadt verschieden sein. Osavaldo Cavallar und Julius Kirshner, „Jews as Citizens in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. The Case of Isacco da Pisa“, Jewish History, 25 (2011), S. 269–318, besonders S. 270. 16  Alejandro García Sanjuán, „Causas inmediatas y alcance de la revuelta mudéjar de 1264“, Actas Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo, hrsg. v. Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2004, S. 505–18; Josep Torró Abad, „El problema del hábitat fortificado en el sur del reino de Valencia después de la segunda revuelta mudéjar (1276–1304)“, Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval, 7 (1988– 89), S. 53–81; Carlos de Ayala, „Jaime I y la sublevación mudéjar-granadina de 1264“, Homenaje al Profesor Juan Torres Fontes, hrsg. v. Juan Torres Fontes, Murcia: Universidad de MurciaAcademia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1987, S. 93–107. 17  Das war zum Beispiel bei der Synagoge von Don Juan in Valencia der Fall: Weil die jüdische Gemeinde sie vergrößert und dekoriert hatte, befahl ihnen Königin Juana, Ehefrau

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Gesetz IV. Unter welchen Bedingungen unter Christen lebende Juden eine Synagoge haben können. Eine Synagoge ist der Ort, an dem Juden beten, und ein neues Gebäude dieser Art darf nirgendwo in unserem Herrschaftsbereich errichtet werden, außer auf unseren direkten Befehl hin. Wo aber zuvor existierende Synagogen niedergerissen wurden, dürfen sie an der gleichen Stätte neu gebaut werden, an der sie ursprünglich gestanden hatten; sie dürfen aber nicht größer oder höher gebaut oder dekoriert werden. Jede Synagoge, die davon abweichend errichtet wird, soll den Juden genommen und der zentralen Kirche des Orts, an dem jene gebaut wurde, übergeben werden. Und weil die Synagoge ein Ort ist, an dem der Name Gottes gepriesen wird, verbieten wir den Christen, sie zu verunstalten, oder irgendetwas von ihr fortzunehmen, oder etwas mit Gewalt aus ihr zu entfernen; ausgenommen, wenn ein Übeltäter dort Schutz sucht, denn dann haben sie das Recht, ihn mit Gewalt von dort fortzuholen, um ihn vor Gericht zu stellen. Außerdem verbieten wir es Christen, irgendwelche Tiere in eine Synagoge zu bringen, oder sich grundlos in ihr aufzuhalten, oder den Juden dort bei der Ausübung ihrer religiösen Pflichten irgendein Hindernis in den Weg zu legen.

Ganz anders der folgende Text aus Ley I, Partida VII, Tit. XXV: Wir verkünden, dass die Mauren unter den Christen genau so leben sollen, wie wir im vorangegangenen Titel erklärt haben, dass die Juden es sollen, nämlich, indem sie ihrem eigenen Recht folgen und das unsere nicht missachten. Aber die Mauren sollen in christlichen Städten keine Moscheen haben und ihre Opfergaben nicht öffentlich in Gegenwart anderer darbringen. Die Moscheen, die sie vormalig besaßen, sollen dem König gehören und er kann sie fortgeben, an wen er will. Obwohl Mauren sich nicht zu einem guten Glauben bekennen, soll ihnen, solange sie unter Christen leben, die ihnen Schutz zugesagt haben, nichts gestohlen oder mit Gewalt genommen werden; und wir befehlen, dass jeder, der gegen dieses Gesetz verstößt, eine Summe zahlen soll, die dem doppelten Werts dessen entspricht, was er sich aneignete.18

In diesem Gesetz wird zwar der Zusammenhang zwischen dem Vorgehen des Königs in Bezug auf Juden einerseits und auf Muslime andererseits deutlich, aber zugleicht wird eine recht harte Position hinsichtlich des Rechts muslimischer Gemeinden bezogen, ihre Moscheen zu nutzen, aufgrund dessen, dass im Anschluss an die Aufstände um 658/1260 herum die entsprechenden Vereinbarungen außer Kraft gesetzt worden waren. Gegen Ende des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts, nachdem von den Königen Begnadigungen gewährt worden waren, um einen zu starken Abzug von Arbeitskräften aus Gegenden zu verhindern, in denen Aufstände unterdrückt worden waren, wurde dann in der Alltagspraxis der Geltungsbereich der gesetzlichen von Heinrich II. von Kastilien (1369–79), sie aufzugeben. Das Gebäude wurde dem Bischof von Oviedo überlassen. Ein ähnlicher Fall war die neue Synagoge in Bembibre, die der dortige Pfarrer in eine christliche Kirche umwandelte, weil sie ohne Erlaubnis gebaut worden war. Ein königlicher Richter ratifizierte das 1490. Vgl. Rita Ríos de la Llave, „Discrimination Against the Jewish Population in Medieval Castile and León“, Religion and Power in Europe. Conflict and Convergence, hrsg. v. Joaquim Carvalho, Pisa: Plus-Pisa University Press, 2007, Bd. II, S. 53. 18  Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas del rey don Alfonso el Sabio, Bd. III, Madrid: Vega, 1972.

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Regelungen zu Synagogen auf Muslime und ihre Moscheen ausgeweitet. Die Partidas wurden bis 749/1348 nicht in vollem Maße als geltendes Recht umgesetzt und danach diente das eben zitierte Ley IV (Partida VII, Tit. XXIV ) als Richtlinie für den Umgang mit sowohl Synagogen als auch Moscheen, wodurch beiden Gemeinschaften ein gewisser Verhandlungsspielraum blieb. Eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Textsammlung für das Gebiet der „Krone von Aragon“ zeigt, dass sich die Juden in der Tat zwischen 628/1231 und 905/1500 in ständigen Verhandlungen mit dem Monarchen  – und in eingeschränktem Maße auch mit der Kirche – befanden, bei denen es um den Neubau, die Renovierung oder die Vergrößerung von Synagogen im Gegenzug für Zahlungen ging.19 Bisher konnte kein Beleg für solche Transaktionen in Kastilien gefunden werden, weder von Juden, noch von Muslimen und ihren Moscheen.

3. Die Neugründung von Moscheen in christlichen Städten Nach dem Aufkommen von aljamas und zweifellos mit der Erlaubnis oder zumindest der stillschweigender Akzeptanz christlicher Machthaber konnten Muslime in fernab von der Front liegenden Gegenden von Kastilien und Aragon, neue Moscheen an Standorten gründen, an denen zuvor keine vorhanden waren – das bedeutet, dass sie keine Bauarbeiten durchführten, sondern bereits existierende Gebäude zu diesem Zweck pachteten –, und diese dekorieren. Die neuen Moscheen waren also keine, die zuvor vom König übernommen worden waren, sondern wurden stattdessen ex novo gegründet. Dass sie oft in Nachbarschaften standen, die zum Besitz der Kirche gehörten, wurde von kirchlichen und staatlichen Machthabern entweder akzeptiert oder ignoriert. Im nächsten Schritt werde ich nun anhand von Fallstudien aus dem Norden Kastiliens belegen, dass Verbote des Neubaus von Moscheen und Synagogen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Mittelalter meistens schlicht nicht eingehalten wurden. In einigen neuere Untersuchungen wurden im Zusammenhang mit der Frage der Gründung von Moscheen ein paar Nuancen eingeführt: Es ist wichtig, zwischen Moscheen zu unterscheiden, die von der Gemeinde in einem bereits existierenden Gebäude etabliert wurden, und solchen, die gezielt als Gebetshäuser gebaut wurden, also sozusagen „zweckspezifisch gebauten Moscheen“.20 Manchmal waren letztere auch ästhetisch als solche erkennbar, aber nicht notwendigerweise. Außerdem muss zweitens berücksichtigt werden, ob es sich um den Fortbestand von Moscheen handelt, die vor dem eben erwähnten Verbot von 749/1348 in christlichen Städten gebaut oder gegründet worden waren – mit 19  Jaume Riera i Sans, Els poders públics i les sinagogues. Segles XIII–XV, Girona, Patronat Call de Girona: 2006. Ich bin Dr. Javier Castaño für den Hinweis auf dieses unverzichtbare Buch sehr dankbar. 20  Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe, S. 23.

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anderen Worten, bei unklarer Rechtslage – oder ob sie erst nach 699/1300 entstanden waren. Im Mittelalter gab es in christlichen Städten auf der Iberischen Halbinsel eine oder mehrere Moscheen,21 von denen manche die christliche Eroberung der Stadt überstanden hatten, während andere von den neuen Machthabern auf Bitte der muslimischen Bevölkerung hin erlaubt worden waren – eine solche Erlaubnis widersprach zwar dem Kirchenrecht und auch dem Recht der Könige, wurde aber trotzdem manchmal aus pragmatischen Gründen erteilt. Genau wie auch an anderen Orten rahmten diese Gebäude den öffentlichen Raum ein, innerhalb dessen sich die muslimische Gemeinde bewegte und miteinander kommunizierte, weil sie an andere, alltägliche Orte der Zusammenkunft anschlossen waren: an den Markt und große öffentlichen Plätze. Die genauen Platzierungen mussten aber erst ausgehandelt werden, weil, wie erwähnt, Muslime in den Städten Nordkastiliens ursprünglich nicht präsent waren. Falls Muslimen als versklavten Kriegsgefangenen erlaubt war, sich zum Beten zu versammeln – es gibt zwar viele Quellen, in denen die Verteilung der Gefangenen an die verschiedenen sozialen Gruppen in kastilischen Städten an der Front dokumentiert ist, darunter auch Kirchenführer, aber keine schriftlichen Belege dafür, dass das der Fall war  –, dann muss ihnen Raum zur Etablierung einer Gebetshalle und für das Anlegen von Friedhöfen zugesprochen worden sein.22 Der Bau von Moscheen vor dem Verbot von 749/1348 ist an zwei Orten dokumentiert. Die ersten Belege beziehen sich auf die Stadt Burgos. Dort hatte sich aufgrund von Arbeiten am Kloster von Las Huelgas und dem Bau des Krankenhauses des Königs und der Königin unter Alfons VIII. eine nicht unbeträchtliche Zahl freier Muslime niedergelassen, denen bis zum Jahr 610/1214 eine Moschee in einer Nachbarschaft zur Verfügung stand, deren Grenzen zunächst durch die Kirche von Santa Agueda und später – nach 658/1260 – die von San Martín, Santa María de la Vieja Rúa und Santa Colomba festgelegt wurden. In den Aufzeichnungen der Kirche wird das Gebäude wie selbstverständlich hingenommen; es gilt aber zu bedenken, dass diese Moschee zu früh gebaut wurde, um von den rechtlichen Einschränkungen betroffen zu sein.23 21  Allerdings war es üblicher, nur eine Moschee zu haben, entsprechend der malikischen Vorschrift, die ḫuṭba (Freitagspredigt) pro Stadt nur in einer einzigen Moschee zu halten. Vgl. hierzu María Isabel Calero Secall, „Algunas fetuas sobre la duplicidad de las aljamas andalusíes“, L’urbanisme dans l’Occident musulman au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques, hrsg. v. Patrice Cressier, María Isabel Fierro und Jean-Pierre van Staëvel, Madrid 2000, S. 125–40. Angesichts des Umstandes, dass es in den meisten Städten im Norden Kastiliens wenige Muslime gab, wäre eine Moschee in den meisten Fällen völlig ausreichend gewesen. Daher stellt sich die Frage, warum es in Ávila drei gab. 22 Für eine Zusammenfassung der Forschungsergebnisse der letzten Jahre zu diesem Thema vgl. Ana Echevarría, „Funerary Practices in a Multi-Religious Context from the Iberian Peninsula to the Eastern Mediterranean“, Das Mittelmeer und der Tod. Mediterrane Mobilität und Sepulkralkultur, hrsg. v. Alexander Berner u. a., Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016, S. 179–94. 23  Teófilo López Mata, „Morería y judería“, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 129 (1951), S. 335–72: S. 337–9. Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta und Luis Araus Ballesteros, „Espacios,

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Ein anderer Fall lässt sich im Gebiet von Toledo und den daran angrenzenden Städten genauer erforschen. Theoretisch hätte es den Muslimen von Toledo erlaubt werden müssen, ihre Moscheen weiter zur Ausübung ihrer Religion zu verwenden; wir wissen aber, dass ihre Hauptmoschee annektiert und als Kathedrale neu eingesegnet wurde, obwohl man die ursprüngliche Architektur noch zwei Jahrhunderte beibehielt, bis unter Erzbischof Jiménez de Rada mit dem Bau des gotischen Gebäudes begonnen wurde. Ibn al-Kardabus zufolge versprach Alfons VI., respektvoll mit den Muslimen umzugehen, die bleiben wollten, und dass all jene samt ihren Besitztümern anerkannt werden würden, die die Stadt verlassen hatten und nun zurückkehren wollten.24 Diese Abmachung ließ im Hinblick auf Fortdauer, auf Änderungen der Nachbarschaften und auf die Erhaltung alter Moscheen einen gewissen Verhandlungsspielraum offen. Es gibt in der entsprechenden Forschung eine anhaltende Debatte zwischen einem Lager, demzufolge alle Muslime Toledo verließen und jenen, die wie auch ich glauben, dass sie zunächst in die Randgebieten der Stadt gedrängt wurden, sich dort niederließen und, nachdem Christen die beliebteren Grundstücke unter sich aufgeteilt hatten, teilweise in die übrig gebliebenen Gebäude zurückkehrten, oder dass sie die Stadt zwar verlassen mussten, aber nur vorübergehend.25 Beide Szenarien würden bedeuten, dass diesen Menschen weiterhin Gebetshallen zur Verfügung standen und dass die zentralen Rollen der Moscheen, die Lehre und das Gerichtswesen, von der Eroberung nicht völlig ausgelöscht wurden, was in der Geschichtsschreibung bisher nicht korrekt wiedergegeben wurde. identidades y relaciones de los musulmanes de la ciudad de Burgos durante su minoría mudéjar“, De la alquería a la aljama, hrsg. v. Ana Echevarría und Adela Fábregas, Madrid: UNED, 2016, S. 167–88, S. 179. 24 Ibn al-Kardabus, Historia de al-Andalus, übers. ins Englische v. Maíllo Salgado, Madrid: Akal 1986, S. 105 25 Ángel González Palencia, Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII, Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1926–30, Bd. I, S. 151–2, 233–41; Pascal Buresi, La frontière entre Chrétienté et Islam dans la Péninsule Ibérique. Du Tage à la Sierra Morena ( fin XIe–milieu XIIIe siècle), Paris 2004, S. 75. Ein vehementer Verteidiger der Position, dass alle Muslime Toledo verließen, ist Jean-Pierre Molénat, Campagnes et Monts de Tolède du XIIe au XVe siècle, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1997, S. 27–41; außerdem, „Les mudéjars de Tolède: Professions et localisations urbaines“, Actas del VI Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo, hrsg. v. Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 1995, S. 429–35 und „Tolède à la fin du XIe siècle et au début du XIIe. Le problème de l’émigration ou de la permanence des musulmans“, De Toledo a Huesca. Sociedades medievales en transición a finales del siglo XI (1080–1100), hrsg. v. Carlos Laliena Corbera und Juan F. Utrilla Utrilla, Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1998, S. 101–10. Für genauere Unterscheidungen vgl. Ana Echevarría, „La transformación del espacio islámico (siglos XI–XIII)“, À la recherche de légitimités chrétiennes. Actas del Coloquio Représentations de l’espace et du temps dans l’Espagne des IXe–XIIIe siècles, hrsg. v. Patrick Henriet, Lyon: ENS Éditions-Casa de Velázquez, 2003, S. 53–77 und „Desplazamientos de población y movilidad social en los inicios del mudejarismo castellano“, Actas del XI Congreso de Estudios Medievales, Ávila-León: Fundación Sánchez Albornoz, 2009, S. 499–520.

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Bis zum Jahr 586/1190 waren die meisten Moscheen der Stadt dann in der Tat zu Kirchen umfunktioniert worden und nur die „neue“ Moschee von Tornerías, auch del Solarejo („auf einem kleinen Stückchen Land“) genannt, blieb den Muslimen bis zum Ende des Mittelalters als Freitagsmoschee erhalten. Ähnlich wie an anderen Orten auch stand diese Moschee mitten in einem Marktviertel, nämlich in Zocodover, dessen Gebäude in christlicher Hand waren, aber an jeden verpachtet wurden, der zahlen konnte, ohne Ansehung der Religionszugehörigkeit.26 Unterhalb der Gebetshalle gab es zwei Kaufläden, die zum Zweck der Unterhaltung des Gebäudes als Ganzem vermietet wurden, gewöhnlich an Muslime.27 Obwohl diese Moschee bis zur Zwangstaufe der Muslime im Jahr 907/1502 weiter existierte, wurde nie in Frage gestellt, wem sie gehörte, und auch nicht, warum sie prominent im Zentrum des Marktviertels lokalisiert war, mitten unter Christen. In Aufzeichnungen über die Moschee von Tornerías heißt es, „la mezquita que fue de los moros“ oder „la mezquita propiedad de los moros“, um welche Art von Besitz es sich hier handelt, wird aber nicht genauer gesagt. Die Bedeutung des hier verwendeten Begriffs ist nicht wirklich klar. Im Zusammenhang mit verpachteten Besitztümern der Kirche wurde bereits 702/1303 und wahrscheinlich im 13. Jahrhundert im Kirchenrecht der römische Rechtsterminus emphiteusis verwendet. Damit war eine langjährige Pacht gemeint, die mit mehr Rechten als in Mietverträgen sonst üblich verbunden war, unter anderem mit der Option, das Pachtverhältnis über mehrere Generationen weiterlaufen zu lassen, sowie dem Recht, selbst weiterzuvermieten, und damit, alle Bauarbeiten durchzuführen zu dürfen, die für die Erhaltung des Gebäudes oder des Grundstücks für notwendig erachtet wurden (z. B. Mauern oder Mühlen). Im kanonischen Recht wird an verschiedenen Stellen erwähnt, dass mehrere Kathedralen ihre Besitztümer in dieser Weise an einzelne Muslime, an Juden und an eigene Angehörige verpachtet hatten, aber auch an Minoritätengruppen als Kollektiv (etwa an eine aljama). Häuser, die über solche als langfristig angelegten Verträgen gepachtet wurden, konnten leicht für Moscheen verwendet werden, ohne dass eine solche „gebaut“ werden musste. Architektonische Veränderungen waren nicht notwendig, vor allem, da Minarette nicht länger erlaubt waren und da das Innere der meisten kastilischen Häuser dieser Zeit von außen nicht eingesehen werden konnte, so dass dort stattfindende religiöse Praktiken niemanden aufgefallen wären. Sehen wir uns ein paar Fallbeispiele an.

26 Julio Porres Martín-Cleto, „La mezquita toledana del Solarejo, llamada de las Tornerías“, Al-Qanṭara, 4 (1983), S. 411–21, hier S. 416–8. 27 Ana Echevarría, Rafael Mayor, „Las actas de reunión de una cofradía islámica de Toledo, una fuente árabe para el estudio de los mudéjares castellanos“, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, Tomo CCVII, Cuaderno III (2010), S. 257–93, Fn. 7r, S. 270, 287; Ana Echevarría, „A Sufi Confraternity in Mudejar Castile“, Constructions of Devotion Across Islamic Lands, hrsg. v. Ana Echevarría, Cynthia Robinson und Amalia Zomeño Rodríguez, Leiden: Brill (im Druck).

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Vom zwölften bis zum sechzehnten Jahrhundert gab es in Ávila eine nicht unbedeutende muslimische Präsenz. Die Phase, in der Muslime und Juden sich dort erstmals im Stadtinneren niederließen, ist zwar nicht schriftlich dokumentiert, aber die Tatsache, dass sich die erste Moschee der Stadt und auch die erste Synagoge direkt im Zentrum derselben befanden, nahe San Esteban und außerdem ein weiteres Mal in direkter Nachbarschaft des Marktes, auf einem Grundstück, das den Kanonikern der Kathedrale gehörte, lässt darauf schließen, dass der Bischof und die Kanoniker ihre Erlaubnis oder zumindest ihr stillschweigendes Einverständnis und der Stadtrat seine Zustimmung gegeben haben mussten. Das Grundstück lag zwar innerhalb der Stadtmauern, an einem vorteilhaften und gut kontrollierbaren Ort nahe der Kathedrale, aber zugleich in einem Viertel, das im Fall von Unruhen leicht abgesperrt und isoliert werden konnte, und außerdem in der Nähe der Burg. Diese erste Moschee der Gemeinde wurde interessanterweise genau wie die in Toledo del Solarejo genannt. Sie blieb bis zum Ende des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts in Gebrauch; wahrscheinlich bis im Süden jenseits der Stadtmauer ein neues muslimisches Viertel gebaut wurde, nahe des „Pfads der Kühe“ (Camino de las Vacas). An manchen Stellen wird sie als Moschee „von San Esteban“ beschrieben oder als die „almaxi (für al-masğid) des Orts im Stadtinneren“.28 Die Entscheidung, der wichtigsten Moschee und auch der Synagoge einen Platz nahe der Kathedrale und innerhalb der Stadtmauern zuzuweisen  – wie auch in Burgos und in anderen kastilischen Städten29 –, hängt auch damit zusammen, dass Minderheiten besonders geschützt werden mussten. Wann genau die Moschee gebaut wurde, ist nicht bekannt und so können wir nur sagen, dass sie ungefähr zur gleichen Zeit wie die Moschee in Toledo entstand und daher noch nicht unter die restriktiven Vorschriften der Partidas fiel. Außerdem ist die Existenz von zwei weiteren Moscheen dokumentiert, als die Zahl freier Muslime in Ávila stieg, deren Bau anscheinend – oder de facto – in direktem Widerspruch zum geltenden Recht stand, wozu auch die Partidas gehörten. Das war erstens die an der Stadtmauer gelegene Moschee La Solana, in der Nachbarschaft der Kirche Santa María Magdalena und des Großen Markts, deren Gemeinde sich wahrscheinlich aus jenen Gläubigen zusammensetze, die rund um den Markt und um die Plätze vor den Kirchen San Pedro und Santo Tomé wohnten, beide im Marktviertel. Doch das eindrucksvollste Beispiel findet sich nach 798/1396, als der Vorort (arrabal) San Nicolás,30 – der bereits seit Ende 28 Seráfin de Tapia Sánchez, La comunidad morisca de Ávila, Ávila-Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1989, S. 61. 29 Villanueva Zubizarreta und Araus Ballesteros, „Espacios, identidades y relaciones“, S. 179; Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta und Luis Araus Ballesteros, „La identidad musulmana de los mudéjares de la cuenca del Duero a finales de la Edad Media. Aportaciones desde la aljama de Burgos“, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie III. Historia Medieval, 27 (2014), S. 525–46: S. 538–9. 30  Sankt Nicholas, Bischof von Myra (dessen Reliquien später nach Bari gebracht wurden), war besonders mit weitgereisten Menschen, die in ganz Europa mit verschiedensten Waren

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des zwölften Jahrhunderts um eine romanische Kirche dieses Namens herum angesiedelt war – für die Muslime von Ávila zu einer wichtigen neuen Wohngegend wurde, die näher am Fluss und an ihrem Friedhof gelegen war. Dort sollte die neue Alquibla-Moschee gebaut werden. Angesichts der bereits beschriebenen restriktiven Vorschriften ist schwer verständlich, wie den Muslimen erlaubt werden konnte, in einer so kleinen Stadt wie Ávila ein drittes Gebetshaus zu errichten, während die anderen beiden noch in Gebrauch waren. Es muss um diese Zeit herum einen starken Anstieg in der muslimischen Bevölkerung Ávilas gegeben haben, während sich das Zentrum tendenziell in Richtung Süden verschob, so dass die Stadt über ihre Mauern herauswuchs; eine solche Entwicklung hätte innerhalb der Stadtmauern Freiräume geschaffen, die dann von Christen für andere Zwecke hätten benutzt werden können. Außerdem könnte für die Gründung einer neuen Moschee gesprochen haben, dass neu zugezogene Muslime weniger gewillt waren, den Weg zu den älteren Moscheen im Stadtinneren auf sich zunehmen, da diese weit von ihren Arbeitsplätzen entfernt lagen, oder dass sie Teil einer anderen islamischen Strömung waren – was dazu passen würde, dass die fuqahāʾ der Stadt sich in Rechtsfragen nicht einig waren.31 Die Abwanderung der Bevölkerung in Richtung Süden lässt sich an Pachtverträgen neuer Häuser ablesen, die von den zweitältesten Söhnen prominenter Familien der aljama abgeschlossen wurden – oft waren das Handwerker –, rund um den Platz „Altes Bad“ („Baño viejo“), was dafür spricht, dass es in der Nähe Brunnen gab, die üblicherweise mit den rituellen Waschungen vor dem Gebet assoziiert sind. In einer Nachbarschaft wie dieser wäre die Errichtung einer Moschee aber für die christlichen Machthaber auf jeden Fall offensichtlich gewesen, vor allem, wenn genügend Raum in Anspruch genommen wurde, um eine große Halle zu bauen. Weil die Nutzwiesen der Stadt in Gebieten, die nahe am Fluss lagen, zwischen den Häusern verteilt waren, wäre Brachland, auf dem an einem für die Gläubigen praktischeren Ort eine Moschee errichtet werden konnte, leicht zu finden gewesen. Um das ohne Hindernisse umsetzen zu können, war eine schriftliche Erlaubnis des Königs, des Bischofs oder des Stadtrats notwendig, genau wie in Aragon, wo damit Gebühren verbunden waren; bisher gibt es keine Belege dafür, dass letzteres auch im Königreich Kastilien geschah. Das könnte bedeuten, dass die Muslime dort hofften, ihr gutes Verhältnis mit kirchlichen und staatlichen Machthabern wäre ein ausreichender Schutz, aber das wäre auf jeden Fall mit einem gewissen Risiko verbunden gewesen und passt auch nicht zu dem, was in Kastilien üblich war, außer in Fällen, in denen handeln, assoziiert. Vgl. hierzu Werner Mezger, Sankt Nikolaus. Zwischen Kult und Klamauk, Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag, 1993, S. 17–35 und S. 83–6. 31  So waren die fuqahāʾ der drei Moscheen z. B. bezüglich des Betens auf einer Ziegenhaut unterschiedlicher Meinung und mussten daher Gelehrte aus anderen Städten hinzuziehen. Vgl. Ana Echevarría, The City of the Three Mosques. Ávila and its Muslims in the Middle Ages, Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2011, S. 92.

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die Muslime über ein bereits zuvor vom Monarchen erteiltes Sonderrecht verfügten. Andererseits könnten wir es hier auch mit „architektonischem Mimikry“ zu tun haben, das heißt mit der Entscheidung, beim Neu‑ oder Umbau eines Gebäudes es an angrenzenden Häuser anzupassen.32 Da die architektonischen Minimalanforderungen für eine Moschee vom Aufbau eines zeitgenössischen kastilischen Hauses durchaus erfüllt wurden, könnte es sein, dass eines der vom Kapitel der Kathedrale gepachteten Gebäude auf diese Weise genutzt wurde.33 In der Tat wird in manchen mittelalterlichen Quellen bei Verweisen auf diese Moscheen das Wort Haus verwendet: Eine Moschee in Segovia in der Nachbarschaft von San Martín wird als „una casa de almagid que los moros ovieron tenudo en la dicha çibdad e collaçion“34 beschrieben, eine Moschee in Valladolid als „la casa que solía ser mezquita e almají“35 und die Moschee La Solana in Ávila als „las casas del almagid que estaban a la bajada del Rastro“.36 Um ein kastilisches Haus zur Moschee umzufunktionieren, mussten am formellen Erscheinungsbild nur geringfügige Veränderungen vorgenommen werden: Üblicherweise gab es bereits einen Innenhof mit einem Springbrunnen, der für rituelle Waschungen verwendet werden konnte und man konnte in einem der Räume eine qiblaMarkierung anbringen, um die Gebetsrichtung anzuzeigen. Dass kleine Nachbarschaftsmoscheen einfach den Aufbau von Häusern mit einem einzelnen großen Raum und mehreren kleinen angrenzenden Zimmern kopierten, war im Maghreb und in al-Andalus sehr üblich und diese Praxis konnte in Kastilien wahrscheinlich recht einfach reproduziert werden.37 Um islamische Kultur zu evozieren, brauchte man nur bewegliche Komponenten der Inneneinrichtung – etwa Teppiche, Buchpulte, Wandteppiche, die minbar – oder architektonische Details aus Gips oder Holz. Tatsächlich waren viele der von Christen bewohnten Häuser und Paläste der Stadt ebenfalls mit islamischen Dekorationen in den Zimmern und den Innenhöfen verziert.  Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe, S. 42–3.  In einem Kapitel in Saḥnūns Mudawwana ist von Häusern die Rede, die von Muslimen an Christen verpachtet werden und daher als Kirchen genutzt werden könnten, was dort eher abgelehnt wird. Dass diese Möglichkeit aber überhaupt in einem herausragenden Werk der masā’il erwähnt wird, zeigt, dass sie zumindest in Betracht gezogen wurde. Vgl. García Sanjuán, „La Formación de la Doctrina“, S. 145. 34  Archivo General de Simancas (Spanien), Bereich Registro General del Sello, 148011, Fn. 123. Ich danke meinem Kollegen J. L. Pascual für einen entsprechenden Hinweis. 35  Manuel Moratinos García und Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta, „Consecuencias del decreto de conversión al cristianismo de 1502 en la aljama mora de Valladolid“, Sharq al-Andalus. Revista de Estudios Mudéjares y Moriscos, 16–17 (1999–2002), S. 121–44: S. 124. 36  Cándido María Ajo González, Historia de Ávila y su tierra, Bd. III, Madrid: CSIC, 1991, S. 241. Diese Moschee wird bereits im Jahr 1411 in Quellen erwähnt. 37  Clara Delgado Valero, „El arte de Ifrīqiya y sus relaciones con distintos ámbitos del Mediterráneo. Al-Andalus, Egipto y Sicilia“, Al-Qantara, 17–2 (1996), S. 291–319, hier S. 293–4. 32 33

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Um ihren Besitz zu vergrößern, schlossen Muslime weitere Gebäude an Moscheen an, die als Wohnhaus für alfaquí oder als Koranschule dienten, oder einfach eine Möglichkeit waren, religiöse Spenden zum Erhalt der Moschee zu nutzen.38 Moscheen konnten mithilfe von Almosen der Gemeindemitglieder betrieben werden, oder unter Rückgriff auf innerstädtische Gebäude, auf der Basis einer frommen Stiftung oder waq f, was auch unter christlicher Herrschaft als Option bekannt war und praktiziert wurde. Üblicherweise handelte es sich bei diesen Besitztümern um Häuser, die dauerhaft von der Gemeinde an die bedürftigsten Muslimen der Gemeinschaft verpachtet wurden. Wenn ein verstorbener Bewohner keinen Erbnachfolger hatte oder wenn Pächter beschlossen, ihr Heim zu verkaufen, konnte die aljama sie zurückkaufen.39 Ein weiterer Punkt ist die sichtbare Präsenz in der Innenstadt, die natürlich symbolischen Wert hat.40 Fest steht, dass diese Moscheen nach entsprechenden Verboten im Rahmen des kanonischen Rechts keine Minarette besaßen,41 weswegen sie in den Städten nicht direkt als solche zu erkennen waren. Minarette standen auch deswegen außer Frage, weil der von ihnen erfolgende Gebetsruf im Konzil von Vienne verboten worden war42 und die Gläubigen sich daher für ihre Treffen am Läuten der Glocken („a campana tañida“) der christlichen Kirche San Juan orientierten. Tatsächlich konnte der Gebetsruf als religiöses Ritual auch 38  Im Jahr 1396 und 1402, pachteten Mahomad Paton und sein Sohn Yuçef Paton die angrenzenden Gebäude vom Kapitel der Kathedrale. Bezeugt wurden die entsprechenden Dokumente von Don Yça, alfaquí der Stadtmoschee, was nahelegt, dass die Alquibla-Moschee noch keine eigenen Ämter hatte. Es wird nicht spezifiziert, ob der Springbrunnen der Moschee gehörte oder wann er gebaut wurde, aber die Lage in der Nähe des Flusses lässt ein Wassersammlungssystem vermuten, dass eine solche Konstruktion ermöglichen würde. Soledad Tena, Libro de arrendamientos de la Catedral de Ávila, Ávila: Institución Gran Duque de Alba, 2004, S. 20, S. 174. 39  Vgl. die drei relevanten Dokumente vom 20. Juli 1480: Archivo Histórico Provincial de Ávila, Protocolo 420, fol. 276v (cat. 1801); fol. 276v (cat. 1802); und fol. 276v (cat. 1803). Sie beschreiben den Transfer eines Hauses, das zwischen dem Hof und der Gasse einer Innenstadt-Moschee lag, von Halona, der es langfristig von der aljama gepachtet hatte zu Hoçeyne Yaya, dem Schatzmeister der maurischen aljama von Ávila für 50 Silberreales. Hoçeyne Yaya und Rodrigo de Valdés treffen sich mit einem Vertreter der aljama der Mauren von Ávila vor dem Gebäude und Diego González del Águila gibt Rodrigo das Recht, den Besitz des Hauses an Hoçeyne Yaya zu übertragen. Zuletzt überträgt Rodrigo de Valdés dann, mit der Erlaubnis von Diego González del Águila, tatsächlich den Besitz des Hauses an Hoçeyne Yaya, der die maurische aljama of Ávila vertritt. Echevarría, City of the Three Mosques, S. 106–9. Der Laden unterhalb der Moschee von Tornerías in Toledo wurde bereits weiter oben erwähnt. 40 Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe, S. 14, 38–41. 41  Hierzu und zum Gebetsruf, vgl. Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe, S. 45–9. Dort wird argumentiert, dass es sich hierbei um eine Praxis handelt, die innerhalb der Moschee stattfindet. 42 Hier sollte erwähnt werden, dass im berühmten Konzil von Vienne (1311–12) Moscheen oder der Bau derselben nicht angesprochen werden, sondern nur den Gebetsruf verboten wird. Olivia Remie Constable, „Regulating Religious Noise. The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World“, Medieval Encounters, 16 (2010), S. 64–95.

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innerhalb der Moschee durchgeführt werden.43 Es war üblich, dass Muezzins Gläubige einzeln zum Gebet aufriefen, wie Aufzeichnungen der Kathedrale von Valladolid zeigen, in denen die einzige Frau erwähnt wird, die nach unserem aktuellen Kenntnisstand an dieser Praxis teilhatte: Da man in der erwähnten morería der genannten Stadt [Valladolid] war, versammelte man sich im Gebetshaus, wenn alle Muslime der bereits erwähnte aljama und des muslimischen Viertels von Seymenia Calderera [der „Kupferschmiedin“], der Witwe des Muslims Montejo, zum Gebet gerufen worden waren, ihrer Aussage zufolge, dass sie sie alle zusammengerufen hatte, um, wie es Brauch ist, die anliegenden Geschäfte zu besprechen.44

In Quellen zu verschiedenen Städten sind die Namen von Muezzins bis weit ins fünfzehnte Jahrhundert hinein aufgelistet,45 obwohl der Gebetsruf noch im Jahr 843/1440 in der Stadt Uclés, Hauptsitz des Kapitels des Militärorderns von Santiago, verboten war.46 Dass Muslime als Präsenz wahrgenommen wurden, war aber nicht nur eine Frage von Türmen und von Geräuschen, sondern war auch durch das Treffen einer beträchtlichen Anzahl von Menschen an öffentlichen Orten gegeben, die für Mitglieder anderer religiöser Gruppen leicht zugänglich waren.47 Hier sticht besonders Talavera de la Reina heraus, eine kleine Stadt, die dem Erzbischof von Toledo unterstand, und in der sich die Moschee den zentralen Platz des Ortes mit der Kapitelkirche Santa María teilte, die Berichten zufolge die ursprüngliche aljama-Moschee der Stadt ersetzt hatte.48 Wie es den Muslimen gelungen war, sich einen so prominenten Ort für ihr Gebetshaus zu sichern, konnte bisher nicht vollständig geklärt werden, aber die Tatsache, dass die Synagoge sich direkt hinter derselben Kirche befand, legt nahe, dass die dortigen Kanoniker diesen religiösen Minderheiten einen besonderen Schutz angedeihen ließen. Zu Beginn des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts erging in Valladolid ein königlicher Erlass, in dem festgelegt wurde, unter welchen Bedingungen Juden und Muslime  Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe, S. 45–9.  „Estando dentro en la dicha morería de esta dicha villa, ayuntados en la casa de oración, llamados todos los moros de la dicha aljama e morería por Seymenia Calderera, mujer que fue de Montejo moro, segun que la dicha hizo fe que los llamara a todos para el negocio ayuso a cuanto e según lo habemos por costumbre.“ Moratinos, Villanueva, „Consecuencias del decreto de Conversión“, S. 119. 45  Echevarría, City of the Three Mosques, S. 110; Echevarría, Mayor, „Las actas de reunión“, S. 271, 274, 288, 290. 46 Clara Almagro, „Religious Minorities’ Identity and Application of the Law. A First Approach to the Lands of Military Orders in Castile“, Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies. Between Theory and Praxis, hrsg. v. Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, John Victor Tolan und Ana Echevarría, Turnhout: Brepols, 2016, S. 197–210: S. 203. 47  Allievi, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe, S. 42. 48  Yolanda Moreno Moreno, „La interacción en el espacio de dos sociedades diferentes. Concordia establecida entre el bachiller Hernando Alonso y la aljama de moros de Talavera“, Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies. Between Theory and Praxis, S. 179–92. 43 44

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in diesem Königreich leben durften.49 Es war ein Versuch, das Problem anzugehen, dass Juden und Muslime mitten unter den christlichen Einwohnern lebten, was in ganz Kastilien in Städten jeder Größe durchaus üblich war. Obwohl der Erlass nie vollkommen durchgesetzt wurde, entstanden um diese Zeit herum in einigen Städten neue jüdische und muslimische Viertel und so auch in Valladolid. Oft ging damit eine Verlegung der Moschee an einen anderen Ort einher, weil die betreffenden Machthaber es vorzogen, religiöse Stätten innerhalb der neuen Viertel zu konzentrieren, um zu verhindern, dass Mitglieder von Minderheitsreligionen hin und her durch die Städte wandern mussten, um sie zu erreichen. Muslimische wie auch jüdische aljamas protestierten gegen diese Entwicklung und zumindest unter der Herrschaft Fernandos von Antequera gelang es ihnen, sich gegen Zahlung einer Gebühr von den Vorschriften freizukaufen und weiterhin ihren Wohnort in der Stadt frei wählen zu dürfen. Im Herrschaftsgebiet der Königin Catalina im Norden von Kastilien hingegen mussten Muslime und Juden in temporäre Quartiere umziehen, die von einer Mauer umgeben waren (in Ávila cércalos genannt). Das verärgerte die Kanoniker der Kathedrale, deren Häuser im Marktviertel nun leer standen, so dass kurze Zeit später eine Gegenmaßnahme angeordnet wurde und die Muslime entweder zurückkehren konnten oder in anderen Gebäuden der Kanoniker untergebracht wurden – ihre Kaufläden wurden ebenfalls weiter an sie verpachtet.50 Anderen blieb nur, am Stadtrand neue Wohngelegenheiten zu finden, so etwa in Valladolid. Weil all dies Maßnahmen der christlichen Machthaber waren, wurde der Neubau von Gebetshäusern erlaubt, obwohl in der entsprechenden Vorschrift weder Moscheen noch Werkstätten erwähnt sind (nur das Verbot von Wohnhäusern und Kaufläden). In diesem Fall unterschrieben sie einen emphyteutischen Pachtvertrag mit den Kanonikern der Kirche Santa María  – da Valladolid kein Bischofssitz war, handelte es sich hier nicht um eine Kathedrale  – über Nutzwiesen im Süden der Stadt, jenseits der Puerta del Campo (Tor zu den Feldern), mit genügend Raum für einen Neubau. Weil der Ortwechsel vom Konzil des Königs angeordnet worden war, wurde den Muslimen zum Ausgleich dafür, ihre alte Moschee in der Innenstadt zurücklassen zu müssen, eine Bauerlaubnis für ein Grundstück von San Martín erteilt, nahe einer fränkischen Nachbarschaft, die bereits seit 689/1290 besiedelt war und daher dem Adel gehörte. Dort entstanden ungefähr dreißig Häuser, eine Moschee (almají genannt), eine Schlächterei und andere von der Gemeinde genutzte Gebäude. In der Folge wurde das muslimische Viertel „Barrio de Santa María“ genannt. In Beschreibungen der etwa 819/1416 fertig gestellten Moschee finden sich die Eigenschaften wieder, die 49 Ana Echevarría, „Política y religión frente al islam. La evolución de la legislación real castellana sobre musulmanes en el siglo XV“, Qurtuba, 4 (1999), S. 45–72. 50  Pilar León Tello, Pilar, Los judíos de Ávila. Ávila: Diputación Provincial de Ávila 1963, doc. 80. All diese Entwicklungen können in den Eigentumsbüchern der Kanoniker verfolgt werden: Echevarría, City of the Three Mosques, S. 64–6.

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alle Nachbarschaftsmoscheen dieser Zeit aufwiesen und sie bot nicht mehr als 150 Menschen zur gleichen Zeit Platz.51 Im tatsächlichen Vertrag zwischen den Kanonikern und den Muslimen ist keine Moschee erwähnt, sondern ein weiteres Mal nur einfach Häuser („casas“): Damit sie Quartiere, Häuser, Wasserräder, Brunnen oder andere Bauten bauen oder bauen lassen können […] ist es unser Wunsch, dass die besagten Gebäude und Nutzwiesen und Häuser nur an männliche und weibliche Muslime übertragen werden dürfen, wie bereits an anderer Stelle erklärt wurde.52

Wir haben aber aus späteren Quellen Beschreibungen der Moschee, die es uns erlauben, uns ein Bild von diesem lokalen Gebetshaus zu machen: Beschrieben wird ein großes Haus mit einem zweiten angrenzenden Gebäude, in einem großen Hof, in dem Hochzeiten gefeiert wurden, umgeben von einer Mauer. Hinzu kamen eine Küche und alles, was sie für ihre Religionsausübung brauchten. An das Anwesen grenzten Nutzwiesen mit hochgewachsenen Pappeln und Ulmen, und einem großen Brunnen, in dem die Muslime sich vor dem Gebet wuschen. Außerdem gab es eine große Halle und Korridore für die Frauen, sowie andere, überdachte lange Korridore und weitere Häuser für die Bedürftigen. Eine große Einfriedung dahinter reichte bis zur Stadtmauer und zur Straße hin zum Tor zu den Feldern.53 Diese Gebäude überdauerten bis zur Zwangskonvertierung der 51  „En enero del año 1414 la aljama e los omes buenos moros de ella arrendaba a censo perpetuo por 40 florines anuales una huerta propiedad del cabildo de la iglesia de Santa María. En la firma del documento comparecieron, de una parte, una representación de la aljama mora, encabezada por el alfaquí Hamed, y, de la otra, el prior y el cabildo de aquella institución. Se situaba al sur de la villa, delimitada por las tapias del convento de San Francisco al norte, la calle Olleros al este, la ronda de la muralla al sur y la calle de la Puerta del Campo al oeste (lo que son hoy las calles Montero Calvo, Duque de la Victoria, Claudio Moyano y Santiago, respectivamente). Acordaron que aquella huerta se arrendaba a censo perpetuo a la aljama para edificar en ella moradas, casas, anorias, pozos e otras casas, propiedades que luego pudiesen vender e anajenar, e trocar e cambiar, dar o donar únicamente entre moros o moras. El solar, de planta triangular, se cercó, como obligaba la ley, con una muralla cuya única puerta de entrada se encontraba frente a las tapias de San Francisco, entonces calle del Mercado. El interior se urbanizó de forma regular en torno a dos calles principales de sentido longitudinal de este a oeste (la calle Carpintería y la calle Carnicería o Caminería, llamada más tarde Arcallería), a las que cruzaban las callejas de Buenaño, la de Barriga, la de Carrión, la del almají y la calle del Corrillo. El barrio contaba con servicios propios, como una mezquita, tres mesones y una carnicería donde se pesaba la carne del dicho barrio.“ M. Moratinos, Olatz Villanueva, „Consecuencias del decreto“, S. 119; Mar Gómez Renau, „La aljama de Valladolid. Nuevas aportaciones“, Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 15 (2004), S. 148–50. 52 „Que puedan hacer e mandar hacer en el dicho suelo de la dicha huerta, edificar moradas, casas, anorias, pozos e otras casas […] es nuestra voluntad que por razón e fuerza de este contrato no puedan ser transpasados los dichos edificios e huerta e casas si no a moros o moras como dicho es.“ Moratinos, Villanueva, „Consecuencias del Decreto“, S. 120. 53  „Tenían en el circuito del dicho barrio una casa grande que llamaban almají donde este testigo vio muchas veces siendo muchacho que hacían oración los dichos moros del dicho barrio, e otra casa junto a ella, todo dentro de un circuito, donde hacían las bodas de entre ellos con su cocina e aparejos de que tenían necesidad, bien grande e ampliadamente; porque este

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Muslime im Jahr 907/1502 und im Anschluss forderten die Kanoniker unter Verweis auf die Tatsache, dass die aljama nicht länger ein Rechtssubjekt sei, die Grundstücke zurück. Es kam zu einem langwierigen Gerichtsverfahren, in dem die Morisken von Valladolid zwar im Großen und Ganzen von der Regierung unterstützt wurden, letztlich aber nicht verhindern konnten, das Grundstück und die Gebäude im Juli 1014/1606 an die Kanoniker zurückgeben zu müssen. Er stellte den bereits erwähnten Junggesellen und Kanoniker Juan de Cáceres vor, zur Vertretung der bewussten Moschee und der Hochzeitshallen, und verkündete, dass er ihren Besitz an diesen übertrage. Und er erklärte im Namen seiner Hoheiten, er werde den Anspruch desselben auf diesen Besitz verteidigen und schützen. Dann befahl der bereits erwähnte Kanoniker Juan de Cáceres allen Menschen, die sich in der Moschee und in den Hochzeitshallen befanden, diese zu verlassen und lief sie dann ab, von einem Platz zum anderen. Dann nahm er den Schlüssel der Moschee und schloss sie von eigener Hand ab.54

Die Kanoniker entfernten später alle Holzbalken, Fließen und gemeißelten Steindekorationen und verkauften sie, was die Moschee und die für Hochzeiten verwendeten Häuser fast zerstörte. Alle Gebäude – darunter die Häuser und die Moschee – wurden einige Jahre später, im Anschluss an das Gerichtsverfahren, aus dem all diese Informationen stammen, an die Morisken zurückgegeben, die das Recht erhielten, in ihre ehemalige Nachbarschaft zurückzukehren. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war die Moschee aber bereits so in Mitleidenschaft gezogen, dass man das Grundstück zum Weideland machte. In anderen kastilischen Städten kam es zu ähnlichen Entwicklungen. Nach einem Bürgerkrieg über die Erbfolge entschieden Königin Isabel und König Fernando von Kastilien im Jahr 885/1480, ein letztes Mal gegen das Emirat von Granada in den Krieg zu ziehen und erließen nach dem Cortes von Toledo eine neue Verfügung, nach der alle Juden und Muslime, die nicht bereits in abgesonderten Nachbarschaften wohnten, in von Mauern umringte Ghettos ziehen testigo como dicho viene estuvo muchas veces en las dichas bodas con otras personas de esta villa que lo iban a ver e los vio hacer sus oraciones de moros e hacer sus bodas. E vio que estaba el dicho almají como a manera de vergel con unos álamos u olmos altos y un pozo grande donde se lavaban los dichos moros para hacer la oración. Y en el dicho almají había una sala grande con sus corredores en que se ponían mujeres y unos corredores grandes cerrados y largos y dentro otras casillas donde vio a algunos moriscos extranjeros e de ellos decían que eran pobres. Y después de esto vio el dicho testigo que siendo cristianos los dichos moros, los dichos edificios estaban enteros e vivía dentro Luis de Aranda, procurador; y que se acuerda que eran los dichos edificios gran circuito detrás e llegaban hasta la ronda de la cerca e hasta la calle que atraviesa hasta la Puerta del Campo.“ Moratinos, Villanueva, „Consecuencias del Decreto“, S. 131–2. 54 „[Al] dicho bachiller Juan de Cáceres canónigo por los dichos señores prior e cabildo en su nombre e metiole dentro de la dicha mezquita e casas de bodas e dijo que le ponía e puso en la posesión de ellas e dijo de parte de sus altezas dende ahora le defendía e amparaba en la dicha posesión e luego el dicho canónigo Juan de Cáceres echó fuera de todas la dicha mezquita e casa de bodas a todas las personas que dentro estaban e anduvo por ellas de una parte para otra e tomó la llave de la mezquita e cerrola de su mano“. Moratinos, Villanueva, „Consecuencias del decreto“, S. 132.

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mussten. Diese dem Krieg geschuldeten Maßnahmen, kombiniert mit einem Zensus aller Angehörigen einer Minoritätenreligion, hatten zur Folge, dass alte Moscheen in den Innenstädten konfisziert und mit Zustimmung des Königs und der Königin neue Moscheen gebaut wurden, auch diese oft auf Grundstücken der Kirche. In Segovia wurde eine Moschee, die innerhalb der Stadtmauern im Gebiet der Gemeinde San Martín gelegen war, von den in diesem Viertel lebenden Anwohnern übernommen.55 Es gelang daher dem Abt des Klosters Sancti Spiritus in Ávila, der theoretisch in der Vorbereitung eines Kreuzzugs begriffen war  – da über Bullen zu einem solchen gegen Granada aufgerufen worden war  –, alle Pachtverträge mit Muslimen, die zuvor der Kathedrale gehört hatten, selbst zu übernehmen. Der Abt war zugleich juez conservador der Kanoniker der Kathedrale und vertrat sie in Gerichtsverhandlungen mit den Kapiteln anderer Kathedralen.56 Die Prämonstratenser verwendeten für Sancti Spiritus, das praktischerweise am Stadtrand nahe des Flusses Grajal in einer Gegend mit vielen Nutzwiesen lag, ein weiteres Mal emphyteutische Verträge, um sich Mieteinnahmen von der muslimischen Gemeinde der Stadt zu sichern, weshalb in entsprechenden Quellen gesagt wird, dass jene Verträge denen entsprachen, die von der Kathedrale mit den gleichen Muslimen abgeschlossen worden waren, und dass die Mauren ihr eigenes Rechtswesen aufgegeben hätten und nun dem kanonischen Recht unterworfen seien.57 Die letzte Moschee der Stadt, die im neuen muslimischen Viertel gegründet wurde, das südöstlich in einer El Berrocal („der steinige Ort“) oder Las Vacas („die Kühe“) genannten Gegend lag, profitierte so letztlich von den Beschlüssen der Cortes von 885/1480, die besagten, dass in maurischen Vierteln neue Moscheen gebaut 55 Aus

dem Archivo General de Simancas (Spanien), Sektion Registro General del Sello, 148011, Fn. 123, 4. November 1480, Medina del Campo. „Don Fernando e donna Ysabel, etc. […] Sepades que Juan de Cuellar, escriuano publico e veçino de la dicha çibdad, por sy e en nombre de los otros sus veçinos e moradores en la collaçion de Sant Martin de la dicha çibdad, e veçinos mas çercanos de una casa de almagid que los moros ovieron tenudo en la dicha çibdad e collaçion, nos fizo rrelaçion por su petiçion que ante nos en el nuestro consejo presento, diziendo que al tienpo que los apartamientos de los judios e moros se ovieron de faser, se apartaron los dichos moros dela dicha cibdad fuera della e les fue dado e asignado logar donde pudiesen faser su mesquita e almagid fuera de la dicha çibdad, el qual diz que fisyeron e deficaron, e lo tyenen, e han acostunbrado e acostunbran e que non enbargante que tyenen el dicho almagid que nin por eso dexan de benir al dicho primer almagid e mas que primara, lo qual diz que es grand agravio e perjuysyo por estar como esta tan junto con sus casas e barrios, en lo qual sy ansy oviese de pasar, diz que ellos rresçebirian grand agravio e dapnno. E nos suplicaron e pidieron por merced que çerca dello les proveyesemos de rremedio con iustiçia mandando cerrar el dicho almagy o lo derrocar e allanar o como la nuestra merçed fuese, e nos tovymoslo por bien. […] Dada en la villa de Medina del Campo, a quatro dias de novienbre, anno del nasçimiento de Nuestro Salvador Ihesuchristo de 1480 annos.“ 56  C. Luis López, Documentación del Archivo Capitular de Ávila (im Druck). Ich bin Dr. Luis Lopez für diesen Hinweis dankbar. 57  Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Clero Secular-Regular, Ávila, leg. 534–1, Censos de la Morería.

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werden dürften, wenn außerhalb dieser Viertel liegende Moscheen geschlossen würden.58 Tatsächlich standen alle Moscheen Ávilas am falschen Ort, wenn dieser Maßstab zugrunde gelegt wird, und dennoch wurde die Alquibla-Moschee noch bis 892/1487 weiter verwendet, wahrscheinlich, weil sie am weitesten weg vom Zentrum lag. In Córdoba hingegen musste 885/1480 die muslimische Bevölkerung nach einem königlichen Beschluss in eine ungünstige Gegend der Stadt ziehen und ihre Moschee wurde zugemauert. Obwohl ihnen nach vielen Beschwerden ein anderer Wohnort zuerkannt wurde, gibt es keine Hinweise auf eine neue Moschee.59 Im bereits erwähnten Talavera de la Reina kam es zu einer ähnlichen Entwicklung wie in den größeren Städten, insofern die muslimische Bevölkerung in das nördlich gelegene Barrionuevo umzog, ohne dass es im Hinblick auf die Moschee zu einer Änderung kam.60

4. Zusammenfassung Gesetzlichen Vorschriften und der öffentlichen Meinung zum Trotz scheint die Haltung gegenüber Moscheen damals wie heute letztlich ausgesprochen pragmatisch geprägt zu sein, wenn auch zuweilen eher zweideutig. Im Interesse des sozialen Friedens verschloss man manchmal die Augen, wenn es um eigentlich verbotene, aber dennoch ausgeübte religiöse Praktiken von Minderheiten ging. Obwohl die christliche Kirche in schriftlicher Form gegen andere Glaubensrichtungen agitierte, fungierte sie auf der Iberischen Halbinsel zugleich als Garant sozialen Friedens und profitierte von dem, was Minoritätengemeinschaften ökonomisch zu geben hatten. Die in diesem Aufsatz vorgestellten Fallbeispiele und Normen zeigen, dass man jüdische und muslimische Minderheiten zwar vergleichend untersuchen sollte, dabei aber ihre unterschiedliche Stellung aus der Perspektive der christlichen Machthaber nicht aus den Augen verlieren darf. Dazu kommen Unterschiede zwischen Kriegsphasen und Epochen der Waffenruhe und des Friedens, in denen diese Unterschiede manchmal schwer zu erkennen sind.

58  11. Januar 1488. Archivo Histórico Provincial, Ávila, Protocol 420, fol. 292r (cat. 1957), zum Grenzverlauf des Gebiets der Moschee, die nahe der Kirche von La Trinidad lag. Zitiert in S. de Tapia, Comunidad morisca, S. 62. 59  Archivo General de Simancas, Registro General del Sello, 148005, Fn. 87. 60  Moreno Moreno, „La interacción en el espacio“, S. 214.

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Literaturverzeichnis Ajo González, Cándido María, Historia de Ávila y su tierra, Bd. III, Madrid: CSIC, 1991. Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas del rey don Alfonso el Sabio, Bd. III, Madrid: Vega, 1972. Allievi, Stefano, Conflicts Over Mosques in Europe. Policy Issues and Trends, London: Alliance Publishing Trust, 2009. Almagro, Clara, „Religious Minorities’ Identity and Application of the Law. A First Approach to the Lands of Military Orders in Castile“, Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies. Between Theory and Praxis, hrsg. v. Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, John Victor Tolan und Ana Echevarría, Turnhout: Brepols, 2016, S. 197–210. Araus Ballesteros, Luis und Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta, „La identidad musulmana de los mudéjares de la cuenca del Duero a finales de la edad media. Aportaciones desde la aljama de Burgos“, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie III. Historia Medieval, 27 (2014), S. 525–46. – „Espacios, identidades y relaciones de los musulmanes de la ciudad de Burgos durante su minoría mudéjar“, De la Alquería a la Aljama, hrsg. v. Ana Echevarría und Adela Fábregas, Madrid: UNED, 2016, S. 167–88. Archivo General del Simancas (Spanien), Bereich Registro General del Sello, 148005, Fn. 87, 148011, Fn. 123. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Clero Secular-Regular, Ávila, leg. 534–1, Censos de la Morería. Archivo Histórico Provincial de Ávila, Protocolo 420, fol. 276v (cat. 1801); fol. 276v (cat. 1802) und fol. 276v (cat. 1803). Ayala Martínez, Carlos de, „Jaime I y la sublevación mudéjar-granadina de 1264“, Homenaje al Profesor Juan Torres Fontes, hrsg. v. Juan Torres Fontes, Murcia: Universidad de Murcia-Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1987, S. 93–108. Barton, Thomas W., „Constructing a Diocese in a Post-Conquest Landscape. A Comparative Approach to Lay Possession of Tithes“, Journal of Medieval History, 35 (2009), S. 1–33. – „Muslims in Christian Countrysides. Reassessing Exaricus Tenures in Eastern Iberia“, Medieval Encounters, 17 (2011), S. 233–320. Buresi, Pascal, La frontière entre Chrétienté et Islam dans la Péninsule Ibérique. Du Tage à la Sierra Morena ( fin XIe–milieu XIIIe siècle), Paris: Publibook, 2004. Calero Secall, María Isabel, „Algunas fetuas sobre la duplicidad de las aljamas andalusíes“, L’urbanisme dans l’Occident musulman au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques, hrsg. v. Patrice Cressier, María Isabel Fierro und Jean-Pierre van Staëvel, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2000, S. 125–40. Cavallar, Osavaldo und Julius Kirshner, „Jews as Citizens in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. The Case of Isacco da Pisa“, Jewish History, 25 (2011), S. 269–318. Codex Theodosianus 16.8.25, verfügbar über die Datenbank Relmin, unter (abgerufen am 22. 06. ​2016). Cohen, Marc, Under Crescent and Cross, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Constable, Olivia Remie, „Regulating Religious Noise. The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World“, Medieval Encounters, 16 (2010), S. 64–95. Delgado Valero, Clara, „El arte de Ifrīqiya y sus relaciones con distintos ámbitos del Mediterráneo. Al-Andalus, Egipto y Sicilia“, Al-Qantara, 17/2 (1996), S. 291–319.

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Echevarría, Ana und Rafael Mayor, „Las actas de reunión de una cofradía islámica de Toledo, una fuente árabe para el estudio de los mudéjares castellanos“, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, Tomo CCVII, Cuaderno III (2010), S. 257–93. Echevarría, Ana, „Política y religión frente al islam. La evolución de la legislación real castellana sobre musulmanes en el siglo XV“, Qurtuba, 4 (1999), S. 45–72. – „La transformación del espacio islámico (siglos XI–XIII)“, À la recherche de légitimités chrétiennes. Actas del coloquio représentations de l’espace et du temps dans l’Espagne des IXe–XIIIe siècles, hrsg. v. Patrick Henriet, Lyon: ENS Éditions-Casa de Velázquez, 2003, S. 53–77. – „La ‘mayoría’ mudéjar en León y Castilla. Legislación real y distribución de la población (siglos XI–XIII)“, La España Medieval, 26 (2006), S. 7–30. – „Desplazamientos de población y movilidad social en los inicios del mudejarismo castellano“, Actas del XI Congreso de Estudios Medievales, Ávila-León: Fundación Sánchez Albornoz, 2009, S. 499–520. – The City of the Three Mosques. Ávila and its Muslims in the Middle Ages, Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2011. – „Funerary Practices in a Multi-Religious Context from the Iberian Peninsula to the Eastern Mediterranean“, Das Mittelmeer und der Tod. Mediterrane Mobilität und Sepulkralkultur, hrsg. v. Alexander Berner u. a., Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016, S. 179–94. – „A Sufi Confraternity in Mudejar Castile“, Constructions of Devotion Across Islamic Lands, hrsg. v. Ana Echevarría, Cynthia Robinson und Amalia Zomeño Rodríguez, Leiden: Brill, S. XX–XY (im Druck). García Sanjuán, Alejandro, „Causas inmediatas y alcance de la revuelta mudéjar de 1264“, Actas Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo. Mudéjares y moriscos. Cambios sociales y culturales, hrsg. v. Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2004, S. 505–18. – „La formación de la doctrina legal mālikí sobre lugares de culto de los dimmīes“, The Legal Status of Ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West (second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries), hrsg. v. John Victor Tolan and Maribel Fierro, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, S. 131–56. Gómez Renau, Mar, „La aljama de Valladolid. Nuevas aportaciones“, Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 15 (2004), S. 141–63. González Palencia, Ángel, Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII, Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, Bd. 1, 1926–30. Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, Bde. I, II, New York: Hermon Press, 1966. al-Kardabus, Ibn, Historia de al-Andalus, hrsg. und übersetzt v. Maíllo Salgado, Madrid: Akal, 1986. Laliena, Carlos und Philippe Sénac, Musulmans et chrétiens dans le haut Moyen Âge. Auxorigines de la reconquête aragonaise, Paris: Minerve, 1991. León Tello, Pilar, Los judíos de Ávila, Ávila: Diputación Provincial de Ávila, 1963. López Mata, Teófilo, „Morería y judería“, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 129 (1951), S. 335–72. Luis López, Carmelo, Documentación del archivo capitular de Ávila (im Druck). Dominicus Mansi, Johannes, Sacrorum Consiliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Bd. XXII, Venice: Antonio Zatta, 1778.

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Mazur, Jerzy, „XIX. De synagogis Judaeorum“, Concilium Viennense, verfügbar über die Datenbank Relmin: http://form-tei.irht.cnrs.fr/manuscrit/affiche/id/254719 (abgerufen am 02. 06. ​2016). Mezger, Werner, Sankt Nikolaus. Zwischen Kult und Klamauk, Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag, 1993. Molénat, Jean-Pierre, „Les“, Actas del VI Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo, hrsg. v. Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 1995, S. 429–35. – Campagnes et Monts de Tolède du XIIe au XVe siècle, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1997. – „Tolède à la fin du XIe siècle et au début du XIIe. Le problème de l’émigration ou de la permanence des musulmans“, De Toledo a Huesca. Sociedades medievales en transición a finales del siglo XI (1080–1100), hrsg. v. Carlos Laliena Corbera und Juan F. Utrilla Utrilla, Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1998, S. 101–11. – „La fatwā sur la construction des églises à Cordoue au IVe/Xe siècle“, The Legal Status of Ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West (second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries), hrsg. v. John Victor Tolan und María Isabel Fierro, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, S. 157–66. Moratinos García, Manuel, und Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta, „Consecuencias del decreto de conversión al cristianismo de 1502 en la aljama mora de Valladolid“, Sharq alAndalus. Revista de Estudios Mudéjares y Moriscos, 16–17 (1999–2002), S. 121–44. Moreno Moreno, Yolanda, „La interacción en el espacio de dos sociedades diferentes. Concordia establecida entre el bachiller Hernando Alonso y la aljama de moros de Talavera“, Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies. Between Theory and Praxis, hrsg. v. Ana Echevarría, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala und John Victor Tolan, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, S. 211–28. Porres Martín-Cleto, Julio, „La mezquita toledana del solarejo, llamada de las tornerías“, Al-Qantara, 4 (1983), S. 411–21. Riera i Sans, Jaume, Els poders públics i les sinagogues. Segles XIII–XV, Girona: Patronat Call de Girona, 2006. Ríos de la Llave, Rita, „Discrimination Against the Jewish Population in Medieval Castile and León“, Religion and Power in Europe. Conflict and Convergence, hrsg. v. Joaquim Carvalho, Pisa: Plus-Pisa University Press, 2007, Bd. II, S. 53–76. Tapia Sánchez, Seráfin de, La comunidad morisca de Ávila, Ávila-Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1989. Tena, Soledad, Libro de arrendamientos de la catedral de Ávila, Ávila: Institución Gran Duque de Alba, 2004. Tolan, John Victor, „The Rites of Purim as Seen by the Christian Legislator: Codex Theodosianus 16.8.18“, Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la Edad Media, hrsg. v. José Martínez Gázquez und John Victor Tolan, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013, S. 165–74. Torró Abad, Josep, „El problema del hábitat fortificado en el sur del Reino de Valencia después de la segunda revuelta mudéjar (1276–1304)“, Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval, 7 (1988–89), S. 53–81.

Translation in Wartime Disseminating the Qur’an during the Crusades (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)1 Davide Scotto Rejeter la validité de la traduction parce qu’elle n’est pas toujours possible et jamais parfaite est absurde. George Steiner, Après Babel (1975)

1. Introduction Over the last decade, growing scholarly interest in the history of Arabic studies in Europe has opened the way for significant research on Latin translations of the Qur’an produced between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Drawing on the legacy of the eminent French medievalist, Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, Charles Burnett has developed individual research and coordinated collaborative projects exploring Latin translations of philosophical and astrological writings, shedding new light on the origins of Arabic studies in medieval Europe. The rich output of this research includes the study of the intellectual profiles of the translators, detailed analysis of their translation methods, and evaluation of the Islamic sources to which they had access.2 In the same period, Thomas Burman’s 1  I presented a preliminary version of this paper on 17 December 2014 at the University of Tübingen as part of the lecture series Europäische Literatur aus interdisziplinärem Blickwinkel: Übersetzen, organised by Jürgen Wertheimer in the winter semester of 2014–2015. This present version was written during my research period in the spring of 2017 at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, in the framework of the project CORPI (Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics and Interaction. Early Modern Iberia and beyond), FP7/2007– 2013/ERC, Grant Agreement number 323316. I am grateful to Mercedes García-Arenal, Katarzyna Starczewska, Eduardo Fernández Guerrero, Ulli Roth, José Martínez Gázquez and Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino for the valuable suggestions and timely help they offered. I also wish to thank Deirdre Casey and Micaela Pattison, who carefully edited this essay. 2  Charles Burnett, Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages. The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context, Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Charles Burnett’s studies reflect the research lines that are being developed more broadly by The Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in

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ground-breaking studies have revealed the hitherto overlooked role of Qur’anic commentaries (tafsīr) in the translation process, describing the multifaceted ways in which the manuscripts of these translations were read, annotated, and understood by diverse Christian readerships.3 José Martínez Gázquez, in turn, has led philological research projects exploring the reception of Latin translations of the Qur’an, which has implicated the publication of a series of marginal notes attributed to either the translator or reader of Qur’anic manuscripts. The publication of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s notes and the discovery of further glosses by Nicholas of Cusa represent only the latest findings of this ambitious research project.4 Scholars have used linguistic characteristics of the available manuscript materials to identify the Islamic sources consulted during the translation process, evaluate the translators’ abilities in Arabic, and explore polemical implications resulting from linguistic misunderstandings.5 New research has also produced a range of conclusions regarding the religious language and cultural programmes behind translations, meriting further debate.6 Europe (CHASE): http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/research/research-projects/centre-history-arabicstudies-europe-chase. 3 Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560, Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 4 José Martínez Gázquez and François Déroche, “Lire et traduire le Coran au Moyen Âge. Les gloses latines du manuscrit arabe 384 de la BnF”, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 54/3 (2010), pp. 1021–40; José Martínez Gázquez, “A New Set of Glosses to the Latin Qur’an in BNF MS Arsenal 1162”, Medieval Encounters, 21 (2015), pp. 295– 309; José Martínez Gázquez, “Las glosas de Nicolás de Cusa al Alchoranus Latinus en el ms. Vat. lat. 4071. Nuevos datos para la Cribratio Alkorani”, Niccolò Cusano: L’uomo, i libri, l’opera. Atti del LII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 11–14 ottobre 2015, Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2016, pp. 473–94. See the research findings and forthcoming projects of Islamolatina, the research group established by José Martínez Gázquez and based at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona: http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/islamolatina. 5  Matthias M. Tischler, “Übersetzen als des/integrativer Akt. Die lateinischen Übertragungen arabischer muslimischer Literatur auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden. Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch‑ und Spätmittelalter, ed. Matthias M. Tischler and Alexander Fidora, Münster: Aschendorff, 2011, pp. 167–90; Ulisse Cecini, Alcoranus latinus. Eine sprachliche und kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Koranübersetzungen von Robert von Ketton und Marcus von Toledo, Berlin: LIT, 2012; Ulli Roth, “Juan of Segovia’s Translation of the Qur’an”, Al-Qanṭara, 35 (2014), pp. 555–78. 6  José Martínez Gázquez, “El lenguaje de la violencia en el prólogo de la traducción latina del Corán impulsada por Pedro el Venerable”, Cahiers d’études hispaniques médiévales, 28 (2005), pp. 243–52; John Victor Tolan, “Las traducciones y la ideología de reconquista: Marcos de Toledo”, Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII, ed. Miquel Barceló and José Martínez Gázquez, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions Bellaterra, 2005, pp. 79–85; José Martínez Gázquez, “Las traducciones latinas del Corán, arma antislámica en la Cristiandad Medieval”, Cuadernos del CEMYR, 13 (2005), pp. 11–28; José Martínez Gázquez and Nàdia Petrus, “Las motivaciones generales de las traducciones medievales latinas del Corán”, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 18 (2008), pp. 230– 46; Katarzyna Starczewska, “Muḥammad’s Portrait in Jiménez de Rada’s «Historia arabum» and in Marcos de Toledo’s «Prologus Alcorani». Two Different Examples of the Islamic-Christian

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These investigations have unearthed unassailable evidence of the hermeneutical sophistication of the translation process and multidimensional nature of the translated texts. In their renderings of the Arabic from either scientific or religious writings, translators were neither linguistically incompetent, nor culturally unimaginative.7 As Reinhold Glei has shown by using Ludovico Marracci’s Latin translation of the Qur’an (1698), medieval and early modern Latin – frequently referred to as neo-Latin – turned out to be an extremely pliant linguistic tool, whose lexical, grammatical and syntactic flexibility provided translators with broad options in rendering even languages as different as Arabic.8 Translations might reflect a faithful approach to the Arabic Qur’an or, conversely, an underlying polemical objective involving premeditated adulterations to the text. As Burman observes, this translation process is often marked by a paradigmatic fluctuation between philology and polemics.9 Even when there are undeniable polemical intentions, the creativity and multidimensional nature of Qur’anic translations give them an ambiguous quality to the eyes of modern readers. It is only recently that we have become fully aware of this ambiguity. In the past, scholars insisted on the strict distinction between knowledge and ignorance, correctness and misinterpretation, open-mindedness and obscurantism, stigmatisation and tolerance, thus regarding medieval authors as redundant, repetitive, and hidebound compared to their learned and tolerant Enlightenment and contemporary heirs. On the contrary, thoughtful study of medieval translations of the Qur’an reveals that this simplistic, Enlightenment-oriented approach to medieval culture is misleading with respect to the ultimate purpose of translating, which in fact is not of a purely linguistic nature. Beyond raising questions about Christian knowledge of Arabic and the availability of Islamic sources, these translations bear witness to a long-standing debate on the role of the Crusades and their effectiveness in countering Muslim forces threatening Controversy Literature”, Estudios de latín medieval hispánico. Actas del V Congreso internacional de latín medieval hispánico (Barcelona, 7–10 de septiembre de 2009), ed. José Martínez Gázquez, Óscar de la Cruz Palma and Cándida Ferrero Hernández, Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011, pp. 455–64; Ulli Roth, “John of Segovia and Religious Language/Interreligious Communication”, Transcending Words. The Language of Religious Contact between Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Premodern Times, ed. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Knut Martin Stünkel, Bochum: Winkler, 2015. 7 Charles Burnett, “The Translating Activity in Medieval Spain”, The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Leiden: Brill, 1992, pp. 1036–58. See also José Martínez Gázquez, The Attitude of the Medieval Latin Translators towards the Arabic Sciences, Firenze: SISMELEdizioni del Galluzzo, 2016. 8 Reinhold F. Glei, “Arabismus latine personatus. Die Koranübersetzung von Ludovico Marracci (1698) und die Funktion des Lateinischen”, Jahrbuch für Europäische Wissenschaftskultur, 5 (2009/2010), pp. 93–115. 9  Burman, Reading the Qur’an, pp. 58, 69, 83. See also Ulisse Cecini, “The Qur’ân Translator Mark of Toledo and Muḥammad: Between Polemic and ‘Philology’”, Vitae Mahometi. Reescritura e invención en la literatura cristiana de controversia, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and Óscar de la Cruz Palma, Madrid: CSIC, 2014, pp. 125–38.

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Europe both from within and outside its borders.10 The chronological overlap between the emergence of these translations, calls for crusade, and the military events themselves suggest undeniable correlation between wars against Muslims and the translations of the Qur’an.11 The first translation of the Qur’an into Latin was made in 1143, somewhere in the Ebro valley (Navarre), four years before the beginning of the Second Crusade in the Near East (1147–49). Half a century had passed since the Christians reconquered Toledo (1085 CE) and Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade (1095 CE), aimed at recapturing Jerusalem after five centuries of Islamic rule. Eminent European churchmen supported military expeditions as an effective and theologically legitimate means of achieving a decisive victory over the Muslim forces in the Near East. On a symbolic level, however, the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187 belied the illusory expectation that the Holy Land would remain in Christian hands. A second translation of the Qur’an was done in Toledo in 1210, at the time of the emergence of the mendicant orders in Italy and Spain, where they established themselves as a Church’s missionary arm, committed to evangelisation in Islamic lands.12 This translation was finished six years after Pope Innocence IV promoted the Fourth Crusade to take Jerusalem through Egypt, and in the midst of the Spanish Crusades against the remaining Muslim kingdoms in Iberia. There is no evidence of a new, full translation of the Qur’an into Latin between 1210 and the mid-fifteenth century, with the possible exception of the late thirteenth-century translation by the Dominican friar Riccoldo da Monte di Croce that may have been lost in the Near East. In the aftermath of the conquest of Byzantium by the Ottoman Turks, a third translation was undertaken between 1455 and 1456 in Aiton (Savoy) as part of an innovative trilingual edition of the Qur’an (Arabic, Castilian, Latin). In the early 1450s, besides supporting the Crusades in Spain through papal bulls, popes Nicholas V and Callixtus III attempted to launch a new crusade first to defend and then to 10  See Benjamin Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission. European Approaches toward the Muslims, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. 11  On the connection between translation and crusade as it relates to the 1143 Latin Qur’an, see José Martínez Gázquez, “Finalidad de la primera traducción latina del Corán”, Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII, ed. Miquel Barceló and José Martínez Gázquez, Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2005, pp. 71–7. 12 See, among the increasing research on Franciscan and Dominican missions to both Jews and Muslims in the late Middle Ages, Robin J. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; John Victor Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan. The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; Robin J. Vose, “The Limits of Dominican Mission in the Western Mediterranean”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden, ed. Tischler and Fidora, pp. 469– 88; Anne Müller, “Dominikaner und Islam: Begegnung, Mission, Wahrnehmung”, Mehr als Schwarz und Weiß. 800 Jahre Dominikanerorden, ed. Elias H. Füllenbach and Susanne Biber, Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet Verlag, 2016, pp. 307–18; MacEvitt, Christopher, The Martyrdom of the Franciscans: Islam, the Papacy, and an Order in Conflict, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

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retake Byzantium from the Ottomans. After the dissolution of the Council of Basel (1449), the search for consensus among European leaders and military support to undertake a crusade against the Turks had become one of the main concerns of the papacy, particularly under Pope Pius II (1458–64). The chronological overlap between the translations of the Qur’an and the calls for crusade from twelfth to fifteenth century is apparent. Yet, we should carefully consider the intention of each individual translation with respect to its specific cultural and theological implications. Unlike modern Orientalists and contemporary scholars who saw it as a purely intellectual challenge, medieval sponsors and translators did not embark on translation of the Qur’an (lex Mahumeti) – which they unanimously considered as a non-divine law (lex non divina) – out of primary linguistic interest in the Arabic text. On the contrary, their attempts to provide a complete and faithful translation of the Qur’an surged from personal and collective convictions, either favourable or critical, in regard to the Crusades, which had been a fixture of the European expansionist and missionary programme since the eleventh century. It is worth recalling that the medieval worldview was highly determined by religious conceptions and expectations. In this light, understanding the intersection between translation and crusade implies tackling the scholarly debate on the theological promotion or criticism of the war, on the reasons for seeking to understand and refuting Islamic doctrine, on the attempts to obtain either voluntary or forced conversion of Muslims to the Christian faith. Hence the questions I intend to raise here: In a period of incessant propaganda against ‘the infidels’, why would an influential Christian monk, a powerful bishop, or a learned theologian wish to provide an accurate translation of the Qur’an? Why was there a need to disseminate the main source of Islamic doctrine among Christian or even Muslim readers? What was the ultimate purpose of each translator or sponsor? In the following pages, I shed light upon some of the aims and intentions behind the three extant medieval translations of the Qur’an into Latin or Castilian. To do so, I consider the shifting contexts in which each translator worked, as well as their different understanding of the role of Islam in the Christian worldview.13

13  The same questions can be posed about the translations into Latin or vernacular languages undertaken throughout Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. An emblematic example is provided by the translation of the Qur’an commissioned by the Augustinian cardinal Giles of Viterbo, recently edited by Katarzyna Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qur’an (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018; see also Katarzyna Starczewska, “Anti-Muslim Preaching in 16th-Century Spain and Egidio da Viterbo’s Research on Islam”, Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’islam nell’Europa mediterranea (secoli XVI–XVIII), ed. Andrea Celli and Davide Scotto, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 51 (2015), pp. 413–30.

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The available sources are few. The critical edition of the first Latin translation of the Qur’an is still a work in progress.14 The critical edition of the second translation was published in early 2017.15 The only manuscript preserving the trilingual edition of the Qur’an was lost and after a fruitless decades-long search, seems unlikely to reappear. The prefaces of the three translations, however, have all survived and are available to scholars. I therefore confine my survey to these prefaces and compare them with a series of pertinent arguments against Islam recorded in the polemical writings that often accompany Qur’anic translations in the manuscripts. In so doing, I intend to show how dissemination of the Qur’an at the time of the Crusades reflected a variety of religious aims which could sometimes co-exist even though appearing to be contradictory: to know and confute Islamic doctrine; to either support or radically repudiate the war against Muslims by providing theological or pragmatic reasons; and, to enact the apostolic call for conversion implied by the Gospels, thus promoting a conception of salvation that embraces both Christian and non-Christian people.

2. A Transfer against Western Ignorance. Peter the Venerable and Robert of Ketton (1143) In 1142, the leader of the Cluniac order, Peter the Venerable, travelled to northeastern Spain to visit monasteries that his order had recently built along the new frontier with Muslim-ruled lands. Peter was charged with collecting funds to maintain properties belonging to some of the Cluniac monasteries, many of which were vast and lacking in economic subsidies. For this reason in particular, Peter sought an audience with the King of León and Castile, Alphonso VII.16 During this journey, he succeeded in recruiting a team of translators employed by local churches in the Ebro Valley, in the environs of Pamplona, Navarre. Peter appealed to these Arabic experts from England, Carinthia, and Spain to translate from Arabic into Latin a number of works concerning Jewish and Islamic doctrine. What resulted was the well-researched collection of writings known as the Collectio Toletana, after the so-called and later established school of Toledo, or more properly, as the Corpus Cluniacense, after the religious affiliation of the 14 José Martínez Gázquez is preparing a comprehensive edition of all the notes in Latin written in the margins of medieval translations of the Qur’an. 15 Nàdia Petrus Pons, Alchoranus latinus quem transtulit Marcus canonicus Toletanus. Estudio y edición crítica, Madrid: CSIC, 2016. 16 Cf. Charles Julian Bishko, “Peter the Venerable’s Journey to Spain”, Petrus Venerabilis 1156–1956. Studies and Texts Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of his Death, ed. Giles Constable and James Kritzeck, Rome: Herder, 1956, pp. 163–75; Tim Rayborn, The Violent Pilgrimage. Christians, Muslims and Holy Conflicts, 850–1150, Jefferson NC: McFarland & Comp., 2013, p. 99.

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collection’s sponsor.17 It comprised seven works on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim doctrine – either translations from Arabic or original Latin works – all made to serve polemical purposes. These works included a refutation of Islamic doctrine written by Peter the Venerable himself, as well as the ‘law of the Saracens’ (lex Sarracenorum), the first complete translation of the Qur’an into Latin.18 Though burnings of Qur’anic manuscripts following Christian raids and conquests of Muslim territories are documented throughout the Iberian Peninsula, the manuscript of the Arabic Qur’an, on which the translation was based, may have come from Aragon, allegedly from Tarazona. According to Hugo of Santalla, translators from Ribera d’Ebre reached Tarazona, wherein the library of the Monastery of Rota or Rueda was located, in search of manuscripts belonging to the former library of the Banu Hud of Zaragoza, which was still available after the city’s fall into Christian hands.19 Certainly, the Qur’anic text was translated by an English member of the team, Robert of Ketton, employed at that time in Tarazona, in the service of Bishop Michael. Robert was born in England, studied rhetoric, philosophy, and astronomy in France, likely at the School of Chartres, and travelled to the Near East to learn Arabic together with fellow translator and teacher, Herman of Carinthia. While he was experienced in translating astronomical and mathematical works, he seems to have had no special interest in the Qur’an or Islamic doctrine. However, we can infer from his preface to the translation that he accepted Peter the Venerable’s commission with great enthusiasm.20 Robert’s preface expresses commitment to Peter’s intellectual endeavour, provides a basic definition of the Qur’an, and remarks on the translation experience. We know from Robert’s translations that he was a learned man trained in arts, thus, unlikely an expert or doctor in theology. Despite his cultural background, the basic definition of the Qur’an provided in the preface’s titulus shows that Robert was aware of the theological implications of making a non-Christian 17  See Gabriella Braga, “Le traduzioni dall’arabo: modalità, problemi e significati”, Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, 3: Le culture circostanti, 2: La cultura arabo-islamica, ed. Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, Rome: Salerno, 2003, pp. 569–624: 609–10. Also, Franco Cardini, “Introduzione. Nemici fratelli”, Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, p. 35, and Giuseppe Rizzardi, Domande cristiane sull’Islām nel Medioevo. Edizioni e studi sul Corpus Cluniacense a proposito dei saraceni, Caltanissetta: Centro Studi Cammarata / Edizioni Lussografica, 2001, favour the latter term. José Martínez Gázquez, too, disagrees with the term Collectio Toletana and instead suggests employing the title Collectio Islamolatina or Corpus Islamolatinum. 18  For a description of its contents, see Óscar de la Cruz Palma, “Los textos de la llamada Collectio Toletana, fuente de información sobre el Islam”, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 17 (2007), pp. 413–34. 19  See Martínez Gázquez, The Attitude of the Medieval Latin Translators, pp. 51–61, 79. 20  For a profile of Robert of Ketton, see Ángel J. Martín Duque, “El inglés Roberto, traductor del Corán. Estancia y actividades en España a mediados del siglo XII”, Hispania, 22 (1962), pp. 483–506.

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divine law accessible to a Christian readership. Robert conceives the book that Muslims called ‘Alchoran’ as ‘the book of the law of the Saracens’ and considers it a ‘collection of precepts which the pseudo-Prophet Muḥammad fabricated as if it came from the Sky through the angel Gabriel’.21 This stripped-back definition of the Qur’an – echoing the widely read last chapter on Islam of John of Damascus’s Perì eréseon (Concerning heresies) – can be found in several Christian chronicles, theological treatises, and inter-faith polemics. Robert’s propositio – the statement of purpose he addresses to his readers – reflects Peter the Venerable’s call for careful consideration of Islamic doctrine, his thirst for knowledge, and a sense of solitude Robert associates with accomplishment of the editorial project. In the metaphorical language peculiar to Robert’s poetic style, Peter’s desire for knowledge is rendered through the image of the ‘infertile swamp of the sect of the Saracens’ in which the Cluniac abbot longed to quench his thirst.22 The distinct roles of translator and sponsor become apparent, with Robert perceiving himself as the diligent servant who aids Peter in his intellectual endeavour. Robert asks rhetorically whether one can be content to sit on one’s hands, hesitating to identify (agnoscere) the ‘mistake of the enemy’ (hostis error) in order to provide a solid, victorious argument to defend the Christian faith.23 With respect to Islam, Robert accuses all of Latin Christendom (Latinitas omnis) of ignorance and negligence (ignorantia, negligentia) and is convinced that the damaging consequences of this heedlessness render Christianity incapable of overthrowing the enemy’s power. He also stresses that, by disseminating his translations and writings among monks and churchmen, Peter’s ever vigilant foresight (pervigil providentia) would put an end to the Church’s ignorance of Islamic doctrine.24 Ultimately, Robert’s preface evokes Peter’s solitary effort to employ translation to establish the heuristic basis of what

21 I am citing from the revised, provisional edition provided in Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, pp. 92–4: ‘Prefatio Roberti translatoris ad dominum Petrum abbatem Cluniacensem in libro legis Sarracenorum quem Alchoran vocant, id est ‘Collectionem preceptorum’, quam Mahumet pseudopropheta per angelum Gabrielem quasi de celo sibi missa confinxit’. 22  Prefatio Roberti translatoris, ed. Cecini, pp. 92–3: ‘Domino suo Petro divino instinctu Cluniacensi abbati Robertus Ketenensis suorum minimus in Deo perfecte gaudere. Ubi sepius atque serio percepi qualiter quamtumve tuus animus solius et totius boni studiosus sitivit sterilem paludem Sarracene secte nondum vise fertilem efficere suumque puteum exhaurire propugnaculaque prorsus diruere, ego peditis tantum officio praevii functus vias et aditus diligentissime patefeci’. 23 Prefatio Roberti translatoris, ed. Cecini, p. 93: ‘Quis enim gressum dilatabit, quis non citissime curret ut hostis errorem ipsumque victum, semetipsum autem tenere sententiam ubique firmam atque victricem agnoscat?’. 24  Prephatio Roberti translatoris, ed. Cecini, p. 93: ‘Latinitas tamen omnis hucusque non dicam perniciosis incommodis ignorantie negligentieve pressa, suorum hostium causam et ignorare et non depellere passa est. Tua vero pervigil providentia, sanctissimos et preelectos ecclesie doctores semper aspiciens hoc nullatenus voluit’.

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Rita George-Tvrtković has identified – in her study of the case of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce – as a Christian theology of Islam.25 Robert’s humanist rather than theological education influenced his translation method and rendering of the prose. What resulted was a translation ad sensum, laden with rhetorical devices, stylistically conforming to the conventions of Latin poetry rather than the linguistic features of the Arabic of the Qur’an. His method consisted of taking a series of verses (ʾāyāt) and translating them in accordance with what he considered their essential meaning. Robert’s translation does not reflect perfectly the contents and literary structure of the Qur’an in the original form: some of the content has been summarised, while titles and places of revelation as well as several stylistic devices including repetitions have been omitted. However, scholars have recently shown that Robert’s apparently arbitrary division of the Suras might have been inspired, to an extent, by the literary structure of an Arabic Qur’an. As noticed by Tom Burman and later discussed by Margarida Castells i Criballés, moreover, by translating the whole text of the Qur’an into Latin for the first time, Robert was certainly able to clarify obscure terms and concepts using Islamic commentaries (tafsīr) that were little known in Latin Christendom.26 What, then, was Peter’s purpose in commissioning this translation? Scholars have debated at length the links between the Cluniac order and crusade propaganda, particularly with regard to the First Crusade.27 It has been demonstrated that the Cluniac order was very much involved in supporting the 1095 crusade. And yet, it would be misleading to project the religious agenda of this order during the late eleventh century onto Peter the Venerable’s thinking about the Crusades which, moreover, evolved from his earlier letters to his later theological writings against Islam. The context and contents of the latter help clarify the author’s intentions. While in Spain, Peter promoted translations and

25  Rita George-Tvrtković, A Christian Pilgrim in Medieval Iraq. Riccoldo da Montecroce’s Encounter with Islam, Turnhout: Brepols, 2012, pp. 107–33. 26 See Margarida Castells Criballés, “Alguns aspectes formals de la traducció llatina de l’Alcorà de Robert de Ketton (c. 1141–43) i la seva relació amb el text original àrab”, Faventia, 29 (2007), pp. 79–106; Margarida Castells i Criballés, La traducció llatina de l’Alcorà de Robert de Ketton (s. XII) en confrontació a l’original àrab. Context, anàlisi i valoració, PhD diss., Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2011; Thomas E. Burman, “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qurʾān Exegesis and the Latin Qurʾāns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo”, Speculum, 73 (1998), pp. 703–32. 27 Virginia G. Berry, “Peter the Venerable and the Crusades”, Petrus Venerabilis 1156–1956, ed. Constable and Kritzeck, pp. 141–62; Maria Teresa Briolin, “La crociata per Pietro il Venerabile. Guerra di armi o guerra di idee?”, Aevum, 61 (1987), pp. 327–54; Scott G. Bruce, Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet. Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2015, pp. 70–129; on the Iberian context, see Carlos Manuel Reglero de la Fuente, “Cluny en el contexto político y cultural de la Península Ibérica, siglos XII–XIII”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden, ed. Tischler and Fidora, pp. 403–32.

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writings on Islam to awaken Christian scholars from their ignorance. In France, the influential leader of the Cistercian order, Bernard of Clairvaux, urged Pope Eugene III to support the crusade, never censuring the use of force and violence against the Muslim ‘enemy’.28 At that time, Bernard’s position on the crusade was close to that of the papacy. Born Bernando da Pisa, the Italian pope was himself a Cistercian monk and former pupil of Bernard’s at the Clairvaux Abbey. Upon his return from Spain, in 1144, Peter alerted Bernard by letter of the collection of writings on Islam he had recently acquired, making explicit mention of his two translators, Robert of Ketton and Herman of Carinthia (interpretantes, utriusque linguae periti), the locations at which they prepared the translations, details regarding their backgrounds, and the exorbitant cost he had paid (ad hoc faciendum multo precio conduxi). The letter also details the resemblance between the terms of Peter’s doctrinal description of the Qur’an and those used by Robert in his preface to the translation.29 Following the example of the Church Fathers (morem illum Patrum sequerer), who made extensive use of the written word to combat ancient heresies,30 Peter wished to arm a Christian bookcase (Christianum armarium) with intellectual weapons. In the medieval monastic context, the word armarium represented a small room between the church and chapter hall housing liturgical books. In this letter, it functions as a powerful image revealing Peter’s desire to replace physical weapons with cultural and spiritual tools. For this reason, he attached to his letter the most biting polemical work of his collection, namely the Latin translation of the Risālat al-Kindī. Harking back to a ninth century polemical writing in Arabic, this literary dialogue is, in fact, a Christian apology in epistolary form, which, in the wake of Peter’s endeavour, exerted a great influence on the Christian understanding of Islam in late medieval Europe.31 28  For an overview of Bernard’s attitude toward the use of force, see Tim Davis, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. A Monastic View of Medieval Violence, New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 29  Petrus Venerabilis, Epistola ad Bernardum, ed. in Petrus Venerabilis, Schriften zum Islam, ed. and trans. Reinhold F. Glei, Altenberge: CIS, 1985, pp. 22–4: ‘Sed et totam impiam sectam vitamque nefarii hominis ac legem quam Alchoran, id est “Collectaneum preceptorum”, appellavit, sibique ab angelo Gabrihele de caelo allatam, miserrimis hominibus persuasit, nichilominus ex Arabico ad Latinitatem perduxi, interpretantibus scilicet viris utriusque linguae peritis, Rotberto Ketenensi de Anglia, qui nunc Pampilonensis ecclesiae archidiaconus est, Hermanno quoque Dalmata, acutissimi et litterati ingenii scolastico, quos in Hispania circa Hiberum astrologicae arti studentes inveni, eosque ad hoc faciendum multo precio conduxi’. 30  On this intriguing analogy, see the note by José Martínez Gázquez, “Los Santos Padres, modelo de Pedro el Venerable en la refutación del Islam”, Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos, 15 (1998), pp. 347–61. 31 Petrus Venerabilis, Epistola ad Bernardum Clareuallis, ed. Glei, p. 22: ‘Mitto vobis carissime novam translationem nostram contra pessimam nequam Mahumet heresim disputantem, quae dum nuper in Hispania morarer, meo studio de Arabica versa est in Latinam’. Cf. Peter the Venerable’s prologue of Liber contra sectam siue haeresim Saracenorum, ed. Glei, pp. 30–61. The Arabic text of the Risālat al-Kindī, with a French translation, is provided by Georges Tartar, Dialogue islamo-chrétien sous le calife al-Ma’mūn. Les épîtres d’al-Hashimî et d’al-Kindî,

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In so doing, Peter invited Bernard to take up his pen against the dangerous Islamic ‘mistake’ and bring to bear the sharpness of his theological arguments: In particular, I inform you of all of this in order to share with such a friend these works of mine, as well as to rouse your noble talent, which in recent times God has granted you in a singular way, in order to write against such pernicious error.32

Eager for an affirmative answer from Bernard, Peter concludes his letter with the offer to supply him with the new translation of the Qur’an in the case that he was willing to write on Islam.33 This final appeal implicitly suggests Peter’s hope that Bernard might give up support for the crusade and instead take up an intellectual campaign against Islamic doctrine. As far as we know, however, Bernard of Clairvaux never answered and, notwithstanding the failure of the Second Crusade whose reasons he acknowledged in his treatise addressed to the Pope, De consideratione ad Eugenium papam, continued to preach in favour of the war and to support the Knights Templar.34 Sometime before his death in 1156, and almost a decade after writing his letter to Bernard, Peter took upon himself the task of composing a second theological treatise on Islam – Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum – this time addressing, in a symbolic fashion, an imaginary Muslim reader. In the aftermath of the failure of the Second Crusade to regain the county of Edessa in the Near East, Peter’s arguments acquire rational depth and spiritual strength. He had come to understand the decline of classical education (antiquum studium) among his predecessors and, more significantly, among his contemporaries (Latini et maxime Combs-la-Ville: Centre évangélique de témoignage et de dialogue, 1982; an English translation can be found in Neal A. Newman, The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue. A Collection of Documents from the First Three Islamic Centuries (632–900 A. D.). Translations with Commentary, Hatfield PA: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1993, pp. 355–545; an Italian translation in Laura Bottini (trans., intro. and ed.), Al-Kindī. Apologia del cristianesimo, Milan: Jaca Books, 1998. See also Fernando González Muñoz (ed. and trans.), Exposición y refutación del islam. La versión latina de las epístolas de al-Hāšimī y al-Kindī, A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña, 2005. 32 At the time of writing this essay, Irven M. Resnick’s laudable translation of Peter the Venerable’s Writings Against the Saracens (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016) was not yet available. Therefore, all quotations from Peter’s works in this essay, were translated from Latin by myself. Petrus Venerabilis, Epistola ad Bernardum, ed. Glei, p. 26: ‘Specialiter autem vobis haec omnia notificavi, ut et tanto amico studia nostra communicarem, et ad scribendum contra tam perniciosum errorem, illam vestram quam nostris diebus Deus vobis singulariter contulit doctrinae magnificentiam animarem’. 33  Petrus Venerabilis, Epistola ad Bernardum, ed. Glei, p. 28: ‘Si igitur reverentiae vestrae in his laborandi Deo aspirante voluntas fuerit, nam facultas per eius gratiam deesse non poterit, rescribite, et mittemus librum quem nondum misimus’. 34 Bernardus Claraevallensis, De consideratione ad Eugenium papam, intro. Pietro Zerbi, trans. and notes Ferrucci Gastaldelli, Milan: Scriptorium Claravallense-Fondazione di Studi Cistercensi, 1984, in Opere di San Bernardo, 1: Trattati, pp. 727–939. See Aurelio Pastori Ramos, “La Segunda Cruzada y su fracaso en De consideratione ad Eugenium papam de Bernardo de Claravall”, Mirabilia, 10 (2010), pp. 70–84.

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moderni) as the key reason for ignorance and indifference in the West about the “errors” in Islamic doctrine: Therefore, regardless of whether the Mohammedan error should be labelled heresy, paganism, or Gentile idolatry, it is necessary to act against it, to write against it. However, since the study of the classics has disappeared (as the Jews claim regarding the Apostles, who once knew many languages) and Western Christians now know only their own mother tongue, they have not been able to understand the magnitude of this error, let alone attempted to cope with it.35

By a rhetorical shift to the first-person narrative (indignatus sum), Peter goes on to rage against the lack of intellectual skill within Latin Christendom, justifying in these terms the significance of his translation of the Qur’an as a basic tool within a wider intellectual programme. As his words make clear, he sponsored a translation of the Qur’an not to support the crusade but to remedy the ignorance he had come to perceive in his own society. I have been vexed at seeing that Western Christians ignore the reason of such misfortune and that due to this ignorance, no one can be incited to resist. In fact, there was no one who could answer as there was no one who was aware of that. Thus I turned to experts in Arabic, from which [language] this deadly virus that has already infected more than half of the world originates.36

Peter’s ideal mission was to initiate the translation of the Qur’an and other apologetic writings on the superiority of the Christian faith over Islam in order to achieve the voluntary conversion of Muslims to the Christian faith. This is the ultimate purpose behind his later Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum. In this book, he points to Muslims’ rational inclination as well as to Islamic education in science and philosophy, revealing his awareness of the radical distance between the Christian and Islamic worlds in terms of geography, language, and culture. While acknowledging the clear cultural and historical differences separating Christians and Muslims, he denounces the hatred of the enemy that his fellow Christians frequently expressed in confronting Islam. Through a rhetorical strategy based on opposing terms, he discredits war and the use of force as an ineffective strategy and instead recommends the apostolic mission, based on teaching and rational argumentation, as the only valuable tool for converting Muslims. 35  Petrus Venerabilis, Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, ed. in Petrus Venerabilis. Schriften zum Islam, ed. Glei, pp. 52–4: ‘Sive ergo Mahumeticus error heretico nomine deturpetur sive gentili aut pagano infametur, agendum contra eum est, scribendum est. Sed quia Latini et maxime moderni antiquo studio pereunte – iuxta Iudaeorum vocem varias linguas apostolorum olim mirantium – non nisi linguam suam noverunt, in qua nati sunt, cuismodi tantus error esset agnoscere, ne dicam tanto errori obviare non poterant’. 36  Petrus Venerabilis, Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, ed. Glei, p. 54: ‘Indignatus sum causam tantae perditionis Latinos ignorare et ipsa ignorantia nullum ad resistendum posse animari. Nam non erat qui responderet, quia non erat qui agnosceret. Contuli ergo me ad peritos linguae Arabicae, ex qua procedens mortiferum virus orbem plusquam dimidium infecit’.

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It may seem incredible, and perhaps it is, that someone so far from you in space, using another language and doing another profession, with alien habits and lifestyle, from the end of the West is addressing you, who are in the East or in the South, whom I have never seen and may never see. I am therefore addressing you not as my co-religionists often do, namely with weapons, but rather with words; not through force, but rather through reason; not with hatred, but rather with love.37

In one of the most inspired passages of the treatise, Peter addresses Muslims by calling them homines, homines – an expression signalling ontological equality – to evoke the radical idea from the Gospel of Matthew to love your enemy and invite him to enter God’s plan for the salvation of the souls (salus, vita aeterna).38 Although Peter himself, in several earlier letters, had initially provided arguments in favour of the Crusades led by the Templars and the French (his letter to King Louis VII written in 1146 is well-known), it is clear that after he decided to commission the translation of the Qur’an and other writings on Islam, and specifically after having seen the results of the Second Crusade, his missionary intent changed.39 In any event, his letter to Bernard (1144) makes clear his belief that the challenges posed by Islamic expansion ought to have been primarily combatted – by monks and churchmen – by intellectual means, rather than by means of military campaigns.

3. A Transfer in Support of the Crusade. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and Mark of Toledo (1210) The second translation of the Qur’an was undertaken in Toledo in 1210, during the Spanish crusade against the Almohad caliphate.40 Its author was Mark of 37  Petrus Venerabilis, Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, ed. Glei, p. 62: ‘Mirum videtur et fortassis etiam est, quod homo a vobis loco remotissimo, lingua diversus, professione seiunctus, moribus vitaque alienus, ab ultimis Occidentis hominibus in Orientis vel meridiei partibus positis scribo, et quos numquam vidi, quos numquam forte visurus sum, loquendo aggredior. Aggredior inquam vos, non, ut nostri saepe faciunt, armis sed verbis, non vi sed ratione, non odio sed amore.’ 38  See Petrus Venerabilis, Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, ed. Glei, p. 66. 39  Dominique Iogna-Prat and John Tolan, in their entry on Peter the Venerable in ChristianMuslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, ed. David Thomas and Alexander Mallett, Leiden: Brill, 2009–17, vol. 3 (2011), pp. 604–10, claim that Peter never supported the Crusade. Other scholars, on the contrary, have claimed that Peter, as a member of the Order of Cluny, necessarily supported the Crusade. I am of the opinion, rather, that there was a gradual change in Peter’s thinking on the Crusades, which was the result of both the evolution of his spiritual understanding of Muslims from Summa totius haeresis Sarracenorum (1143) to Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum (ca. 1155–56) and his reflection on the shifting global scenario around him. See the Conclusions of this essay below. 40  On the Spanish conflict, see Rafael Gerardo Peinado Santaella, Guerra santa, cruzada y yihad en Andalucía y el reino de Granada (siglos XIII–XV), Granada: Ed. Universidad de Granada, 2017.

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Toledo, a canon of the Toledo cathedral (1193–1216) and member of the intellectual entourage of the influential archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.41 Less than two years later, in 1212, the Castilian army dealt a resounding defeat to Islamic forces in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, commemorated in Spanish chronicles and iconography as a portentous victory that heralded total reconquest of Spain. Francisco de Paula van Halen y Gil’s oil painting from 1864, preserved in the Senate building of Madrid, depicts the bearded figure of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada raising his right hand in a sign of victory and riding alongside King Alfonso VIII of Castile, providing an emblematic example of the romantic revival of this foundational episode in Spanish history.42 Mark’s translation reflects the context of armed conflict in whose midst it was composed. By 1212, half of the Peninsula had been recaptured. And, less than fifty years later, in 1236 and 1248 respectively, Cordoba and Seville would become Christian after five centuries of Muslim rule. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain for nearly forty years (1209–47), commissioned the translation during the period of his rise in the Church. He is the author of the monumental chronicle of Spain, De rebus Hispanie libri duo, as well as other chronicles including a well-known history of the Arabs (Historia Arabum) and a literary dialogue against the Jews (Dialogus libri vite). In addition to his literary pursuits, he devoted himself to military endeavours aimed at permanently pushing the Muslims out of the former Visigoth lands.43 In a series of drawings from a manuscript collection of canonical writings on the primacy and privileges of the Church of Toledo (c. 1253–55), a triumphant Jiménez de Rada preaches at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), seated at its head and surrounded by patriarchs and Spanish archbishops. The drawings clearly allude to the place of the Church of Toledo as the leading force within Christianity in a period of Church reform and war (Madrid, BNE, MS Vit. 15–5, fol. 22r). In the wave of this political involvement in the Crusade, Jiménez de Rada requested that Mark of Toledo furnish him with a complete translation of the Qur’an into Latin. Mark was allegedly the foremost expert of Arabic among the churchmen and humanists of Jiménez de Rada’s entourage. He had travelled to 41  On Mark’s name and intellectual activities, see Petrus Pons, Alchoranus Latinus, pp. xxvii– xxxvii. 42  See Manuel González Jiménez, “Las Navas de Tolosa (1212): La Batalla de los Tres Reyes”, La Edad Media hispánica. E: n torno a cuatro centenarios, coord. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2012, pp. 9–69. Some remarks on the relation between this battle and the view of Islam in the Middle Ages can be found in Thomas E. Burman, “Las Navas de Tolosa and Liber Alchorani: Reflections on Iberian Christians and the Qur’an”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 4 (2012), pp. 89–93. 43  See Lucy K. Pick, Conflict and Coexistence. Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain, Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004; Alex J. Novikoff, “From Dialogue to Disputation in the Age of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 4 (2012), pp. 95–100.

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Syria, where he learned both Syriac and Arabic before returning to Toledo and becoming part of Jiménez de Rada’s circle. Unlike Robert of Ketton, he translated the Qur’an literally, de verbo ad verbum, providing a Latin version faithful to the Arabic text and its style, thus differing considerably from Robert’s use of Latin rhetorical devices. For various reasons, Mark’s translation did not enjoy the same degree of popularity as Robert’s, however, Nàdia Petrus Pons has recently demonstrated that its reception between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries was broader than suggested by Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny in her ground-breaking studies of Mark’s works. In her introduction to the critical edition of Mark’s translation, Petrus Pons draws attention to two vernacular translations of his Latin Qur’an, both of them partial: an Italian translation that Luciano Formisano attributed to Niccolaio di Berto, dated to 1461 and held at the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence;44 and an anonymous, unpublished seventeenth century French translation preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.45 Furthermore, Thomas Burman convincingly argues that Mark’s translation was read for polemical purposes by a group of Dominican friars based in Italy. Among them was the prolific writer and traveller, Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, who, at the dawn of the fourteenth century, corrected Mark’s translation by comparing it with an Arabic Qur’an he had likely acquired in the Near East.46 Mark shared the aim of conquest envisioned by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada for his editorial project.47 In his preface, he calls for confrontation with ‘the infidels’ and includes both denigrating descriptions of Islamic doctrine and bitter complaints about the loss of Christian practices. Wicked men (scelerati viri), he writes, now pray in the name of Muḥammad; Christian churches, where priests once celebrated the Mass, have become profane temples.48 Mark especially mourns the celebration of the Christian Mass, which had been supplanted by veneration of 44 Luciano Formisano, “La più antica (?) traduzione italiana del Corano e il Liber Habentometi di Ibn Tumart in una compilazione di viaggi del primo Cinquecento”, Critica del testo, 7/2 (2005), pp. 651–96. 45  Petrus Pons, Alchoranus latinus, pp. lxxi–xci. 46  Thomas E. Burman, “A Sixteenth-Century European Author Portrait of Muḥammad and Medieval Latin Traditions of Qur’an Reading”, The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology. A Scholarly Investigation, ed. Christiane J. Gruber and Avinoam Shalem, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 201–22; Thomas E. Burman, “Two Dominicans, a Lost Manuscript, and Medieval Christian Thought on Islam”, Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference. Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean, ed. Ryan Szpiech, New York NY: Fordham University Press, 2015, pp. 71–86. 47 See John Victor Tolan, “Las traducciones y la ideología de reconquista”, pp. 79–85; José Martínez Gázquez, “Translations of the Qur’an and Other Islamic Texts before Dante (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries)”, Dante and Islam, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski, New York NY: Fordham University, 2015, pp. 67–77: pp. 73–7. 48  Marchus canonicus Toletanus, Prologus, ed. in Petrus Pons, Alchoranus latinus, pp. 5–13, ll. 157–61: ‘[…] verum etiam quasdam partes Yspanie per prodicionem sequaces eius occupaverunt et in quibus olim multi sacerdotes divinum Deo prestabant obsequium, nunc scelerati viri

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the ‘pseudo-Prophet’, Muḥammad. Of Muḥammad, he paints a polemical portrait consistent with the well-established medieval genre of pseudo-historical portraits written in Latin.49 However, as Katarzyna Starczewska has argued, paying particular attention to the widespread trope of the Prophet’s epilepsy,50 Mark’s portrait is in many ways distinct from the depiction of the Prophet in Jiménez de Rada’s chronicle of the Arabs, despite his close work with the archbishop of Toledo.51 If compared to Robert of Ketton’s translation commissioned by Peter the Venerable, where the translator’s prefatory letter strictly echoes the promoter’s purposes, Mark’s case suggests that the patron and the translator’s views of Islam – or at least of the Arab cultural legacy – somehow diverged. In detailing the tribulations of Christians living under Islamic rule, Mark makes particular mention of the fact that, in the very place where once priests celebrated the Holy Eucharist, the name of the pseudo-Prophet is now worshipped and indeed broadcast in blasphemous proclamations from the towers in the place of bells.52 The latter statement would be echoed in later expressions of grievances about the disturbing utterances sounding from the minarets of reconquered Christian cities, down to the fifteenth century.53 Ultimately, Mark’s aim is to provide Christian believers with a broad and effective set of tropes whereby refuting Islamic doctrine (fideles in Sarracenos inuehendi exercitamenta sumant ampliora). The same objective is pursued in the preface to his translation of the Libellus Habentometi de unione Dei, a compendium of Islamic theology attributed to the Almohad mahdī Ibn Tūmart.54 Twice in this preface, Mark considers Ibn Tūmart’s theological treatise on God’s unity and the Qur’an (lex infidelium) – which he claims had been translated three years earlier – an equally exsecrabiles Mafometo supplicaciones impendunt et ecclesie que quondam per manus episcoporum fuerant consecrate, nunc in templa sunt redacte profana’. 49 See Michelina Di Cesare, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muḥammad in Medieval Latin Literature: A Repertory, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. See also Vitae Mahometi. Reescritura e invención en la literatura cristiana de controversia, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and Óscar De la Cruz Palma, Madrid: CSIC, 2014. 50  See Andrea Celli, “‘Maometto cascava del male caduco.’ Epilessia e profetismo islamico nella trattatistica storico-religiosa e medica in lingua italiana (Cinque-Seicento)”, Eroi dell’estasi. Lo sciamanismo come artefatto culturale e sinopia letteraria, ed. Alvaro Barbieri, Verona: Fiorini, 2017, pp. 239–62: pp. 240–6 (for cases dating to medieval times). 51  Starczewska, “Muḥammad’s Portrait”, pp. 455–64: pp. 459–61. 52  Marchus canonicus Toletanus, Prologus, ed. Petrus Pons, ll. 166–70: ‘[…] in locis ubi suffraganei pontifices sacrificia santa Ihesu Christo quondam offerebant, nunc pseudo-prophete nomine extollitur, et in turribus ecclesiarum in quibus olim tintinabula releuabant, nunc quedam prophana preconia fidelium aures insurdant’. 53 See Roser Salicrú Lluch, “Entre la praxis y el estereotipo: vivencias y percepciones de lo islámico ibérico en las fuentes archivísticas y narrativas bajomedievales”, Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la Edad Media, ed. José Martínez Gázquez and John Victor Tolan, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013, pp. 99–111: pp. 103–4. 54  José Martínez Gázquez is preparing a critical edition of this translation. See the announcement on http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/islamolatina/content/a​l​c​o​r​a​n​-​l​a​t​i​n​u​s​-​1​1​4​2​-​1​1​4​3.

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suitable basis ‘for refuting the secrets of the Moors’ (Maurorum secreta via patet impugnandi).55 As for the knowledge of Islamic doctrine on a broader level, however, this indication could have been misleading to inexperienced Christian eyes. Indeed, Ibn Tūmart’s theology harks back to the specific intellectual backdrop of the post-Almohad Iberia. It is well known that the Almohads were a messianic movement and that their religious worldview did not meet the main trends of medieval Islamic theology, being even considered by some jurists and scholars as heretics.56 Mark of Toledo does not seem to be aware of this theological debate within the Islamic world. From the preface, we can infer the audience of Mark’s warnings on the Islamic threat. His translation aimed at providing those who could not participate physically in the war, namely learned monks and churchmen, with an intellectual weapon to use against Islam’s sacrilegious laws (sacrilega instituta) and aberrant precepts (enormia precepta).57 Reclamation of Roman-Christian lands conquered and corrupted by ‘the unbelievers’ (infideles) was the primary aim of both the military campaign staunchly supported by Jiménez de Rada and the Qur’anic translation prepared by Mark. As José Martínez Gázquez suggests, the contention of Christianity’s superiority over Islam expressed in Mark’s preface can be found in Jiménez de Rada’s chronicle, De rebus Hispanie, widely circulated among cultured readers in the thirteenth century. However, Mark goes further in the direction of polemic than Jiménez de Rada,58 the preface to his translation of the Qur’an offering a literary formulation of the archbishop’s political and ecclesiological campaign to secure the seat of Toledo as the centre of Christianity,

 The edition of this text was provided by Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny and Georges Vajda, Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tumart, Madrid: CSIC, 1952, pp. 268–9: ‘Translato ante triennium Alforcano libro legis infidelium Ismaelitarum, ad preceptum R[oderici] domini Toletani archiepiscopi, Yspaniarum primatis, et instantiam Magistri Mauricii eiusdem sedis archidiaconi, libellum Habentometi quem de unione composuit, non immerito duxi transferendum. Transtuli siquidem [librum] Habent[ometi] post librum Mafometi, ut ex utriusque inspectione fideles in Sarracenos inuehendi exercitamenta sumant ampliora. […] in catholicis iuris utrumque librum inspicientibus Maurorum secreta via patet impugnandi’. 56  See Ignác Goldziher, Mohammed ibn Toumert et la théologie de l’Islam dans le nord de l’Afrique au XIe siècle, Algiers: P. Fontana, 1903. 57  Marchus canonicus Toletanus, Prologus, ed. Petrus Pons, pp. 11–2, ll. 170–6: ‘Hic nimirum antistes, quem divine sciencie licteratura comendat, sanctitas beat, virtutes approbant, honestas ornat, infelicem ecclesie sue successum deplorans, utpote qui Novum et Vetus Testamentum novit perscrutabiliter operam dedit et sollicitudinem, ut liber in quo sacrilega continebantur instituta et enormia precepta translatus in noticiam veniret ortodoxorum, ut quos ei non licebat armis impugnare corporalibus saltem enormibus institutis obviando confunderet.’ On the readership of medieval translations of the Qur’an, see Dag Nikolaus Hasse, “The Social Conditions of the Arabic-(Hebrew‑)Latin Translation Movement in Medieval Spain and Renaissance”, Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006, pp. 68–86. 58 Starczewska, “Muḥammad’s Portrait”, pp. 463–4. 55

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thus enhancing the role of the archbishopric in the crusades against the Islamic kingdoms of Spain. Sixty years after Robert of Ketton’s translation, intended to rebuke Christian ignorance in alignment with Peter the Venerable’s call for salvation, the Qur’an was translated a second time with the explicit aim of supporting the crusade. Jiménez de Rada’s purposes were a far cry from Peter’s aspirations to spiritual salvation of ‘the unbelievers’ through intellectual persuasion. On the contrary, the translation Jiménez de Rada commissioned from Mark aimed at providing a strict doctrinal attack on Islam concomitant with the military efforts financed by the archbishopric of Toledo. For this reason, Jiménez de Rada’s project has been interpreted as an attempt at cultural appropriation comparable to the adornment of the Toledo cathedral with Arabic inscriptions. By denigrating Islam on a doctrinal level, while at the same time christianising its cultural heritage on a literary level, it became possible to incorporate the Arabic legacy into Spanish history.59 This interpretation also offers a convincing explanation for the archbishop’s intellectual interest in the history of the Arabs (Arabi), rather than of Muslims (Sarraceni) or Islam (secta Mahumeti) as a rival religion.

4. A Transfer Aimed at Peaceful Conversion. Juan de Segovia and ‘Īsā Ibn Jābir (1455–56) A third translation of the Qur’an was completed in 1456, three years after the Ottoman conquest of Byzantium (1453), amidst the papacy’s campaign to launch a new crusade against the Turks. Four decades later, the Catholic Monarchs would conquer Granada, extinguishing the last Islamic kingdom in Spain (1492). The translation was prepared at the Benedictine monastery of Aiton – a remote site in the mountains of Savoy  – by the Spanish theologian and prominent member of the Council of Basel (1431–49) Juan de Segovia, in close cooperation with an Islamic scholar (faqīh) from Segovia, ‘Īsā Ibn Jābir. The translation included the Arabic, Castilian, and Latin text of the Qur’an and is thus the first trilingual edition of the Qur’an in the history of translation. Despite the unfortunate loss of the sole manuscript preserving this translation, we can discern much about the translation method, the intercultural exchanges between the two translators, and the motives behind the translation, from the extensive Latin preface written by Juan de Segovia after ‘Īsā’s departure from Aiton.60 From this preface, which survives in two manuscript copies dating 59 See Matthias Maser, Die Historia Arabum des Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Arabische Traditionen und die Identität der Hispania im 13. Jahrhundert. Studie, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Berlin: LIT, 2006. Cf. the studies cited in note 45. 60  The edition of the text is provided in José Martínez Gázquez, “El Prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qur’an) trilingüe (1456)”, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 38/1–2 (2003), pp. 389–410.

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respectively from the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, we can surmise that the translation was brilliant both in its beauty and ingenuity. By simply opening the large format manuscript, richly illuminated and bound, the reader could compare the Arabic text on the left with the calligraphic Castilian text and interlinear Latin version transcribed in a small red script on the right. What was the ultimate purpose of such an exquisite object? Juan was born in Segovia around 1393. From around the age of fourteen, he studied at the University of Salamanca, where he became a doctor in theology in 1422 and went on to hold three chairs (Prima, Vísperas, and Biblia), alternating between them over ten years. Since 1434, as a representative of the University of Salamanca, he served on the Council of Basel, where he was a staunch supporter of the conciliarist party against Pope Eugene IV.61 Following the definitive political success of the pope’s party in 1449, Segovia and other advocates for the Council  – including the former pope, Felix V (Amadeus VIII of Savoy), and the French cardinal, Louis Aleman – retired to out-of-the-way places between France and Savoy and devoted themselves to writing and prayer. His allegedly self-imposed exile in Aiton during the last eight years of his life did not prevent Segovia from keeping abreast, through his correspondence, of the most pressing issues of his time and confronting them intellectually through study and writing. In 1457, his private library in Savoy held 108 books on diverse theological topics, including a book section specifically devoted to the confutation of the ‘sect of Muhammed’.62 Upon receiving news of the fall of Byzantium, Segovia began writing prolifically on Islam and offering possible methods to resist its expansion. In the autumn of 1453, he drew up a well-informed treatise – initially conceived as a letter to the archbishop of Seville, Juan de Cervantes – on Islamic doctrine and practices, aimed at facilitating conversion. He followed his treatise with letters against the crusade, addressed to distinguished churchmen of his time, including Nicholas of Cusa, Jean Germain and Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Genuinely concerned with the growing presence of Muslims in the oecumene, Segovia was clearly unsatisfied with preceding writings of Christian theologians and learned

61  See Antony Black, Council and Commune. The Conciliar Movement and the FifteenthCentury Heritage, London: Burns and Oates and Shepherdstown: Patmos Press, 1979; Jesse D. Mann, “The Devilish Pope: Eugenius IV as Lucifer in the Later Works of Juan de Segovia”, Church History, 65/2 (1996), pp. 184–96; Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, El pensamiento eclesial de Juan de Segovia (1393–1458). La gracia en el tiempo, Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2004. 62 Benigno Hernández Montes, Biblioteca de Juan de Segovia. Edición y comentario de su escritura de donación, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Instituto Francisco Suarez, 1984. For the early history of this library, see Óscar Lilao Franca, “La formación del fondo manuscrito de la Universidad de Salamanca”, Scripta. Tesoros manuscritos de la Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2017, pp. 23–51.

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men (doctores) on Islam. The many libelli and tractatus he had read seemed inconsistent with an accurate understanding of the Qur’an’s contents: […] And what saddens me even more is this: Although there are many Christian doctors (and others, both non-doctors and just learned people) who have published a multitude of booklets and treaties to refute this sect – of which, moreover, I own and have read a large number – yet there is practically no one who passes down the contents of the Qur’an or provides the aforesaid translation.63

This passionate desire to understand Islam is rooted in Segovia’s experiences as a diplomat who travelled across Castile, and as a professor of theology at the University of Salamanca. In Castile, on at least one occasion lasting several days, he engaged in oral dispute with a Muslim scholar who agreed to an open debate with him on Christian and Islamic doctrine (Medina del Campo, 1431).64 Moreover, in the years he spent as a member of the Council of Basel, he had enjoyed access to at least two copies of Robert of Ketton’s translation of the Qur’an. Comparing them philologically, he observed that they transmitted the same textual tradition. And, upon reaching Aiton, he recognised that Robert’s translation was defective and misleading.65 To replace this translation, he conceived a new trilingual edition of the Qur’an in Arabic, Castilian, and Latin, to be prepared with the help of an experienced Islamic scholar and addressed to both Christian and Muslim readers.66 Locating an able Arabic translator was a difficult task in late medieval Europe, particularly outside Iberia. In Aiton, Segovia conducted a diligent search for a Christian translator who could help him to translate the Qur’an from Arabic into Latin or Castilian. He appealed to the king of Castile and the general minister of the Franciscan order, as well as two missionary friars to whom he submitted by letter Qur’anic quotations to be translated into Latin. However, he was unable to secure assistance. Finally, he convinced ‘Īsā Ibn Jābir to come to the Aiton monastery to teach him Arabic and work on a new translation of the Qur’an (noviter 63  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 16: ‘et quod permultum gravat, cum multi doctorum catholicorum aliique etiam non doctores vixque docti, multos libellos multosque ediderint tractatus ad secte huius impugnationem, quorum multos perlegi multosque etiam penes me habeo, nulli certe aut paucissimi vixque unus reperitur qui prout Alchuranus continet dictaque patefacit translatione’. 64  See Davide Scotto, “Via pacis et doctrine”. Le Epistole sull’islam di Juan de Segovia, PhD diss., Florence: Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, 2012, pp. xvi–xxiv. I have prepared a monographic study of Segovia’s epistles on Islam with the critical edition of the epistle to Nicholas of Cusa, which is forthcoming. On the Medina del Campo dispute, see also Tristan Vigliano, Parler aux musulmans. Quatre intellectuels face à l’islam à l’orée de la Renaissance, Geneva: Droz, 2017, pp. 220–34. 65  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 16: ‘Sed de hoc certissimum perhibere queo testimonium, translationem predictam in quam plurimis deviare a textus Arabici continentia […]’. 66 On Segovia’s possible readership, see Vigliano, Parler aux musulmans, pp. 277–303.

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editam).67 ‘Īsā came from the aljama of the northern Castilian city of Segovia and was a qāḍī (a religious judge) frequently consulted by Castile’s Muslim communities. Due to the quantity and quality of works he produced, he has been regarded as the most distinguished promoter of the nascent Spanish-Islamic literature written in Castilian and aljamiado.68 To accomplish his task as a translator, he brought at least one tafsīr and four short doctrinal writings with him to Savoy. These Islamic materials assisted him in his translation work and allowed him to teach Segovia the basics of Arabic, discuss with him the contents of the Qur’an, and compare Christian and Islamic calendars.69 After a four-month collaboration during which the Arabic text was translated into Castilian, ‘Īsā left Aiton to return to Spain, where, according to Segovia’s preface, his wife awaited him. Segovia was left with the Arabic and Castilian text, unable to secure further assistance. Thus, he decided to translate the Castilian into Latin on his own, using the basic knowledge of Arabic he had obtained while ‘Īsā was at Aiton to check the Castilian and Latin translations against the Arabic text. In an intriguing preface, Segovia refers to the linguistic challenges faced throughout the translation process. He also points to several changes made to the Latin text after having translated it from the Castilian rendering. He was convinced that it was better to scorn Priscian, author of a Latin grammar that was very popular in the Middle Ages, in order to fully respect the Arabic Qur’an and preserve its syntactical features and idiosyncratic lexicon.70 The result was a trilingual edition that was, according to Thomas Burman, of a supreme philological character.71 The complex philological and linguistic implications of this trilingual edition give way to a range of interesting questions. Is the linguistic dimension the predominant factor shaping this translation and its significance? What was the overall purpose of such a demanding intercultural endeavour? Why would a theologian culturally wedded to the late medieval University – neither a humanist, nor an expert in Arabic – be so eager to provide a translation of the Qur’an as faithful as possible to the Arabic text? The preface’s titulus and the paragraph that follows shed light on the nature of the translation by providing a Christian definition of the Qur’an. Specifically, Segovia makes clear that his preliminary 67  Davide Scotto, “«De pe a pa». Il Corano trilingue di Juan de Segovia (1456) e la conversione pacifica dei musulmani”, Storie e miti di conciliazione, ed. Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti and Chiara Pilocane, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 48 (2012), pp. 515–78. 68  On ‘Īsā’s biography and works, see Gerard Wiegers, Islamic literature in Spanish and Aljamiado. Yça of Segovia ( fl. 1450), his Antecedents and Successors, Leiden: Brill, 1994. 69 On the use of these materials during ‘Īsā’s four-month stay in Aiton, see Scotto, “«De pe a pa»”, pp. 541–5. 70  On the linguistic aspects related to Segovia’s Latin translation, see Scotto, “«De pe a pa»”, pp. 557–65. 71  Burman, Reading the Qur’an, p. 186.

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purpose was to replace Robert of Ketton’s translation, which he considered misleading in both its content and linguistic choices. Preface by Juan de Segovia, archbishop of Caesarea, to the new translation from Arabic into Spanish and Latin of the Qur’an, which Muslims consider as the divine law. An exposition follows about the enormous effort I made to find a translator and an assistant, explaining the problems with the first translation and, on the contrary, how this translation is totally in accordance with the substance and style of the Arabic language.72

Regarding the translation method, the preface suggests that the translated text represents a form of compromise between Segovia’s requests and ‘Īsā’s inclination toward the Islamic reluctance to translate the Qur’an. Although there is no formal prohibition in this regard, the act of translating a text revealed by God to the Prophet in Arabic, gave rise to long-standing debates among ancient and contemporary scholars of the Qur’an. Yet, if an interdiction does not in fact exist, a general attitude of scrupulousness, based on the dogma of the i’ jāz (the inimitability of the Qur’an) and the revelationist nature of the origin of language (tawqīf al-lugha), led Qur’anic translations to be seen as explanatory tools for aid those who do not read Arabic to better understand the contents of the Qur’an.73 This is precisely what took place in Aiton in 1455–56. According to the agreement reached by Segovia and ‘Īsā, the translation ought to have been a Qur’anic ‘commentary’ in Castilian, without glosses, in which only very brief marginal notes clarifying lexical difficulties were permitted.74 Segovia offers his reader detailed information about how the two translators worked together for four months, and the specific role of the Muslim scholar in this process. During the first three months, the Qur’an was translated from Arabic into Castilian, while in the last month, they read the Arabic and the Castilian side by side, checking the latter 72  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 2: ‘Prefatio Iohannis de Segobia, Cesariensis archiepiscopi, in translationem noviter editam ex Arabico in Latinum vulgareque Hyspanum libri Alchorani, per Sarracenos reputati legis divine. Expositio autem de labore multo ut haberetur interpres adiutorque, notificat in quibus prima deficeret, et quod translatio hec conformis omnino sit substantie stiloque Arabici ydeomatis.’ 73  See Mustafa Shah, “The Philological Endeavours of the Early Arabic Linguists: Theological Implications of the tawqīf-iṣṭilāḥ Antithesis and the majāz Controversy – Part I”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 1/1 (1999), pp. 27–46; Mustafa Shah, “The Philological Endeavours of the Early Arabic Linguists: Theological Implications of the tawqīf-iṣṭilāḥ Antithesis and the majāz Controversy – Part II”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 2/1 (2000), pp. 43–66. For an overview of the present debate on the implications of the dissemination of the Qur’an, see Ahmed Gumaa Siddiek, “Viewpoints in the Translation of the Holy QURAN”, International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1/2 (2012), pp. 18–25. 74 Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 21: ‘Unde oportuit et aliis postpositis uni intendere cure, quatenus magister ipse, opus, ad quod accesserat uocatus, impleret, translationem facturus libri Alchurani Arabico ydeomati et textui conformem, absque glosis, limitationibus, expositionibus quoque insertis textui, sed et quasdam breves certe admodum rarasque in marginibus addidit pro quorumdam vocabulorum annotatione.’

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against the former. ‘Īsā was fast in copying down both Arabic and Castilian.75 The use of tafsīr, though just briefly mentioned in the preface (suorum libros doctorum Alchuranum exponentes), must have been essential to perfecting the final rendering of the text according to Islamic doctrine and exegesis.76 The preface goes into even more detail regarding the working method and religious practices of the Muslim translator. During the first month, ‘Īsā transcribed the Arabic text; in the second he vocalised it; and, in the third he translated it into Castilian, writing the text with his own hand. Segovia’s impression was that ‘Īsā was an extremely diligent scholar. Every day he sat at his work desk for at least twelve hours, only resting on the day of the feast celebrating the Prophet’s nativity. On occasion, he arose during the night to write a note lest he forget an idea upon waking up in the morning.77 Drawing upon this reference to ‘Īsā’s celebration of the birth of the Prophet (mawlid al-Nabī) and additional remarks about ‘Īsā recorded in Segovia’s writings, Gerard Wiegers has argued that ‘Īsā might have belonged to a sufi confraternity in Spain.78 Instituted by the Fatimids and heavily influenced by sufi traditions, the feast of mawlid al-Nabī was introduced into the Ottoman calendar in 1588.79 However, given that a universally accepted liturgical calendar does not exist in Islam in the manner of the Christian calendar, ‘Īsā’s decision to celebrate the feast of mawlid al-Nabī is not a reliable clue for determining his religious identity. While today, Islamic denominations from Morocco to Indonesia celebrate the birth of the Prophet, the legitimacy of the festivity was a source of debate among premodern Islamic scholars. Yet, the theoretical dimensions of this debate only acquired importance in modern times. In medieval Islam, the legitimacy of the celebration was tacitly accepted by most Muslim scholars with dispute arising only in marginal cases such as that of Ibn Taymiyya. 75 Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 22: ‘Cum autem fuerit hoc in loco mensibus quatuor, eorum tribus Alchuranum interpretatus est, et quarto, simul ambo legimus, correctionis fine, me vulgare Hispanum et illum Arabicum inspiciente ydeoma, utrumque ab eodem scriptum; erat quippe scriba velox tam Arabicarum quam vulgarium Yspanie literarum.’ 76  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 24: ‘Utque translationem facere posset, secum adduxit suorum libros doctorum Alchuranum exponentes.’ 77  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 23–24: ‘Spatio igitur designato trium mensium, uno, Alchuranum scripsit, alio axuclauit, et alio, interpretatus est in vulgari Hyspanico, translationem etiam ipsam propria describens manu, permaxime quidem, uti monstravit, labore, singulo namque dierum cathedra sedebat per horas, ad minus XII, die excepto festivitatis Sarracenorum quo natiuitas colitur sui Prophete. [§ 24] Surgebat etiam aliquando somnum interrumpens et ne, quod lecto acceperat, obliuioni traderet, scribebat. Utque translationem facere posset, secum adduxit suorum libros doctorum Alchuranum exponentes.’ 78  Wiegers, Islamic Literature, esp. p. 147. 79 See Marion Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad. Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam, London: Routledge, 2007.

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After strict examination of Robert’s translation and a detailed account of the work preparing a new edition of the Qur’an, Segovia moves on to present arguments against the Second Crusade, labelling it an infelix eventum – a misfortune for Christianity – recalling Bernard of Clairvaux’s treatise, De consideratione ad Eugenium papam, addressed to Pope Eugene III as an explanation of the failure of the Crusade. In Segovia’s opinion, past, present, and future wars between Christians and Muslims were the result of persistent differences between the Bible and the Qur’an. And from what can be inferred from the book of their sect, the main and only reason for the present and future continuation of wars is the difference between the laws, in addition to their [the Muslims’] very mistaken opinion about Christians.80

War was not, as most of Segovia’s contemporaries believed, a means of stamping out evil and reconquering lost Christian lands, but a logical consequence of the seemingly insurmountable differences between the Bible and the Qur’an. Segovia’s preface lays out the arguments for the dissemination of the Qur’an, revealing the close connection between translating and going to war. Given that the Crusades had not achieved the desired results and Muslims continued to insult Christ’s name, the new translation was conceived as an alternative means for converting Muslims through the establishment of peace and the teaching of doctrine (via pacis et doctrine). With this purpose in mind, it becomes clear why, from Segovia’s perspective, Robert’s translation insufficiently disclosed the substance of the Qur’an and a new translation of the entire Arabic text was necessary. In this regard, it seems in fact useful if not simply necessary that those interested in converting Muslims to the sacraments of the Catholic faith by peace and doctrine understand what their law claims, which cannot be understood through the aforementioned translation, so that divine piety grants what the force of arms and repeated attempts could not – that is, that Muslims desist from cursing Christ’s name, which is increasingly blasphemed.81

The spiritual programme underlying Segovia’s translation becomes clearer in light of his selected quotations from the Gospels. Segovia weaves quotations from Peter and Paul’s epistles into his preface to bolster his calls for Christians 80  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 12: ‘Et quantum ex tenore libri eorum secte percipi potest, precipua totaque guerrarum continuatarum, continuandarum quoque est legum differentia, superaddita huic falsissima eorum de Christianis existimatione.’ 81 Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 17: ‘Quocirca, intendere cupientibus ad Sarracenorum conversionem in sacramenta catholice fidei per viam pacis et doctrine, ut per eam divina concedat pietas id quod vi armorum tot tantisque ac tam diutissime experimentis habitis, obtineri minime potuit, Sarracenos cessare a maledicendo Christi nomine, quod ab eis magis ac magis blasphematur semper in dies, admodum revera utile, quin et necesse videtur ut veram habeant notitiam quid lex dicat eorum, quod ex dicta translatione non habetur.’

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to engage Muslims in peaceful and rational debate. Casting himself as a humble translator struggling to reach his goal and burdened with doubts about the success of his endeavour, he elects to follow the path of the Apostles charged by Christ with the task of teaching faith without violence and duress, acting instead as shepherds who peacefully join hands with God’s flock. Hence, he urges his contemporaries to take inspiration from the apostolic mission in forming their attitudes toward Muslims. His mode of construing the biblical quotations compels Christian scholars (doctores) and bishops (episcopi), both presented as shepherds, to ground their teaching in clear, persuasive arguments on doctrine and faith: Preface: It is therefore necessary for all doctors of the Catholic faith to be always ready to give an explanation to anyone who may ask for it about the faith that is in them. And then, it is also necessary for bishops, who are both soul shepherds and doctors, to be able to preach in sound doctrine, using the faithful sermons that conform to the doctrine of Christ, and rebuke those who contradict it.82

Cf. 1 Petr. 3:15: […] but in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect. Cf. Titus 1:9: He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

Preface: It is certainly necessary for all the Christian faithful to firmly believe the truth of the Catholic faith and to firmly declare it, knowing that without faith it is impossible to please God and that with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Besides, it is also necessary for the shepherds of the Christian faithful to lead the flock of God that is among you through word and doctrine, not under compulsion, but rather willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but rather spontaneously.83

Cf. Heb. 11:6: And without faith it is impossible to please Him. Rom. 10:10: For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Cf. 1 Petr. 5:2: […] shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but spontaneously; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

82  Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 5: ‘Est denique unum necessarium catholice fidei doctoribus ut parati semper sint omni poscenti rationem reddere de ea, que in ipsis est, fide [1 Petr. 3:15]. Est rursus unum necessarium episcopis, qui pastores animarum sunt et doctores, ut amplectentes eum, qui secundum Christi doctrinam est, fidelem sermonem potentes sint exortari in doctrina sana et eos qui contradicunt arguere [Titus 1:9].’ 83 Iohannes de Segobia, Praefatio Alkorani trilinguis, ed. Martínez Gázquez, § 4: ‘Est profecto unum necessarium omnibus Christi fidelibus veritatem catholice fidei simpliciter credere et firmiter confiteri, quando sciunt quod sine fide impossibile est placere Deo [Hebr. 11:6] et quod corde creditur ad iustitiam, ore autem confessio fit ad salutem [Rom. 10:10]. Est praeterea unum necessarium Christi fidelium pastoribus, ut qui in ipsis est, gregem Dei non coacte, sed

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While Segovia looked to the Bible for spiritual and pragmatic answers to the Islamic threat,84 most of the churchmen of his time remained fixed on the same worn-out military approaches that had been tried and failed. From 1452, Pope Nicholas V strenuously promoted a new crusade against the Turks, to no avail.85 Militarily and politically, Christian leaders were occupied with other matters, as internal conflicts brewed across Europe: France against England in the Hundred Years’ War; the Council against the Pope with the resulting realignment of the balance of power in Europe; the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon against the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The prospect of a new crusade in the Near East  – which would have needed to embark from Ancona on Venetian ships to recapture Byzantium – was seriously considered only by the papacy, and by Burgundy, Poland, and Hungary, which directly faced Turkish forces in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.86 Segovia was almost alone among eminent churchmen of his time in advocating for inter-faith debate and peace with Muslims. The German humanist Nicholas of Cusa agreed, to some extent, with Segovia’s proposal, despite an important set of nuanced theological differences between the two. However, their correspondence regarding their thoughts on Islam lasted only a short time. From December 1454 on, we do not have a further record of their contact. Cusa reached Rome on 30 September 1458, following Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s election as pope, and in fact became an active supporter of the crusade propaganda against the Turks.87 Segovia, on the other hand, never wrote explicitly against the pope or the post-conciliar Church and, at the same time, never provided intellectual support to the plans for a new crusade that were underway in his day. As Anne Marie Wolf has convincingly argued, his twenty years of experience as a theologian and diplomat at the Council of Basel, where he participated in meetings and assemblies aimed at debating political and doctrinal issues of

spontanee, secundum Deum, nec turpis lucri gratia, sed voluntarie [1 Petr. 5:2], verbo et doctrina pascant.’ 84  On Segovia’s use of the Bible, see Anne Marie Wolf, “Precedents and Paradigms: Juan de Segovia on the Bible, the Church, and the Ottoman Threat”, Scripture and Pluralism. Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and Thomas E. Burman, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 143–60; Jesse D. Mann, “Reading the Bible in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of Juan de Segovia”, The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 43 (2017), pp. 115–34. 85  See Walter H. Hanak, “Pope Nicholas V and the Aborted Crusade of 1452–1453 to Rescue Constantinople from the Turks”, Byzantinoslavica, 65 (2007), pp. 337–60. 86 Norman J. Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580. From Lyons to Alcazar, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; Norman J. Housley, Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1560, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996. 87  On the evolution of Cusa’s thinking on Islam between 1453 and 1461, see Davide Scotto, “Sulla soglia della «Cribratio». Riflessi dell’Islam nell’esperienza di Niccolò Cusano”, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 45 (2009), pp. 225–81.

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primary importance to the Church and late medieval European kingdoms, radically shaped Segovia’s thinking on the Church and Islam.88 The third medieval translation of the Qur’an into Latin did not circulate beyond the Aiton monastery, nor did it achieve any popularity among Christian readers. As far as we know, it was lost somewhere between Savoy and Spain sometime after Segovia’s death on 24 May 1458. Its inexplicable disappearance has not been fully considered by scholars. However, a clue as to its fate may lie in Segovia’s relationship with Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Elected pope on 19 August 1458 with the name of Pius II, Piccolomini could have forcibly seized Segovia’s trilingual edition of the Qur’an in February 1459, when by means of a papal bull signed in Perugia during his journey to Mantua, he earmarked for himself several books on Islam that had belonged to the Aiton library, and had been legally destined, by Segovia, to ecclesiastical and university libraries in Salamanca and Valladolid.89 Despite the loss of his translation of the Qur’an, Segovia’s message to posterity remains clear. In December 1454, Cusa invited him to circulate his writings on Islam beyond Aiton, especially among members of the Church in Rome who could verify and properly assess them: the pope, members of the Curia, and himself.90 Whilst this request came from a trusted ecclesiastical correspondent, Segovia refused to send his trilingual edition of the Qur’an to Rome. We encounter proof of this in a passage from the lengthy polemical letter on Islam that he sent in December 1455 to Jean Germain, a strenuous supporter of the Crusade from King Philip II’s court in Burgundy.91 This heretofore unpublished and overlooked passage provides substantial evidence of Segovia’s view that translating the Qur’an was incompatible with supporting wars against Muslims and thus removes all doubt as to his will for his intellectual legacy. Aware that the recently deceased Pope Nicholas V (24 March 1455) had made every effort to launch crusades both in Spain and the Near East, he deliberately left aside his work on Islam, to prevent it from reaching the pope. When I began to write, my purpose was so far from the military solution that, thinking of doing a service to God, I ordered my still unfinished booklet [i. e. De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum] to be copied on parchment, next to the Qur’an. My intention was to send it with due humility to Pope Nicholas V, who had long looked at 88  See Anne Marie Wolf, Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace. Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century, Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014, p. 128. 89 See Davide Scotto, “Juan de Segovia’s Last Manuscript (MS Vat. Lat. 2923). The Quest for Islam from the Aiton Library to Pope Pius II”, Der Papst und das Buch im Spätmittelalter (1350–1500). Bildungsvoraussetzung, Handschriftenherstellung, Bibliotheksgebrauch, ed. Rainer Berndt SJ, Münster: Aschendorff, 2018, pp. 47–67: pp. 53–4. 90  See Nicolai de Cusa De pace fidei. Cum Epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, ed. Raymond Klibansky and Hildebrand Bascour, Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1959. 91  On Jean Germain and his attitude towards Islam, see Vigliano, Parler aux musulmans, pp. 23–77.

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me with paternal benevolence, his holiness being well-acquainted with me. Nevertheless, when I heard of the call for the crusade he had made one year before or more, I decided to leave my work undone.92

Segovia’s decision is understandable given the contents of Nicholas V’s crusade bull, Dum diversas, and the images of Muslim Turks disseminated within this papal document. Though in exile, Segovia must have been aware of this bull, issued on 18 June 1452, whereby the pope allowed King Afonso V of Portugal to annihilate ‘Saracens and pagans’ wheresoever placed. Following the resurfacing of the eschatological view of Islam in mid-fifteenth century Europe, the sultan Mehmed II is depicted as ‘the son of Satan, son of perdition and son of death, seeking like his father, the devil, to devour both bodies and souls. He has risen up like a rabid beast whose thirst is never satisfied by the shedding of Christian blood.’93 These words were barely in accordance with Segovia’s view and understanding of Islam. Opposed to war, isolated, unsatisfied with his recent translation, and unable to find another Muslim scholar who could join him in Savoy, he refused to permit dissemination of his trilingual Qur’an beyond the Aiton monastery. Meanwhile, through his last collection of writings on Islam (MS Vat. Lat. 2923) which he dedicated to Piccolomini in May 1458, he discouraged the future pope from embracing the crusade.94 It is clear that Segovia considered the rationale behind his new translation of the Qur’an to stand in opposition to any declaration of war. Until his death on 24 May 1458, he hopefully awaited a change of course in the Church’s attitude towards Islam. Alas, such change did not come to pass during his lifetime.

5. Conclusion To the eyes of literary and cultural historians, translations represent a selfevident case of knowledge transfer. Medieval translations of the Qur’an are no exception.95 Furthermore, due to their very nature, they provide substantial evidence not just of the cultural challenges involved in the process of translating 92  Iohannes de Segobia, Replica ad Iohannem Cabilonensem episcopum, I, chap. 6, ed. in Scotto, “Via pacis et doctrine”, p. 97, ll. 30–7; p. 98, ll. 1–2: ‘A via quidem belli cum scribere cepi tam aberat longe propositum meum quod tanquam arbitratus me obsequium Deo prestare ad modum libri in pergameno scribi feci nondum perfectum ipsum opusculum meum similiter et librum Alchoran humilitate debita oblaturus felicis recordacionis Nicolao pape V, paterno oculo in me respicienti dudum sanctitati sue familiariter notum, sed post auditam passagii publicacionem per eum factam iam per annum et amplius ab illo destiti opere ut finirem.’ 93  Quotation in Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans. The Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1923, London: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 9. 94  Scotto, “Juan de Segovia’s Last Manuscript”, pp. 61–7. 95  On the potentially opposing consequences of this transfer, see Tischler, “Übersetzen als des/integrativer Akt”, pp. 167–90.

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from Arabic into Latin, but also of the thorny religious consequences of transferring knowledge from an Islamic context to a Christian one. As such, they are important sources for study of the relationship between religious transfer and Christian-Muslim interaction in the Middle Ages and beyond. Clearly, all three translations I have examined were produced in an atmosphere deeply influenced by Crusade propaganda. Though the reasons behind each translation were different, they all show that the cultural and linguistic commissioning of Qur’anic translations in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries did not detract from the primary agenda, which was theological and political, or from an intellectual engagement with the Crusades resulting in either sympathetic or polemical stances. In the late Middle Ages, the first translation of the Qur’an was widely acclaimed. Often preserved as a part of Peter the Venerable’s Corpus Cluniacense, it represented the most widely disseminated Latin translation from the twelfth century until early modern times. In 1543, the Swiss Orientalist and humanist Theodor Bibliander published it in Basel together with additional polemical works on Islam. During this same period, Martin Luther  – who translated Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s polemics against the Qur’an into German  – used Robert of Ketton’s translation as the basis for his theological attack on the Turks.96 Furthermore, it served as the basis for subsequent translations of the Qur’an into various modern languages.97 Yet, from its earliest history in manuscript form, the popularity of the collection followed an irregular trajectory. Anthony Lappin astutely suggests that, until the Second Council of Lyon (1274), almost exclusively the oldest manuscript of Corpus Cluniacense (Paris, Arsenal MS 1162) was circulated and known among the readers. Shortly after 1274, the popularity of Peter’s collection of writings on Islam increased considerably in the wake of conciliar debates on Christian missions and the influential role of the Dominicans and Franciscans in the evangelisation of Muslims in North Africa and the Near East.98 In the late Middle Ages, Islam was variously perceived as either a seductive set of doctrines inherently opposed to the true faith, or a Christian heresy that threatened the faith from within. The widespread dissemination of Robert’s 96  Ricoldus de Monte Crucis  / Martin Luther, Confutatio Alcorani (1300). Verlegung des Alcoran (1542), Johannes Ehmann, Würzburg: Echter, 1999; Adam S. Francisco, Martin Luther and Islam. A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics, Leiden: Brill, 2007; Johannes Ehmann, Luther, Türken und Islam. Eine Untersuchung zum Türken‑ und Islambild Martin Luthers (1515–1546), Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008. 97  See Óscar de la Cruz Palma, “La trascendencia de la primera traducción latina del Corán (Robert de Keton, 1142)”, Collatio, 7 (2002), pp. 21–8. 98 Anthony John Lappin, “Riccoldo’s View of the Qur’an in the Context of its Translation and Annotation”, paper presented at the international conference Riccoldo da Monte di Croce († 1320): Missionary to the Middle East and Expert on Islam, org. by Kurt Villads Jensen, Davide Scotto and Mohammad Fazlhashemi, Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Stockholm, 7–8 September 2017. The proceedings of the conference will be published as a book in 2021.

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challenging translation responded to controversy regarding the origins and nature of ‘the Islamic sect’ to Christian eyes. Beyond the spiritutal meaning of the Qur’an to Muslims (intentio operis), this translation’s popularity can be further explained by looking not only to the rhetorical and misleading linguistic choices made by the translator (intentio auctoris), but also to the hermeneutic contributions of Christian readers (intentio lectoris).99 Their derogatory view of the Qur’an’s contents is amply illustrated in a derisive illumination of the Prophet Muḥammad and a myriad of scornful comments about Islamic doctrine that appear in the marginalia of several manuscripts of this translation.100 The success of Robert’s translation is undeniable and Thomas Burman goes so far as to compare its popularity with Marx’s Manifesto in twentieth-century Europe.101 What is less obvious, however, is the significance of this demanding feat of knowledge transfer to the evolution of Peter the Venerable’s thought, or the relationship between the translation and broader Christian fears about the existence and expansion of Islam, or attempts to contain it. Besides promoting this first translation, Peter wrote two treatises on Islam that emerged in different stages in his life: one was Summa totius haeresis Sarracenorum, which harkens back to his sojourn in Spain, before the Second Crusade, where he hoped to acquire the tools he needed to engage with Islamic doctrine and the contents of the Qur’an (1142–43); the other was Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, a reflection of his return to Cluny (1144–56) after the failure of the Second Crusade, when he was at leisure to write on Christian heresies, Islam, and – from a particularly polemical perspective – Judaism. Regardless of the nuances that distinguish their contents and literary features, both his treatises on Islam aimed at securing voluntary conversion of Muslims by intellectual means. In the 1143 case, translation, study, and polemics went hand in hand and were antithetical to forced conversion and the promotion of war by Christian monks and ecclesiastics. Peter’s polemical writings show that the set of cultural devices employed in the massive process of religious transfer behind his Corpus Cluniacense was regarded as the primary defence against the Islamic threat. In Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, indeed, Peter’s call is rhetorically addressed to Muslim readers, despite their general inability to access his works due to a lack of proficiency in Latin. Through a universal theological language, he expresses  See Umberto Eco, I limiti dell’interpretazione, Milan: Bompiani, 1990.  See José Martínez Gázquez, “Las glosas de la primera traducción latina del Alcoran latinus”, Christlicher Norden  – Muslimischer Süden, ed. Tischler and Fidora, pp. 141–51; José Martínez Gázquez, “Glossae ad Alchoran Latinum Roberti Ketenensis translatoris, fortasse a Petro Pictauiense redactae: An Edition of the Glosses to the Latin Qur’an in BNF MS Arsenal 1162”, Medieval Encounters, 21 (2015), pp. 81–120. The derogatory aspects of these notes have been noticed by John Victor Tolan, “Peter the Venerable on the ‘Diabolical Heresy of the Saracens’”, The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Jefferey B. Russell, ed. Alberto Ferreiro, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 345–67: pp. 355–6. 101  Burman, Reading the Qur’an, p. 1.  99

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his fervent hope that his imaginary readers will enter the path of Christian salvation:102 ‘I invite you to salvation, not to that which passes away, but to that which remains, not to that which ends with earthly life, but to that which lasts for eternal life’.103 This mission towards Muslims was supposed to be embraced by all Christian churchmen of fervent faith and good will. While Bernard of Clairvaux was promoting the Second Crusade, Peter the Venerable attempted to establish the intellectual basis for an invitation to Muslims to willingly embrace the Christian faith. In contrast, the second Latin Qur’an was the product of a wartime context marked by the view of an irrenconcilble relation between Christianity and Islam. Its promotion sprung from Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s conviction that a combination of military and intellectual campaigns was the most effective way to accomplish the Christianisation of Iberia. At a time when the Almohad forces were shrinking, Archbishop Rodrigo hoped, through translation of the Qur’an, to deliver a coup de grâce to the ambitious project of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the West, which dated back to the Umayyad dream incarnated by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I. In 1210 Toledo, the transfer of knowledge from the Islamic to the Christian world enacted by Mark of Toledo was at the service of what has been defined as ‘the violent pilgrimage’ to the Holy Land.104 In the same way as Cluny had been regarded by Peter the Venerable a century before,105 Archbishop Rodrigo and his intellectual entourage regarded Toledo as a second Jerusalem, functioning as an anti-Islamic stronghold in Europe. At a time characterized by eschalogical views of Islam, crusade and polemics by means of translation from Arabic were part of a common effort to re-establish a Christian political order in this world.  Tomaz Mastnak has stressed the pretence of Peter’s Islamic readership, though it should be obvious that, in fact, Peter was addressing learned Christian readers who, in turn, were supposed to write and preach on Islam to Christian believers. See Tomaž Mastnak, Crusading Peace. Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2002, pp. 168–83. 103  Petrus Venerabilis, Liber contra sectam Sarracenorum, ed. Glei, p. 156: ‘Invito vos ad salutem, non quae transit, sed quae permanet, non quae finitur cum vita brevi, sed quae permanet in vitam aeternam.’ On the soteriological implications of Peter the Venerable’s writings on non-Christian peoples, see Davide Scotto, “‘I Invite You to Salvation’. Judaism and Islam in Peter the Venerable’s Soteriological Thinking”, Soteriologie in der frühmittelalterlichen Theologie, ed. David Olszynski and Ulli Roth, Münster: Aschendorff, 2020, pp. 239–62. 104  For a peremptory interpretation that insists on the intrinsically violent nature of medieval attitudes towards Islam in the framework of the Crusades, see Rayborn, The Violent Pilgrimage. 105  Robert George Heath, Crux imperatorum philosophia: Imperial Horizons of the Cluniac Confraternitas, 964–1109, Pittsburgh PA: Pickwick Press, 1976, pp. 144–9; Dominique IognaPrat, “Cluny comme ‘système ecclésial’”, Die Cluniazenser in ihrem politisch-sozialen Umfeld, ed. Giles Constable, Gert Melville, and Jörg Oberste, Münster: LIT, 1998, pp. 13–92; Ricardo da Costa, “Cluny, Jerusalém celeste encarnada (séculos X–XII)”, Revista Mediaevalia, 21 (2002), pp. 115–37; Giles Constable, “The Dislocation of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages”, Norm und Krise von Kommunikation. Inszenierungen literarischer und sozialer Interaktion im Mittelalter, ed. Alois Hahn, Gert Melville, and Werner Röcke, Münster: LIT, 2007, pp. 355–70. 102

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When critically contextualised, polemical writings, theological treatises, and epistles help to clarify the intentions behind knowledge transfers of a religious nature. This is also the case with Juan de Segovia’s translation. As he argues in his treatise on the authority of bishops in the general Council, Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in concilio generali, written in Aiton before 1453, for three hundred years, the Crusades had failed miserably to achieve their desired ends.106 With the threat of Islam looming both within and beyond its borders, it was time for Christianity to embark on a different path. Segovia’s objective is explicitly expressed in the title of the treatise he composed for Juan de Cervantes soon after the fall of Byzantium, and discussed with his correspondents before May 1458: De gladio divini spiritus mittendo in corda Sarracenorum, to sink ‘the sword of the holy spirit’ – in place of a real sword – into the hearts of Muslims. As Ulli Roth has shown in his critical edition of this treatise, the title was mainly inspired by Ephesians 6:17 urging the faithful to ‘Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ and adapted to fit Segovia’s contemporary project of conversion.107 Here, as well as in letters written later to distinguished European personalities such as Nicholas of Cusa and Jean Germain, Segovia opposed crusading propaganda by means of historical and theological arguments. He maintained that military engagement with Muslim forces was allowed only in case of a defensive war (excepto defensionis casu).108 In lieu of crusade, he suggested the establishment of a contraferencia, a meeting of Islamic and Christian scholars to compare Christian Scripture and the Qur’an as newly translated by himself and a knowledgeable Muslim. His goal was to avoid military campaigns and dangerous individual missions to the East and instead launch a creative theological solution based on temporal coexistence and the rational teaching of doctrine. After approximately thirty years, this programme would eventually result in the peaceful conversion of Muslims to the Christian faith. In Segovia’s view  – utopian as it might seem  – the transfer of religious knowledge painstakingly realised by a Muslim and a Christian scholar could function in the place of new crusades, and aid Christian scholars to persuade Muslim believers through rational debate to convert of their own will. 106  Wolf, Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace, p. 110. On the place of Islam in this treatise, see Jesse D. Mann, “Juan de Segovia on the Superiority of Christians over Muslims: Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in concilio generali 10.6”, Nicholas of Cusa and Islam. Polemic and Dialogue in the late Middle Ages, ed. Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-Tvrtković, and Donald Duclow, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 145–59. 107  Iohannes von Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum, ed. Ulli Roth, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012, p. lxxxiv. 108 Iohannes de Segobia, Epistola ad Nicolaum de Cusa, chap. 5, ed. in Scotto, “Via pacis et doctrine”, p. 15, ll. 26–30: ‘excepto defensionis casu, pace magis quam belli via ad exterminandam Mahumeti sectam intendendum sit parte christiane religionis, oblature si videatur ipsis perpetuam pacem, ad ipsamque invitature et inducere.’ The statement excepto defensionis casu was added by Segovia as an autograph note on the second draft of his letter to Cusa (Salamanca, Biblioteca General Histórica, MS. 19, f. 170v).

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Cecini, Ulisse, Alcoranus latinus. Eine sprachliche und kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Koranübersetzungen von Robert von Ketton und Marcus von Toledo, Berlin: LIT, 2012. – “The Qur’ân Translator Mark of Toledo and Muḥammad: Between Polemic and ‘Philology’”, Vitae Mahometi. Reescritura e invención en la literatura cristiana de controversia, ed. Cándida Ferreo Hernández and Óscar de la Cruz Palma, Madrid: CSIC, 2014, pp. 125–38. Celli, Andrea, “‘Maometto cascava del male caduco.’ Epilessia e profetismo islamico nella trattatistica storico-religiosa e medica in lingua italiana (Cinque-Seicento)”, Eroi dell’estasi. Lo sciamanismo come artefatto culturale e sinopia letteraria, ed. Alvaro Barbieri, Verona: Fiorini, 2017, pp. 239–62. Constable, Giles, “The Dislocation of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages”, Norm und Krise von Kommunikation. Inszenierungen literarischer und sozialer Interaktion im Mittelalter, ed. Alois Hahn, Gert Melville, and Werner Röcke, Münster: LIT, 2007, pp. 355–70. D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse and Georges Vajda, Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tumart, Madrid: CSIC, 1952. Da Costa, Ricardo, “Cluny, Jerusalém celeste encarnada (séculos X–XII)”, Revista Mediaevalia, 21 (2002), pp. 115–37. Davis, Tim, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. A Monastic View of Medieval Violence, New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998. De la Cruz Palma, Óscar, “La trascendencia de la primera traducción latina del Corán (Robert de Keton, 1142)”, Collatio, 7 (2002), pp. 21–8. – “Los textos de la llamada Collectio Toletana, fuente de información sobre el Islam”, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 17 (2007), pp. 413–34. Di Cesare, Michelina, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muḥammad in Medieval Latin Literature. A Repertory, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Eco, Umberto, I limiti dell’interpretazione, Milan: Bompiani, 1990. Ehmann, Johannes (ed. and trans.), Ricoldus de Monte Crucis / Martin Luther, Confutatio Alcorani (1300). Verlegung des Alcoran (1542), Würzburg: Echter, 1999. – Luther, Türken und Islam. Eine Untersuchung zum Türken‑ und Islambild Martin Luthers (1515–1546), Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008. Ferrero Hernández, Cándida and Óscar de la Cruz Palma (eds.), Vitae Mahometi. Reescritura e invención en la literatura cristiana de controversia, Madrid: CSIC, 2014. Formisano, Luciano, “La più antica (?) traduzione italiana del Corano e il Liber Habentometi di Ibn Tumart in una compilazione di viaggi del primo Cinquecento”, Critica del testo, 7/2 (2005), pp. 651–96. Francisco, Adam S., Martin Luther and Islam. A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics, Leiden: Brill, 2007. Frazee, Charles A., Catholics and Sultans. The Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1923, London: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Gastaldelli, Ferrucci (trans. and notes) and Pietro Zerbi (intro.), Bernardus Claraevallensis, De consideratione ad Eugenium papam, Milan: Scriptorium Claravallense-Fondazione di Studi Cistercensi, 1984, in Opere di San Bernardo, 1: Trattati, pp. 727–939. George-Tvrtković, Rita, A Christian Pilgrim in Medieval Iraq. Riccoldo da Montecroce’s Encounter with Islam, Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Glei, Reinhold F. (ed. and trans.), Petrus Venerabilis, Schriften zum Islam, Altenberge: CIS, 1985.

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– “Arabismus latine personatus. Die Koranübersetzung von Ludovico Marracci (1698) und die Funktion des Lateinischen”, Jahrbuch für Europäische Wissenschaftskultur, 5 (2009/2010), pp. 93–115. Goldziher, Ignác, Mohammed ibn Toumert et la théologie de l’Islam dans le nord de l’Afrique au XIe siècle, Algiers: P. Fontana, 1903. González Jiménez, Manuel, “Las Navas de Tolosa (1212): La Batalla de los Tres Reyes”, La Edad Media hispánica. En torno a cuatro centenarios, coord. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2012, pp. 9–69. González Muñoz, Fernando (ed. and trans.), Exposición y refutación del islam. La versión latina de las epístolas de al-Hāšimī y al-Kindī, A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña, 2005. Hanak, Walter H., “Pope Nicholas V and the Aborted Crusade of 1452–1453 to Rescue Constantinople from the Turks”, Byzantinoslavica, 65 (2007), pp. 337–60. Hasse, Dag Nikolaus, “The Social Conditions of the Arabic-(Hebrew‑) Latin Translation Movement in Medieval Spain and Renaissance”, Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006, pp. 68–86. Heath, Robert George, Crux imperatorum philosophia. Imperial Horizons of the Cluniac Confraternitas, 964–1109, Pittsburgh PA: Pickwick Press, 1976. Hernández Montes, Benigno, Biblioteca de Juan de Segovia. Edición y comentario de su escritura de donación, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas  / Instituto Francisco Suarez, 1984. Housley, Norman J., The Later Crusades, 1274–1580. From Lyons to Alcazar, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. – Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1560, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996. Iogna-Prat, Dominique and John Victor Tolan, “Peter the Venerable”, Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, ed. David Thomas and Alexander Mallett, Leiden: Brill, 2009–17, vol. 3 (2011), pp. 604–10. Iogna-Prat, Dominique, “Cluny comme ‘système ecclésial’”, Die Cluniazenser in ihrem politisch-sozialen Umfeld, ed. Giles Constable, Gert Melville, and Jörg Oberste, Münster: LIT, 1998, pp. 13–92. Katz, Marion Holmes, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad. Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam, London: Routledge, 2007. Kedar, Benjamin Z., Crusade and Mission. European Approaches toward the Muslims, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Lilao Franca, Óscar, “La formación del fondo manuscrito de la Universidad de Salamanca”, Scripta. Tesoros manuscritos de la Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2017, pp. 23–51. Madrigal Terrazas, Santiago, El pensamiento eclesial de Juan de Segovia (1393–1458). La gracia en el tiempo, Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2004. Mann, Jesse D., “The Devilish Pope: Eugenius IV as Lucifer in the Later Works of Juan de Segovia”, Church History, 65/2 (1996), pp. 184–96. – “Juan de Segovia on the Superiority of Christians over Muslims: Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in concilio generali 10.6”, Nicholas of Cusa and Islam. Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-Tvrtković, and Donald Duclow, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 145–59. – “Reading the Bible in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of Juan de Segovia”, The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 43 (2017), pp. 115–34.

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Martín Duque, Ángel J., “El inglés Roberto, traductor del Corán. Estancia y actividades en España a mediados del siglo XII”, Hispania, 22 (1962), pp. 483–506. Martínez Gázquez, José and Nàdia Petrus, “Las motivaciones generales de las traducciones medievales latinas del Corán”, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 18 (2008), pp. 230–46. Martínez Gázquez, José and François Déroche, “Lire et traduire le Coran au Moyen Âge. Les gloses latines du manuscrit arabe 384 de la BnF”, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 54/3 (2010), pp. 1021–40. Martínez Gázquez, José, “Los Santos Padres, modelo de Pedro el Venerable en la refutación del Islam”, Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos, 15 (1998), pp. 347–61. – “El Prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qur’an) trilingüe (1456)”, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 38/1–2 (2003), pp. 389–410. – “El lenguaje de la violencia en el prólogo de la traducción latina del Corán impulsada por Pedro el Venerable”, Cahiers d’études hispaniques médiévales, 28 (2005), pp. 243– 52. – “Las traducciones latinas del Corán, arma antislámica en la Cristiandad Medieval”, Cuadernos del CEMYR, 13 (2005), pp. 11–28. – “Finalidad de la primera traducción latina del Corán”, Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII, ed. Miquel Barceló and José Martínez Gázquez, Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2005, pp. 71–7. – “Las glosas de la primera traducción latina del Alcoran latinus”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden. Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch‑ und Spätmittelalter, ed. Matthias M. Tischler and Alexander Fidora, Münster: Aschendorff, 2011, pp. 141–51. – “A New Set of Glosses to the Latin Qur’an in BNF MS Arsenal 1162”, Medieval Encounters, 21 (2015), pp. 295–309. – “Glossae ad Alchoran Latinum Roberti Ketenensis translatoris, fortasse a Petro Pictauiense redactae: An Edition of the Glosses to the Latin Qur’ān in BNF MS Arsenal 1162”, Medieval Encounters, 21 (2015), pp. 81–120. – “Translations of the Qur’an and other Islamic Texts before Dante (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries)”, Dante and Islam, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski, New York NY: Fordham University, 2015, pp. 67–77. – The Attitude of the Medieval Latin Translators towards the Arabic Sciences, Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2016. – “Las glosas de Nicolás de Cusa al Alchoranus Latinus en el ms. Vat. lat. 4071. Nuevos datos para la Cribratio Alkorani”, Niccolò Cusano: L’uomo, i libri, l’opera. Atti del LII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 11–14 ottobre 2015, Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2016, pp. 473–94. Maser, Matthias, Die Historia Arabum des Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Arabische Traditionen und die Identität der Hispania im 13. Jahrhundert: Studie, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Berlin: LIT, 2006. Mastnak, Tomaž, Crusading Peace. Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2002. MacEvitt, Christopher, The Martyrdom of the Franciscans: Islam, the Papacy, and an Order in Conflict, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Müller, Anne, “Dominikaner und Islam: Begegnung, Mission, Wahrnehmung”, Mehr als Schwarz und Weiß. 800 Jahre Dominikanerorden, ed. Elias H. Füllenbach and Susanne Biber, Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet Verlag, 2016, pp. 307–18.

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Newman, Neal A., The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue. A Collection of Documents from the First Three Islamic Centuries (632–900 A. D.). Translations with Commentary, Hatfield PA: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1993. Nicolai de Cusa De pace fidei. Cum Epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, ed. Raymond Klibansky and Hildebrand Bascour, Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1959. Novikoff, Alex J., “From Dialogue to Disputation in the Age of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 4 (2012), pp. 95–100. Pastori Ramos, Aurelio, “La Segunda Cruzada y su fracaso en De consideratione ad Eugenium papam de Bernardo de Claraval1”, Mirabilia, 10 (2010), pp. 70–84. Peinado Santaella, Rafael Gerardo, Guerra santa, cruzada y yihad en Andalucía y el reino de Granada (siglos XIII–XV), Granada: Ed. Universidad de Granada, 2017. Petrus Pons, Nàdia (intro. and ed.), Alchoranus latinus quem transtulit Marcus canonicus Toletanus. Estudio y edición crítica, Madrid: CSIC, 2016. Pick, Lucy K., Conflict and Coexistence. Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain, Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Rayborn, Tim, The Violent Pilgrimage. Christians, Muslims and Holy Conflicts, 850–1150, Jefferson NC: McFarland & Comp., 2013. Reglero de la Fuente, Carlos Manuel, “Cluny en el contexto político y cultural de la Península Ibérica, siglos XII–XIII”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden. Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch‑ und Spätmittelalter, ed. Matthias M. Tischler and Alexander Fidora, Münster: Aschendorff, 2011, pp. 403–32. Rizzardi, Giuseppe, Domande cristiane sull’Islām nel Medioevo. Edizioni e studi sul Corpus Cluniacense a proposito dei saraceni, Caltanissetta: Centro Studi Cammarata and Edizioni Lussografica, 2001. Roth, Ulli (ed. and transl.), Iohannes von Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. – “Juan of Segovia’s Translation of the Qur’an”, Al-Qanṭara, 35 (2014), pp. 555–78. – “John of Segovia and Religious Language/Interreligious Communication”, Transcending Words. The Language of Religious Contact Between Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Premodern Times, ed. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Knut Martin Stünkel, Bochum: Winkler, 2015. Salicrú Lluch, Roser, “Entre la praxis y el estereotipo: vivencias y percepciones de lo islámico ibérico en las fuentes archivísticas y narrativas bajomedievales”, Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la Edad Media, ed. José Martínez Gázquez and John V. Tolan, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013, pp. 99–111. Scotto, Davide, “Sulla soglia della «Cribratio». Riflessi dell’Islam nell’esperienza di Niccolò Cusano”, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 45 (2009), pp. 225–81. – “«De pe a pa». Il Corano trilingue di Juan de Segovia (1456) e la conversione pacifica dei musulmani”, Storie e miti di conciliazione, ed. Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti and Chiara Pilocane, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 48 (2012), pp. 515– 78. – “Via pacis et doctrine”. Le Epistole sull’islam di Juan de Segovia, PhD diss., Florence: Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, 2012. – “Juan de Segovia’s Last Manuscript (MS Vat. Lat. 2923). The Quest for Islam from the Aiton Library to Pope Pius II”, Der Papst und das Buch im Spätmittelalter (1350– 1500). Bildungsvoraussetzung, Handschriftenherstellung, Bibliotheksgebrauch, ed. Rainer Berndt SJ, Münster: Aschendorff, 2018, pp. 47–67.

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– “‘I Invite You to Salvation’. Judaism and Islam in Peter the Venerable’s Soteriological Thinking”, Soteriologie in der frühmittelalterlichen Theologie, ed. David Olszynski and Ulli Roth, Münster: Aschendorff, 2020, pp. 239–62. Shah, Mustafa, “The Philological Endeavours of the Early Arabic Linguists: Theological Implications of the tawqīf-iṣṭilāḥ Antithesis and the majāz Controversy  – Part I”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 1/1 (1999), pp. 27–46. – “The Philological Endeavours of the Early Arabic Linguists: Theological Implications of the tawqīf-iṣṭilāḥ Antithesis and the majāz Controversy – Part II”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 2/1 (2000), pp. 43–66. Siddiek, Ahmed Gumaa, “Viewpoints in the Translation of the Holy QURAN”, International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1/2 (2012), pp. 18–25. Starczewska, Katarzyna, “Muḥammad’s Portrait in Jiménez de Rada’s «Historia arabum» and in Marcos de Toledo’s «Prologus Alcorani». Two Different Examples of the IslamicChristian Controversy Literature”, Estudios de latín medieval hispánico. Actas del V Congreso internacional de latín medieval hispánico (Barcelona, 7–10 de septiembre de 2009), ed. José Martínez Gázquez, Óscar de la Cruz Palma, and Cándida Ferrero Hernández, Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011, pp. 455–64. – “Anti-Muslim Preaching in 16th-Century Spain and Egidio da Viterbo’s Research on Islam”, Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’islam nell’Europa mediterranea (secoli XVI– XVIII), ed. Andrea Celli and Davide Scotto, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 51/3 (2015), pp. 413–30. – Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. Tartar, Georges, Dialogue islamo-chrétien sous le calife al-Ma’mūn. Les épîtres d’al-Hashimî et d’al-Kindî, Combs-la-Ville: Centre évangélique de témoignage et de dialogue, 1982. Tischler, Matthias M., “Übersetzen als des/integrativer Akt. Die lateinischen Übertragungen arabischer muslimischer Literatur auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden: Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch‑ und Spätmittelalter, ed. Matthias M. Tischler and Alexander Fidora, Münster: Aschendorff, 2011, pp. 167–90. Tolan, John Victor, “Peter the Venerable on the ‘Diabolical Heresy of the Saracens’”, The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Jefferey B. Russell, ed. Alberto Ferreiro, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 345–67. – “Las traducciones y la ideología de reconquista: Marcos de Toledo”, Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII, ed. Miquel Barceló and José Martínez Gázquez, Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions Bellaterra, 2005, pp. 79–85. – Saint Francis and the Sultan. The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Vigliano, Tristan, Parler aux musulmans. Quatre intellectuels face à l’islam à l’orée de la Renaissance, Geneva: Droz, 2017. Vose, Robin J., “The Limits of Dominican Mission in the Western Mediterranean”, Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden. Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch‑ und Spätmittelalter, ed. Matthias M. Tischler and Alexander Fidora, Münster: Aschendorff, 2011, pp. 469–88. – Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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Wiegers, Gerard, Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado. Yça of Segovia ( fl. 1450), his Antecedents and Successors, Leiden: Brill, 1994. Wolf, Anne Marie, “Precedents and Paradigms: Juan de Segovia on the Bible, the Church, and the Ottoman Threat”, Scripture and Pluralism. Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and Thomas E. Burman, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 143–60. – Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace. Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century, Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

‘Whence Have the Idols Arrived?’ A Monument of Religious-Polemic Literature from the Tatar Manuscript Heritage of the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania Irina Synkova and Michail Tarelka Polemic essays might not constitute the largest category of works in the literary legacy of the Tatars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – or Lithuanian Tatars – but they may well be the most exciting and original.1 They capture the spiritual ambiance of the epoch and its ideological battles. The pieces provide valuable insight into the Muslim culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in early modern times; indeed, they are essentially our only sources of such information. They also contain evidence that assists the scholar to draw conclusions about the cultural development of the Tatars’ neighbours within the multiconfessional and multiethnic society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The monumental polemical work Whence Have the Idols Arrived? stands out among the religious literary texts by Lithuanian Tatars to which we currently have access. The text is part of the manuscript at the archives of the Yakub Kolas Central Research Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, under the signature Р97, on pages 5а–18b and 25а–41b.2 The hand-written document 1  Lithuanian Tatars, or Tatars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, are an ethno-confessional group that emerged as a result of the resettlement of the territory of that state by Turkic migrants throughout a period spanning the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. As a result of language assimilation, which began in the sixteenth century, they adapted to the use of Slavic languages employed in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania such as the Belarusian language and, in the seventeenth century, to Polish. In the twentieth century, the state borders of Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus divided the area inhabited by Lithuanian Tatars. From that time, the designations ‘Polish Tatars’, ‘Belarusian Tatars’, and ‘Lithuanian Tatars’ are used to reflect the modern nation state inhabited by Tatar populations. However, in this article, the name ‘Lithuanian Tatars’ is used according to the historic reference to the Tatars (Muslims) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 2 Antonovich offered the first paleographical description of the manuscript. His analysis of the orthographical features led to the conclusion that the document dated from the eighteenth century (Anton Antonovich, Belorusskie teksty, pisannyie arabskim pismom, i ih grafikoorfograficheskaia sistema, Vilnius: Wilniusskij gosudarstwennyj uniwersitet, 1968, p. 136–8). Later studies of watermarks permitted more precise identification of the manuscript to the late eighteenth century, Rukapisy tataraǔ Belarusi kanca XVII – pačatku XX st. z dziaržaǔnych knihazboraǔ krainy, Minsk: Belaruskaja nawuka, 2011, p. 33.

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is seriously damaged, its initial and final portions missing. In the restoration process, the pages were placed in incorrect sequence. Manuscript Р97 includes liturgical, ritual, and didactic texts, an astrological calendar, suras 67 and 78 of the Quran and a collection of religious polemical texts, described below. The texts of the manuscript are written in the Arabic, Turkic, Belarusian, and Polish languages, using the Arabic alphabet. Following our study of fragments of the manuscript and determination of the correct sequence of the pages – which had been incorrectly collated during the process of binding – the unity of this particular set of texts quickly became obvious, and could be shown to contain a clearly marked beginning and end. On page 5a of the manuscript, the words ‘Bab-article: Whence have the idols arrived?’ (Bab-artykuł: Skąd poszły bałwany)3 initiate a large section containing several polemical texts united into a single collection. The Arabism bāb (‘section’) is a term characteristic of Lithuanian Tatars used to mark the beginning of a separate section or text in written works. The Latinism artykuł that follows – which can be regarded as the translation of the Arab word bāb – is, on the contrary, a unique phenomenon. It is found only once in manuscript Р97, and is rarely encountered as the marker of the beginning of a section in other manuscripts. On page 18a, the collection ends with the words ‘End of this thing’, followed by a totally different text. Reconstruction of the original location of the text fragments has revealed that the text contains the preface to the entire collection, and four separate essays. The titles of the third and fourth opera were written in red ink and thus easily demarcated. It was harder to distinguish the line between the first two due to minor damage of the text between them and their thematic proximity. We drew a hypothetical border between the two on the basis of textological analysis of the text. Our study of all of the four texts also permitted us to identify the initial portion of the text as the preface to the entire collection, rather than the beginning of the first text. The polemic works included in the collection are written in the variant of the Polish language that spread throughout the Belarusian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.4 According to data facilitated by linguistic studies and source analysis, these texts date from the period from the late sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century.5 This epoch was marked by tense interfaith struggle and poignant religious polemics, which might explain why the literary monument under review appeared.  The authors have added punctuation marks here, as none were present in the original.  Michail Tarelka and Irina Synkova, Adkul pajšli idaly. Pomnik relihijna-palemičnaj litaratury z rukapisnaj spadčyny tataraǔ Vialikaha Kniastva Litoǔskaha, Minsk: Tehnalohija, 2009. pp. 236–7. 5  Tarelka and Synkova, Adkul pajšli idaly, pp. 237; 299. 3

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While the origins of these texts are discussed in scientific literature, the confessional affiliation of the authors has remained unclear.6 Our study has made it possible to draw some preliminary conclusions; however, many questions still remain, particularly concerning the primary sources for the works of the collection. A further factor complicating analysis of the work is its uniqueness; so far, only a single copy of the manuscript has been uncovered – the abovementioned manuscript kept at the Central Research Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus7. The mechanical damage of the manuscript, as well as mistakes made by copyists, distort the original text, making it almost impossible to understand some parts of it, or to identify the sources used. The following section contains an overview of the contents of the collection Whence Have the Idols Arrived?.

1. Preface: ‘Whence Have the Idols Arrived?’ The collection opens with a preface outlining the key themes addressed across the compilation: idolatry, the inevitability of divine punishment for the worship of idols, and the cleansing of the world by a virtuous king acting as God’s instrument. The sophisticated intertwining of these themes forms the pillar of the first three texts which comprise numerous arguments and which branch off into an array of secondary storylines. The author declares unequivocally that idolatry is understood not only as a characteristic of ancient paganism, but also as part of Christian practices and teachings. The preface also offers a hint of one of the key themes of the fourth text in the collection that deals with innuendoes against true believers. That particular text is not directly related to the specific subject of idolatry, but is designed, in conjunction with the other parts of the collection, to acquaint the reader with another, possibly more important, idea: apologia of the true faith. The preface serves not only as the starting point to lead the reader to the first work of the collection, but also functions almost as an overture, establishing the pitch and key motives for all of the works incorporated in the collection. While material included in the preface is intricate and at times almost incomprehensible, this short introductory piece must be viewed primarily as the commencement of the first work in the collection.

6  Andrzej Drozd, “Wpływy chrześcijańskie na literaturę Tatarów w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej”, Pamięntnik literacki, 88/3 (1997), p. 28. 7  There are several pieces in Lithuanian Tatar literature only on the subject that is addressed in the first part of the fourth work of the collection – the birth of Ishmael.

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2. First Opus: On Clear and Obscure Writings8 The preface flows seamlessly into the first polemical tractate, On Clear and Obscure Writings, which begins on the very same line that the introductory text ends on (fol. 5a:10). It is difficult, therefore, to establish a clear line between them, however, the quotation of Psalm 146 would seem to mark the beginning of the first work. The seamless nature of the transfer is achieved by the connection between the last words of the preface and the substance of the first work, an antiTrinitarian criticism. The author of the first opus maintains strict monotheism and rejects the idea that the text of the Bible – the text essentially refers to the Old Testament – contains any grounds for teachings of the Trinity, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This opus can be divided into two key parts. The first part of the tractate centres on analysis of dogmas about the Trinity and Jesus’ divine origin. The author first puts forth his main argument: ‘Lord Jesus referred to himself as “the Son of Man”, a true man, and a man cannot be “God”’ (fol. 5b:1–2). He immediately links this thought with the second main theme of the tractate, his criticism of the idea of the Trinity: ‘as if Lord God, when he created Adam, sought someone’s advice’ (fol. 5b:3–4). Having expressed a range of arguments and contemplations, the author draws the following conclusion: That ‘there is not a single word in the Holy Scripture about the Trinity’ (fol. 6b:10); and, that ‘Lord Jesus does not apply to himself any divinity or association [with God]’ (fol. 10а:3–4). In the Gospels, Jesus refers to himself as a man, admits to having no divine properties (omniscience, kindness, omnipotence), and sometimes shows weakness that is characteristic of any human being. Divinity is the property that is ascribed to him by followers who tend to misinterpret the Scripture. ‘Therefore, […] he was not an associate to Lord God in his divinity, but only a servant of God’ (fol. 9b:12– 13). Jesus’ acts were not unique, for other prophets had performed similar deeds. Furthermore, the first Christians to witness miracles never assumed that Jesus had divine properties, and relied only on the Lord God for their salvation. Note, however, that the author seems to consciously disregard episodes of evangelic history such as Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to heaven. Despite criticizing the idea of his heavenly origin, the author of the work displays great respect for Jesus as a religious teacher, censuring only the followers that deify him. According to the author, God punishes those who ‘create’ gods. The system of arguments presented in the first part is chiefly based upon the Biblical texts. It abounds with quotations that the author tends to group in a manner that conveys his remarks and judgments. He consistently emphasizes that he is merely relating the text of the Scripture. The structural units that make up the first part of the first opus  We have titled the first and second opera according to the content of these unnamed works.

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thus comprise the author’s key points and related evidence in the form of direct quotations from the Bible occasionally accompanied by brief explanatory notes. The second part of the first opus is rather more complex. Here, the author tends to focus his contemplations on the traditional Christian exegesis of certain Biblical texts. This part is organized differently, the main structural element being a controversial point from the Old Testament, to which the author adds an expanded exegetical comment. First, a specific fragment of a Biblical text is either quoted or retold, together with the traditional Christian interpretation. Then, the author’s comment follows, combining the polemicist’s own speculations with additional references to the Bible. The second part contains three exegetical units of this kind. They are associated with the pieces of the Old Testament, to which Christian theology normally refers in order to prove Jesus’ divine nature or messiahship: Isa. 7:14 and 9:6, as well as Ps. 110 (109). The author applies the name ‘obscure writings’ to the Christian interpretations of these fragments of the Old Testament. The words used to conclude the first opus sound as if they were a hymn: ‘Blessed be the name of one God in heaven and on earth, him whom every creature praises and to whom [every creature] raises its prayer!’(fol. 30b:2–4). The themes and methods by which the central arguments are presented differ across the opus’s two parts and may well have distinct origins; for example, the author may have borrowed material from the work of other polemicists. However, the two parts cannot be described as eclectic or discrete. Both are marked by a clear stylistic unity and feature repetition of characteristic turns of phrase. The work has a single objective and internal logic, and distinctions in the structural organization of the text correspond to their message. The first part centres on the ‘clear writing’, whereas the second one focuses on the ‘obscure writing’. First, the author seeks to prove that ‘clearly and definitely we have the Holy Scripture […] on the oneness of God’ (fol. 7а:1–2). Then he proceeds to criticize the three ‘obscure writings’– the traditional Christian interpretations of the three Biblical fragments that he opposes to the ‘clear writing’9. Comments marking the transition can be identified between the first and the second parts of the first work. The author of the first opus lauds the position of the first Christians and their attitude to Jesus, though he goes on: ‘Small wonder [because], it represented wisdom a thousand times more than today’s Christianity. Now they only look into the shade to find a flaw in the Holy Scripture and support an obvious mistake of theirs. So it is made clear whence we draw fundamentally different knowledge about Lord Jesus’ (fol. 13b:4–9). The very structure of the first opus emphasizes that fundamentally different knowledge is formed from the ‘clear writing’, which ‘represents wisdom’ and appears to

9 For example, after setting out a Christian interpretation of Ps. 110 (109):1, the author counters: ‘there is clear writing about it’ (fol. 14b:9–10).

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represent a correct understanding of the Holy Scripture, contradicting the ‘obscure writing’ of misinterpretations.

3. Second Opus: On the Word ‘Elohim’ The second work focuses on the multiple meanings of the ancient Hebrew word elohim (‫)אלהים‬. The author seeks to prove that, in the Biblical text, the word does not always refer to ‘God’. The subject is briefly mentioned toward the end of the first opus, with reference to usage of the word in Isa. 9:6. The quotation from Isaiah is reproduced twice in the second opus – in both the introduction and the conclusion – and is accompanied with a clear statement that the use of elohim (‫ )אלהים‬is not a reference to God. Given that this specific subject theme is treated in far greater detail with a range of examples, the second opus can be understood as a supplement to the previous essay. In the brief introduction to the second opus, the author mentions distinct usages of elohim (‫ )אלהים‬in the Old Testament. He suggests that, in Zachariah, the word is used to mean ‘god’, ‘angel’, ‘judge’, and ‘king’ (fol. 30b:6–8.).10 Drawing on Budny’s glossa to Psalm 77, he points to use of the word to refer to ‘god’, ‘judge’, ‘king’, ‘angel’, and ‘false gods’ (fol. 30b:10–11). The body of the second opus resembles a philological treatise and explores elements of the Old Testament to consider the different meanings of elohim: ‘judge’,11 ‘angel’,12 ‘prophet’ or ‘man of family’,13 ‘pagan gods’.14 The author lists a total of seven possible uses. It is worth noting, however, that not all of the meanings enumerated in the introduction are examined in the body of the opus. The author does not go into detail about usages of the word to convey the notions of ‘god’ or ‘king’. When it comes to the first omission, the reason is obvious; the author of the second work sought to prove that the word elohim could have meanings other than ‘god’. As for the second meaning (‘king’), it is only addressed in the introductory part of the second opus, when interpreting Isa. 9:6, but is not examined in the rest of the opus. In the conclusion of the second opus, the author mulls over the quotation from Ps. 96:4 referring to ‘God above all other gods’ and refers to Ps. 97 where 10  In fact, the author uses Symon Budny’s glossa to Zach. 12:8 – ‘Albo iako Bog / abo iako anioł. Bo to wſzytko Elohim znaczy.’ 11  ‘And bring him to the elohim, that is to the judge’ (fols. 31a:3–31a:7). 12  ‘When Jacub fought with a man-elohim, that is, with an angel’ (fol. 31a:9); ‘and looked at three men, that is, angels’ (31b:12–13); ‘and told him, Moses, angel, then and there the elohim stands’ (fol. 32a:1–2). 13  ‘And you will be his God, that is, elohim’ (fol. 32b:1–2). The quotation is substantially adjusted: ‘Here I have given you to the pharaoh as god, that is, elohim’ (fol. 32b:5–12). 14 ‘Here your sister-in-law has returned toher elohims, that is, gods of Moab’ (fol. 32b:5– 12).

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elohim invoked in reference to ‘pagan gods’ is used (fol. 33a:1–7). While drawing the conclusion from his considerations, he adds two additional meanings of the word to his list, i. e. ‘lord’ and ‘knight’: ‘[the word] elohim is employed to denote not only God, but also, as I said above, sometimes angels, sometimes prophets, sometimes kings, lords, and knights’ (fol. 33а:9–11). He also emphasizes that in the expression ‘Wonderful God’ from Isa. 9:615 the word elohim refers not to God, but to a ‘king experienced in chivalry’ (fol. 31a:1). It should be noted that in the original Biblical text of Isa. 9:6 the word el (‫)אל‬ is used rather than elohim to refer to God. This error is a clear indication that the author of the work was dealing with a translation, rather than the original Biblical texts. Close comparison of the three components of the second opus – its introduction, main body, and conclusion – suggests that, while the introduction and conclusion are the original work of a single author, the main body may have been lifted from the work of another author, more proficient in Biblical textology.

4. Third Opus: ‘In Prophet Isaiah’s Times …’ This work consists of three parts, each relatively independent in terms of its narrative yet interrelated through the figure of their protagonist, the Jewish king Josiah (Yoshiyahu). The first part is centred on the events preceding the birth of Josiah and the prophecy of his coming into this world. The author retells the Second Book of Samuel and offers his interpretation of two fragments from Isaiah (Isa. 11:1–3 and Isa. 9:5–6), claiming that the said prophecies are both about Josiah, whose significance is constantly emphasized. The second part presents the story of the struggle against paganism, retelling events described in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings: Huldah’s prophecy, spreading of idolatry in times of Solomon and Jeroboam, Josiah’s struggle against pagan cults and his reinstatement of the celebration of Easter. The third part presents the author’s moralizing speculations about the reason for sinful acts (including idolatry), which, he insists, stem from human disobedience. In order to present his idea in a wider scope, the author refers to Biblical scenes in which even those chosen by God were punished for their wilfulness (Adam and Eve, and kings Saul and Josiah). The stylistic unity of the third work suggests that it was composed as a single integral opus and not assembled from others. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the original text of the essay may have been considerably redacted.

 Isa. 9:6: ‘… y nazwano imię iego / przedziwny / radny / Bog rycerz …’ (Budny’s Bible).

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5. Fourth Opus: ‘On the Birth of Ishmael’ The fourth work of the collection consists of two parts; the first tells the story of the birth of Abraham and Hagar’s son. The author’s overall aim is to prove the noble origin of the legendary prince of Arab people. While recalling for readers the story of the marriage between Abraham and Hagar the author emphasizes that the union was legal, and Hagar and Sarah thus enjoyed equal status, both blessed by God. Another reason to stress the sacral aspect of the marriage was due to the uncertainty of its social aspect, since in Abraham’s time there were no written marriage contracts, which only appeared in a later period. This scrupulousness in determining the nature of conjugal relations is associated with the recognition of the legitimate rights of Hagar’s son Ishmael, the legendary ancestor of Arab people and, therefore, of the prophet Muḥammad. The Tatars’ self-identification was closely connected with their religious confession, and they considered their background in terms of religion. Maciej Miechowita said, writing about the Tatars of the Golden Horde: ‘They naively consider themselves to be Ishmaelites, who descended from Ishmael’.16 The issue of origin has historically played a crucial role in stratified societies. It identifies a person’s status, capacity, and scope of activities. The author of the fourth opus seeks to elevate the social status of Hagar and her son: Hagar is referred to as a pharaoh’s daughter and Abraham’s legitimate spouse, while her son is Abraham’s first-born, older than Sarah’s son Isaac, who enjoys more rights as his father’s rightful heir. The context of this genealogical discussion becomes apparent when the author moves to the issue of the origin of Christians, noting that ‘Christians themselves descend from a real bastard – Perez …’ (fol. 17а:5–6). Formulated in a manner that clearly echoes reproaches directed at Muslims, the statement offers some insight into the role of the latter in the ‘genealogical debate’ of the period. Inspired by the Counter-Reformation, the anti-Muslim disposition of Catholicism is reflected in the early seventeenth century libel Al-furkan tatarski. Amid other forms of reproach, the text contains the following passage on the origin of the Muslims: ‘The Tatar race was born of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, borne by the whore and slave Hagar ….’17 Thus, like other works of Tatar literature produced under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and dedicated to the subject of the birth of Ishmael, the fourth opus of the collection Whence Have the Idols Arrived? was developed 16 Maciej z Miechowa, Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis Asiana et Europiana et de contentis in eis, Augsburg: S. Grimm & M. Wirsung, 1518, fol. b1. 17  Piotr Czyżewski, Alfurkan tatarski prawdziwy na czterdzieści części rozdzielony, Vilnius: J. Karcan, 1617, p. 1. Perhaps, the origin of Muslim Tatars was also addressed in Jan Kochanowski’s unknown works (Drozd, “Wpływy chrześcijańskie na literaturę Tatarów”, p. 18).

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in clear response to provocative assaults by Christians that included derogatory characterizations of the Muslims’ legendary ancestors. The subject matter of the second part of the fourth opus does not connect clearly with the theme of its title. Indeed, the change of subject at first seems quite sharp and unexpected, and a shift in the way that statements and arguments are conveyed is equally conspicuous. While first part is narrated with a strong emotional tone, the second part shifts to exegetical commentary. The second part focuses on Psalm 110 and the author’s interpretation coincides with the notion put forward in the first opus. Both opuses claim that the psalm is about Abraham, rather than Jesus, and both quote the same lines from ‘the first book by Moses’ (Gen. 14), thus it seems likely that the authors of the first and fourth opera used the same source. The two parts of the fourth work appear to have distinct origins, and may have been combined into a single work by a third party. The title, On the Birth of Ishmael, alludes clearly to the specific subject matter of the first part. Yet the two parts are not connected by the issue of genealogy, but rather by the question of opposition between Abraham and Jesus. Although this contraposition is not emphasized, it is present in the background of each part and easily discernable when they are analyzed separately. However, as soon as the two are combined into a single piece, the opposition uniting them comes to the fore, and another, more realistic opposition is obscured: that of Christians versus Muslims, the religion of Jesus versus the religion of Abraham.

6. The Structure, Authorship, and Sources of ‘Whence Have the Idols Arrived?’ Each of the works included in the collection Whence Have the Idols Arrived? contains complex structures: large fragments of texts from various origins, numerous quotations from the Bible, or retelling of certain Biblical pieces. The four works bear apparent marks of common redaction. Each of the four works incorporated into the collection contains quotations from various translations of the Bible into the Polish language: the Brest Bible (1563); the translation of Symon Budny (1576); the translation of Jacob Wuyek (1599); and the poetic translation of the Psalms by Jan Kochanowski (1579).18 However, most of the Biblical quotations are borrowed from Budny’s translation, 18 The use of the Bible in this compilation is nothing extraordinary for the literature of Muslims of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In many handwritten books of Lithuanian Tatars quite large pieces of Biblical texts in the Polish language can be found. Tatars were especially interested in the translation of the Bible performed by the anti-Trinitarian Symon Budny (Irina Synkova and Michail Tarelka, “Polskija pierakłady Biblii XVI–XVII stst. u litaratury litoǔskix tataraǔ”, Bibel, Liturgie und Frömmigkeit in der Slavia Byzantina. Festgabe für Hans Rothe zum 80. Geburtstag, Munich: Otto Sagner, 2009, pp. 82–93).

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containing not only references to the Biblical text, but also glosses with Budny’s commentary. A total of 140 verses from the Old Testament and twenty from the New Testament of Budny’s Bible have been identified. In our opinion, the author of the second opus made use of Jacob Wukek’s translation of the Bible and made Wuyek a target of criticism. The author signals Budny’s translation as the correct version. Other literary works by Muslims of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania repeat this criticism of Wuyek’s translation through use of the translation by Budny.19 Identification of the origin of fragments of the Bible quoted across the works make it possible to determine the earliest possible date for their creation. Since all of the four opera borrow quotations from Budny’s Bible, none of them could have been written before 1572, when the translation was published. In the specific case of the first opus, there is a further factor aiding identification of the period of its composition: quotation from the translation of the Book of Psalms by Jan Kochanowski published in 1579. If our hypothesis about the use of Wuyek’s translation of the Bible in the second opus is correct, then the earliest possible date for not only this work, but also the entire collection, is the year 1599. Few quotations from the Old and New Testaments included in Whence Have the Idols Arrived? coincide with the original text. Analysis of various deviations from the original text (omissions, interpolations, transfers, replacements) demonstrate that some resulted from authors (or copyists) deliberately making religious, ideological, exegetical, or stylistic changes; and others occurred accidentally during the process of copying. When Jesus’ words are quoted in the first opus, the syntagma ‘My Father’ is regularly replaced in order to express rejection of the dogma of the Son of God. For example, ‘prepared with my Father’ becomes ‘Lord God prepared’ (fol. 11a:6); ‘My Father’ becomes ‘My Lord’ (fol. 11b:4). Another word that is altered throughout the text is the word jeden, ‘one’, replaced with jedyny, ‘only one’, when mention is made of God, conveying the author’s desire to underline the ‘oneness’ of God. Nor was the omission of possessive pronouns in the expression ‘to the right hand of mine and to the left hand of mine’ (Matt. 20:23), which becomes ‘to the right hand and to the left hand’ (fol. 11а:5), accidental, as the author believed that the intention to sit next to Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven must have been evidence of his divine origin. For reasons both religious and ideological, entire sentences are revamped at certain points in the text. For example, in the third opus, the phrase from Isaiah ‘the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah’ (Isa. 11:2) is replaced with ‘the spirit means wisdom, the spirit also means understanding, the spirit means counsel, the spirit means might, the spirit means knowledge, the spirit means the  Drozd, “Wpływy chrześcijańskie na literaturę Tatarów”, p. 14.

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fear of God Jehovah’ (fol. 34b:4–6). Through this interpretation of the quotation, the author shares his understanding of the word ‘spirit’ as a totality of qualities (wisdom, understanding, etc.), rather than an independent entity. In some cases, words from the original text are omitted, possibly due to their being not very significant in terms of the expressed ideas. In other cases, interpolation is resorted to in order to make the text clearer. Furthermore, the opera of the collection used non-biblical Christian stories, and a fragment from a Protestant (or Hussite) piece. As noted above, the authors of works in the collection may have used materials from other polemical works, which may have been redacted in the process, thus complicating identification of the original material. And it cannot be ruled out that the author of the first opus might have used pieces by anti-Trinitarians. However, despite the obvious proximity of the thoughts and arguments expressed in the first work with the writings of anti-Trinitarians of the Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth, we have not found any texts in the known antiTrinitarian treatises that could be unambiguously regarded as the source. The author either made use of unknown essays, or borrowed ideas and evidence, but did the writing independently, guided by his own objectives. The latter seems likelier given the specific ways that Biblical quotations are edited in the work. As noted above, an unidentified source was used in the second opus. We can only add here that the unnamed source may have been of Judaic or Judaizer origin. If we leave aside the anti-Christian remarks – that may well have been inserted by the compiling editor of the collection – the third opus also bears a certain resemblance to Judaic (or Judaizer) literature. In the fourth opus, the first part is undoubtedly connected with the Tatar– Muslim community and, as we mentioned above, has parallels in the literature of Lithuanian Tatars. The interpretation of Ps. 110 in the first and fourth treatises corresponds to the Judaic tradition and differs from the views of anti-Trinitarians, who regarded it as evidence of Jesus’ messiahship. A curious aspect is revealed in the structure of certain works, where the combination of texts of distinct origin brings about new meaning. For example, in the first and second parts of the first opus, such a process creates a contrast between materials now perceived as two contradictory doctrines: the ‘clear writing’ and ‘obscure writing’. Because of the diversity of elements that constitute the works of the collection, the impression of eclecticism and pastiche would have been stronger, were it not for the redactor. Due to common redaction, the assembly of quite sophisticated separate texts has the appearance of a single work with several chapters. The work of the compiling editor can be sensed in the foreword preceding the first text in which the general theme of the entire collection is reflected, in peripheral pieces – introductions and conclusions – which serve as bridges between various works; and in the keen remarks inserted within the narrative.

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The statement found at the end of the first opus serves as an example of such a bridge between texts: ‘For not everyone is god who is referred to as a god in the Holy Scripture’ (fol. 30а:12–13). This idea does not result logically from the previous discourse, nor is it substantiated by references to the Bible. It is essentially different from the system of arguments that can be otherwise observed in the first opus. At first sight, this phrase only rhetorically strengthens speculations regarding God’s sonship, for not only those referred to as God’s sons cannot be considered gods, but even those referred to as gods. However, explanation is found later in the second work of the collection addressing the various meaning of the word elohim. In this context, the second opus can be considered as the third part of the first opus, or a sort of supplement to it. In the fragments that must have been written by the compiling editor, some expressions are repeated. For instance, the expression Jewish Scripture can only be found in the preface to the collection, as well as in the introduction and conclusion of the second opus. The compiling redactor does not appear to have set out to substantially rework the original texts. Therefore, different interpretations of the same quotation from the Bible (Isa. 9:6) have remained unchanged. The compiler adds remarks to the original texts with the sole aim of underlining an important idea so as to channel his readers’ thoughts in the right direction. The general message that the compiler endeavours to bring home to readers is revealed so long as all of the parts of the collection are read. It would seem that this general conceptual mission guided the selection and arrangement of the separate works that came to form the collection.

7. About Idolatry: Theological Background, Exegetical Issues, and Possible Aims The entire collection constitutes a response to the complicated question asked in the title Whence Have the Idols Arrived? and seems to be directed against idolatry. Voicing criticism under the banner of combating idolatry was not a new invention of the authors of this polemical collection. Many authors of Reformation polemics use the same technique. Protestants treated certain elements of the Catholic cult as idolatry, and anti-Trinitarians went further, adding to it the doctrine of the Trinity and identification of separate godly images of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Overall, Whence Have the Idols Arrived? offers an ambivalent interpretation of idolatry in both the original meaning  – as a synonym of paganism  – and the figurative (expanded) meaning used in polemical literature. The third opus addresses pagan cults that spread in ancient Israel. Idolatry in the extended

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sense – according to which the works of the compilation present the teaching of the Trinity and some elements of the ceremonial practice of the Catholic Church – becomes a target of criticism in the first opus and is also addressed in the third. The compiling redactor is the least interested in polytheism. His mission is to prove the idolatry of Christians who follow the Trinitarian teaching. Thus, the collection begins with the treatise criticizing the teaching of the Trinity, where the word idolatry is not to be found. In the second opus, the main body of text is neutral (non-polemical) but the overall opus is rendered critical by an introduction and conclusion that may well have been authored by the collection’s compiling redactor. The first two tractates share the tonality of textological Biblical studies that challenge Christian exegesis. Only in the third opus does the author speak directly of idolatry. In this work, he looks into reasons for the restoration of paganism. The author sees human wilfulness, which upsets the order determined by God, as the reason for distortions in religion. Direct violation of God’s will or introduction of new cults that have no origins in the Holy Scripture can be considered a variation of wilfulness. The question ‘Whence have the idols arrived?’ thereby seems to be answered. The author of the third opus also issues a warning: Any violation of God’s will shall result in inevitable punishment. The third opus essentially retells the events of ancient history, yet numerous remarks permeating the entire composition imbue the narrative with a markedly polemical tone. These remarks draw analogies between the events of the past and the present, and the Christianity that is contemporary to the author (more precisely, the Catholic Church) is identified with ancient idolatry. Such remarks were likely inserted by the editor, who sought to connect that work with the two previous ones. Owing to this bridge, the message of the entire collection became clearer: In its teachings and activities, the contemporary Catholic Church is based upon wilfulness, stemming from misinterpretations of the Bible (rather than upon the Holy Scripture, that is, God’s will) leading to idolatry, which in its turn results in inevitable punishment by God. The third opus would make a fine concluding work, however, it is followed by the fourth opus, which does not address the topic of idolatry. Why then does it appear in the collection at all? To answer this question, we need to turn our attention again to the preface that opens the collection. It tells of the attacks on true believers, among others: ‘Then they [the idolaters] speak to abuse believers in God’ (fol. 5a:5–6). The fourth opus reveals that true believers suffer wrongs from Christians. First, it should be noted that the collection emerged as a response to harassment by the Catholic Church, which became particularly widespread and fervent during the first half of the seventeenth century. This oppression was manifested in various forms, from direct violence and discrimination to the appearance of

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anti-Muslim pamphlets20. In any case, it is this form of social environment that aids us to understand the critical and sharply polemical tone of the collection. If only the first three opera are analyzed, the collection looks like a polemical composition; however, as soon as the fourth one is added, it becomes an apologetic work. The compiler seems to attempt to encourage his coreligionists, whose faith may be failing because of assaults, and prove that their faith is the right one, while their persecutors are the ones at fault. It is for a reason that criticism of fundamentals of the Christian doctrine – the Trinity doctrine – appears to be so important for the compiler. Not only the existence of the hypostases, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but also the idea of the Incarnation is denied. With a total respect for Jesus, his deification in any form is not allowed. It is stressed in the third opus that it was the Christians’ incorrect interpretation of Isa. 9 and Isa. 11 that served as the basis for the cult of Jesus. This is the focus of three works of the collection. Moreover, the collection analyzes other pieces from the Old Testament, Isa. 7:14 and Ps. 110. The interpretation of Isa. 7:14 in the first opus coincides with that of certain Judaic commentators and the anti-Trinitarian Budny. In some cases, the authors of separate works offer their own interpretations, which lie beyond any tradition: The first opus suggests that Isa. 9:5–7 makes reference to Moses and David; the author of the second opus believes that Isaiah spoke about Barak, Gideon, or Samson; whereas the third opus contains assumptions that Isaiah’s prophecies are about the virtuous king Josiah.

8. Conclusion The collection of polemical texts Whence Have the Idols Arrived? is a monument of religious thought of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, dating from the period of inter-confessional struggle of the late sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth century, which has a sophisticated structure and separate components whose origins are scarcely identifiable. The authors (or compiling editors) of the separate opera incorporated in the compilation were Muslims of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who used materials from various translations of the Bible, Judaic (or Judaizer) and anti-Trinitarian exegetical literature, as well as various polemical essays. The appearance of these polemical works during the identified period (the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries) is, in our opinion, by no means accidental. A synergy of political, social, and cultural factors summoned these works to life. These factors can be conventionally divided into those that were common to Europe (the spread of humanism, the Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation), those that were specific to the nations involved 20 Jan Tyszkiewicz, Tatarzy na Litwie i w Polsce, Warsaw: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe, 1989, pp. 288–9.

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(conditioned upon peculiarities of the historical development of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland that amalgamated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569; related to the entire population of the united state), and intracommunal (associated with processes taking place in the Tatar-Muslim community of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania itself ). In reality, these factors were closely interrelated. The impact of studia humanitatis on the sphere of education and, through that sphere, on the public conscience, opened the way for the appearance of such religious literature. The learning of ancient languages and philological studies took Christian Biblical textual criticism to a new level and provided polemists with new opportunities to support their concepts. In addition, humanistic criticism drew public attention to the issue of translation of the Bible and a number of issues concerning ecclesiastical life. After that time, the interest in religion as a lens through which to view the world moved beyond theological circles and became a subject of discussion, first among humanist intellectuals, and as soon as the Reformation started, among broader social strata. The interest of Muslim Tatars in the Bible and their aspiration to rely not only on a translated version, but also on the original text could, in the spirit of the time, have been stimulated by the high social authority of philological argumentation. In this regard, the attempts at exegesis undertaken by the authors of the collection Whence Have the Idols Arrived? based on the interpretation of separate words of Biblical Hebrew (ruakh, alma, Emmanuel in the first opus, elohim in the second) are most notable. The influence of humanism can be perceived in the emphatic rationalism of contemplations of Muslim polemists. The authors of the collection do not invite anyone to believe them. They do not appeal to any authorities, but strive to reveal the contradictions they perceived in the study they were criticizing and to support their statements with references to the Bible and with textual analysis of biblical excerpts. The Reformation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth not only cleared the way for a wider public discussion of religious issues, but also sharpened the criticism of the Catholic Church, which could then be adopted by Tatar-Muslim polemists who had their own reasons for anti-Catholic sentiment. Together with the religious tolerance guarded by the non-Catholic part of the szlachta and magnates (those Orthodox successors of Reformation sects), confessional polemics ensured favourable conditions for the dissemination of information about various religious doctrines. Arian (anti-Trinitarian) literature left the deepest imprint on Lithuanian Tatar polemical works. It also served as the source for Biblical-textological argumentation and knowledge about the Catholic Church. Even the comparison of Catholicism to idolatry by Tatar authors was likely to have been adopted from the works of anti-Trinitarians, rather than from Islamic sources.

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While the humanism of the Renaissance and the Reformation created the necessary prerequisites for the appearance of Lithuanian Tatar polemic literature in its known form, the Counter-Reformation was the direct impetus for its appearance. With the support of secular authorities, the struggle of the Catholic Church with all other confessions in the late sixteenth century, and especially, in the first half of the seventeenth century, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, became unprecedentedly powerful and sweeping. Over the course of a hundred years the state of interconfessional relations swung from maximum tolerance to maximum intolerance.21 Polemic works defending the non-Christian communities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Jews, Karaites, and Muslims) appeared in response to that unprecedented pressure. It is in this context that we must consider the works included in the collection Whence Have the Idols Arrived?.22 Notwithstanding these conditions, in our opinion, the works of the collection were not intended for open polemics. As manuscripts written in the Arabic script, they were unavailable to potential Christian opponents and remained unknown to contemporaries. Indeed, no known source of the epoch includes references to the collection Whence Have the Idols Arrived? or its separate works. It seems that they circulated exclusively in the Tatar-Muslim environment and carried out a primarily apologetic function. This might be associated with another reason for the appearance of these works, that which relates to the peculiarities of life of the Tatar-Muslim community in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Assimilation processes had already led to the loss of the Turkic language among the descendants of migrants. Their mode of life had undergone considerable changes while 21  Such a situation was inconceivable in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania before its association with the Kingdom of Poland in 1569 (the so-called Union of Lublin). Since its appearance in the thirteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had incorporated lands whose population belonged to different ethnic groups and confessions. The initial unification of the Lithuanian and Belarusian principalities around Navahrudak became the nucleus of the state. The Belarusian population was Orthodox. The majority of Lithuanians were still pagans, who began converting to Catholicism as late as the fourteenth century. Princes were often forced to manoeuvre between various political forces, which may have made them less than scrupulous regarding the matter of their lieges’ faith. Such an attitude opened the Duchy to various migrants of various faiths: Armenians (professing Christianity of the Monophysite type), Muslims, Qaraites, and Jews. A multiconfessional state would have disintegrated quickly if it had not been for the tolerance that became the basis for living in it. Interestingly, even the laws adopted to grant privileges to the Catholic population were frequently violated by grand dukes themselves, which finally led to the abolition of discriminating provisions. After the Union of Lublin, when there was a real threat that this confessional balance would be lost, the Warsaw Confederation proclaimed the freedom of religion in 1573 through the effort of the non-Catholic szlachta. However, as subsequent events showed, that move only temporarily postponed the advancement of the Catholic Church. 22  The seventeenth century is also known for the 1672 Lipka Rebellion, the defection of the military unit quartered in Ukraine and consisting of Lithuanian Tatars, to the Ottoman side. The history of this event is not well explored, and there must have been a number of reasons that led to it, but it cannot be denied that the oppression against Muslims also played its negative part.

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taking on features of the surrounding Slavic-Christian population’s lifestyle. Religion was the last obstacle impeding complete assimilation. There is always an attraction to joining the dominant confession that exists within multiconfessional societies, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania certainly observed cases of conversion of Tatars to Christianity. The authors of the collection pursued the perhaps attainable goal of proving the falseness of the Christian doctrine to their coreligionists. Thus, the work is not a call addressed to Christians seeking to make them give up on their false doctrine, but an appeal to stop coreligionists from accepting it. Such polemic works served as a specific means of supporting and strengthening the spirit of hesitant believers. The Muslim authors of Whence Have the Idols Arrived? do not quote the Qur’an or Muslim legends. They instead use the Bible and its various commentaries to criticize the Catholic Church. This collection is a clear indication of the high level of education of both its authors and its readers, and is indirect evidence of deep cultural modifications within the framework of the TatarMuslim community of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in which, by that time, a clerical elite had developed from intellectuals whose scholastic sensibilities were close to those of Christian European intellectuals of early modern times.

Bibliography Antonovich, Anton, Belorusskie teksty, pisannyie arabskim pismom, i ih grafiko-orfo­gra­ ficheskaia sistema, Vilnius: Wilniusskij gosudarstwennyj uniwersitet, 1968, pp. 136–8. Czyżewski, Piotr, Alfurkan tatarski prawdziwy na czterdzieści części rozdzielony, Vilnius: J. Karcan, 1617. Drozd, Andrzej, “Wpływy chrześcijańskie na literaturę Tatarów w dawnej Rzeczypospoli­ tej”, Pa­mięntnik literacki, 88/3 (1997), pp. 3–34. Maciej z Miechowa, Maciej, Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis Asiana et Europiana et de contentis in eis, Augsburg: S. Grimm & M. Wirsung, 1518. Tarelka, Michail and Irina Synkova, Adkul pajšli idaly. Pomnik relihijna-palemičnaj litaratury z rukapisnaj spadčyny tataraǔ Vialikaha Kniastva Litoǔskaha, Minsk: Tehna­ lohija, 2009. – “Polskija pierakłady Biblii XVI–XVII stst. u litaratury litoǔskix tataraǔ”, Bibel, Liturgie und Frömmigkeit in der Slavia Byzantina. Festgabe für Hans Rothe zum 80. Geburtstag, Munich: Otto Sagner, 2009, pp. 82–93. Tarelka, Michail and Alena Citawiec, Rukapisy tataraǔ Belarusi kanca XVII – pačatku XX st. z dziaržaǔnych knihazboraǔ krainy, Minsk: Belaruskaja nawuka, 2011. Tyszkiewicz, Jan, Tatarzy na Litwie i w Polsce, Warsaw: Państwowe wydawnictwo nau­ kowe, 1989.

The Early Modern Invention of ‘Abrahamic Religions’ An Overview of Baroque Approaches to the Hagar Narrative Andrea Celli From late antiquity until the Middle Ages and beyond, Christian and Jewish commentators referred to the Biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael (Gen. 16; 21),1 asserting that their own community descended from Isaac, the legitimate son of Abraham, while the other communities came from the illegitimate son, Ishmael, and were thus excluded from God’s covenant with Abraham.2 Islamic tradition further reinforced and complicated this genealogy by claiming Ishmael as Abraham’s favoured son over Isaac.3 1 As narrated in Gen. 16, Sarai, wife of Abram, was old and unable to give a son to the patriarch. Therefore, she offered him her Egyptian servant. But when Hagar, the maidservant, ‘became aware of her pregnancy, she looked on her mistress with disdain.’ For this reason, Sarai ‘abused’ Hagar, who ran away from her house. However, an angel appeared to Hagar and promised her numerous offspring, announcing, too, an ominous destiny for the son she was carrying: ‘He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him. In opposition to all his kin shall he encamp’ (Gen. 16:12). Hagar obeyed the angel and went back to Abram’s house and gave birth to Ishmael. Afterwards, Sarai, who later became Sarah, was miraculously blessed with a child, Isaac, and she asked Abraham to ‘drive out that slave and her son! No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac!’ At first, Abraham refused to accept Sarah’s demand, but once God promised him that a nation would have risen from Ishmael, the patriarch ‘got some bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar’ (Gen. 21:14), forcing her to leave the house and to enter the Desert of Beersheba with their son. Unless otherwise specified, English quotations of the Bible are from the New American Bible Revised Edition, Charlotte NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2011. For the Qur’an, I will refer to Arthur John Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. 2  This genealogical use of the narrative is common among Christian and Jewish commentators when referring to Muslims. It is also applied to Jews by Christian commentators on the basis of Paul’s allegorical interpretation of the narrative (Gal. 4:21–31). Also Andalusian shu’ūbī literature resorts to it in the contrast between populations of a’ǧamī and ‘arabī origins. See Göran Larsson, Ibn García’s Shuʻūbiyya Letter. Ethnic and Theological Tensions in Medieval al-Andalus, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 170–91. See Esperanza Alfonso, Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes. Al-Andalus from the Tenth to Twelfth Century, London: Routledge, 2008, for the ‘typological identification between Arabic and Hebrew with Hagar and Sarah respectively, that takes place in al-Harizi’s time, and specifically in his Tahkemoni’, p. 33. 3  The name of the mother is not mentioned in the Qur’an, but the story of her restless quest for water in the desert is symbolized in the Islamic saʿy, the ritual walking between al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa. According to the Qur’an, it was Ishmael – not Isaac – whom God commanded

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The Hagar narrative lies at the core of a notion of Abrahamic faiths that has gained momentum in both religious and academic debates over the past fifty years.4 Although the use of this notion or similar expressions derive from the fact that the foundational literatures of the three putatively Abrahamic communities regard the patriarch as the father of their own people, there is no denying that a sparkle of universalist relativism and ecumenism is attached to its current uses. This article seeks to address the following questions: when, why, and how did Christian interpretations of this narrative begin to shift from a long-standing negative reading of the story of Hagar to one that openly embraces it? In fact, it is only when the troublesome nature of Hagar’s destiny is acknowledged, that a shared genealogy of the three communities of faith becomes utterable. My research hypothesis, corroborated by a variety of written and visual sources,5 is that the roots of widespread positive use of the story are surprisingly found in the Counter-Reformist Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.6 Paintings portraying Hagar’s banishment and despair before her dying son in the desert became very popular in the early modern period, particularly in Dutch and Roman milieus.7 They were meant to perturb the viewer and generate Abraham to sacrifice (Q 2:25–127; 19:54). See Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. On the issue of the absence of Hagar’s name in the Qur’an, fresh and provocative is the approach of Fethi Benslama, La psychanalyse à l’épreuve de l’islam, Paris: Aubier, 2002. 4  By way of example, see Guy G. Stroumsa, The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Louis Massignon is to be acknowledged as a pivotal advocate of this notion. See Louis Massignon, Les trois prières d’Abraham, Paris: Cerf, 1997. 5 This article presents a sketch of a research project on the history of early modern rereadings of Gen. 16; 21, aimed at underlining its inter-religious significance in the context of postReformation social, political, and religious developments. Although the project focuses mainly on Mediterranean Counter-Reformation Europe, it stresses cultural cross-pollination and interaction with other confessional contexts. 6  The notion of Counter-Reformation is controversial. In fact, sources seem to contrast with a commonplace narrative that portrays Counter-Reformist societies as mainly reactive, homogeneous, and resistant to outside influence. On the contrary, the analysis of different typologies of treatments of the Hagar narrative in Roman-Catholic milieus shows an intricate interlacement of discursive strategies. For a brief survey of debates around this notion, see the introduction in Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 (11998). 7  Artistic interest in the narrative is simultaneous in Roman and Dutch contexts, but the ‘allegorical’ focus of their attention differs: While Dutch patrons and artists read Hagar’s story through the lens of the mercantile Dutch society, Roman treatments of the same subject, while confirming traditional genealogical meanings (Hagar and Ishmael as an ancestor of Muslims and Jews), perceive Hagar’s destiny as a prototype of Counter-Reformist redemption. See Christine Petra Sellin, Fractured Families and Rebel Maidservants. The Biblical Hagar in SeventeenthCentury Dutch Art and Literature, New York NY: Continuum, 2006. As the author stresses, ‘by the 1630s, her story became a favorite subject in Dutch paintings and prints, which treated her with an unprecedented degree of sympathy, mercy, and dignity. The Dutch transformed the outcast into a symbol of redemption and a model of maternity. Hagar’s story was interpreted as a didactic domestic drama, touching on topics as relevant to households then as now. These

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a sense of compassion regarding the fate of mother and son. Part of their appeal derived precisely from the ambivalence attached to these characters. Paintings made this sympathy explicit and public, often contradicting derogatory uses of the same narrative in contemporary writings against Turks, moriscos, Jews and Protestants.8 Sources from the early modern period, and more specifically of Renaissance and Post-Reformation Italy, reveal a significant shift in interpretations of Hagar’s narrative: Hagar was tacitly acknowledged as a figure worthy of compassion. Visual arts played a crucial role in this change of perspective. The complexity of the Biblical story already had its place in the Pentateuch. A millenary exegetical tradition had highlighted the shadows and nuances of each character, often questioning Sarah’s cruel attitude and the protection granted by God to Hagar’s son and his numerous offspring. Yet, from the sixteenth century, attention on the drama clearly shifts from Sarah and Isaac to Hagar and Ishmael. How did this change become possible? What were its consequences? In this paper, I will consider representative examples from two major classes of 1) religious apologetics and early modern historiography; and, 2) figurative treatments of the narrative, in connection to treatises on the arts.9 In order to contextualize these materials it is appropriate to begin with a broad outline of two major trends in the late antique and medieval Christian exegesis of the Hagar and Ishmael narrative: the allegorical and the genealogical.

1. The Allegorical Exegesis: Hagar as a Symbol of the Synagogue Paul the Apostle formulated a crucial allegorical interpretation of the episode in question in his Epistle to the Galatians (4:21–31). Pauline interpretation reflects his partition of Christian faith from Jewish tradition:10 included family breakups, extramarital sex, rivalry between women over men, feuding stepsiblings, and struggles between husbands and wives and masters and servants’ (p. 2). According to Sellin, what mattered the most to the Dutch was ‘the primacy of the family, an emphasis on domestic well-being, and the maintenance of ideal civic order’.  8  A question we cannot thoroughly address here regards features of the clients and places where the works were originally displayed. However, large portions of these works were showcased in family mansions and chapels of Italian patrons. See, for instance, Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte ovvero le vite degli illustri pittori veneti e dello stato, Venice: Gio. Battista Sgaua, 1648, p. 327.  9  A third noteworthy group of sources is represented by sacred eloquence and musical oratorios. See Andrea Celli, “Crisi di coppia con concubina e figli. Gli amori di Abramo nell’oratorio musicale del secondo Seicento italiano”, Il tema della coppia nella letteratura italiana, ed. Fabrizio Bondi et al., Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 2016, pp. 23–34. 10  Recent literature tends to interpret the Epistle against scriptural arguments of Paul’s missionary opponents. See Charles Kingsley Barrett, “The Allegory of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in the Argument of Galatians”, Essays on Paul, Philadelphia PA: Westminster Press, 1982, pp. 154–70; Albert L. A. Hogeterp, “Hagar and Paul’s Covenant Thought”, Abraham, the

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21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the freeborn woman. 23 The son of the slave woman was born naturally, the son of the freeborn through a promise. 24 Now this is an allegory. These women represent two covenants. One was from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; this is Hagar. 25 Hagar represents Sinai, a mountain in Arabia; it corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery along with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother.

Paul’s figural approach to the narrative had an enormous influence on Christian exegesis. Of many possible examples, Augustine’s sermon Quomodo ad Agar et Ismael pertineant haeretici et schismatici does not require further comment.11 However, one might also consider Origen’s sermon on Genesis 21 where Paul’s allegory is presented once again.12 Naturally, Christian allegorical interpretations of the narrative are not limited to the identification of Hagar with the Old Covenant  – that is, with Judaism. For instance, equally influential is Philo of Alexandria’s typological exegesis (De Congressu Quaerendae Eruditionis et Gratiae), where Hagar is presented as the allegory of the enkyklios paideia preliminary education, while Sarah represents philosophy. In Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata, the relationship between Sarah and Hagar parallels the relationship between divine wisdom (hē theia pronoia) and worldly philosophy (hē kosmikē paideia).13 Nevertheless, all these allegorical interpretations and their polychrome variations seem to confirm the subordinate role of Hagar in relation to Sarah. At the same time, it is worth noticing the extraordinary polysemy of the Hagar and Ishmael narrative, flourishing in a multiplicity of readings from late antiquity to the early modern period.

2. Genealogical Interpretations The other significant Christian usage of the Hagar and Ishmael narrative, examples of which are almost countless, is genealogical. The following examples derive from late medieval Italian sources. Jacobus de Varagine presents Muḥammad in these terms: ‘Magumeth, pseudo propheta et etiam magus, Agarenus sive Nations, and the Hagarites. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Perspectives on Kinship with Abraham, ed. Martin Goodman, George H. van Kooten, and Jacques T A G M. van Ruiten, Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 346–59. 11 In Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus. Sive Bibliotheca universalis, Tomus XXXVIII (S. Aurelii Augustinii tomus V ), Petit-Montrouge: Migne, 1865, pp. 32–3. See Johan Leemans, “After Philo and Paul: Hagar in the Writings of the Church Fathers”, Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites, ed. Goodman et al., pp. 435–47: p. 47. 12  Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, Homily VII, ed. Ronald E. Heine, Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982, pp. 127–35. 13  See John L. Thompson, Writing the Wrongs. Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 29–30.

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Ismaelita, id est Saracenus’.14 The sentiment is echoed in Giovanni Villani’s Cronica (1348): ‘In spite of being born from Ishmael’s descendants, the Saracens took their name from Sarah, when they should be rightly called Hagarens, because they come from Hagar’.15 In fact, agareni and ismaeliti are very common Christian epithets for Arabs and Muslims, besides saraceni, implying that Muslims were the illegitimate sons of a slave (Hagar), not of her mistress (Sarah).16 The origin of this identification is pre-Islamic and is to be found in Saint Jerome (347–420), who stated with reference to a pre-Islamic tribe known as Saraceni: ‘Midianites, Ishmaelites, and Hagarens, who now are called Saracens, falsely claimed the name of Sarah, as if they believed to be born from a freeborn Lady.’17 This etymology is reiterated and amplified by the Venerable Bede, Rabanus Maurus and Isidore of Seville, whose pre-Islamic Etymologiae influenced later scholastic theologians until the fifteenth century.18

14  Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, vol. 2, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni and Francesco Stella, Florence: SISMEL  – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007, pp. 1261–6. See Stefano Mula, “Muḥammad and the Saints: The History of the Prophet in the Golden Legend”, Romance Philology, 101 (2003), pp. 175–88. 15 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Porta, Libro III, cap. VIII, Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo – Guanda, 1991, p. 112. 16 On occasion, late antique and medieval exegesis links Ishmael to the blackness of Kedar, his second son (Cant 1:4). See also Gen 25:13 and 1 Chr 1:29. Blackness, alongside their bastard or servile condition, casts a negative light on their descendants, the Moors. See my “Agar in Brasile. Schiavitù reale e simbolica in un sermone di António Vieira”, Schiavitù del Corpo e Schiavitù dell’Anima: Chiesa, potere politico e schiavitù tra Atlantico e Mediterraneo (sec. XVI– XVIII), ed. Emanuele Colombo, Marina Massimi, Alberto Rocca, and Carlos Zeron, Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2018, pp. 177–98. The seventeenth century Portuguese Jesuit Antonio Vieira represents an exegetical turning point in respect to this narrative. In Sermon XX from his Maria Rosa Mystica (1688), he presents a fascinating ‘theory of colors’ in relation to the black skin of African slaves in Brazil. The Angolans not only embody Hagar, the Egyptian slave, they also resemble Mary, the divine servant, or ancilla domini. The blackness associated with Hagar, Ishmael, and the African slaves brought across the Atlantic to Brazil, becomes synonymous with Mary’s humility. 17  S. Hieronymi presbyteri Opera, ed. Fr. Gloire, Pars I (Opera exegetica), 4 (Commentariorum in Hiezechielem libri XIV), Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, Turnholt: Brepols, 1964: ‘madianaeos, ismaelitas et agarenos  – qui nunc saraceni appellantur, assumentes sibi falso nomen sarae quo scilicet de ingenua et domina uideantur esse generati’ (lib. 8. cap. 25). See John V. Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 287, fn. 25. 18  Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, De gentium vocabulis, IX, ii, 6 and 57, in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 192–5. However, as John L. Thompson indicates, early medieval writers such as Isidore, the Venerable Bede, or Rabanus Maurus, who did not directly face Islamic expansionism, even though confirm the equation Hagar – Jews, focus their attention more and more ‘on something like the literal Hagar, while the [negative] Hagar of Galatians 4 moves into the shadows’, Reading the Bible with the Dead. What You Can Learn from the History of Exegesis that You Can’t Learn from Exegesis Alone, Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007, pp. 20–1.

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Such identification is at once genealogical and etymological. On the matter of the Islamic claim of Abrahamic ancestry John of Damascus explains in De haeresibus that the Arabs were called ‘Saracens’ [Σαρακενοί] because they were ‘empty’ [κενός] ‘of Sarah’. They were called ‘Hagarens’ because they were ‘the descendants of the slave-girl Hagar.’19 In Eastern and Western Christian literature, this genealogical commonplace is echoed ubiquitously in references to Muḥammad and the Muslims. Latin translations of Islamic sources, such as Petrus Venerabilis’ Corpus Cluniacense or Petrus Alphonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudaeos, while making accessible to European audiences original Islamic genealogies of the Prophet Muḥammad, confirmed the validity of the Christian narrative. As a consequence, Muḥammad and his Biblical ancestors gradually became synonymous.

3. The Early Modern Period: Juridical Language of Inheritance It is clear that the names of Hagar and Ishmael were linked to Islam as strongly in early modern writings as they had been in the entire medieval corpus of polemical literature. For example, in his acrimonious Tractatus contra principales errores perfidi Machometi et Turcorum sive Saracenorum (1459), Juan de Torquemada recycled this genealogical interpretation in the most malevolent way. It is evident how impious and foolish Mahomet was to infer that he himself was the origin and cause for the whole [of his] people being blessed. [Such a thing] is not appropriate for that wicked man: in fact the promise of blessing was made to Abraham in Isaac, the son of Sarah, and from there the inheritance follows, not in Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the slave girl, from which the Ishmaelites descend [and] to whose race and people Mahomet belonged. Therefore his descendants, the Hagarenes, should not be called Saracens: and they falsely usurped the name from Sarah, who is free and nobler; regarding the very Ishmael, Genesis 16 truly says that he was a wild man, and his hand [was] against everyone and everyone’s hand against him. Hence Mahomet is rather the cause and reason for innumerous people who follow his doctrine to be condemned to damnation.20

This aggressive and slanderous use of the narrative is reiterated in Spanish apologetic literature over the following two centuries. Countless seventeenth century Spanish authors adjusted the narrative to address the issue of moriscos and their 19  John of Damascus, “Liber de haeresibus”, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, 5 vols., Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–81, vol. 4, p. 60. See Tolan, Saracens, p. 52. 20 I translate from Juan de Torquemada OP, Tractatus contra principales errores perfidi Machometi, ed. and trans. R. F. Glei and C. Finiello, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz [forthcoming], Capitulum III, ‘in quo improbantur quaedam, quae Machometus de se mendaciter asserit’, ll. 60–70. I would like to express my gratitude to Reinhold Glei, for making a proof copy of his work available to me. See Ildefonso Adeva Martín, “Juan de Torquemada y su Tractatus contra principales errores perfidi Machometi et turcorum sive saracenorum (1459)”, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 16 (2007), pp. 195–208: pp. 199–200.

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destierro, that is, their expulsion from the Peninsula.21 The adaptation of the commonplace to the contemporary issue of the expulsion of moriscos from Spain is a new feature shown by the majority of the sources.22 For instance, Fray Marco de Guadalajara, in his Memorable expulsion y iustissimo destierro de los moriscos de España (Memorable Expulsion and Fair Exile of the Moriscos from Spain) from 1613, identifies the king Philip III of Augsburg with Abraham. He says: Our great Monarch Philip III had two children: the first one represents legitimate Christians from the Mother Church and fair Sarah, while the second is a bastard and treacherous, and they are the Moriscos, descendants of Hagar: dwelling in Spain, they have built altars to their Idol, Mohamed, playing with their brothers, right believers; but their jokes turned into serious things, as David prophesied: They scheme with one mind, they have entered into a covenant against you: The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites [Ps. 83:6–7]. All these Ishmaelites joined forces to take the lives of the Spanish Catholics and seize the inheritance of the land; but the old Sarah, our Lady and Queen Marguerite, when she saw that her legitimate and beloved sons were in danger, asked Philip, [who is] a second Abraham, to expel from their Kingdoms the traitors, because their end and goal was to upraise against Spain.23 21  For instance, without pretension to completeness, here a list of significant titles: Juan de Ribera [Martín de Ayala], Catechismo para instrucción de los nuevamente convertidos de moros (Valencia, 1599); Miguel de Cervantes, Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, Book III, Chapter XI (1616), where the morisco Jadraque Xarife argues ‘Del inutil peso de la generacion agarena’; Francisco de Quevedo, La hora de todos y la Fortuna con seso, XXXV (1635); Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La devoción de la Misa, Auto historial alegórico (1637 or 1658), and Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El orden de Melquisedec (1652 post quem); Pedro Aznar Cardona, Expulsion iustificada de los moriscos españoles (1612); Damián Fonseca, Justa expulsión de los moriscos de España (Roma: Iacomo Mascardo, 1612); Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsion y iustissimo destierro de los Moriscos de España; Prodición y destierro de los Moriscos de Castilla hasta la Valle de Ricote (1613); Jaime Bleda, Crónica de los Moros de España (1618); Tomás Fernández, Discurso, y pronosticaciones de la victoria que tuvieron los otomanos, y moros, descendientes de Ismael hijo de Abraham, y de Agar su esclava, y de su ruyna y destruyción, y fin que ternan sus malas y dañadas setas de Mahoma, y sus descendientes (1629). See my “‘Como otra Agar’. Counterreformist and Multiconfessional Spain, through the Lenses of a Biblical Narrative”, Sharq al-Andalus [forthcoming]. 22  On the other hand, over the course of the sixteenth century there are several examples of appropriations of this narrative by the cristianos nuevos of Jewish and morisco communities. See Alicia Álvarez Sellers, Del texto a la iconografía: aproximación al documento teatral del siglo XVII, Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2008. Another significant example is offered by the Espejo de consolación de tristes, a popular devotional text where Hagar’s tribulations are praised as a rewarding spiritual trial (pp. 108–9). See Espejo de consolación de tristes, compuesto por […] el menor frayle y predicador de la horden de n.ro glorioso padre Sant Francisco Juan de Dueñas, Burgos: en casa de Juan de Ju[n]ta, 1540. There are historical evidences of heterodox usages of this text by Spanish conversos. See Sara Nalle, God in La Mancha. Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, ad indicem; Charles Amiel, “Les cent voix de Quintanar. Le modèle castillan du marranisme”, (II) Revue de l’histoire des religions, 118 (2001), pp. 487–577: pp. 524–31. 23  Fr. Marco Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsion y iustissimo destierro de los Moriscos de España, Pamplona: por Nicolas de Assiayn impresor de reyno de Navarra, 1613, p. 154v. ‘Tenía nuestro gran Monarca Felipo II. [sic] dentro de sus Catholicos Reynos dos hijos: el uno representa los Christianos legitimos de la Madre Iglesia, y hermosa Sarra y el segundo bastardo

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Here a supporter of the destierro of Iberian Muslims makes use of the terminology of inheritance so intrinsic to the Biblical narrative. The settlement of the descendants of Hagar on peninsular soil is tout court illegitimate. Genesis 21 is the hypotext through which he interprets the outcomes of the second rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568–71). There are powerful juridical consequences to the identification of the emperor Philip III with Abraham and the suggestion that he was persuaded by the ‘old Sarah, our Lady and Queen Marguerite’ to expel the rebellious sons of Ishmael from their kingdom/household. The rebellion of the Muslim population is interpreted as a scheme, aimed at ‘alçarse con el mayorazgo de la tierra’: this is a very specific reference to an early modern right of succession (fideicommis), based on male primogeniture. The conflict is about ownership of the land. The historical primogeniture of Spanish Muslims is nullified by their descendancy from Ishmael, the bastard son of a slave. For this reason, they can be lawfully deprived of their lands. Another example of an updated version can be found in a biography (Vida) of Alonso de Orozco (1500–91), an Augustinian friar and the confesor real of Charles V and Philip II, venerated for his austere lifestyle and closeness to the poorest people. After his death, dignitaries such as the Princess Isabel Clara Eugenia, the Dukes of Alba and Lerma, or the writers Lope de Vega and Francisco de Quevedo, were witnesses in his canonization procedure. The Vida of the friar was intended as a substantial piece of evidence for his beatification dossier.24 As a proof of the virtues of the friar’s charismatic elocution, the biographer recounts the anecdote of a North African slave that Orozco had managed to convert: After listening to him, one had to be really stubborn, not to surrender to him, because he captured the souls with the softness of his argument, as with a golden net. A lady from y traydor, que son los Moriscos decendientes de Agar: los quales morando en España han hecho altares a su Idolo Mahoma, jugando con sus hermanos los fieles: mas sus burlas llegaron à veras, como lo tenia prophetizado Dauid: Quoniam cogitaverunt unanimiter; simul adversum te testamentum disposuerunt tabernacula Idumæorum et Ismahelitæ [Vulgata Clementina, Ps. 82:6–7]. Auianse mancomunado todos estos Ismaelitas; para quitar la vida à los Catholicos Españoles, y alçarse con el mayorazgo de la tierra: mas la vella Sarra, Señora y Reyna nostra Margarita, con sus Reales Consejos de Estado y Guerra, viendo en peligro sus hijos legitimos y queridos, pidiò al segundo Abraham Filipo, saliessen de sus Reynos los traydores: porque su proceder è intento, yua encaminado à leuantarse con España.’ See also Guadalajara’s comment to Genesis 21 (p. 154r) for another example of actualization: ‘sin que te valga, o Ismael, el auxilio que tendras de Francia’, p. 162r. His genealogy of Muḥammad (‘Mahoma asciende por linea recta hasta Ismael por veynte y tres generaciones’, p. 33v) derives from medieval sources (Hermann of Carinthia’s Liber de generatione et nutritura eius). See Israel Burshatin, “The Moor in the Text: Metaphor, Emblem, and Silence”, Critical Inquiry, 12/1 (1985), pp. 98–118: pp. 113–4. 24  Juan Marquez, Vida del venerable P. Fr. Alonso de Orozco, Religioso de la Orden de N. P. S. Agustin, y Predicador de las Catolicas Magestades de Carlos V y Felipe II, […] sacada a luz por Tomas de Herrera […], en Madrid: por Iuan Sanchez, 1648. See Alonso de Orozco, Catecismo provechoso, ed. Luis Resines, in Alonso de Orozco, Obras completas, I. Obras castellanas 1, ed. Rafael Lazcano, Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2001, pp. 695–843.

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Seville had a bondmaid [una esclava] from Berberia who was so obstinate in her allegiance to the sect of Mahoma that there was no way to sponsor her sacred Baptism (in fact her mother, who had ransomed herself, kept writing her to stand firm in her faith [ley], because she would finally [succeed in] rescuing her). [This Lady], who was a devotee of the saint man, reported this story to him. So he asked the girl to be sent to him. He received her with great humanity and started contending that our Lord loved her, and in order to save her soul, He had resorted to the most expensive means, giving for her on the Cross the very saint blood of his veins. Then he went on declaring the ruse of the infernal Mahoma, that with his accursed doctrine had been the cause of so many people’s misery. She didn’t utter a single word: but the look on her face showed that she was pleased with what she was hearing, therefore without waiting for an answer, he told her: May God bring you light, follow him, and tell your Mistress that you want to become a Christian, so that your Baptism shall be performed, and your name be Maria. She left the chapel and, like another Hagar, changed by the Angel’s words, threw herself at her Mistress’ feet and implored: I want to become a Christian, give me the Baptism.25

The traditional topos of Muslim descent from the slave Hagar is not explicit, yet the relationship between Sarah and Hagar is perfectly mirrored in the dependence of a Moroccan (or Algerian) bondmaid on a Sevillian noblewoman, while the friar plays the role of the Biblical angel, appearing to the runaway servant near Beer-lahai-roi (Gen. 16:7–14). Significantly, Hagar, the proud slave, rebel to her mistress (Gen. 16:4), becomes a figure of redemptive hope that conforms to an ideal of Augustinian humility in Counter-Reformist Spain. The idea put forward is that of Muslim assimilation to Christian society through conversion. At the same time, Hagar becomes a positive figure, capable of deliverance from sin and of social emancipation. This anecdote must be read against a complex economy of redemption (that is spiritual and therefore social) in the early modern Mediterranean.26 Although the friar Alonso de Orozco’s lack of 25  ‘Muy rebelde auia de ser el que oyendole con atencion no se le diesse a partido, porque enlaçaua las almas con la suauidad del razonar, como con prisiones de oro. Tenia vna señora en Seuilla vna esclaua de Berberia tan pertinaz en la seta de Mahoma, que por ningun camino se podia acabar con ella que recibiesse el santo Bautismo; (auiase su madre rescatado siendo esclaua, y escriuiala que estuuiesse firme en su ley, que ella la rescataria.) Dio cuenta de esto al santo varon, de quien era muy deuota, y el la pidio que se la embiasse. Respondiole, que todo seruiria de nada, y no ostante su desconfiança porfiô en que la auia de ver, y lleuaronsela a la capilla del santo Crucifixo, que està en aquel Monasterio. Recibiola con grande humanidad, y començô a encarecerla el amor que la tenia nuestro Señor, y los medios tan costosos con que auia procurado el remedio de su alma, hasta dar por ella en la Cruz la santissima sangre de sus venas. Y de aqui passô a declararla en engaño del infernal Mahoma, que con su maldita dotrina auia sido causa de la condenacion de tantos. No le respondiô palabra; pero en la muestras del semblante, parecia que le oìa cin agrado, y sin esperar otra respuesta la dixo; Dios os alumbre, id con èl, y dezid a vuestra señora, que quereis ser Christiana, para que se solemnize vuestro Bautismo, y os pongan por nombre Maria. Partiose luego de la capilla, y ya, como otra Agar, mudada por la palabras del Angel, se echô a los pies de su señora, y dixo a vozes: Christiana quiero ser, denme el Bautismo. Tan en el alma lleuô la fuerça de sus razones’, pp. 38–9. 26 See Daniel Herschenzon, “The Political Economy of Ransom in the Early Modern Mediterranean”, Past and Present, 231 (2016), pp. 61–95.

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sympathy toward Islam is evident in his apologetic works,27 in his view, baptism is a viable means for emancipation and inclusion. This perspective stands in contrast to the approach that prevailed over the following decades; that is, the expulsion of the descendants of Hagar from the Iberian Peninsula. The profusion of testimonies is per se significant. Not only does it confirm that the Biblical narrative remained in widespread use as a tool for slander well into the seventeenth century – in reference to Muslims, as well as Jews, cristianos nuevos, and Protestants28  – but, as I will argue in the next paragraph, it also makes even more striking the emergence of positive representations of Hagar and Ishmael as a major theme in Baroque paintings.29 As scholarship has demonstrated,30 theological debates aroused by Humanism and taken on by the Reformation frequently developed hand in hand with Western scholarship on Islam and the so-called Oriental languages, against the background of relentless Ottoman conquests in Europe, and Spanish interventionism in the Mediterranean. Such debates must also be considered in the context of the fragmentation of European Christianity produced by the Reformation. Nicolaus Cusanus’ Cribratio Alkorani (Sifting the Qur’an) is paradigmatic of this more nuanced reconsideration of Islam. The work first appeared in manuscript in 1461 and in print almost eighty years later in a famous collection of works on Islam edited by Theodor Bibliander (11543–50). Shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Cusanus had written De pace fidei, a text whose openness toward other confessions is frequently emphasized.31 27  See Luis Resines’ entry on Alonso de Orozco in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 6. Western Europe (1500–1600), ed. David Thomas et al., Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 219–23. 28  See, for instance, the Jesuit polemicist Nicholas Sanders (circa 1530–81), De Lutheranorum dissidiis circa justificationem libri sex, Coloniae Agrippinae: apud Henricum Falckenburg, 1594, p. 152. Same use of the narrative in the Jesuit controversialist Henry Fitzsimon (1566 or 1569 Dublin – 1643 or 1645, probably at Kilkenny): Britannomachia Ministrorum, in Plerisque Et Fidei Fundamentis Et Fidei Articulis Dissidentium, Ex officina B. Belleri: Duaci, 1614, p. 55. 29  See, for instance, the elogio of Hagar by Martín de Carrillo, Elogios de mugeres insignes del Viejo Testamento, Huesca: por Pedro Blusón, 1627, pp. 12v–15r. This text, modeled on Paolo Giovio’s Elogia, shows all the bitter trademarks of contemporary apologetic literature, but significantly the author seals the text with a sonnet by Fray Miguel de Ezpeleta (p. 15r) that is informed by an utterly positive praise of Hagar. The two features coexist on the same page with no apparent sense of contradiction. 30  See Hartmut Bobzin, Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde in Europa, Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1995; Alastair Hamilton, Maurits H. van den Boogert and Bart Westerweel, The Republic of Letters and the Levant, Leiden: Brill, 2005; Jan Loop, Johann Heinrich Hottinger. Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Seventeenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. See also Roberto Tottoli, “«Ex historia orientali Joh. Henrici Hottingeri …». Ludovico Marracci and Reformed Sources According to his Manuscripts”, Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’Islam nell’Europa mediterranea (secoli XVI–XVIII), ed. Andrea Celli and Davide Scotto, special issue of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 51 (2015), pp. 691–704. 31  See Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West. Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks,

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Despite its stark criticism of Islam, the Cribratio Alkorani aspires to provide an accurate review of the Qur’an. While the choice of a dialogic style represents a long-standing feature of medieval apologetic writings32  – demonstrated, for instance, in the pseudo al-Kindi’s Risāla or in Petrus Alphonsi’s Dialogi contra Iudaeos – in Cusanus’ case it seems to originate from a sincere desire to understand and engage with Muslims. In Chapter 3, Quod pactum Dei et Abrahæ excludit Ismaelitas, et in Christo mediatore concluditur, that is, On the exclusion of Ismaelites from the promise of God to Abraham, Cusanus carefully questions Muslims’ beliefs, stressing their subordinate genealogical status in the Abrahamic family: Now Arabs, you have to understand, that as a carnal offspring of Ishmael, you are not [included] in the covenant of Abraham with God, contrary to the sons of the share [descended] from Isaac, and you will have no sharing in Abraham’s inheritance, because you were engendered by Hagar the servant, opponents to the Spirit, just as the flesh is always against the spirit. And you cannot be blessed in the seed of Abraham, unless by faith you become sons of Abraham in spirit, and you then will attain the promise of blessing in Christ.33

Cusanus addresses the Arabs directly in a rational attempt at persuasion, quite different from the belligerent attitude of his contemporaneous Juan de Torquemada.34 The fact that Muslims were recognised as a part of the progeny of Abraham becomes a half-acknowledgment of their significance in the history of Christian revelation and suggests a hope of redemption. In Cusanus too, the notion of inheritance plays a crucial role. This aspect is even clearer in the following text, taken from Des histoires orientales et principalement des Turkes, published in 1575 by the Frenchman Guillaume Postel. The author, with his unique linguistic skills, is highly representative of the heterodox openness to other faiths permitted by the diplomatic relations developed by Venice and France with the Turks and the Protestant reformers. Postel’s interest in Kabbalah and Islam, cultivated during his stays among the Ottomans and in Venice, has been thoroughly researched. In his Histoires orientales,35 a text which belongs to the histories of Turks, a Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; Nicholas of Cusa and Islam. Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-Tvrtkovic, and Donald Duclow, Leiden: Brill, 2014. 32 See Reinhold F. Glei, “Religious Dialogues and Trialogues in the Middle Ages: A Preliminary Essay”, Medievalia et Humanistica. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, ed. Reinhold F. Glei, Wolfgang Polleichtner and Nina Tomaszewski, Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013, pp. 21–36. 33  I quote and translate from Nicholas of Cusa, Opera omnia, VIII, Cribratio Alkorani, ed. Ludwig Hagemann, Hamburg: Meiner, 1959. 34 See Davide Scotto, “Sulla soglia della ‘Cribratio’: Riflessi dell’Islam nell’esperienza di Niccolò Cusano”, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 45 (2009), pp. 225–81. 35  Guillaume Postel, Des Histoires orientales et principalement des Turkes ou Turchikes et Schitiques ou Tartaresques et aultres qui en sont descendues. Oeuvre pour la tierce fois augmentée, Paris: Impr. de Hierosme de Marnef et Guillaume Cavellat, 1575.

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sub-genre of early modern historiography,36 Postel asserts the so to speak bastard lineage of the ‘Republique des Ismaëlites’, but he also maintains that Abraham loved his two sons equally: ‘il a toujours porté semblable et esgual amour à Ismaël, et à Isaac’. As regards Abraham, he always equally loved Ishmael and Isaac, and this proves that, as far as Abraham’s will is concerned, the whole of the jurisdiction entrusted to him had to be equally [divided] between Isaac and Ishmael, and that is the reason why, when Sarah ordered Ishmael to be expelled and disinherited, Abraham found that extremely evil and painful. However, won by the divine commandment, he obeyed her and banished him. Here it lays the force and the predestination of the body or Church or Republic of the Ishmaelites: the truth is that they have the jurisdiction of Abraham.37

From this quotation, it is possible to infer how the prestige gained by the Ottomans through their military campaigns contributed to a reconsideration of this narrative: their res publica benefits from a ‘force’ and ‘predestination’ granted by Abraham’s ‘jurisdiction.’ Here the juridical terminology of inheritance intertwines with a reference to Abraham’s equal love for both sons, Isaac and Ishmael.38 Juan Andrés’ Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán,39 first published in Valencia in 1515, is interesting for different reasons. This treatise became tremendously influential in sixteenth century Europe, demonstrated by its numerous translations.40 Like Postel, Juan Andrés, who presents himself as a converted morisco, possessed firsthand knowledge of Islamic culture, and his familiarity with it stimulated a new understanding of the narrative. Aside from recycling the medieval genealogical legend, Juan Andrés offers a quite rare 36  See Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008; Agostino Pertusi, Bisanzio e i Turchi nella cultura del Rinascimento e del Barocco, ed. Carlo Maria Mazzucchi, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2004. 37  ‘Quant est à Abraham, il a toujours porté semblable et esgual amour à Ismaël, et à Isaac, parquoy se voit, que, quant est à la volonté d’Abraham, toute la iurisdiction donnée à luy, deuoit estre esgualement entre Isaac et Ismaël, de mode que, quant Sara commanda que ledit Ismaël seust chassé, et desherité, Abraham le trouva tresmauvais et tresdolent, vaincu du divin commandement, luy obeist en le chassant. Icy donc est la force et preordination du corps ou Eglise ou Republique des Ismaëlites, lesquels à la verité ont la iurisdiction dudit Abraham’ (Postel, Des Histoires orientales, p. 17). 38  On De originibus, seu de varia et potissimum orbi latino ad hanc diem incognita, aut inconsyderata historia (1553), another work by Postel, see Linda Bisello, “L’idea di concordia universale in Guillaume Postel (1510–81) tra unità religiosa e linguistica”, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 48 (2012), pp. 579–602: p. 587: ‘Postel introduce la teoria secondo la quale la religione naturale dei musulmani derivi da Abramo, capostipite delle tre religioni monoteiste, la cui sapienza discende a sua volta da quella egizia di natura esoterica. Abramo l’avrebbe trasmessa, dei suoi due figli, a Ismaele (figlio di Abramo e Agar), progenitore degli arabi o ismaeliti: il Corano sarebbe pertanto illuminato da questa ascendenza.’ 39  Juan Andrés, Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán, ed. Elisa Ruiz García and María Isabel García-Monge Carretero, Mérida: Regional de Extremadura, 2003. 40 See Ryan Szpiech, “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos: The Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) by Juan Andrés”, La Corónica, 41 (2012), pp. 317–43.

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summary of traditional Muslim accounts of the narrative. Directly or indirectly, his work played a chief role in the renewal of European interest in Islam. For instance, successful anthologies such as the Alcorano di Macometto, written by Giovanni Battista Castrodardo in 1547, or Francesco Sansovino’s Dell’historia universale dell’origine et imperio de’ Turchi drew on it considerably.41 The following passage is taken from a rudimental Italian translation of the Confusión de la secta mahomética, published in Venice in 1537.42 According to the book that is called Azar, which Moors considered very reliable and in which is contained the entire life of [Mahomet], from his birth to his death, and this is a book whose importance for Moors is comparable to the importance of our lord Jesus Christ’s life among us, the Christians. This book states that Mahomet is born from Ishmael who was born from Abraham and Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah. Because of this Azar, Moors are called Azareni, and they must not be called Saracens, in fact they do not descend from Sarah, legitimate wife of Abraham, but they rather descend from Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid [ancilla], as Genesis xvi–xvii says. The book of Azar tells that Abraham had two sons, one was Isaac, Sarah’s son, the other was Ishmael, Hagar’s son. It also says that Abraham [and] his son Ishmael built the temple of Mecca, that as [the book of ] Azar explains, was called Beytiglieh,43 which means the house of God. Moreover this temple of Mecca is called Beytiglieh alharam,44 that means the house of God, and it is called vietazione [prohibition]45 because Abraham forbade hunting in the territory of Mecca four months every year, so Azar relates, and the idolaters cherished and respected this [custom] as a form of respect for the Idol that they kept in the temple founded in the so called Alcabba tower, and this law is kept and honored to this day by Moors. In the second chapter [sūra] of the Qur’an it is said that this temple of Mecca is the first that was ever built by human beings in the world46 and this is the Arabic text: ine aquele beytin o di ha linnecilel ledi bi-bequete.47

The confusing elements of the passage that derive from translator Domingo de Gaztelu’s lack of familiarity with Arabic are clarified by consulting the original Spanish. However, the Italian translation is worthy of analysis because it adds an apocryphal element to the Islamic narrative. The ‘book that is called Azar’ (Azear in the Spanish original) corresponds to the Arabic al-Sīra, which is a 41 See Pier Mattia Tommasino, L’Alcorano di Macometto. Storia di un libro del Cinquecento europeo, Bologna: il Mulino, 2013. 42  Juan Andrés, Opera chiamata Confusione della setta machumetana, composta in lingua Spagnola, per Giouan Andrea gia Moro & Alfacqui della citta de Sciatiua, hora per la Diuina bontà Christiano e Sacerdote, Tradotta in Italiano, per Domenico Gaztelu Secretario del Illustrissimo Signor Don Lope de Soria Imbasciador Cesareo appresso la Illustrissima Signoria di Venetia, Stampata in Spagna ne la città di Seuiglia [i. e. Venice?], il mese di Marzo 1537, Capitolo primo, p. 6v. 43  Bayt Allāh. 44  Bayt Allāh al-Ḥarām, or Masǧid al-Ḥarām, the mosque surrounding the Ka’ba. 45  Al-Ḥarām, that is the sacred precincts of Mecca. 46  In Q 22:29 the Ka’ba is called al-bayt al-ʿatīq, the ancient house. See Mahmoud Ayoub, The Qur’an and Its Interpreters, Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1992, vol. 2, pp. 257–8. 47  Q 3:96: ‘Inna awwala baytin wuḍi’a lil-nās la-lladhī bi-bakka’, ‘Indeed, the first House (of Prayer) established for mankind is the one at Bakka.’

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traditional biographical genre on the life of the prophet Muḥammad. Andrés specifies that this genre is ‘comparable among us, the Christians, to […] our lord Jesus Christ’s Life.’ A pseudo etymology produced by Domingo de Gaztelu makes of Hagar (Agar in Spanish and Italian) and Azar the same thing and the sobriquet of Muslims, agareni, is implicitly explained as if deriving from the title of this sacred book.48 Setting aside this misunderstanding, the second part of the quotation demonstrates Andrés’ genuine knowledge of the Islamic traditions through accurate transliterations and translations of Qur’anic phrases. Beytiglieh49 stands for bayt Allāh; Beytiglieh al-Haram is the sacred precinct of Mecca and is quite correctly translated by Juan Andrés as ‘Casa de Dios vedada.’ Moreover, the anecdote regarding the Abrahamic origins of the temple of Mecca perfectly corresponds to Koranic and Islamic traditions.50 The antiquity of the temple, ‘the first that was ever built by human beings’, is a widespread Islamic belief that goes back to the Qur’anic verse 3:96, of which the Arabic short text at the end of Andrés’ quotation is a correct transliteration: inna awwala baytin wuḍi’a li-nāsi lalladhī bi-bakka (‘Indeed, the first House established for mankind is the one at Bakka’).51 If, in conformity with a tenacious historiographic notion, some representations of the past tend to depict European attitudes towards the Turks as hostilely onesided, in reality, the rich literature on Islam from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century feeds off and reveals a curiosity that is not only opportunistic, but might also cross into fascination, syncretistic fantasies or even conversion.52 It is in this context that a text like the Confusión de la secta mahomética was received by portions of its readers. 48 This

paraetymology in not uncommon. See, for instance, Filippo Guadagnolo’s Apologia pro christiana religione (1631), where the Liber Agar appears next to the Alchoranus and the Sonna: ‘Si verò dicamus, Christum ex nobilissima ortum progenie, titulus hic nobilitatis ostendet nobilitatem ipsam, nam Christus ortus est ex Maria Virgine, ex progenie Dauid Regis, & Regum omnium Israelis seu Iuda, & ex progenie Sacerdotum, ex Abraham, non pariente ancilla Agar, sed eius domina Sara’ (p. 362). 49  More correctly Beytilleh in the Spanish text. 50  Q 2:125–27. 51  Bakka is an ancient name for Mecca. 52  See Lucia Rostagno, Mi faccio turco. Esperienze e immagini dell’Islam nell’Italia moderna, Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1983. As Giovanni Ricci suggests, it is ‘errata ogni lettura del passato tributaria dei discorsi ufficiali dell’epoca […]. Invece esistevano anche altri discorsi, esistevano altre pratiche non dichiarate, esistevano scambi e ibridazioni di ogni tipo che avvolgevano lo spazio mediterraneo e balcanico’: Appello al Turco. I confini infranti del Rinascimento, Rome: Viella, 2011, p. 11. See also Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee. Corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2009; Francesca Trivellato, “Renaissance Italy and the Muslim Mediterranean in Recent Historical Work”, Journal of Modern History, 82/1 (2010), pp. 127–55. Of particular relevance to the present topic is Alexander Bevilacqua and Helen Pfeifer, “Turquerie: Culture in Motion, 1650–1750”, Past and Present, 221 (2013), pp. 75–118; also Géraud Poumarède, Pour en finir avec la Croisade. Mythes et réalités de la lutte contre les Turcs aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2004.

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Image 1: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as ‘il Guercino.’ Abraham Casting Out Hagar and Ishmael (1657). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Barely visible on the left cheek of Hagar, the trace of a falling tear.

4. Hagar’s Tears and the Doctrine of Affections A primary reason for a radically revised approach to the Biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael is the so-called doctrine of affections and the consequent increase in attention that Baroque aesthetics paid to the ambiguity of the human condition. Hagar’s tears and lamentations in the desert with her dying son represent the suffering and imperfection of this condition: ‘When the water in the skin was gone, [Hagar] put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die”. And as she sat there, she began to sob’. (Gen. 21:15–16). Hagar’s tears emerge as a theme congenial to sixteenth and seventeenth century sacred eloquence and paintings [image 1], with their emphasis on spiritual ‘utilità delle lagrime’ (usefulness of tears).53 As the painter and theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (Milan, 1538–92) remarks in his Trattato dell’arte de la pittura (1584), the scene of Hagar castaway in the 53 Roberto Bellarmino, Del gemito della colomba overo della utilità delle lagrime libri tre, Rome: per Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1617.

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desert is one of the most suitable for the purposes of moving the viewer to pity: ‘Because of pity, the eyes become tearful […] as it is said of […] Hagar, when she sees that her son is suffering from the lack of water’.54 Another quote from the same treatise situates the nature of this fascination in the context of the Baroque interest in the ambiguity of human suffering: ‘we shall start (discussing) melancholy, which makes gestures pensive, dejected and filled with sadness’. The appropriate scenery to set the melancholy tone includes ‘shady trees, or rocks, and caverns surrounded by which also Hagar is to be represented, when she is driven away by Abraham’s wife, while expecting Ishmael’. At the time, Hagar ‘took shelter in a solitary place, and there, head bowed, she started crying, moaning miserably. Then the Angel descended from the sky and in such circumstances comforted her’.55 Lomazzo is a unique figure of Italian Mannerist aesthetics. It is opportune to remark at this point on his contributions to the debate on the notions of grotesque and arabesque56 animated by a fascination with the exotic and often intersecting areas of cultural heterodoxy, contrasting to religious standards emerging from the Council of Trent.57 This deviant interest, not unrelated to the curiosity addressed by ventures in publishing such as the Alcorano di Macometto (1547), overcame the sieve of new aesthetical paradigms enforced in the course of the sixteenth century, as clearly demonstrated in some eclectic pages on Hagar in Athanasius Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–54).58 Lomazzo’s comments on Hagar’s suitability for the aesthetics of affections, with its emphasis on the movere, imply that in his time the fortunes of Hagar 54  Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, Milan: Appresso Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1584, Book II, Chap. XII, De i moti dell’honore, commandamento, nobiltà, magnanimità, liberalità, eccellenza, benignità, discretione, allegrezza, et pietà, pp. 144–5. 55  Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, Book II, Chap. IX, De i moti de la melancolia, timidità, malignità, auaritia, tardità, inuidia, rossezza, et ansietà, p. 128: ‘cominciando dalla melancolia ella fa gl’atti pensosi, mesti, & colmi di tristezza […] frà sassi, & cauerne doue si porrebbe ancora Agar, quando grauida d’Ismael scacciata dalla moglie di Abraam, si era ricouerata in loco solitario, & iui tutta dolente se nè staua piangendo, & lagnandosi co’l capo chino, sin che l’Angelo scese dal Cielo à confortarla in tali sembianti’. 56  In addition to the arabesque manifesto of Lomazzo’s academy, Rabisch dra Academiglia dor Compa Zavargna, Nabad Dra Vall D’Bregn, Milan: per Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1589 (Dante Isella, Rabisch. Giovan Paolo Lomazzo e i Facchini della Val di Blenio, Turin: Einaudi, 1993), see his Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, chapter XLVIII, Compositione de le grottesche, pp. 422–5. 57  Insightful are Dante Isella’s considerations on Lomazzo’s circle in Lombardia stravagante: Testi e studi dal Quattrocento al Seicento tra lettere e arti, Turin: Einaudi, 2005. 58  Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus aegyptiacus: Hoc est Uniuersalis hierolglyphicae veterum doctrinae temporum iniuria abolitae instauratio. Opus ex omni orientalium doctrina & sapientia conditum, nec non viginti diuersarium linguarum, authoritate stabilitum, felicibus auspicijs Ferdinandi III, Austriaci sapientissimi & inuictissimi Romanorum imperatoris semper Augisto è tenebris erutum, atque bono reipublicae literariae conseoratum, Rome: Ex typographia Vitalis Mascardi, 1652[–54], t. 1, s. III, Venus Aphacitis, Anaitis, Cabar, pp. 345–53. This work is to be considered in the context of Barberini’s patronage, in relation to which Hagar’s narrative experiences a second wave of reconsideration, both from a figurative and an antiquary point of view.

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had already undergone a considerable transformation when compared to the late antique and medieval patterns of exegesis and representation, in which, albeit with some significant exceptions, negative tones were generally prevalent. In effect, we could find analogous commitment to the aesthetics of affections in countless works including the preface to the Quadrins historiques de la Bible (1550),59 a popular collection of woodcuts commissioned from the engraver Bernard Salomon by the successful Protestant printer Jean de Tournes in Lyon.60 Claude Paradin, the author of the quatrains,61 repeats in his preface the main tenets of Ut pictura poesis. Although his argument seems to fit stereotypical images of Counter-Reformist audiences, in reality, the lines of aesthetic sensitivity appear blurred: they ignore clear-cut confessional borders. Those people who have the finest judgment about all things […] have written how Painting and Poetry are in such contraction and contiguity of common affinity that, they say, Painting is mute Poetry and Poetry is speaking Painting. The one is the body, the other is the soul. Because in truth, the one and the other have almost the same effect and quality. Since both please, delight, console and dispose the spirit toward virtuous things: and moreover they can move the passions and affections, with such great intensity that it is impossible to find more ardent and affecting needles, as those that incite unto death.62

The quatrains, short lyric stanzas that accompany and comment on each engraving, still echo many features of a predominantly negative representation of Hagar and her son. For example, the first quatrain about Hagar states that when she knew she was pregnant, she despised (‘mesprisa’) her mistress (Gen. 59  Several new editions and translations followed the first one. See Anne E. B. Coldiron, Printers Without Borders. Translation and Textuality in the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 107. I quote from Claude Paradin, Quadrins historiques de la Bible, rev. and augm. d’un grand nombre de figures par Bernard Salomon, Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1555. 60  Peter Sharratt, Bernard Salomon, illustrateur lyonnais, Geneva: Droz, 2005. See Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces. True, False, Fictive, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2012: ‘Salomon […] frequently used a five-pointed star as a signature’, p. 245, fn. 10. Jean de Tournes resorted to Salomon also for the illustration of André Thevet’s Cosmographie de Levant, Lyon: Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau, 1554. André Thevet participated in the embassy to Suleiman the Magnificent of Gabriel d’Aramon, French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1546 to 1553. 61  Claude Paradin (brother of Guillaume, a more prolific writer) was born in Cuiseaux (Saône-et-Loire). In addition to the Quadrins historiques de la Bible (1553), he published two other works, both also printed in Lyons by Jean de Tournes (a distinguished publisher specializing in illustrated and emblematic works), the Devises heroïques (1551), that became extremely influential throughout Europe, and the Alliances genealogiques des rois et princes de Gaule (1561). 62 ‘Ceus qui ont assiz bon iugement sur toutes choses […] ont escrit la Peinture & la Poësie avoir telle contraccion & contrectacion d’afinité ensemble, qu’ils disent la Peinture estre muette Poësie: & aussi la Poësie estre Peinture parlante. L’une est le corps, & l’autre est l’ame. Et à la verité l’une & l’autre ont quasi un mesme efet & proprieté. Atendu que toutes deus resiouissent, repaissent, consolent, & animent l’esprit à choses vertueuses : & d’avantage peuuent esmouuoir les passions & affections, avec si grande vehemence, qu’il est impossible de pouvuoir trouuer plus ardans & afeccionnez aguillons, que ceus qui incitent à la mort.’

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16:4), and the quatrain corresponding to Gen. 21 describes Ishmael ‘qui s’esbat avec son fils Isaac trionfant’ (‘struggles with Isaac, her triumphant son’).63 Yet, while Paradin’s poesis embodies a conservative reading of the story, Salomon’s pictura shows a more nuanced and sympathetic attitude. The engraver makes apparent the complexity of Hagar’s personality by combining in the same frame two consecutive segments of the story [image 2]. On the right half, the great feast on the day of Isaac’s weaning (Gen. 21:9–10), when Sarah, upset by seeing that Ishmael is playing with her son Isaac, demands that Abraham drive out Hagar and her son: ‘No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac!’64 On the left half of the same engraving, Abraham casts Hagar and Ishmael away. This juxtaposition is unsettling, because it draws attention to the contrast between the festive scene of the banquet and the loneliness of the exile. The scene of the banishment is reproduced again and again in Dutch and German iconographic tradition. However, a visual element that differentiates Salomon’s composition from most of previous and contemporary testimonies is the torsion of Hagar’s body: while setting out, she looks back at Abraham, taking a loaf of bread from his hand. Her stylized figure shows a hint of melancholic deference, almost as if acquiescent to the order of her master. Hagar’s moral complexity is substantiated by two other images [3 and 4], where the artist represents the epiphanies of an angel in front of the woman. In fact, later pictorial tradition will favour these scenes because they encapsulate the theme of the tears (of Hagar and Ishmael), central to Baroque rhetoric.65 The contrast between aesthetic compassion and confessional starkness is a fundamental component of the rediscovery of Hagar as a subject in the early modern period. In fact, the visits of the angel are problematic to most of the exegetical tradition, because they 63  The same kind of contempt can be found in Damiano Maraffi’s octaves that replace Paradin’s quatrains in Jean de Tournes’ Italian edition of the text. See Figure del Vecchio Testamento, con versi toscani, per Damian Maraffi nuovamente composti, illustrate, Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1554. For instance, the final two couplets commenting on Gen. 16 say: Hagar ‘Qui partorì dopo poco Ismaello / Agl’huomin auuersario, e à Dio rubello.’ 64  Hebrew commentaries quoted by Christian Biblicists in 16th and 17th century disagree on the interpretation of the Hebrew word məṣaḥêq (ludum), that is problematic in this context as it does not imply any negative attitude because of which Ishmael is to be chastised. Ishmael was ‘playing’ with his brother and Abraham was enjoying the scene. When recounting the episode of the banquet, the Book of Jubilees (or Leptogenesis), text belonging to the HebrewChristian tradition, takes the side of Ishmael, while pointing at Sarah’s jealousy. However, most of the tradition translates the Hebrew word with more expressive and cruel terms, in order to make sense of Hagar’s expulsion from Abraham’s house. For instance, Paul (Gal. 4:29) says: ‘qui secundum carnem natus fuerat persequebatur eum qui secundum spiritum ita et nunc’ (Vulgata). See Carol Bakhos, The Family of Abraham. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Interpretations, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 18–20. See also Andrea Celli, “Emblemi islamo-cristiani. L’Agar secundo exul di Baudouin Cabilliau (1642)”, Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’Islam nell’Europa mediterranea, ed. Andrea Celli and Davide Scotto, pp. 645–69: pp. 665–6. 65  See Jean-Loup Charvet, L’éloquence des larmes, Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2000.

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Image 2: Claude Paradin, Quadrins historiques de la Bible, à Lyon: par Jean de Tournes, 1553 [etching by Bernard Salomon], p. 43. On the right, the «convivium in die ablactationis» (with Isaac being attacked by his brother Ishmael in the foreground). On the left, the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael (Gen 21). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Image 3: Claude Paradin, Quadrins historiques de la Bible, à Lyon: par Jean de Tournes, 1553 [etching by Bernard Salomon], p. 43. The first visit of the angel at Bir Lahai-roi (Gen 16: 14). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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Image 4: Claude Paradin, Quadrins historiques de la Bible, à Lyon: par Jean de Tournes, 1553 [etching by Bernard Salomon], p. 43. The second visit of the angel in the wilderness of Beersheba (Gen. 21:17–19). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

suggest the existence of a special preference accorded by God to the Egyptian slave, and her son. For instance, Tommaso de Vio, known as Cardinal Cajetan, a very influential Biblicist who dared to liken Hagar to the Virgin Mary (both women ‘having been greeted by the angel’), was bitterly criticized by his Roman Catholic readers.66 Salomon’s woodcuts had a remarkable diffusion in Europe, in close relation to the phenomenon of illustrated Bibles.67 What is more, Salomon’s work has been recognised as the closest source of a cycle of frescoes in the Vatican Tower of the Winds, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII (1572–85).68 I am inclined to consider this group of frescoes with Old Testament Patriarchs, attributed to the Flemish Matthijs Bril, as a turning point in Counter-Reformist 66  On Cajetan’s sympathetic approach to Hagar and Ishmael, mainly based on Hebrew commentaries to the Bible, see Thompson, Writing the Wrongs, pp. 70–3 (‘Cardinal Cajetan: Hagar the Pious’). 67  See Max Engammare, “Les fonctions pédagogiques des Figures de la Bible du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle”, Catéchismes et confessions de foi. Actes du VIIIe colloque Jean Boisset, actes du XIIIe colloque du Centre d’histoire des réformes et du protestantisme de l’Université de Montpellier, ed. Michel Péronnet and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 1995, pp. 313–70. 68 Nicola Courtright, The Papacy and the Art of Reform in Sixteenth-Century Rome. Gregory XIII’s Tower of the Winds in the Vatican, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 105– 8. I am grateful to the author who shared with me some comments on this point in the form of private communication.

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Image 5: Matthijs Bril. Abraham dismissing Hagar and Ishmael; Personification of Tempered Justice (1580–82). Fresco. Tower of the Winds, Vatican. Photo © Musei Vaticani.

Image 6: Matthijs Bril. Hagar and Ishmael succoured by the Angel in the wilderness; Personification of the Baptism (1580–82). Fresco. Tower of the Winds, Vatican. Photo © Musei Vaticani.

treatments of Hagar’s narrative, because of the historical circumstances and the authoritative nature of the client who commissioned the work. The cycle includes a scene that shows Abraham dismissing Hagar and Ishmael, followed by a personification of Tempered Justice [image 5] and a scene that shows Hagar and Ishmael succoured by the Angel in the wilderness, followed by a personification of the Baptism [image 6].

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As Nicola Courtright has convincingly argued, the meaningful use of these two allegories (Tempered Justice and Baptism) can be understood in the context of the multiple challenges Tridentine Rome faced at the time. Pope Gregory  XIII’s attitude toward the Reformation as well as toward Islam was unquestionably heavy-handed.69 However, his papacy also responded to contemporary challenges to Roman authority with an ambitious program of cultural renovation, aimed at reaffirming the universal (Catholic) mission of Rome. We cannot overlook the fact that, while the Pope was tireless in his diplomatic and financial efforts toward military campaigns against Protestants and Otto­ mans, his initiatives aimed at expanding the influence of Catholicism in lands under Islamic rule and throughout the entire globe; from America to the Philippines and Japan, were equally vigorous and perhaps more successful. The foundation of the so-called Stamperia Orientale Medicea (1584–1614) is emblematic of this strategy.70 Under the initial patronage of Gregory XIII, the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici71 entrusted the project to the orientalist Giovan Battista Raimondi. Raimondi’s main goal was to compose a Polyglot Bible, to which end he availed himself of a team that included, among others,  See Agostino Borromeo, “Gregorio XIII”, Enciclopedia dei papi, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2000, vol. 3, pp. 180–202, and its bibliography. Limited is the literature on Gregory XIII’s attitude toward Ottomans and Muslims. See Bernard Vincent, “Les jésuites et l’Islam méditerranéen”, Chretiens et Musulmans à la Renaissance. Actes du 37e Colloque International du CESR (1994), ed. Bartolomé Bennassar and Robert Sauzet, Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998, pp. 519–31. 70  See Josée Balagna, L’imprimerie arabe en occident (XVI e, XVII e et XVIII e siècles), Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1984, pp. 34–41; Sara Fani and Margherita Farina, Le vie delle lettere. La Tipografia medicea tra Roma e l’Oriente, Florence: Mandragora, 2012; Alberto Pinto, La tipografia medicea orientale, Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1987. 71  Ferdinando himself is representative of a complex (almost schizophrenic) attitude toward Islam and other faiths. As a cardinal, he promoted the ambitious endeavours of the Oriental Typography, an offspring of his antiquarian itches; when he became Grand Duke of Tuscany, he became a supporter of military campaigns undertaken by Philip III of Spain in Algeria and by the Austrian Augsburg’ against the Ottomans. The ‘Four Moors Statue’ in Livorno commemorates posthumously his official image. However he simultaneously undertook the development of Livorno as an open and tolerant port-city, and to this end promulgated the so called ‘Costituzione livornina,’ (1593), that allowed any nation (and community of faith) to install themselves in Livorno: ‘Il Serenissimo Gran Duca […] a tutti Voi Mercanti di qualsivoglia Nazione, Levantini, Ponentini, Spagnuoli, Portughesi, Grechi, Tedeschi, Italiani, Ebrei, Turchi, Mori, Armeni, Persiani, dicendo ad ognuno di essi salute […] per il suo desiderio di accrescere l’animo a forestieri di venire a frequentare lor traffichi, merchantie nella sua diletta Città di Pisa e Porto e scalo di Livorno con habitarvi, sperandone habbia a resultare utile a tutta Italia, nostri sudditi e massime a poveri,’ Documento che invita i mercanti ebrei a stabilirsi in Livorno e Pisa (Costituzione Livornina), Shoenberg Collection – Manuscript Number: ljs379, Center For Electronic Text & Image, University Library of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, ed. Massimiliano Zattera, Claudio Paganelli and the Distributed Proofreaders Europe team (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19688/19688–8.txt) [download 26. 6. ​2018]. See Christopher Pastore, “Bipolar Behavior: Ferdinando I de’ Medici and the East”, The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750. Visual Imagery Before Orientalism, ed. James G. Harper, Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 129–54. 69

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Paolo Orsini, a converted Turk; Guglielmo Africano, a Tunisian neophyte, and the Andalusian Diego de Guadix.72 The Arabic translation of the Gospels (1591), completed by Raimondi with drawings by Antonio Tempesta, was the first outcome of this ambitious typographical endeavour.73 However, it has been often noted that part of the Medicean catalogue reflects a strong humanistic interest rather than solely evangelical goals. After the Gospels, they published Avicenna’s Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (1593),74 and al-Ṭūsī’s version of Euclid’s Elements (1594).75 An intricate network of converts from many regions of the Mediterranean, spokespersons of Eastern and Egyptian Christianity, missionaries, Jesuits with a Jewish background, polyglot humanists and travellers linked Rome to the Islamic world and gave substance to the initiatives promoted by the papacy.76 It is a feature intrinsic to early modern Republic of Letters, both Catholic and Protestant, to pair philological, humanistic and scientific curiosity to apologetic concerns. Yet, the Roman Church kept such dynamics under strict supervision, associating Catholic universalism to an elitist control of symbols and their circulation. It is in this context that we must look upon Matthijs Bril’s cycle of frescoes in the Vatican’s Tower of the Winds. The author of the frescoes, certainly familiar with a blooming German and Dutch tradition of images illustrating Hagar and Ishmael in distress, found himself in charge of a significant task: he had to translate a set of scenes reflecting theological preoccupations specific to reformed mercantile milieus into a Roman-Catholic context centred on aristocratic magniloquence and universalistic ambitions. Paradoxical as it might sound, a sympathetic manner of painting the story of Hagar comes to Rome from an increasingly protestant Northern Europe. Rome, however, is the place where this 72  De Guadix is a particularly interesting figure since he may have played some important role in the episode of the so-called Lead Books of Sacromonte, a forgery that is to be understood in the context of late moriscos’ Granada and the effort to conciliate moriscos’ identity with the new Catholic environment. See Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism, Leiden: Brill, 2013, p. 361. 73 Evangelium Sanctum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi conscriptum a quatuor evangelistis sanctis id est Matthaeo, Marco, Luca, et Johanne, Rome: Typographia Medicea, 1591. Antonio Tempesta was associated to Matthijs Bril’s team. He realized some etchings portraying the story of Hagar and Ishmael, as part of a series of illustration of the First Testament. 74  Kitāb al-Qānūn fī al-ţibb li-Abū [sic] ‘Alī al-[Ra’īs] Ibn Sīnā – Libri quinque canonis medicinae, Rome: Typographia Medicea, 1593. See Sara Fani and Margherita Farina, Le vie delle lettere, pp. 172–3. 75  Kitāb taḥrīr uṣūl li-Ūqlīdis, Rome: Typographia Medicea, 1594. See Sara Fani and Margherita Farina, Le vie delle lettere, pp. 182–6. 76 An iconic example of this is the Gregorian reform of the calendar, with which figures such as the Jesuit Christopher Clavius and Ignatius Nehemias – former Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church before his forced resignation in 1576 and exile in Italy – collaborated. See Eberhard Knobloch, “The Knowledge of Arabic Mathematics by Clavius”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 12 (2002), pp. 257–84; George Saliba, “Embedding Scientific Ideas as a Mode of Science Transmission”, A Shared Legacy. Islamic Science East and West, ed. Emilia Calvo et al., Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2008, pp. 193–213: pp. 199–212.

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story is reinterpreted in accordance with post-Tridentine stances and acquires new meanings.77 Here Hagar’s story finds official recognition78 in relation to the idea of a Tempered Justice that is virtue of a victorious Church. As Nicola Courtright79 has inferred, the fact that Bril depicts Hagar accepting Abraham’s offer of a pitcher of water, rather than showing her back to him and walking away as in many previous illustrations of the episode of her banishment, may be an allegory for reconciliation with other faiths promoted by the papacy at this time. Indeed, the personification of Justice, in the form of a deity with a veiled sword, suggests a spirit of forgiveness and concord, under the aegis of baptism.80 Abraham’s attitude and the merciful succour of the Angel perhaps stand as symbols of Rome’s superior disposition to clemency. Thus, the execution of Bril’s cycle of frescos, commissioned by a pope driven by universalist ambitions, might be considered the first attempt to depict Hagar sympathetically in CounterReformist Italy. Thenceforth, Hagar and Ishmael would become a major theme in paintings and drawings of the Counter-Reformation. The iconographical valorization of Hagar’s story is widespread and multiform: Hagar appears in paintings as a hopeless mother, a fugitive, a humiliated and desperate exile, recipient of divine mercy. The image of Hagar’s tears becomes complex in pictorial examples, characterized by a variety of attitudes and nuances.81 However, it is a symbol whose circulation is mostly limited to aristocratic milieus, as demonstrated in its success as the subject of seventeenth century oratorios.82 It is also significant that, while Hagar and Ishmael are routinely associated with Turks, moriscos, Protestants, and Jews by apologetic authors (as I have 77  As the Portuguese theorist Francisco de Hollanda reports in the first of his Quatro dialogos da pintura antigua (1548), when Vittoria Colonna tells Michelangelo that Flemish paintings seem to her more devout than those in the Italian manner, her interlocutor replies: ‘A pintura de Frandes […] satisfará geralmente a qualquer devoto, mais que nenhuma de Italia, que lhe nunca fará chorar uma só lagrima e a de Frandes muitas; isto não polo vigor e bondade d’aquela pintura, mas pola bondade d’aquele tal devoto’ (Joaquim de Vasconcelos, Qvatro dialogos da pintvra antigva. Francisco de Hollanda, Migvel Angelo, Vittoria Colonna, Lattanzio Tolomei, interlocvtores em Roma, Porto: Joaquim de Vasconcellos, 1896, pp. 10–1). See Nicola Courtright, The Papacy and the Art of Reform, p. 108. 78  Significantly, Hagar’s theme was still avoided in the so-called ‘Raffaello’s Bible’, an earlier series of frescos representing histories from the Old Testament in the cycle known as Vatican Raffaello Loggias, completed within the first quarter of the sixteenth century. This possibly means that Hagar became an available theme only in the course of the century. 79  Courtright, The Papacy and the Art of Reform, p. 186. 80 Courtright, The Papacy and the Art of Reform, p. 125. Hagar in this case represents Protestants and Easter Christian communities rather than Muslims or Jews. 81 An analysis of the expressions and proxemics of the figures represented in the paintings will be part of a chapter currently in preparation. 82  See Celli, Crisi di coppia con concubina e figli. I have identified three major clusters of ‘rehabilitation’ of Hagar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the first one revolves around the papacy of Gregory XIII; the second one around Urban VIII (Barberini); the third around Innocent X (Pamphili).

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demonstrated above), figurative representations of Hagar are seldom accompanied by signs unveiling interreligious references.83 The symbol must be kept locked up and carefully deployed, because it contains perilous references to the merciful plan of God that includes even the people who are outside the Church, the foes of the Church.84 Significantly, Claude Lorrain, who echoes Bril’s Hagar in his interpretations of the same subject, decentralizes the story: At the very centre of his paintings lays a mysteriously monumental landscape.85

5. Conclusions The Counter-Reformist Cinquecento witnessed a radical metamorphosis of the approach to the Hagar narrative, consecrating the sufferings of Hagar and Ishmael as symbols of redemption and divine mercy. Artists, composers and oratorio writers such as Francesco Solimena, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Preti, Benedetto Panfili and Domenico de Totis, or ecclesiastic polymaths such as Antonio Vieira, or François de Sales, offered sometimes surprising re-readings of the narrative. They each contributed to preparations for the later establishment of the idea of an Abrahamic family, capable of connecting a plurality of people and faiths previously characterized by mutual denial. This might seem to stand in contrast to idées reçues about Counter-Reformist culture based on an assumption of homogeneity in attitudes toward other confessions in post-Tridentine milieus. However, when we take into account the distinct treatments of this story and its puzzling transformation into a positive 83  One of the few exceptions is Johann Israel de Bry’s Acta Mechmeti I. Saracenorum Principis (1597), a best-selling history of Islam, from ‘Mehmet I’ (the prophet Muḥammad) to the Ottoman sultan Mehmet III (1595–1603). The first page of the treatise is occupied by a drawing of the banishment of Hagar. See Celli, “Emblemi islamo-cristiani”, p. 655. This work aimed at appealing to European fascination with the Ottomans: ‘Ne verò nudam tantum historiam proponeremus, compluribus eam elegantioribusque Iconibus & picturis exornauimus’ (Acta Mechmeti, 2v). 84  This theme is explicitly mentioned by a Franciscan writer, François Bonal, in his Le chrestien du temps, en quatre parties, Lyon: François Comba, 1667: ‘Cela ne veut-il pas dire […] que Dieu est le premier père des créatures délaissées, et des mères sans consolation et des enfants sans secours [?] S’il est obligeant envers le fils de la mère libre, il n’est pas cruel pourtant à celui de la mère esclave. S’il écoute les prières et la dévotion du peuple fidèle qui suit implorer son saint nom, il ne dédaigne point l’ignorance et l’aveuglement des nations infidèles qui ne connaissent point les mystères de son culte ni les secrets de sa révélation.’ I quote from Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, t. 1, L’humanisme dévot (1580–1660), Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1916, pp. 416–7. This quotation is part of a comment on Gen. 21 and the ‘salut des infidèles’. Contemporary ecumenical usages of the idea of Abrahamic religions are a way out of the notion of ‘extra Ecclesiam nulla salus’ (still valid until the Second Vatican Council). 85  Courtright, The Papacy and the Art of Reform, p. 176. See also Claude Lorrain 1600–1682, ed. Helen Diane Russell, Washington D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1982.

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emblem of redemption and salvation, the plurality of contradicting tensions operating from within post-Reformist societies and their institutions become apparent: between Rome and Spain, between papacy and Roman aristocracy, between low clergy and inquisitorial apparatus. Certainly, in many apologetic writings, the mother and her son remained identified with ostracized groups and contemporary foes, such as Turks, moriscos, Jews, and Protestants. Yet, there are multiple signs of a parallel reconsideration of the pair as they are rescued by an angel who announces that, ‘God was with the child’ (Gen. 21:20). The interplay of tensions and opposing needs found articulation in distinct uses of Hagar’s narrative. At a doctrinal and institutional level, post-Reformist societies expressed a demand for conformism and homogeneity. Yet, multiple factors contributed to a new understanding of the narrative: 1) the legacy of humanism, and a new philological approach to sacred texts, combined with an increasing acquaintance with Hebrew commentaries and Arabic sources, resulted in toning down one-sided representations of the story; 2) the universalist ambition of Catholicism could not avoid questioning the place of Ishmael in God’s impenetrable plan of salvation. Why was God on his side? 3) tensions and diverging attitudes toward other communities of faith among different sectors of Roman Catholicism could only be articulated in a very indirect way, and the story of Hagar was particularly suited to this purpose; 4) baroque aesthetics, that is, the doctrine of affections, recognized in Hagar’s sufferings an elective theme. This very same narrative also afforded an opportunity for marginalized communities to perform their identities in disguise.86 The early modern revaluation of Hagar is part of a process of thinking in pictures. Verbalization is rare and is generally oblique. Through this subterranean labour, symbols and allegories lived and circulated. And Counter-Reformist culture tested this way the limits of its theological foundations.

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Models of Knowledge and the Impact of Secularization on Interfaith Coexistence Implications of Religious Transfer in Modern Times

Modernisierung des Judentums durch Wissenschaft und der Rekurs auf den Islam Moritz Steinschneider, Ignác Goldziher, Shlomo Pines Ottfried Fraisse Die Rede von der Modernisierung des Judentums meint gewöhnlich eine Erfolgsgeschichte: Dass es den europäischen Juden beginnend mit der jüdischen Aufklärung (Haskala) gelungen sei, ihre religiösen Traditionen in die Ratio der westlichen Gesellschaften einzupassen. Diese Wahrnehmung basiert auf dem Wissens‑ und Kulturbegriff der Aufklärung, welche sowohl von der Universalität ihres Wissensbegriffs ausging, also auch die überregional und vielsprachig geprägten Traditionen im Judentum nicht als eine eigenständige Kultur wahrnehmen konnte.1 Die Gewalt, welche dieses Modernisierungsverständnis auf die jüdischen Traditionen ausgeübt hat, haben jedoch bestimmte Autoren der wissenschaftspolitischen Bewegung der „Wissenschaft des Judentums“ scharf erkannt. Meine These lautet, dass sie bevorzugt am Gegenstand des Islam – wenn auch weitgehend unausgesprochen  – über die Möglichkeit einer Alternative zum essentialistischen Kulturbegriff der Aufklärung nachgedacht haben. Das Ziel, neben der Ratio der westlichen Gesellschaften Raum für die Ratio der jüdischen Traditionen zu schaffen, ohne sich in die im 19. Jahrhundert populär werdenden nationalen oder völkischen Kulturbegriffe zu flüchten, führte bei 1  Der Kulturbegriff der Aufklärung wurde wesentlich durch Johann Gottfried Herder geprägt. In seinen Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–1791) entwickelt Herder die Vorstellung einer Kultur als einer autonomen geographischen und sprachlichen Insel. Da jüdische Kulturen sich kaum durch geographische Umgrenzung und sprachliche Reinheit definieren lassen, war es durchaus „folgerichtig“, wenn Herder aufgrund seines Kulturbegriffs die Juden „als parasitische Pflanze, die sich beinahe allen europäischen Nationen angehängt und mehr oder minder von ihrem Safte an sich gezogen hat“ charakterisierte (Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, vierter Teil, Stuttgart und Tübingen: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1828, S. 39). Dieselbe Idee der Reinheit und Ausgrenzung spiegelt sich in dem zeitgenössischen autonomen Wissensbegriff. Vgl. Hartmut Böhme und Gernot Böhme, Das Andere der Vernunft. Zur Entwicklung von Rationalitätsstrukturen am Beispiel Kants, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1985, u. a. Kap. IV „Der Kampf der Vernunft mit der Einbildungskraft“. Es bedarf keiner besonderen Hervorhebung, dass sowohl der angesprochene Wissens‑ als auch Kulturbegriff in der westlichen Öffentlichkeit weiterhin präsent sind.

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bestimmten Autoren der „Wissenschaft des Judentums“ zum Entwurf einer  – anachronistisch gesprochen  – kulturanthropologisch fundierten Theorie der Transkulturalität.2 Moritz Steinschneider, Ignác Goldziher und Shlomo Pines haben nacheinander die Idee von einer universalen Kultur als parteiisch entlarvt, indem sie die Abhängigkeit jeder Kultur von der Entwicklung ihrer Sprache wie auch der soziologischen Dynamiken ihrer Gesellschaft nachgewiesen haben. Die Ausführungen im Folgenden möchten einige analytische Ansätze dieser drei Autoren zu einem Kulturverständnis vorstellen, welches für die jüdischen Traditionen weniger präskriptiv gewesen wäre. Die Frage, warum jene Forscher der „Wissenschaft des Judentums“ gerade mit Hilfe des Islam hierüber nachgedacht haben  – tatsächlich hat seit dem Mittelalter das westliche Judentum wiederholt mit Hilfe des Islam über seine Selbstentwicklung nachgedacht – kann hier nur gestreift werden.3

1. Haskala und Wissenschaft des Judentums: Zwei unterschiedliche Wissensbegriffe Gewöhnlich hat der Begriff der Modernisierung des Judentums einen politischen Bedeutungskontext und meint etwa die Öffnung des Judentums gegenüber dem westlichen Lebensstil, die Reorganisation der jüdischen Traditionen im Sinne einer religiösen Konfession oder auch die Bildungsbewegung der jüdischen 2  Der sich seit den sechziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts etablierende Forschungsansatz der Cultural Studies hat eine Vielzahl von Kulturtheorien entstehen lassen. Wegen der Fruchtbarkeit dieses Forschungsansatzes spricht man auch von einem Cultural Turn mit seinem Höhepunkt in den achtziger Jahren (vgl. Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, Hamburg: Rowohlt, 52014). Der Cultural Turn meint ein Sich-Abwenden von der ausschließlichen Erforschung der sogenannten Hochkulturen der Eliten und eine Hinwendung zu einem kultursoziologischen Verständnis der Alltagskulturen. So rückte etwa das praktische Handeln als Ebene der Herstellung von Bedeutung ins Blickfeld (performative turn). Neben der Kultursoziologie kamen auch Elemente aus Methoden der Kulturanthropologie, den Kommunikationswissenschaften und den Literaturwissenschaften zum Einsatz. Der Kulturbegriff der Transkulturalität entstammt diesem Forschungsansatz und wurde zuletzt von dem Philosophen Wolfgang Welsch (Magdeburg/Stanford) weiterentwickelt. Er versteht Kultur bewusst niederschwellig als „geteilte Lebenspraxis“  – ein Kulturverständnis, welches er dem pragmatischen Kulturbegriff Ludwig Wittgensteins entnommen hat. Die Transkulturalität möchte insbesondere die mannigfaltigen Überschneidungen und Übergänge zwischen unterschiedlichen Lebensformen in ihrer Dynamik besser verstehen. Sie geht davon aus, dass Kultur immer schon Strategien kennt, mit dem Fremden – innerhalb der Gesellschaft, aber auch im Individuum – produktiv zu leben. Nach diesem Verständnis ist Kultur wesentlich transkulturell orientiert, weshalb alle sprachlich, ethnisch oder nationalstaatlich begründeten Homogenitätsansprüche an Bedeutung verlieren. Dies ist der Grund, warum sich der Kulturbegriff der Transkulturalität insbesondere für die Erforschung der jüdischen Kulturen anbietet. 3  Yossef Schwartz, „Jewish Orientalism Pre-Modern and Modern: Epochal Variations of Cultural Hybridity“, Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam in Context. Rationality, European Borders, and the Search for Belonging, hrsg. v. Ottfried Fraisse, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, S. 31–59.

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Aufklärung. Während aus dieser politischen Blickrichtung die Haskala und ihre Nachfolgebewegung, die Wissenschaft des Judentums, als ein Kontinuum erscheinen, ändert sich das Verhältnis von Haskala und Wissenschaft des Judentums, wenn sie aufgrund ihrer jeweiligen Wissensbegriffe verglichen werden. Verallgemeinernd kann man sagen, dass die Wissenschaft des Judentums auf den Wissensbegriff der Haskala kritisch reagiert hat und damit auf eine Auffassung von Modernisierung, in welcher dem Judentum ein vor allem reaktiver Part zukommt. Dagegen wird auf einer wissenssoziologischen Ebene, welche die Wissenschaft auch als eine Funktion der modernen, westlichen Gesellschaft versteht, nicht nur eine kritische Haltung der Wissenschaft des Judentums gegenüber einer unidirektional verlaufenden Vorstellung von der Modernisierung der jüdischen Kulturen, sondern auch gegenüber der Moderne selbst erkennbar. Erst ein Verständnis der konzeptionellen Radikalität der Wissenschaft des Judentums gegenüber der Haskala lässt – so meine These – das spezifische Interesse der Wissenschaft des Judentums am Islam erkennbar werden. Die jüdische Aufklärung war wie die allgemeine Aufklärung eine Bildungsbewegung. Das jedermann und jederfrau zugerufene sapere aude, wage dich deines Verstandes zu bedienen, galt für sie beide. Es wäre aber voreilig, wenn man auch das Verhältnis beider Bewegungen zur Religion ineinssetzen würde. Während erstere Bildungsbewegung ein ambivalentes Verhältnis zur Religion hatte  – z. T. ablehnend-kritisch, z. T. affirmativ  – war die Haskala durchweg positiv gegenüber der Religion eingestellt, wie Christoph Schulte festgestellt hat: „Die Haskala war eine religionsnahe und religionsfreundliche Aufklärung“.4 Das Projekt der jüdischen Aufklärer, der Maskilim, war die Aufklärung des Juden als Juden und nicht etwa als Mensch oder Bürger. Dies gilt auch für die nachfolgende Bewegung, die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Auch sie will die Religion nicht säkularisieren, sondern reinterpretieren. Gemessen an ihrem veränderten Wissensbegriff markiert die Wissenschaft des Judentums aber auch eine radikale Zäsur gegenüber der Haskala. Was den Wissensbegriff betrifft, war die Position der Haskala, neben dem Torastudium auch externes, nicht-jüdisches Wissen gelten zu lassen. Dabei wurde das Verhältnis zwischen dem partikularen auf Offenbarung beruhenden Wissen und dem universalen Wissensbegriff der Wissenschaft, allgemein gesprochen, als ein Kompromiss gehandhabt: (offenbarte) Tora und Wissenschaft. Um ein Beispiel zu geben: Mendelssohn hatte die westeuropäischen Juden mit nicht-jüdischem Wissen, mit Kant und Sokrates, bekannt gemacht; wenn er aber nicht mehr die Offenbarung, sondern die natürliche Vernunft zum Träger der religiösen Wahrheit des Judentums macht, gerät die partikulare Form der jüdischen Religion, an der Mendelssohn fraglos festhielt, in Rechfertigungsnöte. Wie kann man an der Existenzberechtigung einer (jüdischen) Partikularität festhalten, die sich einem dem Anspruch nach  Christoph Schulte, Die jüdische Aufklärung, München: C. H. Beck, 2002, S. 43.

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universalen Wahrheitsbegriffs bereits unterworfen hat? Es war genau diese Argumentationslücke, in die der Schweizer Theologe Johann Lavater 1769 stieß, als er mit Mendelssohn in einen öffentlichen Briefwechsel eintrat und ihn aufforderte, seine philosophischen Beweise für das Christentum zu widerlegen. Sollte ihm das nicht gelingen, müsse er wegen der universalen Kraft des philosophischen Arguments zum Christentum übertreten. Die abschließende Antwort Mendelssohns war seine Schrift Jerusalem oder über die religiöse Macht und Judenthum (1783). Mendelssohn beharrte auf der Verankerung der Tora als „göttlichem Buch“ in den Vernunftwahrheiten: „Ob nun gleich dieses göttliche Buch, das wir durch Mosen empfangen haben, eigentlich ein Gesetzbuch seyn, und Verordnungen, Lebensregeln und Vorschriften enthalten soll; so schließt es gleichwohl, wie bekannt, einen unergründlichen Schatz von Vernunftwahrheiten und Religionslehren mit ein, die mit dem Gesetz so innigst verbunden sind, daß sie nur Eins ausmachen“.5 Die hier vor allem rhetorisch beschworene Einheit von Tora und Wissenschaft hatte folglich nur die Kraft eines Kompromisses und konnte den von Lavater ins Spiel gebrachten logischen Zweifel an der Existenzberechtigung des Judentums nicht ausräumen.6 Genau dieser unklare Kompromiss zwischen Tora und Wissenschaft war aber für die Initiatoren der Wissenschaft des Judentums ein Stein des Anstoßes.7 Das Faktum der zunehmenden Konversionen machte schmerzlich bewusst, dass die Öffnung der jüdischen Tradition gegenüber den angeblich universalen Konzepten der Vernunft, der Freiheit und des Fortschritts sich in dem Sinne auswirken würde, dass die Partikularität des Judentums letztlich in der Universalität nicht-jüdischer Konzepte aufgehen würde. Die Initiatoren der Wissenschaft des Judentums erkannten jedoch sehr scharf die Notwendigkeit, darüber Rechenschaft ablegen zu müssen, ob und wie eine vorbehaltlose Öffnung gegenüber dem universalen Anspruch der Wissenschaft mit einem Beharren auf der Partikularität der jüdischen Traditionen vereinbar sei. 5  Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum, nach den Erstausgaben neu ediert von David Martyn, Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2001, S. 95. 6  Die Hauptschriften des öffentlichen Briefwechsels zwischen Mendelssohn und Lavater waren: Johann Caspar Lavater, Johann Caspar Lavaters Zueignungsschrift der Bonnetischen Philosophischen Untersuchung der Beweise für das Christenthum an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin, Zürich [auf Kosten guter Freunde], 1769; Moses Mendelssohn, Schreiben an den Herrn Diaconus Lavater zu Zürich, Berlin: Nicolai, 1769; Johann Caspar Lavater, Antwort an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn zu Berlin, Berlin: Nicolai, 1770; Moses Mendelssohn, Gedanken über die Zumutung des Herrn Diaconus Lavater an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn ein Christ zu werden …, Hamburg [Verlag unbekannt], 1770. 7 Die Antwort der frühen Wissenschaft des Judentums auf die Frage, wie das Verhältnis zwischen Tora und Wissenschaft zu bestimmen sei, hat keine allgemeine Akzeptanz im Judentum gefunden. Vor allem im Gefolge der Einschätzung von Gershom Scholem geriet die Wissenschaft des Judentums (als angebliche Totengräberin der jüdischen Existenz) zu einer Karikatur der Ambitionen ihres ursprünglichen wissenschaftspolitischen Projektes. Bis heute hält unter der Formel Tora u-madda‘ die Auseinandersetzung darum an, wie das Verhältnis zwischen säkularem Wissen und Judentum zu bestimmen sei.

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2. Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Wissenschaft des Judentums und ihr neu kontextualisierter Wissensbegriff Die kritische Neuorientierung der Wissenschaft des Judentums gegenüber der Haskala war kein theoretisches Projekt „am grünen Tisch“, sondern das Resultat ihrer politischen Entstehungsbedingungen. Die drei Namen, die sich jene neue Bewegung nacheinander gab – ein Prozess, an dessen Ende erst die sogenannte Wissenschaft des Judentums stand –, zeugen von dem Formierungsvorgang ihres gegenüber der Haskala veränderten Wissensbegriffs. Ohne in diesem Zusammenhang eine umfassende Analyse der Gründungsakten vornehmen zu können, sei hier anhand der Namensänderungen des Vereins der Formierungsprozess seines neu kontextualisierten Wissensbegriffs in drei Etappen angedeutet. Ausgangspunkt dieser Bewegung war die Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts einsetzende Verschlechterung der politischen Lage für die Juden in Europa. Mit dem Zusammenbruch des Napoleonischen Reichs im Jahr 1813 witterten konservative Kräfte Morgenluft. Der Wiener Kongress 1815 weigerte sich, die unter französischer Besatzung erlangten Rechte der Juden zu bestätigen. Dies wiederum hatte das Aufflammen antisemitischer Rhetorik wie auch Gewalt gegen Juden und ihr Eigentum im Sommer 1819 europaweit zur Folge (die sogenannten Hep-Hep-Krawalle). In dieser Atmosphäre wurde am 9. November 1819 in Berlin (von 8 Mitgliedern eines zwischen November 1816 und Juli 1817 dort wirkenden Wissenschaftszirkels) der „Verein zur Verbesserung des Zustandes der Juden im deutschen Bundesstaat“ gegründet. Zu den Gründern dieses Vereins gehörten u. a. Isaak Markus Jost (1793–1860), der spätere berühmte Historiker der jüdischen Geschichte, Eduard Gans (1797–1839), der spätere Jurist und Rechtsphilosoph Hegelscher Prägung, und Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), der spätere geistige Vater der Wissenschaft des Judentums  – alles junge Männer, die meist kaum älter als 25 Jahre (1822 sollte auch noch Heinrich Heine dazustoßen), akademisch gebildet und nahezu mittellos waren. Dieser erste Name der Bewegung, „Verein zur Verbesserung des Zustandes der Juden im deutschen Bundesstaat“, versteht sich noch ganz in der Tradition der Aufklärung mit ihrem politischen Programm einer „bürgerlichen Verbesserung der Juden“.8 Offensichtlich war jedoch dieser Name, der die Verbesserung der Situation der Juden nur auf der politischen Ebene reflektierte, im Verein schon bald nicht mehr mehrheitsfähig. Zwischen Mai und Juli 1821 verzeichnen die Protokolle des „Vereins zur Verbesserung des Zustandes der Juden“ eine Aussprache über den Vereinsnamen. Man einigte sich auf einen neuen, von Gans vorgeschlagenen Namen: „Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums“. Daraus darf man schließen, dass man mehrheitlich zur Einsicht gelangt war, dem rückläufigen 8 Christian Konrad Wilhelm von Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, Berlin: Nicolai, 1783.

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„Zustand der Juden“ eher auf der Ebene der Kultur begegnen zu müssen.9 Die Tatsache, dass man sich nun mittels des universalen Paradigmas der Wissenschaft als ein integrales Phänomen der Gesamtkultur präsentieren wollte, bedeutete, dass man die Frage der Verbesserung des Zustands der Juden auch auf epistemologischer Ebene beantworten musste und wollte. Auf diese Weise geriet zwangsläufig die Problematik der Ambivalenz des Wissensbegriffs der Haskala („Tora und Wissenschaft“) wieder in den Blick. Da der Genitiv „Wissenschaft des Judentums“ im neuen Vereinsnamen nicht nur als Genetivus subjektivus, sondern auch im Sinne eines Genetivus objektivus zu verstehen war, behauptete der neue Name nicht nur die Denkmöglichkeit einer jüdischen Wissenschaft, sondern brachte auch die Überzeugung zum Ausdruck, Teilmenge der allgemeinen Kultur und Wissenschaft sein zu können. Die große Frage der Haskala: „Aufgehen des Judentums in der Welt oder Bestand des Judentums als eigenwertige Individualität“10 – war um 1820 keine Alternative mehr. Man hatte sowohl erkannt, dass der Anspruch der Aufklärung unglaubhaft wird, wenn er vor der Tora Halt macht, als auch war man überzeugt, dass die Individualität des Judentums in Kultur und Wissenschaft der allgemeinen Kultur begründet werden müsse und könne.11 Aber auch dieser Name war nicht von langem Bestand. Nach einem erfolgreichen Start löste sich der Verein bereits 1824 wieder auf. Er scheiterte an der reaktionären preußischen Politik, die die Tätigkeit des Vereins erschwerte, an inneren Streitigkeiten, aber auch an der veränderungsunwilligen Plutokratie der Berliner Juden. Nach Ismar Schorsch sei es dem Verein nicht gelungen, „to persuade the larger community that their individual dilemmas were but the harbinger of a pending collective fate“.12 Die sich im zweiten Namen des Vereins verbergende Idealvorstellung von einer homogenen Gesamtkultur („Cultur“), in der die Juden mit Hilfe der Wissenschaft würden aufgehen und gleichzeitig doch mit eben dieser Wissenschaft ihre Individualität würden behaupten können, wurde durch die Praxis dieser Kultur – der jüdischen und der nicht-jüdischen – widerlegt. Wohlgemerkt hatte es sich um eine praktische Widerlegung gehandelt  9 Sinai Ucko, „Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums“, Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, 5 (1935), S. 1–35, hier S. 1. Rachel LivnehFreudenthal spricht in ihrer Analyse von einer Verschränkung des universalen Kulturbegriffs der Aufklärung und des nationalen Kulturbegriffs der Romantik, deren Umschlagpunkt das Denken Herders gewesen sei. Vgl. Livneh-Freudenthal, „Kultur als Weltanschauung. Der Kulturbegriff der Begründer der ‚Wissenschaft des Judentums‘“,Arche Noah. Die Idee der „Kultur“ im deutschjüdischen Diskurs, hrsg. v. Bernhard Greiner, Freiburg: Rombach 2002, S. 59–84, hier S. 74. 10  Ucko, „Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen“, S. 323. 11 Vgl. Immanuel Wolfs programmatischen Aufsatz „Ueber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums“ im ersten Band der Vereinszeitschrift Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1822), S. 1–24. 12  Ismar Schorsch, „Breakthrough into the Past: The Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden“, From Text to Context. The Turn to History in Modern Judaism, Schorsch, Hanover: Brandeis University Press 1994, S. 205–232, hier S. 206.

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und die Tatsache, dass auch diese Krise nicht das Ende des wissenschaftspolitischen Projektes des Vereins war, legt nahe, dass auch die dritte Namensversion für eine Korrektur, aber nicht für die Aufgabe des kulturtheoretischen Anspruchs des vorangegangenen Namens steht. Nachdem Leopold Zunz die Bewegung nach ihrem Scheitern im Jahr 1824 zunächst einige Jahre im Alleingang fortgeführt hatte, verkürzte er ihren Namen auf „Wissenschaft des Judentums“. Die Streichung der „Cultur“ aus dem Namen – so meine These – ist folglich nicht im Sinne eines Verzichts auf die Ausgangsidee des Vereins zu verstehen, sondern im Sinne der Einsicht, dass die Möglichkeit einer wissenschaftlichen Begründung des Judentums innerhalb einer universalen „Cultur“ nicht besteht. Dies wäre eine Form von Wissenschaftsromantik gewesen, als ob sich alle aufgeklärten Kulturen auf dem Feld der Wissenschaft objektiv und damit gerecht begegnen könnten. Genau dies hatten jüngst die Hep-Hep-Krawalle widerlegt. Zunz’ Verkürzung des Namens der Bewegung auf den doppelten Genitiv „Wissenschaft des Judentums“ könnte daher die Einsicht zugrund liegen, dass sich Kulturen allein durch Wissenschaft nicht miteinander vermitteln lassen. Während die Gründung des Vereins Gans’ Initiative war und damit auch die in dem ersten Namenswechsel sich spiegelnde Neuausrichtung, so war es Zunz’ Verdienst, die ursprüngliche Vereinsidee in die Gestalt der Wissenschaft des Judentums überführt zu haben. Tatsächlich bildeten rückblickend beide Männer, Gans und Zunz, zwei geistige Pole, was die Auffassung von dem Verhältnis von jüdischer Kultur und Wissenschaft betrifft. Sie repräsentieren unterschiedliche Antworten auf die Erkenntnis, dass der Judenhass durch das politische Modell der Verbesserung oder Modernisierung der Juden nicht beseitigt werden konnte.

3. „Universalistisches“ oder „wissenssoziologisches“ Selbstverständnis der Wissenschaft des Judentums Der genaueren Bestimmung von Zunz’ Wissens‑ und Kulturbegriff kann seine Abgrenzung von dem Wissens‑ und Kulturbegriff des Eduard Gans dienen. Zunächst gilt es zu betonen, dass nicht etwa Gans für das Aufgehen des Judentums in der Welt und Zunz für den Bestand des Judentums als eigenwertige Individualität  – oder umgekehrt  – eingetreten wären. Beide haben beides vertreten, aber auf sehr unterschiedliche Weise. Der berühmte Historiker Heinrich Grätz schüttete das Kind mit dem Bade aus, als er behauptete, dass die Schriften des Vereins „zumeist unverdauliches Hegelianisches Kauderwelsch“ enthielten, wie umgekehrt auch Hermann Cohen über das Ziel hinausschoß, wenn er über Zunz sagte: „Er hätte ein großer Historiker sein können, war aber doch nur ein – Antiquar“.13 Wahr ist, dass einzelne Vereinsmitglieder, etwa Immanuel Wolf und vor  „Einleitung in die Akademieausgabe der jüdischen Schriften Herman Cohens“,

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allem Gans Hegelsche Gedankenfiguren zur Erklärung des Verhältnisses des Judentums als Individualität zur Gesamtkultur verwendeten, wahr ist aber auch, dass es sich bei Zunz in diesem Punkt „wesentlich anders“ verhielt, wie Sinai Ucko in seinem analytischen Aufsatz über die „Geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums“ festgestellt hat.14 Nicht jedoch, weil Zunz ein Antiquar gewesen wäre, wie Cohen meinte, sondern weil Zunz durchaus systematische und universalgeschichtliche Absichten verfolgte, aber aus einer anderen Perspektive als nur die der Hegelschen Philosophie.15 Wie hat Gans die Verbindung von Universalität und partikularem Judentum formuliert? In seiner zweiten Vereinsrede fragt er: „Was ist das heutige Europa?“16 Europa beruht „hauptsächlich auf dem Reichtum seines vielgliedrigen Organismus […], jedes Glied hat sein besonderes Leben, und dennoch lebt es nur in dem organischen Ganzen“.17 Wie verhält sich dazu das Judentum? Gans stellt fest: „[E]s [das Judentum] sei die noch garnicht zur Vielheit gekommene Einheit“.18 Das meint für das Leben der Juden: „Ausgeschlossen und ausschließend gingen Zwei­stromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, hrsg. v. Reinhold und Annemarie Mayer, Dord­recht: Martinus Nijhoff, S. 185. 14 Ucko, „Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen“, S. 321. 15 Fritz Bamberger, „Zunz’s Conception of History. A Study of the Philosophic Elements in Early Science of Judaism“, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 11 (1941), S. 1–25, hier S. 2. In seiner dritten Rede aus dem Jahr 1823 anlässlich der jährlichen Sitzungen des Vereins gibt Gans in unzweideutig Hegelscher Terminologie folgende Analyse der Zeit: „Fragt man mich aber, was die Zeit wolle, so antworte ich: sie will das Bewusstsein von sich erringen, sie will nicht bloß sein, sondern auch sich wissen“. Hieraus folgt als Aufgabe für die Juden: „Soll ich diese unabweisliche Forderung der Zeit auf unsern Verein anwenden, so war und bleibt es seine Aufgabe, das Judentum als Gegenstand, auf den er ausschließlich angewiesen ist, zum Bewußtsein zu bringen, die jüdische Welt sich selbst vorstellig zu machen. Nicht dies oder jenes Gute soll vollbracht, nicht diese oder jene Nützlichkeit soll ausgeführt werden: mit einer so atomistischen, vereinzelten Tätigkeit haben wir es hier überhaupt gar nicht zu tun …“ (Eduard Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ III, Der jüdische Wille. Zeitschrift des Kartells jüdischer Verbindungen e. V., 1, 1918/1919, hrsg. v. Salman Rubaschow [Schazar], S. 193–203, hier S. 196). Die Aufklärung müsse als „unzulänglicher Talisman abgewiesen werden“, wenn der dort „von seinen Fesseln befreite subjektive Geist“ ihn nicht in die Lage versetzt habe, „diejenige Stärke zu gewinnen, die ihn nicht zu einer gezwungenen, sondern zu einer freiwilligen Rückkehr bewegen konnte. Diese Rückkehr aber ist es, worauf es ankommt […]. Was aber nicht zurückkehrt, nachdem seine Individualität sattsam erstarkt ist, das geht in dieser Vereinzelung unter, es ist dem Tode, der Äußerlichkeit der Vernichtung hingegeben …“ (Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ III, S. 198). Die richtende Instanz seiner Zeit ist nach Gans (und Hegel) die Wissenschaft: „Was sich vor dem Bewußtsein nicht rechtfertigen und verantworten kann, das ist oben als das Nichtige und Verschwindende angegeben worden, das die Zeit von sich weist. Was sich vom Judentum nicht vor der Wissenschaft in ihrer heutigen Gestaltung auszuweisen vermag, das […] ist schon dadurch gefallen und umgestoßen, dass es seine Verantwortung der Wissenschaft schuldig blieb“ (Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ III, S. 196). 16  Eduard Gans, Erstlinge der Entjudung II, Der jüdische Wille. Zeitschrift des Kartells jüdischer Verbindungen e. V., 1 1918/1919 [hrsg. v. Salman Rubaschow (Schazar)], S. 109–215, hier S. 109. 17  Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ II, S. 110. 18  Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ II, S. 111.

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sie daher, eine eigene Geschichte, parallel neben der Weltgeschichte her …“.19 Und er fährt fort: „Wo der Organismus die Wellenlinie verlangt, da ist die gerade Linie ein Greuel. Also ist die Forderung des heutigen Europas, daß die Juden sich ihm ganz einverleiben sollen, eine aus der Notwendigkeit seines Begriffs hervorgehende“. Dennoch betont Gans ausdrücklich, dass das „Aufgehen der jüdischen Welt in der europäischen“ nicht ihren Untergang bedeute: „Aufgehen ist nicht untergehen. Nur die störende und bloß auf sich reflektierende Selbständigkeit [der Juden] soll vernichtet werden, nicht die dem Ganzen untergeordnete; der Totalität dienend, soll es sein Substantielles nicht zu verlieren brauchen.“ Und er fährt fort: „Auch würde dies [nämlich wenn das Judentum sein Substantielles verlöre] dem Begriff widersprechen, den wir den des heutigen Europas genannt haben. Seine Eigentümlichkeit war ja die Fülle und der Reichtum seiner Besonderheit. […] Keine Besonderheit schadet ihm, nur ihre Alleinherrschaft, ihr ausschließendes Recht muß aufhören, sie muß ein abhängiges Moment unter den Vielen werden“. Diese deutlich an den Begriff der Synthese in Hegels dialektischer Methode erinnernde Vorstellung von dem Organismus Europa bringt Gans abschließend in folgendes Bild: „Darum können weder die Juden untergehen, noch kann das Judentum sich auflösen, aber in die große Bewegung des Ganzen soll es untergegangen scheinen und dennoch fortleben, wie der Strom fortlebt in dem Ocean“.20 Soviel zu Gans’ Formulierung des Verhältnisses von jüdischer Partikularität und europäischer Gesamtkultur. Auch Zunz gebraucht in seinem Artikel „Zur Geschichte und Literatur“ aus dem Jahr 1845 das Bild vom Organismus – ein Schlüsselbegriff seiner Zeit – und die Rede vom Strom, der sich in das Meer ergießt, um das Verhältnisses von jüdischer Partikularität und gesamtkultureller Universalität zu beschreiben. Zwar spielt Zunz auf Hegels geschichtsphilosophischen Ansatz an, wonach sich in der „Geschichte der Menschheit […] zugleich die Geschichte des Menschengeistes, in der Gesammtliteratur erschlossen“ darstelle. Jedoch böte sich diese Perspektive einstweilen nur dem intuitiven Geist, wie beim Betrachten eines Kunstwerks, und nicht dem spekulativen. Mit dieser Kritik an Hegels durchgeistigter Perspektive holt Zunz den spekulativen Geist mit der beißenden Bemerkung auf den Boden der Tatsachen zurück, dass bislang noch niemand ein Gesamtbewusstsein von der Geschichte des Menschengeistes erworben habe: „Ausser Stande bis zu dieser vollkommenen Geschichte unmittelbar vorzudringen, indem das Geschlecht der Menschen bis jetzt das Bewusstsein von dieser Ganzheit weder errungen noch dargestellt hat, müssen wir auf gegebene Besonderheiten achtend, von den Gliedern zu dem Ganzen emporzuschreiten uns bemühen, damit die erkannten Spuren des Geistes in den Gliedern diese zu organischen Theilen eines Gesammtbaues erheben.“ Mit anderen Worten: Zunz richtet den Forscherblick  Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ II, S. 111.  Gans, „Erstlinge der Entjudung“ II, S. 112–3.

19 20

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auf die (literarischen) Spuren des Geistes im partikularen jüdischen Leben, also „nach unten“, um indirekt – gewissermaßen wissenssoziologisch – aus diesen Spuren das Ganze des Organismus zu skizzieren. Wenn aber die Erkenntnis der Teile und ihr Verhältnis zueinander zur hermeneutischen Voraussetzung für die Erschließung des Gesamtorganismus gemacht werden, bietet nach Zunz speziell die jüdische Literatur einen vielversprechenden Zugang zu diesem. Gerade die „von der Weltgeschichte anerkannte historische Besonderheit“ der Juden und die „Eigentümlichkeit der jüdischen Literatur“ seien in diesem Sinn Garanten, den Gesamtorganismus zu erfassen. Und derart deutet Zunz auch das Bild vom in den Ozean fließenden Strom um: für ihn ist das Judentum im Zustand des auf den Ozean zufließenden Stroms aufschlussreicher, was die Erkenntnis des Ganzen betrifft, als im Zustand seiner Auflösung im Ozean: „Ist die Totalität der geistigen Betriebsamkeit ein Meer, so ist einer von den Strömen, welche jenem das Wasser zuführen, eben die jüdische Literatur; auch in ihr wird das Edelste sichtbar werden, das die Seelen erfüllt hat und wonach sie gerungen: auch sie zeigt die manigfachen Thaten des erkennenden Geistes“. Zunz’ Blickrichtung geht folglich in die entgegengesetzte Richtung derjenigen, in die Gans blickt, nämlich zur Quelle und nicht zum Ozean, wenn er diesen Gedanken mit dem Satz schließt: „… die Schiffahrt auf dem einen Strome kann zu der Urquelle führen, der aller Geist entströmt, und um welchen, wie um einen ruhenden Pol, alle Richtungen sich bewegen“.21

4. Zunz’ „kulturanthropologisch“ inspirierter Kulturbegriff zwischen Kulturen Man kann sagen, dass Gans und Zunz innerhalb der Bewegung der Wissenschaft des Judentums zwei gegensätzliche historische Hermeneutiken repräsentieren. Während Gans die Entwicklung des Organismus der Geschichte wie Hegel mit der Wirksamkeit einer Idee in Verbindung bringt, handhabt Zunz ein kulturanthropologisches, genauer: auf der Dynamik zwischen Kulturen basierendes Erklärungsmodell für die Ausbildung des Organismus der jüdischen Geschichte. Mit dem (anachronistischen) Begriff „kulturanthropologisch“ möchte ich hier auf Zunz’ Berücksichtigung der Praxis und damit die Aufhebung einer qualitativen Unterscheidung zwischen Hoch‑ und Volkskultur hinweisen. Diese Auffassung, wonach alle kulturellen Hervorbringungen eine zusammengehörige Einheit darstellen, dürfte durch den Rechtshistoriker Friedrich Carl von Savigny, dessen „Einleitung in die Institutionen des römischen Rechts“ Zunz 1817 in Berlin gehört hat, mit inspiriert gewesen sein. Das Programm der von Savigny 21 Leopold Zunz, „Die jüdische Literatur“, abgedruckt in: Gesammelte Schriften, 3 Bde., Berlin: L. Gerschel 1875–1876, Bd. 1, S. 42.

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gegründeten historischen Rechtsschule basierte auf der Überzeugung, dass Sprache, Sitte, Verfassung, Gesetz und Religion eines Volkes „kein abgesondertes Daseyn [haben], es sind nur einzelne Kräfte und Thätigkeiten des einen Volkes, in der Natur untrennbar verbunden, und nur unserer Betrachtung als besondere Eigenschaften erscheinend. Was sie zu einem Ganzen verknüpft, ist die gemeinsame Überzeugung des Volkes, das gleiche Gefühl innerer Nothwendigkeit, welches allen Gedanken an zufällige und willkührliche Entstehung ausschließt.“22 Diesen „kulturanthropologischen“ Ansatz von der inneren oder organischen Einheit aller kulturellen Äußerungen eines Volkes überträgt Zunz nun auf den Fall der vor allem kulturübergreifend sich herausbildenden jüdischen Geschichte. Erneut anachronistisch gesprochen ergänzt er seine kulturanthropologische Methode durch die Perspektive der Transkulturalität.23 In seinem berühmten Programm für die Wissenschaft des Judentums mit dem Titel „Etwas über rabbinische Literatur“ betont Zunz nicht nur die materiellen Aspekte des Kulturgangs der jüdischen Literatur durch alle Zeiten, nämlich „wie Schicksal, Klima, Sitten, Religion und Zufall freundschaftlich oder feindlich in einander greifen“, sondern er hebt auch die Transkulturalität als ein zweites wichtiges Entstehungsprinzip der jüdischen Literatur hervor, nämlich „wie in jedem Moment ihr Wesen aus dem Gegebenen und dem Hinzugekommenen, d.i. aus dem Inneren und dem Aeusseren sich gestaltet“.24 Über das Judentum in der Zeit des Aufstiegs der islamischen Kultur sagt Zunz in dem oben zitierten Aufsatz „Zur Geschichte und Literatur“: „[D]ie Sprache ward nun abermals die Vermittlerin zwischen der jüdischen und einer WeltLiteratur, und die höheren Geister der beiden Nationen wirkten durch sie auf einander ein. Die Juden schreiben für ihre Brüder arabisch, wie einst griechisch, und wie damals entwickelte auch jetzt die Cultur der Herrschenden, sowohl in ihren Nachahmungen als in ihren Gegensätzen eine gleiche unter Juden“.25 Eine genauere Analyse seiner, auf dem Gedanken der kulturellen Durchdringung basierenden, Hermeneutik kultureller Entwicklung im Judentum unternimmt Zunz allerdings nicht. Immerhin wird deutlich, dass dem kulturübergreifenden Sprachgebrauch des Griechischen und Arabischen wie auch der literarischen Tätigkeit der Übersetzung eine wichtige Rolle zugewiesen wird. Dies wiederum erinnert auch an den Eindruck, den Friedrich August Wolfs umfassendes Konzept der Philologie, welches auf die Erforschung der menschlichen Natur aus

22  Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, Heidelberg: J. C. B. Mohr 1814, S. 8 (dessen Volksgeistlehre wiederum durch Johann Gottfried Herder inspiriert war). 23  Vgl. Anmerkung 2. 24  Leopold Zunz, „Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur“, abgedruckt in: Gesammelte Schriften, 3 Bde., Berlin: L. Gerschel, 1875–1876, Bd. 1, S. 6–7. 25  Zunz, „Die jüdische Literatur“, S. 45.

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literarischen Quellen zielte, und vor allem Wilhelm von Humboldts Erforschung der Geschichte am Leitfaden der Sprachentwicklung auf Zunz gemacht haben.26

5. Steinschneiders Geschichtsschreibung aus der Sprachdynamik zwischen Kulturen und das Paradigma des Islam Es springt ins Auge, dass sich Moritz Steinschneider, dessen lebenslanger Freund und Mentor der 22 Jahre ältere Zunz war, die genauere Analyse der Beziehungen zwischen dem kulturanthropologischen Fokus auf die Praxis, der Dynamik zwischen Sprachen und dem textbasierten Kulturaustausch zur Lebensaufgabe gemacht hat. Und es war Steinschneider, der sich hierzu die Beziehung des Judentums zum Islam als erster explizit zum paradigmatischen Gegenstand gewählt hat. Ein auf der Dynamik zwischen Kulturen basierter Kulturbegriff setzt damit im Werk Steinschneiders eine von Zunz ausgehende Traditionslinie fort, welche sich wesentlich von einer auf Gans zurückgehenden Linie des Kulturbegriffs unterscheidet. Letztere Entwicklungslinie, für die ein auf einem Wesen oder einer Idee – insbesondere einer Idee der Entwicklung – basierter Kulturbegriff kennzeichnend ist, wurde eher von Wissenschaftlern fortgesetzt wie Abraham Geiger, Salomon Formstecher, Moses Hess, Salomon Ludwig Steinheim, Samuel Hirsch und Nachman Krochmal. Mit Ausnahme von Geiger, dessen Position sich zwischen beiden Entwicklungslinien befindet, handelt es sich bei dieser Reihe um Personen, bei denen der Islam kein größeres Interesse hervorgerufen hat. Für die Vorstellung der Person Moritz Steinschneiders beschränke ich mich auf folgenden Hinweis.27 Steinschneider ist bekannt als der Bibliograph des Judentums. Jedoch erschöpft sich seine Bedeutung für die Wissenschaft des Judentums bei weitem nicht in dem Erschließen der hebräischen Handschriften der Bibliotheken in Oxford, Hamburg, Leiden, Berlin und München  – eine Leistung, die bis heute sein Werk unverzichtbar macht. Weit weniger bekannt ist, dass er die Wissenschaft des Judentums auch mit einem profilierten Begriff jüdischer Kulturgeschichtsschreibung nachhaltig geprägt hat. Steinschneider hat die jüdische Kulturgeschichte ohne Unterschied zwischen Hoch‑ und Volksliteratur in seiner Ganzheit, „einem lebendigen Kunstwerke gleich“, wie Zunz gefordert hat, erforscht. Steinschneider hat keine Ideengeschichte geschrieben, 26 Fritz Bamberger, Zunz’s Conception of History, S. 4, 11 und 13. Zu Wolf vgl. seine Encyclopädie der Philologie. Nach dessen Vorlesungen …, hrsg. S. M. Stockmann, Leipzig: Expedition des europäischen Aufsehers 1831, S. 8. Eine genauere Analyse des Verhältnisses von Zunz zu Wolf und Humboldt muss einem anderen Ort vorbehalten bleiben. 27  Zu einer engagierten Würdigung der Person Steinschneiders siehe Charles H. Manekin, „Moritz Steinschneider’s indecent burial“, S. 1–9 (http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/ frontdoor/index/index/docId/12372, eingesehen am 21. 7. ​2016).

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sondern – modern ausgedrückt – eine kulturanthropologisch motivierte Literaturgeschichte zwischen Sprachen, zu denen vorrangig Arabisch, Hebräisch, Latein und Griechisch gehörten. Hierzu passt die Gattung der Bibliographie als die dominierende Form seiner Bücher ausgezeichnet, denn Steinschneider interessierte sich für alles Geschriebene: nicht nur für Philosophie, Medizin und Mathematik, nicht nur für Grammatik, Poesie und Onomastik, sondern auch für Numismatik, Astrologie, Alchemie und Mystik. Die ungeheure Masse des von Steinschneider bearbeiteten Stoffs wird in seinen Werken lediglich durch zwei Foci strukturiert: durch sein Interesse an allen kulturübergreifenden Vorgängen, insbesondere der Übersetzung, und durch die arabische Sprache als kulturelles Medium. Sein besonderes Interesse an der Dynamik zwischen Sprachen bezeugen bereits die Titel seiner Bücher: „Polemische und Apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden“ (Leipzig 1877), „Die Arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen“ (Berlin 1889–96), „Die Hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher“ (Berlin 1893) und „Die Arabische Literatur der Juden“ (Frankfurt/Main 1902). Mit seiner Konzentration auf das Genre der Übersetzung werden Steinschneider die drei in Zunz’ historischer Methode nur lose miteinander verbundenen Elemente: Sprache, Praxisinteresse und transkulturelle Dynamik, nun in ihrer historischen Interaktion zugänglich. Da nur übersetzt wird, was auch irgendwie praktische Relevanz besitzt, fokussiert Steinschneider mit dem Genre der Übersetzungen zwangsläufig einen durch praktische Relevanz angetriebenen transkulturellen Wissensaustausch. Tatsächlich interessierte sich Steinschneider vor allem für die in und aus dem Arabischen, insbesondere ins Hebräische, übersetzten Texte. Zu der programmatischen Bedeutung dieser Beziehung für sein Lebenswerk hat sich Steinschneider offen bekannt. Das Vorwort seiner Edition und Übersetzung von Simon Durans „Kritik des Islam“ aus dem Jahr 1880 eröffnet Steinschneider mit folgenden Worten: „Vor ungefähr 40 Jahren, im hoffnungsvollen Eifer der Jugend meiner Person und einer aufblühenden Wissenschaft, stellte ich mir eine Aufgabe, deren Umfang, Tragweite und Anforderungen allerdings erst bei weiterem Vordringen in die Einzelheiten fast entmuthigend sich enthüllten: die Beziehung des Islam und Judenthums in religiöser, literarischer und culturhistorischer Beziehung“,28 – also die Aufgabe, die Übergänge und Überschneidungen zwischen Kulturen zu untersuchen, welchen Fokus ich oben als zentrales Element in Zunz’ Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums vorgestellt habe. Doch warum interessierte sich Steinschneider gerade im Kontext der Beziehung zwischen Islam und Judentum für den genannten Fokus? Leider 28  Moritz Steinschneider, „Islam und Judenthum. Kritik des Islam von Simon Duran (1423), aus dem Hebräischen übersetzt und erläutert“, Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthum, 7 (1880), S. 1–48, hier S. 1.

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hat Steinschneider hierüber nicht offen reflektiert. Sein Werk ist ein wenig wie ein Midrasch, der sich erst verstehen lässt, wenn man seine Ausgangsfrage entschlüsselt hat. Meine These ist, dass Steinschneider nach einer alternativen Darstellung der jüdischen Geschichte gesucht hat  – nämlich anders, als es ihm der zeitgenössische Wissenschaftsbegriff methodisch und inhaltlich vorzuschreiben schien. Es ist nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass ihm hierbei der Wissenschaftsbegriff und die Rolle des Judentums in der Auffassung des dominantesten Denkers der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts kritisch vor Augen stand. Für Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) war die Wissenschaft keine beliebige Wissensform, sondern das Resultat des Weges, „auf dem sie reines Wissen oder absoluter Geist wird“,29 wobei „die Weltgeschichte die konkreteste Wirklichkeit des Geistes“ ist, „wie er [der absolute Geist] sich das Wissen dessen, das er an sich ist, erarbeitet“.30 Dem Orient und besonders dem Judentum komme das Verdienst zu, die Substanz oder das „ausschließende Eine“ durch seinen strengen Monotheismus hervorgebracht zu haben.31 Dieses Stadium repräsentiere aber nur den Anfang des selbstbestimmten, sprich wissenschaftlichen Denkens. Dem europäischen Denken komme nun am Leitfaden christlicher Denkfiguren (logos ensarkos) das Verdienst zu, der orientalischen Objektivität (dem Allgemeinen) die sich selbst reflektierende Subjektivität entgegengesetzt zu haben (die Differenz, das Besondere). Die Fähigkeit, die Einheit von Einheit und Differenz zu denken, hätten erst die neuzeitliche Wissenschaft und Philosophie entwickelt.32 Es lässt sich zeigen, dass Steinschneider – entsprechend der oben vorgeschlagenen Bedeutung des Genetivus subjectivus im Namen der Wissenschaft des Judentums – dem dominanten christlich orientierten Wissenschaftsbegriff bei Hegel einen jüdisch konnotierten gegenübergestellt hat. Innerhalb der Hegelschen Logik repräsentierte das Judentum als Religion der Erhabenheit ein überwundenes Stadium, weshalb Hegels Wissenschaftsbegriff keinen Platz für einen aktuellen jüdisch orientierten Wissenschaftsbegriff zuließ. Steinschneider hatte erkannt, dass die Methodenfrage eine Machtfrage war und dass er nur mit 29 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Werke in 20 Bänden, Band 3, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970, S. 593. 30  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke in 20 Bänden, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970, Bd. 12, S. 29–31. 31  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke in 20 Bänden, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996, Bd. 18, 241–2. 32  Dirk Westerkamp verteidigt die These, dass Hegel durch die Bedeutung, welcher er der „philonischen Unterscheidung“ (Logos als identisch und unterschieden von Gott) in seinem Denken gegeben hat, bereits eine Differenzierung – und Vorwegnahme der Rolle des jesuanischen Logos ensarkos – in die durch das Judentum repräsentierte Phase eingetragen habe, welche bei seinen Vorgängern in der philosophia hebraeorum noch ungebrochen mit der Substanzmetaphysik identifiziert worden sei (Dirk Westerkamp, Die philonische Unterscheidung. Aufklärung, Orientalismus und die Konstruktion der Philosophie, München: Fink, 2009, S. 115– 24).

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einem auf einer eigenen Logik basierenden Wissenschaftsbegriff die Chance hatte, dem Judentum seine Relevanz bis in die Gegenwart zu garantieren.

6. Steinschneiders Suche nach einem jüdisch konnotierten Wissenschaftsbegriff Im Jahr 1843 wurde Steinschneider nach seiner Meinung „über das Unternehmen einer Real-Encyklopädie über die gesammte Wissenschaft des Judentums“ gefragt. Mit lediglich dem Hinweis auf „die aller Analogie entbehrende Eigenthümlichkeiten der Wissenschaft des Judenthums“ entzieht er sich jedoch der Aufgabe, sie zu definieren. Immerhin identifiziert er ein paar Zeilen weiter seinen Wissenschaftsbegriff  – analog zu Hegel  – mit dem Verweis auf die jüdische Geschichte: „Die Wissenschaft des Judentums faßt die Kenntnis der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart der jüdischen Religion und des jüdischen Volkes. Sie ist gewissermaaßen die Geschichte des Judenthums im weitesten Sinne, bis auf die Gegenwart“.33 Es scheint so, dass Steinschneider in diesem Text aus dem Jahr 1843 noch keine Antwort parat hatte, auf welche alternative Logik er seinen jüdischen Wissenschaftsbegriff gründen sollte. Unmittelbar im Anschluss an die oben zitierte Passage, in der er sich zu seinem lebenslangen Programm der Erforschung der Beziehungen zwischen Islam und Judentum bekannte, berichtet er aber, dass ihn die Arbeit an dem ihm übertragenen Lexikonartikel „Jüdische Literatur“ zu einer Neuorientierung gezwungen habe, denn „der Artikel ‚Jüdische Literatur‘ in [der „Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste“ von] Ersch und Gruber [warf ] mich aus meinem Centrum nach allen Radien dieses weiten Gebietes”. Wenn wir davon ausgehen, dass die kreative Verunsicherung seiner Arbeit an jenem Buchlänge erreichenden Eintrag (114 Seiten) ihm auch geholfen hat, seine wissenschaftliche Methode genauer zu fassen, dann müsste das Leitprinzip dieses Artikels, nämlich die Darstellung der jüdischen Literatur aus ihren kulturellen Beziehungen zu den umgebenden Kulturen, als die neue Logik seiner jüdischen Wissenschaft aufgefasst werden. Der erste Satz dieses Enzyklopädieartikels lautet: „Die Literatur der Juden im weitesten Sinne begreift eigentlich Alles, was Juden von den ältesten Zeiten an bis auf die Gegenwart, ohne Rücksicht auf Inhalt, Sprache und Vaterland, geschrieben haben“.34 Gegen Hegel prägt damit gerade nicht die Darstellung der Kulturen in ihrer Reinform – die Indische, die Griechisch-Römische, die Germanische – die Methode seiner Wissenschaft, sondern in ihrer geographischen, sprachlichen 33 Moritz Steinschneider, „Brief über eine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaft des Judenthums“, Literaturblatt des Orients, Nr. 30 (1843), S. 466–504 (aufgeteilt auf mehrere Folgen), hier S. 467. 34  Moritz Steinschneider, Art. „Jüdische Literatur“, Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, hrsg. v. Johann Samuel Ersch und Johann Gottfried Gruber, Sektion 2, Teil 27, Leipzig: Gleditsch 1850, S. 357–471, hier S. 357.

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und inhaltlichen Vermischung liegt der Grund für ihre organische Einheit. Er fährt fort: „In diesem Durchgange durch so viele Länder, Sprachen und Materien liegt eine […] Eigenthümlichkeit; gewiss bildet aber dieses anscheinende Aggregat von Schriftthum einen stetigen Organismus, (insofern die Träger desselben ein eigenthümliches Ganzes bilden, welches mit dem Namen: Religionsgenossenschaft nicht erschöpfend, mit dem der Nationalität nur annäherungsweise bezeichnet ist).“35 Es kann damit nicht mehr überraschen, dass die jüdischarabische Kulturüberschneidung die Dreiteilung seines Lexikoneintrags strukturiert, denn in dieser Sphäre lebte über 1000 Jahre die Mehrheit der Juden.36 Die erste Periode überschreibt Steinschneider „von Esra bis zur Einwirkung der arabischen Wissenschaft“ und die zweite „vom Beginne der arabischen Wissenschaft bis zur Vertreibung der Juden aus Spanien“. Die dritte heißt – seine Methode der kulturellen Dynamik am reinsten verkörpernd – nur noch „Übergang“.37 Fünfzig Jahre später im Jahr 1902 hat Steinschneider seine Methode in seiner Monographie Die arabische Literatur der Juden noch einmal folgendermaßen rudimentär angedeutet: „Die Culturgeschichte der Juden ist darum so schwierig, so wenig durchgeführt, zum Teil streitig, weil es ihr an einem angemessenen Maassstabe fehlt, an einem Seitenstück.“38 Als diesen Maßstab empfiehlt er 35  Ebd. Die Klammer des Zitats zeugt von dem Dilemma, in dem sich Steinschneider mit der Neuausrichtung seiner jüdischen Wissenschaft befand, denn wollte er dem Hegelschen Paradigma entkommen, dann durfte er seine jüdische Wissenschaft weder an den Religionsbegriff noch an den Begriff der Nation unmittelbar koppeln, welche für dessen Paradigma grundlegend waren. 36  Im Umkehrschluss sei hier die Vermutung geäußert, dass ein weiterer Grund, warum sich Steinschneider die kulturellen Überschneidungen mit den arabischen Kulturen und nicht den aschkenazischen als paradigmatisch für die jüdische Geschichte ausgesucht hat, darin liegen könnte, dass diese Überschneidungen frei von Theologie waren. Erst eine gewisse Ideologiefreiheit macht es möglich, Überschneidungen des praktischen Lebens von Kulturen zu studieren. Vgl. Mark R. Cohen, Unter Kreuz und Halbmond. Die Juden im Mittelalter, München: C. H. Beck, 2005, S. 42–5. 37  Dass Steinschneider tatsächlich die Kulturüberschneidung als das treibende Prinzip der jüdischen Geschichte erachtete (und diese deshalb zum Prinzip seiner wissenschaftlichen Methode gemacht hat), belegt die Beobachtung, dass er dieser die Hervorbringung solch zentraler literarischer Elemente wie des rabbinischen Midrasch und des jüdischen systematischen Denkens im Mittelalter zuschreibt. In seinem Artikel „Jüdische Literatur“ stellt Steinschneider zu Beginn der zweiten Periode der jüdischen Geschichte folgende Analogie her: „… sowie [sich durch] das Hinzutreten der griechischen und römischen Cultur […] an der abgeschlossenen Bibel der Midrasch […] entfaltete; so keimen auch […] die ersten Saaten der neuen arabischen Wissenschaft […] bis die neue Weisheit […] der lebendigen Schöpferkraft des Midrasch hemmend entgegentritt […] und wissenschaftliche und religiöse Systeme und Richtungen fixiert“ (Steinschneider, „Jüdische Literatur“, S. 384). 38 Dem widerspricht nicht, dass Steinschneider sein ursprüngliches dreifaches Buchprojekt, wie Charles H. Manekin herausgearbeitet hat, später über seinen ursprünglich jüdisch-arabischen Fokus hinaus ausgedehnt hat. Dies ist eine quantitative, keine qualitative Modifikation von Steinschneiders Forschungsprogramm; vgl. Charles H. Manekin, „Steinschneider’s Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters. From Reference Work to Digitalized Database“, Jewish Studies Quarterly, 7 (2000), S. 141–59, hier S. 150.

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übergangslos und ohne Begründung die Cultur der Araber: „Es wäre zunächst die Cultur der Araber, d. h. der Bewohner der islamischen Länder, wo das Arabische vorherrschte, zu skizzieren, der Anteil der Juden zu untersuchen, ja auch das Resultat mit dem auf dem Boden christlicher Länder gewonnenen zu vergleichen.“39 Man kann Steinschneiders Vorliebe für die alle geographischen Einteilungen relativierende Bibliographie und für die kulturellen Übergänge, von denen die Übersetzungen insbesondere in und aus dem Arabischen zeugen, folgendermaßen deuten: Mit seiner transkulturellen Logik wehrte er sich  – spätestens seit seinem Artikel „Jüdische-Literatur“ im Jahr 1850 – dagegen, das Judentum oder den Orient als Vorspiel Europas zu begreifen, welches für Hegel der Maßstab seiner Darstellung des Judentums wie auch seines Wissenschaftsbegriffs war. Steinschneider dagegen macht den Orient zum Maßstab seines Wissenschaftsbegriffs.40 Allerdings fällt auf, dass Steinschneider viel lieber von arabischer Kultur als vom Islam geredet hat. Es ist genau diese Ausblendung des Religiösen, wogegen sich Ignác Goldziher in seiner Fortführung der Zunz-Steinschneiderschen Kulturhermeneutik gewandt hat.

7. Ignác Goldzihers Verdichtung von Steinschneiders jüdischer Wissenschaft zu einer Methode jüdischer Kulturgeschichtsschreibung Auf den jungen Goldziher hat Steinschneider einen großen Eindruck gemacht, als ersterer im Jahr 1869 für kurze Zeit an dessen Vorlesungen über jüdische Philosophie und jüdisch-arabische Literatur an der Veitel-Heine-Ephraimschen Lehranstalt in Berlin teilnahm. In seinem Tagebuch schreibt Goldziher: „Der als Bibliograph verschrieene Steinschneider führte mich in das wahre Wesen dieser Literatur ein und ich wurde durch diese Vorlesungen angeregt, meinen häuslichen Fleiss fast ausschließlich der jüdisch arabischen Literatur zuzuwenden.“41 Goldziher sah mit Recht in Steinschneider mehr als den Bibliographen und auch ich möchte Goldziher nicht als den vorstellen, als der er hauptsächlich bekannt ist: den Begründer der Islamwissenschaften. Um die hier 39 Moritz Steinschneider, Die arabische Literatur der Juden, Frankfurt a. M.: J. Kauffmann, 1902, S. XII. Bedeutsam ist, dass Steinschneider in dieser Monographie auffällig häufig zu dem Schluss kommt, dass nicht mehr entschieden werden könne, ob ein bestimmtes sprachliches Phänomen jüdischen oder arabischen Ursprungs sei. 40 Irene Zwiep hält dagegen Steinschneider zumindest zu Beginn seiner Forschungen für einen Hegelianer, der sich erst am Ende seiner Karriere zum vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaftler gewandelt habe; vgl. „From Dialektik to Comparative Literature: Steinschneider’s ‚Orientalism‘“, Studies on Steinschneider. Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany, hrsg. v. Reimund Leicht und Gad Freudenthal, Leiden: Brill 2012, S. 137–50. 41  Ignác Goldziher, Tagebuch, hrsg. v. Alexander Scheiber, Leiden: Brill, 1978, S. 38.

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interessierende epistemologische Rolle, die der Islam in der Genese von Goldzihers wissenschaftlicher Methode spielt, in den Blick zu bekommen, muss Goldziher – anachronistisch – als ein Kulturanthropologe oder Soziologe vorgestellt werden, in dessen kulturwissenschaftlicher Methode die Kontextualisierung der Analyse in dem praktisch-performativen Geschehen in den Kulturen eine zentrale Rolle spielt. Auch seine Methode ist wesentlich durch den methodischen Dreischritt der Betonung der Praxis, der kultursoziologischen Rolle von Sprachen und der Dynamik zwischen Kulturen geprägt. Jedoch verleiht Goldziher der Praxis eine weit umfassendere methodische Bedeutung im Vergleich zu (Zunz und) Steinschneider, der sie auf den interkulturellen Vorgang des Übersetzens beschränkt hatte. Bei Goldziher kann man geradezu von einem methodischen Primat der soziologischen Praxis religiöser – jüdischer wie muslimischer – Gemeinden sprechen. Damit ist Goldziher ein weiterer Repräsentant der von mir herausgearbeiteten Linie eines kulturellen Denkens in der Wissenschaft des Judentums, in dessen Methodologie das Verhältnis zum Islam eine herausragende Rolle spielt. In der hier gebotenen Kürze will ich folgende drei Grundgedanken von Goldzihers Methode vorstellen: die Rolle der Dialektik zwischen Einheit und Differenz von religiösen Traditionen mit den Umgebungskulturen, die sprachliche und literarische Performativität der Gemeinde als Basis eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Entwicklungsbegriffs und warum hieraus ein großes Interesse am Islam erwachsen konnte. In der später „Tradition und Dogma“ überschriebenen Derasha, die Goldziher zu Rosh Ha-Shana am 3. Oktober 1913 in Stockholm gehalten hat, gibt Goldziher tiefe Einblicke in seine Auffassung vom Verhältnis von religiöser Tradition und Kultur.42 Goldziher unterscheidet zu Beginn dieser Derasha zwischen toter und lebendiger Tradition. Erstere sei ein toter Gegenstand, dem der Forscher als einem „für immer abgeschlossenen Objekt gegenübersteht, an dessen Leben seine eigene Seele keinen subjektiven Anteil hat“.43 Für die lebendige Tradition im Judentum gelte dagegen, dass sie Teil des lebendigen kulturellen Lebens der jeweiligen Gegenwart sei: „[Die lebendige Tradition kann] nicht abseits stehen von dem Gesamtresultate unserer geistigen Kräfte, von allen jenen Faktoren, die zusammen unser geistiges und sittliches Leben, sagen wir es mit einem kurzen Worte heraus, unsere Bildung ausmachen.“ Goldziher bejaht nicht nur, dass alle Äußerungen der Bildung einer Epoche mit den jüdischen Traditionen in Berührung kommen  – „mit unserer ethischen Bestimmtheit, mit unserem Bildungsbesitz, mit unseren wissenschaftlichen Ueberzeugungen, mit unseren sozialen Bestrebungen, mit unseren ästhetischen Anlagen“, wie er sagt –, sondern er ist überzeugt, dass die religiösen Traditionen ihre Lebendigkeit allein dieser transkulturellen Dynamik verdanken. Goldziher spricht davon, 42  Ignác Goldziher, „Tradition und Dogma“, Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (1914), Nr. 1, S. 6–8, Nr. 2, S. 22–23, und Nr. 3, S. 33–5. 43  Goldziher, „Tradition und Dogma“, S. 7.

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dass die religiösen Traditionen hierdurch „in ihrem Entwicklungsgange immer wieder neu geschaffen, von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht neu entfaltet …“ werden.44 Was sich hier aber wie eine Empfehlung zur ungebremsten Assimilation einer Tradition an das jeweilige Zeitbewusstsein anhört, erfährt in folgender zentralen Überlegung eine performative Pointe. Goldziher unterscheidet zwischen Akzidentien einer Tradition und ihrer Substanz. Die Dynamik einer Tradition mit ihrer kulturellen Umgebung betrifft nur den Austausch akzidentieller Ideen. Diese fordern aber traditionsintern gleichzeitig auch den „Selbstbehauptungswillen“ der ihrer Substanz zugrunde liegenden Ideen heraus. Der traditionsinhärente Kampf zwischen (neuen) akzidentiellen Ideen und der (überlieferten) Substanz einer Tradition hat die Reaktivierung oder Verlebendigung letzterer zur Folge, wird sie demzufolge aber nicht in ihrer Substanz verändern. Methodisch bedeutsam ist, dass dieser Kampf der Ideen sich nicht nur darwinistisch anhört, sondern auch in diesem Sinn gemeint ist. Die Übertragung des biologischen Evolutionismus auf kulturelle Zusammenhänge ist angesichts der großen Popularität, die ab den 60er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts die Darwinsche Forschung erlangt hatte, nicht verwunderlich. Nach Goldziher werden durch die im transkulturellen Kontakt begierig aufgenommenen Ideen einer Epoche (wie z. B. der Darwinismus) „die alten Ideen nach dem Maß der Bedürfnisse der neuen Epoche weiter entwickelt und [wieder] ins Kampffeld des Lebens eingeführt, damit sie dort erneut zur Geltung kommen“. Hierdurch werde gewährleistet, „dass der Gang der Entwicklung von den Grundwahrheiten des Judentums nicht abweicht, keine Richtung einnimmt, die unsere Religion […] in Strömungen treiben könnte, die den Grundwahrheiten widersprechen“.45 Mit anderen Worten: Goldziher behauptet, dass die entscheidende Kraft für die Entwicklung einer religiösen Tradition nicht das Bewusstsein einzelner herausragender Individuen ist, sondern eine anti-individualistische, quasi-evolutive transkulturelle Dynamik. Die Erforschung der Entwicklung von religiösen Traditionen erfordert daher nach Goldziher eine Methode der Kulturgeschichtsschreibung, welche auf einer performativ angetriebenen Dialektik zwischen Einheit und Differenz religiöser Traditionen mit den Umgebungskulturen besteht.

8. Der Islam als Paradigma für Goldzihers Verbindung von Wissenschaft und Tradition Das letzte Zitat stammt aus einer Vorlesungsreihe, die Goldziher im Jahr 1888/9 unter dem späteren Titel „Wesen und Entwicklung des Judentums“ in Budapest gehalten hat – und damit komme ich zu meinem zweiten Punkt: die sprachliche  Goldziher, „Tradition und Dogma“, S. 22.  Goldziher, „Tradition und Dogma“, S. 41.

44 45

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und literarische Performativität der Gemeinde als Basis eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Entwicklungsbegriffs. Genau diesen Nachweis versucht Goldziher in seiner Vorlesungsreihe „Wesen und Entwicklung des Judentums“ zu führen. Er zeigt, dass das Judentum durch all seine formativen Epochen, von den Propheten, über die rabbinische Phase, die mittelalterliche Philosophie und die moderne Religionswissenschaft oder Wissenschaft des Judentums, stets ein Fenster zu den Ideen der umgebenden Kulturen weit geöffnet hielt, dass aber die Substanz des Judentums seit den Propheten unverändert geblieben sei, dass diese sich im Kampf mit den jeweiligen Ideen einer Epoche stets durchgesetzt habe und dass der geschichtliche Träger dieser Dynamik in erster Linie die religiösen Gemeinschaften gewesen seien. Auf die selbstgestellte Frage, was denn allen Epochen des Judentums gemeinsam sei, sagt Goldziher am Ende seines Vorlesungszyklus: „Das ist die Entwicklung und das Erleben der Ideen und Faktoren des religiösen Lebens des Judentums durch die Gemeinschaft, ihre Befreiung davon, das ausschließliche Privileg einer Kaste zu sein. Die ganze jüdische Gemeinde vertritt Gottes Wort, die ganze jüdische Versammlung hütet und entwickelt die Lehre, nicht einzelne Klassen, die sich von der Mehrheit des Volkes abspalten“.46 Tatsächlich geht der Anspruch von Goldzihers, auf der Performativität der Gemeinde beruhender, Methode der Geschichtsschreibung noch weiter. In seiner Vorlesungsreihe führt er nämlich außerdem den Nachweis, dass diese Methode einen modernen wissenschaftlichen Begriff ihrer selbst hervorgebracht habe. Im Geiste des Maimonides führt Goldziher die (aus der historischen Kontextualisierung des jüdischen Religionsgesetzes gewonnene monotheistische) Methode der Begründung des jüdischen Religionsgesetzes mit dem gegen jeglichen Aberglauben gerichteten Begriff moderner Wissenschaft zusammen  – eine subtile Argumentation, die hier nicht im einzelnen entfaltet werden kann. Es genügt in diesem Zusammenhang festzuhalten, dass Goldziher für die Wissenschaft des Judentums eine spezifische anti-individualistische wissenschaftliche Methode der Kulturgeschichtsschreibung beanspruchte.47 Damit liegt aber auf der Hand, warum Goldziher seine aus der Performativität der Gemeinde der Gläubigen abgeleitete wissenschaftliche Methode so nachdrücklich auf den Islam angewandt hat. Mehr noch als im Judentum trifft es auf den Islam zu, dass die auf dem Agieren der religiösen Gemeinschaft basierende transkulturelle Dynamik den Rang einer eigenständigen Institution besitzt. 46 Ignác Goldziher, A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése [„Wesen und Entwicklung des Judentums“. Vorlesungen gehalten im Jahr 1887/78], Budapest o. J. [um 1923]; neu ediert von János Kőbányai und József Zsengellér, A zsidóság lényege és feilődése, Budapest 2000, S. 29–128, hier S. 124 (Kursivierung im Original; eine deutsche Edition dieses Textes durch den Autor in der Übersetzung von Mihály Riszovannij und Angelika Balog ist in Vorbereitung). 47  Vgl. Ottfried Fraisse, Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft. Zur Historisierung des Islam, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 2014, S. 102–34.

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Wenn Goldziher sagt, dass „die ganze jüdische Gemeinde“ das Wort Gottes vertritt, dann entspricht das vor allem dem Iğmāʿ, einer der vier Institutionen der muslimischen Traditionsbildung (neben Koran, Sunna und Ray’). Der Iğmāʿ ist der Konsens der Gemeinde, „d. h. der allgemeine Brauch der Gemeinde, der sich unabhängig von geschriebenem, überliefertem oder erschlossenem Gesetz in großen Kreisen der Rechtgläubigen übereinstimmend festgesetzt hat“. Das „große Prinzip“ des Iğmāʿ sei der „Schlüssel zum Verständnis der islamischen Entwicklung“, sagt Goldziher in seinem Islam-Artikel in der Enzyklopädie „Die Kultur der Gegenwart“.48 Es ließe sich an jedem Buch Goldzihers zeigen, wie er die Geschichte des Islam als ein riesiges Laboratorium zur Erforschung und Verifizierung der Funktionsweise seiner anthropologisch und soziologisch orientierten kulturgeschichtlichen Methode aufgefasst hat. Es war die Leistung Goldzihers, am Gegenstand der muslimischen Traditionen in Verdichtung und Konzeptionalisierung der Überlegungen, welche bereits Zunz und Steinschneider zur methodischen Relevanz der Praxis und zur sprachlichen und literarischen Dynamik zwischen Kulturen angestellt hatten, eine wissenschaftliche Methode jüdischer Kulturgeschichtsschreibung geschaffen zu haben.

9. Shlomo Pines’ ideologiekritische Bearbeitung des am Islam entwickelten Paradigmas jüdischer Kulturgeschichtsschreibung Shlomo Pines (1908–1990) gehört nicht mehr der Welt des 19. Jahrhunderts an und deren Entdeckung der Geschichte wie auch deren Faszination am entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Denken. Statt der Suche nach einer jüdischen Kulturgeschichte reduziert er diese auf die Analyse derjenigen kulturellen Zentren, an deren literarischer Dynamik jüdische Autoren beteiligt waren. Fast scheint seine Biographie ein Vorschein seiner Methode des Eintauchens in die literarische Dynamik unterschiedlicher kultureller Zentren. Als Kind eines Geschäftsmanns und Wissenschaftlers wurde Pines in Paris 1908 geboren und hatte bereits vor seinem Arabischstudium und dem Studium der Philosophie in Heidelberg noch an den Orten Riga, Archangelsk (Russland), London und Berlin jeweils für ein paar Jahre gewohnt. Ab 1926 studierte er Sprachwissenschaften und Französische Literatur in Genf. Nach seiner Promotion 1934 in Berlin kehrte er nach Paris zurück und es gelang ihm, mit seiner Familie 1945 mit dem letzten Schiff aus Marseille nach Palästina zu entkommen, wo er an der Hebräischen Universität bis zu seinem Tod im Jahr 1990 Professor für Jüdische Philosophie war. Im Laufe dieser Stationen hatte Pines außer Französisch, Russisch, Deutsch und 48  Ignác Goldziher, „Die Religion des Islam“, Die Kultur der Gegenwart. Ihre Entwicklung und ihre Ziele, hrsg. von Paul Hinneberg, Berlin: 1906, Teil 1, Abteilung 5, Leipzig: Teubner, 1913, S. 301–37, hier S. 305–6.

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Ivrith auch Latein, Griechisch, Arabisch, Syrisch, Persisch, Türkisch und Sanskrit gelernt.49 Die Desillusionierung des 1. Weltkriegs mag dazu beigetragen haben, dass Pines’ Kulturbegriff äußerst kritisch gegenüber jeder Entwicklungsidee in der Geschichte eingestellt war. Anders als Steinschneider, der auf den christlichen Geschichtsbegriff Hegels mit einem auf der Dynamik zwischen Judentum und Islam beruhenden jüdischen Kulturbegriff reagiert hat, und Goldziher, der auf der kulturellen Performativität der religiösen Traditionen von Judentum und Islam eine anti-idealistische entwicklungsgeschichtliche Methode hervorgebracht hat, verhielt Pines sich kritisch gegenüber der Behauptung jeglicher Entwicklungsidee in der Geschichte. Auch versuchte er nicht – anders als Goldziher –, den Begriff des entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Denkens durch seine Anpassung an die kulturelle Dynamik religiöser Traditionen zu rekonzeptionalisieren. Damit kehrt er methodisch in gewisser Weise zum areliösen Standpunkt Steinschneiders zurück. Stattdessen basiert Pines die jüdische Kulturgeschichtsschreibung auf die Analyse der literarischen Dynamiken multikultureller Zentren zum Verständnis der Entstehung jüdischer Texte in ihnen. Auf einer Konferenz über Jüdische Studien (Limude Jahedut) im Jahr 1956 sagte Pines über den Begriff „jüdische Kultur“: „Es ist legitim zu sagen, dass die Juden für eine bestimmte Zeit im Geltungsbereich der griechisch-römischen Kultur existierten, danach im Geltungsbereich der arabischen Kultur und danach im Geltungsbereich der christlich-europäischen Kultur. Wenn man dies im Auge behält, stellt der Begriff ‚jüdische Kultur‘ zumindest ein Problem dar …“.50 Jüdische Kultur konstituiert sich nicht aus sich selber, sondern ist vor allem ein Produkt der Interaktion zwischen Kulturen, woraus folgt, dass sie nicht im Singular existiert. Pines’ Methode der Kulturgeschichtsschreibung ist damit exklusiv durch das Konzept der Transkulturalität bestimmt. Dieser regional kontextualisierte Begriff jüdischer Kulturen widerspreche nicht der Tatsache, dass die Juden durchaus ein Bewusstsein von der historischen Einheit ihres Volkes haben: „Wir finden die Tatsache, dass die Juden in verschiedenen Perioden eindeutig zu den Geltungsbereichen bestimmter Kulturen gehören und trotz dieses Umstands ist es so als ob dies im [historischen] Bewusstsein [des Volkes] nicht verinnerlicht worden wäre“.51 Pines bleibt dabei: „Jeder Versuch, über ‚jüdische Kultur‘ zu reden, welcher nicht auf dem Bewusstsein beruht, dass sie in Wahrheit eine multikulturelle Angelegenheit ist, muss 49  Ze’ev W. Harvey, „‫“על פרופסור שלמה פינס‬, Sefer ha-Yovel le-Shlomo Pines, Teil A, Jerusalem 1988, S. 1–15, hier S. 1–2 [Hebräisch]. 50  Harvey, „‫“על פרופסור שלמה פינס‬, S. 4. 51  Harvey, „‫“על פרופסור שלמה פינס‬, S. 4. Trotz seiner pluralistischen Position, wonach die jüdische Kultur eigentlich auf einer Vielheit von Kulturen beruhe, akzeptiert Pines die Annahme der historischen Einheit des Volkes, wie sie in folgendem Schriftvers zum Ausdruck komme: „Da, ein Volk, einsam wohnt es“ (Num 23,9).

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letztendlich als Verfälschung historischer Tatsachen scheitern“.52 So überrascht es nicht, dass Pines in der Einleitung seiner Übersetzung des Dalālat al-Ha’irīn von Maimonides neun Zehntel des Textes den Autoren Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Bāğğa, Ibn Rushd und dem Kalām widmet, deren Texte aber fester Bestandteil des kulturellen Raumes waren, in dem Maimonides lebte. Selbst von dem scheinbar jüdischsten Denker, Jehuda Halevi, zeigt Pines, dass dieser sich wesentlich an muslimischen Ideen orientierte, wie die ṣafwa/segula (arabisch und hebräisch für „Eigentümlichkeit“ im Sinne von Erwählung) oder den al-’amr al-ilāhī/hainyan ha-elohi (arabisch und hebräisch für „göttlicher Befehl“).53 So ist bei Pines – ähnlich wie bei Steinschneider – das jüdisch-muslimische Kulturverhältnis nicht aus religiösen oder konzeptionellen Gründen, sondern allein deswegen in das Zentrum seiner Forschung gerückt, weil die Mehrheit der Juden über 1000 Jahre lang im muslimischen Herrschaftsbereich und damit in zahlreichen kulturellen Zentren des Islam wie Bagdad, Kairo und Córdoba gelebt haben. Auch wenn Pines in den 50er Jahren bis Mitte der 60er Jahre sich ausschließlich auf die Erforschung arabischer Texte konzentriert hat, war es für seine an kulturellen Zentren orientierte Methode nur konsequent, seine Forschungen später auch über das jüdisch-arabische Sprachzentrum hinaus auf das jüdisch-hellenistische und das jüdisch-europäische Sprachzentrum ausgedehnt zu haben.

10. Schlussfolgerungen Bei allen drei Autoren, Steinschneider, Goldziher und Pines, hat sich gezeigt, dass im Hinblick auf die Entwicklung einer (alternativen) wissenschaftlichen Methode der Historisierung die muslimischen Traditionen ein paradigmatischer Gegenstand des Nachdenkens waren. Da sie ihre Methode der (Kultur‑) Geschichtsschreibung insbesondere an die Dynamik zwischen Judentum und Islam knüpften, ist ihr ein Begriff von kultureller Homogenität fremd. Über diese zentrale konzeptionelle Übereinstimmung hinaus weisen die besprochenen Methodenbegriffe aber auch eine auffallende Vielfalt und Kreativität auf. Während Steinschneiders Kulturgeschichtsschreibung in der Beziehung des Judentums zum Islam die entscheidende Bedingung für die Entwicklung des rationalen Denkens im Judentum sah, gründete Goldziher seine Methode einer wissenschaftlichen Kulturgeschichtsschreibung ausdrücklich auf die religiöse 52 Wie Harvey feststellt, entsteht hierdurch das Paradox, „dass trotz des partikularistischen Bewusstseins des jüdischen Volkes die jüdische Kultur die für andere Völker charakteristische Partikularität übersteigt und eine spezifisch universale und kosmopolitische Dimension besitzt“; Harvey, „‫“על פרופסור שלמה פינס‬, S. 6. 53  Shlomo Pines, “Shi‛ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2 (1980), S. 165–251.

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Dynamik der jüdischen und muslimischen Gemeinden das (anti-individualistische) Modell einer wissenschaftlichen Kulturgeschichtsschreibung. Pines versuchte sich in seiner Analyse der kulturellen Dynamik des Judentums mit dem Islam von derartigen Erkenntniszwecken ganz frei zu machen. Für ihn enthielten ergebnisoffen grundsätzlich alle Spuren transkultureller Dynamik historische Informationen. Durch den methodischen Gebrauch von unterschiedlichen Formen des Kontextes – insbesondere literarische, soziologische, religiöse und kulturelle – antizipieren diese Forscher wissenssoziologische und kulturanthropologische Ansätze des späten 20. Jahrhunderts, einschließlich der Konzepte der Transkulturalität und des performative turn.54 All dies geschah, um dem im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert dominanten wissenschaftlichen Geschichts‑ und Kulturbegriffen zu entkommen, deren Logik auf kultureller Homogenität und vermeintlicher Universalität gegründet waren.55 Die Verwissenschaftlichung des Islam ermöglichte offensichtlich gleichzeitig, eine kritische Distanz zur westlichen Forschungsgeschichte aufzubauen, als auch ihre kreative Bereicherung durch alternative Methoden. Die Ablehnung der Vorstellung von kultureller Homogenität und ihre Ersetzung durch unterschiedliche Formen von transkultureller Hybridität als eine klare Gemeinsamkeit in der Forschung von Steinschneider, Goldziher und Pines erlaubt es, von einer eigenen forschungsgeschichtlichen Linie zu sprechen, deren Programm der frühen Wissenschaft des Judentums entstammt.

Literaturverzeichnis Bachmann-Medick, Doris, Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, Hamburg: Rowohlt, 52014. Bamberger, Fritz, „Zunz’s Conception of History. A Study of the Philosophic Elements in Early Science of Judaism“, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 11 (1941), S. 1–25. Böhme, Hartmut und Gernot Böhme, Das Andere der Vernunft. Zur Entwicklung von Rationalitätsstrukturen am Beispiel Kants, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1985. Cohen, Mark R., Unter Kreuz und Halbmond. Die Juden im Mittelalter, München: C. H. Beck, 2005. Dohm, Christian Konrad Wilhelm von, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, Berlin: Nicolai, 1783. Fraisse, Ottfried, „Criticizing Historicism  – Ignác Goldziher’s Concept of Intercultural Evolution in Judaism and Islam“, Wissenschaft des Judentums between East and West. 54 Siehe

Anmerkung 2.  Ottfried Fraisse, „Criticizing Historicism  – Ignác Goldziher’s Concept of Intercultural Evolution in Judaism and Islam“, Wissenschaft des Judentums between East and West. The Hungarian Connection in Modern Jewish Scholarship, hrsg. v. Tamas Turan und Carsten Wilke, Berlin: De Gruyter 2016, S. 203–221. 55

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The Hungarian Connection in Modern Jewish Scholarship, hrsg. v. Tamas Turan und Carsten Wilke, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016, S. 203–21. – Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft. Zur Historisierung des Islam, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2014. Gans, Eduard, Erstlinge der Entjudung II, Der jüdische Wille. Zeitschrift des Kartells jüdischer Verbindungen e. V., 1 1918/1919 [hrsg. v. S. Salman Rubaschow (Schazar)], S. 109–215. – Erstlinge der Entjudung III, Der jüdische Wille. Zeitschrift des Kartells jüdischer Verbindungen e. V., 1 (1918/1919) [hrsg. v. S. Salman Rubaschow (Schazar) S. 193–203. Goldziher, Ignác, „Die Religion des Islam“, Die Kultur der Gegenwart. Ihre Entwicklung und ihre Ziele, hrsg. v. Paul Hinneberg, Berlin 1906, Teil 1, Abteilung 5, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913, S. 301–37. – „Tradition und Dogma“, Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, 78/1 (1914), S. 6–8, 2 (1914), S. 22–3 und 3 (1914), S. 33–5. – Tagebuch, hrsg. v. Alexander Scheiber, Leiden: Brill, 1978. – A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése [Wesen und Entwicklung des Judentums. Vorlesungen gehalten im Jahr 1887/78], Budapest o. J. [um 1923]; neu ediert von János Kőbányai und József Zsengellér, A zsidóság lényege és feilődése, Budapest 2000, S. 29–128, Harvey, Ze’ev W., ‫על פרופסור שלמה פינס‬, Sefer ha-Yovel le-Shlomo Pines, Teil A, Jerusalem 1988, S. 1–15 (Hebräisch). Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Werke in 20 Bänden, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970. Herder, Johann Gottfried, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Stuttgart und Tübingen: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1828. Lavater, Johann Caspar, Johann Caspar Lavaters Zueignungsschrift der Bonnetischen Philosophischen Untersuchung der Beweise für das Christenthum an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin, Zürich [auf Kosten guter Freunde], 1769. – Antwort an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn zu Berlin, Berlin: Nicolai, 1770. Livneh-Freudenthal, Rachel, „Kultur als Weltanschauung. Der Kulturbegriff der Begründer der ‚Wissenschaft des Judentums‘“, Arche Noah. Die Idee der Kultur im deutschjüdischen Diskurs, hrsg. v. Bernhard Greiner und Christoph Schmidt, Freiburg i.Br.: Rombach Verlag, 2002, S. 59–84. Manekin, Charles H., „Steinschneider’s Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters. From Reference Work to Digitalized Database“, Jewish Studies Quarterly, 7 (2000), S. 141–59. – Moritz Steinschneider’s Indecent Burial, University of Maryland, College Park/ Bar Ilan University, S. 1–9 (http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/d​o​ c​I​d​/12372; eingesehen am 21.  7. ​2016). Mendelssohn, Moses, Gedanken über die Zumutung des Herrn Diaconus Lavater an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn ein Christ zu werden …, Hamburg [Verlag unbekannt], 1770. – Schreiben an den Herrn Diaconus Lavater zu Zürich, Berlin: Nicolai, 1769. – Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum, nach den Erstausgaben neu ediert von David Martyn, Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2001. Pines, Shlomo, „Shi‛ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari“, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2 (1980), S. 165–251. Rosenzweig, Franz, „Einleitung“, Hermann Cohens jüdische Schriften, Berlin: C. A. Schwetsch­ke, 1924, S. XIII–LXIV.

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Savigny, Friedrich Carl von, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, Heidelberg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1814. Schorsch, Ismar, „Breakthrough into the Past: The Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden“, From Text to Context. The Turn to History in Modern Judaism, Schorsch, Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994, S. 205–32. Schulte, Christoph, Die jüdische Aufklärung, München: C. H. Beck, 2002. Schwartz, Yossef, „Jewish Orientalism Pre-Modern and Modern: Epochal Variations of Cultural Hybridity“, Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam in Context. Rationality, European Borders, and the Search for Belonging, hrsg. v. Ottfried Fraisse, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, S. 31–59. Steinschneider, Moritz, „Brief über eine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaft des Judenthums“, Literaturblatt des Orients, 30 (1843), S. 466–504. – „Jüdische Literatur“, Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, hrsg. v. Johann Samuel Ersch und Johann Gottfried Gruber, Sektion 2, Teil 27, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1850, S. 357–471. – „Islam und Judenthum. Kritik des Islam von Simon Duran (1423), aus dem Hebräischen übersetzt und erläutert“, Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 7 (1880), S. 1–48. – Die arabische Literatur der Juden, Frankfurt a. M.: J. Kaufmann, 1902. Ucko, Sinai, „Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums“, ZGJD, 5 (1935), S. 1–35. Westerkamp, Dirk, Die philonische Unterscheidung, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009. Wolf, Friedrich August, Encyclopädie der Philologie. Nach dessen Vorlesungen […], hrsg. v. S. M. Stockmann, Leipzig: Serig’sche Buchhandlung, 1845. Wolf, Immanuel, „Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums“, Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1 (1822), S. 1–24. Zunz, Leopold, Gesammelte Schriften, 3 Bde., Berlin: L. Gerschel, 1875–1876. Zwiep, Irene, „From Dialektik to Comparative Literature: Steinschneider’s ‚Orientalism‘“, Studies on Steinschneider. Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany, hrsg. v. Reimund Leicht und Gad Freudenthal, Leiden: Brill, 2012, S. 137–150.

From Polemical Discourse to Cultural Transmission in Spanish Arabism and European Orientalism The Case of Miguel Asín Palacios’s Study of al-Fiṣal by Ibn Ḥazm Enas Aly Ahmed 1. Introduction The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 marked a turning point in the history of Oriental studies by integrating an entirely new theoretical framework into the discipline. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s thesis on the exercise of power and knowledge, Said declared that Orientalism – specifically, the French and British varieties  – offered a fundamental basis for European colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The landmark work inspired a generation of scholars to incorporate new methodological approaches into their analyses of European Orientalist discourse. Yet many have come to refute Said’s thesis, shaping instead a counter-Orientalist approach that draws attention to the intellectual curiosity typical within Western culture and the rigorous scientific methods of European Orientalists, in order to repudiate claims that their aims and perspectives were inherently or exclusively colonialist.1 An engaging third approach to Oriental studies emerges in Suzanne Marchand’s study of nineteenth-century German Orientalism. By firmly anchoring the scholarship in European intellectual history, Marchand exposes the advantages of analyzing the knowledge-making practices of European Orientalists in their wider cultural milieu rather than concentrating upon the specifics of their limited ideological or political context.2 She explains how German Orientalists developed their 1  Stefano Rapisarda, “Orientalism, Counter-Orientalism and the History of Philology”, Archivio Storico per la Sicilia Orientale, Catania: Società di Storia Patria per la Sicilia Orientale, 2012, pp. 5–19. Rapisarda identifies several publications as part of an emergent counterOrientalist perspective, including Bernard Lewis, “The Question of Orientalism”, New York Review of Books, 24 June 1982; Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies, London: Penguin Books, 2007; and Karla Mallette, European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean: Toward a New Philology and a Counter-Orientalism, Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. 2  Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship, New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. xxii–xxiii. Marchand draws upon

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theoretical approaches by making use of tendencies in European cultural and scientific life across diverse fields including anthropology, history, comparative literature and philosophy. Her work marks a significant point in the history of Oriental studies, signalling a growing interest in approaches that consider a far wider range of elements contained in Orientalist texts including their methodological approaches, key terminology and theoretical bases. This essay explores the possibilities of applying Marchand’s methodological approach to the study of Orientalist discourse to key works by Spanish Arabists, taking as a key case-study Miguel Asín Palacios’s study of Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-ahwā’ wa-l-niḥal (Treatise on religions, sects, and creeds). Spanish Arabism is absent from Edward Said’s study of the processes by which British and French Orientalisms sustained their respective colonial movements. Indeed, Spanish Arabism has remained largely outside the debate on the relationship between Orientalism and colonialism.3 Bernabé López García suggests that this is because the Arabists of Spain ‘did not give Spanish colonialism in North Africa the sufficient and continual support that it needed,’ and thus did not form the ideological function crucial to Said’s categorization.4 Yet close study of the knowledge-making processes of Spanish Arabists reveals considerable overlap and intellectual exchange between European Orientalisms and Spanish Arabism. I will employ Marchand’s methodology to analyze the writing of one of Spain’s most prominent Arabists, Miguel Asín Palacios (1871–1944). I situate Asín Palacios’s ideas in the context of intellectual tendencies that marked both European Orientalism and Spanish Arabism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and evaluate his engagement with the theme of cultural transmission between Islam and Christianity. My aim is neither to suggest that Asín Palacios’ project was identical to that of European Orientalists of his time, nor to explore the extent to which a colonial agenda underlay the project. Instead, I point to the advantages of comparing methodological approaches and exploring thematic commonalities. The application of Marchand’s approach to the work of Miguel Asín Palacios sheds light on processes of multidirectional citation among Spanish Arabists and European Orientalists, particularly in their engagement with historical cases of cultural theoretical proposals put forward in Bradley L. Herling, “Either a Hermeneutical Consciousness or a Critical Consciousness: Renegotiating Theories of the Germany-India Encounter”, The Comparatist, 34 (2010), pp. 63–79. In a doctoral thesis defended in 2012, David Moshfegh demonstrates the potential of Marchand’s methodological approach by successfully using it to analyze the discourse of Ignác Goldziher. David Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher and the Rise of Islamwissenschaft as a “Science of Religion”, PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley CA, 2012, pp. 2–24. 3  See Bernabé López García, Orientalismo e ideología colonial en el arabismo español (1840– 1917), Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2011. 4  Bernabé López García, “Arabismo y Orientalismo en España. Radiografía y diagnóstico de un gremio escaso y apartadizo”, Awraq. Estudios sobre el mundo árabe e islámico contemporáneo, Extra 1 (1990), pp. 35–69: p. 50.

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transfer. Cultural transmission was of great interest to nineteenth-century European Orientalists who paid close attention to links between Islam and Europe and developed new methodological tools to analyze these links. Although Asín Palacios did not use the specific term ‘cultural transmission’, he had a clear set of ideas and terminology to refer to its processes. By highlighting the centrality of this theme to Asín Palacios’ work, I demonstrate the value of studying the ‘knowledge-making practices’ of Spanish Arabism in light of interactions with ideas, approaches and terminology circulating among European Orientalists. The essay is divided into two parts. The first part provides a general introduction to significant characteristics of European Orientalism and Spanish Arabism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, paying particular attention to the ways that scholars approached the theme of cultural transmission. Pointing to the work of Austrian Orientalist Alfred von Kremer (1828–89), I argue that the Kulturgeschichte that emerged in German historiography during the second half of the nineteenth century shaped historical approaches to cultural transfer in vital ways.5 I go on to examine key characteristics of Spanish Arabism before considering the specific study of the cultural history of al-Andalus. I focus on the methodological approaches developed by Asín Palacios’ professor and colleague, Julián Ribera Tarragó (1858–1934), whom Asín Palacios himself proclaimed the first Spanish Arabist to apply scientific methodology to analysis of the cultural history of al-Andalus.6 Asín Palacios acknowledged the direct ways in which Ribera’s theories regarding the transmission of ideas across cultures inspired his own work. Moreover, both scholars developed theoretical approaches to the study of the transmission of ideas that crucially shaped the development of their integrative cultural histories of al-Andalus.7 The second part of the essay focuses on Asín Palacios’ own work and his theoretical approach to the study of processes of cultural transmission. I have taken as a key case study the second volume of his five-volume work Abenházam de Córdoba y su historia crítica de las ideas religiosas (Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba and his Critical History of Religious Ideas). Published between 1927 and 1932, the work is important for understanding the growing interest on the part of Spanish Arabists in Islamic science and theology.8 Its second volume contains 5  Tomás Navarro Tomás Library in Madrid conserves a vast collection of letters received by Asín Palacios. A catalogue of this correspondence and outstanding study of Julián Ribera and Asín Palacios is found in Manuela Marín et al. (eds.), Los epistolarios de Julián Ribera Tarragó y Miguel Asín Palacios. Introducción, catálogo e índices, Madrid: CSIC, 2009. 6  Julián Ribera y Tarragó, Disertaciones y opúsculos. Edición colectiva que en su jubilación del profesorado le ofrecen sus discípulos y amigos, 1887–1927. Con una introducción de Miguel Asín Palacios, vol. 1, Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1928, pp. xvii–xviii. 7  Miguel Asín Palacios, La escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia. Seguida de la historia y crítica de una polémica, Madrid: Instituto Hispano Árabe de Cultura, 31961, p. 357, note 1. 8  Miguel Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba y su Historia crítica de las ideas religiosas, 5 vols., Madrid: Real Academica de la Historia, 1927–1932. The first volume of Asín Palacions’

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Asín Palacios’ complete translation and critical study of Ibn Ḥazm’s al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-ahwā’ wa-l-niḥal, a valuable example of eleventh century religious polemical discourse. In this text, Ibn Ḥazm systematically refutes the principles of each of the non-Islamic religions with which he was familiar, and critiques all Islamic schools except the Ẓāhiriyya. I will argue that al-Fiṣal is also a valuable text for the study of cultural transmission between Spain and the rest of Europe, as well as between Islam and Christianity; and that Asín Palacios’ interpretation of this work was crucially shaped by his ideas regarding the links between Islamic and Christian theological thought. I offer detailed analysis of the methodological tools that the Arabist used to study and interpret the text, and the principal links he identified in the chain of transmission of theological ideas between Islam and Christianity. The essay concludes with brief reflections upon the significance of Asín Palacios’ work in light of important shifts in both European Orientalism and Spanish scholarship.

2. Characteristics of European Orientalism and Spanish Arabism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: European Orientalists and the “Kulturgeschichte” European Orientalist writing of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century was shaped by three significant factors.9 Firstly, the emergence of the romantic generation of Orientalists, authors of great works of translation from Arabic or other Oriental languages into European languages.10 Secondly, the considerable contributions of Orientalists to the study of Arabic, particularly in works by Silvestre de Sacy, and his disciples, Freytag (1788–1861), Fleischer (1801–88) and Flügel (1802–70).11 And thirdly, a shifting interest during the work offers a study of Ibn Ḥazm’s life and work, the second presents a critique of al-Fiṣal; and, the remaining volumes contain a full translation of the Arabic text into Spanish. The book of al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal.  9 Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabism and Arabic Literature. Self-view of a Profession”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 27 (1969), pp. 145–56: p. 145. Josef van Ess, “From Wellhausen to Carl Heinrich Becker. The Emergence of Kulturgeschichte in Islamic Studies”, Islamic Studies. A Tradition and its Problem, ed. Malcolm H. Kerr et al., Malibu CA: United Publications, 1980, pp. 27–52: p. 39. 10  One can note Friedrich Rückert’s translations (1788–1866) from both Arabic and Persian into German. See Friedrich Rückert (trans.), Die Verwandlungen des Abu Seid von Serug, oder die Makamen des Hariri, Stuttgart: F. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1864. Friedrich Rückert (trans.), Der Koran, Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2000. And Charles Lyall’s translation (1845–1920) of pre-Islamic poetry from Arabic to English. See Charles Lyall (ed. and trans.), The Dīwāns of ʿAbīd ibn al-Abraṣ, of Asad, and ʿĀmir ibn aṭ-Ṭufail, of ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿah, Leiden: Brill, 1913. 11  See Ursula Wokoeck, German Orientalism. The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945, New York: Routledge, 2009, pp. 103–8. Rudi Paret, The Study of Arabic and Islam at German Universities. German Orientalists since Theodore Nöldeke, Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1968, p. 7.

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second half of the nineteenth century toward historical issues associated with Islamic civilization. Such historical studies were typically oriented toward either political history or cultural history. With regard to the political history of Islam, particularly significant works include Gustav Weil’s (1808–89) scholarship on the history of the Prophet and the Islamic Caliphate,12 and William Muir’s studies (1819–1905) exploring the Umayyad Caliphate.13 Among cultural histories of Islam, the works of Alfred von Kremer (1828–89), Ignác Goldziher (1850–1920) and Carl Heinrich Becker (1876–1933) stand as models for an approach that considers processes of cultural transmission between Islam and the West. In contextualizing the work of Asín Palacios within a wider European cultural milieu, it is more useful to draw comparisons with the work of Germanic Orientalists such as Kremer, Becker or Goldziher, rather than with French Orientalists whose cultural context might appear closer to that of Spanish Arabists. This is not least because Asín Palacios made clear his choice of employing specific approaches and methodological tools associated with the Kulturgeschichte that emerged in German historiography during the second half of the nineteenth century.14 Scholars such as the renowned Austrian Orientalist Alfred von Kremer looked to the history of Islam for the purposes of ‘integrating the Orient into universal culture, if only by means of the Western catalyst’.15 As Asín Palacios can be considered a proponent of a similar approach, it is worth considering the thematic axis and methodologies of such approaches. Alfred von Kremer studied the history of religious ideas and social phenomena in Islamic societies, laying out a theoretical approach to the issue of cultural transmission that is firmly anchored in the concept of Kulturgeschichte. Kremer collected the outcomes of this research in two books: Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams: der Gottesbegriff, die Prophetie und Staatsidee (History of the dominant ideas in Islam, the concept of God, prophecy, and the idea of the State), published in 1868; and, Kulturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen (Cultural history of the East under the Caliphate), published in two volumes between 1875 and 1877. Across these works, the Austrian worked to draw possible analogies and interconnections between Islamic and Christian ideas. He compared ideas about the justice of God and the anthropomorphism of Muslim theologians and sufi scholars, including al-Ḥallāj (242–309/857–922), al-Bisṭāmī (188–261/804–875), and al-Ghazālī (450–505/1058–1111), with writings by Christian theologians and philosophers such as Descartes (1596–1650) and Leibniz (1646–1716). Through 12  See Gustav Weil, Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1843; Historisch-kritische Einleitung in den Koran, Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1844; and Geschichte der Chalifen, 5 vols., Mannheim: Bassermann, 1846–62. 13  See William Muir, Annals of the Early Caliphate from Original Sources, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1883. 14  Julián Ribera, Disertaciones y Opúsculos, vol. 1, p. xix. 15  Stetkevych, “Arabism and Arabic literature”, p. 145.

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such comparisons, he elucidated the innovative contributions of Muslim authors to the subject matter. He also searched for other ways in which both religions were related, and explored the birth of Muslim schools such as the Muʿtazila and sufi thought under the influence of the Greek philosophy.16 A primary aim of Kremer’s work was to track the processes by which ideas were circulated and transmitted. In doing so, Kremer hoped to shed light on the role of Muslim authors in the development of the wider history of ideas. For example, his study of the ideas of al-Ghazālī does not consider these ideas in a Muslim context only, but works to contextualize and situate them in a wider, even a universal, perspective. Kremer applied principles of the Kulturgeschichte, or cultural history, developed in his time, to the study of these issues. As Suzanne Marchand notes, a key concept within the Kulturgeschichte was the presentation of the laws that organize the circulation of ideas in history as universal. Thus, authors like Kremer encountered no problem in associating ideas from Muslim tradition in the tenth century with those of Christian philosophers of the eighteenth century. In this context, Kremer attempted, to grasp, by comparing an overview of the whole course of a nation’s civilizing process with the development process of other cultured people, those general laws which determine the course of the history of peoples, and direct it in just as lasting a way as natural forces guide the realm of matter.17

This perspective demonstrates an integrated approach to Islamic civilization in the history of human progress. Carl Heinrich Becker’s contribution to the subject matter, specifically his study of the cultural aspects of the Islamic civilization, can be read in the same vein. Becker argued that ‘Islam should be studied as a civilization, not as a religion’ suggesting that without Alexander the Great no Islamic civilization could grow […]. Only the historical fact of Hellenism explains the possibility of a homogeneous Islamic civilization … Only if we see the Islamic world under a purely ethnic aspect may we take it as a part of Asia; in cultural affairs it lies closer to Europe. Because of this intermediary position, it is indispensable for our understanding of Western civilization; it presents the opportunity to compare an alternative process in the assimilation of a common heritage.18

Such approaches synthesize cultural, social and religious phenomena within Islamic civilization to incorporate it into universal history and demonstrate the influence of Christian tradition on Islamic thought. Germanic scholars developed an integrative approach to the study of Islamic tradition in a process that Josef van Ess rightly identifies as one oriented toward the ‘Europeanization 16  Alfred von Kremer, Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams. Der Gottesbegriff, die Prophetie und Staatsidee, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1868, pp. 113–6. 17  Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 189. Marchand cites Kremer, Kulturgeschichte des Orientes unter des Chalifen, vol. 1, pp. vii, ix. 18  Cited in Van Ess, “The emergence of Kulturgeschichte”, p. 46.

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of Islam’.19 It is therefore worth considering how Spanish Arabists responded to this integrative approach and engaged in a similar process known as the ‘Españolización de al-Andalus’ or ‘Hispanicization of al-Andalus’, particularly evident in the work of Arabists Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín Palacios.

3. Spanish Arabism and the History of al-Andalus Like European Orientalists, Spanish Arabists were interested in the two general research areas of linguistic and historical studies. However, while scholars such as José Moreno Nieto (1825–82), Francisco Codera Zaidín (1836–1917), and Miguel Asín Palacios developed works on the rules of Arabic grammar addressed to students of Arabic language,20 linguistic studies did not hold a primary position within Spanish scholarship in the way it did in the work of Orientalists elsewhere in Europe. The Spanish Arabists who wrote about Arabic grammar were aware of the importance of the study of the Arabic language for reading and understanding sources on the history of al-Andalus written by Muslim authors, and comparing them with Christian writings, so as to develop a broader view of the history of Spain in medieval times.21 The Arabist Ángel González Palencia (1889– 1949) observed that his professors and colleagues ‘did not study the language as an objective, but as an instrument to write the history, especially the history of alAndalus’.22 Eduardo Manzano Moreno suggests that Spanish Arabism was born in the nineteenth century as above all else ‘a historical discipline’ dedicated to the study of a particular period in Medieval Spain, that of al-Andalus.23 Alejandro García Sanjuan suggests that Spanish historiography has been marked by two key approaches to the history of al-Andalus. First, it has sought to exclude the history of al-Andalus from the national history due to the fact that Muslims remained in the Iberian Peninsula as enemies until the Reconquista allowed for reclamation of Spanish Catholic identity. The second approach has  Van Ess, “The emergence of Kulturgeschichte”, p. 47.  See José Moreno Nieto, Gramática de la lengua arábiga, Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1872, Francisco Codera Zaídin, Elementos de gramática árabe para uso de los alumnos, Madrid: Litografía de E. Fernández, 1886, and Miguel Asín Palacios, Crestomatía de árabe literal con glosario y Elementos de Gramática, Madrid: Lit. Fernández, 1939. 21  Patricio de la Torre, Ensayos de la Gramática y Poética Árabe, Madrid: Imprenta de Don Antonio de Sancha, 1787, p. xv. 22  Ángel González Palencia, “Don Miguel Asín Palacios”, Arbor. Revista general del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2/4–5 (1944), pp. 179–206: p. 186. 23 Eduardo Manzano Moreno, “La Creación de un esencialismo. La historia de al-Andalus en la visión del arabismo español”, Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción, ed. Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla et al., Cuenca: Castilla–La Mancha University, 2000, pp. 23–38: p. 24. See also Manuela Marín, “Orientalismo en España. Estudios Árabes y Acción Colonial en Marruecos (1894– 1943)”, Hispania. Revista española de Historia, 69 (2009), pp. 117–46: p. 118; Irene González González, Spanish Education in Morocco 1912–1956. Cultural Interactions in Colonial Context, Eastbourne: Sussex Academic e-Library, 2015, p. 167. 19

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offered an integrative approach to the history of al-Andalus in order to convey its importance to the national history of Spain.24 Fernando Rodríguez Mediano suggests that this integrative approach toward Islamic civilization has its origins in the historiographical discourse of seventeenth century Spain. The Marquis of Mondejár, a forerunner of the Spanish Arabists, asserted that ignorance of Eastern languages prevented scholars from developing further knowledge and limited their understanding of Greek science.25 In the nineteenth century, this integrative approach took shape in the work of Francisco Codera Ziadín, Ribera Tarragó, and Angel Gonzalez Palencia. As Sanjuan notes, these Arabists were able to convey a positive view of al-Andalus by associating it with modern Spanish identity. They showed that elements of Islamic civilization represented in educational and legal institutions, literary phenomena and philosophical ideas in the writing of Andalusian authors, persisted into later periods of Medieval European history, emphasizing the influence of Islamic-Hispano civilization upon the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages.26 Asín Palacios pointed out that by studying the history of ideas in al-Andalus, one develops a sense of Spain as ‘la patria del saber’, the fatherland of knowledge. Contemporary Spaniards, he maintained, should feel proud of their glorious scientific tradition of the Middle Ages.27 Spanish Arabists wrote about al-Andalus as a chapter of their national history; that is, the history of medieval Spain, and this phenomenon is particular to Spanish Arabism unobservable in any other branch of European Orientalism. Like European Orientalists, they developed their historical studies through two key approaches: political history and cultural history.28 In their research on the political history of al-Andalus, they paid particular attention to the study of the history of Muslim caliphates, and the battles and the dynasties of that time. Pascual Gayangos (1809–97) developed a novel perspective on the political history of al-Andalus with his translation al-Maqqarī’s Nafḥ al-ṭīb from Arabic into English, published in 1840 with the title, The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in 24  Alejandro García Sanjuán, “Al-Andalus en la Historiografía del Nacionalismo Españolista (Siglos XIX–XXI). Entre la Reconquista y la España Musulmana”, 1300 años de la conquista de Al-Andalus (711–2011). Historia, cultura y legado del Islam en la Península ibérica, ed. Diego Melo Carrasco et al., Coquimbo: Centro de Mohammed VI para el diálogo de civilizaciones, 2012, pp. 65–104: p. 66. 25  Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, “Culture, Identity and Civilization. The Arabs and Islam in the History of Spain”, Islam and the Politics of Culture in Europe. Memory, Aesthetics, Art, ed. Frank Peter et al., Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014, pp. 41–60: p. 45. 26 García Sanjuán, “Al-Andalus en la historiografía”, pp. 73–7. 27 Miguel Asín Palacios, Mohidín, Homenaje a Menéndez Pelayo, en el año vigésimo de su profesorado. Estudios de erudición española, vol. 2, Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, 1899, pp. 217–56: p. 56. 28  In his book Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship. Sixteenth Century to the Present, James Monroe showed that until the first half of the twentieth century, the Spanish Arabists wrote about historical studies through two main dimensions: first political history and second cultural history. See James Monroe, Islam and Arabs in Spanish Scholarship. Sixteenth Century to the Present, Leiden: Brill, 1970.

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Spain, while Francisco Codera y Zaidín wrote about the history of Almoravids in al-Andalus in his book, Decadencia y desaparición de los almoravides en España (Decline and disappearance of the Almoravids in Spain), published in 1899.29 In his inaugural address to the Academic year 1870–71 at the University of Saragossa titled Importancia general que tiene para España el estudio de la Lengua árabe, y en especial para los que han nacido en el antiguo reino de Aragón (The general importance of the study of Arabic language to Spain, especially to those who were born in the old Kingdom of Aragón), Codera declared that Arabic sources on the history of al-Andalus are essential for the writing of Spanish history. Codera pointed to the importance of historiographical sources composed by Muslim authors who wrote extensively on a part of ‘our own history’.30 Codera’s interest in writing the history of al-Andalus, however, was limited to publication of several monographs centred on the external history  – considered ‘political history’. Codera avoided writing about cultural and social aspects of the history of al-Andalus, maintaining that Spanish Arabists of the late nineteenth century lacked sufficient historical sources to explore these issues.31 Nevertheless, in the second decade of the twentieth century, Codera modified his ideas about writing the internal history (considered ‘cultural history’) of al-Andalus after reading the early works of Julián Ribera and Asín Palacios. He conceded that Ribera and Asín Palacios drew important conclusions about the internal history of al-Andalus by studying the cultural, philological, and social phenomena that marked it.32

4. A Radical Shift: The Emergence of Cultural History in Spanish Arabism From the 1890s, Arabists such as Julián Ribera Tarragó and Miguel Asín Palacios dramatically shifted Spanish Arabism by adjusting their focus to the cultural history of al-Andalus.33 As Eduardo Manzano notes, they afforded greater attention 29  Codera also highlighted the study of the numismatics as an important source in describing the history of the Muslim Caliphate in al-Andalus: see an essay to the Arabic-Hispano numismatics by Francisco Codera y Zaidín, Tratado de Numismática Arábigo-Española, Madrid: M. Murillo, 1879. 30 Francisco Codera y Zaidín, Importancia general que tiene para España el estudio de la lengua árabe, y especial para los que han nacido en el antiguo reino de Aragón, Saragossa: Saragossa University, 1870, p. 51. 31  Francisco Codera y Zaidín, “Anteproyecto de trabajos y publicaciones árabes que la Academia debiera emprender”, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 16 (1890), pp. 395– 404: pp. 95–6. 32 Francisco Codera y Zaidín, “Manuscript 5.341 of the National Library of Spain”, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 62 (1913), p. 337. 33  On Asín Palacios in particular, see Andrea Celli, Figure della relazione. Il Medioevo in Asín Palacios e nell’arabismo spagnolo, Rome: Carocci, 2005. Miguel Asín Palacios, Dante y el Islam, Prólogo de Miguel Cruz Hernández, Navarra: Urgoiti, 2007.

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to the study of its cultural legacy by analyzing the development of institutions, social phenomena and ideas within Muslim society.34 Asín Palacios suggested that the shift from political history to cultural history was a logical development in Spanish Arabism: Actually, it was obligatory to start with political history as its aspects were more obvious […]. But to understand the base of political societies, and to explore the internal structures of their organizations – the interior life of ideas, customs, and civilization – it is important to have studied first the more superficial aspects. In history, like in philosophy, metaphysics could not be conceived before the physics. Thus, this metaphysics of the human being, which is the cultural history, requires special skills from the researcher.35

Asín Palacios maintained that political history and cultural history were not contradictory tendencies in historiography. Both were essential to analysis of distinct layers of society and military, social, religious, and literary phenomena. For his part, Ribera preferred to separate the political conditions from the cultural. He argued that, although al-Andalus was in the hands of a barbaric government during the periods of the Almoravids and Almohads, there remained ‘European peoples’ in al-Andalus who were experts in the civilizing process.36 Ribera suggested that it was vital to study cultural history because it considers the origins of philosophical ideas and social phenomena that emerged in al-Andalus, and illustrates the accomplishments of the ‘Spanish Muslim people’ who would spread across the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages. The shift to the study of cultural history in Spanish Arabism incorporated new thematic, theoretical and methodological approaches that can be observed across the writings of Ribera and Asín Palacios. Both authors shed light on the topic of the transmission of ideas and discussed issues pertaining to the origins and manners of transmission between Oriental and Western civilizations. They claimed that there are direct analogies between the cultural and social phenomena in al-Andalus, Spain and the rest of Europe and suggested mutual influences between Islam and Christianity in the fields of mysticism, theology, institutions and literature. They also affirmed that both Persian and Hellenistic cultures had substantially impacted upon the birth and development of Islamic Oriental civilization, which in turn impacted on Hispanic-Muslim authors. They recognized the role of Mozarabs who lived in Muslim Iberia in the transmission of copious amounts of knowledge from the Islamic tradition to the rest of Europe.37 Ribera and Asín Palacios developed distinctive theoretical approaches to interpret the circulation of ideas and their transmission from al-Andalus to Europe. Ribera suggested that it was essential to compare and evaluate ideas by 34 Manzano

Moreno, “La creación de un Esencialismo”, p. 29.  Ribera Tarragó, Disertaciones, vol. 1, p. xvii. 36  Ribera Tarragó, Disertaciones, vol. 1, p. 9. 37  Miguel Asín Palacios, Huellas del islam, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1941, p. 7. 35

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tracking their imitations. Through imitation, he maintained, it becomes possible to interpret the origin of the literary texts, and understand authors such as Shakespeare, Cervantes, Góngora, Milton and Dante not as mere plagiarists but as great imitators.38 He affirms that imitation illustrates the similarities between institutions and religious ideas, thus revealing that civilizations ‘derived from a common origin’. In his conclusion, Ribera argues that research on the theme of imitation must always engage important questions about the commonalities among mankind.39 He adds that ‘the impossibility of spontaneous generation of cultural phenomena’ is a law that informs the process by which ideas are transmitted across and throughout history. No idea or cultural phenomenon can exist without first having a precursor.40 For this reason, it is vital to study the ‘birth conditions’ of a cultural phenomenon in order to properly understand its origins and development.41 In applying this theoretical approach, Ribera sought to provide a new understanding of the extensive chain transmitting ideas between East and West in the fields of poetry, music, and institutions. In his 1899 essay, Orígenes de la filosofía de Raimundo Lulio (The Origins of the Philosophy of Ramon Llull), he suggests the sufi Islamic origins of various ideas within the philosophy of Ramon Llull.42 He identifies a range of similarities between the work of Llull and the Andalusian sufi Ibn ʿArabī (560–637/1165–1240), pointing to their representations of the divine and metaphysical realities through geometrical figures. Ribera referred to his exploration of the process of cultural transmission as ‘a study of the origins and precursors of the philosophical system of Ramon Llull’.43 In a 1912 speech to the Spanish Royal Academy of History, Ribera spoke about the lyrical poetry of Ibn Quzmān (470–555/1078–1160), a well-known poet who used a poetical strophical form known as zajal (zéjel in Spanish). He suggested that the zajal represents a Hispanic-European literary genre, not an Oriental style of poetry. Ibn Quzmān wrote verses in the arabo-romance dialect of the peninsula and his poetry contributed to the development of popular themes that continued to appear in European literature centuries later.44 Ribera compared Ibn Quzmān’s poetry with later models of poetic forms such as those used by Alfonso el Sabio in the thirteenth century, or in popular songs of the fifteenth century, demonstrating that clear similarities existed between all of them. The zajal, he 38  Julián Ribera Tarragó, Orígenes del Justicia de Aragón, Saragossa: Comas Hermanos, 1897, p. 333. 39  Ribera Tarragó, Orígenes del Justicia, pp. 230–4. 40  Ribera Tarragó, Disertaciones, vol. 1, p. 365. 41  Ribera Tarragó, Orígenes del Justicia, pp. 192–3, 285. 42  Ribera Tarragó, Disertaciones, vol. 1, p. 160. 43  Ribera Tarragó, Disertaciones, pp. 170–1, 78. 44  Ribera suggested that Ibn Quzmān did not describe the desert nor use Classical Arabic language as it was used in the Arabian Peninsula, Damascus or Baghdad, because the zajal of twelfth century al-Andalus was more European than Oriental.

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maintained, influenced Hispanic-European literature and indeed European literature in general.45 He thus concluded that ‘Spain was first in the origins of Renaissance literature in Europe during the Middle Ages’.46 It is in this context that Ribera identified al-Andalus as a Spanish civilization. In the history of Spanish Arabism, this approach is referred to as the españolización de al-Andalus that emerged from the 1890s through Ribera and Asín Palacios’ research on cultural history. Both Arabists demonstrated Islamic influence on European cultural phenomena through their study of ‘Spanish Islam’.47 Ribera and later Asín Palacios aimed to historically integrate the Islamic civilization of al-Andalus into a broader European context, demonstrating that it was more European than Arabic.

5. Asín Palacios and the Study of Cultural Transmission Asín Palacios was born in Saragossa in 1871.48 He was a graduate of the University of Saragossa’s Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, where he received his first lessons in Arabic language from professor Julián Ribera during the Academic year 1892/93.49 He also studied at the Seminario Conciliar and celebrated his first Mass in 1895. One year later, at the Central University of Madrid, he defended a doctoral thesis entitled Algazzali y su papel en el islamismo (Al-Ghazālī and his role in Islam). He later returned to Saragossa for six years to teach Latin and the history of philosophy at the Seminario Conciliar. During this time, Asín Palacios published essays on mysticism, theology and philosophy in Islam, and the relationship between Islam and Christianity.50 In 1903, he succeeded 45 Ribera

Tarragó, Disertaciones, vol. 1, pp. 5, 9, 11. Tarragó, Disertaciones, vol. 1, p. 150. 47  Ribera’s works were well-received in Spanish Arabist circles with Emilio García Gómez classifying his study of the influence of Andalusian poetry on the songs of the medieval troubadours as ‘one of the most interesting topics in the history of the cultural relations between Islam and Christianity.’ See Julián Ribera Tarragó, Historia de la música árabe medieval y su influencia en la española, Madrid: Editorial Voluntad, 1927, pp. 6, 7. 48  For more biographical information about Asín Palacios, see: Monroe, Islam and Arabs in Spanish Scholarship; José Valdivia Valor, Miguel Asín Palacios. Mística cristiana y mística musulmana, Madrid: Hiperión, 1991; Marín et al., Los epistolarios de Julián Ribera; Luce López Baralt (ed.), Miguel Asín Palacios, estudiante de la lengua sánscrita y profesor de la filosofía religiosa de la India, Madrid: Mandala, 2015. 49 The Academic record of Asín Palacios, saved in the General Archive of the Complutense University of Madrid, offers some important information about the academic life of the Arabist as a student and later as a professor at the Central University of Madrid. 50 In Menendez Pelayo’s Homage volume (1889), he published his article Mohdín about the Muslim sufi Muḥī l-Dīn ibn ʿArabī and the similarities of his philosophical ideas with Raimundo Llull. In the monthly Journal of Aragón founded in 1900 by Julián Ribera and Eduardo Ibarra, Asín Palacios published some articles, such as El filósofo zaragozano Avempace (The Aragoness Philosopher Ibn Bācha) in 1900, El filósofo autodidacto (The Autodidact Philosopher) about 46 Ribera

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Codera, who retired voluntarily, as the chair of Arabic language at the Central University of Madrid. Upon moving to Madrid, Asín Palacios’ network of contacts was extended considerably. He frequently attended the cultural and literary gatherings convened by Menéndez Pelayo and Guillermo J. de Osma. Throughout his career, Asín Palacios studied the works of crucial Islamic philosophers, sufis and theologians including Ibn Masarra (269–319/883–931), Ibn Ḥazm (384–56/994–1064), al-Ghazālī, Ibn Rushd (520–594/1126–98) and Ibn ʿArabī.51 In his doctoral thesis, he set out to explain al-Ghazālī’s contribution to Islamic thought, particularly with regard to Islamic theology and mysticism. Close analysis of his body of work demonstrates that his views on this subject matter altered over the course of his career. In his latter works, Asín Palacios paid particular attention to the study of the mutual influence between Islamic and Christian philosophical thought. He began to study and contextualize Muslim theologians and philosophers in both European and Christian contexts. During his doctoral viva, Menéndez Pelayo, a member of the committee, recommended he study the relationship and influence of Islamic theology on Christian scholasticism. Following this advice, Asín Palacios published the 1901 book Algazel, dogmática, moral, y ascética (Al-Ghazālī, dogma, morality and asceticism), studying al-Ghazālī’s influence upon the theological thinking of Ramon Martí (1220–84) and Thomas Aquinas.52 Later, Asín Palacios studied the mutual influence between Islam and Christianity in mysticism, theological thought and philosophy. He published several essays about the sufi experience and life of Ibn ʿArabī. In his article Mohidín (1899), he studied the ‘possible relationship’ between Ramon Llull and Muslim sufis, in particular, Ibn ʿArabī. He argued that both authors used a similar geometric figure to describe the idea of ‘the identification of the creature with the Creator’ known as pantheism. Asín Palacios believed that the discovery of these links could fill in the gaps in the history of ideas in the Middle Ages between Islamic philosophy and Christian scholasticism.53 Six years later, he traced another link in the chain of transmission of the idea of pantheism, demonstrating that Ibn ʿArabī had been influenced by the classical philosopher Plotinus.54 In his 1919 book La Escatalogía Musulmana en la Divina Comedia (Islamic Eschatology in the Divine Comedy), he studied the similarities in eschatological representations between Islamic and Christian literary works. He claimed that Ibn Ṭufayl in 1901, and Psicología de la creencia según Algazel (Psychology of Belief according to Al-Ghazālī) in 1902. 51  For further information about Asín Palacios’s philosophical research see: Janero González Carreño, “La Obra Filosófica de Miguel Asín”, Revista de Filosofía, 4 (1945), pp. 125–88. 52 Miguel Asín Palacios, Algazel, dogmática, moral y ascética, intro. Menéndez Pelayo, Saragossa: Comas Hermanos, 1901, p. xxxiii. 53  Asín Palacios, Mohidín, pp. 221–55. 54 Miguel Asín Palacios, “La Psicología según Mohidin Abenarabi”, Actes du XIV congrès international des Orientalistes, Paris: Leroux, 1907, pp. 79–191: pp. 147–8.

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elements of Dante’s Divine Comedy had Islamic origins, especially in the Prophet’s tradition and Ibn ʿArabī’s writings. Finally, in 1931, he published his work El Islam Cristianizado (Christianised Islam), a study about Ibn ʿArabī’s life, his mystical writings and his relationship with Christian mysticism. Here, Asín Palacios defended his conviction that ancient Eastern Christian mysticism had influenced Islamic mysticism. On the subject of Ibn Rushd’s theological thought, Asín Palacios wrote El averroísmo teológico de Santo Tomas de Aquino (1904), one of his most important essays on comparative theology.55 Orientalists such as Louis Massignon had already studied the impact of Ibn Rushd’s writings on St. Thomas Aquinas. Asín Palacios’s innovation was to study the influence not only of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle, but also of his Kitāb al-Falsafa and Tahāfut al-Tahāfut upon the writings of Thomas Aquinas.56 Asín Palacios argued that Thomas Aquinas was familiarized with Ibn Rushd’s ideas through Maimonides and Ramon Martí, who each cited several writings of the Muslim philosopher. It is in this context, Asín Palacios explains, that Thomas Aquinas introduced a substantial part of Ibn Rushd’s philosophy and theology into Christian scholasticism which was, in its origin, an adaptation of the Christian dogma of the Oriental Church.57 Another Andalusian philosopher studied by Asín Palacios was Ibn Masarra, to whom he dedicated his 1914 inauguration speech to the Spanish Academy of Moral and Social Sciences. Ibn Masarra’s philosophy is considered a heretical system within Islam, characterized by neoplatonic and mystical elements that were later transmitted to Christian scholasticism through the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Jabīrūl’s (c. 411–450/1020–58). Asín Palacios aimed to use the writings of these authors to analyze ‘the history of the Hispanic-Muslim philosophical and theological system in order to illustrate its relationship to its precursors and the similarities with posterior ideas’.58 These works reflect Asín Palacios’s great interest in the study of the mutual relationship between Islam and Christianity in the fields of literature, philosophy, theology and mysticism. His attempt to present common points between Islam and Christianity led him to prioritize the study of cultural aspects of al-Andalus over the political. He outlined a general map of channels of contact between the faiths, whose origin point could be found in Greek thought, yet was later modified by Christian mysticism, adopted by Islam, and consequently transmitted to the west.59  González Palencia, “Don Miguel”, p. 183.  Miguel Asín Palacios, “El Averroísmo Teológico de Santo Tomás de Aquino”, Homenaje a D. Francisco Codera, en su jubilación del profesorado. Estudios de erudición Oriental, Saragossa: Mariano Escar, 1904, pp. 271–331, 299, 300. 57  Asín Palacios, “El Averroísmo Teológico”, p. 324. 58  Miguel Asín Palacios, Abenmasarra y su escuela. Orígenes de la filosofía hispano-musulmana, Madrid: Maestre, 1914, pp. 1, 3. 59  James Monroe, Islam and Arabs in Spanish Scholarship, p. 181. 55 56

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Asín Palacios developed a well-defined theory to describe the circulation of ideas between the East and the West. He was eager to place key religious, social and cultural elements in historical order, without considering the differences between the religions or in the civilizations from which they emerged. He summarized his view in a famous sentence: ‘there is no break in continuity in the life of collective thought’. The principle of continuity, he argued, represents one of the important laws of history that can convey the movement of ideas. He was convinced that there were clear and on-going channels of communication between Islam and Christianity, whose connections could be analyzed in order to fill in the gaps of history.60 Asín Palacios was convinced that parallels and similarities between the philosophical and theological ideas of different religions revealed constant processes of imitation. He suggested that, in order to evaluate processes of influence and imitation across cultural contexts, it was necessary to identify several similarities between the writings of two or more authors; to demonstrate the previous existence of a given model; to show coexistence between the two different communities; and to provide evidence of the historical connections between the authors.61 Across his works, Asín Palacios paid close attention to the similarities between writings and ideas by means of comparison. Yet he seldom provided sufficient historical evidence to prove explicit connections between authors, considering the issue of ‘secondary importance’.62 He believed that the discovery of parallels between the authors’ works was sufficient to prove the existence of imitation and thus establish a clear link between them. Like Julián Ribera, Asín Palacios rejected the notion that similarities between Islamic and Christian thought could be explained as coincidence. He maintained that such interpretation represented ‘mental laziness’ on the part of scholars who encountered coincidences, due to their failure to fully explore the origins of ideas and their influences.63 In this context, Asín Palacios also rejected the use of the theory of ‘spontaneous generation’ to illustrate the origins and circulation of ideas in time, instead defending his conviction that ideas are born in a specific place and that mankind retransmits them through migrations and other channels of contacts.64 Having interpreted the movement of ideas across history from this perspective, he maintained that scholars were required to interpret the origin and the diffusion of ideas as a beginning point that expands in concentric circles.  Asín Palacios, Abenmasarra y su escuela, p. 4.  Miguel Asín Palacios, “Bosquejo de un Diccionario técnico de filosofía y teología musulmanas”, Obras Escogidas, II–III, Madrid: Miguel Asín Institute, 1946–48, pp. 171–215: pp. 210–1. 62  Asín Palacios, La escatología musulmana, pp. 357–8. 63  Asín Palacios, “El Averroísmo Teológico”, p. 307. 64 Miguel Asín Palacios, “El filósofo zaragozano Avempace”, Revista de Aragón, 1 (1900), pp. 193–7: p. 94. 60 61

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Asín Palacios challenged those who declared the originality of Islamic philosophy, suggesting instead that they search for and study its origins in Greek philosophy. In reference to the originality of Ibn Rushd’s philosophical ideas, he proclaimed: ‘it is too late to create’.65 He observed that the nucleus of Ibn Rushd’s thought can be located in the writing of Greek and Muslim philosophers including Aristotle, al-Ghazālī or Ibn Bājja.66 In the same vein, he denied the originality of Christian scholastic philosophy of the thirteenth century considering it ‘a spontaneous product of the genius of its authors’. He argued that, like Islamic theology and Christian Oriental theology, Christian scholasticism should be studied in relation to its antecedents.67 Asín Palacios considered al-Fiṣal, Ibn Ḥazm’s polemical work, as an important document for the study of the origins of Christian scholasticism. He was convinced that the work offered clear evidence of the transmission of ideas from Christian theology to Islamic theology and vice versa, and used it to shed light upon a chain of ideas transmitted across Islamic and Christian thought between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.

6. Ibn Ḥazm and al-Fiṣal Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd Ibn Ḥazm was a theologian, historian, genealogist and one of the foremost theoreticians of Ẓāhirism in Islam.68 Ibn Ḥazm’s father, Abū ʿUmar Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd Ibn Ḥazm (d. 402/1012), was a vizier to ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar (392–399/1002–1008). Ibn Ḥazm and his family supported the Umayyad Caliphate in the dynasty’s critical moment preceding its disappearance. As a result of his participation in political struggles, Ibn Ḥazm had to leave Cordoba and was imprisoned on several occasions. In 414/1024, at the age of thirty, he conceded ‘that the possibilities of restoring the Umayyad caliphate had gone forever’ and decided to abandon political life to dedicate himself to study and writing. He began to study the most common juridical school of alAndalus, Mālikism, with his teacher, Ibn Daḥḥūn, beginning with the book of alMuwaṭṭāʾ. After having committed himself to Mālikism for three years, Ibn Ḥazm turned his attentions, as Asín Palacios observes, from ‘the non-scientific milieu of the Maliki jurists in al-Andalus’ to Shafiʿism. His adoption of Shafiʿism lasted only until he arrived at the ultimate decision to adhere to Ẓāhirism, ‘to which he devoted the rest of his life’. During the two years from 418/1027 to 420/1029,  Asín Palacios, “El filósofo zaragozano”, p. 194.  Asín Palacios, “El filósofo zaragozano”, pp. 195–6. 67  Asín Palacios, “El averroísmo teológico”, p. 307. 68  I draw biographical detail about Ibn Ḥazm from Miguel Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba y su historia crítica de las ideas religiosas, vol. 1, Madrid: Turner, 1984; and José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, “Ibn Ḥazm a Biographical Sketch”, Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba. The Life and the Works of a Controversial Thinker, ed. Camilla Adang et al., Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 1–24. 65 66

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he taught the Ẓāhirī method at the Great Mosque of Cordoba. His juridical adhesion caused problems with Maliki jurists, who asked the Umayyad caliph Hishām III to prohibit his classes in Cordoba. Consequently, Ibn Ḥazm was forced to leave the city in search of a shelter from which to share his knowledge.69 During his life, Ibn Ḥazm engaged in several polemics. In 404/1013, he wrote one of his famous epistles, Risāla fī l-Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Naghrela, to the vizier of the Zīrid king of Granada, Bādīs Ibn Ḥabūs. In this epistle, Ibn Ḥazm refuted the arguments of the Jewish author who had criticized passages of the Qurʾān. He also ‘launched a counter attack’ to demonstrate several contradictions within the Torah.70 From Majorca he engaged in a famous debate with Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (403–74/1013–81) about Ẓāhirī and Māliki fiqh. These polemics, as Asín Palacios explains, illustrated the solid base of his knowledge in other religions and his rigid dialectic method of study. Al-Fiṣal fi l-milal wa-l-ahwā’ wa-l-niḥal is recognised as one of Ibn Ḥazm’s most significant polemical works. The book opens with the classification of the principal religious attitudes of mankind.71 According to the author, there are six main religious tendencies: 1. The scepticism of the sophists who deny reality. 2. The atheism of philosophers who confirm that the world is eternal yet has no creator. 3. The philosophers who assert that the world is eternal and that its creator, too, is eternal. 4. Zoroastrians, Manicheans, and polytheistic Trinitarian Christians who confirm that there is more than one creator of the world. While some in this category believe that the world is eternal, others affirm that it has a beginning in time. 5. The monotheism of the Brahmans and the rationalists who confirm the existence of reality, believe that the world has a beginning and that it has one eternal creator, but deny all prophecies. 6. The monotheism of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who confirm the existence of reality, believe that the world has a beginning and that it has one eternal creator, affirm the existence of some prophets and deny the existence of others. 69 Asín

Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 1, pp. 121–30. this theme, see Emilio García Gómez, “Polémica Religiosa entre Ibn Ḥazm e Ibn al-Nagrila”, Al-Andalus, 4 (1936–1939), pp. 1–28. Maribel Fierro, “Ibn Ḥazm and the Jewish Zindīq”, Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba, the Life and the Works of a Controversial Thinker, pp. 497–509. 71  On the book al-Fiṣal, see Camilla Adang, Islam Frente al Judaismo. La polémica de Ibn Ḥazm de Córdoba, Madrid: Ibn Ezra editorial, 1994 and Samir Kaddoury, Le Livre Décisif sur les Religions et les Sectes d’Ibn Hazm. Entre l’Histoire du Texte et la Critique Textuelle, PhD diss., Leiden University, Leiden, 2013. 70 On

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Ibn Ḥazm attempted to demonstrate the falseness of each one of these religious ideas by refuting their main arguments. He devoted a special part of his book to criticism of the Bible, highlighting contradictions and geographical errors. The second part studies a series of Islamic schools (Muʿtazila, Murjiʾa, Shiʿa and Khawārij), criticizing their principles with regard to theological issues such as anthropomorphism, divine names and attributes, the problems of faith; and presents his opinion on these topics in accordance with Ẓāhirī method.

6. Asín Palacios’s Reading of al-Fiṣal Asín Palacios presented al-Fiṣal as ‘the first essay of the systematic and critical study of the principal religions of Humanity’ and ‘a nucleus of the disciplines of History of Religions, History of Dogmas and History of Theology’.72 He emphasized that the historical value of Ibn Ḥazm’s work was as important as its polemical or controversial aspects, and even more important for the historians of religions. He also suggested that it could be considered as an essay on the history of civilization avant la lettre and a pivotal document for understanding cultural transmission, or as he calls it the ‘history of ideas’, between Islam and Christianity in the Middle Ages.73 In this regard, al-Fiṣal contained vital evidence of two important chains for the transmission of ideas that helped Asín Palacios to fill in important gaps in the history of religious ideas between the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Al-Fiṣal is situated alongside historiographical works exploring distinct aspects of civilization and is understood to be representative, to a certain degree, of an important trend in historical writing in Islamic society during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Having studied the political phenomena of Islamic societies through writings such as al-Ṭabarī’s (224–310/839–923) Tāʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, Asín Palacios determined that Muslim historians attached great importance to the study of social, scientific, and religious elements of civilization. Works such as Murūj al-dhahab by al-Masʿūdī (280–345/894–56), and Taḥqīq mā lil-Hind min maqūla by al-Bīrūnī (362–442/972–1051) represented ‘the nucleus of the discipline of the History of Civilizations that Ibn Khaldūn would write in the fourteenth century in his al-Muqaddima.74 Muslim historians wrote about the economic, geographical, religious, and literary histories of both Muslim societies and of other cultural contexts, including those of India, China, Byzantium, and Iran. In doing so, they shed light upon the connections and mutual influences between Islamic societies and those of other cultures. In his  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 7–9.  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 49, 75–6. 74  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, p. 18. 72 73

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book Sirāj al-mulūk, Abū Bakr al-Ṭurṭūshī (451–520/1059–1126) wrote about administrative and military organizations in Muslim and Persian societies. In al-Fihrist, Ibn al-Nadīm (325–85/936–95) conveyed a sense of ‘continuity in history’ by illustrating the influence of Greek philosophy and science on the Islamic tradition. In the Kitāb al-aghānī, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (284–362/898–973) conveyed in turn his interest in exploring the origins, developments and precedents of music in classical civilizations.75 Asín Palacios used all these works to argue that Muslim authors were acutely aware of intercultural connections and the influence of other cultures upon Islamic civilization. On a methodological level, he suggested that when examining all forms of society, historians must extend the parameters of their craft to incorporate social and cultural aspects. Only then would they be able to study religious ideas in a historical perspective.76 Ultimately, its taking into consideration the cultural history of the Islamic tradition had opened up the possibility of al-Fiṣal being viewed as a history of religions. While others studied al-Fiṣal alongside polemical works against Judaism and Christianity, Asín Palacios located it alongside a diverse array of essays dealing with economics, geography, music and poetry, each of which demonstrated a clear influence of Greek and Persian civilizations upon Islamic tradition.77 He contextualized Ibn Ḥazm’s work within the framework of historical essays, insisting that the book had ‘an extraordinary value from the historiographical point of view’ that far exceeded its usefulness as a polemical work.78 It was not Ibn Ḥazm’s ‘anti-Christian ideology’ that was of interest to historians of religion, but rather its ‘textual documentation’ of religious phenomena of the period.79 Ibn Ḥazm had significant lived experience of the so-called convivencia, and had experienced first-hand involvement in a wide range of points of connection between Muslims, Christians and Jews in al-Andalus. In al-Fiṣal, he represented this experience through study of a full range of religious ideas, and exploration of their relation to Islamic society, using the six-point table of classification mentioned above. The first chain of transmission of religious ideas identified in Asín Palacios’s work is that of the relationship between Oriental Christianity and Islamic mysticism, and the influence of the former upon the latter. He interpreted Ibn Ḥazm’s ‘anti-Christian ideology’ as a reaction to the impact of Christianity on Islamic dogma and mysticism and identified processes by which that the Islamic  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 20–4.  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 12–3. 77 See Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Ḥazm, Leiden: Brill, 1996; Theodore Pulcini, Exegesis as Polemical Discourse. Ibn Ḥazm on Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1998. 78 Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, p. 42. 79  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, p. 49. 75 76

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legacy had been transformed and modified under the influence of Christian ideas. He observed that the tenth and eleventh centuries had brought intense Christianization of both primitive Islam and the mystical tradition, and that Ibn Ḥazm was fully conscious of the influence of Christian ideas upon Muslim sufis. He noted that Ibn Ḥazm had hoped to halt the processes of ‘Christianization of Islam’, using al-Fiṣal as a platform from which to criticize Judaism and Christianity. By drawing attention to contradictions in the dogma of both religions, Ibn Ḥazm hoped to make clear to Muslims that Christianity was a false religion from which they should keep their distance. In Asín Palacios’s opinion, however, Ibn Ḥazm’s plan failed. The proof of this failure could be observed by tracing a series of lasting Christian influences upon Islam.80 The idea that Christianity had left a powerful legacy upon Islam was a key conclusion of Asín Palacios’s research, including his studies of Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn Masarra. Asín Palacios sheds light on a second chain of transmission of ideas between Islam and Christianity by comparing Ibn Ḥazm’s theological thought with that of Thomas Aquinas. Having rejected the notion of the ‘spontaneous generation of ideas’, he set out to prove that Christian scholastic philosophy had origins in Islamic theology. He thus analyzed Ibn Ḥazm’s theological ideas, not by comparing them with other Muslim authors, but instead by highlighting connections with the thought of Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (1224–74), Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca (1512–69), Jerónimo Martínez de Ripalda (1536–1618), and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). In doing so, he emphasized similarities in the writings of Ibn Ḥazm and those of diverse Christian theologians with regard to the relationship between faith and rationality, conceptualizations of divine science, the compatibility and incompatibility of faith with sin, and the essence of the act of faith.81 Asín Palacios demonstrated that key concepts and principles of Christian scholastic philosophy had always existed and had never disappeared, that they were discernible in different religions and historical contexts. He denied the existence of historical rupture and reasoned, in historiographical terms, that ‘there is no break in continuity in the life of collective thought’.82

7. Conclusions It is useful to conclude here by elucidating several key comparisons that Asín Palacios drew between the thought of Ibn Ḥazm and that of Christian scholastic theologians. Through such comparison, Asín Palacios revealed a further possible  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, p. 77.  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 62–3. 82  Asín Palacios, Abenmasarra y su escuela, p. 4. 80 81

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chain of transmission of theological ideas between Islam and Christianity. He underlined the importance of the study of Islamic theology from the eleventh century in order to understand Christian theology, in particular, scholastic philosophy. In doing so, he emphasized the significance of the emerging discipline of comparative theology for the study of similarities between Christian and Islamic theology. Asín Palacios sought to fill in historical gaps in the understanding of the Middle Ages by revealing possibilities for an integrative approach to Islamic and European civilizations. According to his historical vision, Islam, together with Christianity, formed a vital component of medieval cultural history. In his study of al-Fiṣal, he suggested that the Mozarabs had an important role in this process of transmission of ideas. In agreement with fellow historians, he recognized the important role of Toledo and its school of translators in transmitting knowledge during the twelfth century. However, he also inferred that Spain could have been playing a similar role in the eleventh and twelfth centuries – acting as an intermediary between Islam and the rest of Europe by facilitating travels, commerce and cultural exchanges between the Mozarabs and the rest of Europe. It is in this context that Asín Palacios maintained that scholastic philosophers and theologians such as Peter Abelard (1079–1142), Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) and Hugh of Saint Victor (1096–1141) should be studied in light of their intellectual relationship with Islamic theology. They proved to have several connections with the Islamic world, as was the case of Peter Abelard, who engaged in intense correspondence with Peter the Venerable, the foremost promoter of the study of Islam and Qur’an in the mid-twelfth century.83 Asín Palacios maintained that only through the study of these chains of transmission of ideas from Christianity to Islam, and later from Islam to Christianity, could historians formulate an acceptable ‘synthesis of the history of medieval thought.’ He understood that medieval culture was made up of two essential elements, the Muslim and the Christian, and considered both to be at once the legacy and a mode of continuity for the classical tradition. He claimed that Classical and Christian civilizations have drowned in Europe in the period of the barbarians, survived the Byzantine Empire and revived in Islam […]. Saint John of Damascus (650–749) and Theodore Abū Qurrah (750–832) were the mentors of Muslim theologians, and the latter were the same to scholastic philosophers in Western Christian Europe centuries later.84

It is in this context that Asín Palacios was able to present al-Fiṣal as clear evidence of a process of continuity and constant transfer of ideas between Islam and Christianity and thus much more than a polemical work. One of his key aims was to contextualize Islamic legacy in the great chain of transmission of ideas during the  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 73–4.  Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba, vol. 2, pp. 73–5.

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Middle Ages. Ultimately, Asín Palacios was not simply interested in Ibn Ḥazm’s theology and in its Islamic context. Instead, as he himself insisted, he studied al-Fiṣal because Ibn Ḥazm’s theology offered evidence of religious and cultural transmission between religions and appeared as a possible precursor to both scholastic philosophy and the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Writing almost exclusively about the history of al-Andalus did not separate Spanish Arabism from the intellectual milieu of European Orientalism. Like European Orientalists, Spanish Arabists studied al-Andalus’ past as both political and cultural history, developing over time new thematic and methodological approaches to these histories. In integrating cultural history into their scholarship, they drew attention to processes of cultural transmission between Islam and the West. Julián Ribera Tarragó and Miguel Asín Palacios dealt explicitly with the circulation of ideas and culture between al-Andalus and Spain, and the rest of Europe. Although imbued with late nineteenth century positivistic ideas, what is innovative in Asín Palacios’ approach is that he analyzes al-Fiṣal not exclusively in order to stress its polemical implications  – anticipating the interpretative patterns which late twentieth and early twenty-first century European scholarship would later apply to other medieval writings involving interfaith issues – but also as a site of cross-cultural transmission. As such, this interfaith site reveals the complexity of the knowledge-making processes of Spanish Arabists, and permits us to draw it into a more nuanced ‘third approach’ to the history of European Orientalism. Asín Palacios’ research into cases of cultural transmission underpinned his engagement with the history of ideas, historical critique and Kulturgeschichte, and his overall aim of studying the ‘history of the philosophical system in alAndalus through the models which preceded and followed it’ in order to ‘fill the gaps noted in the history of mankind, especially the gap that represented the Middle Ages’.85 It is in this very ambition that we are able to discern clear links between his approach and that of Germanic Orientalists including Alfred von Kremer and Carl Heinrich Becker. Through careful analysis of Asín Palacios’ work in light of the knowledge-making practices of Spanish Arabists, it becomes clear that his principal innovations were grounded in the use of historiographical concepts developed in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century and introduced in turn into Arabic studies as practised in Spain.

 Ribera y Tarragó, Disertaciones y opúsculos, vol. 1, p. civ.

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Pulcini, Theodore, Exegesis as Polemical Discourse. Ibn Ḥazm on Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Atlanta GA: Scholars Press, 1998. Rapisarda, Stefano, “Orientalism, Counter-Orientalism and the History of Philology”, Archivio Storico per la Sicilia Orientale, Catania: Società di Storia Patria per la Sicilia Orientale, 2012, pp. 5–19. Ribera Tarragó, Julián, Orígenes del Justicia de Aragón, Saragossa: Comas Hermanos, 1897. – Historia de la música árabe medieval y su influencia en la española, Madrid: Voluntad, 1927. – Disertaciones y opúsculos, intro. Miguel Asín Palacios, 2 vols., Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1928. Rodríguez Mediano, Fernando, “Culture, Identity and Civilization. The Arabs and Islam in the History of Spain”, Islam and the Politics of Culture in Europe. Memory, Aesthetics, Art, ed. Frank Peter et al., Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014, pp. 41–60. Rückert Friedrich, (trans.), Der Koran, Würzburg: Ergon, 2000. – (trans.), Die Verwandlungen des Abu Seid von Serug uber die Makamen des Hariri, Stuttgart: F. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1864. Stern, S. M., “Ibn Masarra, Follower of Pseudo-Empedocles – an Illusion”, Actas del IV Congreso de Estudios Árabes e Islámicos (Coimbra-Lisboa, 1968), Leiden: Brill, 1971, pp. 325–37. Stetkevych, Jaroslav, “Arabism and Arabic Literature. Self-View of a Profession”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 27 (1969), pp. 145–56. Torre, Patricio de la, Ensayos de la gramática y poética árabe, Madrid: Imprenta de Don Antonio de Sancha, 1787. Valdivia Valor, José, Miguel Asín Palacios. Mística cristiana y mística musulmana, Madrid: Hiperión, 1991. Van Ess, Josef, “The Emergence of Kulturgeschichte in Islamic Studies. From Wellhausen to Carl Heinrich Becker”, Islamic Studies. A Tradition and its Problem, ed. Malcolm H. Kerr et al., Malibu CA: United Publications, 1980, pp. 27–52. Weil, Gustav, Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1843. – Historisch-kritische Einleitung in den Koran, Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1844. – Geschichte der Chalifen, 5 vols., Mannheim: Bassermann, 1846–62. Wokoeck, Ursula, German Orientalism. The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945, New York NY: Routledge, 2009.

A Jewish Orthodox Response to the Hostility Towards the Morality of Jewish Lawand the Jewish God at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century in Germany Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann (1843–1921) on the Relationship between Jews and Gentiles Alexander A. Dubrau 1. Introduction The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a new and decisive phase in the history of Jewish life in the German-speaking world. In addition to the emergence of Jewish bourgeois society, transculturation and secularization, this new phase brought integration of Jews into the sciences, the emergence of Jewish liberal and Neo-Orthodox movements, as well as Zionism. For all that, in the fin-de-siècle, a wave of hostility arose against Jews, in which new national and social Darwinist arguments and defamation of the Jewish notion of God (Gottesbegriff) mixed with the old anti-Semitism of the so-called Jewish question.1 This article analyzes a Jewish orthodox approach to allegations of immorality concerning Jewish law and the conception of the Jewish God that surfaced in Germany at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. It takes as its case study Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann (1843–1921), an outstanding representative of the Berlin Jewish Neo-Orthodoxy and a legal authority (posek) for European orthodox Jewry. Conflict about the morality of Jewish law 1  For the development of the different structures, movements and struggles of the Christian anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century see Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction. AntiSemitism, 1700–1933, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 304–15; Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany. Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich 1870–1914, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1975, pp. 223–89; Anders Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism. German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann, Leiden: Brill, 2009; Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008; Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth. A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, London: Chatto and Windus, 1974. Wiese takes up this context for the same issue discussed in his Challenging Colonial Discourse, chapter YHVH – a “Jewish God?” (see also his Jahwe – Ein Gott nur für Juden?). See also Segev’s essay about Gerhard Kittel in this present volume.

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in nineteenth century Germany and other European countries revolved around the question of whether the Jews could become citizens of a Western European nation. Could they be trusted despite (or because) of their religious affinities? Is the religious normative system of Halakha compatible with the German legal system? Could Jews truly participate in the German society in spite of their (hidden) disloyalty to the German Fatherland? These questions, with their antiSemitic undertones, were submitted to the Jews in the post-emancipation era, after the age of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) and cultural acculturation, in a period in which many Jews formally achieved political and social equality. From the mid-nineteenth century up until the Second World War, the Jews in Germany – often represented institutionally by the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (C. V.)2 – defended themselves legally against the anti-Semitic pamphlets published in the German mass media. In doing so, they referred to paragraphs protecting recognized religious communities, as set out in § 130 and § 166 of the Prussian state legislature. It was then up to the German courts to decide whether or not the Jewish religion was insulted on the basis of these writings. In adherence with contemporary ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’ criteria, the anti-Semitic tracts often contained passages from both Talmudic writings and from the Shulchan Aruch, the most authoritative Jewish law-code, authored by Josef Karo in sixteenth century Galilee. To orient the decision on whether or not the Jewish religion, that is, the Jewish community, was offended by the quarrelsome quotations and their interpretation of Jewish traditional literature, the courts often solicited expert opinions from Christian theologians or orientalists, as well as from Jewish representatives.3 Amidst growing debate at the end of the nineteenth century around the Jewish question, Jewish law and the Jewish God, a large body of literature emerged in which the Jews increasingly participated. It was mainly secular and liberal Jews who engaged in the fight against anti-Semitism. However, in the last third of the nineteenth century, German-Jewish orthodoxy ever more stuck its head above the parapet and took an active part in the defence of the Talmud.4 Fearful that the 2  An overview of this organization is given by Avraham Barkai, Wehr dich! Der Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (C. V.), 1893–1938, Munich: C. H. Beck, 2002. 3  On this issue see George Y. Kohler, “Manuel Joel in Defense of the Talmud. Liberal Responses to Religious Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century Germany”, HUCA, 79 (2008), pp. 141–48; Barnet Hartston, Sensationalizing the Jewish Question. Anti-Semitic Trials and the Press in the Early German Empire, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 295–305; and Nils H. Roemer, “Jewish Historiography at the Center of Debate”, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in NineteenthCentury Germany. Between History and Faith, ed. Nils H. Roemer, Madison WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, pp. 49–59. 4 From the 1880s, the orthodox newspaper Die Jüdische Presse, founded 1870 by Esriel Hildesheimer, developed into an organ for the fight against anti-Semitism. Countless articles expressed a Jewish-orthodox position while apologetically defending Talmudic Judaism, the Hebrew Bible, or Jews as a whole. Of the longer essays written on the subject, only a few examples are treated here. Marcus Hirsch (1833–1909), wrote a comprehensive piece on modern

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influence of the anti-Semitic press might lead to a decline in respect for Jewish traditional literature, orthodox authors frequently addressed such publications to Jews. A common benchmark of writings against anti-Semitism from orthodox authors is the reference to Christian theologians who opposed anti-Semitism – at least, in its strong völkisch expression – while insulting the Old Testament God.5 The entry of Orthodoxy into this discourse is no coincidence. In contrast to the majority of Jews who, at the end of the nineteenth century in Germany, were secular or part of the Jewish reform movement, Orthodoxy never tried to make itself at home in non-Jewish society. In his social history of the German-Jewish orthodox movement from 1871 to 1918, the Israeli historian Mordechai Breuer sums up, ‘The more assimilated the Jews were, the more they were struck by the anti-Semitic slogans’.6 Moreover, for the orthodox Jews, the Talmud did not embody an emotional cultural heritage, but presented a binding statement for life that was studied throughout Jewish history. These sociohistorical attitudes are essential factors towards understanding Jewish orthodox defence of the Talmud as compared to liberal or secular Jewish voices. In this essay, I pay attention to an expert report prepared by David Zvi Hoffmann for the Leipzig court in 1912/13. Hoffmann’s statement for the trial against the anti-Semitic agitator Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933) formed an integrative response to the accusation that Jewish law and religion from a Jewish anti-Semitism titled Kulturdefizit am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (1893). Hirsch’s essay was not written from a specifically orthodox point of view. Another example is Ludwig Stern’s brochure, Über den Talmud (1875), which aims to educate the general public about the essence and development of the Talmud and explains the negative connotations in Talmudic passages about the Gentile with the history of Jewish suffering amidst the strengthening of Christianity. Eleazer ben Aryeh Leib Münz addressed an explicitly Jewish audience in his apologetic treatise Die modernen Anklagen gegen das Judentum als falsch nachgewiesen (1882). Josef Nobel wrote a comprehensive response (Kritisches Richtschwert für Rohling’s “Talmudjude”) to one of the highly influential standard anti-Semitic works, August Rohling’s (1839–1931) pamphlet Der Talmudjude (1871). For the orthodox approach toward anti-Semitism, see Mordechai Breuer, Jüdische Orthodoxie im Deutschen Reich 1871–1918. Sozialgeschichte einer religiösen Minderheit, Frankfurt a. M.: Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenaeum, 1986 (English translation: Modernity within Tradition. The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 301–16, and Stanford Ragins, Jewish Responses to Antisemitism in Germany, 1870–1914, PhD diss., Brandeis University, Waltham MA, 1972. Some aspects of orthodox responses to anti-Semitism are also mentioned by Arnold Paucker, Der jüdische Abwehrkampf gegen Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik, Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag, 1968; Paucker, “Die Abwehr des Antisemitismus in den Jahren 1893– 1933”, Antisemitismus. Von der Judenfeindschaft zum Holocaust, ed. Herbert A. Strauss and Norbert Kampe, Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 1995, pp. 143–63; Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Antisemitism 1870–1914, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 1972; Marjorie Lamberti, Jewish Activism in Imperial Germany. The Struggle for Civil Equality, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1937; and, Jehuda Reinharz, Fatherland or Promised Land. The Dilemma of the German Jew, 1893–1914, Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 1975. 5  For this issue see for example Gustaf Dalman’s (1855–1941) Jüdisches Fremdenrecht, the works of Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890) and Hermann Strack (1848–1922). 6  Breuer, Jüdische Orthodoxie, p. 307.

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orthodox-halakhic perspective was directed against non-Jews. To analyze the report, I refer to the socio-cultural environment in Germany and in the orthodox world immediately prior to the First World War. Taking into account other approaches to the defence of the Talmud, halakhic Judaism, or the Jewish notion of God as perceived at the turn of the twentieth century, the aim of this article is to offer insight into the ideological background of Jewish orthodox defence strategies for Halakha as a revealed universal moral institution, and to explore the role of polemics and apologetics in these debates.

2. David Zvi Hoffmann on Torah, Wissenschaft, and the Role of Jewish-Orthodox Apologetica Born in Verbó (today Slovakia), Hoffmann studied at Talmud schools in Central and Eastern Europe before enrolling at the University of Tübingen, where he completed his doctorate in 1871. He studied ancient and modern languages, history, philology, and linguistics. Underlying his erudition was genuine faith in a living dialogue between Jewish and non-Jewish, secular and sacred, traditions. Hoffmann was a lecturer and rector of the Berlin Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary from 1899 until his death in 1921. He succeeded Rabbi Esriel (Azriel) Hildesheimer (1820–1899), the founder of the Berlin Seminary. Hoffmann shaped the last generation of German-Jewish orthodoxy prior to the Shoah, and thus its continuation in contemporary forms of modern Jewish orthodoxy in Israel and North America. He is often recognized as an orthodox representative of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism).7 7 Marc Shapiro, “Rabbi David Zevi Hoffmann on Torah and Wissenschaft”, The Torah u-Madda Journal, 6 (1995–1996), p. 129. Ellenson and Jacobs explicitly discuss Hoffmann’s relation to Wissenschaft in “Scholarship and Faith: David Hoffmann and his Relationship to Wissenschaft des Judentums”, Modern Judaism, 8/1 (1988), pp. 27–40. For Asaf Yedidya, Hoffmann, among others, creates an Orthodox alternative to the Wissenschaft des Judentums: see Asaf Yedidya, “Orthodox Strategies in the Research of the Wissenschaft des Judentums”, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 5/1 (2011), pp. 67–79. This article is based on the author’s Hebrew Ph.D thesis titled, Orthodox Alternatives to “Wissenschaft des Judentums” 1873–1938. With regards to the Wissenschaft des Judentums, which developed new methods in the study of Jewish culture and history in nineteenth century Germany, see the introductory speech of Ismar Schorsch, “Das erste Jahrhundert der Wissenschaft des Judentums (1818–1919)”, Wissenschaft vom Judentum. Annäherungen nach dem Holocaust, ed. Michael Brenner and Stefan Rohrbacher, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000, pp. 11–24. See also for this issue the article from Ottfried Fraisse in the current volume. For general introduction for Hoffmann see Mosche Baumel, Orthodoxie und Wissenschaft. Der Weg von Rabbiner David Zwi Hoffmann, Münster: LIT, 2013, especially pp. 83–8; Hans-Joachim Bechtholdt, “David Hoffmann”, Die jüdische Bibelkritik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans-Joachim Bechtholdt, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1995, pp. 363–438; and Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism, Albany NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 228–34.

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Hoffmann’s comprehensive oeuvre includes a Torah commentary (incomplete), Responsa, Mishnaic, Midrashic and Talmudic Studies, translations of Hebrew traditional texts into German, editions of medieval Rabbinic works, several contributions in Bible studies, and various exegetical essays published in monograph and article form, almost exclusively in the Jewish press.8 Besides his primary theological-exegetical and philologically oriented publication activities, Hoffmann produced a number of public responses regarding the numerous challenges facing the German-Jewish Neo-Orthodox world. This part of his oeuvre is often regarded as having been composed in an apologetic style and can therefore be understood as a vindication of this body of religious-moral doctrines constituting Jewish orthodox religious identity.9 It mainly addresses the following fields: 1. Theological-historical critique of the Jewish reformist movement as established in the course of the nineteenth century and developed as an alternative to the so-called Jewish orthodoxy;10 2. Responses to historiccritical Bible studies centred on the Old Testament (higher criticism), as developed by the school of the Protestant theologian Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), and taught in faculties of Protestant theology in Germany;11 3. Defence against  8 A 28 page bibliography of Hoffmann’s writings until 1914 was compiled in L. Fischer, Biblio-

graphie der Schriften und Aufsätze des Dr. D. Hoffmann. Festschrift zum Siebzigsten Geburtstage David Hoffmanns, ed. Simon Eppenstein et al., Berlin: Lamm, 1914, pp. vii–xxxiv.  9 Hoffmann’s authoritative position within the Jewish orthodox movement is attested in the numerous biographical records of students and friends regarding his person and impact. After his death in 1921, more and more appreciative reports appeared in the Jewish press about his influence, especially concerning questions that are important for the identity of Neo-Orthodoxy, such as certain attitudes toward the state, non-Jews, reform and Zionism. See: Yeshayahu AviadWolfsberg, David Hoffmann. Guardians of Our Heritage. 1724–1953, ed. Leo Jung, New York NY: Bloch, 1958, pp. 363–419; Yeshayahu Aviad-Wolfsberg, ‫עזריאל הילדסהיימר ודוד צבי הופמן‬, Sinai, 14 (1944), pp. 65–81 (Hebrew); Alexander Marx, Studies in Jewish History and Booklore, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1944; Marx, Essays in Jewish Biography, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947; Louis Ginzburg, Students Scholars and Saints, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1928; Josef Wohlgemuth, “David Hoffmann”, Jeschurun, 9/1–2 (1922), pp. 1–19; Josef Wohlgemuth, “Nachwort des Herausgebers”, Jeschurun, 7 (1921), pp. 505–512; Chaim Tchernowitz (Rav Tzair) ‫דוד צבי הופמן‬, Book of Memoirs (‫)מסכת זכרונות‬, Chaim Tchernowitz (ed.), New York NY: Jubilee Committee, 1945, pp. 244–64 (Hebrew). 10  For example, see Hoffmann’s Ein Sendschreiben an den “Verein zur Wahrung des gesetzestreuen Judentums in Baden”. Zur Aufklärung über die badische Gebetsreform, Rödelheim: Lehrberger, about 1908 (s.d.), which is an exhortation against the prayer book of the reform community in South-Baden, and the reply from Moritz Steckelmacher, Widerlegung des Sendschreibens des Dr. D. Hoffmann, Rektors am Rabbinerseminar in Berlin. Über den von dem Gr. Bad. Oberrat der Israeliten herausgegebenen Gebetbuchentwurf und die zugehörige Denkschrift, Mannheim: Mannheimer Vereinsdruckerei, 1908. 11 See his monograph on a refutation of Julius Wellhausen’s (1844–1918) documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch (“Die Wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese”, Heft 1, Jahres-Bericht des Rabbiner Seminars zu Berlin, Berlin, 1902/1903 [reprint Berlin 1904]; David Zvi Hoffmann, Heft 2, Jahres-Bericht des Rabbiner Seminars zu Berlin, Berlin, 1914/1915 [reprint Berlin 1916]). An annotated translation into English was made by Carla Sulzbach, David Zvi Hoffmann’s “Die Wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche

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anti-Semitism, which posed a new set of challenges at the turn of the century amidst a move towards völkisch anti-Semitism that was demonstrated in the Fritsch case, discussed below.12 It was precisely these apologetic-oriented, programmatic elements of Hoffmann’s oeuvre that led to outright glorification of his personality and works by a wider group of German Jews, beyond his orthodox disciples and followers. For example, due to his comprehensive critique of higher criticism of the biblical text, he was regarded by many Jewish contemporaries as the ‘Jewish St. George to Wellhausen’s dragon’.13 Among his orthodox contemporaries, Hoffmann was Hypothese” (“The Main Arguments against the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis”). An Annotated Translation and Introduction, PhD diss., McGill University Montreal, 1996. Toward the end of his lifetime, Hoffmann published the pragmatic article rejecting modern Protestant Bible criticism titled “Tora und Wissenschaft”, Jeschurun, 7/11–12 (1920), pp. 497–504 (English translation Marc Shapiro, Hoffmann on Torah and Wissenschaft). 12 At this point, we must also refer to the discussion about Zionism, which was mostly rejected by reformists and supported only by a small part of the Orthodox movement. Marx notes, with reference to a letter Hoffmann wrote to his son that, ‘Hoffmann felt very sympathetic toward it [the Zionist movement, A. D.] though his official position did not permit him to express himself publicly. The Seminary was dependent on the support of the Orthodox, and the teachers had to be very careful in all their utterances not to give offense to some extreme fanatics of Frankfort (sic) and other parts of Southern Germany’ (Essays in Jewish Biography, p. 193). 13  Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, “Christianity, Judaism and Modern Bible Study”, Vetus Testamentum Supplements, 28 (1975), p. 80. The historic-critical school named after Wellhausen rejects the historicity of many parts of the biblical tradition and regards it only as a projection of later generations. Wellhausen based his studies on a literary analysis of ancient texts alone. Hoffmann summarizes: For Wellhausen, Old Testament law ‘was not an organic part of Israelitism at all, it was rather a pagan element, grafted on to the prophetic religion, which the rightful successor, Christianity, even if she could not stop it, at least she could suspend it’ (das Gesetz sei “überhaupt kein organischer Bestandteil des Israelitismus, es ist vielmehr ein heidnisches Element, der prophetischen Religion erst aufgepfropft, das die rechtmäßigen Nachfolger, das Christentum, wenn nicht zu verhindern, so doch aufzuhalten im Stande war” (Instanzen, Teil 1, p. 86). As Hoffmann notes, Wellhausen’s approach and especially the documentary hypothesis that explains the origins and composition of the first five books of the Bible was a great danger for the aspiring rabbinical students at the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary at his time. Hoffmann argues ‘that the flood of destructive biblical criticism has carried many students of Jewish theology along with it and has driven the wrong paths of apostasy and denial of the most important articles of faith’ (“[dass] die Hochflut einer destruktiven Bibelkritik viele Studierende der jüdischen Theologie mit sich fortgerissen [hat] und in die verkehrten Bahnen des Abfalls und der Verleugnung der wichtigsten Glaubensgrundsätze getrieben hatte.”); Bericht des Rektors über das Studienjahr 1907–1908 (5668), Jahres-Bericht des Rabbiner-Seminars zu Berlin für 1907/08 (5668). Mit einer wissenschaftlichen Beilage von Dr. D. Hoffmann. Midrasch Tannaim zum Deuteronomium II, Berlin: M Poppelauer 1909, p. 5. For Hoffmann’s approach toward higher criticism of the Hebrew Bible see Baumel, Orthodoxie und Wissenschaft, pp. 71–8; Matthias Morgenstern, “Jüdisch-orthodoxe Wege zur Bibelkritik. I. Schriftauslegung der mündlichen Tora: Vom Drasch zum Pschat”, Judaica. Beiträge zum Verstehen des Judentums, 56 (2000), pp. 183–4; Hanna Liss, “‘Das Erbe ihrer Väter’: Die deutsch-jüdische Bibelwissenschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und der Streit um die Hebräische Bibel”, ‫מה טוב חלקנו‬. Wie gut ist unser Anteil. Gedenkschrift für Yehuda T. Radday, ed. Daniel Krochmalnik and Magdalena Schultz, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2004, pp. 21–36 (new and expanded form of “Jewish Bible Scholars in the 19th and Early 20th Century and the Debate on the Hebrew

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considered the most unique scholar of his generation (Hebrew ‫ )יחיד בדורו‬and could even be compared with the famous Halakhist, decision maker (posek) and philosopher, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides (acronym Rambam, 1138–1204), and also, with one of the most influential Torah commentators in Europe, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (acronym Rashi, 1040–1105).14 Hoffmann’s fundamental acceptance of torafremde Wissenschaft (science outside of the Torah) led to an internal Jewish dissension with Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), the founding father of German Neo-Orthodoxy and Rabbi of the Frankfurt Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft, and his successors. In his educational doctrines Torah im Derech Eretz (literally understood as ‘appropriate behaviour and good character’) and his Mensch-Jisroel principle, Hirsch emphasized elements of German and European culture articulated in German idealism, literature, and philosophy. This ideological difference is also evident in his writings that confront Talmud criticism tinted with anti-Semitism. Hoffmann, one of the principal orthodox authorities in the generation that followed Hirsch, regarded himself as responsible for opening up Jewish orthodoxy to Wissenschaft.15 His oeuvre could be aptly categorized under the banner of Torah and science (Torah u-Maddah), and it is not without reason that Marc Shapiro identifies Hoffmann as an ‘outstanding practitioner of Wissenschaft des Judentums’.16 The place of science and history were key issues that split the German-Jewish orthodoxy of the nineteenth century into the culture-oriented Bible”, LTQ, 37 [2002], pp. 129–44); Liss, “Der Biblische Gottesname in der religionsgeschichtlichen Debatte. Jüdische Exegese zwischen den Fronten am Beispiel Benno Jacobs”, Trumah, 13 (2004), pp. 69–102; Ran HaCohen, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible. German Jewish Reception of Biblical Criticism, trans. M. Engel, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2010, pp. 164–8; Steven Shaw, “Orthodox Reactions to the Challenge of Biblical Criticism”, Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, 10/3 (1969), pp. 61–85; Stefan Schreiner, “Protestant Bible Study and the Jewish Response in the 19th and 20th Centuries”, Jewish Studies Quarterly, 10/2 (2003), pp. 159–62 and Robert J.  Thompson, Moses and the Law in a Century of Criticism Since Graf, Leiden: Brill, 1970. For a fresh view on the approach of contemporary Orthodox Judaism towards higher criticism of the Hebrew Bible, see Marc Shapiro, “Is Modern Orthodoxy Moving Towards an Acceptance of Biblical Criticism?”, Modern Judaism, 37/2 (2017), pp. 165–93. For a comparison of Hoffmann’s analysis of Protestant Bible criticism with Benno Jacobs and Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, see Meir Seidler, “Vergleichende Betrachtungen zu Benno Jacobs Kritik der Quellenscheidung”, Trumah. Zeitschrift der Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, 13 (2004), pp. 121–39. 14  Jeschurun, 9/1–2 (1922), pp. 3–8. The orthodox journal Der Israelit called Hoffmann a ‘Moreh Nevuchim [Hebrew: a teacher for the perplexed] of our generation’ ([no author given], Israelit 45, no. 32 [1904], pp. 689–91: p. 691). 15 Hoffmann, who studied in Eisenstadt with Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and taught at the Hirsch School in Frankfurt before joining the faculty of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary in 1873, was very familiar with Hirsch’s orthodox-cultural worldview. In 1919, Hoffmann delivered a lecture entitled Tora und Wissenschaft, which was published in Jeschurun in 1920. It gives insight into Hoffmann’s own understanding of the interaction of Jewish and secular culture in general, and Torah and academic Jewish studies in particular (see Hoffmann, Tora and Wissenschaft). 16  Shapiro, “Rabbi David Zevi Hoffmann”, p. 129.

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Frankfurt approach and the position of openness to science that characterized the Berlin orthodox school of thought.17 With regard to Hoffmann’s Jewish apologetica, his investigations into Talmudic literature stand in a certain tension with his exegetical writings – that is, his Torah-commentary as well as his writings on biblical criticism – and his explorations of the morality of Talmudic Judaism. Like many protagonists of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, Hoffmann formulated theses on the origin and development of the halakhic Midrash and its stance toward the Bible and the prescriptive Mishnaic tradition.18 While Hoffmann applied the historic-critical approach to the study of halakhic Midrashim, he rejected this method in his exegetic-biblical research.19 In a manner not dissimilar to many Christian theologians of his time, Hoffmann argued for the compatibility and integrity of the biblical text vis-à-vis historic critical questions raised by Christian Bible scholars on the textus receptus of the Hebrew Old Testament.20 This background must be taken into account when analyzing Hoffmann’s intervention in the discourse about the morality of the Talmud in the Fritsch case. Hoffmann’s learned testimony for the Fritsch case was never published in its complete form and can be found only as a typewritten manuscript in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.21 It was not his first attempt to deal with 17  The dispute between the Frankfurt and Berlin schools was expressed by the sharp debate over Hoffmann’s doctoral thesis. Hoffmann published his dissertation Mar Samuel in 1873, dealing with the Amoraic sage from the early third century in Babylonia, who, according to Talmudic sources, combined his Torah wisdom with comprehensive medical and mathematicastronomical knowledge and to whom the statement dina de-malkuta dina (Aramaic the law of the state is the law) is attributed. Both factors play a decisive role in Hoffmann’s understanding of Jewish orthodoxy in the late German Empire. David Zvi Hoffmann, Mar Samuel. Rector der jüdischen Akademie zu Nehardea in Babylonien, Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1873. However, in the eyes of Hirsch, Hoffmann committed an inexcusable sin by quoting several times from historical essays by Wissenschaft scholars, first and foremost Heinrich Graetz. Although Hoffmann’s book nowhere actually deviates from Orthodox positions, and Graetz is refuted on many accounts, Hoffmann fell from grace with Hirsch. For this issue see Breuer, Jüdische Orthodoxie, pp. 170–8, 78 and Baumel, Orthodoxie und Wissenschaft, pp. 24–32. 18  Thus, the classification of the Halakhic Midrashim in the Akiba and Ishmael Midrashim as formulated mainly by Hoffmann is the opinio communis of modern research, apart from some changes on the basis of recent manuscript discoveries. 19  Reform-oriented authors however, generally accepted the use of historical text-critical methods for Talmud, as well as Bible-research. An outstanding example is the liberal rabbi Benno Jacob (1862–1945), who developed a comprehensive theory on the composition and formation of the Pentateuch in the context of contemporary biblical science. 20  Hoffmann writes: “That I could not conclude, as a result of my principles of faith that the Pentateuch was written by another than by Moses, or even after Moses, that I have to confess. […]. However, in the effort to provide detailed scientific grounds for these ‘dogmatic presuppositions’, I was always careful to assert only those arguments whose justification could be recognized from another point of view.” (Das Buch Leviticus, übersetzt und erklärt, vol. 1 (erster Halbband Lev. I–XVII), Berlin: Verlag von M. Poppelauer, 1905, p. xii [Introduction]). 21  Gutachten dem königlichen Landgerichte zu Leipzig erstattet von Dr. D. Hoffmann, Rektor des Rabbiner-Seminars zu Berlin (s.d.), unpublished manuscript at the National Library in

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attitudes toward Gentiles from an orthodox-halakhic perspective. This report must be read together with his first bulky monograph from 1885, Der SchulchanAruch und die Rabbinen über das Verhältnis der Juden zu Andersgläubigen (The Shulchan Aruch and the Rabbis on the Relationship between Jews and other Believers). An enhanced second edition of this work with several corrections was published nine years later.22 The key motivation for the monograph was once again the publication of an anti-Semitic pamphlet and its aftermath. The monograph responded to the impact and consequences of two anti-Semitic brochures published in 1883: Der Judenspiegel, a work issued in several editions by Dr. Justus (pseudonym for Aron Israel Brimann, 1859–1934, a Romanian Jew who converted to Christianity), and, related to that, Jakob Ecker’s (1851–1912) expert report Der Judenspiegel im Lichte der Wahrheit (1884) supporting Justus’s accusations.23 Hoffmann’s monograph also addresses the so-called Isaakiade trial that followed the publication of Die Isaakiade. Oder der Ewige Jude des XIXten Jahrhunderts (The Isaakiade, or the Eternal Jew of the Nineteenth Century) by August Maaß from Bonn, and evaluates accounts written in support of Maaß’s thesis by Johannes Gildemeister (1812–1890).24 At various points Jerusalem (Signature: S 2= 59 B 1186). Two parts of this report were published in Jeschurun. See his “Probleme der Pentateuchexegese X: Zurückweisung einiger Angriffe gegen die Moral der Juden”, (Part X), Jeschurun, 3 (1916), pp. 20–35; and “Stellung des heutigen Judentums zu der aus Talmud und Schulchan-aruch zu entnehmenden Ethik”, Jeschurun, 3/6 (1916), pp. 298–312. 22  The title reads Der Schulchan-Aruch und die Rabbinen über das Verhältnis der Juden zu Andersgläubigen. Zur Berichtigung eines von Prof. Gildemeister in dem “Isaakiade”-Prozesse abgegebenen gerichtlichen Gutachten (Sonderdruck aus der Jüdischen Presse 1884, no. 27–52), Berlin: Verlag der Expedition der “Jüdischen Presse”, 1885, 21894 (in the following Der SchulchanAruch, page references follows the second edition). 23  The complete title of Brimans pamphlet reads: Judenspiegel. Oder, 100 neuenthüllte, heutzutage noch geltende, den Verkehr der Juden mit den Christen betreffende Gesetze der Juden. Mit einer die Entstehung und Weiterentwicklung der jüdischen Gesetze darstellenden, höchst interessanten Einleitung. Jakob Ecker, professor of Semitic languages and Old Testament exegesis at the Trier priest’s seminar, was summoned as an expert by the court. Ecker’s report titled Der Judenspiegel im Lichte der Wahrheit. Eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung confirmed the accusations made in Brimans’ Judenspiegel against the morality of Jewish law and the Jews in general. Against Ecker’s attestation see also Michael Levi Rodkinssohn, Der Schulchan Aruch und seine Beziehungen zu den Juden und Nichtjuden (ins Deutsche übertragen v. D. Löwy), London: R. & N. Rodkinssohn, 1884. It is interesting that in 1896, the year Lazarus Goldschmidt’s first volume of his Talmud translation into German was printed, Michael Levi Rodkinson (1845–1904) published the first volume of his eclectic Talmud translation, the treatise Berakhot, into English. 24  The pamphlet Die Isaakiade was confiscated before it could be distributed. Maaß was accused of insulting an established religion (§ 166) and class violence (§ 130). The trial took place in June 1884 at the district court in Bonn. Gildemeister, Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Bonn, testified among others that the quotations in the Maaß brochure taken from the Shulchan Aruch are correct. The quotations suggested that Jews kill converts to Christianity and the possessions of non-Jews were to be considered as unclaimed. This trial also involved the testimony of several expert witnesses (the most important is Manuel Joël, Gegen Gildemeister. Herrn Prof. Gildemeisters Gutachten über den jüdischen Moralcodex (Schulchan Aruch) und das Verhältnis der Juden zu demselben. Kritisch beleuchtet, Breslau: S. Schottlaender,

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in Der Schulchan-Aruch, Hoffmann refers specifically to the allegations presented in these tracts and Gildemeister’s account,25 though he endeavours to present the reader with a comprehensive treatise on the response to non-Jews viewed from a halakhic-oriented Jewish orthodox perspective. Hoffmann’s monograph Schulchan-Aruch and his testimony are evidence of the fragility of the political-social discourse of German-Jewish orthodoxy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Under the auspices of idealism and humanism, Hoffmann’s apologetics were aimed at securing the full social and political recognition of Jewish denominations within the German-Christian society of Wilhelmine Germany, even though he only represented Jewish NeoOrthodoxy, a marginal movement in the minority of German Jewry.26 The case of Fritsch, a spokesman of the right wing anti-Semitic and völkisch circles, reveals the complexity of this issue in the context of the contemporary struggles of Jewish orthodoxy, Halakha, anti-Semitism, Jewish self-determination, the Jewish reform movement, and the shifting relationship between church and state that markedly shaped Jewish experience in final phase of the long nineteenth century. Due to an extended history of allegations of immorality against Gentiles as extant in Halakha, the issue of attitudes toward non-Jews from a Jewish religious perspective (talmudische Fremdengesetze) is one of the most sensitive topics of the nineteenth and early twentieth century critique of Halakha within ChristianJewish debates based on the discourse of the so-called Jewish question. The only scholarly study of the Frisch case that examines Hoffmann’s report specifically is a comprehensive article by Christian Wiese exploring the stance of Protestant theologians toward Jewish writings, as reflected in the case and its aftermath.27 Wiese describes in detail the trial history of the Fritsch case and explores several statements written in preparation for the trial. He also incorporates reactions from Jewish and non-Jewish perspectives, including Hoffmann’s statement.28 He focuses his discussion on the tension between influential Protestant and Jewish voices of the time. The work does not pay close attention 1884). For these Judenspiegel trials and their aftermaths, see Hartston, Sensationalizing the Jewish Question, p. 209. 25  See also Hoffmann’s “Wahrheit und Klarheit, Rezension über ‘Der Judenspiegel im Lichte der Wahrheit’ von Dr. Jacob Ecker (Privatdocent für semitische Philologie an der königlichen Akademie zu München)”, Israelische Monatsschrift (Appendix Jüdische Presse), second edition Paderborn, 1884 (11), pp. 41–3; 1895 (2) pp. 5–6, (4) pp. 13–5. 26  For a detailed introduction in the social setting of the Jewish Neo-Orthodox movement in nineteenth century Germany, see Breuer, Jüdische Orthodoxie. 27 Challenging Colonial Discourse, chapter YHVH – a “Jewish God?”, pp. 248–78. 28  Apart from Hoffmann’s own report, additional expert opinions and statements were written in the Fritsch trial by Jewish scholars and organizations as well as by Protestant theologians, such as Paul Kahle (1875–1964), Eduard König (1846–1936) or Rudolf Kittel (1853– 1929). The context of Kittel’s conception of the Hebrew Bible in the context of Old Testament research between 1850 and 1950 was examined by Kusche, Die unterlegene Religion, pp. 113–36.

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to the halakhic argument regarding attitudes toward Gentiles. The only study dealing directly with Hoffmann’s Der Schulchan-Aruch is an article by Emmanuel Bloch. Bloch emphasizes, inter alia, that Hoffmann opened up a new systematic halakhic investigation into the field of Jewish legal sources that had never been done before with the authority of a halakhic decision maker (posek).29

3. On Race, Jews, and the Jewish God: Theodor Fritsch’s Attack upon the Talmud, Jewish Law and Religion Born in Saxony in 1852, Theodor Fritsch was a leading anti-Semitic publicist, politician and spokesman for the radical German national völkisch movement. With his leaflets, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, journals, and books, Fritsch chose the way of mass propaganda in his struggle against the Jews who, in his eyes, represented a destructive breed. He remained a prominent leader of the anti-Semite movement in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany until Hitler seized power in 1933, the year of his death. As Moshe Zimmerman noted, Fritsch’s historical importance derives from his role as a bridge between two generations of anti-Semites – this fits in well with his self-fashioned image as a despairing prophet.30 He founded the ‘Hammer’ publishing house as an ideological forum for his publishing activities. Using the pseudonym Thomas Frey, he issued the Antisemiten-Katechismus (Anti-Semitic Catechism), later titled Handbuch der Judenfrage (Handbook of the Jewish Question). One of the most widely read and influential anti-Semitic works at the turn of the century which sold over 100,000 copies.31 Fritsch played an active role in numerous right-wing groups and political parties such as the Deutschvölkische Schutz‑ und Trutzbund and the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei, for which he became a 29 “La loi juive comme rempart face à l’antisémitisme moderne: Le rabbin David Tsvi Hoffmann (1843–1921) entre Science et Apologie”, Revue des études juives, vol. 177/1–2 (2017), pp. 173–99. The issue of the attitudes toward non-Jews had not been studied before within a halakhic compendium. In doing so, Hoffmann was the inventor of a new field in Jewish law, the ius gentium halakhique. 30  Moshe Zimmermann, “Two Generations in the History of German Antisemitism. The Letters of Theodor Fritsch to Wilhelm Man”, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 23 (1978), pp. 89–99. See also Friedrich Battenberg, Das europäische Zeitalter der Juden. Zur Entwicklung einer Minderheit in der nichtjüdischen Umwelt Europas, Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1990, p. 129: Fritsch is the ‘personelle Kontinuität des modernen Antisemitismus des 19. Jhs. zur nationalsozialistischen Ideologie’. 31  Hitler commented in a foreword to the thirtieth edition: ‘As a young man in Vienna I had already read the “Handbook for the Jewish Problem” very thoroughly. I am convinced that this book especially helped in preparing the ground for the National-Socialist anti-Semitic movement’.

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Reichstag member in 1924.32 He conducted correspondence with Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904), who was 33 years his senior. Marr was responsible for coining the term ‘Antisemitismus’ (anti-Semitism), used as a political slogan for the first time in his Das Junge Deutschland. As one of the prolific anti-Semites in the midnineteenth century, he decisively influenced Fritsch’s worldview.33 On numerous occasions, Fritsch faced charges for anti-Semitic agitation. In 1888, the Supreme Court of Saxony in Dresden fined him 60 German marks for claims made in his pamphlet The Jewish God is a God of Lies and Cunning. Later, in response to his Antisemiten-Katechismus, the court in Leipzig sentenced him to one week in prison. In 1910 he faced further charges on the basis of paragraph § 166 of the German criminal code after printing the following declaration in his journal ‘Hammer’: The fact that the Hebrews want to dismiss their Judaism and to become Germans, I do not believe; rather they burn their Talmudic writings and tear down their synagogues, as a sign that they are no longer inclined to pray to Jahwe, the god of wickedness and lies.34

Fritsch used this trial as a platform for political agitation by immediately circulating the text of the trial together with his treatment in Der falsche Gott (The False God, first and second edition 1911). He insulted the Jewish God in several manners, calling him the God of thieves (Gott der Diebe), the spirit of wickedness and falsehood (Geist der Bosheit und der Lüge), the protector of injustice (Schützer des Unrechts), or the spirit of devastation and deception (Geist der Zerstörung und des Truges).35 Of particular importance for the discussion that follows regarding Hoffmann’s report is the fact that Fritsch consistently presented the Hebrew Bible as the  The most detailed contributions about Fritsch are: Massimo Ferrari Zumbini, Die Wurzeln des Bösen. Gründerjahre des Antisemitismus. Von der Bismarckzeit zu Hitler, Frankfurt a. M.: V. Klostermann, 2004, pp. 321–422 and pp. 605–35; Dirk Schubert (ed.), Die Gartenstadtidee zwischen reaktionärer Ideologie und pragmatischer Umsetzung. Theodor Fritschs völkische Version der Gartenstadt, Dortmund: Institut für Raumplanung Universität Dortmund, 2004; and Serge Tabary, Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933), Le ‘Vieux Maitre’ de l’antisemitisme allemand et la diffusion de l’idée ‘völkisch’, PhD diss., Univ. de Strasbourg III, Strasbourg, 1998. Fritsch’s idea of building ‘Aryan garden cities’ was published years before Ebenezer Howard’s well-known book Garden Cities of To-morrow, London: S. Sonnenschein, 1902 (The first edition from 1898 was titled To-morrow. A Peaceful Path to Real Reform). 33 Marrs published books such as Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum vom nicht-confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet. For Marr, see Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr. The Patriarch of Antisemitism, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1986, especially pp. 70–95. Hoffmann refers in Der Schulchan-Aruch several times to Marr’s pamphlets. 34 ‘Dass die Hebräer ihr Judentum abtun und Deutsche werden wollen glaube ich nicht eher, als dass sie ihre talmudischen Schriften verbrennen und ihre Synagogen niederreißen, zum Zeichen dafür, dass sie nicht länger Jahwe, dem Gott der Bosheit und Lüge anzubeten gesonnen sind’. 35  Der falsche Gott. Beweismaterial gegen Jahwe, Leipzig: Hammer-Verlag, 1921, pp. 10, 13, 31, 65. This book, originally titled Beweismaterial gegen Jahwe, was published in ten editions. The 1921 edition quoted here is the eighth. 32

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focus of his agitation thus arousing debate about the dependency of Christianity on Judaism.36 For Fritsch, the Jewish God stands in dualistic contradiction to the ‘spirit of love and graciousness, which we see in God.’37 In accordance with the Aryan Jesus research of the nineteenth century, Frisch struggles for a strictly dualistic Weltanschauung and establishes racial opposition between Israel (Jewish) and Judah (non-Jewish), between the prophets of the Bible and Jews of the Hebrew race, between Jesus (who emerged from the non-Jewish tribe of the Galileans) and the Jews; and, between biblical nations such as the Caanaites, Moabites, Amorites (blue-eyed Aryan peoples) and the Jews.38 Thus, the Jewish question is the ‘essential source of our contemporary social and moral needs’.39 No civilized country (Kulturstaat) could therefore ever recognize the Jewish God, who, for Fritsch, is nothing more than a tribal idol (Stammesgötze).40 This harsh dualistic stance makes it difficult for Fritsch to base his arguments on Christian theological discussions or sources such as the New Testament or the Church Fathers, which are very rarely quoted in his work. According to Uriel Tal, Fritsch thus pursues an atheistic ‘anti-Christian anti-Semitism’.41 In response to The False God and other inflammatory pamphlets, the Centralverein charged Fritsch once again in 1912. Already before the trial, the leading prosecutor solicited opinions from doyens in both Jewish and Christian theology. The appraisals led many well-known Jewish and Christian scholars to become directly or indirectly involved in the case. The Centralverein’s long-standing director, Dr. Ludwig Holländer, himself a lawyer, appeared as the claimant. The 36  See Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse. Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 248–53. 37  Der falsche Gott, pp. 3–5. 38  For all these references, see Der falsche Gott, 17–26 and inter alia. 39  Der falsche Gott, pp. 4–5. 40  Der falsche Gott, p. 7. See also his conclusion: “Und so klage ich hiermit die unter uns lebende Judenschaft als einen verbrecherischen Geheimbund öffentlich an und fordere die Staats-Anwaltschaften auf, dieser Verschwörer-Gesellschaft den Prozeß zu machen und alle Schritte zu tun, di nötig sind, um Staat und Gesellschaft vor deren Anschlägen zu schützen und diesen gemeingefährlichen Bund aufzulösen” (p. 96). 41  Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany, pp. 223–89. On the whole topic, see Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse, pp. 248–58 and Christian Wiese, “Jahwe – Ein Gott nur für Juden? Der Disput um das Gottesverständnis zwischen Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantischer alttestamentlicher Wissenschaft des Kaiserreichs”, Christlicher Antijudaismus und Antisemitismus. Theologische und kirchliche Programme Deutscher Christen, ed. Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Frankfurt a. M.: Haag und Herchen Verlag, 1994, pp. 27–9. It should be noted that Frisch wanted the Jews settled in a national state outside Europe (Antisemiten-Katechismus, p. 23). This idea was widespread in the anti-Semitic press and supported, for instance, by the Göttinger orientalist Paul Anton de Lagarde (1827–1891) and further developed by the businessman and notorious anti-Semitic publicist Carl Rudolf Paasch (1848–1915). According to Paasch, the Jews should be killed without concern for age or gender, but this idea would be ‘excluded at least for us Germans’. He suggests New Guinea as a new homeland (Eine jüdisch-deutsche Gesandtschaft und ihre Helfer. Geheimes Judenthum, Nebenregierungen und jüdische Weltherrschaft, Leipzig: C. Minde, 1892, p. 252).

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Centralverein named Hoffmann, the rector of the Orthodox Berlin Rabbinical Seminary, as knowledgeable witness together with Adolf Schwartz (1846–1931), a graduate of the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary, and from 1893, Rector of the Israelitisch-Theologischen Lehranstalt in Vienna. Appearing on the side of Christian theology were Georg Beer (1865–1946), Semitist and Professor for Protestant Theology (Old Testament) in Heidelberg,42 and Johannes Meinhold (1861– 1937), Professor for Protestant Theology (Old Testament) in Bonn. As expected, the pronouncements were contradictory, which prompted Dr. Wunderlich, the judge presiding over the November 1912 trial, to call upon the Christian theologian Rudolf Kittel (1853–1929)43 – who was in Leipzig at the time – to write a decisive evaluation (Obergutachten). Kittel asked to be relieved of this task and recommended instead Paul Kahle (1875–1964) and Israel Issar Kahan (1858– 1924) both, according to Kittel, authorities in the field of Talmudic literature.44 When the court renewed its request, Kittel finally agreed to write an assessment. He was given the written reports by the Christian and Jewish scholars drawn up so far. Kittel’s decisive expert opinion contributed essentially to Fritsch’s acquittal. Contrary to the outcomes of previous proceedings against him, Fritsch was legally released and the general meeting to be convened to hear the pronouncement of the verdict on 30 September 1913 was dropped. The court came to the conclusion that the ‘God blamed by the accused’ was not ‘the God worshipped by the Jewry of Germany today’.45 Since Fritsch only attacked the ‘prophetic God of ancient Israel’, this did not affect the present Jewish community, but only the Jews who ‘clung to the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch’ who therefore stood ‘outside the Jewish religious community’.46 Kittel’s decisive opinion was met with resistance from Jewish scholars such as the conservative Rabbi Moritz Güdemann (1835–1918), the legal-historian and Rabbi Jacob Neubauer (1895–1945), the Rabbi and scholar Adolf Schwarz (1846–1931), the Neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), and the liberal Rabbi Benno Jacobs (1862–1945), as well as from within the Protestant Christian camp.47 42  After 1939, Beer was associated with the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. 43  See also Alon Segev’s article about Rudolf Kittel’s son Gerhard Kittel in this volume. 44  This information comes from personal testimony by Rudolf Kittel, Judenfeindschaft oder Gotteslästerung? Ein gerichtliches Gutachten. Mit einem Schlußwort: Die Juden und der gegenwärtige Krieg, Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1914, p. 24. Kahan was an assistant to Franz Delitzsch and engaged in scholarly research with Gerhard Kittel. For Kittel’s expert opinion and the Jewish refutations, see Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse, pp. 258–78. 45  “[…] dass der “durch den Angeschuldigten gelästerte Gott J.” nicht “der von der Judenschaft Deutschlands heute verehrte Gott” sei. 46 An overview of the legal dispute with anti-Semitic incidents in the German Kaiserreich is given by Jahr, Antisemitismus vor Gericht, expecially the chapter Antisemitische Agitation und Straftat im Kaiserreich, 1879–1914, pp. 130–4. 47  See Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse. Neubauer, who praised Hoffmann’s analysis of modern biblical criticism, as well as Cohen were very involved in the confrontation with

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4. On the Attitudes toward non-Jews and the Morality of Jewish Law and Religion: Hoffmann’s Rejoinder and Vindication of Halakhic Judaism In his expert report, Hoffmann frequently refers to his book Der SchulchanAruch, which was handed over to the court along with the curriculum of the Rabbinical Seminary to supplement his appraisal prepared for the main trial of the Fritsch case held in 1912.48 The structure of Hoffmann’s court report is arranged in the form of answers to the ten questions raised by the judge, which include ‘Are the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch Jewish holy books?’ and ‘How does today’s Judaism relate to the ethics of the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch?’ The questions were the opening for discussions of a wide range of issues relating to the Christian-Jewish relationship, including the moral standards of the Jewish God as presented in the Bible, linguistic analyses of Talmudic quotations and concepts, the validity of Talmudic literature, translations from Hebrew and Aramaic, Jewish hermeneutics, and the examination of various allegations such as the existence of a certain secret Jewish general synod. His appraisal reflects Hoffmann’s approach toward anti-Jewish and anti-Talmudic writings in the 28 years after the first edition of Der Schulchan-Aruch, a period in which several new anti-Semitic incidents and trials had taken place. To refute Fritsch’s arguments, Hoffmann turned to the full scope of Jewish sources from the Hebrew Bible, Vulgate, Septuagint, Peshitta, Targumim, classical Talmudic literature, medieval Jewish responses and Bible commentaries, as well as the writing of modern Jewish interpreters such as Moses Mendelssohn (1729– 1786) or Samson Raphael Hirsch. He also relies on arguments from Protestant, orientalist or Wissenschaft-oriented scholars, such as the Jewish historian Heinrich Grätz (1817–1891); the father of Reform Judaism, Abraham Geiger (1810–1874); or, the orientalist and Lutheran, Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842). He adopted their terminology making reference, for example, to the Old Testament or Pentateuch. Hoffmann often adduces Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Greek and other languages in the original and explains his translations. He writes in a progressive style and applies stringent reasoning, offering comprehensive explanations and references to Jewish and non-Jewish literature. Protestant Bible criticism. In a monograph that has not yet been examined in scholarship, Neubauer deals with the Graf-Wellhausen theory in a much more critical manner than Hoffmann does (Schreiner, Jewish Response, pp. 160–1 and Liss, “Der Biblische Gottesname in der religionsgeschichtlichen Debatte”, pp. 77–8). 48 We do not know the exact date on which Hoffmann sent the document to the court. However, it is clear that he did so within a few weeks of the court assembly of 1912 and the court’s solicitation of an expert opinion from Rudolf Kittel on November 6, 1912. This also explains Wohlgemuth’s statement that Hoffmann worked for ‘months’ on his testimony, until three o’clock in the morning (“David Hoffmann”, p. 7).

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Using Fritsch’s writings, the libel action of the Centralverein, and their response countering Fritsch’s claims,49 the court stressed four main topics for Hoffmann to address: 1. The significance, acceptance and legal and moral validity of Talmud and Shulchan Aruch for Jews in the present time. 2. The translation, context and significance of the passages from the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch quoted by Fritsch, as well the translations offered in the treatise against Fritsch’s pamphlet published by the Centralverein. 3. The way contemporary Judaism relates to the ethics of the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch, especially in regard to passages which are in conflict with ‘modern moral conceptions’. 4. The name of the Jewish God, his morality according to biblical passages discussed by Fritsch, and the way contemporary Judaism (as a religious community) relates to Bible stories that can ‘neither be approved by religious, ethical, nor by legal aspect’. 4.1. The Origin of Halakha and its Challenges: Hoffmann on History and Wissenschaft Drawing upon several quotations from both the Shulchan Aruch and the Talmud,50 Fritsch argues that the Halakha functions for the good of the Jews while humiliating Gentiles and opening ways to harm and exploit innocent (German) citizens. Responding to Fritsch’s use of each of these sources, Hoffmann corrects the translation, explains the context of these halakhic passages from a historical, philological and theological perspective, and exposes Fritsch’s slander. Textual criticism and philological methods played an important part in shaping his conclusions. Hoffmann cites and relies on manuscripts, compares and explains the use of Talmudic termini technici,51 and speaks in favour of certain translations.52 He comments on later redactional additions within the Talmudic text and on the influence of Christian censorship.53 He suggests that the Shulchan Aruch and Talmudic literature contain several laws and unfavourable sayings concerning the Gentiles that do not conform to the moral standards 49  This Centralverein response (Gegengutachten) is not available. Its content must be gleaned from comments in the documents of the parties engaged in the discussion. 50  Fritsch himself takes most of these quotations from anti-Semitic publications such as Rohling’s Der Talmudjude (1871) or Justus’ Judenspiegel (1883). These publications again recycle Andreas Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judentum (Discovered Judaism), a vast collection of Hebrew and Aramaic Talmudic passages compiled to expose the primitive and irrational essence of Judaism. 51  Gutachten, p. 22. 52  In the case of the Shulchan Aruch, Hoffmann recommends the partial translation into German by Pavly (Gutachten, p. 4). 53  For example Gutachten, p. 9 n1.

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of the present time and require explanation. The main purpose of Hoffmann’s report is to justify the moral status of these passages within their Talmudic context. Hoffmann’s explanations for the Shulchan Aruch’s controversial halakhic laws regarding non-Jews are shaped by the influence of Hirsch’s doctrine of the image of God (Ebenbildlichkeit).54 His key argument is based on a hermeneutical and historic-critical approach and involves two axioms. Firstly, he asserts at the beginning of his work that the laws of the Shulchan Aruch are not fixed and static, and that an authorised interpreter (posek) of the Shulchan Aruch can modify, with stated reasons, the decrees set by Joseph Karo, the redactor of the Shulchan Aruch.55 Hoffmann refers here to both the concept of Talmudic literature as interpretative literature, and to the rule that the authoritative source is the earliest. Therefore, a halakhic ruling unrelated to the various interpretations, authorized by tradition, of the original Shulchan Aruch text with the glosses of Moses Isserles (Poland 1525–1572) – such as those of Magen Avraham, Beer ha-Golah (one of Hoffmann’s main sources), Sifthei Kohen or Sha’are Teshuvah – is worthless. Secondly, Hoffmann rejects legal decisions presented in the Shulchan Aruch that are incompatible with Talmudic sources or anchored in historical circumstances that have become obsolete in the present time and are therefore no longer relevant.56 By means of both of these concepts, Hoffmann asserts that the degree to which the legal code of the Shulchan Aruch is binding differs from that of the Talmud.57 The Shulchan Aruch resembles an open law corpus whose assertive claim towards halakhic validity cannot be automatically assumed, seeing that it is subject to a constant process of commentary on Joseph Karo’s source text. Although Hoffmann is not alone in the orthodox camp with his broad claims regarding the Shulchan Aruch, his historicized view certainly diverges from the old-orthodox approach of Eastern European Jews. Hoffmann’s approach implied a latent danger through its proximity to historicism, and to the spiritual attitude of Reform Judaism and the liberal movement as exemplified, for example, in Hermann Cohen’s defence of the Talmud.58 It is therefore unsurprising that the German Neo-Orthodoxy only partly supported Hoffmann’s approach. For example, the Frankfurt orthodox Philosopher and writer Isaac Breuer (1883– 1946), Hirsch’s son-in-law, explicitly rejected Hoffmann’s apologetic approach. In his 1910 essay ‘woman’s rights, slave rights, and the law of Gentiles’ (Frauenrecht, Sklavenrecht und Fremdenrecht)59 – likely inspired, among other things 54 Hirsch

commentary to Genesis 1:27.  Gutachten, pp. 6–8. 56 Gutachten, p. 7. 57  The later holds the highest authority, see for example Gutachten, pp. 2–6, 85–6. 58  See Roemer, Jewish Scholarship, pp. 15–46. 59  Isaac Breuer, “Frauenrecht, Sklavenrecht und Fremdenrecht”, Isaac Breuer. Frühe religionsphilosophische Schriften (Werkausgabe Vol. 1), ed. Matthias Morgenstern and Meir Hildesheimer, 55

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by Hoffmann’s Der Schulchan-Aruch – Breuer claims that the grandeur of the Torah and the ideal of worship of God is beyond any apologetics.60 In lieu of polemic and apologetic approaches to the principles of the Torah, Breuer draws a clear line between the ethics of the law of modern states which, according to Kant, is based on the idea of mankind (Idee der Menschheit), and Jewish law, in which ethical foundations and the idea of mankind are natural prerequisites, but not the overall goal, which is the worship of God (Gottesdienerschaft). We can assume that Hoffmann was well aware of Breuer’s critical approach to Jewish apologetics when he wrote his report in 1912/13. However, in the face of new waves of scientific anti-Semitic criticisms of Halakha and the Jewish religion, most of the German orthodox Jewry supported Hoffmann’s chosen path towards Jewish apologetica, as demonstrated in the statements mentioned above.61 Hoffmann’s historical-critical argumentation enables him to identify ‘wrong decisions’ of the original text of the Shulchan Aruch when applied to contemporary circumstances. For example, he argues against Fritsch’s claim that Jews are prohibited from returning lost property to a Gentile owner (Choshen Mishpat 266:1; Babylonian Talmud Baba Metzia 27b). Hoffmann suggests that the law applies only in cases of fraud. When the fraudsters multiplied, the Rabbis decided that property should only be returned in cases where testimony attesting to the sincerity of the (former) fraudster was available (Choshen Mishpat 267:5– 6). In his opinion, the obligation to return lost property applies equally to Jews and non-Jews. The only difference is the fact that the Jew is considered a brother of faith.62 Taking other sources into consideration, Hoffmann concludes that the return of lost property to Gentiles is prohibited from a moral perspective, but not explicitly expressed as law.63 It is possible, nevertheless, for the discussed Talmudic passage to be interpreted differently, and the basic halakhic decision in the Shulchan Aruch regarding the return of lost property to a Gentile owner to be taken literally. Hoffmann underlines that the last section of the Shulchan Aruch – dealing with laws of judicial procedure, monetary affairs, real and personal property, property damages, Berlin: LIT, 2017 (first publication 1910/5671 in Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft VIII, pp. 35–64), pp. 133–72. 60  Apart from Hebrew translations, an English translation was made titled The Philosophical Foundations of Jewish and of Modern Law. For a possible impact of Hoffmann’s apologetic approach in his Schulchan-Aruch on Breuer, see also the commentary in Werkausgabe Vol. 1, p. 174. 61  Joseph Wohlgemuth, a teacher of Halakha, homiletics and philosophy at the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary after 1895, claimed for example that Hoffmann’s book Der Schulchan Aruch was ‘a reference book against the defamation of the ethics of the rabbinate’ for the whole generation (“David Hoffmann”, p. 7). 62  Gutachten, pp. 21–3. Hoffmann uses commentaries of the Shulchan Aruch to explain the passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 76b. There, Rav declares that it is forbidden to return lost property to a pagan because one basically supports an offender in a sinful act. 63  See his summary of the whole discussion Gutachten, p. 61.

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and personal injuries – does not contain Halakha relevant to present-day Jewish practice, except for court testimony regarding the laws of marriage and divorce. With this comment, Hoffmann once again emphasizes his commitment to approaching the halakhic context within the appropriate historical context. In this context, Hoffmann notes that the curriculum of the Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin does not contain the section Choshen Mishpat of the Shulchan Aruch, which treats aspects of Jewish law pertinent to finance, torts, legal procedure and loans.64 Similar arguments emerge about other allegations made against Jews since the Middle Ages including those that concern interest transactions, Jewish jurisdiction in relation to the Gentiles and the national state, the meaning of the Kol Nidre prayer on the Day of Atonement, or the swearing of false and invalid oaths before a secular court according to Talmudic sources. On these questions as well, Hoffmann argues historically and refers to the economic and social status of the Jews in Europe, the Rabbinic complication in the application of the death penalty mentioned in the Bible, or the development of the Talmudic principle Dina de-Malkhuta Dina (Aramaic the law of the state is the law).65 Referring to the sensitive issue of the development of Halakha, Hoffmann summarizes: The Jewish religion is a religion originating in the revelation of God, which has set up the ideal of truth, justice and morality in a law which is absolutely perfect, and therefore we cannot relate to the progressive development (of religion). Rather, mankind has to develop and advance to properly understand this law correctly, to abandon all self-interests, and to attain the divine ideal.66

Even if Hoffmann rejects the concept of a historical development of the Halakha, he demonstrates a great deal of openness regarding the influence of reason. For him, the Halakha demands intellectual reasoning (Vernunftsgründe).67 It is the task of the Jewish people to participate in this process of reasoning, a task that the rabbis pursue in the Talmud and the Oral Torah in general, and to which each generation is challenged time and time again.

 Gutachten, pp. 7–8. for example Gutachten, pp. 29–30, 39–40, 75. 66 Gutachten, p. 9: ‘Die jüdische Religion ist eine von Gott geoffenbarte Religion, welche das Ideal der Wahrheit, der Gerechtigkeit und Sittlichkeit in einem Gesetze aufgestellt hat, das absolut vollkommen ist, bei dem daher von einer fortschreitenden Entwicklung keine Rede sein kann. Vielmehr müssen wir Menschen uns entwickeln und fortschreiten, um jenes Gesetz richtig zu verstehen, mit Aufopferung aller selbstischen Interessen auszuüben und jenes göttliche Ideal zu erreichen’. 67  Gutachten, p. 75. 64

65 See

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4.2. The Political Dimension of Halakha: Hoffmann on the Nation and the Law of the State According to Fritsch, Halakha dictates that the Jews should take over the wealth of the Gentiles and rob them of their possessions. In order to ensure the continuation of the German people in future, the state must ensure that the Jews will give up Halakha and their perception of God. Hoffmann assumes that Judaism conforms to the ethical normativity of contemporary European societies. He argues that the modern citizen holds a reasonable understanding of Halakha. There is no risk that any branch of Halakha might contradict the moral ideals of the German nation. Using a wide range of Talmudic sources, Hoffmann demonstrates that it is the Jews’s duty to act in a moral manner toward Gentiles. He emphasizes general Talmudic concepts such as that maintained by Hillel – a Tannaitic authority at the turn of the Christian era – regarding non-Jews. Hillel formulates the golden rule as quoted in Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 31a: ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour – that is the whole Torah’.68 Hoffmann also states unequivocally that the words ‘Love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD’ from Leviticus 19:18 relate to all human beings and not, as most Jewish commentators suggest, to Jews only.69 However, his main argument against Fritsch is that Jewish law does not imply that one should take an active part within the non-Jewish state (keine Sonderstellung im Staat einnehmen).70 Based on a statement made by Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai in the Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 1:1 18a, he explains that the Rabbis are in fact pleased that, since the destruction of the Temple, they are unable to pronounce rulings on criminal law.71 Thus, within the Diaspora, the civil law of 68  Gutachten, pp. 64–5, with reference to the declaration of the Rabbinical Assembly in Germany in 1884 and 1893. 69  Gutachten, pp. 65–7. This view, however, is carefully explained in his commentary on Leviticus 19:18 (Das Buch Leviticus, vol. 2 (zweiter Halbband Lev. XVII–Ende), Berlin: Verlag von M. Poppelauer, 1906, pp. 43–4). Hoffmann refers to Mendelssohn’s Torah commentary Bi’ur, where a distinction is made between the quality and quantity of love. According to Mendelssohn, the Torah points at the quality of love. This means that man will likely love himself more than others, but should have the same quality of love for himself and others. A higher sense is needed in order to understand which despicable human characteristics must be overcome. The verse clearly expresses this by the lemma I am the Lord. Although a similar position is found in Hayyim ben Joseph Vital (Safed, seventeenth century) and is regarded as a law derived from the written Torah (‫ )דאורייתא‬by Elijah Benamozegh (Italy, nineteenth century), Hoffmann’s reading is a unique opinion. He reads the biblical term ‘your fellow’ (‫ )רעך‬according to Exodus 11:2 – the divine order for the Israelites to take gold and silver from the Egyptians immediately before the last plague and the Exodus. This is not easy to justify, since in almost all other biblical verses ‫ רעך‬stands only for the Israelites (for example Lev. 19:13, 19:16). Hoffmann bases his argumentation on an interpretation of a Talmudic controversy between Rabbi Akiba and Ben Azzai regarding Lev. 19:18. 70  Gutachten, p. 36. 71 Gutachten, p. 35.

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the non-Jewish state is interpreted as neutral and even positive.72 Jewish law itself permits Jewish criminal law to be handed over to the state, as occurred in Spain in the fourteenth century and in Portugal soon after.73 4.3. Jewish Universalism and Ethics within History: Hoffmann on Christianity and Gentile Cultures Fritsch treats Judaism as an enemy not only of the German people, but also of Christianity. He argues that it contradicts Christianity’s basic moral values. He justifies his argumentation in a scholarly manner, claiming that, according to the Shulchan Aruch and the Talmud, Christians are idolaters (in Hebrew Avoda Zara, literally wrong worship; the acronym Akum means literally worshippers of planets and constellations, the term Oved Elilim means worshipper of idols). Thus, Talmudic law systematically discriminates against Christians and Christian values. The term idolatry inevitably polarizes the issue due to the complex religious-philosophical matters underlying the concept and the high degree of emotional sensitivity to the term’s negative connotations regarding non-Jewish cultures. Moreover, the prohibition of idolatry is one of the so-called seven Noahide laws considered by the Rabbis as a set of doctrines for all nations.74 Hoffmann approached this issue through comprehensive historical contextualisation and philological analysis. According to Menachem ben Solomon (Meiri, Southern France 1249–1306) and other European Rabbinic authorities since the thirteenth century, Christianity was not strictly defined as idolatrous.75 For Hoffmann, who relies especially on Meiri and Jacob Emden (Altona 1697–1776), Christians, like Muslims, are not regarded as idolaters, but rather, as resident aliens (in Hebrew Ger Toshav). According to Rabbinic definition, a Ger Toshav (resident alien) is a Gentile who accepts the seven Noahide laws and lives under Jewish rule or in a Jewish state. He must grapple with the fact that the Shulchan Aruch does not typically define Gentiles explicitly as resident aliens, which could be interpreted as suggesting that they belong among the idolaters. Hoffmann offers a historical explanation: In the sixteenth century, unlike in his own times, not all non-Jews accepted the seven Noahide laws.76 Hoffmann’s historicizing explanation presupposes the  Gutachten, pp. 46–9.  Gutachten, p. 49. 74 The Noahide laws contains: 1. Prohibition of idolatry, 2. Prohibition of blasphemy, 3. Establishing a court system, 4. Prohibition of murder, 5. Prohibition of incest, 6. Prohibition of larceny and 7. Prohibition to eat flesh torn from a living animal (see Tosefta Avoda Zara 8:4; Genesis Rabbah 16:16 and Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 56a). 75 The decision not to define Christianity as idolatry has extensive halakhic consequences. The development of this attitude in Europe, where Jews lived in close proximity with Christians, is more complex in detail; see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. 76  Gutachten, p. 10. 72 73

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idea of development and progress in human history. In this regard, Hoffmann was a child of his time, intellectually shaped by the spirit of enlightenment and German idealism. According to Hoffmann, these ‘old laws toward Gentiles’ (alte Fremdengesetze) in the Talmud were written to avoid ‘ancient atheist idolatry’.77 Nevertheless, one must consider the opposition towards idolatry within Christianity. For example, Babylonian Talmud Baba Qama 113b states with reference to Lev. 25:47 that erroneously transferred property need not be returned to the Gentile. According to Hoffmann, the law discriminating against Gentiles applies to pagans, but not to a Ger Toshav (resident alien).78 Thus, this group of laws regarding Gentiles is archaic and irrelevant. Hoffmann summarizes: Talmudic laws toward today’s Gentiles have no validity.79 Hoffmann develops a strong argument based on his strict historical reasoning regarding Talmudic sources on Gentiles. He reasons that, even if the Shulchan Aruch defined the Christians as Akum (worshippers of planets and constellations), which it does not, one must return to the meaning of the word in the original source in the Talmud. Furthermore, he claims that the Talmud’s understanding of the category goy (in Rabbinic literature Gentile) is always pagan (in German Heide).80 Using this definition, Hoffmann negates the possibility of connecting these passages with idolaters. Hoffmann does not mention that, for Jews, Christianity in its cultic dimension is halakhicly forbidden. In one of his responsa written in Hebrew, he rules that it was proscribed to give donations to build a church because of the prohibition against idolatry.81 Moreover, the fact that Maimonides defines Christianity as idolatry was well known to Fritsch. With regard to the socio-economic situation of the small Jewish communities in medieval Ashkenaz or, a fortiori, in the postemancipation era of Wilhelmine Germany, Maimonides’ position would have had drastic socio-historical and economic consequences for the coexistence of Jews and Christians. It is worth noting that, according to Mishna Avoda Zara 1:1 (cf. Babylonian Talmud Avoda Zara 13a and 18b) it is forbidden for Jews to engage in trade three days before and after a holiday of the idolaters. If Christianity were to be defined as idolatry and thus Sunday as a holiday of idolaters, no commercial exchange and fundamental economic order during the whole week  Gutachten, p. 86 (‘Gesetzesbestimmungen über den atheistischen Götzendienst’).  Gutachten, p. 12 n1 and Der Schulchan-Aruch, pp. 129–34; cf. Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 348:2. 79  “[…], dass alle Fremdengesetze des Talmuds gegen die heutigen Nichtjuden haben keinerlei Geltung”, Gutachten, pp. 10–11. 80  Gutachten, p. 12. 81  His responsa were written in Hebrew and thus inaccessible to most non-Jewish readers. They were published after Hoffmann’s death in 1923 (Melamed leho’il, [‫]מלמד להועיל‬, 3 vols., Frankfurt a. M. 1926–1927, no. 148/2, vol. 1, p. 149 [Hebrew]). 77 78

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would be possible between Jews and Christians.82 In his Der Schulchan-Aruch, Hoffmann addressed Maimonides’ approach towards Christianity and argued that Maimonides did not mention ‘Christianity in the sense of idolatry’ but underlined instead the segregation of the Jews. Hoffmann solves this difficulty by claiming that, according to Maimonides, the laws against pagan idolaters do not apply to Christians, but to Israel, whose belief in the unity of God is its commandment, and that it must be completely separated from Christianity, just as it should be afraid of paganism.83 In some passages, he refers to Christian ethics in order to strengthen Jewish belief. He defines Halakha as the tradition of the fathers: According to Hoffmann, this concept also applies in Matthew 2:15, Mark 7:3, 5 and Josephus Flavius (Antiquities X,4,1).84 In another passage, he explains Judaism’s prohibition of the desecrating of God’s Divine name. He argues that, if Israel takes a hostile attitude towards non-Jews, the Gentile nations will ask ‘What nation did God choose for him’? From this too, one learns that committing fraud towards Gentiles is equivalent to the desecration of the Divine name.85 Hoffmann argues that the principle is central in the New Testament and can be found in Matthew 5:16, where it is stated: Let your light shine before the people, for they can see your good works, and praise your Father in heaven.86 In his report, Hoffmann avoids direct comparison of moral values in a hierarchical relationship between Christianity and Judaism. However, in his discussion of halakhic deliberations on the treatment of non-Jews, he refers on several occasions to ancient Roman law and compares it to Halakha. On the one hand, Hoffmann compares certain Jewish laws with Roman law; for example, the possibility of annulling forgotten debts;87 the legacy of the heathen from his father in inheritance law (according to Roman law, the peregrinus does not acquire hereditas).88 On the other hand, he uses comparisons between Halakha and 82  A pragmatic tendency to facilitate these rigid Rabbinic rules has already been observed in the Talmudic era. According to the Palestinian tradition, trade with non-Jews outside Palestine was limited to one day before the feast. The Talmud Yerushalmi refers to some fixed-date Greco-Roman festivities of the first century BC (yAZ 1:1 39a–b; see also Tosefta Avoda Zara 1:1). Later Babylonian traditions established further-reaching changes. According to Shmuel, trade was limited to the feast day itself (bAZ 7b). Rabbi Yohanan (third century CE in Palestine) taught that non-Jews outside of Palestine are not to be considered as idol worshipers (bChul 13b). For this issue see Christine Elizabeth Hayes, “The Reduction of the Prohibition of m. AZ 1:1 in the Diaspora”, Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds. Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 127–43. 83 Gutachten, p. 10. For this issue, see Kohler, “Manuel Joel in Defense of the Talmud”, pp. 145–57. 84 Gutachten, pp. 3, 39. 85 Gutachten, pp. 23, 61. 86  Cf. 1 Peter 2:12, see Gutachten, pp. 23, 95. 87  Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 348:2; Babylonian Talmud Baba Qama 113b. 88  Gutachten, pp. 12–6.

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Roman law vis-à-vis foreigners to underline the morality of Jewish law and suggest its superiority over ancient Roman law.89 The strategy of comparing Jewish law with ancient Roman law was common among adherents of Wissenschaft des Judentums, and also among orthodox and reform voices in Judaism. Indeed, an astonishing number of nineteenth century publications by Jews compare between the Talmud and non-Jewish legal systems, particularly ancient Roman civil law. 4.4. The Jewish God: Hoffmann’s Theology As stated above, Fritsch attacked not only the Talmud but also the Jewish God as represented in the Hebrew Bible. Against Fritsch’s dualistic contradiction of a double moral standard to the Old Testament’s Jewish God and the spirit of wisdom of the prophets of the Bible, Hoffmann emphasizes the morality of the patriarchs (especially Abraham, Gen. 12:2–3; 14:23; 18:3–8; 18:23–32) and quotes from a rich selection of psalms, wisdom literature, and proverbs that address God’s law, justice, and truth. Hoffmann argues that the acts of men in the Old Testament are not considered mere guidelines. In the case of the most pious, their actions serve as prescription of the law.90 He explains that the criticism of biblical narratives is consistent with Jewish orthodoxy as it refers to the acts of humans and not those of God. In applying this approach, Hoffmann is in the company of contemporary Christian theologians such as Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802–1869), Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890) or Hermann Strack (1848–1922). It is no coincidence that, to illustrate his arguments on the Jewish reading of the Bible, Hoffmann chooses an outstanding early Midrash from the fourth or fifth century C. E. which offers a negative interpretation of Jacob’s taking of Isaac’s blessing in disguise. In Rabbinic literature, Jacob’s brother, Esau (Edom), becomes a synonym for Rome, and is regarded as the father of Christianity. Jewish commentaries take a negative view of Esau due to his evil disposition, manifest from the time he was in his mother’s womb until his death.91 Hoffmann, however, quotes Genesis Rabbah 67:34 on Gen. 27:34, where Esau cries for the blessing stolen from his father. According to this Midrash, Mordecai’s cry upon receiving the message of Haman’s plan to exterminate the Jews (Esther 4:1) is the long-term consequence of Jacob’s actions against Esau.92 At the end of his defence, Hoffmann presents a collection of ten Talmudic sources that stands for ‘unrestricted charity and respect, commitment to justice, 89  In Roman law, the law for foreigners was part of ius naturae rather than ius civile, see Gutachten, p. 17 90  Gutachten, pp. 95–7. 91  For more on the issue, see Matthias Morgenstern, “The Image of Edom in Midrash Bereshit Rabbah”, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 223/2 (2016), pp. 193–222. 92  Gutachten, pp. 98–9; Hoffmann quotes also Midrash Tanhuma Qedoshim 15 (ed. Buber, pp. 79–80).

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honesty and truthfulness toward mankind.’93 It was his commitment to explain ‘some derogatory statements of the rabbis about the Gentiles’. Yet, Hoffmann strongly opposed the assumption that Talmudic laws contradicting the Rabbinic spirit and moral ethos could be justified through reference to the struggle between the Roman Empire and the Jews in ancient times or the regulation of idolatry found in Mishnah Avoda Zara 2:1–2. The Rabbis, he argued, were ‘too conscientious to issue current decisions caused by the circumstances of time as Torah laws.’ With this important reflection, which Hoffmann places in a footnote, he consciously distinguishes himself from Jewish liberal positions, which could use this to argue for the abolition of elements of what they saw as fossilized religious law.94 Hoffmann also cites twelve sources from the Shulchan Aruch – none of which are mentioned in Fritsch’s pamphlet – that express a positive or neutral attitude toward non-Jews.95 In compiling these selected texts, Hoffmann moves from a defensive to an offensive position in which he presents Judaism as a moral institution. As Hoffmann argues, the moral ethos of the Shulchan Aruch, viewed as problematic from today’s perspective, is in full harmony with justice and morality. 4.5. Self-Representation of Judaism: Hoffmann’s Approach to Science For our purposes, it is worth reflecting upon the approach to biblical criticism offered in Hoffmann’s exposition. Surprisingly, given his theological struggle against biblical criticism, Hoffmann’s scholarly critique is presented in a neutral manner. For example, he explains that, according to the theory of biblical criticism, ‘the Torah does not contain a double standard’. In response to the results of the documentary hypothesis, Hoffmann argues that the offensive passages in the Hebrew Bible obtain only in the two historical documents (Geschichtsbücher, sources E and J), while the law books (Gesetzbücher, sources D, and P) do not quote these passages.96 Hoffmann’s tendency to present the development of Oral Law in a harmonious manner is replicated in his portrayal of various streams of contemporary Judaism. In passages where he mentions the Reform movement, which he defines in surprisingly restrained terms as ‘a liberal tendency in Judaism’,97 he does so in a neutral fashion. He evidently sought to prevent unnecessary internal conflict within Judaism and prevent possible alliances between radical Jewish liberal  Gutachten, pp. 66–72, quotation on p. 71.  Gutachten, p. 71 n1. 95 Gutachten, pp. 72–7. 96  Gutachten, pp. 95–6. Hoffmann mentioned, among others, Wellhausen and Kautsch. 97  Gutachten, p. 8. For Hoffmann’s view on the role of Reform see David Ellenson, “The Role of Reform in Selected German-Jewish Orthodox Responsa: A Sociological Analysis”, HUCA, 53 (1982), pp. 357–80. 93 94

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voices and anti-Talmudic approaches of the anti-Semitic agenda. He explains that even if the liberal interpretation overrides many commandments, liberals are still concerned with the principles of the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch.98 Nevertheless, Hoffmann strongly defends the orthodox position against the liberal interpretation of Jewish tradition: for example, regarding the idea that the Kol Nidre prayer, recited on the Day of Atonement, negated vows taken by Jews visà-vis state authorities. The fact that liberal concessions resulting in the abolition of the prayer were often based on arguments similar to those presented in antiSemitic propaganda made it hard for Hoffmann to sustain this argument.99

5. Conclusions In the last decade of Hoffmann’s life, the völkisch and anti-Semitic tinted scholarship of the first decade of the twentieth century led him to write his comprehensive report for the Fritsch trial. Hoffmann was primarily concerned with the social position of the Jews in Wilhelmine Germany and hoped to secure Fritsch’s conviction. He served as the mouthpiece of all Jews, not just the orthodox minority. Thus, all the greater was the disappointment among German Jews when the effort did not succeed.100 The main reason for the publication of Hoffmann’s book Der Schulchan-Aruch was to hinder the increasingly internal uprooting of the Jews from their Talmudic tradition. With their expert reports written for the legal German system, Christian theological professors and Orientalists such as Jakob Ecker (in the case of Justus’ Judenspiegel) or Johann Gildemeister (in the case of Maaß’ Isaakiade) justified an approach that was supported by arguments of harsh Talmud criticism. Hoffmann, therefore, considered himself not only as a cultural translator and an interpreter of the criticized Talmud passages, which mostly deal with non-Jews, but also as a mouthpiece of Torah-abiding Judaism vis-à-vis the German state as presented in its legal institutions. While, in his apologetic Der Schulchan-Aruch, Hoffmann explicitly addresses a Jewish audience, the readership of his statement written for the Fritsch case of 1913 was largely limited to the judges of the Leipzig court. Yet, in Der Schulchan-Aruch, he took up similar arguments regarding the dangers of losing traditional Jewish knowledge and identity through his rejection of Julius Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis of the Hebrew Bible. If one takes the report as a seismograph for understanding the socio-historical situation of Jewish orthodoxy in Wilhelmine Germany, the sense of insecurity  Gutachten, p. 8.  Gutachten, pp. 57–9. 100  This also explains Joseph Wohlgemuth’s claim that, for ‘months’ Hoffmann worked until three o’clock in the morning on his expert testimony (“David Hoffmann”, p. 7).  98  99

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within the Jewish orthodox minority is unmistakable. Unlike the Old-Jewish orthodoxy, where political and social discrimination of the Jews through the state was reflected as God’s will and thus accepted without resistance, the Jewish neo-orthodox movement that grew around Samson Raphael Hirsch from the mid-nineteenth century strongly believed in resistance and produced a diverse range of writings in defence of the Talmud. Litigation cases against anti-Semitic publications dealt with literature based on quotations, terminology and concepts mostly taken from halakhic Talmudic literature. Yet, the discourses on Halakha, Jewish hermeneutics (the role of the Oral Torah), and Talmudic passages examined in the orthodox apologetics remained unanswered on the Christian side. As the Fritsch case developed, there was no serious attempt by Christian theologians to counter Hoffmann’s halakhic and theological arguments. Regardless of the imbalance of the Rabbinic-halakhic discourse reflected in the juridical decision of the Fritsch trial in 1912/13 using learned opinions from Jewish and Christian scholars, it is clear that the socio-historical context creates a literature unique in form and content. Although the history of the Talmudic disputations extends far back into the Middle Ages, the conditions of debate at the turn of the twentieth century cannot be compared with those of past generations. Hostility toward Jews and Christian anti-Semitism had changed significantly, and the majority of Jews were alienated from religious tradition. Despite their occasional half-hearted defences of the Talmud, liberal Jews typically emphasized the backwardness of Talmudic traditions and Halakha, and doubted the validity of Rabbinic doctrines in general. During this trial, Jewish orthodoxy was forced to formulate statements regarding the role of Christianity. In accordance with the decisions of the Rabbinical Assemblies of 1888 based on the writings of Menachem ben Solomon in the thirteenth century, the recognition of Christianity as a religion based on moral principles was adopted and confirmed in Europe (Askenaz). To this day, debate within Judaism regarding the halakhic perspective on attitudes toward Gentiles drawsd explicitly upon Hoffmann.101 The basic message of Hoffmann’s Der Schulchan-Aruch and his report for the Fritsch case is that there is no difference in the way Jews interact with Jews and with Gentiles from a moral-theological perspective, yet there are unequivocal justifications for norms of actions relating to matters concerning Talmudic civil law.

101  See for example Eliezer Samson Rosenthal, Divrei Ne’ilah (‫)דברי נעילה בסיום כנס היסוד‬, haHadash Itkadesh we-haKadosh Ithadesh (‫)החדש יתקדש והקדוש יתחדש‬, Jerusalem: 1966, pp. 17–21: p. 19 (Hebrew); and Adam Mintz, The Relationship of Orthodox Jews with Believing Jews of Other Religious Ideologies and Non-Believing Jews, New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2010.

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Bibliography Aviad-Wolfsberg, Yeshayahu, “‫”עזריאל הילדסהיימר ודוד צבי הופמן‬, Sinai, 14 (1944), pp. 65–81 (Hebrew). – “David Hoffmann”, Guardians of Our Heritage. 1724–1953, ed. Leo Jung, New York NY: Bloch, 1958, pp. 363–419. Barkai, Avraham, Wehr dich! Der Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (C. V.), 1893–1938, München: C. H. Beck, 2002. Battenberg, Friedrich, Das europäische Zeitalter der Juden. Zur Entwicklung einer Minderheit in der nichtjüdischen Umwelt Europas, Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1990. Baumel, Mosche, Orthodoxie und Wissenschaft. Der Weg von Rabbiner David Zwi Hoffmann, Münster: LIT, 2013. Bechtholdt, Hans-Joachim, “David Hoffmann”, Die jüdische Bibelkritik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans-Joachim Bechtholdt, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1995, pp. 363–438. Bloch, Emmanuel, “La loi juive comme rempart face à l’antisémitisme moderne: Le rabbin David Tsvi Hoffmann (1843–1921) entre Science et Apologie”, Revue des études juives, vol. 177/1–2 (2017), pp. 173–99. Breuer, Isaac, “The Philosophical Foundations of Jewish and of Modern Law”, Concepts of Judaism, ed. Jacob S. Levinger: Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974, pp. 53–81. – “Frauenrecht, Sklavenrecht und Fremdenrecht”, Isaac Breuer, Frühe religionsphilo­ sophische Schriften (Werkausgabe Vol. 1), ed. Matthias Morgenstern and Meir Hildesheimer, Berlin: LIT, 2017. Breuer, Mordechai, Jüdische Orthodoxie im Deutschen Reich 1871–1918. Sozialgeschichte einer religiösen Minderheit, Frankfurt a. M.: Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenaeum, 1986. Dalman, Gustaf (see Marx, Gustaf D.) Ecker, Jakob, Der Judenspiegel im Lichte der Wahrheit. Eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung, Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1884. Ellenson, David and Richard Jacobs, “Scholarship and Faith: David Hoffmann and his Relationship to Wissenschaft des Judentums”, Modern Judaism, 8/1 (1988), pp. 27–40. Ellenson, David, “The Role of Reform in Selected German-Jewish Orthodox Responsa: A Sociological Analysis”, HUCA, 53 (1982), pp. 357–80. Ferrari Zumbini, Massimo, Die Wurzeln des Bösen. Gründerjahre des Antisemitismus. Von der Bismarckzeit zu Hitler, Frankfurt a. M.: V. Klostermann, 2004. Fischer, Leopold, “Bibliographie der Schriften und Aufsätze des Dr. D. Hoffmann”, Festschrift zum Siebzigsten Geburtstage David Hoffmann’s, ed. Simon Eppenstein et al., Berlin: Lamm, 1914, pp. vii–xxxiv. Fritsch, Theodor, Antisemiten-Katechismus. Eine Zusammenstellung des wichtigsten Materials zum Verständniss der Judenfrage, Leipzig: T. Fritsch, 11887. – Der falsche Gott. Beweismaterial gegen Jahwe, Leipzig: Hammer-Verlag, 91921 (11916). – Handbuch der Judenfrage. Die wichtigsten Tatsachen zur Beurteilung des jüdischen Volkes, Leipzig: Hammer-Verlag, 351933 (11907). Gerdmar, Anders, Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism. German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann, Leiden: Brill, 2009. Ginzburg, Louis, Students Scholars and Saints, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1928. Goshen-Gottstein, Moshe H., “Christianity, Judaism and Modern Bible Study”, Vetus Testamentum Supplements, 28 (1975), pp. 69–88.

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HaCohen, Ran, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible. German Jewish Reception of Biblical Criticism, trans. M. Engel, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010, pp. 164–8. Halbertal, Moshe and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Harris, Jay M., How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism, Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. Hartston, Barnet, Sensationalizing the Jewish Question. Anti-Semitic Trials and the Press in the Early German Empire, Leiden: Brill, 2005. Hayes, Christine Elizabeth, “The Reduction of the Prohibition of m. AZ 1:1 in the Diaspora”, Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds. Accounting for Halakhic Difference, Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Heschel, Susannah, The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Hirsch, Marcus, Kulturdefizit am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a. M.: J. Kauffmann, 1893. Hoffmann, David Zvi, Mar Samuel. Rector der jüdischen Akademie zu Nehardea in Babylonien, Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1873. – Der Schulchan-Aruch und die Rabbinen über das Verhältnis der Juden zu Andersgläubigen. Zur Berichtigung eines von Prof. Gildemeister in dem “Isaakiade”-Prozesse abgegebenen gerichtlichen Gutachten (Sonderdruck aus der Jüdischen Presse 1884, no. 27–52), Berlin: Verlag der Expedition der “Jüdischen Presse”, 1885, 21894. – “Wahrheit und Klarheit, Rezension über ‘Der Judenspiegel im Lichte der Wahrheit’ von Dr. Jacob Ecker (Privatdocent für semitische Philologie an der königlichen Akademie zu München)“, Israelische Monatsschrift (Appendix Jüdische Presse), second edition Paderborn, 1884 (11), pp. 41–3; 1895 (2) pp. 5–6, (4) pp. 13–5. – “Die Wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese”, Heft 1, JahresBericht des Rabbiner Seminars zu Berlin, Berlin, 1902/1903 [reprint Berlin 1904]; David Zvi Hoffmann, Heft 2, Jahres-Bericht des Rabbiner Seminars zu Berlin, Berlin, 1914/1915 [reprint Berlin 1916]. – Das Buch Leviticus, übersetzt und erklärt, vol. 2 (erster Halbband Lev. I–XVII), Berlin: Verlag von M. Poppelauer, 1905; vol. 2 (zweiter Halbband Lev. XVII–Ende), Berlin: Verlag von M. Poppelauer, 1906. – Ein Sendschreiben an den “Verein zur Wahrung des gesetzestreuen Judentums in Baden”. Zur Aufklärung über die badische Gebetsreform, Rödelheim: Lehrberger, about 1908 (s.d.). – Bericht des Rektors über das Studienjahr 1907–1908 (5668), Jahres-Bericht des RabbinerSeminars zu Berlin für 1907/08 (5668). Mit einer wissenschaftlichen Beilage von Dr. D. Hoffmann. Midrasch Tannaim zum Deuteronomium II, Berlin: M Poppelauer 1909, pp. 5–6. – Gutachten dem königlichen Landgerichte zu Leipzig erstattet von Dr. D. Hoffmann, Rektor des Rabbiner-Seminars zu Berlin, unpublished manuscript at the National Library in Jerusalem, (S 2= 59 B 1186), about 1912 (s.d.). – “Probleme der Pentateuchexegese X: Zurückweisung einiger Angriffe gegen die Moral der Juden”, (Part X), Jeschurun, 3 (1916), pp. 20–35. – “Stellung des heutigen Judentums zu der aus Talmud und Schulchan-aruch zu entnehmenden Ethik”, Jeschurun, 3/6 (1916), pp. 298–312.

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– “Tora und Wissenschaft”, Jeschurun, 7/11–12 (1920), pp. 497–504 (English translation Marc Shapiro, Hoffmann on Torah and Wissenschaft). – Melamed leho’il (‫)מלמד להועיל‬, 3 vols., Frankfurt a. M. 1926–1927 (Hebrew). Howard, Ebenezer, Garden Cities of To-morrow, London: S. Sonnenschein, 1902 (first edition 1898: To-morrow. A Peaceful Path to Real Reform). Jahr, Christoph, Antisemitismus vor Gericht. Debatten über die juristische Ahndung judenfeindlicher Agitation in Deutschland (1879–1960), Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2011. Joël, Manuel, Gegen Gildemeister. Herrn Prof. Gildemeisters Gutachten über den jüdischen Moralcodex (Schulchan Aruch) und das Verhältnis der Juden zu demselben. Kritisch beleuchtet, Breslau: S. Schottlaender, 1884. Justus (Dr.) (pseudonym Aron Israel Brimann), Judenspiegel. Oder, 100 neuenthüllte, heutzutage noch geltende, den Verkehr der Juden mit den Christen betreffende Gesetze der Juden. Mit einer die Entstehung und Weiterentwicklung der jüdischen Gesetze darstellenden, höchst interessanten Einleitung, Paderborn: Bonifacius-Dr., 1883. Katz, Jacob, From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. Kittel, Rudolf, Judenfeindschaft oder Gotteslästerung? Ein gerichtliches Gutachten. Mit einem Schlußwort: Die Juden und der gegenwärtige Krieg, Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1914. Kohler, George Y., “Manuel Joel in Defense of the Talmud. Liberal Responses to Religious Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century Germany”, HUCA, 79 (2008), pp. 141–63. Kusche, Ulrich, Die unterlegene Religion. Das Judentum im Urteil deutscher Alttestamentler. Zur Kritik theologischer Geschichtsschreibung, Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1991. Lamberti, Marjorie, Jewish Activism in Imperial Germany. The Struggle for Civil Equality, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1937. Liss, Hanna, “‘Das Erbe ihrer Väter’: Die deutsch-jüdische Bibelwissenschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und der Streit um die Hebräische Bibel”, ‫מה טוב חלקנו‬. Wie gut ist unser Anteil. Gedenkschrift für Yehuda T. Radday, ed. Daniel Krochmalnik and Magdalena Schultz, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2004, pp. 21–36. – “Der Biblische Gottesname in der religionsgeschichtlichen Debatte. Jüdische Exegese zwischen den Fronten am Beispiel Benno Jacobs”, Trumah, 13 (2004), pp. 69–102. Marr, Wilhelm, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum vom nicht-confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet, Bern: R. Costenoble 51879. Marx, Alexander, Studies in Jewish History and Booklore, New York NY: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1944, – Essays in Jewish Biography, Philadelphia PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947. Marx, Gustaf D. (Gustaf Dalman), Jüdisches Fremdenrecht. Antisemitische Polemik und Jüdische Apologetik. Kritische Blätter für Antisemiten und Juden, Karlsruhe: H. Reuther, 1986. Mintz, Adam, The Relationship of Orthodox Jews with Believing Jews of Other Religious Ideologies and Non-Believing Jews, New York NY: Yeshiva University Press, 2010. Morgenstern, Matthias, “Jüdisch-orthodoxe Wege zur Bibelkritik. I. Schriftauslegung der mündlichen Tora: Vom Drasch zum Pschat”, Judaica. Beiträge zum Verstehen des Judentums, 56 (2000), pp. 178–92. – “The Image of Edom in Midrash Bereshit Rabbah”, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 223 (2016), pp. 193–222.

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Münz, Eleazer ben Aryeh Leib, Die modernen Anklagen gegen das Judentum als falsch nachgewiesen, Frankfurt a. M.: Kauffmann, 1882. Nobel, Josef, Kritisches Richtschwert für Rohling’s “Talmudjude”, Totis: Self-publishing, 1881. Paasch, Carl Rudolf, Eine jüdisch-deutsche Gesandtschaft und ihre Helfer. Geheimes Judenthum, Nebenregierungen und jüdische Weltherrschaft, Leipzig: C. Minde, 1892. Paucker, Arnold, Der jüdische Abwehrkampf gegen Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik, Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag, 1968. – “Die Abwehr des Antisemitismus in den Jahren 1893–1933”, Antisemitismus. Von der Judenfeindschaft zum Holocaust, ed. Herbert A. Strauss and Norbert Kampe, Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 1995, pp. 143–63. Poliakov, Leon, The Aryan Myth. A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, London: Chatto and Windus, 1974. Ragins, Stanford, Jewish Responses to Antisemitism in Germany, 1870–1914, PhD diss., Brandeis University, Waltham MA, 1972. Reinharz, Jehuda, Fatherland or Promised Land. The Dilemma of the German Jew, 1893– 1914, Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press 1975. Rodkinssohn, Michael Levi, Der Schulchan Aruch und seine Beziehungen zu den Juden und Nichtjuden, trans. D. Löwy, London: R. & N. Rodkinssohn, 1884. Roemer, Nils H., “Jewish Historiography at the Center of Debate”, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Between History and Faith, ed. Nils H. Roemer, Madison, Wisconsin WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, pp. 49–59. Roenthal, Eliezer Samson, Divrei Ne’ilah (‫)דברי נעילה בסיום כנס היסוד‬, ha-Hadash Itkadesh we-haKadosh Ithadesh (‫)החדש יתקדש והקדוש יתחדש‬, Jerusalem: 1966, pp. 17–21 (Hebrew). Rohling, August, Der Talmudjude, Münster: A. Russel, 1871. Schorsch, Ismar, Jewish Reactions to German Antisemitism 1870–1914, New York NY: Columbia University Press, 1972. – “Das erste Jahrhundert der Wissenschaft des Judentums (1818–1919)”, Wissenschaft vom Judentum. Annäherungen nach dem Holocaust, ed. Michael Brenner and Stefan Rohrbacher, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000, pp. 11–24. Schreiner, Stefan, “Protestant Bible Study and the Jewish Response in the 19th and 20th Centuries”, Jewish Studies Quarterly, 10 (2003), pp. 140–71, Schubert, Dirk (ed.), Die Gartenstadtidee zwischen reaktionärer Ideologie und pragmatischer Umsetzung. Theodor Fritschs völkische Version der Gartenstadt, Dortmund: Institut für Raumplanung Universität Dortmund, 2004. Seidler, Meir, “Vergleichende Betrachtungen zu Benno Jacobs Kritik der Quellenscheidung”, Trumah, 13 (2004), pp. 121–39. Shapiro, Marc, “Rabbi David Zevi Hoffmann on Torah and Wissenschaft”, The Torah u-Madda Journal, 6 (1995–1996), pp. 129–37. – “Is Modern Orthodoxy Moving Towards an Acceptance of Biblical Criticism?”, Modern Judaism, 37 (2017), pp. 165–93. Shaw, Steven, “Orthodox Reactions to the Challenge of Biblical Criticism”, Tradition. A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, 10 (1969), pp. 61–85. Steckelmacher, Moritz, Widerlegung des Sendschreibens des Dr. D. Hoffmann, Rektors am Rabbinerseminar in Berlin. Über den von dem Gr. Bad. Oberrat der Israeliten herausgegebenen Gebetbuchentwurf und die zugehörige Denkschrift, Mannheim: Mannheimer Vereinsdruckerei, 1908.

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Stern, Ludwig, Über den Talmud. Populär-wissenschaftlicher Vortrag gesprochen am 9. De­ cem­ber 1874 im Saale des Bürgervereins zu Würzburg, Würzburg: Verlag der Stahel’schen Buch & Kunsthandlung, 1875. Sulzbach, Carla, David Zvi Hoffmann’s “Die Wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese” (“The Main Arguments against the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis”). An Annotated Translation and Introduction, PhD diss., McGill University, Montreal, 1996. Tabary, Serge, Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933), Le ‘Vieux Maitre’ de l’antisemitisme allemand et la diffusion de l’idée ’völkisch‘, PhD diss., University of Strasbourg III, Strasbourg, 1998. Tal, Uriel, Christians and Jews in Germany. Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich 1870–1914, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1975. Tchernowitz, Chaim (Rav Tzair), “‫”דוד צבי הופמן‬, Book of Memoirs (‫)מסכת זכרונות‬, ed. Chaim Tchernowitz, New York NY: Jubilee Commitee, 1945, pp. 244–64 (Hebrew). Thompson, R. J., Moses and the Law in a Century of Criticism Since Graf, Leiden: Brill, 1970. Wiese, Christian, “Jahwe – Ein Gott nur für Juden? Der Disput um das Gottesverständnis zwischen Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantischer alttestamentlicher Wissenschaft des Kaiserreichs”, Christlicher Antijudaismus und Antisemitismus. Theologische und kirchliche Programme Deutscher Christen, ed. Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Frankfurt a. M.: Haag und Herchen Verlag, 1994, pp. 27–94. – Challenging Colonial Discourse. Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany, Leiden: Brill, 2005. Wohlgemuth, Josef, “Nachwort des Herausgebers”, Jeschurun, 7 (1921), pp. 505–12. – “David Hoffmann”, Jeschurun, 9/1–2 (1922), pp. 1–19. Yedidya, Asaf, Orthodox Alternatives to “Wissenschaft des Judentums” 1873–1938, PhD diss., Bar-Ilan-University, Ramat Gan, 2007. – “Orthodox Strategies in the Research of the Wissenschaft des Judentums”, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 5/1 (2011), pp. 67–79. Zimmermann, Moshe, “Two Generations in the History of German Antisemitism. The Letters of Theodor Fritsch to Wilhelm Mann”, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 23 (1978), pp. 89–99. – Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Antisemitism, New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Religion, Race, and Politics Gerhard Kittel and the Jewish Question Alon Segev Gerhard Kittel (1888–1948), the great German Protestant theologian, was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the twentieth century, and founder and co-editor of the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament). Regarding this dictionary, Swiss theologian Emil Brunner wrote that it was: ‘The most significant achievement of Protestant theology since the time of the Reformation’.1 In 1933, Kittel published a short book called Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question). The text stemmed from Kittel’s keynote address at the Verein deutscher Studenten (Association of German Students) on its fiftieth anniversary on 1 June 1933. The book sold 9,000 copies in three editions. Kittel dedicated the book to ‘my fraternity brothers (meinen Bundesbrüdern) in the association’. This association had a long tradition of anti-Semitism. Kittel also noted that the association had traditionally opposed Jewish assimilation which, as we shall later see, Kittel regarded as the main threat which Judaism poses to German culture, race, religion, and society (Rasse, Religion, Gesellschaft).2 The second and enhanced edition of the text appeared in 1934. It contains two essays, one of which responds to an open letter, which Martin Buber published in the Jüdische Rundschau concerning Kittel’s book. The title The Jewish Question has an anti-Semitic and racist undertone. Many texts that deal with the Jews and their life in the diaspora bear this title such as, to name the most famous, Karl Marx’ Zur Judenfrage (1843), Bruno Bauer’s Die Judenfrage (1843), Eugen Dühring’s Die Judenfrage als Rasse, Sitten und Kulturfrage (1881), and Theodor Fritsch’s Handbuch der Judenfrage (1935). The authors of these texts see Jewish existence as a problem, a disease that infects all layers of life and a burning issue that calls for serious consideration and resolution. Marx conceives the Jewish question in economic terms. Thus, the key to understanding and resolving this problem is economic. Bauer conceives Judaism as a 1  Gerhard Kittel, Meine Verteidigung. Neue erweiterte Niederschrift, unpublished manuscript, Universitätsarchiv Tübingen, Signatur: 162/31, p. 3. 2  See Anders Gerdmar, Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism. German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann, Leiden: Brill, 2009.

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backward way of life that does not keep pace with the progress brought about by the Enlightenment. The key to resolving this problem should therefore be found in secularization and modernization of the Jews. Dühring conceives the Jewish question in racial terms. Contrastingly, Kittel regards the Jewish question as a problem whose origin lies in the Jewish religion and Heilsgeschichte. Having breached the covenant with God, the Jews are doomed to live dispersed across the earth, possessing no homeland. This doom will be removed only at the end of days through divine intervention (eschatology). Thus, only theology can provide us with the key to understand and deal with the Jewish problem. Kittel expected support for this theory from Jews, and expressed disappointment that Martin Buber, to whom he sent his book, did not join him in these efforts.3 As Kittel himself admits, he conceives the Jewish problem from the perspective of the Christian Heilsgeschichte, or history of salvation.4 In a later text, composed while Kittel was in prison, he claims that he treats the Jewish question from an exclusively Christian perspective.5 He insists that his perspective has nothing to do with Nazi politics against the Jews or with what he refers to as rowdy anti-Semitism (Radauantisemitismus)6 and vulgar anti-Semitism (Vulgärantisemitismus).7 In his view, the Christian Heilsgeschichte (history of salvation) and the Jewish Unheilsgeschichte (history of disaster) are intertwined and inseparable.8 Kittel claims that The Jewish Question was his only publication addressing political concerns. He maintains that the lecture he gave on the Jewish question, later published as a book, had no connection with the NSDAP, its programme and people,9 but was a mere attempt to remove the 3  Gerhard Kittel, “Antwort an Martin Buber”, Gerhard Kittel, Die Judenfrage. Mit zwei Beilagen. Antwort an Martin Buber, Kirche und Judenchristen, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 31934, pp. 87–100. 4 Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 82: ‘Damit ist nun freilich die Erörterung der Judenfrage in die spezifisch christliche Fragestellung einbezogen, die ihren Sinn allein gewinnt aus einem christlichen Verständnis der Geschichte und auch der Geschichte des Judenvolkes. Es versteht sich, dass diese Fragestellung allein dem vom Neuen Testament herkommenden Glauben zugänglich ist.’ (Italics added.). As Max Weinreich noted in 1946: ‘The Jew, he [i. e. Kittel] contended, always had been outside the larger community; thus he should not share in its activities and should be kept in the position of an alien. But in taking this decision “racial or emotional viewpoints” alone should not prevail; “the real and full reply”, he stressed, is given only when one succeeds in building the Jewish question on a religious foundation and in giving the struggle against Jewry a Christian interpretation.’ Max Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 41. 5  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 1. Compare with p. 16 of the same work: ‘Alle Äusserungen Kittels zur Judenfrage sind von ihm bewusst als Theologe und als Glied seiner Kirche getan.’ (underlining in the original.) 6 Meine Verteidigung, p. 9. 7  Meine Verteidigung, p. 8. 8  Meine Verteidigung, p. 6. 9  Meine Verteidigung, p. 27.

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Jewish question from a racist context and return it to its natural and genuine religious context.10 His main claim was that anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism is not a racial or political matter, but rather metaphysical.11 However, it becomes clear that Kittel’s theological attitude toward the Jewish question was not meant to exclude or confine the Nazi racial attitude but rather to provide it with a firm foundation.12 This alliance between religion, race, and politics is by no means clear. In what follows, I will critically evaluate Kittel’s theses on the Jewish question and the relations he finds between religion, race, and politics.

1. Kittel and the Jewish Question On 3 May 1945, the French authorities arrested Gerhard Kittel, professor of New Testament. The reason for the arrest was Kittel’s research and lectures on the Jewish question during the Third Reich.13 Kittel sat in prison for seventeen months. He was not allowed to regain his position at the university and was denied his pension. He passed away on 11 July 1948 at the age of 59. Rudolf Kittel was a famed Old Testament scholar and his son, Gerhard Kittel, followed his path, becoming a respected academic. The younger Kittel’s area of expertise was the Jewish world in the period of early Christianity. His first publications were Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament (Contributions to the Study of the Old Testament), a series of essays edited by his father. At the age of 25, he became a lecturer at the University of Kiel. In 1917, he joined the University of Leipzig, where his father was rector. In 1921, he was named professor of New Testament at Greifswald and then, in 1926, at Tübingen. Kittel is not considered to be among the giants of German theology, like Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich. And yet, he was an established and respected scholar supervising students from Germany and abroad. He was invited to give lectures in Amsterdam, Cambridge, Copenhagen, and the United States. He was editor of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, which named him as a foremost

 Meine Verteidigung, p. 21. Verteidigung, p. 7. 12 See Gerdmar, Roots, p. 467: ‘Kittel chose to write on the “Jewish problem” very early during National Socialism. It appears that he did this, not to mitigate anything in the racial policy, but quite the contrary: this racial law is motivated and legitimised on the basis of “God’s history”. Jews are doomed to be a wandering and homeless people, and so it shall be in the new Germany. At this point, Kittel, without any critical distance, subscribes to the racist ideology of National Socialism.’ 13  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 1. 10

11 Meine

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New Testament scholar. In 1922, he published his annotated translation of Sifre Deuteronomy,14 and edited a substantial series of Rabbinic texts.15 Kittel joined the Nazi party in May 1933 and the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage (Research Section on the Jewish Question) of the Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des Neuen Deutschlands (National Institute for History of New Germany) in 1936. During its second workshop, Julius Streicher lectured on the political character of the Nazi-conducted research on Judaism. As Robert P. Ericksen remarks, beyond his membership at the Research Section, ‘He [Kittel] had no other sins to hide. He was not even among that radical group of German academics who abandoned all semblance of objectivity to push the Nazi Party line’.16 During the Third Reich, a great number of institutes were created to study the Jewish question. The first of them, founded in Goebbels’ area of competence, was called Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage (Institute for Research of the Jewish Question). In 1939, its title was changed to ‘anti-Semitic’ and later ‘anti-Jewish Action’ (antijüdische Aktion). Ericksen does not mention that Kittel composed and published two anti-Semitic essays on Talmudic Judaism and its alleged hatred of all Gentiles in the journal of this institute, initially called Judenfrage (The Jewish Question), and later, Archiv für Judenfragen. Schriften zur geistigen Überwindung des Judentums (Archive for Jewish Questions. Writings on the Spiritual Overcoming of Judaism).17 At the National Socialist Teachers’ Association in 1937, Kittel hailed the Nuremberg Laws: The Jewish problem arises always and everywhere with Judaism; it is thus an essential phenomenon (Erscheinung) of Judaism; only sentimental effeminacy can disregard it today. What the National Socialist Germany has done through the Jewish legislation is not barbarism, but the cold consequence of a sober historical insight, for which the world will have Adolf Hitler to thank.18 14 Gerhard

Kittel, Sifre zu Deuteronomium, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1922. Kittel (ed.), Rabbinische Texte, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933. 16  Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler. Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1985, p. 29. According to Horst Junginger, Anders Gerdmar, and Matthias Morgenstern, Kittel’s antisemitism exceeds by far what he said in The Jewish Question. Horst Junginger, Die Verwissenschaftlichung der “Judenfrage” im Nationalsozialismus, Darmstadt: WBG, 2011; Gerdmar, Roots; Matthias Morgenstern, “Von Adolf Schlatter zum Tübinger Institutum Judaicum. Gab es in Tübingen im 20. Jahrhundert eine Schlatter-Schule? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion”, Das Tübinger Institutum Judaicum. Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte und Vorgeschichte seit Adolf Schlatter, ed. Matthias Morgenstern and Reinhold Rieger, Stuttgart: Contubernium, 2015, pp. 11–147. 17 Horst Junginger, “Reichspogromsnacht – Ein bisher unbekanntes Gutachten des antisemitischen Theologen Gerhard Kittel über Herschel Grynszpan”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 November 2005. 18  Cited in Gerdmar, Roots, p. 442. Compare Kittel, Die Entstehung, p. 63: ‘Es [war] nicht willkürliche Brutalität und Barbarei, sondern echtes, aus historischer Nüchternheit geborenes Handeln, wenn der Führer des Neuen Deutschlands für das deutsche Volk als erstes Volk der Neuzeit das Judenproblem in radikalem Entschluß auf eine völlig neue Grundlage stellte.’ 15 Gerhard

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On 9 November 2005, Horst Junginger published an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the forgotten report that Kittel composed following his interrogation of Herschel Grynszpan.19 Grynszpan was responsible for the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on 7 November 1938. The assassination provided the Nazis with the pretext for starting Kristallnacht, the anti-Semitic pogrom that took place on the night between 9 and 10 November. According to Junginger, Kittel’s report conveys his interpretation of Grynszpan’s assassination as an attack of ‘international global Judaism’ (internationales Weltjudentum) on the Third Reich. Thus, in Kittel’s view, the Kristallnacht-pogroms were legitimate acts of defence. Goebbels wanted to conduct a huge show trial against Grynszpan in order to justify Nazi annihilation of the Jews. Because the body of evidence was poor, Kittel was appointed as expert to shed light on the real motivation behind Grynszpan’s act. According to Junginger, Kittel came to the conclusion that Grynszpan’s Talmudic cast of mind (talmudische Gesinnung) led him to carry out the assassination. That is, his motives were not personal – the defence in the trial talked about homosexual motives – but rather Jewish, notwithstanding the fact that Grynszpan was not religious and could not read the Talmud. According to Kittel, the Jewish mentality, namely the innate hatred of all Gentiles, is far more dangerous among secular Jews.20 Among orthodox Jews, he argues, the relation to God restricts these negative Talmudic drives.21

2. Church and Race Christianity ostensibly remains indifferent to any racial factors. However, during the Third Reich the German Christian Movement – a group of 600,000 members of the Protestant Church in Germany – considered race a decisive factor.22 As he  Junginger, Reichspogromsnacht.  See Junginger, Reichspogromsnacht. See also Morgenstern, Von Adolf Schlatter, p. 64: ‘Es war demnach Grynszpans von seinen Vorvätern ererbte Gesinnung des Hasses auf alles Nichtjüdische, durch die er sich zu seiner Tat habe verführen lassen. Dieses Schriftstück Kittels, das Dokument seiner tiefsten Verstrickung in die Verbrechen der nationalsozialistischen Judenpolitik, zeigt die Folgen seiner zugleich wissenschaftlichen wie politischen Selbstüberschatzung, mit der er über Jahre hinweg geglaubt hatte, in einem wie auch immer gearteten “christlichen” Sinne auf die NS-Machthaber einwirken zu können.’ 21  Kittel, Die Entstehung, pp. 60–1. 22  See Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross. The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich, Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 2: ‘For more than a decade, they [the German Christians] sustained a mass movement of over half a million members with branches in all parts of Germany. Adherents held important positions within Protestant church governments at every level and occupied influential posts in theological faculties and religious training institutes. From those offices, they controlled many of the decisions and much of the revenue of the Protestant church. The movement’s quest to fuse Christianity and National Socialism reflected the desire of many Germans to retain their religious traditions while supporting the Nazi fatherland. Throughout the 1930s and during the war years, German Christian 19 20

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recounts in My Defense, Kittel himself tried for a short time to influence the German Christian Movement, but resigned in 1933.23 As Doris L. Bergen shows, in the eyes of the German Christians, race could bring Germans of all congregations together.24 War, she suggests, represented the ultimate moment of anti-doctrinal, spiritual unity: ‘In the heat of battle, they proclaimed, all Germans, pious or atheist, Catholic or Protestant were as one. That same spirit of unity, German Christians insisted, must permeate the people’s church’.25 Susannah Heschel maintains that, ‘The [German Christian] movement’s goal was to create a unified, national German church transcending Protestant and Catholic divisions that would exemplify the Nazified Christianity it advocated.’26 On 6 May 1939, a group of Protestant theologians, pastors and Church members gathered at Wartburg Castle where Martin Luther resided from May 1521 to March 1522. Following Luther’s excommunication by Pope Leo X, Fredrick the Wise placed him into protective custody in the castle. During that time, he translated the New Testament from ancient Greek into German. Thus, the decision to gather at the castle was loaded with symbolic meaning. The purpose of the gathering was to celebrate the opening of the Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben (Institute for Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on the German Church). Heschel notes that the goal of the Institute was both political and theological.27 Seeking to create a de-Judaized church for a Germany that was in the process of ridding Europe of all Jews, it developed new biblical interpretations and liturgical materials. In the six years of its existence, as the Nazi regime carried out its genocide of the Jews, the Institute redefined Christianity as a Germanic religion whose founder, Jesus, was no Jew but rather had fought valiantly to destroy Judaism, falling as victim to that struggle.28

women and men held rallies, attended church services, and published newspapers, books, and tracts. They sang hymns to Jesus but also to Hitler. They denounced their rivals as disloyal and un-German; they fought for control of local church facilities. Through sermons, speeches, and songs they propagated anti-Jewish Christianity and boosted Nazi racial policy. After the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, instead of being ostracized in their congregations and shut out of ecclesiastical posts, German Christians, lay and clergy, found it relatively easy to reintegrate into Protestant church life.’ 23  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 16. 24  Bergen, Twisted Cross, p. 51. 25  Bergen, Twisted Cross, p. 57. 26  Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 3. 27  In My Defense, Kittel emphasizes his distance from this institute and connection with two bishops of the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), Wurm and Eder. See Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 16. 28  Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, p. 1.

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We can also learn about the importance of race within the Church during the Third Reich from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reaction, published in the Aryan Paragraph: The given order of race is just as little unrecognized as the order of gender, social status, etc. Within the Church, Jew remains a Jew, heathen – a heathen, male – a male, capitalist – a capitalist, etc. etc. Church is not the community of the same kind, but rather of different [kinds] which are called by the Word. […] Race, blood, is one among the orders into which the Church enters, but it should never serve as criterion for belonging to the Church. This can only be the Word of God and belief.29

A debate regarding the race of Jesus Christ began long before the Third Reich. According to Leon Poliakov, Fichte was the first to deal with this question.30 There was also significant debate regarding Christians of Jewish origin and the extent to which their baptism was valid. As demonstrated below, Kittel had a firm opinion on this matter. The question of the extent to which understanding of race depends on religion is different from questions regarding the extent to which religion depends on racial factors. Let me begin with the first question, the extent to which race owes its definition to religion: Our belief that race is scientifically defined is deeprooted. To the Nazis, it was of the utmost importance to demonstrate that race is scientifically and objectively defined to avoid recourse to religion or subjective sentiments. And yet, it seems that without the anti-Jewish predisposition within the Church, ‘scientifically’ based race theory would not win over and attract the masses.31 As Horst Junginger convincingly argues, all Nazi definitions of race ultimately refer back to religion: Regardless how one tackled the structural antinomy involved in the Nazi law of race (Rassenrecht), the criterion of religion remained actually the only starting point in defining race, be it of Jew or of Aryan, obtained in direct or indirect way. Also the proof of Aryan origin could be achieved only through the denomination of the parents and grandparents.32 29 Cited in Oliver Arnold and Hartmut Lenhard, Kirche ohne Juden. Christlicher Antisemitismus 1933–1945, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, pp. 21–2. 30  See Gerdmar, Roots, p. 435. Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth. A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, New York NY: Basic Books, 1946. 31  ‘Already in 1971 the historian Uriel Tal challenged the entrenched view that racist antiSemitism is a new phenomenon that repudiates Christianity by arguing that it was actually utterly dependent on Christian anti-Judaism for its success: “it was not economic crises that brought about this new political, racial and antireligious antisemitism, but completely the reverse, it was precisely the anti-Christian and antireligious ideology of racial antisemitism which hampered the first antisemitic parties in their efforts to utilize the economic crisis for their political development … [because] what still attracted the masses was the classical, traditional Christian anti-Judaism, however adapted it may have become to the new economic conditions.”’ Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, p. 7. 32 Junginger, Die Verwissenschaftlichung, p. 15.

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Thus, the scientific ambition to define race by means of biology, sociology, and genetics is nothing but pretension. According to Junginger, religion is the only decisive factor in determining one’s race: indeed, ‘The proof of Aryan race could be obtained in many cases only by means of the Church registers.’33 As mentioned above, debate over the racial origin of Jesus existed long before the rise of the Nazi Party.34 There was also considerable debate regarding the meaning of baptism in the case of Christians descended from Jews. As mentioned above, it was Kittel’s understanding that only theological treatment of the Jewish question could lay the ground for the Nazi racial attitude against the Jews. It is useful at this point to consider the extent to which Kittel saw religion as dependent on race.

3. Kittel’s Answers to the Jewish Question In The Jewish Question, Kittel professes to provide an answer to the Jewish question or problem. The context in which he studies the question is Christianity. He was thus required to consider whether Nazi ideology and legislation, including the Nuremberg Laws, undermined the most basic principle of Christianity; that is, love. A complicated question emerges especially for the Christian person, because for him it is not a matter of humanity in all this [i. e. Nuremberg Laws], but it is rather the problem of love which is the basic claim of Christianity and of which Paul says that without it everything else does not count.35

Kittel goes on to claim that, in its worldview, the Nazi party represents positive Christianity, and that German men always commit themselves to this worldview. Therefore, the right attitude to the Jewish question can only be theological.36 He tells us that the only way to cope with the Jewish question, and not by means of sentimentality and catchwords, is through a correct understanding of religion.37

 Junginger, Die Verwissenschaftlichung, p. 13.  See Kittel on this topic: ‘Certain racial questions have recently been applied to the relationship of “Jesus and Judaism”. It really is not worth the effort of wasting very many words on this. The fundamental, very serious problem of “right and wrong of the racial conflicts” does not need to be touched upon at all. But when it comes to whether Jesus himself was an Aryan or a Jew by descent and race, one must certainly establish as a simple historical fact, which cannot be explained away, that it is conceivable that Jesus, if he was a Galilean, had a couple of drops of non-Jewish blood in his veins – I wonder: it is conceivable, not wholly impossible; but it is absolutely certain that he in any case had very many drops of genuine Semitic blood in him.’ Cited in Gerdmar, Roots, pp. 435–6. 35  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 8. 36 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 8–9. 37  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 9. 33 34

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Thus, for Kittel, there is an essential link between religion and race, and theology is the only means to expose this link. According to Kittel, there are two fundamental historical events that we should study in order to understand the emergence of the Jewish question. The first event is the destruction of Jerusalem, first, by the Babylonians in the sixth century BC, and then, by the Romans in the first century AD. Since then, the Jews have been living all over the earth in the diaspora, without a homeland. The diaspora is not merely an option available to the Jews, but the only conceivable mode of existence. And, this is not the case because there is no Jewish state. Rather, the reverse is true. There is no Jewish state because diaspora is the essence of Judaism; its fate:38 ‘Judaism is the unity of people or race [Volk] and religion that is independent of any fixed domiciles.’39 The Jews live as aliens (Fremdling) among other peoples. This alienism consists of two distinct components: religion and race.40 In other words, Judaism is equally religion and race (Volk). It exists as an isolated religion among other religions and an isolated race among other races.41 In 1944, Kittel collaborated with biologists and anthropologists working on the concept of ‘Jewish race.’ As he later claimed, he did it only out of the conviction that ‘Judaism’ refers to the bond of race and religion. Again, he looked at the question concerning the Jewish race from a theological perspective.42 The second fundamental phase in Jewish history is emancipation, beginning with the Enlightenment, French Revolution, and the assimilation of the Jews.43 The religious context is clear. On the one hand, there is the Jewish diaspora, the outcome of the breach of the covenant between God and His chosen people. The Jews live as an isolated people dispersed all over the earth. On the other hand, we see the Jews trying to escape this divine curse by means of emancipation and assimilation. On this basis, Kittel enumerates four possible solutions to the Jewish problem: annihilation; a Jewish state in Palestine; assimilation; the status of aliens among the nations. Only the fourth solution, that is Jews living as guests or foreigners among the nations, is in accord with the fate of the Jews as derived from Heilsgeschichte. 38 According to Kittel, diaspora, Talmud and the concept of God’s people, being superior to all other peoples, are the three components that make up Judaism. See Gerhard Kittel, “Die Entstehung des Judentums und die Entstehung der Judenfrage”, Forschungen zur Judenfrage, ed. Eugen Fischer, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1937, vol. 1, pp. 43, 56, 60. Under ‘Talmud’ or ‘Talmudic state of mind’ Kittel understands the ‘casuistic’ way of thinking (kasuistisches Denken). See pp. 53–5. 39  Kittel, Die Entstehung, p. 48. Compare p. 50: ‘Dieses Judentum ist seinem Wesen nach nicht nur ohne Heimat, in der Fremde lebend, sondern auch in einer nur noch lockeren Verwurzelung mit dem Boden, auf auf dem es jeweils lebt’. 40 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 10–11. 41  Kittel, Die Entstehung, p. 48. 42  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 39. 43  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 12.

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Kittel argues that history has shown that the annihilation of all Jews is impossible.44 He suggests that foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine will only lead to atrocities and injustice against the indigenous Arab population. A Jewish state would be an artificial product that does not stem naturally from the Jewish spirit, since Jews, by definition, can only lead a diasporic life. The Jewish state would instead be the enterprise of foreign nations and an outcome of foreign political interests. It would never overcome its financial problems, and would become home to only a small percentage of the Jewish people. Furthermore, there is no agreement among the Jews over the establishment of a Jewish state:45 Zionism is opposed by both assimilated Jews, who want to live as Gentiles among the Gentiles, and orthodox Jews, who believe exclusively in a solution to be achieved at the end of days. He reiterates that the Jewish problem stems from the breach of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. Thus, the solution to the diaspora cannot be artificially imposed through foundation of a Jewish state. Rather, it must be achieved through divine intervention. He writes: […] also the [Jewish orthodoxy] hopes for the day on which its [i. e. the Jewish] people will be once resettled in Zion. But this day is eschatology; it is the day that God Himself will bring about at the end of days.46

This hope makes up the essence of Judaism. In the eyes of the orthodox Jew, the foundation of the Jewish state represents the destruction of this hope and of the belief in God. Thus two solutions remain; disavowal or avowal of the Jewish lot; that is, assimilation or alienism.47 Assimilation began with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution when Jews could leave the Ghetto. Conversion of Jews to Christianity has almost always been done out of a desire to improve living conditions, rather than the result of genuine belief.48 As we have seen, Judaism, in Kittel’s view, is equally religion and race. Disavowing its lot by assimilation and conversion leads to mixed marriages (Mischehe) and for that reason, ‘since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the unfolding Jewish question revolved around the still continuing process of mixed blood and race.’49 Kittel claims that the solution to the Jewish question should lie in the return of the Jews to their religion, and the acceptance of their lot. Kittel’s problem is not with the Jewish religion or with Jewish orthodoxy. Instead, he is concerned with assimilated Jews: those who turned their backs on their Jewish origin and religion; on race and belief. Herein lies the great peril to the German race (Volk). This is also the source of anti-Semitism. The more the Jews adhere to their 44 Kittel,

Die Judenfrage, p. 14. Die Judenfrage, pp. 14–6. 46 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 17. 47  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 19. 48  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 20–1. 49  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 23. 45 Kittel,

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religion, the less they provide reasons for active anti-Semitism.50 In Kittel’s eyes, the Jews are the embodiment of decadence, both moral and racial. The Jewish question is therefore a question of decadence (Dekadenzfrage).51 Kittel maintains that this decadence is the source of internationalism, materialism, cosmopolitanism, and humanism;52 that is, of everything that damages the superiority of the race. Thus, the cure can only come out of the race (Volk): But now, a new vital movement has erupted amongst us whose ideal is neither cosmopolitanism nor general culture (Menschheitskultur), but rather culture, which is bonded with and rooted in race (volksverbundene und volksverwurzelte Kultur).53

How then does Kittel reach this conclusion, arriving from religion to race? What does he find in the Bible to support his thesis? It seems that, in some places in the Old Testament, race and religion are inseparable. For example, in Genesis 15:18 it is said: On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants [‫לְ זַ ְר ֲע ָך‬ = to your seed] I give this land …’

Likewise, in Exodus 33, 1: Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’

The great danger to the Aryan race (Volk) lies in an assimilated Jewry. Kittel believes that, on this matter, he is in full accord with orthodox Jews.54 The Jewish prophets themselves discerned the greatest danger in assimilation and forbade it. ‘According to one of the basic laws, which the prophets in the Old Testament never grew tired of proclaiming, interbreeding with other peoples is the worst sin of Israel.’55 Thus, Volk, or, race is inherently bound with religion and the people’s lot as determined by God. Kittel writes: Genuine Judaism always knew and knows also today that mixture of people (Volksvermischung) and mixture of race (Rassenvermischung) means to lose one’s self, decadence. Assimilation is sin and violation of the will, which is introduced by God into people and peoples.56 50 Kittel,

Die Judenfrage, p. 21.  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 25. 52  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 27–8. 53  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 30. 54  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 38. 55 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 38. 56 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 61: ‘Nur wenn die Andersartigkeit von beiden Seiten ebenso rückhaltlos wie ehrlich anerkannt wird, kann die furchtbare Theorie von der Minderwertigkeit der einen Rasse überwunden werden. Nur dann kann wieder ins Licht treten, die ewige und unwandelbare Wirklichkeit, daß jeder Rasse und jedem Volke seine Art, seine Gabe und seine Aufgabe, von dem Schöpfer gegeben ist.’ 51

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4. Assimilation, the Jewish Lot, and the Status of Alien As we have seen, the only conceivable solution to the Jewish question is, in Kittel’s view, bestowal of the status of guest or alien (Gast, Fremdling) on the Jew. This status is understood as a punishment delivered by God to the Jews for their ‘disobedience’ (Ungehorsam).57 It is a divine decree and should be respected. Kittel affirms that, ‘For genuine Judaism, this state of suffering is delivered to it by God and thus it should be approved and admitted.’58 Hence, the only solution to the Jewish problem is ‘determined and pious approval of life in a state of “dispersion” (Zerstreuung) and “alienism” (Fremdlingschaft).’59 In their status of guest, the Jew should be protected as in the Ghetto. Kittel recommends the status of guest for the Jew in accordance with the programme for the Jews suggested by Karl Friedrich Heman, a Jew who converted to Christianity, in his 1881 work, History of the Jewish People since the Destruction of Jerusalem”.60 According to Kittel, the status of guest should guarantee that the Jew could safely observe his tradition and rites.61 This status of guest should be the only status allowed to the Jews, and assimilated and secular Jews must return to their religion.62 Indeed, Kittel calls for enforced return to religion: ‘One should rather forbid the Jew to go to school or to open his business on Shabbat, again: in order to force him to be a Jew.’63 In My Defense, Kittel argues that the more the Jews adhere to their religion, the less motive they provide for active antiSemitism.64 In his response to Martin Buber, Kittel cites an orthodox Jew who says to one of his people: ‘You will carry on in this way until God will again force us Jews, by means of Adolf Hitler, to be what we should be’.65 He insists: Anti-Semitic polemic against and mocking of the orthodox Jew (whose life is rooted in the tradition of his ancestors), even if he bears the most typical (drastischst) Jewish surname, should radically stop. Contemptuous is only that Jew who is ashamed of his old surname and changes it from Abrahamson to Otto Brahm, from Goldmann to Max Reinhardt, from Schlesinger to Bruno Walter, from Cohn to Max Conrat or from Cohen to Georg Brandeis. Contemptuous I call that assimilated Jew who disguises and denies his Judaism and the lore (Überlieferungen) of history, religion and ethics of his people.66  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 40.  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 40. 59 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 40. 60  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, pp. 22–3. Karl Friedrich Heman, Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes seit der Zerstörung Jerusalems, Stuttgart: Verlag der Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1908. 61 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 42–3. 62  ‘Deshalb: wenn ich dem Assimilationsjuden sage: Werde wieder Jude!, so kann das nur heißen: Werde wieder frommer Jude; bekehre dich zu dem Gott deiner Väter, höre den Bußruf der alten Propheten deines Volkes.’ Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 70–1. 63 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 44. 64  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 21. 65  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 98. 66  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 44. 57 58

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According to Kittel, the main problem is not the existence of the Jewish religion, but rather, its nonexistence due to the assimilation of a great number of Jews.67 We shall now see how, in Kittel’s eyes, Christianity offers a basis for the Nuremberg Laws. The status of guest is derived from the Heilsgeschichte and the Jews should therefore obey and accept their fate as specified in the Nuremberg Laws. He should not interpret the Nuremberg Laws as an act of violence. Instead, he should ‘rather say for his own sake that, although this [legislation] is harsh, it is yet right and befitting both sides.’68 Kittel claims that the harsh measures carried out by the Nazis against the Jews would have been avoided if people had not failed to see this religious truth years ago.69 Their status as foreigner was already specified in Deuteronomy 24:14. That is, it was not a creation of German legislation, but rather of the Mosaic legislation; ‘Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates’. Kittel perceives support for his theory in the course of history. The Jews have been living for two millennia as foreigners, for this is God’s will. Thus, returning to Judaism means to accept history as stemming from the will of God: ‘Coming back to God means for the Jew to obediently say yes to this course of history; to obediently take up the suffering stemming from dispersion, the suffering stemming from Israel’s Galuth’.70 Both assimilation and Zionism imply a Judaism that disobediently rebels against God.71 In My Defense, Kittel identifies disobedience with the process of secularization that began in 1800.72 Genuine Judaism remains foreign, homeless, dispersed all over the earth, waiting for the end of days.73 Kittel expects understanding and assistance from the Jews in solving the Jewish question.74 In any event, according to his eschatological view, the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question, of the Galuth, will be achieved only in the end of days, in the eschatological revelation of God to Zion.75 Kittel is confident that their hope for this day will give the Jews the endurance to obediently bear their lot.76

 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 71.  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 45. 69 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 59. 70  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 73. 71 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 73. 72 Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 22. 73 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 73–4. 74  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 75. 75  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 76. 76  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 76. 67 68

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5. Christian Jew and Baptism If religion and race are bound together, how should we conceive Jews who converted to Christianity through baptism? Kittel maintains that ‘baptizing a Jew does not touch his Jewish existence (Judesein), to be a Christian does not mean to be a German. The converted Jew will not become German, but rather a Christian-Jew (Judenchrist)’.77At this point, Kittel seems to enter into a position hard to defend. Even if ethnicity cannot be disregarded, why should there be a hierarchy within the Church between people of different ethnic backgrounds? Why should these differences matter? In his worldview, the solution can be reached only in the end of days. He articulates his reasoning from an eschatological perspective. Thus, in this Christian worldview, there are people destined to be Jewish; this is the role they are meant to play in the Heilsgeschichte. They cannot evade their destiny to play this role by means of conversion and assimilation. Kittel complains about assimilation and the false conversion of Jews is undertaken only in order to improve living conditions. He goes further and claims that it is a ‘sheer improbable exception whenever a Jew becomes Christian out of genuine serious convictions’.78 As mentioned above, Kittel’s perspective on the Jewish question is the Christian Heilsgeschichte. As he himself admits, ‘it is selfevident that this raising of the [Jewish] question is intelligible only in relation to the belief that stems from the New Testament.’79 And yet, Kittel’s main concern is not false conversion and misuse of baptism to obtain better living conditions as Christians. Instead, his concern is the flow of non-Aryan blood into the Aryan pool through the process of baptism.80 He contends that all these questions regarding baptized Jews will seem far simpler once we eliminate the ‘disastrous connection between baptism and assimilation.’81 He admits that the Christian Jew is a ‘Christian-brother’ (christlicher Bruder) but will never qualify as a ‘German-brother’ (deutscher Bruder).82 He goes on to state that, in general, a converted Jew or Christian-Jew will never be allowed to become a ‘pastor [verordneter Pfarrer] or head of parish [Gemeindeältester] in a German parish’.83 Likewise,

 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 78. Die Judenfrage, p. 77. 79  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 82. 80  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 78. 81 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 81. 82 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 80. 83 Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 79. In one of the two short texts appended to the 1934 edition of the ‘Jewish Question’, Church and Christian-Jews’ (Kirche und Judenchristen) Kittel seems to qualify his claim: ‘Wherever one starts to distinguish between Christians of first and second class, the Church ceases to exist.’ Gerhard Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 101–13, p. 102. And yet, he did not change his mind regarding the Christian-Jews and their place in the German society. See p. 104. 77

78 Kittel,

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Kittel complains about the great number of Jews in the print media and of Jewish physicians and lawyers.84 In a short text appended to the 1934 edition of Die Judenfrage titled Kirche und Judenchristen (Church and Jewish-Christians) Kittel states that Christian-Jews have a special role to play in the Heilsgeschichte. Their role is to be a concrete reminder to the world that God rejected His people because of their disbelief. Kittel refers here to Romans 11: Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

The question is why Kittel thinks that it is the Christian-Jews who should serve as concrete reminder for this matter. And, why should there be a concrete reminder when this is already an essential component in Christianity? As Kittel writes: Christians should and could never forget that the [Jewish] people [Volk] was once ‘God’s people’; never forget that the one who is the saviour of the world as well as saviour of the German people stemmed from that people.85

6. The Debate with Buber over the Jewish Question As stated above, Kittel expected assistance from orthodox and religious Jews in solving the Jewish question. In his eyes, they should admit that their suffering and Galuth is the outcome of their disbelief and disobedience to God and accept the status of guest and foreigner (Gast, Fremdling), which Kittel suggests as the solution to the Jewish question. Kittel hoped that Martin Buber would understand his intention and be willing to work together to solve the Jewish question.86 After Kittel sent Buber a copy of The Jewish Question, Buber published his response as an open letter in the December 1933 edition of Theologische Blätter. The open letter appeared once more in the Jüdische Rundschau on 9 September 1933. In the archive of the National Library in Jerusalem there is a personal letter sent from Buber to Kittel on 13 June 1933. In his personal letter, Buber claims that discrimination against the Jews is by no means derived from the theological interpretation of the status of guest that Kittel assigns them. Buber contends that Kittel cites only those passages from the Old Testament that serve his theory on the guest status of the foreign Jews. Buber asks why Kittel does not cite Leviticus  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, pp. 46–7 and 51–2.  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 82. 86  Kittel, Die Judenfrage, p. 74. 84 85

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24:22, where it is stated: ‘You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God’. Moreover, why he does not cite Numbers 15:15–16, which states: One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance forever in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.87

Kittel’s response to this claim is interesting. He suggests that laws applying equally to the foreigner and native-born are implemented only in particular cases and cannot be applied generally to all cases.88 He asks, ‘Where is it said, for example, that a ‘foreigner’ in Israel has the ‘right’ to become a priest?’89 Buber replies that he would debate with Kittel in public but is aware that what he has to say would not resonate with Kittel’s audience and readership: ‘You are talking in a space [Raum] which is closed to my reply’. Disappointed by Buber’s response, Kittel responds that, ‘conversation with someone who conceives the thesis about the otherness (Andersartigkeit) [of the Jews] as defamation is for me naturally pointless.’90 As we have seen, the Jews, according to Kittel, should be obedient to God and thus accept the status of guest. In his open letter, Buber attempts to show that Kittel does not understand the true meaning of obedience to God. Buber returns to Leviticus 24:22, where it is stated that the same law should be for the foreigner and the native-born. Only when we assume that law is equally applied to the foreigner and the native-born, does it become meaningful to talk about foreignness (Fremdlingschaft) and obedience among foreigners. Buber implies that the obedience that Kittel has in mind is obedience of one people to another people, and not obedience to God. God does not demand from us obedience in the way that you [i. e. Kittel], but not God, understand it. We are not supposed to rebel against it, but we are also not supposed to submit ourselves to the will of the [other] people (Volkswille) as if it were the will of God.91

Buber is vague in formulating his argument, perhaps due to fear of attracting the attention of Nazi authorities. Nevertheless, his point seems to be very clear. He asks Kittel not to mix metaphysics with politics; that is, conflate the Jewish 87  Martin Buber, Letter to Gerhard Kittel, June 3, 1933. The Archive of the National Library in Jerusalem, archive number 367 I. 1 88  Kittel, Antwort an Martin Buber, pp. 94–5. 89  Kittel, Antwort an Martin Buber, p. 96. 90 Kittel, Antwort an Martin Buber, p. 90. Later Kittel claims that the thesis about the otherness of the Jews, from which his status as foreign and guest is derived, has nothing to do with defamation. (pp. 92–3). 91 Martin Buber, “Offener Brief an Kittel”, Jüdische Rundschau, no. 72, 9 September 9, 1933, p. 498.

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fate and the will of God with the current political persecution of the Jews by the Germans. Buber maintains that story in which the Jews are predestined to be homeless is Christian mythology regarding the eternal wandering Jew. Judaism itself does not acknowledge this story. On the contrary, he claims, ‘true Judaism is always prepared for the next moment in which the promise will be fulfilled, and its wandering will end.’ For Buber, the Jewish status as foreigner and dispersion of Jews all over the earth is the question posed by God to the peoples of the world and specifically to Israel over the course of history. At the same time, it implies the absence of the answer to this question. But ultimately this does not mean that he insists that the Jews should ‘fall back on the absence of answer’ to this question.92 Though his language is vague, Buber’s point seems clear: the Jewish question stems from the metaphysical realm but this does not mean the Jews should remain apathetic to their fate or abstain from seeking the solution to their situation. Buber agrees with Kittel over the metaphysical source of the Jewish question. It also seems that Buber would be willing to turn to politics for a solution. He rejects, however, the political solution that Kittel has in mind, embodied in the politics of Adolf Hitler.93

7. My Defense At the end of the war, Kittel was arrested, jailed for seventeen months, forbidden to return to the university, and denied his pension. The motive for the persecution was his writing, research and lectures on the Jewish question during the war. In My Defense, a dense text composed in prison, he takes great pains to show that his anti-Semitism is of a religious and not racist nature. He argues that it is founded in the New Testament and has nothing to do with the rowdy and vulgar varieties of anti-Semitism. In order to demonstrate this, he recounts episodes in which he declined offers from the Nazi party. He explains that he declined illustrious positions such as a rectorship at the University of Tübingen and a professorship in the philosophy department. He also tells us about several cases in which he helped Jewish people and colleagues, risking his life by doing  Martin Buber, Offener Brief an Kittel.  Gershom Scholem, who by that time was already in Jerusalem, wrote Buber about the nuisance (Ekel) and indignation (Empörung) which he felt as he read Kittel’s book The Jewish Question. ‘It appears to me’, Scholem writes concerning Kittel’s text, ‘to be definitely the most disgraceful document among all those disgraceful documents by obsequious professorships that keep surprising us again and again. What mendacity, what cynical play with God and religion. And he was one of those gentlemen who have been highly praised on our side.’ Cited in Junginger, Die Verwissenschaftlichung, p. 178. See also “Deutschtum und Judentum vereinbar? Der ‘Fall Kittel’”, Karl-Josef Kuschel, Martin Buber. Seine Herausforderung an das Christentum, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2015. 92 93

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so.94 In his eyes, he is a hero who fearlessly opposed to Nazi politics. He writes: ‘I believe that I can and am allowed to compare my error with the deeds and error of the serious and brave German soldiers’.95 His error consists in his trust in Hitler and in his politics. He stresses time and again that his motivation to justify the discrimination and persecution of the Jews was, above all, to combat the rowdy and vulgar anti-Semitism of National Socialism.96 He says that before accepting the sober reality, he exalted Hitler and Nazism because he saw it as an ethnic (völkisch) renewal movement (Erneuerungsbewegung) on a Christian basis, without having any idea of where the Nazi movement would lead.97 He had complete confidence in Hitler’s integrity (Lauterkeit).98 He proclaims that his mistaken assessment of Hitler and his politics was the bitterest mistake of his life and an error of judgment and guilt that he shares with the entire German people.99 He claims that his decision to join and remain a member of the Nazi party was rooted in a desire to prevent radicals and fanatics from leading and becoming dominant in the party.100 He hoped to be a ‘thorn in the party flesh’, as he puts it.101 In contrast with Nazi anti-Semitism, Kittel’s anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism, is of a religious nature and he continues to conceive of his metaphysical antiSemitism as true and valid even after the end of the war. He states: Kittel is a representative of Christian anti-Judaism. The very fundamental question that arises in this respect is whether it is regarded as a crime in the Christian civilized world, a crime that must be prevented with violent measures, when one advocates the approach toward the Jewish question that is derived from and standardized by the instructions of Jesus and his apostles? Whomsoever declares this attitude of Kittel [toward the Jewish question] reprehensible, will necessarily have to firstly denounce and dismiss as bewilderment the attitude of Jesus, of Paul and John, of the Church fathers and the early Christian convocation, and, secondly, of Martin Luther and Goethe.102

The main problem is that metaphysics is intimately bound up with politics in Kittel’s worldview. In other words, the metaphysical realm in which the Jew is destined to be a guest and a homeless foreigner among the peoples of the world must be translated into reality through a decisive political act, according to Kittel.

 94  See the case of Maria Tugendhat, a Jewish theology student whose cousin was arrested and Kittel helped her. Kittel also intervened in order to prevent the interruption of Martin Buber’s teaching at the University of Frankfurt. Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 64.  95 Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 75.  96  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 75.  97 Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 11.  98 Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 28, see also p. 67.  99 Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 75. 100  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 13. 101  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, see also p. 67. 102  Kittel, Meine Verteidigung, p. 74.

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At the beginning of the Nazi regime, Kittel thought that Hitler was the right person to turn this metaphysics into reality. He writes: It was not arbitrary brutality and barbarity when the Führer of the new Germany put the Jewish problem on a completely new foundation in a radical resolution for the German people as the first people of the present day, but it was honest political action, born out of historical sobriety.103

Kittel also seriously considered the annihilation of all Jews as a possible solution to the Jewish question. Later, as he claims in My Defense, he was disappointed by Hitler and rejected him. Yet he did not abandon his worldview in which the metaphysical view of the Jew as guest and foreigner demands realization by political means. As we have seen, this is the reason why Kittel supported the Nuremberg Laws. Thus, his claim that his attitude toward the Jews is harmless because it is rooted in the New Testament is an unconvincing apologetic excuse. This metaphysical attitude always demands worldly realization by means of politics. Thus, we might ask why he thought that Nazi policies represented a more appropriate means for addressing the metaphysical Jewish question than alternative solutions proposed by other politicians and political movements. As we saw, Buber also defines the source of the Jewish question and the fate of the Jews in metaphysical terms. However, he implicitly points to a different political approach to the Jewish question.

Bibliography Arnold, Oliver and Hartmut Lenhard, Kirche ohne Juden. Christlicher Antisemitismus 1933–1945, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Bergen, Doris L., Twisted Cross. The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich, Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Buber, Martin, “Letter to Gerhard Kittel”, June 3, 1933. The Archive of the National Library in Jerusalem, archive number 367 I. 1. – “Offener Brief an Kittel”, Jüdische Rundschau, no. 72, 9 September 1933, p. 498. Ericksen, Robert P., Theologians under Hitler. Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Gerdmar, Anders, Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism. German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann, Leiden: Brill, 2009. Heman, Karl Friedrich, Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes seit der Zerstörung Jerusalems, Stuttgart: Verlag der Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1908. Heschel, Susannah, The Aryan Jesus. Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Junginger, Horst, “Reichspogromsnacht  – Ein bisher unbekanntes Gutachten des antisemitischen Theologen Gerhard Kittel über Herschel Grynszpan”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 November 2005.  Kittel, Die Entstehung, p. 63. Cited in Gerdmar, Roots, p. 442.

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– Die Verwissenschaftlichung der “Judenfrage” im Nationalsozialismus, Darmstadt: WBG, 2011. Kittel, Gerhard, Sifre zu Deuteronomium, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1922. – (ed.), Rabbinische Texte, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933. – “Antwort an Martin Buber”, in Gerhard Kittel, Die Judenfrage. Mit zwei Beilagen: Antwort an Martin Buber, Kirche und Judenchristen, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 31934, pp. 87–100. – Die Judenfrage, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 31934. – “Die Entstehung des Judentums und die Entstehung der Judenfrage”, Forschungen zur Judenfrage, ed. Eugen Fischer, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1937, vol. 11, pp. 43–63. – Meine Verteidigung. Neue erweiterte Niederschrift, unpublished manuscript, Universitätsarchiv Tübingen, 1946. Kuschel, Karl-Josef, Martin Buber. Seine Herausforderung an das Christentum, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2015. Morgenstern, Matthias, “Von Adolf Schlatter zum Tübinger Institutum Judaicum. Gab es in Tübingen im 20. Jahrhundert eine Schlatter-Schule? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion”, Das Tübinger Institutum Judaicum. Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte und Vorgeschichte seit Adolf Schlatter, ed. Matthias Morgenstern and Reinhold Rieger, Stuttgart: Contubernium, 2015, pp. 11–147. Poliakov, Leon, The Aryan Myth. A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, New York NY: Basic Books, 1946. Weinreich, Max, Hitler’s Professors. The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Das Konzil und der christliche Blick auf den Islam Gemeinsame Impulse des Basler Konzils und des II. Vaticanums Ulli Roth Vielleicht mag es auf den ersten Blick befremdlich sein, zwei gut ein halbes Jahrtausend auseinanderliegende Konzilien wie das Konzil von Basel (1431–1437) und das II. Vaticanum (1962–1965) zu einem Thema zusammenzubringen, das beim ersten nicht explizit und beim zweiten nicht vorrangig behandelt wurde. Doch geht man einmal das Wagnis ein, Verbindungslinien in dieser ungewöhnlichen Konstellation zu suchen, erhält man aufschlussreiche Gesichtspunkte, die auch für die zukünftige Arbeit beim Gespräch dieser beiden Religionen von Bedeutung sein können. An vier Punkten soll der Versuch unternommen werden, Verbindungen aufzuweisen, nämlich erstens hinsichtlich des Selbstverständnisses des Konzils und der entsprechenden Rolle, die dem Heiligen Geist zugedacht wird, zweitens mit Blick auf die jeweiligen Entstehungsanlässe und die Eigendynamik des Konzilsgeschehens, dann drittens hinsichtlich der Vorbilder für die Haltung gegenüber dem Islam und viertens in den aus dem Konzilsgedanken erwachsenen konkreten Ideen zur Auseinandersetzung mit den Muslimen. Zunächst sollen aber kurz einige allgemeine Punkte erinnert werden, aus denen sich ersehen lässt, warum man gerade diese beiden Konzilien zusammenbringen kann. Als Partnerkonzil zum II. Vaticanum fällt einem natürlich der Namensvorgänger ein, das I. Vaticanum (1869–1870), das 1870 vorzeitig beendet worden war und als dessen Abschluss manche Kräfte das II. Vaticanum inszenieren wollten. Doch statt eines ultramontanen papalistischen Triumphzuges entwickelte sich das II. Vaticanum für viele unerwartet zu einer völligen Neupositionierung der Kirche angesichts der Herausforderungen des 20. Jahrhunderts und der Welt der Moderne.1 Hierzu gehörte nicht nur eine Erneuerung der Liturgie und eine 1 S. Giuseppe Alberigo (Hrsg.), Geschichte des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (1959–1965), Mainz: Grünewald, 1997–2008; Peter Hünermann und Bernd J. Hilberath (Hrsg.), Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, 5 Bde., Freiburg: Herder, 2004–6; die deutschen Zitate der Konzilsdokumente, die im Text nachgewiesen werden, erfolgen nach der sehr wörtlichen Übersetzung in Peter Hünermann und Bernd J. Hilberath, Herders Theologischer Kommentar, Bd. 1: Die Dokumente des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils. Konstitutionen,

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Besinnung über die sozialen Kommunikationsmittel wie in den beiden ersten Verlautbarungen von 1963. Als etwas ganz Eigenständiges und geradezu vorausschauend mit Blick auf die kommenden Jahrzehnte entwickelte sich auch die Thematik der anderen Religionen, die erst in der letzten Sitzungsperiode zu einer Klärung gebracht werden konnte. Bekanntlich hat sich die katholische Kirche mit dem II. Vaticanum überhaupt erst für diese Thematik geöffnet. Die bisherigen Konzilien waren wenig oder nicht direkt darauf eingegangen. So beginnt zum Beispiel auch die Sammlung der sogenannten offiziellen Dokumente der katholischen Kirche zum Dialog mit dem Islam erst mit der Zeit des II. Vaticanums.2 Die Kirche hat auf diesem Konzil nicht nur das Fenster zur Welt der Moderne, sondern auch zur Welt der Religionen geöffnet. Auf ihm wurde mit der Konzilserklärung Nostra Aetate vom 28. 10. ​1965 zum ersten Mal im eigentlichen Sinne eine Verlautbarung der katholischen Kirche zu ihrer Haltung gegenüber den anderen Religionen veröffentlicht, die sich als eine späte, aber sehr reife und folgenschwere Frucht der Konzilsdiskussionen erwiesen hat.3 Sie ist deutlich an das Selbstverständnis der Kirche zurückgebunden. Denn schon in der wegweisenden dogmatischen Konstitution Lumen gentium vom 21. 11. ​1964 über die Kirche werden die anderen Religionen und Glaubensüberzeugungen thematisiert (Lumen gentium 16). Diese Dokumente der katholischen Kirche gehen zusammen mit der Erklärung über die Religionsfreiheit Dignitatis humanae, dem letzten Dokument des Konzils, in ihrer inhaltlichen Tiefe und Bedeutung weit über jene pragmatischen Hinweise zum Verhalten gegenüber Andersgläubigen hinaus, die man etwa in mittelalterlichen Bullen findet. Während der Kreuzfahrerzeit oder der Zeit der Belagerung Konstantinopels im 15. Jahrhundert ging es offensichtlich mehr um innerweltliche Regeln für den Handel mit Muslimen, Waffen‑ oder Proviantlieferungen und ähnliches und weniger um eine theologische Grundlegung oder gar Neubesinnung.4

Dekrete, Erklärungen; hilfreich ist die etwas freiere Übersetzung in Karl Rahner und Herbert Vorgrimler (Hrsg.), Kleines Konzilskompendium, Freiburg: Herder, 1966 u. ö. 2  S. Timo Güzelmansur, Die offiziellen Dokumente der katholischen Kirche zum Dialog mit dem Islam, Regensburg: Pustet, 2009; vgl. die Untersuchung von Andreas Renz, Die katholische Kirche und der interreligiöse Dialog, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014. 3  S. grundlegend zur Deutung von Nostra Aetate den Kommentar von Roman A. Siebenrock, „Theologischer Kommentar zur Erklärung über die Haltung der Kirche zu den nichtchristlichen Religionen Nostra aetate“, Peter Hünermann und Bernd J. Hilberath; Herders Theologischer Kommentar, Bd. 3, S. 591–693. 4 S. u. a. III. Laterankonzil von 1179 c. 24 und 26 in Josef Wohlmuth (Hrsg.), Dekrete der Ökumenischen Konzilien. Conciliorum Oecomenicorum Decreta, Bd. 2: Konzilien des Mittelalters: Vom ersten Laterankonzil (1123) bis zum fünften Laterankonzil (1512–1517), Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000 (ab jetzt COD 2), S. 223–4, zu Waffenlieferungen, Piraterie und Umgang mit Andersgläubigen; ebenso die Sammlung von Rechtstexten z. B. Clemens’ III.: De Iudaeis (Liber Extra, lib. 5, titulus 6, cap. 1–19), hrsg. v. Emil Friedberg, 2 Bde., Leipzig: Tauchnitz, ²1879, Bd. 2, col. 771–8).

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Auch beim Basler Konzil handelt es sich um ein Ringen um das Selbstverständnis der Kirche, das unter den Nachwirkungen des langjährigen Großen Schismas und seiner Beilegung auf dem Konzil von Konstanz (1414–1418) von einer ganz eigenen, unerwarteten Dynamik ergriffen wurde.5 Das Konzil tagte anfangs von 1431 bis 1437 in Basel. Doch sehr bald verstrickte es sich immer mehr in den Streit mit Papst Eugen IV. über die Frage nach der Oberhoheit in der Kirche. Der Superioritätsstreit führte schließlich zur Spaltung der Kirchenversammlung und der Konstitution eines Gegenkonzils durch den Papst. Das Restkonzil von Basel tagte bis 1449, zunächst noch in Basel und schließlich in Lausanne. Das von Papst Eugen IV. verlegte Konzil war zunächst in Ferrara und schließlich von 1439 bis 1442 in Florenz, die letzte Sitzung fand am 7. 8. ​1445 in Rom statt. Das Basler Restkonzil stellte einen eigenen Gegenpapst, Felix V. Amadeus von Savoyen, auf. Am Ende löste es sich schließlich selbst auf, indem es 1449 den 1447 in Rom gewählten Papst Nikolaus V. ebenfalls zum Papst wählte, während der eigene Gegenpapst Felix V. abdankte. Schon diese ungewöhnliche und doch diplomatische Lösung, die eigene Niederlage zu verarbeiten, ohne zugleich eine Kirchenspaltung zu provozieren, wirft ein bezeichnendes Licht auf den Geist, der in der Basler Konzilsversammlung wirkte. Diese Kurzfassung der Konzilsgeschichte zeigt ein scheinbar verwirrendes Bild von den Entwicklungen, die sich über fast zwei Jahrzehnte von 1431– 1449 abspielten, wobei noch die Jahre der Vorbereitung des Konzils und vor allem der Auswirkungen dazuzurechnen sind. Dabei erfassten diese Vorgänge ganz Europa, und zwar politisch wie auch religiös, vom Westen, vor allem mit Spanien, bis in den Osten mit Byzanz und der orthodoxen Kirche, vom Norden Skandinaviens bis in den Süden der europäischen Mittelmeerländer und über das Mittelmeer hinaus. Dies zeigen die Unionsverhandlungen mit den Griechen, den Armeniern, den Kopten und den Äthiopiern. Der Blickwinkel dieses Konzils war also eindeutig übereuropäisch und blieb es auch bei seinen Teilnehmern nach dem Ende der Konzilssitzungen. Als Ostrom 1453 endgültig in die Hände der türkischen Eroberer unter Mehmet II. fiel, entwickelten zahlreiche der früheren Konzilstheologen Antworten auf den Islam als einer weltgeschichtlichen Herausforderung, und zwar aus jener universalen Dynamik heraus, die sich in vielem dem Konzilsgeschehen der vorhergehenden Jahre verdankt. Insofern zeigt das Basler Konzil einen universalen, übereuropäischen Grundzug, den es wie kein 5  S. die Quellensammlungen Monumenta Conciliorum Generalium Seculi decimi quinti, Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hrsg.), 4 Bde, Wien: Holzhausen, 1857–1935 (mit ausführlichem Index; abgekürzt als MC); Eugenio Cecconi: Studi storici sul concilio di Firenze. Con documenti inediti o nuovamente dat alla luce sui manoscritti di Firenze e di Roma, Bd. 1: Antecedenti del concilio, Florenz: Antonio, 1869; Concilium Basiliense, hrsg. v. Johannes Haller et al., 8 Bde., Basel: R. Reich u. a., 1857–1936; Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio u. a., hrsg. v. Giovanni Mansi, Paris: Welter, 1901–1927, Bd. 29–32; einen grundlegenden Überblick gibt Johannes Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil 1431–1449. Forschungsstand und Probleme, Köln: Böhlau, 1987.

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anderes der späteren Konzilien mit dem II. Vaticanum gemeinsam hat, auch wenn dieses angesichts der immer weiter zusammengewachsenen Welt eindeutig schon ein Weltkonzil war.

1. Selbstverständnis des Konzils und Heiliger Geist beim Basler Konzil und II. Vaticanum Das Christentum kennt Versammlungen zur kollektiven Entscheidungs‑ und Wahrheitsfindung seit seinen ersten Anfängen, das heißt seit der Zeit der Apostel, wenn man Apg 15 über das sogenannte Apostelkonzil in Jerusalem ernst nimmt.6 Eine solche Versammlung, griechisch Synode, also Zusammenkunft, oder lateinisch Einberufung (concilium von concalare, einberufen) kann auf verschiedenen Ebenen stattfinden. Ab dem 2. Jahrhundert und dann vor allem ab dem 3. Jahrhundert gab es Bischofstreffen, dann Provinzialsynoden und seit dem Konzil von Nizäa, einer Reichssynode des römischen Reiches, auch eine ökumenische Synode, das heißt Gesamtversammlung der Kirche. Dabei waren es meist, aber nicht nur, Bischöfe und ihre Vertreter, die dabei anwesend waren. Die Art der Zusammensetzung wechselte durch die Jahrhunderte. Dass in diesen Versammlungen der Heilige Geist am Werk ist, wenn Glaubens‑ und Disziplinarfragen geregelt werden, ist seit der frühen Kirche Grundüberzeugung (vgl. Apg 15,28), auch wenn die theologische Reflexion hierüber erst später einsetzt. Darum gelten ihre Entscheidungen nach katholischer Lehre auch als endgültig und haben an der Unfehlbarkeit der Kirche teil, welche die Pforten der Unterwelt niemals überwältigen werden, wie es in Mt 16,18 heißt. Auch bis in die ersten Anfänge zurück reicht der Konflikt, wer die Führungsrolle in der Kirche hat, das Konzil oder der Papst. Nach den aus später kirchenrechtlicher Sicht eher ungeordneten ersten Anfängen gab es im Mittelalter explizit vom Papst einberufene Kirchenversammlungen, z. B. die vier Lateransynoden (1123–1215) oder die beiden Konzilien von Lyon 1245 bzw. 1274). Mit dem großen Schisma um 1400, als zeitweise zwei oder gar drei Päpste um das oberste Hirtenamt stritten, änderte sich die Situation. Eine entscheidende Stärkung erlangte die Konzilsidee durch das Konzil von Konstanz (1414–1418). Ihm gelang es, aus einer gespaltenen westlichen Kirche mit drei Päpsten, deren Anhängern und zahlreichen gegenseitigen Verurteilungen einen Weg zurück zu einer unter dem neuen Papst Martin V. (1417–1431) geeinten Kirche zu finden. 6 Grundlegend sind die Werke von Hermann Josef Sieben, für unsere Thematik besonders die beiden Bände Hermann J. Sieben, Die Konzilsidee des lateinischen Mittelalters (847–1378), Paderborn: Schöningh, 1984, und Hermann J. Sieben, Katholische Konzilsidee im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Paderborn: Schöningh, 1993; einführend und mit weiteren Literaturhinweisen s. Hermann J. Sieben, „Konzil“, LThK³, hrsg. v. Michael Buchberger, Freiburg: Herder, 1997, Bd. 6, S. 345–8.

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Dabei war nun offensichtlich nicht mehr der Papst in welcher Weise auch immer das Oberhaupt dieses Prozesses, sondern das Konzil agierte als eigenständige kollektive Größe – ohne Papst, auch wenn hierbei einflussreiche politische Faktoren wie z. B. Kaiser Sigismund mit zum Konzilsgeschehen gehörten. In dieser Tradition stand nun auch das Konzil von Basel, das – entsprechend des Dekretes Frequens des Konstanzer Konzils  – turnusgemäß und noch von Martin V. kurz vor seinem Tod nach Basel einberufen worden war.7 Beherrscht wurde es schließlich vom Streit über die Frage, ob dem Konzil oder dem Papst die Oberhoheit in der Kirche zukomme. Der auf Martin V. nachfolgende Papst Eugen IV. attackierte die Legitimität der Basler Konzilsversammlung immer wieder, und schließlich riskierten beide Seiten die offene Spaltung und gegenseitige Exkommunikation. Er eröffnete 1438 in Ferrara das Konzil neu und konnte hierfür einen kleineren Teil der Konzilsväter gewinnen. Das Basler Restkonzil blieb bei seiner Grundausrichtung und setzte die Konzilsarbeit fort. Das Konzil von Basel war am 25. 7. ​1431 eröffnet worden. Am Ende zählte es circa 3500 Inkorporierte, von denen in Basel um die 500, zeitweise aber auch bis zu 1400 versammelt gewesen waren. Schon daran kann man seine eminente Bedeutung für ganz Europa erkennen. Es hatte sich angesichts der politischen und kirchlichen Situation drei Aufgaben gestellt: Häresien zu bekämpfen, Frieden in Europa zu vermitteln und die Kirche an Haupt und Gliedern zu reformieren. Unter den Häresien verstand man primär die Hussiten, also jene böhmischen Christen, die seit dem 14. Jahrhundert ein radikaleres und ursprünglicheres Christentum zu etablieren suchten und sich besonders nach der Verbrennung von Jan Hus als Ketzer auf dem Konstanzer Konzil radikalisiert hatten. Mit dazu gerechnet wurden die Ostkirchen, z. B. die Griechisch-Orthodoxen. Hier gab es ebenfalls dogmatische Unterschiede, etwa in der Trinitätslehre. Mit beiden Gruppen wurden ausgleichende Gespräche anvisiert, um zu einer endgültigen Einigung zu gelangen. Wichtig ist dabei die Gesamtperspektive: Es ging um die Erleuchtung der Dunkelheiten aller Häresien, wie sich das Konzil ausdrückte.8 Dabei war man zu der Überzeugung gelangt, dass dieser Kampf gegen die Häresien nicht mehr mit Waffengewalt, sondern durch Argumente geschehen sollte, das heißt auf dem Weg des Friedens und der Wahrheit (via pacis et veritatis). Dieser Ausdruck tauchte schon im Einladungsschreiben an die 7  Zum Basler Konzil vgl. besonders Michiel Decaluwé, A Successful Defeat. Eugene IV’s Struggle with the Council of Basel for Ultimate Authority in the Church 1431–1449, Brussels: Brepols, 2009 und Michiel Decaluwé, Thomas M. Izbicki und Gerald Christianson (Hrsg.), A Companion to the Council of Basel, Leiden: Brill, 2016. 8 Vgl. zur Absicht des Konzils die erste Sitzung vom 14. 1 2. ​1431, COD 2, 456: „Erstens: Nach der Vertreibung der Finsternis aller Häresien aus dem Gebiet des christlichen Volkes soll durch die Gnade Christi, des wahren Lichts, das Licht des katholischen Glaubens erstrahlen.“ („Primo, ut omnium haeresum a christiani populi finibus tenebris profugatis, lumen catholicae veritatis, Christo vera luce largiente, refulgeat“).

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Hussiten zu ihrer Wiedereingliederung in die Kirche auf.9 Später wird er für den bedeutenden Konzilstheologen Johannes von Segovia (gest. 1458) als via pacis et doctrinae zum Motto für eine zukunftsträchtige, friedliche Auseinandersetzung mit dem Islam, wobei er ihn explizit aus der Auseinandersetzung mit den Böhmen ableitet. In diesem Ausdruck verknüpft sich die umfassende Friedensvision, die das Konzil beseelte: Friede durch Beilegung der Häresien im Bereich der Kirche, Friede durch Beilegung der politischen, internationalen Streitigkeiten auf europäischer Ebene. Direkt verknüpft mit dieser Friedensvision ist die andere Seite, der Weg der Wahrheit und der Lehre, also Anhörungen, Verhandlungen, Disputationen zur Klärung und Beilegung von Streitigkeiten. Das Konzil vertraute der kollektiven und konsensualen Wahrheitsfindung als dem nicht nur rational, sondern auch offenbarungstheologisch überzeugenderen Weg, um Konflikte zu beheben und die Wahrheit ans Licht zu bringen. Dieser Weg ergab sich für die Konzilstheologen nicht nur aus rein pragmatischen Gründen, sondern natürlich aus Botschaft der Heiligen Schrift. Immer wieder wurde dabei der Ausspruch Jesu ins Feld geführt (Mt 18,20): „Wo zwei oder drei in meinem Namen versammelt sind, da bin ich mitten unter ihnen.“10 Beide Punkte – Friede und Lehre – deuteten nun auf die Kraft hin, die sich nach christlicher Überzeugung in der göttlichen Person des Heiligen Geistes manifestiert. Er gilt seit Augustinus als das vinculum caritatis, das Band der Liebeseinheit von Vater und Sohn. Darum verbindet sich in ihm der Weg des Friedens oder der Weg der Einheit bzw. Eintracht mit dem Weg der Lehre. So verwundert es wenig, dass gerade jener Einladungsbrief an die Böhmen auf den Heiligen Geist zu sprechen kommt und das Konzilsgeschehen in Form eines freien Austausches und Streites um die Wahrheit mit seinem Wirken verknüpft.11 Statt des Schwertes aus Eisen und der Gewalt sollte also „das Schwert des Geistes,  9  Vgl. das Einladungsschreiben an die Böhmen vom 13. 10. ​1431 in Johannes von Ragusa: Tractatus de reductione Bohemorum (ed. MC I), S. 136–7: „Aderit plane spiritus sanctus, in cujus nomine congretata est haec sancta synodus. Ipse erit dux et rector concilii, perfecte illuminaturus corda omnium, ut viam ambulent veritatis et pacis.“ S. auch die Notiz über ein Gespräch von 1428 zur Hussitenproblematik bei Johannes von Segovia, Replica magne continencie II (hrsg. v. Scotto, S. 117): „Porro quam congrua fuerit via tractatus pacis et doctrine in facto Bohemorum et aliam viam minime profuisse […].“ Natürlich kannte Johannes von Segovia den Brief an die Böhmen, hatte er ihn doch selbst in seine Konzilsgeschichte aufgenommen, s. Johannes von Segovia: Historia gestorum (ed. MC II), S. 38–40. Zum Thema s. Ulli Roth in Johannes von Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum, hrsg. v. Ulli Roth, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012, XLI, und Anne Marie Wolf, Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace. Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century, Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2014, S. 97–101. 10 Vgl. Thomas Prügl, „Das Schriftargument zwischen Papsttum und konziliarer Idee. Biblische Argumentationsmodelle im Basler Konziliarismus“, Die Bibel als politisches Argument. Voraussetzungen und Folgen biblizistischer Herrschaftslegitimation in der Vormoderne, hrsg. v. Andreas Pečar und Kai Trampedach, München: Oldenbourg, 2007, S. 219–41. 11  Vgl. das Zitat oben in Anm. 9, s. auch Johannes von Ragusa: Tractatus de reductione Bohemorum (ed. MC I), S. 136: „Ecce spiritus sanctus ex omni natione congregat fratres, ut sicut

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das das Wort Gottes ist“ (Eph 6,17), gezogen werden. Hier werden die biblischen Bilder zur geistlichen Waffenrüstung zu einem theologisch-politischen Programm des Umgangs mit Alterität.12 Diese Sichtweise teilten die böhmischen Gesandten mit den Konzilsteilnehmern. In der Tat gelang es dann auch, in den sogenannten Prager bzw. Basler Kompaktaten einen Kompromiss zu schließen, also keine Niederwerfung und bloße Rückführung der abweichenden Gruppierung, sondern ein Zugeständnis von Verschiedenheit  – konkret z. B. das Zugeständnis des Laienkelches –, mit der eine bleibende Einheit der Kirche und doch eine Verschiedenheit im Ritus in eine wenn auch brüchige und immer wieder umkämpfte Harmonie gebracht wurden. Diese Lösung durch eine Einheit trotz Verschiedenheit der Riten spielte später als Modell für den Umgang auch mit anderen Religionen eine wichtige Rolle. Der Erfolg mit der böhmischen „Häresie“ beflügelte die Basler Konzilsversammlung, auf ähnliche Weise auch bei den Griechen und allem Anschein nach auch bei anderen, zum Beispiel den Muslimen, zu einer Einigung zu kommen. Zwar gelang auch der papsttreuen Konzilsversammlung von Florenz ein Verhandlungserfolg, nämlich die Verständigung mit den Griechen und damit eine wenn auch zeitlich begrenzte Wiederherstellung der Kirchenunion. Doch offenbar war diese Versammlung von einem anderen Geist beseelt. Denn zugleich mit der Verständigung mit den Jakobiten zementierte sie zum ersten Mal lehramtlich die Verdammung aller Häretiker, indem sie auch die Anhänger anderer Religionen miterwähnte.13 Zwar ist auch dieses harte Zeugnis einer restriktiven Festlegung für das „Außerhalb der Kirche kein Heil“ zunächst als Selbstermahnung für Christen in einer schon rein geographisch begrenzten Welt‑ und Geschichtsvorstellung gedacht.14 Dennoch stellt sich die Frage, ob es nicht dem anderen Selbstverständnis dieser Konzilsversammlung geschuldet ist, dass sie zu dieser doch sehr harschen Formulierung griff. Auch wenn das Konzil von ipse caritas est, ita in caritate vivant, et juxta promissionem Christi omnem doceant veritatem, quae ad salutem est necessaria.“ 12  Vgl. Johannes von Segovia: Historia gestorum (ed. MC II), S. 345. Das Bildwort des „Schwertes des Geistes“ übernimmt Segovia später für sein Opus magnum zur Auseinandersetzung mit dem Islam, De gladio divini spiritus, womit er zugleich an den von ihm geschätzten Petrus Venerabilis anknüpft, vgl. Petrus Venerabilis, „Contra legem Saracenorum“, Petrus Venerabilis. Schriften zum Islam, ediert, ins Deutsche übersetzt und kommentiert v. Reinhold Glei, Altenberge: CIS-Verlag 1985, N. 10, S. 44. Auch hier sieht man, wie innerkonziliare Formulierungen direkt in die interreligiöse Thematik übertragen werden. 13  S. das sogenannte Dekret für die Kopten vom 4. 2. ​1442, COD 2, S. 567–83, insb. 578: „Die römische Kirche glaubt fest, bekennt und verkündet: Alle Menschen, die sich außerhalb der katholischen Kirche befinden, nicht nur Heiden, sondern auch Juden, Häretiker oder Schismatiker, können des ewigen Lebens nicht teilhaftig werden; vielmehr werden sie in ‚das ewige Feuer‘ kommen […]“ („Firmiter credit, profitetur et predicat nullos extra ecclesiam catholicam existentes, non solum paganos, sed nec Iudeos aut hereticos atque scismaticos eterne vite fieri posse participes, sed in ignem eternum ituros […]“). 14  Vgl. Francis A. Sullivan, Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response, New York: Paulist Press, 1992, S. 200–2.

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Ferrara/Florenz/Rom kein reines Papstkonzil war, hatte es sich doch schon mit seiner Konstitution zur Oberhoheit des Papstes bekannt. So war es nur schlüssig, dass dessen Dekrete nunmehr als päpstliche Bullen erlassen wurden. Dabei steht die papstzentrierte, hierarchiebetonte Einleitungsformel „Bischof Eugen, Diener der Diener Christi, zum ewigen Gedenken“ derjenigen des Basler Versammlung gegenüber, die das Moment der Kollektivität, der kirchlichen Gemeinschaft und des Heiligen Geistes betont: „die hochheilige Generalsynode von Basel, im Heiligen Geist rechtmäßig versammelt, Repräsentantin der universalen Kirche.“15 Es stellt sich hier die Frage, ob es nicht eine enge Verbindung von Heiligem Geist, Konzilsgedanke und Offenheit für Andersgläubige gibt. Diese Korrelation zeichnet sich zumindest schon für das Basler Konzil ab und soll nun auch für das II. Vaticanum erhärtet werden. Das Vorläuferkonzil des II. Vaticanums, das I. Vatikanische Konzil von 1870/71, hatte sich zu einem reinen Papstkonzil entwickelt und mit seiner Definition der Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes darin seinen Höhepunkt erreicht. Das II. Vaticanum sollte nach den Plänen konservativer Kreise in diesen Triumphgesang des Papsttums einstimmen. Dass es dazu nicht kam, war nicht zuletzt das Verdienst des Papstes Johannes XXIII. selbst, der mit seiner plötzlichen Einberufung eines allgemeinen Konzils gerade die Befürworter eines autonomen Papsttums am meisten überrascht, wenn nicht gar geschockt hatte. Wie verstand sich nun dieses Konzil? Das erste Ergebnis war die Liturgiekonstitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, der wir heute unter anderem die Feier der Messe in unseren Landessprachen verdanken. Darin heißt es zu Beginn: „Paulus, Bischof Diener der Diener Gottes, zusammen mit den Vätern des hochheiligen Konzils zum fortwährenden Gedenken. Das Heilige Konzil hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, das christliche Leben der Gläubigen mehr und mehr zu vertiefen, die dem Wechsel unterworfenen Einrichtungen den Notwendigkeiten unseres Zeitalters besser anzupassen, zu fördern, was immer zur Einheit aller, die an Christus glauben, beitragen kann, und zu stärken, was immer helfen kann, alle in den Schoß der Kirche zu rufen.“16 15 Vgl. z. B. COD 2, S. 523 (10. 7. ​1439): „Eugenius episcopus, servus servorum Dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.“ Dagegen ebd. COD 2, S. 460 (10. 6. ​1432): „Sacrosancta generalis synodus Basileensis, in Spiritu sancto legitime congregata, universalem ecclesiam repraesentans.“ Das Basler Konzil greift damit die Formulierung des Konstanzer Konzils auf, dem mangels eines allgemein anerkannten legitimen Papstes die Rolle der Kirchenrepräsentation zugefallen war, vgl. z. B. COD 2, S. 411 (4. 5. ​1415): „Sacrosancta Constantiensis synodus, generale concilium faciens, et ecclesiam catholicam repraesentans […] in Spiritus sancto legitime congregata, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.“ Dass die Berufung auf den Heiligen Geist nach vorne gestellt wurde, passt zum Selbstverständnis des Basler Konzils, doch sollte man nicht mehr daraus ableiten wollen. Vgl. Alberto Cadili, Lo Spirito e il Concilio: Basilea 1432. Legittimazione pneumatologica del conciliarismo, preface by Jürgen Miethke, Bologna: il Mulino, 2016. 16  Auf Latein lauten die ersten Worte von Sacrosanctum Concilium 1: „Paulus Episcopus servus servorum Dei una cum sacrosancti concilii patribus ad perpetuam rei memoriam. Sacrosanctum Concilium […].“

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Hier wird deutlich, dass nicht mehr nur der Papst, sondern er und die Konzilsversammlung zusammen mit ihm in Gemeinschaft die folgenden Ausführungen und Bestimmungen erlassen. Anders als auf dem I. Vaticanum hatte hier die Konzilsversammlung mitzureden und mitzuentscheiden, auch wenn dann in der Konzilspraxis diese Kollegialität von Papst und Bischöfen nicht immer ganz ungetrübt war. Ebenso betonen die allerersten einleitenden Worte der ersten Konzilsverlautbarung Sacrosanctum Concilium nicht nur das Selbstverständnis des Konzils, sondern stellen einen inneren Bezug zu jenen Konzilien her, die sich nicht als Ausführungsorgane des Papsttums, sondern als eigenständige Repräsentationen der Kirche verstanden, nämlich das Konstanzer und das Basler Konzil. Auch kann man an diesen ersten Worten, die wie eine „Einleitung zum ganzen Konzil“17 klingen und quasi das gesamte Arbeitsprogramm des Konzils umreißen, schon sehen, dass dessen Perspektive universal ist und sich auf alle Menschen richtet. Von innen her weitet sich der Kreis von den katholischen Gläubigen zu den Christen bis zu allen Menschen, die alle zur Gemeinschaft in der Kirche Gottes gerufen sind. Diese Grundlinie war nun nicht nur für dieses konkrete Konzil verbindlich, sondern das Konzil hat sie auch als Wesensaufgabe der Kirche überhaupt festgeschrieben. Hier ist an die berühmte Bestimmung der Kirche aus der Kirchenkonstitution zu erinnern (Lumen gentium 1): „Da aber die Kirche in Christus gleichsam das Sakrament bzw. Zeichen und Werkzeug für die innigste Vereinigung mit Gott und für die Einheit der ganzen Menschheit ist […].“ Kirche kann also nicht mehr nur auf sich gerichtet sein, als ginge es allein um sie, ihre Getauften und deren Vereinigung mit Gott. Vielmehr ist sie auf alle Menschen ausgerichtet und hat der ganzen Menschheit zu dienen. Diese ist kein Außen mehr für sie, etwa weil die meisten der Kirche nicht angehören. Vielmehr hat sich gerade die Kirche nach außen zu bewegen und über sich hinauszugehen, weil sie Gott nachzufolgen hat, dessen Heilshandeln und Heilswille alle Menschen umfasst. Darum greifen gerade diejenigen Texte, welche sich gemäß ihrer Thematik am meisten der gesamten Menschheit öffnen, diese universale Bestimmung der Kirche auf. Die Erklärung über die Haltung der Kirche gegenüber den nichtchristlichen Religionen Nostra aetate formuliert dies schon in ihren Anfangsworten (Nostra aetate 1): „Bei ihrer Aufgabe, Einheit und Liebe unter den Menschen, ja sogar unter den Völkern zu fördern, erwägt sie [die Kirche] hier vor allem das, was den Menschen gemeinsam ist und sie zur Gemeinschaft untereinander führt.“ Die theologische Perspektive ist dabei, dass gerade von Gott her alle eine einzige Gemeinschaft bilden (Nostra aetate 1): „Alle Völker sind 17  Vgl. Reiner Kaczynski, „Theologischer Kommentar zur Konstitution über die heilige Liturgie Sacrosanctum Concilium“, hrsg. v. Peter Hünermann und Bernd J. Hilberath, Herders Theologischer Kommentar, Bd. 2, S. 1–227, S. 54.

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nämlich eine Gemeinschaft, haben einen Ursprung […], haben auch ein letztes Ziel, Gott, dessen Vorsehung, Zeugnis der Güte und Heilsratschlüsse sich auf alle erstrecken […].“ Auch in ihrem Missionsdekret Ad gentes kommt der Dienstcharakter der Kirche zum Ausdruck, wobei hier schon die Selbstbestimmung der Kirche aus der Kirchenkonstitution zitiert wird (Ad gentes 1): „Zu den Völkern von Gott gesandt, um ‚das allgemeine Sakrament des Heiles‘ [Lumen gentium 48] zu sein, bemüht sich die Kirche […], das Evangelium allen Menschen zu verkünden.“ Anders als manche in den kurialen Vorbereitungskommissionen hofften, verstieg sich das II. Vatikanische Konzil nicht zu einer Verurteilung aller Irrtümer der modernen Welt und der Definition neuer Mariendogmen als katholisches Gegengewicht. Vielmehr machte es sich die Kirche zur Aufgabe, auf die Zerrissenheit des modernen Menschen zu antworten, indem sie sich für deren Einheit in Dienst stellen lässt, auch mit Blick auf die Trennung der Menschen durch die Vielzahl der Religionen. Dabei war das Bewusstsein, vom Heiligen Geist getragen und geführt zu werden, eine wesentliche Erfahrung dieser Konzilsgemeinschaft. Der polnische Konzilsteilnehmer und spätere Papst Johannes Paul II. schreibt dazu im Rückblick: „Das Konzil  – oder wie man es damals nannte: das ‚Seminar des Heiligen Geistes‘ – war eine wichtige Erfahrung der Kirche. Im Konzil sprach der Heilige Geist zur gesamten Kirche in ihrer Universalität, die von der Teilnahme der Bischöfe aus der ganzen Welt bestimmt wurde. Prägend wirkte sich auch die Anwesenheit von Repräsentanten zahlreicher nichtkatholischer Kirchen und Gemeinschaften aus.“18 Der Gottesgeist wirkte dabei nicht nur in den Bischöfen, sondern im Gesamtgefüge der Konzilsgemeinschaft, in der bekanntlich viele Theologen eine wichtige Rolle hatten und haben durften, wenn auch nur durch ihre Bischöfe. Diese ergriffen aber in ungeahnter Art und Weise und mit Selbstbewusstsein – gerade auch gegenüber der Kurie – ihr Rederecht, so dass das Konzil eine ganz eigene Dynamik entwickelte. Diese Dynamik wird heute für die Konzilsdeutung immer wieder als der „Geist des Konzils“19 beschworen, aus dem heraus die Konzilstexte zu interpretieren seien. Was dieser Geist des Konzils bedeuten konnte, soll nun am Beispiel der Auseinandersetzung mit der Religionsproblematik aufgezeigt werden.

18  Johannes Paul II., Die Schwelle der Hoffnung überschreiten, Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1994, S. 186. 19  S. hierzu Rudolf Voderholzer, „Der Geist des Konzils. Überlegungen zur Konzilshermeneutik“, Trierer theologische Zeitschrift, 123 (2014), S. 169–86.

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2. Äußerer Anstoß und die Eigendynamik des Konzils mit Blick auf die Beschäftigung mit dem Islam Die Auseinandersetzung mit den anderen Religionen war dem II. Vaticanum nicht in die Wiege gelegt.20 Dass es zu diesem wegweisenden Schritt kam, lag letztlich daran, dass sich das Konzil dem Verhältnis des Christentums und der Kirche gegenüber dem Judentum zugewandt hatte. Zwar gab es die katastrophale Erfahrung des II. Weltkrieges und des Holocaust, als Christen Juden auf schrecklichste Weise ermordet hatten. Die katholische Kirche hatte hier wenig eindeutig gehandelt. Es gab keine bekennende katholische Kirche wie es eine bekennende evangelische Kirche gegeben hatte, und das Schweigen Papst Pius’ XII. wirft auch heute noch viele Fragen auf. Dass schließlich fast zwei Jahrzehnte nach dem II. Weltkrieg das Verhältnis der Christen zum Judentum doch noch zum Konzilsthema wurde, liegt letztlich an vier Faktoren. Der erste und wesentliche Türöffner war die Aufgeschlossenheit und persönliche Einstellung Papst Johannes’ XXIII. Sogleich nach der Ankündigung des Konzils änderte er 1959 die anstößige Karfreitagsbitte und hatte für weitere Initiativen ein offenes Ohr. So konnte auch zweitens der jüdische Historiker Jules Isaac mit seinem persönlichen Einsatz das Thema erfolgreich voranbringen. Er erreichte in einer Audienz am 13. 6. ​1960, dass Johannes XXIII. das Thema Judentum und Kirche sogar in die Konzilsagenda aufnehmen wollte. Drittens gelang es schließlich aufgeschlossenen und umsichtigen Köpfen wie Augustin Kardinal Bea, dieses Anliegen des Papstes unbeschadet durch die Mühlen der kurialen Verwaltung sowie gegen viele Widerstände durchzubringen. In den Anhörungen zu diesem heiß diskutierten Thema, das aufgrund des Palästinakonflikts auch politisch aufgeladen war, brachten dann – und das ist für uns nun entscheidend als vierte Kraft – unter anderem auch die Bischöfe Asiens die Religionen Asiens und Afrikas ins Blickfeld. Dadurch war der Blick nun auch für den Islam geöffnet. Paul VI. schließlich machte sich diese umfassendere Sichtweise bei seinen Reisen nach Israel und seiner Osterbotschaft 29. 3. ​1964 zu Eigen: „Jede Religion ist ein morgendliches Aufscheinen des Glaubens, und wir erwarten seine Entfaltung im Abendlicht, im strahlenden Glanz der christlichen Weisheit.“21 So wurde schließlich aus der sogenannten „Judenerklärung“ und einem Anhängsel des Ökumenismusdekrets eine eigenständige Selbstverpflichtung zur Haltung der Kirche gegenüber den Religionen. Zur Eigendynamik des Konzils, in der man vielleicht den „Geist des Konzils“ erkennen kann, zähle ich die Offenheit, auf die die eher informellen Vorgänge wie die Privataudienz Jules Isaacs oder schließlich die Forderungen der asiatischen Bischöfe stießen, und die Bereitwilligkeit, mit der 20  S. zum folgenden die übersichtlichen, informativen und mit weiteren Literaturverweisen versehenen Darstellungen in Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 58–76 und 93–160. 21  Zitiert nach Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 105.

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sich viele Konzilsteilnehmer selbst auf einen Lernweg gemacht hatten, so dass die Erklärung trotz vieler Widerstände zum Erfolg geführt werden konnten. Auch das Konzil von Basel, das sich am Rhein mitten in Europa und weitab von der Welt der Muslime konstituiert hatte, setzte den Islam weder zunächst noch später auf seine Agenda.22 Dennoch diskutierten die Konzilsteilnehmer dieses Thema, nicht ohne durch äußere Vorgänge dahin gebracht worden zu werden und nicht ohne die Anregung aufgeschlossener Köpfe. Zunächst ist das Vordringen des Islams in Gestalt des osmanischen Reiches zu nennen, das während der Konzilszeit das Byzantinische Reich mehr oder weniger bis auf das Gebiet der Hauptstadt zurückgedrängt hatte. Die muslimischen Eroberer standen schon lange auf dem Boden Europas. Die Nachrichten hierüber beschäftigten die Konzilsväter. Der Kampf gegen die Türken wurde als Aufgabe aller Christen, der Altgläubigen wie der Böhmen, gesehen, wie der Konzilspräsident Giuliano Cesarini (1398–1444) schon 1433 hervorhob.23 Auch entsprang die Bereitschaft der Ostchristen zu Unionsverhandlungen offensichtlich der Hoffnung, mehr Unterstützung aus dem Westen in ihrem Verzweiflungskampf zu erhalten. Zwar gab es immer wieder militärische Initiativen, und fast das ganze 15. Jahrhundert hindurch wurde die Kreuzzugsidee beschworen, unter anderem durch den Konzilsteilnehmer Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405–1464), der sich auch als Papst Pius II. diese Idee ganz zu Eigen gemacht hatte.24 Trotz mancher Erfolge waren die Niederlagen 1444 bei Varna und 1448 auf dem Amselfeld definitiv. Letztlich konnte sich das Abendland auf keine konzentrierte Großaktion mehr einigen. Für unseren Kontext ist nun besonders interessant, dass gerade als Nebenprodukt aus den Verhandlungen mit den Griechen starke Impulse hervorgingen, sich über militärische Belange hinaus auch inhaltlich mit dem Islam zu beschäftigen. 22  Diese noch kaum untersuchte Thematik wird von meinem Mitarbeiter Jacob Langeloh im Rahmen des DFG-Projektes „Die Auseinandersetzung der lateinischen Kirche des Westens mit dem Islam während des Basler Konzils (1431–1449) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Johannes von Ragusa (gest. 1443). Erschließung und Deutung neuer Quellen auf dem Hintergrund des Konzilsgeschehens und des Selbstverständnisses des Konzils“ erforscht, die ausführlichste Zusammenstellung findet sich bisher in Florian Hamann, Das Siegel der Ewigkeit. Universalwissenschaft und Konziliarismus bei Heymericus de Campo, Münster: Aschendorff, 2006, S. 37–42; vgl. auch Florian Hamann, „Koran und Konziliarismus. Anmerkungen zum Verhältnis von Heymericus de Campo und Nikolaus von Kues“, Vivarium, 43/2 (2005), S. 275–91. 23  S. die an die Vertreter des Böhmischen Reiches gerichtete Konzilsansprache Cesarinis vom 10. 1. ​1433, besonders MC II, S. 315: „Circumspicite vndique quomodo plebs christiana a Turcis, Sarracenis, Tartaris et barbaris conculcatur et deuoratur. Cur non compatimini tot millibus fratrum vestrorum, qui singulis annis in durissimam infidelium seruitutem rediguntur? […] Desineretis tunc forsitan bellis inuicem decertare. […] Harum omnium calamitatum dissidia christianorum sunt causa.“ 24  Vgl. Harry W. Hazard (Hrsg.), A History of the Crusades, Bd. 3. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975; Volker Reinhardt, Pius II. Piccolomini, der Papst, mit dem die Renaissance begann. Eine Biographie, München: Beck, 2014, S. 166–70, 336–52.

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Schon vor der Legationsreise nach Konstantinopel gab es von Seiten des Basler Konzils, aber auch von Seiten der Papstpartei einige Hinweise, dass vom Islam gesprochen wurde. Die Hussiten waren schon seit ihrer Entstehung als „Mohammedaner“ verunglimpft worden.25 Während der Debatten über die Hussiten führte 1433 Johannes Hieronymus von Prag Muslime als trotz ihres Unglaubens unbescholtene Zeugen gegen die Böhmen an.26 In den Diskussionen über die Unbefleckte Empfängnis Marias brachte man Zeugnisse aus dem Koran und Hadith ein, die Johannes von Segovia dann sobald wie möglich anhand einer lateinischen Koranübersetzung überprüfte.27 Heymericus de Campo, ein Cusanus nahe stehender Gelehrter, argumentierte über den päpstlichen Primat und baute dabei seine Wissensbrocken über Muḥammad und den Koran ein, die er aus Riccoldo da Monte di Croce entlehnte.28 Seitdem Johannes von Ragusa (gest. 1443) in Konstantinopel war, verstärkte sich dann das Interesse. Dieser berichtete in seinen zahlreichen Briefen an das Konzil aus den Jahren 1435– 1437, die noch nicht alle vollständig ediert sind, am Rande immer wieder auch über die Türken und Muslime sowie den Islam. Unter anderem klärte er die Konzilsväter über die Entstehungsgeschichte des Islams auf. Er wies auch auf ihre innere Zerrissenheit hin. Außerdem würden sie im Osten von den Tataren bedroht. Zudem erwähnte er eine angeblich muslimische Prophezeiung, nach der den Muslimen nur eine Herrschaft von 800 Jahren vorhergesagt sei, danach würden sie sich von selbst auflösen.29 Ragusa benutzte diese Thematik, um die Sache des Konzils voranzubringen. Er entwarf seinen Konzilsbrüdern eine umfassende Vision: Wenn den Christen Einheit der Kirchen und Frieden unter den Ländern Europas gelingen würden, würden die vielen Unzufriedenen in 25  S. Pavel Soukup, „‚Pars Machometica‘ in Early Hussite Polemic“, Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536. Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, hrsg. v. Michael van Dussen und Pavel Soukup, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, S. 251–87. 26  Vgl. William P. Hyland, „John-Jerome of Prague and the Religion of the Saracens“, Medieval Christian Perceptions on Islam, hrsg. v. John V. Tolan, New York: Routledge, 1996, S. 199–208. 27  S. Stephen Mossman, „Western Understanding of Islamic Theology in the Later Middle Ages. Mendicant Responses to Islam from Riccoldo da Monte di Croce to Marquard von Lindau“, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 74 (2007), S. 169–224; Réjane GayCanton, „Lorsque Muḥammad orne les autels. Sur l’utilisation de la théologie islamique dans la controverse autour de l’Immaculée Conception de la fin du xive au début du xviiie siècle“, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 94 (2010), S. 201–48; Ulli Roth und Davide Scotto, „Auf der Suche nach der Erbsünde im Koran. Die Allegationes de peccatis primi parentis des Juan de Segovia“, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch, 17 (2015), S. 181–218. 28  S. Florian Hamann, „Der Koran als ekklesiologische Autorität bei Heymericus de ­Campo († 1460)“, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 50 (2003), S. 150–62; Florian Hamann, „Koran und Konziliarismus“, S. 275–91; Florian Hamann, Das Siegel der Ewigkeit, S. 167–74, 250–7. 29  S. Johannes von Segovia: Historia gestorum (ed. MC II, S. 946); vgl. Johannes von Segovia: De gladio, hrsg. v. Roth, Consideratio 28, S. 391–400, und Johannes von Segovia: Replica magne continencie, III, hrsg. v. Davide Scotto, “Via pacis et doctrine.” Le Epistole sull’Islam di Juan de Segovia, Diss. masch. Florenz 2012, S. 82–281, S. 154–5; s. hierzu auch Johannes de Segovia, De gladio, hrsg. v. Roth, S. 635.

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den muslimischen Ländern zur christlichen Sache übergehen und die Sekte der Sarazenen könnte endgültig besiegt werden.30 Diese Briefe wurden teilweise in der Konzilsversammlung verlesen und blieben bei den Konzilsvätern offenbar nicht ohne Wirkung. Viele von ihnen stammten aus Spanien, Portugal oder Ungarn und hatten schon eigene Erfahrungen mit Muslimen gemacht oder hatten sich schon davor gewisse Kenntnisse über den Islam erworben und Zeugnisse islamischer Theologie für ihre innerchristlichen Argumentationen benutzt. Insgesamt entwickelte sich das Konzil außerdem zu einem Umschlagplatz von Wissen, besonders natürlich in Form von Handschriften. Das gilt auch für die Kenntnisse über den Islam. Hier war ebenfalls die Legationsreise nach Konstantinopel ein entscheidendes Bindeglied. Johannes von Ragusa und Nikolaus von Kues (1401–1464) unterhielten sich in Konstantinopel mit den Gelehrten dort über den Glauben jener osmanischen Angreifer, die kurz vor den Stadtmauern standen. Johannes von Ragusa brachte z. B. nicht nur eine umfangreiche Sammlung griechischer Manuskripte mit, sondern auch lateinische Werke über den Islam, darunter auch eine lateinische Koranübersetzung und einen arabischen Koran, der heute noch in Basel lagert. Als erfolgreicher Handschriftenjäger machte sich auch Nikolaus von Kues einen Namen. So lieh sich nachweislich Johannes von Segovia 1437 eine Handschrift mit der lateinischen Koranübersetzung und einige anderen Schriften aus der sogenannten Collectio Toletana aus. Offensichtlich gab es also schon weit vor der Katastrophe von 1453 vielfältige Gespräche und Beschäftigungen mit Islam. Zusammenfassend kann also gesagt werden, dass es der Initiative energischer und wohl auch weitsichtiger Männer zu verdanken ist, dass beide Konzilien sich des Islams annahmen, wenn auch in unterschiedlicher Intensität. Dennoch bedurfte es eines starken weltgeschichtlichen Anstoßes, in dem das Verhältnis der Religionen in Frage gestellt wurde, so dass diese Initiativen überhaupt ergriffen wurden, einmal die Eroberungszüge und das unaufhaltsame Vordringen der Osmanen nach Europa, das andere Mal die Vernichtung des europäischen Judentums und die mehr als fragliche Rolle des Christentums. Dass aber diese Initiativen nicht wirkungslos blieben, sondern weitergeführt wurden, lässt sich meines Erachtens nur aus der Dynamik und auch Offenheit beider Konzilien erklären. Dass gerade auch dem Islam in einer positiven Weise begegnet werden konnte, beruht zudem auf der Tatsache, dass für diese Aufgeschlossenheit jeweils auf Vorbilder als entsprechende hermeneutische Schlüssel zurückgegriffen werden konnte, wie nun gezeigt werden soll.

30 S. Johannes von Ragusa: Brief vom 10.  2. ​1436, hrsg. v. Mansi 29, S. 656–60, besonders S. 657–8, und Johannes von Ragusa: Brief vom 13. 2. ​1437, Concilium Basiliense I, S. 380.

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3. Vorbilder für die Haltung gegenüber dem Islam Die Theologen des Basler Konzils betrachteten wie die Theologie der vorigen Jahrhunderte den Glauben der sogenannten Sarazenen in der Regel als christliche Häresie, das heißt als eine inhaltlich in gravierenden Punkten abweichende Lehre über Gott und die Menschen, deren Anhänger offenbar mit vollem Bewusstsein und aus freiem Willen die christliche Lehre in Teilen ablehnten.31 Dass die Unterschiede vielleicht viel gravierender waren, dämmerte zwar schon Petrus Venerabilis. Doch als Heiden konnte man sie bei genauerer Prüfung kaum bezeichnen, glaubten sie doch an den einen Gott und hatten viele biblische Inhalte in ihrem Glaubensrepertoire. Für den Umgang mit Häretikern gab es nun kaum Spielraum. Sie mussten ihrer Irrlehre entsagen und konnten nach angemessener Buße wieder in den Schoß der Kirche aufgenommen werden. Ansonsten drohten ihnen, zumal wenn es sich um abtrünnig gewordene Christen handelte, schlimmste Strafen von der Verfolgung bis zum Feuertod, wie man es noch nach damaligem Recht und Gesetz gegen Jan Hus und seinen Gefährten Hieronymus von Prag während des Konstanzer Konzils praktiziert hatte.32 Das Basler Konzil ging hier neue Wege. Die hussitische Lehre war nicht mit dem Feuer zu besiegen. Doch gerade so brachte sie das Konzil dazu, nach einem neuen, friedlichen Weg zu suchen. Dem Bemühen um einen universellen, politischen wie religiösen Frieden (pax) sahen sich die Konzilsteilnehmer sowieso verpflichtet. Außerdem setzte sich die Einsicht durch, dass man sich mit den griechischen Christen, die im Westen oft als Häretiker verstanden wurden, nur auf dem Verhandlungsweg einigen konnte. An einen Kreuzzug gegen Ostrom wurde im 15. Jahrhundert nicht gedacht. Dass aber eine Häresie wie die Hussiten unmittelbar nach ihrer Verurteilung auf dem Konstanzer Konzil auf dem nächsten Konzil als Verhandlungspartner an einem Tisch sitzen sollte, war ein ungewöhnliches Vorgehen, das nicht mit der Unterstützung aller rechnen konnte. Papst Eugen IV. sah in dieser Frage eine weitere Möglichkeit, stärkeren Zugriff auf das Konzilsgeschehen zu bekommen. Ihm stellte sich der päpstlich bestellte Konzilspräsident Cesarini mit mehreren traktatähnlichen Briefen entgegen. Diese bilden ein für das Mittelalter einzigartiges Zeugnis, wie mit Abweichlern umzugehen sei.33 Cesarini betonte, dass nicht die Verurteilung, 31  Davon hebt sich Johannes Hieronymus von Prag ab, der den Sarazenen zugesteht, den Glauben an Christus unverschuldet nicht zu kennen, vgl. den Literaturhinweis oben in Anm. 26. 32  S. besonders Hermann J. Sieben, „Die via concilii zur Wiedervereinigung der Kirchen. Stellungnahmen, Hindernisse, konkrete Projekte. Ein historischer Exkurs (13.–17. Jhd.)“, Christian Unity. The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/39–1989, hrsg. v. Giuseppe Alberigo, Leuven: University Press, 1991, S. 23–56. 33  Vgl. Gerald Christianson, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal. The Basel Years 1431–1438, St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1979, S. 45–51, der wichtigste Brief, auf den sich die folgenden Informationen im Text beziehen, findet sich in Johannes von Segovia: Historia gestorum (ed. MC II), S. 109–17.

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sondern die Rückführung der Häretiker das Ziel sein müsse. Dazu berief er sich eigens auf das Vorbild Jesu, der Apostel, der früheren Konzilien, des Kirchenrechts bis zu aktuellen Beispielen wie etwa den Disputationen mit Juden. Der Kranke bedürfe des Arztes, man dürfe gerade dann nicht ruhen, wenn die Verurteilung der Irrtümer keinen Wandel bringe. Dieser Brief sticht unter den zahlreichen eher restriktiven Ansichten heraus, welche die Frage, ob man überhaupt mit verurteilten Häretikern verhandeln dürfe, negativ beantworteten. Für Johannes von Segovia wurde er später zu einem zentralen Dokument, als er 1455 mit dem Bischof von Chalon-sur-Saône und Sprecher des burgundischen Herzogs Jean Germain dieselbe Frage hinsichtlich des Umgangs mit den Sarazenen diskutierte. Nachdem sich das Basler Konzil zu Verhandlungen mit den Hussiten bereit erklärt hatte, kam es schließlich zu einem Kompromiss. Der Vertrag, die sogenannten Prager Kompaktaten vom 30. 11. ​1433, gestand den Böhmen den Laienkelch zu. Damit war eine Regelung getroffen, die eine Verschiedenheit im Ritus bei gleichzeitiger Betonung der Einheit der Lehre zugestand. Auch diese Idee – Einheit der Religion, Verschiedenheit der Riten – wurde etwa für Cusanus in seinem berühmten Religionsdialog De pace fidei zu einer Grundformel, mit der er der Verschiedenheit der Religionen gerecht zu werden hoffte. Dabei kann man an seinem Werk direkt verfolgen, wie sich die Idee langsam vom Umgang mit den christlichen Böhmen auf das Verhältnis zu den Muslimen und anderen Religionen übertrug.34 Dieser erste innerchristliche, sozusagen ökumenische Kompromiss mit den Hussiten – ein zweiter wären die Unionsverhandlungen und die Unionsbeschlüsse mit den Ostkirchen, auf die unter anderem auch schon Cesarini hinwies – diente also als Vorbild für die fortschrittlicheren Kräfte im Umgang mit dem Islam. Die traditionalistischeren Kräfte hielten dagegen weder etwas vom Kompromiss mit den Böhmen noch gar von Verhandlungen mit Sarazenen. Auch die neue Haltung gegenüber den Muslimen auf dem II. Vaticanum richtete sich an einem Vorbild aus, nämlich dem Umgang der Kirche mit dem Volk Israel. Das II. Vaticanum hatte sich endgültig von dem Muster zu befreien, in den anderen Religionen nur Heidentum zu erkennen – also gar keine eigentliche Erkenntnis und Verehrung Gottes zu erkennen – oder eben Häresie, das heißt eine mehr oder weniger willentliche Verdrehung und Verzerrung der 34  S. Nikolaus von Kues, De pace fidei I, N. 6, in: Nicolaus von Kues, Opera omnia, hrsg. v. Raymundus Klibansky, Bd. 7, De pace fidei cum epistula ad Ioannem de Segobia, Hamburg: Meiner, 1959, S. 7, Z. 10–1; Michael Seidlmayer, „‚Una religio in rituum varietate‘. Zur Religionsauffassung des Nikolaus von Cues“, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 36 (1954), S. 145–207; Walter Andreas Euler, „Una religio in rituum varietate. Der Beitrag des Nikolaus von Kues zur Theologie der Religionen“, Jahrbuch für Religionswissenschaft und Theologie der Religionen, 3 (1995), S. 67–82; Pim Valkenberg, „Una Religio in Rituum Varietate: Religious Pluralism, the Qur’an, and Nicholas of Cusa“, Nicholas of Cusa and Islam. Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, hrsg. v. Ian Christopher Levy u. a., Leiden: Brill, 2014, S. 30–48.

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christlichen Lehre. Darum sprach man auch diplomatisch von nichtchristlichen Religionen. Die Erklärung über die Juden wird heute von manchen als das Herzstück von Nostra aetate bezeichnet und gilt als geradezu revolutionär.35 Das Konzil „gedenkt des Bandes, durch das das Volk des Neuen Bundes mit dem Stamm Abrahams geistlich verbunden ist“ (Nostra aetate 4). Trotz der Trennungsgeschichte von Christentum und Judentum gilt (Nostra aetate 4): „Nichtsdestotrotz bleiben die Juden […] Gott, dessen Gaben und Berufung ohne Reue sind, immer noch äußerst lieb wegen der Väter.“ Hier wird auf Paulus’ Römerbrief 11,28–29. Bezug genommen. Damit ist aus der Sicht der Kirche das Judentum keine vom Christentum nun endgültig überholte Religion, in der man nur aus Halsstarrigkeit und Trotz verbleibt. Sie hat eine bleibende Gültigkeit und Bedeutung, nicht zuletzt für das Christentum selbst. Dieser Geist strahlt besonders aus den Worten Pauls VI. hervor, der sich 1964 auf die historisch erste Reise eines Papstes ins Heilige Land begab, seit 150 Jahren die erste Reise eines Papstes außerhalb Italiens. In seiner Predigt in Bethlehem sprach er nun Juden und Muslime an: „Diesen ehrfurchtsvollen Gruß richten wir besonders an jene, die sich zum Eingottglauben bekennen und die mit uns ihren Gottesdienst dem einen wahren Gott, dem höchsten und lebendigen, darbringen, dem Gott Abrahams.“36 Eigentlich neu und entscheidend ist nicht der Hinweis auf den Monotheismus und Abraham als Verbindungsglieder, sondern in welchem Licht diese Gemeinsamkeiten gesehen werden: Beide, Juden und Muslime, beten „mit uns“, mit den Christen, zum selben Gott. Hier stehen sie quasi vereint vor Gott und stehen sich nicht mehr in einem unversöhnlichen Gegensatz gegenüber, und das im Kernstück, was Religion ausmacht, nämlich in der Verehrung Gottes. Diese Sichtweise konnte nun auch in den Konzilstexten auf die Muslime ausgezogen werden. Dies geschah zeitlich zuerst und wohl direkt in Anlehnung an die Predigt Pauls VI. in der Kirchenkonstitution Lumen gentium 16: „Die Heilsabsicht [Gottes] umfasst aber auch die, welche den Schöpfer anerkennen, unter ihnen besonders die Muslime, die, indem sie sich zum Glauben Abrahams bekennen, mit uns den einzigen Gott anbeten, den barmherzigen, der die Menschen am Jüngsten Tag richten wird.“ Die Muslime beten also nicht für sich einen anderen Gott an, auch nicht unseren oder den einen Gott, sondern sie beten „mit uns“ denselben einzigen Gott an.37 Im Gefolge des Basler Konzils war es also ein offenerer Umgang mit christlichen Häretikern, der das Modell darstellte, Einheit trotz Differenz zu  Vgl. Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 147. nach Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 104. 37 Die Erklärung über die nichtchristlichen Religionen macht diese tiefe Verbundenheit mit den Christen nicht mehr so deutlich, auch wenn es dort heißt (Nostra Aetate 3): „Mit Wertschätzung betrachtet die Kirche auch die Muslime, die den einzigen Gott anbeten […]“ Dennoch wird diese neue Sichtweise der Muslime schon in den ersten Kommentaren als kopernikanische Wende gefeiert, vgl. Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 146. 35

36 Zitiert

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suchen und so auch neu auf die Muslime zugehen zu können. Dass diese Impulse nicht vom Konzil von Florenz kamen, das von der Papstpartei bestimmt war und dort den Heilsausschluss für Häretiker verkündete, halte ich für keinen Zufall. Für das II. Vaticanum und die gerade zu Anfang des 20. Jh. beginnende vertiefte theologische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Islam war Häresie keine geeignete Kategorie mehr. Die Religionen sollten in ihrer Eigenständigkeit wahrgenommen und wertgeschätzt werden, soweit wie irgend möglich: „Die katholische Kirche lehnt nichts von alledem ab, was in diesen Religionen wahr und heilig ist“ (Nostra Aetate 2). Gerade darum konnte das Judentum ein Modell für die Klärung des Verhältnisses zu den anderen Religionen abgeben, bei dem man sich auf die biblische Tradition berufen und eine bleibende Wertschätzung auch der Andersheit gegenüber ausdrücken konnte.

4. Konkretionen von Contraferentia bis Dialog Nicht nur hinsichtlich eher allgemeiner historischer und theologischer Charakteristika lassen sich Parallelen zwischen dem Basler Konzil und dem II. Vaticanum ziehen, auch in einigen konkreten Punkten gibt es trotz der durch fünf Jahrhunderte hindurch gewandelten Problemlage verblüffende Analogien. Für das II. Vaticanum schlug etwa Georges C. Anawati OP schon 1962 vor, Muslime zum Konzil einzuladen.38 Zu einem solchen revolutionären Schritt kam es nicht, allerdings nahmen einige Muslime an der Schlusskundgebung teil. Noch gibt es keinen quellenkritischen Kommentar zur Konzilserklärung Nostra Aetate. Man weiß zwar, dass im Vorfeld jüdische Gelehrte konsultiert wurden39 und dass bei jenem kleinen Abschnitt über den Buddhismus neben katholischen Experten auch einige Buddhisten mitarbeiteten. Doch dass auch Muslime beim Abschnitt über die Muslime konsultiert wurden, ist mir nicht bekannt. Die Weißen Väter und Anawati, die wesentlich daran arbeiteten, waren Islamwissenschaftler, wie man heute sagen würde. Ob sie selbst nochmals ihre Texte, aus denen immerhin einige Formulierungen direkt in den Konzilstext übernommen wurden40, Muslimen vorgelegt haben, ist eine spannende und meines Wissens noch nicht geklärte Frage. Immerhin gehörte der vom Islam zum Christentum konvertierte Jean-Muḥammad Ben Adb-el-Jalil OFM zum Kreis jener engagierten katholischen Orientalisten, die dann später von Paul VI. 38  S. Jean-Jacques Pérennès, Georges Anawati (1905–1994). Ein ägyptischer Christ und das Geheimnis des Islam, Freiburg: Herder, 2010, S. 247. 39  S. Michael Attridge, „The Struggle for Nostra Aetate. The ‚Quaestione Ebraica‘ from 1960– 1962: Issues and Influences“, La théologie catholique entre intransigeance et renouveau. La réception des mouvements préconciliaires à Vatican II, hrsg. v. Gilles Routhier u. a., Louvain: Collège Erasme, 2011, S. 213–30, besonders 224–5. 40  S. Pérennès, Georges Anawati, S. 254–5, dort besonders Anm. 15.

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in Anerkennung ihrer Vorarbeiten für den christlich-islamischen Dialog in den Beraterkreis des Sekretariats für die Nichtchristen ernannt wurden.41 Entscheidender als der Punkt, ob wirklich Muslime in die Beratungsprozesse einbezogen wurden, ist aber, dass das Konzil seinem Selbstverständnis nach nicht mehr über andere Religionen verhandeln, sondern mit ihnen ins Gespräch kommen wollte. Darum lautet auch der Titel der Konzilserklärung Nostra Aetate „Erklärung über die Haltung der Kirche zu den nichtchristlichen Religionen“ (Declaratio de ecclesiae habitudine ad religiones non-christianas). Offenbar ging es dem Konzil nicht um eine Erklärung über die anderen Religionen, sondern um eine Selbstbesinnung gerade der Kirche auf ihre eigene innere Haltung gegenüber den Religionen, also kein Verhältnisbestimmung von oben herab aus einer theoretischen Vogelperspektive, sondern eine Selbstverpflichtung von innen heraus aus dem Wesen der Kirche. Roman Siebenrock hat dies in seinem Kommentar zu Nostra Aetate herausgestellt: „Die Kirche sucht das Gespräch mit den Menschen anderen Glaubens dadurch, dass sie jene Haltung erläutert und festlegt, mit der die Kirche ihnen begegnen wird.“42 Diese Haltung ist normativ gemeint mit Blick auf die Kirche, an ihr soll sie sich messen lassen, nicht die anderen Religionen gemessen werden. Eine Verhältnisbestimmung könnte die Religionen kaum anders denn als Objekte zu behandeln. Eine Erklärung über die Haltung der Kirche gegenüber den Religionen eröffnet dagegen einen Dialog mit den Religionen. Dieser kann nur im Gegenüber von Subjekten stattfinden. Das Konzil nahm also gerade nicht die Perspektive eines Blicks der Kirche von oben aus dem Vollbesitz der Wahrheit heraus ein, sondern von innen, aus ihrer eigenen Bestimmung heraus. Darum macht sie es sich und allen Mitchristen zur wirklich eigenen Aufgabe, „durch Gespräche und Zusammenarbeit mit den Anhängern anderer Religionen, indem sie ihren christlichen Glauben und ihr christliches Leben bezeugen, jene geistlichen und sittlichen Güter sowie jene soziokulturellen Werte, die sich bei ihnen finden, an[zu]erkennen, [zu] wahren und [zu] fördern“ (Nostra aetate 2). Konkret wird dies, indem nicht nur noch während des Konzils 1964 ein Sekretariat für die Nichtchristen eingerichtet, sondern dieses dann später 1988 zum Päpstlichen Rat für den Interreligiösen Dialog erhoben und den anderen Kurienbehörden gleichgestellt wurde.43 Überhaupt entdeckte das Konzil den Dialog als ureigene, wenn auch nicht einzige Aufgabe der Kirche und legte ihn allen Gläubigen ans Herz, „um selbst in aufrichtigem und geduldigem Dialog [dialogo sincero et patienti] zu lernen, welche Reichtümer der großzügige Gott den Völkern verteilt hat“ (Ad gentes 11). Zwar eröffnet sich hier sogleich die Spannung von Dialog und Verkündigung, also Evangelisierung bzw. Mission.  Vgl. Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 81.  Siebenrock, Theologischer Kommentar, S. 596. 43  S. Renz, Die katholische Kirche, S. 167. 41 42

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Doch der wertschätzende Blick des Konzils auf die nichtchristlichen Religionen verbietet es, das eine auf das andere zu reduzieren, also den Dialog als verstecktes Mittel zur Evangelisierung zu benutzen oder den Verkündigungsauftrag auf den Dialog als bloßen stillen Impuls oder Hinweis auf die Botschaft Christi zurückzunehmen. Institutionell gibt es so ebenfalls zwei getrennte Einrichtungen, nämlich den Päpstlichen Rat für den Interreligiösen Dialog und die Kongregation für die Evangelisierung der Völker. Wichtig ist auch, dass der Dialog verschiedene Dimensionen hat, nämlich die Theologie und Theorie, die spirituelle Erfahrung, den Dialog des praktischen Lebens und schließlich den des gemeinsamen Handelns für diese Welt.44 Nicht unerwähnt sei jener Höhepunkt, mit dem sich Papst Johannes Paul II. in der Sichtweise eher traditionalistischer Gruppen als Antipapst entpuppt haben soll, der aber letztlich ganz auf der Linie des Konzils bleibt, nämlich das Gebetstreffen 1986 in Assisi. Jetzt wurde nicht nur mit den Muslimen, sondern mit vielen Vertretern verschiedener Religion wirklich das eine göttliche Geheimnis angebetet. Diese Entwicklungen waren für einen Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts überraschend und geradezu kühn, um wieviel unverständlicher wären sie wohl für einen Menschen des 15. Jahrhunderts gewesen, könnte man auf den ersten Blick schließen. Doch ein genauerer Blick auf das 15. Jahrhundert zeigt auch dort ein Potential, das selbst wiederum einen Menschen des 21. Jahrhunderts zu verblüffen vermag und auch zukünftig der Kirche als Inspirationsquelle aus der eigenen Tradition dienen kann. Das Basler Konzil brachte es zu keiner Erklärung über die Haltung des Konzils oder der Kirche gegenüber Muslimen oder dem Islam. Der Kompromiss mit den Hussiten, bei denen es sich um eine innerchristliche Splittergruppe handelte, war vielleicht sein Höhepunkt. Die Friedensproblematik in Europa war ein unlösbares Problem, der Hundertjährige Krieg tobte weiter. Die Frage nach der Kirchenreform entglitt dem Konzil ebenso wie die Unionsverhandlungen mit den Griechen, als sich das Konzil spaltete und die Papstpartei schließlich in Florenz tagte, wo es diese Sache zu einem vorläufigen Erfolg bringen konnte. Dabei waren im Konzilsprogramm sowohl die Kirchenunion als auch die Einheit mit den noch Ungläubigen im Sinne einer Bekehrung ein Herzensanliegen. Von der Einheit mit den Hussiten über die Verständigung mit den Griechen erhoffte man sich eine fortschreitende Dynamik, die gerade auch die Muslime dahingehend mitreißen sollte, sich schließlich dem Christentum anzuschließen.45 Der 44 Vgl. das Dokument der beiden vatikanischen Organisationen Verkündigung und Dialog. Überlegungen und Orientierungen zum Interreligiösen Dialog und zur Verkündigung des Evangeliums Jesu Christi N. 42 (online verfügbar unter: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_19051991_dialogue-and-p​r​o​c​l​a​m​ a​t​i​o​_​e​n​.html). 45  Vgl. die Verlautbarung vom 7. 9. ​1434 in COD 2, 479: „Deshalb vertrauen wir darauf, daß mit Gottes Gnade dem christlichen Gemeinwesen noch ein anderes Glück zuteil wird. Es

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Blick über den Raum der verfassten Christenheit war dem Konzil ein Anliegen. So wurde 1434 das Dekret über die Juden und Neophyten verabschiedet.46 Darin werden bei den konkreten Regelungen zur Missionstätigkeit und zum Umgang mit Juden oder Neugetauften deutlich nicht nur die Juden, sondern alle „Ungläubigen“ in den Blick genommen, auch wenn die letzte Gruppe nicht mehr präzisiert wird. Das Konzil hatte sich also auch hier auf eine umfassende Perspektive festgelegt. Doch die konkreten Bestimmungen waren eher restriktiv und repressiv und nicht an einem Kennenlernen, Gespräch oder Dialog mit den Andersgläubigen interessiert, wurde doch sogar der alltägliche Umgang mit den anderen eingeschränkt und sollte auf das Notwendigste beschränkt werden. Erst recht nicht kam es wie mit den Hussiten zu offiziellen Verhandlungen. Doch muss man sehen, dass es daneben auch tastende Versuche in verschiedene Richtungen hin zu einer Öffnung gegenüber den Andersgläubigen gab. So war man auf alle Fälle sehr interessiert und wach für neue und fundierte Informationen über das, was sich hinter den Grenzen des christlichen Abendlandes befand. Der Legat des Konzils in Konstantinopel und stellvertretende Konzilspräsident Johannes von Ragusa beschaffte sich in Byzanz nicht nur neue Quellen, sondern studierte sie auch eingehend. Er schrieb noch vor seinem Tod 1443 und damit, noch während das Basler Konzil tagte, an einem Traktat zum Islam.47 Darin verarbeitete er einmal die ihm zugänglichen Informationen über die Welt des Islams, allen voran Riccoldos Contra legem Sarracenorum. Doch der Traktat hatte offensichtlich nicht allein die innerchristliche Verständigung zum Ziel, sondern war wohl an einen muslimischen Herrscher gerichtet. Es werden zwei Ziele genannt, erstens von der Wahrheit des christlichen Glaubens Zeugnis abzulegen gegen die anderslautenden Aussagen in der muslimischen Tradition, zweitens aber auch aus einem soteriologischen Interesse heraus die Muslime für das Heil zu gewinnen. Auch Ragusa macht sich hier also das Anliegen Cesarinis bezüglich der Hussiten zu Eigen, die Häretiker nicht zu vernichten oder sie ihrem Schicksal zu überlassen, sondern sie für die rettende Wahrheit zu gewinnen. Dass hier natürlich noch anders als beim II. Vaticanum kein Unterschied zwischen Dialog und Verkündigung gemacht wird, ist offensichtlich. ist nämlich zu hoffen, daß sich infolge des Zustandekommens der Union sehr viele von der ungläubigen Gefolgschaft Mohammeds zum katholischen Glauben bekehren.“ („Unde et aliam reipublicae christianae, Deo propitio, utilitatem accrescere confidimus, quoniam ex hac unione, cum facta fuerit, plurimos ex nefanda Mahumeti secta ad fidem catholicam converti sperandum est.“). 46 S. das Decretum de Iudaeis et neophytis, COD 2, 483–485; vgl. dazu Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, S. 336–7 und 346 sowie Carlos Gilly, Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck bis 1600. Ein Querschnitt durch die spanische Geistesgeschichte aus der Sicht einer europäischen Buchdruckerstadt, Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1985, S. 41–8. 47  S. Aloysius Krchňák, De vita et operibus Ioannis de Ragusio, Rom: Universitas Lateranensis, 1960–1961, S. 60; eine Edition dieses Werkes bereite ich mit meinen Mitarbeitern für die Reihe Corpus Islamo-Christianum vor.

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DasAnliegen Ragusas, fundierte Kenntnis über die Welt des Islams zu gewinnen, scheint während des Konzils nicht singulär geblieben zu sein. Auch Johannes von Segovia arbeitete sich noch während des Konzils durch den lateinischen Koran hindurch und notierte sich „Irrtümer“, die er darin fand.48 Als er dann vom Fall Konstantinopels 1453 erfuhr, konnte er sich sogleich daran machen, seinen umfangreichen Traktat De gladio divini spiritus (Über das Schwert des Heiligen Geistes) zu verfassen.49 In ihm plädierte er für eine friedliche Verständigung mit den Sarazenen und entwickelte auch erste Ansätze für ein Modell, wie mit ihnen über ihren Glauben zu sprechen sei. Wie Ragusa plagte ihn, dass die Sarazenen der ewigen Verdammnis anheimfallen sollten. Dabei sah er, auch aufgrund seiner eigenen Erfahrungen aus Gesprächen mit Muslimen: Die feindliche Haltung gegenüber Christen war vielen Missverständnissen geschuldet, mit denen der einzelne, oft ungebildete Gläubige groß geworden war, ohne sie durchschauen zu können. In Segovias Sicht ist schwer zu erkennen, welche subjektive Schuld der einzelne Gläubige eigentlich für seinen Irrglauben und damit seine Verdammung haben soll, da er durch vielerlei Irrtümer getäuscht wurde. Umso wichtiger waren Segovia daher klärende Gespräche. Als optimales Ergebnis visierte er zwar auch hier wie Ragusa eine Bekehrung der Gesprächspartner an. Doch gerade aufgrund seiner vertieften Gedanken über den Koran und seine Lehren entdeckte er noch andere, in unseren Augen realitätsnähere Ziele, die solche bei ihm doch auch heilstheologisch motivierten Gespräche rechtfertigen würden. Das Gespräch mit den Sarazenen rechtfertigen würde für Segovia z. B. schon die Möglichkeit, die falschen Ansichten der muslimischen Seite über die Christen zurechtzurücken und deren Vorurteile wie die Unterstellung eines Tritheismus oder ähnliches richtig zu stellen.50 Die Aufgabe wäre also hierbei noch nicht die Bekehrung, sondern erst einmal die Klärung von Glaubensinhalten. Dies wäre ein erster notwendiger Schritt Richtung Bekehrung, aber auch in Richtung eines Endes für die beständigen Kriegszüge, die sich gerade aus den falschen Vorurteilen ergäben. Damit näherte sich Segovia der Unterscheidung von Dialog und Verkündigung, die im Zuge des II. Vaticanums stark gemacht wurde. Segovia selbst praktizierte dies schon vor dem Basler Konzil, als er 1431 in Spanien das Gespräch mit Muslimen suchte oder als er viele Jahre später einen muslimischen Übersetzer für den arabischen Koran bei sich hatte und es ihm dabei um den Gedankenaustausch, nicht die Bekehrung ging. Er ließ sich von ihm die muslimischen Vorwürfe gegen das Christentum aufschreiben, um dann später einmal auf sie antworten zu können. 48  S. Anna Bündgens u. a.: „Die Errores legis Mahumeti des Johannes von Segovia“, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch, 15 (2013), S. 27–60, zur Datierung besonders S. 40–1; zu Segovias Beschäftigung mit dem Islam s. besonders Wolf, Juan de Segovia. 49  S. hierzu Johannes von Segovia, De gladio (hrsg. v. Roth), darin besonders die Considerationes 13–16. 50  Vgl. Johannes von Segovia, De gladio (Hrsg. Roth), Consideratio 38, S. 286–90.

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Auch machte sich Segovia Gedanken über Bedingungen solcher interreligiöser Gespräche: Einstellung von Kriegshandlungen, Argumentation auf der Basis genauer Kenntnisse über den Koran und mittels Vernunftschlüssen, keine Übersetzer als Zwischeninstanzen, sich mit Respekt und Hochachtung begegnen, Gespräche auf der Leitungsebene.51 Dass diese Gespräche durchaus mit harten Bandagen zu führen und mehr als kontrovers sein würden, wusste er aus eigener Erfahrung und überschrieb sie einmal mit dem Wort contraferentia, also „Entgegen-tragung“, nicht einfach Konferenz oder Zusammenkunft. Das Konfliktpotential bei solchen Gesprächen war ihm bekannt. Darum benutzte er diesen Ausdruck, den er z. B. in seiner Konzilsgeschichte für innerchristliche Auseinandersetzungen etwa bei einem Konklave oder für die Disputationen mit den Ostchristen verwandte.52 Während nun in Folge des II. Vatikanischen Konzils zu einem ausführlichen Dialogprozess mit dem Islam kam, lässt sich derartiges nicht vom Basler Konzil feststellen. Allerdings zieht etwa Johannes von Segovia noch vor dem Fall Konstantinopels 1453 die Möglichkeit in Betracht, mit den Muslimen wie mit den Hussiten auf einem Konzil in ein Glaubensgespräch zu kommen, um sie in den Schoß der christlichen Kirche heimzuholen.53 Auch wenn es dazu bisher in der Realität nicht gekommen ist, so hat doch sein Gesprächspartner Nikolaus von Kues zumindest in der theologischen Imagination eine solche Vision durchgespielt. Er nun konnte zwar angesichts der Erfolge der osmanischen Eroberer manchmal in seinen Predigten ebenfalls in den Ruf nach einem neuen Kreuzzug einstimmen. Doch sowohl in seiner ersten Reaktion auf den Fall Konstantinopels De pace fidei als auch in seiner für Pius II. bestimmten Schrift Cribratio Alkorani, also „Siebung des Korans“, verfolgte er einen weiter gehenden Plan. In De pace fidei entwarf er ein Konzil der Religionen, und zwar offensichtlich aus seinen Erfahrungen auf dem Basler Konzil heraus. In den Diskussionen kommen die einzelnen Religionsvertreter zu Wort und werden zu einer gemeinsamen Sichtweise hingeführt. Diese fasste er in der schon erwähnten Formulierung „eine Religion in der Verschiedenheit der Riten“ (religio una in rituum varietate) zusammen.54 Die Verschiedenheiten können sich bei Cusanus zwar nicht auf der inhaltlichen Ebene äußern, nur in den Formen der Gottesverehrung. Auch  Vgl. Johannes von Segovia, De gladio (Hrsg. Roth), Consideratio 3 und 38.  Vgl. hierzu besonders Wolf, Juan de Segovia, S. 177–82. 53  S. Johannes von Segovia, Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in Concilio generali XI § 3, hrsg. v. Rolf de Kegel, Freiburg/Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1995, S. 605; vgl. den Hinweis von Jesse D. Mann, „Juan de Segovia on the Superiority of Christians over Muslims: Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in concilio generali 10.6“, Nicholas of Cusa, hrsg. v. Ian Christopher Levy u. a., S. 145–59, 152 Anm. 40. 54  S. Belege und Literatur oben in Anm. 34. Wie wenig selbstverständlich dieses Konzept in allen Religionen damals war, zeigen die breit angelegten Untersuchungen in José Martínez Gázquez und John V. Tolan (Hrsg.), Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la edad media, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013. 51 52

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ist die eine Religion, auf die jede Gottesverehrung implizit hinläuft, durch und durch christlich bestimmt. Doch die Idee, in den anderen zuallererst Häresien zu entdecken, hatte Cusanus damit endgültig aufgegeben und zu einer Perspektive gefunden, in der das Wahre und Heilige in den anderen Religionen ähnlich wie nach Nostra aetate 2 nicht nur nicht verworfen, sondern mit Hochachtung betrachtet werden konnte.55 Diese Formulierung der einen Religion in der Verschiedenheit der Riten als christliche Grundvision für den respektvollen Blick auf die anderen Religionen entdeckte Cusanus auch in der aus dem Arabischen ins Lateinische übersetzten Schrift Doctrina Mahumeti (12. Jahrhundert), nachdem sie ihm doch schon zuvor während des Konzils von Basel bei seinen eigenen Arbeiten zu den Lehren der Hussiten in die Feder geflossen war. Nur wer die enge Verbindung von Konzilsidee und Konzilsdynamik sowie dem sich daran orientierenden christlichen Blick auf den Islam nicht kennt, dürfte sich über derartige Christentum und Islam miteinander verwebende Verbindungen noch wundern.

Literaturverzeichnis Alberigo, Giuseppe (Hrsg.), Geschichte des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (1959–1965), Mainz: Grünewald, 1997–2008. Attridge, Michael, „The Struggle for Nostra Aetate. The ‚Quaestione Ebraica‘ from 1960– 1962: Issues and Influences“, La théologie catholique entre intransigeance et renouveau. La réception des mouvements préconciliaires à Vatican II, hrsg. v. Gilles Routhier u. a., Louvain: Collège Erasme, 2011, S. 213–30. Bündgens, Anna u. a.: „Die Errores legis Mahumeti des Johannes von Segovia“, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch, 15 (2013), S. 27–60. Cadili, Alberto, Lo Spirito e il Concilio. Basilea 1432. Legittimazione pneumatologica del conciliarismo, preface by Jürgen Miethke, Bologna: il Mulino, 2016. Cecconi, Eugenio, Studi storici sul concilio di Firenze. Con documenti inediti o nuovamente dat alla luce sui manoscritti di Firenze e di Roma, Bd. 1: Antecedenti del concilio, Florenz: Antonio, 1869. Christianson, Gerald, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal. The Basel Years 1431–1438, St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1979. De Kegel, Rolf (Hrsg.), Johannes von Segovia, Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in Concilio generali XI § 3, Freiburg/Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1995. Decaluwé, Michiel, Thomas M. Izbicki und Gerald Christianson (Hrsg.), A Companion to the Council of Basel, Leiden: Brill, 2016. Decaluwé, Michiel, A Successful Defeat. Eugene IV’s Struggle with the Council of Basel for Ultimate Authority in the Church 1431–1449, Brussels: Brepols, 2009. Euler, Walter Andreas, „Una religio in rituum varietate. Der Beitrag des Nikolaus von Kues zur Theologie der Religionen“, Jahrbuch für Religionswissenschaft und Theologie der Religionen, 3 (1995), S. 67–82. 55 Vgl. zu den Parallelen zwischen Cusanus und Nostra aetate Tom Kerger, Pia interpretatio. Vier christliche Theologen im Gespräch mit dem Islam, Trier: Paulinus, 2009, S. 144–5.

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Friedberg, Emil (Hrsg.), Clemens III.: De Iudaeis, 2 Bde., Leipzig: Tauchnitz, ²1879. Haller, Johannes et al. (Hrsg.), Concilium Basiliense, 8 Bde., Basel: R. Reich u. a., 1857– 1936. Johannes Paul II., Die Schwelle der Hoffnung überschreiten, Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1994. Gay-Canton, Réjane, „Lorsque Muḥammad orne les autels. Sur l’utilisation de la théologie islamique dans la controverse autour de l’Immaculée Conception de la fin du xive au début du xviiie siècle“, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 94 (2010), S. 201–48. Gázquez, José M. und Tolan, John V. (Hrsg.), Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la edad media, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013. Glei, Reinhold (Hrsg.), Petrus Venerabilis, „Contra legem Saracenorum“, Petrus Ve­ne­ra­ bilis, Schriften zum Islam, Altenberge: CIS-Verlag, 1985. Gilly, Carlos, Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck bis 1600. Ein Querschnitt durch die spanische Geistesgeschichte aus der Sicht einer europäischen Buchdruckerstadt, Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1985. Güzelmansur, Timo, Die offiziellen Dokumente der katholischen Kirche zum Dialog mit dem Islam, Regensburg: Pustet, 2009. Hamann, Florian, „Der Koran als ekklesiologische Autorität bei Heymericus de Campo († 1460)“, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 50 (2003), S. 150–62. – „Koran und Konziliarismus. Anmerkungen zum Verhältnis von Heymericus de Campo und Nikolaus von Kues“, Vivarium, 43/2 (2005), S. 275–91. – Das Siegel der Ewigkeit. Universalwissenschaft und Konziliarismus bei Heymericus de Campo, Münster: Aschendorff, 2006. Hazard, Harry W. (Hrsg.), A History of the Crusades, Bd. 3. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975. Helmrath, Johannes, Das Basler Konzil 1431–1449. Forschungsstand und Probleme, Köln: Böhlau, 1987. Hünermann, Peter und Hilberath, Bernd J. (Hrsg.), Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, 5 Bde., Freiburg: Herder, 2004–2006. Hyland, William P., „John-Jerome of Prague and the Religion of the Saracens“, Medieval Christian Perceptions on Islam, hrsg. v. John V. Tolan, New York: Routledge, 1996, S. 199–208. Kaczynski, Reiner, „Theologischer Kommentar zur Konstitution über die heilige Liturgie Sacrosanctum Concilium“, Herders Theologischer Kommentar, hrsg. v. Peter Hünermann und Bernd J. Hilberath, Bd. 2, S. 1–227. Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hrsg.), Monumenta Conciliorum Generalium Seculi decimi quinti, 4 Bde, Vienna: Holzhausen, 1857–1935. Kerger, Tom, Pia interpretatio. Vier christliche Theologen im Gespräch mit dem Islam, Trier: Paulinus, 2009. Krchňák, Aloysius, De vita et operibus Ioannis de Ragusio, Rom: Universitas Lateranensis, 1960–1961. Mann, Jesse D., „Juan de Segovia on the Superiority of Christians over Muslims: Liber de magna auctoritate episcoporum in concilio generali“, Nicholas of Cusa and Islam. Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, hrsg. v. Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-Tvrtković und Donald Duclow, Leiden: Brill, 2014, S 145–59. Mansi, Giovanni (Hrsg.), Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, Paris u. a.: Welter, 1901–1927.

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Secularisation and Conflicting Images of the Prophet in Contemporary Islam* The Critical Meaning of Prophetology according to ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd (1910–78) Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino 1. Introduction: How Should Muslims Perceive the Prophet Muḥammad? The question of how the Prophet should be perceived is not a trivial one. The answer has important consequences for how Muslims understand and practise their religion. Considered the personification of the divine teaching revealed in the Qur’an, the Prophet’s conduct, teaching and life has for Muslims a normative and exemplary value and, as such, forms the fundamental source and reference for the articulation of the Islamic religion. As Constance Padwick puts it, the relationship to the Prophet constitutes the emotional and spiritual centre of religious life in Islam: ‘No one can estimate the power of Islam as a religion who does not take into account the love at the heart of it for this figure. It is here that human emotion, repressed at some points by the austerity of the doctrine of God as developed in theology, has its full outlet – a warm human emotion which the peasant can share with the mystic. The love of this figure is perhaps the strongest binding force in a religion which has so marked a binding force’.1 The Islamic identity of a Muslim is, amongst other things, dependent on his or her perception of the Prophet Muḥammad. What distinguishes a Muslim from a non-Muslim is that the former has an image of the figure of Muḥammad, determined and shaped by belief in his prophecy. This fact is clearly illustrated by the Islamic testimony of faith, the second and concluding part of which is formed by the attestation of Muḥammad’s prophethood. * This contribution was supported by the Interreg V Oberrhein project Inter-Religio, which is financed by the European Fund FEDER. 1 See Constance E. Padwick, Muslim Devotions. A Study of Prayer-Manuals in Common Use, Oxford: Oneworld, 1996, p. 145.

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Unsurprisingly, the question of how the Prophet should be perceived has been treated abundantly in Islamic tradition. Representations of the Prophet in the various literary, discursive and ritual forms that have developed within the history of Islamic thought and practice reflect an ongoing effort to answer this question. The ‘Islamic image’ of the Prophet Muḥammad is in fact the history of representations developed by Islamic traditions in order to fulfil the shifting historical needs of Muslim communities. Thus, it is understandable why the representation of the Prophet Muḥammad has been the object of constant theological debate throughout the history of Islam. In a similar way, the Islamic image of the Prophet Muḥammad constitutes an abundantly discussed object of academic research.2 The reason for this scholarly interest lies not only in the historical and cultural significance of this topic, but also in the history of Western perceptions of the figure of Muḥammad.3 As Andreas Goerke summarizes the situation, ‘[…] the question of how perceptions of Muḥammad changed in the course of the following one and a half centuries [after the Qur’an] is contentious’.4 The history of Islam suggests that questions regarding representation of the Prophet are raised and treated in the most decisive and creative manner during periods of crisis. Modernism and the secularization of political, social and cultural structures and practices in the twentieth century undoubtedly constitute one such period of crisis.5 As we will see through the case of the famed Azhar scholar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd (d. 1398/1978) (Maḥmūd hereafter) this crisis lead to the development of new approaches towards the question of the Islamic perception of the Prophet Muḥammad. Originating in the West in the form of Orientalism, secular research on the figure of Muḥammad offered a different reading of Muslim sources. It depicted an image of Muḥammad 2  For example, see Tor Andrae, Die Person Muhammeds im Leben und Glauben seiner Gemeinde, Stockholm: Kungl. Boktryckeriet P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1918; Annemarie Schimmel, Und Muḥammad ist Sein Prophet. Die Verehrung des Propheten in der islamischen Frömmigkeit, München: Diederichs, 31995; Uri Rubin, The eye of the beholder. The life of Muḥammad as viewed by the early Muslims. A Textual Analysis, vol. 5, Princeton NJ: The Darwin Press, 1995; Marco Schöller, Exegetisches Denken und Prophetenbiographie. Eine quellenkritische Analyse der SīraÜberlieferung zu Muḥammads Konflikt mit den Juden, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998; Tilman Nagel, Allahs Liebling. Ursprung und Erscheinungsformen des Mohammedglaubens, München: Oldenbourg, 2008; Mareike Körtner, We Have Made Clear the Signs. Dalāʾil al-Nubūwa. Proofs of Prophecy in Early Hadīth Literature, PhD diss., Yale University, New Haven CT, 2012; Claude Addas, La maison Muḥammadienne. Aperçus de la dévotion au Prophète en mystique musulmane, Paris: Gallimard, 2015. 3 See especially Avinoam Shalem (ed.), Constructing the Image of Muḥammad in Europe, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. 4 Andreas Goerke, “Introduction. Images of Muḥammad in the Course of Time”, Muḥammad. Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, ed. Andreas Goerke, New York NY: Routledge, 2015, vol. 1, p. 1. 5  Jonathan Brown speaks very accurately of ‘a crisis of confidence’ towards canonical culture in Jonathan Brown, Misquoting Muḥammad. The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy, Oxford: Oneworld, 2014, p. 70.

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which stresses the political, social and economic motivations of his mission6 and claims to represent historical reality. As Muslims respond to images of Muḥammad mediated by secular research, Orientalism comes to effectively influence contemporary Islamic thought. In this way, secular research shapes, in a more or less direct way, the prophetological debate in modern Islam. While academic research has focused on the historical emergence and development of the Islamic image of Muḥammad, the study of how this image is re-interpreted and negotiated in contemporary Islam, particularly in light of the cultural dynamics of interaction between Muslim thought and Orientalist research, remains a desideratum.7 In view of the above, this study analyzes how Maḥmūd, an influential and popular representative of contemporary Islamic scholarship, responds to the challenge that modernity poses to the Islamic perception of the Prophet Muḥammad and how this leads him to develop the critical potential of prophetology with regard to the role of cultural transfer in modern Islamic thought and writing. While Part One explores the problematization and interrogation of the image of Muḥammad in contemporary Islam, Part Two centres upon the precise discursive context in which Maḥmūd formulated his prophetological criticism. Part Three offers analysis of Maḥmūd’s criticism and perceptions of his approach to the issue of Islamic representation of the Prophet Muḥammad.

2. Images of Muḥammad, Prophetological Debates, and Cultural Transfer In a recent study conducted from the perspective of comparative history of world art, Christiane Gruber and Avinoam Shalem stress the global dimensions of images of the Prophet and insist upon the necessity of interdisciplinary and transcultural approaches to the subject matter. With reference to prophetic iconography in Persian illustrated manuscripts, they conclude that, ‘these medieval images of the Prophet are as multicultural in their formulations and aspirations 6  Indeed, in most of orientalist research, the eschatological scope of Muḥammad’s mission has been widely neglected. On “The Practical Muḥammad: Social Reformer, Political Organizer, Empire Builder” in western scholarship, see Stephen J., Shoemaker, “The Reign of God Has Come: Eschatology and Empire in Late Antiquity and Early Islam”, Arabica, 61 (2014), pp. 518–23. 7 For an overview of the emergence, development and renegotiation of images of Muḥammad, see Tarif Khalidi, Images of Muḥammad. Narratives of the Prophet in Islam across the Centuries, New York NY: Doubleday, 2009, pp. 281–303. See also Anna M. Gade, “Religious Biography of the Prophet Muḥammad in Twenty-First-Century Indonesia”, The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad, ed. Jonathan E. Brockopp, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 251–73; Abdulkader Tayob, “Muḥammad in the future”, The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad, pp. 293–308.

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as their modern counterparts’.8 The case of figurative medieval images shows why representations of the Prophet are to be considered in terms of the interactions between cultures they reflect. These representations do in fact constitute a projection surface for Islamic identities and for the aspirations of Muslim communities and societies. Images of Muḥammad are articulated in certain cultural contexts in order to reaffirm the Islamicity of a culture and to determine its borders, or to legitimize influences from other cultural backgrounds and to integrate divergent cultural discourses or practices. Gruber and Shalem also make the interesting observation that that representations of the Prophet reflect relationships between the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’: ‘The construction and the reception of images of Muḥammad […] intersect and mediate perceived conflicts between ‘East’ and ‘West’ from the past to today. The many and varied representations of the Prophet therefore function as visual documents – a litmus test of sorts – for the articulation of identity and belonging via expressions of inclusivity and exclusivity’.9 As Uri Rubin demonstrates, representations of the Prophet, for example, in early Sīra writing, fulfil the function of defining the confessional identity of the Muslim community – particularly in relation to other religious confessions – and the role of their communities in human salvation history. Indeed, in the history of Islam, prophetology – that is, dogmatic, normative, narrative and figurative discourses about prophecy  – has always served as a major ground for debates and polemics concerning the transfer of knowledge systems or of social practices from other cultural traditions.10 In a religious context such as the Islamic, the fact that the representation of the Prophet reflects the aspirations of a society, of its self-perception and of its relationship to the other, is inseparable from the question of the ‘orthodoxy’ of this representation and the matter of whether it corresponds to the way Muslims should perceive the Prophet.11 In other words, the question of whether a certain image of the Prophet corresponds to the ‘truths of faith’ and to the conception of Muḥammadan prophethood, as they are articulated by Islamic revelation and salvation history, constitutes an important element in the process of constructing, de-constructing and re-constructing these representations.  8  Christiane J. Gruber and Avinoam Shalem (eds.), The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology. A Scholarly Investigation, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014, p. 2.  9  Gruber and Shalem, The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology, p. 3. 10  This relevance of prophetology is equally true today. See Felice Dassetto, Polémiques révélatrices autour du Prophète, Cismoc Papers on line, https://cdn.uclouvain.be/public/E​x​p​o​ r​t​s​%​2​0​r​e​d​d​o​t​/​e​s​p​o​/documents/Polemiques_revelatrices _autour_du_prophete.pdf (accessed online on 3 May 2017). 11 It is important to note the difference with the question of ‘how Muslims actually do perceive the Prophet Muḥammad’. In our question, we are explicitly dealing with the theological and normative aspect of the representation of the Prophet Muḥammad, not with how it is factually lived and practised in determined social and cultural circumstances as can be disclosed through anthropological inquiry.

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2.1. Reality, Representation, and Perceptions of Muḥammad in Reformist Criticism In light of the above, it is necessary to consider the epistemological dimension of these debates in order to understand their theological implications. The question of the grounds upon which knowledge of the ‘true’ representation of the Prophet can be obtained is a crucial matter here: Is it upon the basis of revelation, rational speculation, or historical data that one obtains an Islamic representation of the Prophet Muḥammad? It is easy to see how, in determined historical situations, this question implies the problem of the Islamic character of these sources of prophetological knowledge. While there is naturally little doubt about the Islamicity of revelation as transmitted by the tradition,12 certain theological currents in the Middle Ages consider the Aristotelian configuration of philosophical rationality as problematic.13 And, as we shall see, the same holds for the Western origin of the historical critical method in the modern period. The study of Maḥmūd’s works on prophetology and the discursive horizon of Islam in 1960s and 1970s Egypt sheds light on the ways the question of ‘what an Islamic image of Muḥammad should look like’ took on particular significance in the contemporary period.14 Tarif Khalidi, among others, has shown how modernity raised a completely new type of challenge to the Islamic representation of the Prophet.15 In particular, the delineation of the ‘historical Muḥammad’ of Orientalist research16 with the ‘Muḥammad of faith’ introduces new approaches towards the scriptural sources of Islam into modern Islamic thinking. Situated in a space of tension between the religious and the secular, debates about the Islamic representation of Muḥammad reflect and contain the major interrogations and issues of modern Islamic thought and theology. To inquire about the Islamic representation of Muḥammad means touching upon the origin, nature and scope of the prophetic dignity of Muḥammad, and, as a consequence, upon the theologically fundamental issues of divine election and of revelation. Ultimately, this means questioning the nature and limits of the normative authority of this prophetic dignity.

12  To be precise, it should be added that even the genuine Islamic character of the various modalities of this transmission were an object of debate. 13 See Nadjet Zouggar’s chapter in this volume. 14  This observation is illustrated by the exceptional productivity of Sira writing in this period: ‘Especially since the thirties […], Egypt has been flooded with a stream of literature about the life of Muḥammad. Indeed, it has been contended that more books have been written about Muḥammad since that time than during many centuries before […]’ See Antonie Wessels, A modern Arabic biography of Muḥammad. A critical study of Muḥammad Hussayn Haykal’s Hayat Muḥammad, Leiden: Brill, 1972, p. 1. 15  Khalidi, Images of Muḥammad, pp. 247–303. 16  The very notion of ‘historical Muḥammad’ is indebted to the New Testament Studies and its notion of the ‘historical Jesus’. For a comparison of both, see Francis E. Peters, “The Quest of the Historical Muḥammad”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 23 (1991), pp. 291–315.

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In light of the complexity of the crucial historical and theological matter of Islamic perception of the Prophet, our initial question, ‘how should Muslims perceive the Prophet Muḥammad?’ must be answered in a way that takes into account three underlying elements: the actual person known as the Prophet Muḥammad, the representation of this figure, and the perception of his representation. In short, a given perception of the Prophet Muḥammad implies an idea of whom or what he was, a notion of how valid representation is obtained, and an understanding of what constitutes an acceptable perception of this representation. This triple structure allows for a clearer understanding of the challenge presented by modernity. Islamic tradition was confronted most effectively with this challenge by modern reformist thinkers who questioned the legitimacy and the historical, theological, and normative value of ‘canonical’ Islamic representations of the Prophet Muḥammad. This contestation was essentially focused upon challenging the correspondence between the represented and the representation: That is, between the actual personality of Muḥammad the Prophet and the image formed by Islamic tradition and scholarly discourse. Reformist thought questioned this correspondence in its historical, theological and normative dimension. It challenged the correspondence between the historical reality of Muḥammad and the traditional Islamic representations of him, the correspondence between the original Qur’anic account about the Prophet and the post-Qur’anic image, and finally, it argued that there is a discrepancy between the normative value of Islamic representations and the cultural and historical contingency of the Muḥammadan personality and mission. These three critical approaches were not invented by Islamic reformists, but developed from a multifaceted process of engagement with Orientalism and modern Western philosophy. The various reformist criticisms of the canonical Islamic representations of Muḥammad are, to varying degrees and in different ways, a result of a cultural transfer triggered by colonialism and the emergence of a Western-educated middle class in the Muslim world. As will be discussed in the first section of this study, discourses about the Prophet Muḥammad developed in twentieth century Egypt are largely determined by reactions against Orientalist research on the Sīra and on Hadith, or by attempts to integrate it. The conflictual potential of this transfer needs to be understood in light of a historical situation in which religion sought to regain its intelligibility and its social visibility. We must also keep in mind that the transfer took place between explicitly secular and sometimes even anti-religious forms of discourses, and those dealing specifically with a figure symbolic of Islamic identity. The transfer is also intimately tied to the social dimension of Islamic scholarship, whereby the new Egyptian middle class felt it had begun to replace the traditional scholarly elite, particularly the ʿulamāʾ of the great al-Azhar, as the interpretative authority of Islam.17 The  As the example of Egypt’s most important reformer and Mufti of Azhar, Muḥammad

17

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tensions explored here are enhanced by the colonial origins of Orientalism and the cultural and political meanings that Islamic polemics against Orientalist research take on. 2.2. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd and the Modernization of Islamic Culture Maḥmūd seems well aware of the above-mentioned three dimensions of Orientalist and reformist criticism, and the role that cultural transfer plays in it. In his own criticism of reformist prophetology, and of contemporary Sīra writing, he argues for the theological necessity of sharp distinction between a genuine Islamic approach based on revelation and tradition, and a secular approach based on methodologies imported from Orientalism. As we shall see, Maḥmūd aims to demonstrate that this distinction should be applied to the actual person of the Prophet Muḥammad, as well as to his representation and its perception. Having obtained a doctorate at the Sorbonne under famed Orientalist Louis Massignon (1883–1962), he has direct and practical experience of secular research on Islam. As head of al-Azhar, he is also the highest representative of traditional Islamic authority in Egypt and thus equally aware of the sociocultural stakes of the modern prophetological debate. His tenure as Shaykh al-Azhar (1393–1398/1973–1978) fell in a crucial period of modern Egyptian history, marked by politically motivated rapprochement with the liberal West and by the phenomena of Islamization of culture, politics and society in counter-reaction. Within this Kulturkampf, Maḥmūd comes to represent a unique symbiosis of Egyptian Shādhilī Sufism, Orientalism in the vein of Louis Massignon, and Azharī Islamic traditionalism. Whilst in his academic experience and active interest in modern Western culture and scholarship he is, in a sense, ‘more modern’ than many contemporaries, he demonstrates at the same time a distinct esteem for, and a categorical trust in, the Islamic intellectual tradition. This characteristic of his profile distinguishes him from many contemporary Islamic intellectuals who, in one way or in another, aim to reform or revise this tradition and its representatives, and who, for various reasons, express a certain mistrust or doubt towards its legitimacy, authenticity or simply its basic ʿAbduh (1265–1323/1849–1905), demonstrates, the somewhat stereotypical division between reformers and traditionalists does not always reflect exactly the social distinction between a traditional elite and a modern middle class. In the same way, the view of reformism as a dynamic and contextualized discourse in contrast to the supposed static character of Islamic tradition considerably distorts the picture of Islam in the contemporary period. For the dynamic character of premodern Islam, see Thomas Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität. Eine andere Geschichte des Islams, Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011. For the issue of religious authority and the role of the ʿulamāʾ, see Speaking for Islam. Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies, Leiden: Brill, 2006. Concerning the public role of traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars in Muslim societies and how they react to the transformations they have undergone in the modern era, see Muḥammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Custodians of Change, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

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relevance. It is perhaps this very attitude that earned him the title of ‘Ghazālī of the twentieth century’.18 And, as Malika Zeghal points out, he seems capable of combining apparently opposing positions, such as Sufism and a certain type of Salafism.19 In all his heterogeneity, Maḥmūd’s profile reflects major tendencies of contemporary Islam in the Middle East, while being at the same time specifically Egyptian. A major actor in the public life and religious discourse of contemporary Egypt,20 Maḥmūd’s trajectory21 and thought is studied in light of the rehabilitation, through mass media, of Sufism in Egyptian public discourse;22 his role in the redefinition and public appearance of the ‘Islamic intellectual’;23 his role in the modernization of Azhar and the 1970s policy of Islamization24 and, his role in the relationship of Azhar towards politics.25 Recent research has attempted to explain Maḥmūd’s popularity in terms of his use of modern media, his AzharSufi-Salafist profile, and his role in the re-establishment of Azhar’s independence and prestige during the Sadat era. Consequently, Maḥmūd’s thought and literary production is primarily analyzed in relation to his role as an apologist for Sufism or defender of the political independence of al-Azhar, but not in its own right as a genuine theological contribution. Beyond developing a prophetology of his own, Maḥmūd engaged at length with critique of contemporary Islamic thought and writing about the Prophet Muḥammad, bringing to light aspects of the modern prophetological debate that have not yet received due academic attention. In order to fill this gap, we will focus here upon Maḥmūd’s Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa (The indications of [Muḥammad’s] prophecy), the most sophisticated of his works on the Prophet which demonstrates the maturity of his prophetological  Hatsuki Aishima, Public culture and Islam in modern Egypt. Media, intellectuals and Society, London: I. B. Tauris, 2016, pp. 131–3. 19  For Maḥmūd’s hybrid profile as reason for his popularity, see Malika Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam. Les oulémas d’Al Azhar dans l’Égypte contemporaine, Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po, 1996, pp. 147–9. 20  For Maḥmūd’s achievements and his significance for Middle Eastern Studies, see Hatsuki Aishima, “A Sufi-ʿÂlim Intellectual in Contemporary Egypt, ‘Al-Ghazâlî of the 14th Century A. H.’ Shaykh ‘Abd al-Halîm Mahmûd”, Une voie soufie dans le monde. La Shâdhiliyya, ed. Éric Geoffroy, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2005, pp. 319–32. 21  For his biography, see in French Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, pp. 143–56, in English see Aishima, “A Sufi-‘Âlim Intellectual in Contemporary Egypt”. 22  Hatsuki Aishima, “A Sufi-‘Âlim Intellectual in Contemporary Egypt”, pp. 319–32; Hatsuki Aishima, “Between ‘Public’ Islam and ‘Private’ Sufism. Producing a National Icon through Mass Mediated Hagiography”, Die Welt des Islams, (2016) 56/1, pp. 34–54.; Hatsuki Aishima, Public culture and Islam in modern Egypt. 23  Hatsuki Aishima and Armando Salvatore, “Doubt, Faith, and Knowledge. The reconfiguration of the Intellectual Field in Post-Nasserist Cairo”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15 (2009), pp. 41–56. 24  Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, pp. 143–56. 25 Moshe Albo and Yoram Meital, “The Independent Path of Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd”, Die Welt des Islams, 54/2 (2014), pp. 159–82. 18

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thought and the influence of his experiences of Sufism. Of his two previous works dealing exclusively with representation of the Prophet Muḥammad, the 1966 work Muḥammad rasūl Allāh reveals the influence of the reformist’s rationalist approach to prophecy and miracles prominent among the Egyptian educated classes of the time. He takes an explicitly critical stance towards narrations of the miracles of the Prophet, arguing that what characterizes the Islamic Prophet is that he does not need such miracles.26 Maḥmūd’s Sīra must be situated among the polemics of contemporary Muslim authors against the critical historical approach to the life of Muḥammad by Orientalists. Yet, like other authors before him, he integrates the Orientalist’s rationalistic approach towards supernatural phenomena in the Sīra. Mistrust towards miracles is undoubtedly a common feature of the modern apologetic Sīra writing. We also find a visible emphasis upon the human nature of the figure of Muḥammad and an attempt to explain supernatural elements in the Prophet’s life in a naturalistic way. Written in 1965, Al-Rasūl has a very similar structure. The issue of representation of the Prophet, expressed through the notion of ‘image’ (ṣūra), serves as introduction to considerations of the biography of the Prophet. Maḥmūd’s Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa thus represents the outcome and synthesis of his prophetological thinking. The title refers quite explicitly to the classical literary genre of Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa,27 emphasizing, thus, Maḥmūd’s aims of vivifying this prophetological discourse and making it accessible and useful for contemporary Islam. He seems here to change his critical and rationalistic attitude towards miracles. In fact, he classifies miracles as indications of the truthfulness of Muḥammad’s prophecy, thus taking a very classical stance. It is possible that Maḥmūd’s contact with Sufism is the reason for this change, because, though similar to al-Rasūl, the influence of sufi thought is far more visible in the prophetology he proposes in this work.28 The language and style of these three books suggest we are dealing with writing destined for the educated middle class, as was the case with most of Maḥmūd’s works.29 As demonstrated in Aishima’s study, Maḥmūd’s writings were known for their ‘French style’, that is, a style influenced by Orientalist writing that contrasts with the traditional style of scholastic Islamic literature.30 In fact, Aishima reports 26  ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1990, p. 62. 27  See Körtner’s study of this literary tradition in formative Islam in Körtner, We Have Made Clear the Signs. 28  Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, p. 8. 29 ‘As will become clear from his choice of rhetorical expressions and writing style, the majority of ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm’s publications was not produced for his colleagues in the field but for educated “lay” Muslims.’ Aishima, “A Sufi-ʿÂlim Intellectual in Contemporary Egypt”, p. 61. 30  ‘Ashur explained to me that in the traditional style of learning, students were expected to orally receive these explanations from a shaykh or his seniors as they go through a text, but nowadays readers need books from which they can learn by themselves.’ Aishima, “A Sufi-’Âlim Intellectual in Contemporary Egypt”, p. 81.

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that the popular success of Maḥmūd’s writings was viewed critically by some of his Azhar colleagues who judged them illegitimate vulgarizations of Islamic sciences.31 However, the intentionally simple and apologetic style of Maḥmūd’s writings, which sometimes gives the impression of preaching, should not divert our attention from the theological creativity of his argumentation.

3. Writing about the Prophet in Contemporary Egypt Unlike the scholastic works of many of his traditionalist Azharī colleagues, Maḥmūd’s writings seek to respond to the acute interrogations and controversies of his time, as well as the cultural problems of contemporary Egyptian society. His popularity is partly explained by his capacity to fill the vacuum that emerged between the traditional scholarly Azharī elite and the modernized and educated Egyptian middle class. While in his lifetime he attracted certain suspicion from colleagues due to the unconventional manner of his intellectual and public engagement, his reconfiguration of the role of the Azharī scholar visibly marked the Islamic landscape of contemporary Egypt and beyond. 3.1. Infitāḥ, Islamization and Maḥmūd’s Role as Rector of Azhar Maḥmūd became rector of al-Azhar in 1393/1973 and held the position until his death in 1398/1978. His tenure fell in the era of Anwar Sadat (1390–1402/1970– 1981), amidst the latter’s policy of liberalization and ‘ouverture’ towards the liberalist West. Beyond the economic dimensions, Sadat’s policy entailed a certain Occidentalization of social and cultural practices, not least in regard of the education system. Maḥmūd was directly implicated in the modernization of education in Egypt. Albo and Meital suggest that, amidst this process evolution, Maḥmūd allotted to himself a specific role as ‘the country’s custodian of the faith’.32 It is precisely for this reason that Maḥmūd can be considered one of the key actors of the movement of Islamization which developed in parallel to the Infitāḥ policy. In the 1970s, Islam and the institution of al-Azhar appeared as the most effective ideological device against Arab socialism and communism. Having issued fatwas and published several pamphlets denouncing communism, Maḥmūd participated in the alliance between Anwar al-Sadat’s government and the Azharī Ulema.33 As Zeghal demonstrates, the ‘Islamization’ of the public sphere of 1970s Egypt should not be interpreted as a ‘return’ to a pre-Nasser and a pre-secular  Aishima, Public Culture and Islam in Modern Egypt, p. 78.  Albo and Meital, “The Independent Path of Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd”, p. 160. 33  Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, pp. 133–4. 31 32

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situation. Islamization in this context was a dynamic process that should be understood as a form of discursive practice with Islamic references and legitimization. Furthermore, Nasserian reforms to the educational system were not suspended by the Azharī milieu. On the contrary, they were used to serve the Islamization of Egyptian society.34 For these reasons, some researchers identify an Islamist and even a Salafist tendency in Maḥmūd’s thought and engagement. Zeghal qualifies Maḥmūd as Salafist because of his call for the application of the sharīʿa in the Egyptian legal system and in the new constitution.35 Maḥmūd had a very proactive stance towards the issue of Islamization and even praised Saudi Arabia for applying the penal sanctions (ḥudūd) prescribed by the sharīʿa.36 However, from a theological point of view, this qualification seems problematic, as there exist very diverse political attitudes within Salafism. The latter defines itself mainly by a return to the practices of the first generation of Muslims (al-salaf), implying a rejection of Islamic tradition (including Azhar scholarship and Sufism) as it developed afterwards. If a label is needed in order to describe Maḥmūd’s agenda of Islamization, it might be ‘Islamist’, though again with certain reservations, as it is doubtful that Maḥmūd considered Islam a political system. His activities aimed at the Re-Islamization of education, jurisprudence and legislation and are more appropriately considered within the context of efforts by Azharī scholars to defend and reinforce the Islamicate identity of Egyptian society. In this endeavour, the problematic of cultural transfer in modern Egypt – with the notion of cultural transfer used here to refer, above all, to the entanglement of Western and Islamic social practices, intellectual outlooks and educational models – plays a significant role.37 For Maḥmūd, this cultural transfer must be held responsible for the decline of Islamic education and of the public standing of its institutions. The solution he proposes lies in the intellectual and institutional empowerment of Islamic scholarship.38 An important element of Maḥmūd’s educational reform is the effort to overcome the modern separation between learning and devotion by ‘reviving the role of the mosque as an educational institution’.39 Maḥmūd’s revival of the idea of the college-mosque and his struggle for the rehabilitation of Islamic 34 Zeghal,

Gardiens de l’Islam, p. 127.  Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, pp. 147–60. 36  Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, pp. 142–3. However, it is worth noting that within the scope of his engagement for Islamization, Maḥmūd promoted a flexible approach towards the implementation of sharīʿa rulings. See Brown, Misquoting Muḥammad, pp. 150–1. 37  For the general debate on taghrīb (‘occidentalization’) in Egypt and modern Islam see Samira Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition. Reform, Rationality, and Modernity, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 77–86. 38  Albo and Meital, “The Independent Path of Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd”, p. 173. 39  Aishima, Public Culture and Islam in Modern Egypt, p. 53. 35

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knowledge in the public sphere of contemporary Egypt must be understood in the context of a society in which modern science had become an increasingly important marker of intellectual authority and credibility. It is in this regard that his experience in French academia gave him a certain credibility in accordance with the expectations of a culturally westernized audience. Maḥmūd’s activity as a scholar can be seen as an effort to address ‘the need to reposition Islam-based knowledge […] vis-à-vis a variety of contradictory demands coming from the West, as well as in relation to aspirations of the educated middle class of Cairo [consisting in] a rationale to defend their eagerly cultivated and often carefully displayed piety, while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle and an adequate class status’.40 With regard to Maḥmūd’s political engagement, recent research underlines the politically independent nature of his agenda, which consisted primarily in securing the emancipation of al-Azhar University and the Islamization of the educational system and the constitution.41 It seems that two experiences were decisive for the development of Maḥmūd’s unique stance on the issues of Egyptian Islamization and Occidentalization in the seventies: firstly, his stay in France and direct contact with Orientalism;42 and, his encounter and engagement with Shādhilī-Sufism.43 Both experiences visibly nuanced his assessment of the modern development of Islamic thought, leading him to develop a critical position towards Salafist puritanism and to disassociate himself from the political aspirations typically associated with Islamism. Rather than the expression of an ideological project or a formal demand for return to a presupposed Islam of the origins, Maḥmūd’s prophetology should be considered a reaction to the secularization of representations of the Prophet Muḥammad by the educated Egyptian middle class. His works about the Prophet are directed against the relativization of the normative authority and scope of the Sunna, which characterizes reformist and modernist Islamic thought in its diversity. For Maḥmūd, what is at stake here is the project of re-establishing and giving meaning to the presence of the prophetic figure of Muḥammad in the lives of contemporary Muslims. 3.2. Islamic Modernism and Challenging Traditional Images of Muḥammad With Maḥmūd’s hybrid professional profile and public activity in mind, it is apparent that his prophetological writings must be evaluated in light of the discursive setting of writing about the Prophet in Egypt in the second half of the  Aishima, and Salvatore, “Doubt, Faith, and Knowledge”, p. 43.  Albo and Meital, “The Independent Path of Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd”, p. 162. 42  See ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, al-Ḥamd li-llāh hādhihi ḥayātī, 3rd ed., Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1985, pp. 115–50. 43  For this aspect of his life, see especially ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, Qaḍīyyat al-taṣawwuf. Al-madrasat al-Shadhilīyya, 5th ed., Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 2007, pp. 364–9. 40 41

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twentieth century. Johansen suggests that the religious sphere of this time was characterized by a ‘tension between the reformist thinkers and those who are committed to maintain a public sufi identity in the face of demands for change.’44 Writing about the Prophet was conditioned by three major developments: the emergence of a reformist prophetology; a growing scepticism towards the Hadith tradition; and, the appearance of modern biographical writing about the Prophet (al-sīra). All three developments relate in some way to the three constitutive elements of representations of the Prophet Muḥammad mentioned in the introduction. Reformist prophetology challenges the classical view of the figure of Muḥammad as a miraculously inspired and infallible transmitter of God’s commands by emphasizing the cultural contingency of his proclamation, the rationality of his teaching and the limited scope of his authority. Scepticism towards the Hadith tradition appeals against the use of material transmitted by the classical Islamic scholarly tradition as source for the representation of the Prophet. And finally, modern Sīra writing bypasses faith as requirement for and valid perception of the Prophet’s representation by introducing subjectivism, fiction and current sociopolitical concerns into the narrative of his life. As Johanson has shown, in the ‘battle for Islamic tradition’ that characterized Islamic discourses in twentieth century Egypt, the figure of the Prophet plays an important role.45 In Egypt, the modern prophetological controversy emerged with the introduction of the thought of al-Afghānī (d. 1315/1897), and with ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Rāziq’s (d. 1386/1966) book published in 1925, al-Islām wa uṣūl al-ḥukm (“Islam and the foundations of political power”), which denies the political scope of Muḥammad’s mission. The issues at stake in the reformist prophetology of the time were, firstly, the infallibility (ʿiṣma) of the Prophet Muḥammad and thereby the limits of the normative authority of the Sunna or prophetic practice; and secondly, the issue of the Prophet’s miracles, which concerns the rationality of Muḥammad’s prophethood. Al-Afghānī’s well-known student and follower, Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1323/1905), decisively influenced both debates.46 ʿAbduh’s prophetology is more cautious than al-Afghānī’s in that it distinguishes between the possibility of the Prophet’s mistakes in worldly matters (dunyāwī) and his infallibility in religious matters (dīnī).47 ʿAbduh’s naturalistic apologetics concerning the possibility of muʿjizāt (prophetic miracles) exerted an important 44  Julian Johansen, Sufism and Islamic Reform in Egypt. The Battle for Islamic Tradition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, p. 31. 45 Johansen, Sufism and Islamic Reform in Egypt, pp. 102–3. 46 For an analysis of ʿAbduh’s reform project and its meaning for the idea of orthodoxy and the Azhar establishment, see the chapter “An Islamic Reconfiguration of Colonial Modernity” in Haj’s Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition, pp. 67–108. 47  See especially his Risālat al-tawḥīd, ed. Muḥammad ʿImāra, Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1994, pp. 80–130, and specifically on the mission of Muḥammad, pp. 119–30 (in the translation by Ishaq Masa’ad und Kenneth Cragg, The Theology of Unity, London: Allen and Unwin, 1966, pp. 76–117). For an analytical overview of his doctrine on prophecy, see Charles C. Adams, Islam

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influence upon reformist prophetology and constitutes one of its emblematic issues. The apologetic scope of his thought is clearly visible. It is well known that ʿAbduh was deeply interested in modern western philosophy and its critical rationalism, and was particularly influenced by Auguste Comte’s positivism. Against the classical prophetological discourses emphasizing the supra-natural and supra-rational dimension of the figure of Muḥammad and of his teaching,48 ʿAbduh sought to establish Islamic prophetology upon the grounds of modern rationalism, naturalism and the modern theory of human progress. For ʿAbduh, the scope of Muḥammad’s prophecy and mission is inherently rational and moral in an almost Kantian sense and corresponds to the liberation of mankind from superstition, ignorance and intellectual immaturity.49 Debate about the infallibility of the Prophet was further fueled by ʿAbd al-Jalīl ʿIsā’s (d. 1401/1981) book Ijtihād al-Rasūl (The legal reasoning of the Messenger), published in 1389/1969. According to this controversial author, the Prophet was not always correct in his judgements and God was not always satisfied with them. Against Ashʿarite theology, which defines prophecy in terms of divine election only, ʿIsā argues that prophecy is the fact of an acquisition of superior intellectual qualities. This attack on classical Sunni theology and jurisprudence bears the influence of al-Afghānī’s thought – which is influenced by medieval Arabic philosophy50 – and his view that the doctrine of ʿiṣma leads to the Christian error of divinization of the Prophet.51 Again, this last argument has a clear apologetic scope aimed at demonstrating the superiority of a postulated ‘rationalistic Islam’ against Western Christianism and its Trinitarian theology. In the view of al-Afghānī and his followers, Islamic tradition and classical scholarship have blurred the progressive and rational character of Islam found, according to them, in the Qur’an, by promoting an un-Islamic veneration of the Prophet and superstitious belief in his miracles and infallibility. The resulting exaggeration of the Prophet’s authority led to a dogmatic view of the Sunna’s normative value, and Modernism in Egypt. A study of the modern reform movement inaugurated by Muḥammad ʿAbduh, New York NY: H. Milford, 1933/1963, pp. 155–61. 48  See for example Addas, La maison Muḥammadienne, and Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino, “‘Wer dem Gesandten gehorcht, der gehorcht damit Gott’. Normativität der prophetischen Tradition und Gnadenerfüllung im sunnitischen Denken der spätformativen Periode“, Islamisches Recht in Theorie und Praxis. Neue Ansätze zu aktuellen und klassischen Rechtsdebatten, ed. Mouez Khalfaoui and Bülent Ucar, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016, pp. 57–78. 49 Tafsīr al-Manār, vol. 2, 2nd ed., Cairo: Dār al-Manār, 1931, p. 299. See Ibrahim Lashin, Zum Prophetenverständnis in der Bibel und im Koran. Eine vergleichende Studie anhand ausgewählter christlicher und islamischer Auslegungswerke des 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel Heinrich Ewalds und Muḥammad ʿAbduhs, Hamburg: Kovač, 2013, p. 193–5. 50 On philosophical prophetology, see Fazlur Rahman, Prophecy in Islam. Philosophy and Orthodoxy, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013. On the classical debates concerning the ijtihād of the Prophet, see Éric Chaumont, La problématique classique de l’Ijtihâd et la question de l’Ijtihâd du prophète. Ijtihâd, wahy et ʿisma, London: Routledge, 2011. 51  Johansen, Sufism and Islamic Reform in Egypt, pp. 93–4.

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thereby obstructing the progress and triumph of Islam as force of modernization in the world, leaving modernity to the ‘Christian West’. In this argumentation, the critique of classical prophetology is inserted into a militant reform agenda that connects the disempowerment of the ulama corps, as authoritative interpreters of Islam, with a pan-Islamic anti-colonialism. 3.3. The Crisis of the Hadith Tradition and the Reinvention of Sīra Writing The discrepancy, implicitly postulated in reformist thought, between the Qur’an and the prophetologies developed by Islamic tradition, constitutes an important argumentative element of the growing scepticism towards the Hadith tradition. Next to India, Egypt is the major centre of the hypercritical reevaluation of the Hadith corpus.52 Maḥmūd’s works on prophetology are quite explicitly also a reaction against these Qur’anistic tendencies and their sceptical position before the canonical Hadith corpus.53 ʿAbduh’s Neo-Muʿtazilite stance on this matter is representative of a certain tendency to narrow down the classical conception of authenticity of Hadith.54 In his writing, ʿAbduh claims that only those Hadith that fulfil the requirements of mass transmission (mutawātir) may be used as a source for theology.55 As Daniel Brown explains, ʿAbduh also ‘opened the door to personal judgement in deciding what traditions to accept or reject’,56 undermining thereby the interpretative monopoly of the consensus (al-ijmāʿ) of the ulama. If it is true that ʿAbduh was more interested in issues of speculative theology than in Hadith, his scant remarks on the matter, and general rationalistic attitude towards transmitted knowledge, did have an important influence on modern Islamic thinking in Egypt and in the Arab world. In light of Orientalist research and its challenges to the historical reliability of Hadith, the authenticity and historicity of Hadith has become the central issue of modern Islamic thinking regarding the prophetic figure and practice.57 Tawfīq Ṣidqī 52  See Daniel W. Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 21–2. 53  Maḥmūd dedicates a whole book to this issue: al-Sunna wa-makānatuhā fī l-tashrīʿ alislāmī (The Sunna and its Place in Islamic Jurisprudence) Cairo: al-Maktabat al-ʿAṣrīyya, 1977. 54  See the chapter “The authenticity in the eyes of M. ʿAbduh”, in Gautier H. A. Juynboll, The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature. Discussions in Modern Egypt, Leiden: Brill, 1969, pp. 15–20. On ʿAbduh’s influence on Hadith scepticism and his neo-Muʿtazilite stance in this matter, see Brown, Misquoting Muḥammad, p. 111. Interestingly, ʿAbduh defends himself against the charge of being influenced by Muʿtazilism by denying to follow any authority other than reason (see Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition, p. 24). 55  ʿAbduh, Risālat al-tawḥīd, pp. 177–8, (in the English translation pp. 155–6). In contrast, the traditional Ashʿarite school of speculative theology accepted Hadith on the basis of consensus and their widespread use by the Sunni scholars (see Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith. Muḥammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Oxford: Oneworld, 2009, pp. 179–80). 56  Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, p. 37. 57  “For his [Abduh’s] scriptualist successors the authenticity of Hadith and the status of Sunna became central concerns” (Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, p. 37).

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(d. 1339/1920), a member of the circle surrounding ʿAbduh’s Salafist student Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1354/1935), expressed quite explicitly the Qur’anist tendency of reformist thought in Egypt and its stance towards the Hadith corpus.58 This tendency, which existed in various forms and degrees, held that Muslims should rely exclusively upon the Qur’an, and disqualified, thus, the Hadith tradition as a normative and theological source for Islam.59 It is here that reformist thought becomes tangled with modern Salafism.60 And Maḥmūd clearly positions himself against both. By upholding the principal reliability of the classical Hadith tradition, Maḥ­ mūd takes a position against both of these influential tendencies within contemporary Islam. However, his stance must also be read within the context of his engagement in the Islamization of Egyptian culture during the Sadat era, as scepticism towards the Hadith corpus constituted an important element of the religious policy of the nasserist thawra or ‘revolution’.61 Moreover, the defence of the canonical Hadith corpus relates to Maḥmūd’s struggle for the hermeneutic monopoly of al-Azhar.62 As demonstrated in the third section of this essay, Maḥmūd develops a new strategy of theological argumentation to show that, together with the Qur’an, the Hadith tradition constitutes the only valid source for an Islamic representation of the Prophet Muḥammad. Opposed to Qur’anism in its various forms, Maḥmūd insists that the Qur’an and the Sunna, as transmitted through Hadith, are hermeneutically interdependent and can only 58  See Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, pp. 40–7; Juynboll, The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature, pp. 23–32. 59  The rejection of Hadith, or at least a certain mistrust towards it, is in fact not an entirely new topos of Islamic theological debate. The Muʿtazilites, and to some extend the Khawārij too, are known to have relativized the value of the Hadith as a normative source. But unlike modern Qur’anists, they did not doubt the normative status of the prophetic practice or Sunna as such, but rather the methodology relying on isnād (chain of transmission) criticism. See Josef van Ess, “L’autorité de la tradition prophétique dans la théologie mu’tazilite”, La notion d’autorité au Moyen Âge. Islam, Byzance, Occident, ed. George Makdisi, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982, pp. 211–25. On the specificity of modern Hadith scepticism and its ‘crisis of confidence’, see Brown, Misquoting Muḥammad, pp. 69–113. 60  Daniel Brown rightly remarks that ‘the rejection of hadith as a source of authority was simply a new variation on an old salafi theme’, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, pp. 40–1, pp. 47–8. 61  Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, pp. 97–8. Interestingly, the same association of an Arab revolutionary movement and a project of devalorization of the Hadith corpus holds true in the case of the Libyan revolution of Muammar Gadhafi. See Eva Hager, Volksmacht und Islam. Eine terminologie‑ und ideologieanalytische Untersuchung zum Politik‑ und Religionsverständnis bei Muʿammar al-Qaḏḏāfī, Berlin: Schwarz, 1985, p. 112. 62  As Daniel Brown explains, a reformist like Rashīd Rīḍā used the controversy regarding the authenticity of Hadith in order to discredit traditional Islamic scholarship: ‘Riḍā was motivated primarily by a desire to shake up the Azhar establishment; he wanted to rouse them to the defence of their views on the Sunna’, Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, p. 41.

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be understood in relation to another, as it is through both forms, divine word and prophetic inspiration, that revelation (waḥy) becomes to be accessible and known to man. For Maḥmūd, the Qur’an and the Hadith corpus constitute the fundamental sources for the narrative of Muḥammad’s life known as al-sīra al-nabawiyya. By upholding this view, he stands against an important tendency in contemporary Islamic discourse while, at the same time, aligning himself with a general movement of literary production. Maḥmūd’s work is located within the movement of modern apologetic Sīra writing discussed by Antonie Wessels63 and by Tarif Khalidi.64 Far from a phenomenon exclusive to the religious sphere, this movement represents a major development in the cultural life of modern Egypt. As Antonie Wessels notes, ‘during the thirties, the monopoly of the “religious writers” was broken, […] almost every self-respecting Egyptian author wrote a book about Muḥammad’.65 Sīra writing is as much a social issue as it is a theological and literary one. The question that emerges here is, which social group of contemporary Egypt possesses the monopoly on explaining how the Prophet of Islam should be imagined and understood? The new types of Sīra writing are associated with the emergence of a new type of religious authority; that of the independent Muslim intellectual and man of letters, detached from al-Azhar or any other Islamic institution. It is easy to see why this question is so contentious: the power of interpretation over the figure of Muḥammad implies the power of determining the religious ideal and identity of Islam, including its normative dimension. It seems that the original motivation for these writings on the life of Muḥammad was to defend the moral integrity of the personality of the Prophet against the polemical depiction of early Orientalism, such as William Muir’s (d. 1905) influential Life of Mahomet, published in four volumes in the period 1858–1861. Representation of Muḥammad as the founder of an archaic religion with – by Victorian standards66 – immoral practices, was interpreted as an attack on the Arab-Islamic identity. In consequence, the new Sīras sought to show the compatibility of the Prophet Muḥammad’s personality and mission with the imported ideals of rationalism, progressism and western moralism, thus reconciling Islam with a certain vision of modernity. The scope was two-fold: to demonstrate to the Western world that Islam is modern; and, to the Muslim community that modernism is Islamic. In this way, the movement of modern Sīra writing operates a re-functionalization of this genre: while classical Sīra writing  Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muḥammad, pp. 2–33.  Khalidi, Images of Muḥammad, pp. 241–97. 65  Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muḥammad, pp. 1–2. 66  Concerning the influence of Victorian moralism on the way contemporary debates of Islamic moral values are conducted and represented, see Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität, pp. 295–311. 63 64

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has always constituted a means of affirming Islamic identities and of determining the providential role of the Islamic community within the history of salvation,67 these modern Sīras seek to highlight the role of Islamic culture for the progress of human civilization.68 Khalidi demonstrates how two works published in the first half of the twentieth century challenged the premises of traditional perceptions of the Prophet and determined the scope of modern Egyptian Sīra writing. Tāha Ḥusayn’s (d. 1393/1973) popular ʿAlā hāmish al-Sīra, published in 1352/1933, presented the Sīra as a novel, emphasizing and developing its dramatic moments. Through this de-theologisation of the Prophet’s life, the Sīra no longer deals with salvation history, but with the personal and emotional life story of a moral and cultural figure.69 ʿAbd al-Rāziq’s above-mentioned work on the principles of political power in Islam introduces the distinction between the purely religious (dīnī) and the political (dawlī) aspects of the Prophet’s mission and teaching.70 With the formula ‘religious mission and not political power, religion and not government’ (risāla wa lā ḥukm, dīn wa lā dawla) he opens the door to denial of any worldly relevance to the prophetic mission and islamicizes a form of categorization seen to pertain exclusively to the histories of the Church and of secularization in the West.71 ʿAbd al-Rāziq’s work redefines, thus, the discursive horizon concerning Islam’s societal dimension and represents a complementary counterpart to the Islamist conception of an ‘Islamic state’ (al-dawlat al-islāmiyya) founded by the Prophet and the endeavour for a modern nation-state based on a secularized and moralistic conception of the sharīʿa. While ʿAbd al-Rāziq’s ideas challenged a classical image of the Prophet as the divinely chosen institutor of a sacred order found on revelation, Tāha Ḥusayn questioned the traditional methodology of Sīra writing by arguing for the need for modern historical criticism and the biographical format. As Marco Schöller notes,72 classical Sīra writing does not correspond to a biography in the modern  Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder.  Very typical examples are Sharqāwī’s (1920–1987) Rasūl al-Ḥurriya (The Messenger of Freedom) published in 1962, which makes of the Prophet a champion of Nasserist socialism avant-la-lettre, and the most influential modern Sīra, the Ḥayat Muḥammad (The Life of Muḥammad) by Muḥammad Husayn Haykal (1888–1956) published in 1933. For both, see Anthony Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muḥammad. 69  ‘[…] The Sīra is to be recast as a novel, a form that allowed the author to explore the contingencies of historical fiction’ Khalidi, Images of Muḥammad, p. 266. 70 ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Rāziq, al-Islām wa-uṣūl al-ḥukm, ed. ʿAlī Ḥasan ʿAmmār, Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 2011, pp. 87–106. 71 This distinction is quite comparable to the distinction between the equation public-politics and private-religion. For the latter see Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular. Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2010, pp. 185–6. For the background of ʿAbd al-Rāziq’s work and the important reactions to it, see the introduction of Abdou Filali-Ansary, L’islam et les fondements du pouvoir, Paris: La Découverte, 2003. 72  Schöller, Exegetisches Denken und Prophetenbiographie, p. 23–6. 67 68

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sense, since the Sīras contain only scant biographical details about the individuality of Muḥammad. Instead, this literature addresses the history of divine revelation to Muḥammad, and the action of God’s grace and salvation through him. According to Tarif Khalidi,73 the idea that a biography of the Prophet Muḥammad must be (re)written grew prominent among the emerging educated middle class of modern Egypt. A new narrative of the birth of Islam and of its principal actor that met the standards of modernity was required. There existed a need to demonstrate with the aid of modern literary styles that the Prophet Muḥammad did not found a religious community by establishing precise social norms and political structures, but instead, conveyed a message that was a purely ethical in character.

4. Maḥmūd’s Critique of Modern Islamic Prophetology Maḥmūd makes clear that for him the new developments were symptomatic of a deep crisis in Islamic thought and scholarship. Even if, like the Azhar establishment more generally, he was influenced to some extent by ideas promoted amidst this process of evolution, he ultimately developed a critical attitude towards them and questioned their epistemological and hermeneutical presuppositions, particularly with regard to the representation and perception of the figure of Muḥammad. In his works on the Sīra, Maḥmūd raises the issue of the Prophet’s image (ṣūra) and the means by which one obtains a sound perception of it. By evoking the Persian miniature paintings in which Muḥammad is depicted without a face, Maḥmūd argues that Muslims always recognized the incapacity of man to achieve an exhaustive representation of the Prophet.74 He implicitly accuses those who diverge from traditional representations of claiming the ability to acquire knowledge of Muḥammad’s personality and prophetic reality by mere human means; that is, through rational reflection, historical research or literary imagination. By raising the question ‘how should the believer view (naẓar) the Messenger of God?’,75 Maḥmūd sets out to develop the distinction between an Islamic and a non-Islamic – or jāhiliyya (the pre-Islamic period of ‘ignorance’) – perception of the Prophet Muḥammad. In this way, Maḥmūd addresses each of the three developments laid out above, that is, reformist prophetology, hadith scepticism and modern Sīra writing, with a focus on the representation of the Prophet and of its perception.

 Khalidi, Images of Muḥammad, pp. 262–3.  Maḥmūd, al-Rasūl, p. 64–5. 75  Maḥmūd, al-Rasūl, p. 25. 73 74

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4.1. Representing the Reality of Prophecy and the Reliability of Tradition Maḥmūd explicitly addresses the reformist argument regarding discrepancy between the Qur’anic representation of the Prophet and the representations formulated by Islamic tradition. He also interrogates the resulting deconstruction of the doctrine of ʿiṣma, or, infallibility. He further criticizes those who attribute to the Prophet errors in normative judgement (khaṭāʾ fī l-raʾy), thus undermining the ʿiṣma, and accuses them of speaking about the Prophet as though he were an average person, thereby ignoring the Qur’anic prophetology.76 Maḥmūd’s critique of reformist prophetology appears to emerge from his study of al-Muḥāsibī’s refutation of Muʿtazilite rationalism. Maḥmūd explains that the argumentative method (manhaj) used by al-Muḥāsibī to refute Muʿtazilite rationalism does not correspond with the ‘usual conventional way’ (al-ṭarīq al-ʿādī al-taqlīdī).77 Yet, in a discernibly classical fashion, Maḥmūd argues against conceding to reason the authority to interpret revelation, postulating that reason is incapable of deducing, understanding and clarifying metaphysical realities (mā warāʾ al-ṭabīʿa) on its own. Hence, a supra-rational source of knowledge corresponding to divine revelation is required.78 Maḥmūd does not tire of stating in his works that ‘there is no alternative to the submission of reason (ʿaql) to scriptural sources (naṣṣ)’.79 Commenting on a citation from Maḥmūd comparing those who ‘attempt to balance revelation and reason’ to the figure of Iblīs (Satan), Zeghal remarks: ‘The shaykh classes amongst them the Muʿtazilites, whose heirs are all the tentatives of establishing a rationalist method in religion, in particular the school of Muḥammad ʿAbduh who (according to Maḥmūd) does not distinguish between ibtidāʿ and ittibāʿ, invention and observance’.80 While al-Muḥāsibī’s example visibly inspired Maḥmūd’s own criticism of reformist prophetology, the latter marks out new paths for elaborating the theological foundation of the Sunna’s normative authority. Counteracting the rationalization and humanization of the Prophet in modern Islamic thought represents a central element of his approach.81 According to Maḥmūd, it is an overemphasis upon the Prophet’s human nature (al-bashariyya) that leads contemporary Muslim intellectuals to their attitude towards the Sunna, the hadith and the issue of prophetic infallibility. He accuses those who think themselves progressive (mutaṭawwarūn) in their emphasis upon the Prophet’s human nature of being, in reality, ‘backward’ (rājīʿ), since their perception of the Prophet represents, in fact, a regression to Abū Jahl’s perception.82  Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-Nubuwwa wa muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, p. 19. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, al-Ḥamd li-llāh hādhihi ḥayātī, p. 128. 78 Maḥmūd, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, al-Ḥamd li-llāh hādhihi ḥayātī, pp. 127–8. 79 Maḥmūd, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, al-Ḥamd li-llāh hādhihi ḥayātī, p. 128. 80  Zeghal, Gardiens de l’Islam, p. 145. 81  Maḥmūd, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, al-Ḥamd li-llāh hādhihi ḥayātī, p. 128. 82  Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, p. 24. 76

77 Maḥmūd,

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In order to illustrate this argument and explain his reference to the emblematic figure of the Sīra, Abū Jahl, Maḥmūd relates an anecdote taken from sufi hagiography concerning the famous saint Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 260/874).83 We present here the translation of the key part of this anecdote, because it reveals a crucial element of Maḥmūd’s prophetological thought: A certain sultan travelled to the shrine of Abū Yazīd in order to visit him and asked around: “Is there anybody who met Abū Yazīd?” A very old man (shaykh) who lived there was indicated to him. He asked him: “Have you heard any of the sayings of Abū Yazīd?” The old man answered: “Yes, I heard him say: Whoever has seen me will not be burned by [hell] fire!” This discourse astonished the sultan and he replied: “How can Abū Yazīd say this when Abū Jahl saw the Prophet and [hell] fire is burning him [because he rejected his claim to prophecy]?” The old man said to the sultan: “Abū Jahl did not see the Prophet (al-nabī), but in truth, he saw only the orphan of Abū Ṭālib – had he really seen him [the Prophet], the fire would not burn him!” The sultan understood the old man’s words and was impressed by his answer which meant that Abū Jahl did not see the Prophet with an attitude of magnification and veneration, neither did he see him as a model to be followed, nor did he believe that he was the Messenger of God. Had he not seen him in this sense, the fire would not burn him. But instead, he considered him with disregard and believed that he was merely the orphan of Abū Ṭālib – this vision (ruʾya) did not benefit him in any way. […] This perception (naẓar) is the perception of Abū Jahl and it is this perception that we want to deliver the believers from.84

To a Muslim mind, the figure of Abū Jahl,85 literally ‘the father of ignorance’, evokes multiple negative associations. In the traditional narrative, however, it represents above all else the stubborn refusal, due to economic, political and social interests, to recognize Muḥammad’s divine election and the need to follow him. What Maḥmūd intends to show with this anecdote is that Abū Jahl’s vision of Muḥammad was constructed on purely human terms. Abū Jahl could only perceive Muḥammad’s individuality and social condition, but he was unable to perceive the latter’s prophetic reality and divine election. Consequently, as Maḥmūd explains, Abū Jahl did not see and recognize Muḥammad the Prophet, but only Muḥammad the orphan of Abū Ṭālib.86 This reduction of the figure of Muḥammad to its historical contingency, without considering its metahistorical dimension and significance, is precisely what Maḥmūd reproaches against reformist prophetology and its alleged Orientalist model. In his final appeal, 83  Maḥmūd dedicated a whole book to this saint (ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, Sulṭān al-ʿĀrifīn. Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī, Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1985). 84 Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, p. 22. 85 See Uri Rubin, “Abū Jahl”, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition, ed. Marc Gaborieau et al., Leiden: Brill, 2007, vol. 3, pp. 59–61. 86 Abū Ṭālib b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (c. 86–2/550–619) is a paternal uncle of Muḥammad who took care of him after the death of his parents and of his grandfather. He played an important role in the Sīra as Muḥammad’s protector when the latter announced his prophetic mission. Unlike the other clan chiefs of Quraysh, Abū Ṭālib and his family suffered from scarce economic resources.

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the climax of his argumentation, Maḥmūd summons contemporary Muslims to choose the way they wish to follow, the way of pre-Islamic ignorance (al-jāhiliyya) personified by Abū Jahl, or the Islamic way personified in figures as Abū Bakr, ʿUmar and others.87 In equating the Orientalist perception of Muḥammad with that of Abū Jahl’s, Maḥmūd evidently seeks to disqualify historical criticism as a legitimate or relevant approach to contemporary Islamic prophetology. He therefore denies the claims of universality and neutrality that reformist thinkers attribute to modern historical methodologies. For Maḥmūd, such methods are invalid theologically, as they fail to recognize the prophetic reality of the personality of Muḥammad, and of his mission. The question of how a theological understanding of the prophetic reality of Muḥammad might be reached is directly linked to the important issue of sources: Which are the sources that allow for obtaining a theologically valid representation of Muḥammad? Whereas Abū Bakr and Abū Jahl were contemporaries of the Prophet, this is obviously not the case for Muslims of today. Herein lays the significance of Islamic tradition, in particular the Hadith tradition, which bridges the gap between the Prophet’s death and later generations of Muslims.88 As we have seen, the reliability of this tradition as a source for the representation of the Prophet Muḥammad is called into question by various currents of modern Islam. Maḥmūd addresses the question of source reliability by fiercely attacking the Hadith scepticism of his time. In particular, he accuses the Egyptian Maḥmūd Abū Rayya (d. 1390/1970) of attempting to destroy the prophetic tradition.89 He denounces him as unscientific, ‘more prejudicial than the fiercest Orientalist’, and accuses him of ‘lying about the Prophet’ forsaking, thus, the moral and religious integrity (saqṭ al-ʿadāla) demanded of the trustworthy Hadith transmitter and scholar by classical Hadith science.90 He reproaches Abū Rayya for blindly following the famed Hungarian Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921) whose agenda, in Maḥmūd’s view, was to prove that Islamic tradition was the 87 Interestingly, Maḥmūd identifies an objective non-Muslim view of Muḥammad with another figure from the Sīra, that is, Heraclius (Herakleios; 64–20/575–641), a Byzantine Emperor contemporary with Muḥammad (see Suleiman A. Mourad, “Christians and Christianity in the Sīra of Muḥammad”, Christian Muslim Relations 600–1500, ed. David Thomas and Alexander Mallett, Leiden: Brill, 2017, vol. 1, pp. 57–71). Muslim sources, as, for example, the beginning of al-Bukhārī’s famous Hadith anthology, relate a dialogue between the Emperor and a delegation of the Quraysh about Muḥammad and his claim to prophecy. According to these accounts, the Emperor is believed to have recognized Muḥammad’s claim as truthful (Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, pp. 30–4). 88  On this issue, see William H. Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation”, Journal of Comparative History, 23 (1993), pp. 495–522. 89  Author of the controversial book, Maḥmūd Abū Rayya, Aḍwāʾ ʿalā l-Sunna al-Muḥam­ma­ diyya (Lights on the Muḥammadan Sunna), Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Taʾlīf, 1958. See Juynboll, The Authenticity of the Tradition Literature, pp. 38–46; Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, pp. 87–95. 90 Maḥmūd, al-Sunna wa-makānatuhā fī l-tashrīʿ al-islāmī, pp. 98–103.

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product of a transfer of Jewish doctrines, narratives and methodologies.91 He goes even further, accusing Abū Rayya of taḥrīf (alteration and falsification) of the Hadith as scriptural source (naṣṣ). In doing so, he places Hadith sceptics like Abū Rayya alongside Jews and Christians who, according to the Islamic view, altered their revealed scriptures to accommodate economic, social or ideological needs.92 Maḥmūd’s virulent polemics against Abū Rayya seeks to demonstrate, if a study of Hadith is to claim any theological and normative significance, it must be based on its own specific theological categories and criteria. According to this view, ‘trustworthiness’ (thiqa) is of crucial significance here, because it is precisely this criterion that distinguishes Islamic scholarship from Orientalism. Evidently, thiqa does not represent a scientific requirement in the modern sense, as it refers the religious and moral integrity (ʿadāla) of a person. Maḥmūd argues that ‘those in the contemporary age pretending to apply scientific methods do not fulfil the criteria of “trustworthiness” (thiqa) and therefore are not to be relied upon for knowledge of Hadith.’93 By discrediting the sceptics of Hadith and accusing them of using a theologically invalid methodology borrowed from Orientalism, Maḥmūd does more than aiming to reestablish the reliability of the Hadith corpus. He also seeks to show that the scriptural corpus transmitted by the Islamic tradition, that is, the Qur’an and the Hadith, constitutes the only theologically valid source of knowledge for the representation of the Prophet Muḥammad. Consequently, critical historical research has mere supplementary utility, and its conclusions are only accepted insofar as they are compatible with an Islamic interpretation of scriptural sources. For Maḥmūd then, philosophical rationality and empirical history are secondary or auxiliary sources for the representation of the Prophet Muḥammad. In the absence of revelation, these sources do not allow the human mind to recognize or understand the prophetical reality that constitutes and distinguishes the personality of Muḥammad. 4.2. The Spirituality of Perceiving Muḥammad Maḥmūd addresses the question of how scriptural sources might be used to obtain a valid representation of the Prophet Muḥammad. He refers to the Qur’anic verse, ‘Say: I am merely a human being (bashar) like you to whom has been revealed (yūḥā ilayya) that your divinity is one God’ (Q 18:110) and criticizes contemporary Sīra writing for considering only the first part of the 91  Maḥmūd, al-Sunna wa-makānatuhā fī l-tashrīʿ al-islāmī, pp. 86–7. See the contribution of Ottfried Fraisse in this volume. 92  See Q 4:46 and Q 5:13. For a general overview about the notion of taḥrīf in Islamic thought see Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “Taḥrīf ”, Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman et al., Leiden: Brill, vol. 10 (2002), pp. 120–1. 93  Maḥmūd, al-Sunna wa-makānatuhā fī l-tashrīʿ al-islāmī, p. 95.

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verse, ‘I am merely a human being like you’, and disregarding the second part, ‘to whom has been revealed (yūḥā ilayya)’.94 Wessels notes that, in his Rasūl alḥurriyya (The Messenger of Freedom), the socialist author al-Sharqāwī cites the Qur’anic ‘I am merely a human being like you’ (Q 18:110) without the words that follow, ‘to whom has been revealed’95 Al-Sharqāwī defended himself against criticism from the Azharite ʿAlī al-ʿImārī, by referring to the historical studies of Orientalists.96 It is possible that Maḥmūd intended to resume this debate. Notoriously unfavourable in his attitude towards socialism,97 he also sought to unmask what he considers to be a hermeneutical negligence of modern Sīra writing. According to Maḥmūd, this incomplete exegesis of Q 18:110 is the consequence of deficient hermeneutics with theologically invalid presuppositions: ‘It pertains to the known verities that man inclines either towards focusing on “human being (bashar)” or on “to whom has been revealed (yūḥā ilayya)” according to the strength or weakness of his religious consciousness (al-shuʿūr aldīnī), for he who has no faith perceives only the human nature [of the Prophet] and he whose faith is weak focuses on [the Prophet’s] human nature. The focus on human nature becomes thinner each time that faith becomes more intense and so the focus on “to whom has been revealed” increases each time that faith increases until man perceives almost exclusively “to whom has been revealed”’.98 The excessive humanization of the Prophet that, in Maḥmūd’s view, characterizes contemporary Sīra writing is presented here as having roots in religious consciousness.99 In other words, it is a matter of spirituality, and not of science and erudition. Maḥmūd does not define or clarify his usage of the term ‘faith’ (īmān), but he likely intended it in a classical sense, as the fact of being convinced of the truth (taṣdīq) of Islamic revelation and tradition. At the same time, he uses the term not merely as theological concept, but also as a state of being that encapsulates a certain hermeneutical attitude that he describes using the term manhaj al-ittibāʿ – ‘the method of emulation’ – and defines quite broadly as ‘following the orientations of the noble Qur’an and the noble prophetic Sunna’100.  Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, pp. 18–22.  Wessels, A modern Arabic biography of Muḥammad, pp. 165–6; p. 390.  96  Wessels, A modern Arabic biography of Muḥammad, p. 22.  97  See his contribution to the debate about the Prophet’s companion Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī who is interpreted by Muslim socialist thinkers as a model for an Islamic socialism avant-lalettre, Abū al-Dharr al-Ghifārī wa-l-Shuyūʿiyya, Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1975. See Ulrich Haarmann, “Abu Dharr – Muḥammad’s Revolutionary Companion”, The Muslim World, 68 (1978), pp. 285–9.  98  Maḥmūd, Daḷāʾil al-nubuwwa wa-muʿjizāt al-Rasūl, p. 24.  99 Curiously, Maḥmūd does not mention the name of any specific contemporary Sīra author in these passages. Instead, he polemically refers to the addressee of his criticism as almunḥarifūn, ‘those who alter’ revelation or Islamic tradition. The explanation for this discretion might be that Maḥmūd sought to avoid public debate with individual authors, hoping instead to address the matter in a more general manner. 100  ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, al-Islām wa-l-ʿaql, 2nd ed., Cairo 1966, 1998, p. 11. This ‘method’  94  95

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Maḥmūd’s explanation of the relationship between human nature and divine election is easily traced back to sufi thought. In the famous collection of aphorisms al-Ḥikam by the Shadhilī sufi Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309), a work that Maḥmūd knew very well, one encounters the declaration: ‘Glorified be He who veils (satara) the secret of divine election (khuṣuṣiyya) with the appearance of human nature (bashariyya) and who manifests the immensity of His Lordship (al-rubūbiyya) through the appearance of servanthood (alʿubūdiyya)’ (N° 100).101 Applied to prophecy, this idea means that the Prophet’s human nature, and the fact that he experienced the same vicissitudes as any other human being, does not contradict the supra-natural dimension that prophecy confers upon his person. On the contrary, the human fragility of the Prophet testifies to his perfect servanthood (ʿubūdiyya) and therefore to his unique aptitude to make God’s Lordship intelligible to mankind. As maintained in the classical Sunni prophetology that Maḥmūd defends, the human nature of the Prophet is necessary for his mission. Without it, his example could not serve as a model for human life.102 The notion of ‘veil’ (sitr) expresses his idea that the human nature of the personality of Muḥammad prevents those who lack faith from perceiving its divine election and prophetic reality. What Maḥmūd effectively does here, is to articulate classical ideas about the relationship between human nature and divine election  – and its spiritual interpretation  – in modern language, and relate them to the issue of modern Sīra writing. In doing so, he seeks to make clear that modern representations of the Prophet divergent from those based in transmitted sources result from a deficiency in spiritual awareness, while representations developed by Islamic tradition correspond to a spiritual necessity.

5. Conclusion: Towards an Experiential Prophetology, against the Secularization of Muḥammad’s Image Analysis of Maḥmūd’s theological thought reveals the creative and critical meaning of Islamic prophetology in a discursive context marked by debate concerning the renewal and modernization of Islam. Instead of being treated as a legacy from the past that requires either preservation or rejection, the prophetic and its significance as a hermeneutical attitude for Maḥmūd’s own prophetology will be the object of another study to be published soon. 101  See the English translation by Victor Danner, The Book of Wisdoms. Kitāb al‑ Ḥikam. A Collection of Sufi Aphorisms, London: White Thread, 2014. The aphorism N° 228 expresses a similar idea: ‘The affirmation of divine election does not entail the extinction of human contingency (bashariyya)’. In both aphorisms the term khuṣuṣiyya is actually related to the reality of sainthood. 102  For example in al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s (476–544/1083–1149) reference treatise for Sunni prophetology, al-Shifā bi-taʿrīf ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā, ed. Nawāf al-Jarrāḥ, Beirut: Dār al-Fikr li–l-Ṭibāʿa wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzīʿ, 2006, p. 277.

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figure and tradition appears as both a theological scale for critical judgement of the evolution and trends of contemporary Islamic thought, and as a starting point from which a constructive dialogue of Islamic tradition with modernity is to be engaged. The image of Muḥammad is at the centre of the quest for an Islamic identity, especially in a context of the secularization of society, culture and religion. Maḥmūd argues that this quest cannot yield theologically meaningful results unless it derives from careful reflection upon the Islamic conception of the Prophet; the means to obtain valid representation of Muḥammad; and the standpoint from which it should be perceived. Maḥmūd’s prophetological works seem to suggest that this is the only way to prevent improper functionalization of the prophetic figure. It also suggests that this reflection is vital in situations where the Muslim community is faced with the secularization of its intellectual tradition and religious culture, as displayed by such apparently contradictory phenomena as the inifitāḥ towards the West, Reformism and the Islamization movement. Against what he considers to be the intellectual failures of reformist prophetology, Hadith scepticism and modern Sīra writing, Maḥmūd seeks to show why it is only possible to obtain what he calls a ‘clear image’ (ṣūra wāḍiḥa) of the Prophet Muḥammad when one considers him man and prophet, represents him as depicted by revelation and perceives him with faith. Using new terms and modes of reflection, his argument reiterates the traditional idea of the epistemological and hermeneutical primacy of divine revelation before any type of human or naturalistic knowledge and understanding. He argues that because prophecy is of a purely divine institution – classical theology speaks, against Muʿtazilites and Muslim philosophers, of a ‘divine gift’ –, the figure of Muḥammad can only be known in its prophetic reality through divine revelation; and, given that divine revelation is known through Islamic tradition and understood through faith, profane history as it is researched by Orientalists can only perceive and represent Muḥammad the individual, not Muḥammad the Prophet; it ignores and overlooks that which is essential from a theological point of view. For Maḥmūd, only the epistemological and hermeneutical primacy of revelation guarantees the liberty of Islamic thought from worldly interests and political or cultural conditions, and thus, its ability to overcome the contemporary crisis and disorientation of the Muslim community vis-à-vis modernity and the political and cultural power of the West. The issue raised by Maḥmūd appears as a point of intersection for the overlapping discourses that shape and determine the contemporary crises of Islam: the encounter of traditional Islamic scholarship with academic Orientalism, the issue of the Islamization and the Occidentalization of society, the scope and the actuality of the prophetic authority, the reliability and relevance of Islamic tradition and of transmitted knowledge, the limits and the autonomy of human reasoning, the epistemological value and theological relevance of historical

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research; and, above all, the role of the individual believer’s relationship to the Prophet and personal perception of him. The location of the relationship between believer and Prophet at the centre of the prophetological controversy might well be Maḥmūd’s key contribution to this debate. His criticism of the influence of Orientalism and polemics with regard to the transfer of Western and secular approaches into modern Islamic thought stems from his endeavour to emotionally and spiritually reconnect the Muslim community with its founder. Yet his polemical attitude should not overshadow his nuanced stance vis-à-vis the issue of modernization of Islam and the role of the West. His polemics are not directed against the West or against modernity as such. After all, both inspired the development of his thought. Maḥmūd’s case shows that these categories have fluid borders that overlap one another. Maḥmūd’s virulent polemics against Muslim intellectuals who, in his opinion, uncritically adopt Orientalist ideas do not prevent him from praising Orientalist research and integrating it into his own intellectual practice. As Albert Hourani explains in his work Islamic Thought in the Age of Liberalism, ‘Polemics have their danger: in defending oneself, one may draw closer to one’s adversary that one thinks’.103 Yet, the actual purpose of Maḥmūd’s criticism seems to be to liberate contemporary Islamic prophetology from conditioning by the bipolarity of modernity-tradition or Islam-Occident. He hopes to achieve this ‘liberation’ by moving prophetology away from its position as a mere theoretical and doctrinal issue, to become a matter of personal experience and of spirituality that involves the believer and his existential situation. Maḥmūd’s works reveal his objective of redirecting contemporary prophetological controversy towards the issue of the relationship between the believer and the Prophet. This rudiment of an experience-based prophetology, which still needs to be studied, has to be considered in the wider context of Maḥmūd’s engagement as the head of al-Azhar and as a leading Muslim intellectual of his time. It certainly reflects an agenda aimed at revivifying a traditional system of Islamic education within the modern Egyptian society. Maḥmūd firmly believed that the study of Islamic content should be nourished and animated by a spiritual experience that engages the personality of the student through its relation to the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad. Maḥmūd also believed that re-Islamization of Egyptian Muslim identity and community would only be achieved through reconnection to the founding figure of Islam. However, his vision for reconnection differed significantly from the Salafist call for a formalistic and rigid return to the prophetic practice; or, the Islamist call to a political return to a prophetic ideal state. What Maḥmūd called for was less a programme for political action, or even 103  Albert Habib Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. 1798–1939, 22nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 119–20. Cited in Johansen, Sufism and Islamic Reform in Egypt, p. 15.

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religious commitment; but rather, an inner re-orientation toward the actual person of the Prophet Muḥammad and personal engagement with him. Functioning in apparent contradiction to his own engagement with Orientalism and Western culture, Maḥmūd’s fierce critique of the impact of Orientalist methodologies upon contemporary Islamic prophetology is explained by his theological background. Maḥmūd’s critique arguably has an explicit cultural, social and political dimension, insofar as ‘he argued that the preservation of Egypt’s cultural and historical heritage and the accentuation of Islam’s spiritual and juridical uniqueness were the keys to Egypt’s political, economic, and cultural success’.104 Yet beyond the issue of political and cultural independence from the West, it is clear that Maḥmūd’s criticism of Islamic reformism, Hadith sceptics and modern Sīra writing resides neither in their engagement in a cultural transfer, nor in the western origin of this transfer. For Maḥmūd, who considers the integration of Greek philosophy into Islamic learning in the Middle Ages and the impact of Islamic philosophy on the European Renaissance as positive historical achievements, cultural transfer is not a problem in and of itself 105. If Maḥmūd criticizes the way Muslim intellectuals deal with Orientalist methodologies and ideas, it is because, in his opinion, the consequences of this intertwining relationship constitute a significant obstacle to the reconnection of the Muslim community with the Prophet. Maḥmūd is concerned that this transfer may lead to an alienation of Muslims, and of Islamic thinking, from their Prophet; or, more exactly, from the prophetic reality of the Muḥammadan personality. If the Prophet is viewed as a mere historical figure, or at most an abstract ethical model, the direct emotional and spiritual bond could be lost. In Maḥmūd’s view, the cause of this loss is neither the West nor modernity, but a deficiency in faith and in the spiritual awareness of the contemporary Muslim elite. His identification of Muslim intellectuals with the Prophet’s opponents in the founding narrative of Islam shows that, for him, an uncritical approach to cultural transfer is symptomatic of an internal problem rooted in the Muslim perception of the Prophet Muḥammad.

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104  Albo and Meital, “The Independent Path of Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd”, p. 163. 105  See his al-Islām wa-l-ʿaql.

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Notes on the Contributors Enas Aly Ahmedteaches Medieval Arabic Literature, History of Oriental Studies, and Orientalism at the Faculty of Languages of Ain Shams University, Cairo. She obtained her PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid in 2017 with a dissertation on the Spanish Arabist, Miguel Asín Palacios. She is currently developing a study on re-readings of the writings of European Orientalists about the Nahda in the Arab World. Daniel Boušekis Associate Professor of Hebrew Studies at Charles University, Prague. His PhD dissertation focused on Hebrew medieval travel books and Jewish pilgrimage. He is the author of Polemics of Islam with Judaism and the Hebrew Bible in the Middle Ages (Academia, 2013 and 2015, in Czech). Together with Dita Rukriglová, he translated Judah Halevi’s Book of Refutation and Proof on the Despised Faith, known as The Book of Kuzari from Judaeo-Arabic into Czech. In 2015, he was a fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellowship for the years 2016–2018, during which he worked on the project Masāʾil al-khilāf. The Samaritan Polemical Treatise Against the Jews. Andrea Celli, Assistant Professor of Italian and Mediterranean Studies (University of Connecticut), studied ‘Letteratura moderna’ at the University of Padua, where he also completed his PhD degree. Before joining UConn, he lectured at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. With Davide Scotto, he co-edited a collection of essays on “Esperienza e rappresentazione dell’Islam nell’Europa mediterranea (secoli XVI–XVIII)”, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa (Leo S. Olschki), 51/3, 2015. He has published several monographs, and various book chapters on issues related to the history of Orientalism, and has also translated a number of works from French, Spanish, and Arabic authors (Miguel Asín Palacios, Louis Massignon, Ali Ahmad Said Esber / Adonis). His current research projects include a monograph on early modern treatments of the narrative of Hagar and Ishmael in the context of interreligious polemics. Alexander Aharon Dubraureceived his PhD in Talmudic Studies from the Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg (2011). He published his thesis under

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the title of Der Midrasch Sifre Zuta (LIT, 2017). He has been a research fellow in Judaic Studies at the University of Tübingen since 2013. In 2018, he began working on a project on German-Jewish Orthodoxy in nineteenth century Wissenschaft des Judentums with a grant from the Israel Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Ana Echevarría Arsuagateaches Medieval History at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid. She obtained her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1998 and later held a post-doctoral research fellowship at UNED. She was a visiting Assistant Professor at the International Spanish Program in Madrid of the New York University, a visiting fellow at the Ruhr-University Bochum and, in 2016–2017, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Konstanz, where she developed a project on ‘Muslim Minorities in the Iberian Peninsula. The Challenge of the Convivencia Model.’ She published monographs and articles on Muslims and Muslim-Christian interactions in late medieval Iberia. Ottfried Fraisseis Professor of Jewish studies at the University Halle-Wittenberg, since 2019. He previously held an interim professorship in Jewish studies at Cologne University. His research interests concern medieval Jewish-Arabic philosophy, Judaism under Islam, the scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums researching Islam, and oriental Jewry. He is the author of Ignáz Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), Salomon ibn Gabirol. Fons Vitae I–II. Lateinisch-Deutsch (Herder, 2009), and Moshe ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on the Song of Songs (De Gruyter, 2004). He co-edited (together with Andreas Kilcher) Metzler Lexikon jüdischer Philosophen (J. B. Metzler, 2003). Y. Tzvi Langermannreceived his PhD in the History of Science from Harvard. He spent about fifteen years cataloguing Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic texts in philosophy and science at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem before joining the Department of Arabic at Bar Ilan. He teaches the Qur’an and tafsīr, Maimonides, and other courses based on the reading of texts in philosophy, Sufism, and other topics. Together with Gerrit Bos, he published two monographs in the history of medicine: The Alexandrian Summaries of Galen’s On Critical Days (Brill, 2014), and Maimonides, On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art (Brigham Young University Press, 2014), and co-edited (with Robert Morrison) Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016). Ulli Rothstudied Catholic Theology, Philosophy and Mathematics at the Universities of Freiburg i. Br. and Copenhagen from 1986 to 1995. At the University of Freiburg i. Br., he obtained his Doctor theologiae in 1998 and his Habilitation

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in 2010. From 2001 to 2016, he worked as a high school teacher in Pforzheim and Offenburg. Since 2016, he has been Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Koblenz. Davide Scotto(PhD, Florence 2012) works as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Historisches Seminar of the Goethe University Frankfurt. He specializes in the study of Christian interactions with Judaism and Islam in premodern Europe and the Mediterranean. Prior to this he worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Center for Islamic Theology, the University of Tübingen, and then at the Department of History, the University of Basel. He participated in the ERC Advanced Project CORPI, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid (2013– 19), and is a member of the ERC Synergy Project EuQu, Univeristy of Naples “L’Orientale” (2019–). He was a visiting scholar at UNED and CSIC, Madrid, and a visiting lecturer at the Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Brno. He is an editorial assistant of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa (Leo S. Olschki), and in 2018, he was among the co-founders of the Centro di Studi Interreligiosi, Collegio Borromeo, Pavia. Alon Segevis Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago. He has published extensively on various subjects in Intellectual History, Philosophy of Religion and Modern Philosophy. He is the author of three books: Thinking and Killing: Philosophical Discourse in the Shadow of the Third Reich (De Gruyter, 2013); Political Readings of Descartes in Continental Thought (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), and along with Matthias Morgenstern, Gerhard Kittel: My Defence (Berlin University Press, 2019). Irina Synkovagraduated from the history department of St. Petersburg University in 1993. In 2003, she defended her PhD thesis in the philosophical sciences. She taught at the St. Petersburg Institute of Film and Television, Minsk State Linguistic University, where she lectured on the history of culture and religious studies. She is currently working at the Faculty of International Relations of the Belarusian State University. She has been researching the history of Central and Eastern European culture and the history of printing. Since the beginning of the 2000s, one of the main areas of her scientific research is kitabistica, a scientific branch related to the study of the manuscript heritage of Belarusian Tatars (Muslims). She is the author of more than 60 publications. Michail Tarelkagraduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies (Department of Arabic Philology, a sub-department of Semitic Studies) of Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg) University in 1991. For about fifteen years, he worked at the Belarusian State University and other educational institutes where he taught Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic. Since 2011, he has been working at the National

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Academy of Sciences of Belarus. His PhD dissertation The Structure of the Text in the Polish Language written with Arabic Letters (on the Material of the ReligiousPolemical Works from the Manuscript Р97 of the Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus) was defended in 2004. He has over 50 publications, most of which are dedicated to the study of the manuscript heritage of the Belarusian Tatars. Ruggero VimercatiSanseverino is Junior-Professor in Hadith Studies and Prophetic Tradition at the Center for Islamic Theology (ZITh), Tübingen University, since 2016. He obtained his PhD at the University of Aix-Marseille (France) in 2012 with a thesis dedicated to the hagiographical tradition of the city of Fez in Morocco (published Fès et sainteté, 2014). He then became a research fellow at the Iremam (Aix-en-Provence) and the CJB (Rabat), before joining the ZITh in 2013 as a post-doctoral fellow. He specializes in the transmission of Hadith (reports about the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muḥammad); classical and modern Islamic prophetology, and the history of Islamic spirituality. Nadjet Zouggaris Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Aix Marseille University and a researcher at the Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur les Mondes Arabes et Musulmans (IREMAM–CNRS). She holds a PhD from Toulouse University. Her PhD dissertation was dedicated to Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-philosophical discourse. Her main field of research and publication is related to Sunni theology, especially heresiology, with a focus on epistemological issues.

Index of Sources Hebrew Bible (First Testament) Daniel 7:8 42 11 42 Deuteronomy 18:15 41 18:15–18 26, 42 18:18 25 24:14 317 33:2 25, 41 33:2–3 26, 42 Esther 4:1 296 Exodus 33:1 315 11:2 292 Genesis 12:2–3 296 14 177, 192 14:23 296 15:18 315 16 187 16:4 195, 204 16:7–14 195 16; 21 188 17:20 25, 41 18:3–8 296 18:23–32 296 21 190, 194, 204–205, 211 21:15–16 201 21:17–19 206 21:20 212 21:21 26

21:9–10 204 27:34 296 Hosea 9:7

43, 83

Isaiah 7:14 173, 182 9:5–6 175 9:6 173–175, 180 10:5 47 11 182 11:1–3 175 11:2 178 66:23 46 Jeremiah 16:19 53 29:21–23 51 2 Kings 19:11 83 Leviticus 19:18 292 24:22 320 25:47 294 Numbers 15:15–16 320 Psalms 77 174 78:36 72 96:4 174 97 174

390

Index of Sources

110 173, 179, 182 110(109):1 173 146 172

Zechariah 14:18 46

Gospels (Second Testament) Acts 15 328 15:28 328

5:16 295 18:20 330 20:23 178

Ephesians 6:17

160, 331

Galatians 4:21–31

187, 189

1 Peter 2:12 295 3:15 153 5:2 153, 154

Hebrew 11:6 153 Mark 7:3 295 Matthew 2:15 295

Romans 10:10 153 11 319 11:28–29 341 Titus 1:9 153

Qur’an 2:61 46 2:106 26 2:119 26 2:256 73 4:46 375 5:13 375

5:78–82 19 13:38 27 18:110 375–376 33:40 27 61:6 24, 42

Hadith al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, ‘al-sawm’, 1814  93

391

Index of Sources

Rabbinic Literature (Mishnah and Talmudim) Mishnah Avoda Zara 1:1 Avoda Zara 2:1–2

294 297

Babylonian Talmud Avoda Zara 7b Baba Metzia 27b Baba Qama 113b Chagiga 13b

295 290 294–295 29

Sanhedrin 56a Sanhedrin 76b Shabbat 31a Sukkah 20a

293 290 292 23

Jerusalem Talmud Avoda Zara 1:1 39a–b 295 Sanhedrin 1:1 18a 292

Index of Names ‘Abd al-Raḥīm ibn ‘Alī Fāḍil (‘Abd alRaḥīm al-Baysānī al-‘Asqalānī; al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil) ​59, 61–69, 71 ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī ​34, 35, 64 ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar ​262 ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Jawbarī ​33, 34 ʿAbd al-Rāziq, ʿAlī ​365, 370 ʿAbduh, Muḥammad ​365_368, 372 Abelard, Peter ​267 Abraham (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​ 4, 47, 82, 176–177, 187–190, 192–194, 197–202, 204, 207, 210–211, 296, 315, 341 Abraham ibn Daud ​39–40, 45, 49 Abū Bakr (Compagnon of the Prophet) ​ 41, 374 Abū Bishr Matta Ibn Yūnus ​94 Abū Jahl ​372–374 Abū Rayya, Maḥmūd ​374–375 Abū Ṭālib ​373 Adam (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​172, 175 Afonso V of Portugal (King) ​156 Africano, Guglielmo ​209 Ahab (Prophet) ​51 Akiba (Rabbi) ​280, 292 al-Afghānī, Jamāl al-Dīn ​365–366 al-Ayyūbī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) ​73, 77–79, al-Baghdādī, Abū al-Barakāt ​88 al-Bājī, Abū al-Walīd ​263 al-Biqāʿī ​22 al-Bīrūnī, Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ​28, 264 al-Bisṭāmī, Abū Yazīd ​251, 273 al-Bukhārī, Ismāʿīl ​374 al-Damanhūrī, Aḥmad ​32 al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn ​100–101 Aleman, Louis (Cardinal) ​147

al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ​58, 91, 98–99 Alfonsi, Petrus (Petrus Alphonsi) ​27, 30, 58 Alfonso VI of León and Castile (King) ​58 Alfonso VII of León and Castile (King) ​ 134 Alfonso VIII of Castile (King) ​142 Alfonso X of Castile (King) ​109–110, 257 al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid ​58, 88, 90, 95, 97, 99, ​251–252, 258–259, 262, 360 al-Ḥallāj, Manṣūr ​251 al-Ḥasan, Nāṣir al-Dīn ​33 Ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī ​ʿAlī 24–25 ʿAlī ​41 Alighieri, Dante ​143, 257, 260 al-ʿImārī, ʿAlī ​376 al-Iṣfahānī, Abū al-Faraj ​265 al-Isfahānī, Abū ʿĪsā ​48 al-Jāḥiẓ, ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr ​24 al-Jīlī, ʿAbd al-Karīm​ al-Juwaynī, ʿAbd al-Malik ​23 al-Kindī, Abū Yaʿqūb Ibn Isḥāq ​30, 58, 89, 93, 139, 197 al-Mālikī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn ​33 al-Maqqarī, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad ​254 al-Masʿūdī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ​264 al-Māwardī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ​37 al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥārith ​372 al-Nawawī, Sharaf al-Dīn ​22, 32–33 al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (‘Abd al-Raḥīm ibn ‘Alī al-Fāḍil) ​71, 73–74, 76, 78, 80–81, 83 al-Qarāfī, Shihāb al-Dīn ​31 al-Qaysī, Muḥammad ​35 al-Qirqisānī, Yaʿqūb ​23, 28–30, 36, 39, 41, 43–44, 46, 48–50 al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr ​36 al-Sadat, Anwar ​346 al-Samwaʾal, b. Yaḥyā al-Maghribī 20–21, 28, 31, 34–35, 42, 60

Index of Names

al-Shahrastānī, Tāj al-Dīn ​88 al-Sharīf al-Ḥalabī, Abū al-Qāsim ​75 al-Sharqāwī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ​376 al-Shaybānī, Muḥammad​ al-Sīrāfī, Abū Saʿīd ​94 al-Subkī, Taqī al-Dīn ​32 al-Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn ​77 al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr ​264 al-Ṭurṭūshī, Abū Bakr ​265 al-Tūṣī, Naṣīr al-Dīn ​90, 209 al-Ẓāhirī, Zachariā ​49, 51, 53 Amadeus VIII of Savoy (Duke) (see: Felix V ) Anawati, Georges C. ​342 Andrés, Juan ​198–200 Aquinas, Thomas ​259–260, 266, 268 Aranda, Luis de (Counselor) ​122 Aristotle ​51, 260, 262 Asín Palacios, Miguel 10, 247–251, 253–256, 258–268 Asnāwī ​33 Augustine of Hippo ​190 Avicenna (see: Ibn Sīnā) Abraham ibn Dāwūd ​39–40, 45, 49, 55 Avraham, Magen ​59, 289 Aznar Cardona, Pedro ​193 Bādīs Ibn Habūs ​263 Barak (Biblical figure) ​182 Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco (‘il Guer­cino’) ​201 Barth, Karl ​307 Bauer, Bruno ​305 Bea, Augustin (Jesuit Cardinal) ​335 Becker, Carl Heinrich ​250–252, 268 Bede the Venerable ​191 Beer, Georg ​286 Bellarmino, Roberto ​201 Ben Azzai (Rabbi) ​292 Benamozegh, Elijah ​292 Bernard of Clairvaux 138–139, 152, 159 Berto, Nicolai di ​143 Bibliander, Theodor ​157, 196 Bishr ibn Finḥās ibn Shuʿayb Bleda, Jaime ​193 Bonal, François ​211

393

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich ​311 Brahm, Otto ​316 Brandeis, Georg ​316 Breuer, Isaac ​289–290 Breuer, Mordechai ​275, 279 Brimann, Aron Israel ​281 Brunner, Emil ​305 Bry, Johann Israel de ​211 Buber, Martin ​305–306, 316, 319–323 Budny, Symon ​174–175, 177–178, 182 Bultmann, Rudolf ​273, 305, 307 Cáceres, Juan de (Canon) ​122 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro ​193 Callixtus III (Pope) ​132 Canterbury, Anselm of ​267 Cardinal Cajetan (see: Tommaso de Vio) Carinthia, Herman of ​135, 138 Carrillo, Martín de ​196 Castrodardo, Giovanni Battista 199 Catherine of Lancaster (Queen) 120 Cervantes, Juan de ​147, 160 Cervantes, Miguel de ​193, 257 Clement IV (Pope) ​106 Clement of Alexandria 190 Codera Zaidín, Francisco ​253, 255 Cohen, Hermann 227, 286, 289 Comte, Auguste ​366 Conrat, Max ​316 Cuellar, Juan de ​123 Cusa, Nicholas of ​130, 147–148, 154–155, 160, 196–197, 337, 340, 347–348 Cyprian ​25 Czyżewski, Piotr ​176 Dalman, Gustaf ​275 Damascus, John of ​24, 136, 192, 267 Daniel (Prophet) ​42–44 Darwin, Charles ​239 Dāʾud ibn Marwān al-Muqammaṣ ​49–50 David (Biblical figure) ​38, 55, 82, 193 David (Maimonides’ brother) ​74 Delitzsch, Franz ​275, 286, 296 Descartes, René ​251 Dühring, Eugen ​305–306 Duran, Simon (see: Shimʿon b. Ṣemaḥ Duran)

394

Index of Names

Ecker, Jacob ​281–282, 298 Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas ​288 Eleazer ben Aryeh Leib Münz ​275 Eliezer (Rabbi) ​38 Elijah of Genazzano ​45 Emden, Jacob ​293 Esau / Edom (Biblical figure) ​42, 47–48, 193, 296 Euclid ​209 Eugene III (Pope) ​138, 152 Eugene IV (Pope) ​147, 329 Eve (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​175 Ezpeleta, Fr. Miguel de ​196 Ezra the Scribe ​23, 40 Farissol, Avraham ​59 Felix V (Pope) / Amadeus VIII of Savoy (Duke) ​147, 327 Ferdinando I de’ Medici (Grand Duke) 208 Ferdinand I of Aragon (King) 120 Ferdinand II of Aragon (King) ​122–123 Ferdinand III of Habsburg (Emperor) ​ 202 Ferdinand III of Castile (King) 104 Fernández, Tomás ​193 Fichte, Johaan Gottlieb ​311 Fitzsimon, Henry ​196 Fleischer, Heinrich Leberecht ​250 Flügel, Gustav Leberecht ​28, 250 Fonseca, Damián ​193 Formstecher, Salomon ​232 Foucault, Michel ​247 Fredrick the Wise (King) ​310 Frey, Thomas (see: Theodor Fritsch) Freytag, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich ​250 Fritsch, Theodor (Thomas Frey) ​11, 275, 278, 280, 282–288, 290, 292–294, 296–299, 305 Gans, Eduard ​225, 227–230, 232 Gaztelu, Domingo de ​199–200 Geiger, Abraham ​232, 287 Germain, Jean ​147, 155, 160, 340 Gesenius, Wilhelm ​287 Gidelli, Yça (‘Īsā Ibn Jābir) ​146, 148 Gideon (Biblical figure) ​182 Gildemeister, Johannes ​281–282, 298

Giovio, Paolo ​196 Goebbels, Joseph ​308–309 Goldschmidt, Lazarus ​281 Goldziher, Ignác ​18, 22, 27, 29, 33–34, 48, 88, 145, 221–222, 237–244, 248, 251, 374, 386 Góngora, Luis de ​257 González del Águila, Diego ​118 González Palencia, Ángel 113, 253–254 Grätz, Heinrich ​227, 287 Gregory XIII (Pope) ​206, 208, 210 Grynszpan, Herschel ​308–309 Guadagnolo, Filippo ​200 Guadix, Diego de ​209 Güdemann, Moritz ​286 Hagar (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​5, 25, 176, 187–197, 199–207, 209–212 Halen, Francisco de Paula van ​142 Halevi, Jehuda (see: Yehuda ha-Levi) Haykal, Muhammad Husayn (Muhammad Husayn Haekal) ​357, 370 Hayyim ben Joseph Vital / Hayyim Vital ​ 292 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich ​228–230, 234–235, 237, 242 Heine, Heinrich ​225 Heman, Karl Friedrich ​316 Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm ​296 Henry II of Castile (King) ​110 Heraclius (Emperor) ​374 Herder, Johann Gottfried ​221, 231, 235 Hess, Moses ​232 Heymeric de Campo ​336–337 Hildesheimer, Esriel ​274, 276, 279 Hillel (Jewish religious leader) ​292 Hirsch, Marcus ​274–275 Hirsch, Samson Raphael ​279–280, 287, 289, 299 Hirsch, Samuel ​232 Hitler, Adolf ​11, 283–284, 306, 308, 310, 316, 321–323 Ḥiwi ha-Balkhī ​36 Hoffmann, David Zvi ​11, 273, 275–284, 286–299 Hollanda, Francisco de ​210 Holländer, Ludwig ​285 Honorius III (Pope) ​104–106

Index of Names

Howard, Ebenezer ​284 Hugh of Saint Victor 267 Hugo of Santalla 135 Huldah (Prophet) ​175 Humboldt, Wilhelm von ​232 Hus, Jan ​329, 339 Ḥusayn, Tāha ​370 Ibarra, Eduardo ​258 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, Aḥmad ​32 Ibn al-Kardabus ​113 Ibn al-Malāḥimī, Rukn al-Dīn ​88 Ibn al-Nadīm, Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ​ 28, 265 Ibn al-Naqqāsh, Abū Umāma Muḥammad ​ 33 Ibn al-Qifṭī ​71–72, 84 Ibn al-Rāwandī ​20, 36 Ibn al-Rifʿa, Najm al-Dīn ​32 Ibn al-Wāsiṭī, Ghāzī ​33, 77 Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥy al-Dīn ​257–260, 266 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī, Tāj al-Dīn ​ 377 Ibn Bācha ​258 Ibn Daḥḥūn ​262 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ​32 Ibn Ḥasan, Saʿīd ​22, 34–35 Ibn Ḥazm (Abū Muhammad ʿAlī Aḥmad Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm) ​262 Ibn Ḥazm, Abū ʿUmar Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ​ 10, 20, 22–23, 28–30, 40, 46, 53–56, 60, 90, 247–250, 259, 262–266, 268 Ibn Jābir, ‘Īsā (see: Yça Gidelli) Ibn Jabīrūl ​260 Ibn Kammūna, Saʿd ​21, 39–40, 43 Ibn Khaldūn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ​94, 264 Ibn Killis, Yaʿqūb ​36 Ibn Masarra. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh ​ 259–260, 266 Ibn Mu‘īsha (Muʿāwiya I), Abū al-Aʿlā ​71 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya ​31, 37, 60, 90 Ibn Qutayba, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ​ 24 Ibn Quzmān, Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Mālik ​ 257 Ibn Rushd, Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad (Averroes) ​57–58, 243, 259–260, 262

395

Ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, Najm al-Dīn ​88, 94 Ibn Salām, ʿAbdullah (Sage) ​41 Ibn Sanā’ al-Mulk ​75 Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) ​58, 88–89, 91, 209, 243 Ibn Sulaymān, ʿAlī ​40 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ​7, 22, 31–32, 87–100, 151 Ibn Tūmart, AbūʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ​ 143–145 Ibn ʿUbayya, Shihāb al-Dīn ​32 Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām ​27 Innocent III (Pope) ​106 Innocent IV (Pope) ​106 Innocent X / Giovanni Battista Pamphilj (Pope) ​210 ʿĪsā Ibn Ğabīr (Faqīh) ​146, 148–151 ʿĪsā Ibn Sahl ​105 ʿIsā, ʿAbd al-Jalīl  ​366 Isaac (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​47, 176, 187, 189, 192, 197–199, 204–205, 296, 315, 335 Isabel Clara Eugenia (Princess) ​194 Isabella I of Castile (Queen) ​123–124 Isaiah (Prophet) ​46, 174–175, 178, 182 Ishmael (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​5, 25–26, 35, 42–43, 47, 50, 171, 176–177, 187–194, 196–199, 201–202, 204–207, 209–212 Isidore of Seville 191 Ismāʿīl ibn Naghrīla (Samuel ha-Nagid) ​ 20 Issar Kahan, Israel ​286 Isserles, Moses ​289 Jacob (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​27, 296, 315 Jacob, Benno ​279–280, 286 Jehuda Halevi ​(see: Yehuda ha-Levi) Jeroboam (Prophet) ​175 Jesus of Nazareth ​23–25, 38, 41–43, 45, 48, 52–53, 56, 92, 96–97, 172–173, 177–179, 182, 199–200, 273, 285, 310–312, 322, 357 Jiménez de Rada, Rodrigo (Archbishop) ​ 113, 130, 141–146, 159 John Paul II (Pope) ​334, 344 John XXIII (Pope) ​332, 335

396

Index of Names

Josephus Flavius ​295 Josiah / Yoshiyahu (King) ​175, 182 Jost, Isaak Markus ​225 Juana Manuel of Castile (Queen) ​109 Justin Martyr ​25 Melito of Sardis ​25 Kahle, Paul ​282, 286 Kant, Immanuel ​223, 290 Karo, Josef ​274, 289 Kedar (Biblical figure) ​191 Ketton, Robert of ​134–135, 137–138, 143–144, 146, 148, 150, 157 Kircher, Athanasius ​202 Kittel, Gerhard ​11, 273, 286, 305–308, 313, 318, 320 Kittel, Rudolf ​282, 286–287, 307 Kochanowski, Jan ​176–178 Kolaiah (Biblical figure) ​51 König, Eduard ​282 Kremer, Alfred von ​249, 251–252, 268 Krochmal, Nachman ​232 Lagarde, Paul Anton de ​285 Langton, Stephen ​106 Lavater, Diaconus ​224 Lavater, Johann Caspar ​224 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm ​251 Leo X (Pope) ​310 Lindau, Marquard von ​337 Llull, Ramon ​54, 257, 259 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo ​201–202 Lope de Vega ​194 Rabanus Maurus ​191 Lopez, Luis ​123 Lorrain, Claude ​211 Luther, Martin ​157, 310, 322 Maaseiah (Prophet) ​51 Maaß, August ​281, 298 Maḥmūd, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ​9–11, 353–357, 359–364, 367–369, 371–380 Maimonides (see: Moses ben Maimon) Manasseh Ibn Ṣāliḥ ​27 Maraffi, Damiano ​204 Marco de Guadalajara y Javier (Fray) ​193 Marguerite / Margarita (Queen) ​193–194 Marquez, Juan ​194

Marr, Wilhelm ​284 Marracci, Ludovico ​131, 196 Marti, Ramon (Raymundus Martini; Ramon Martin) ​54, 60, 259–260 Martin V (Pope) ​328–329 Martínez de Ripalda, Jerónimo ​266 Marwān ibn Muḥammad ​48 Marx, Karl ​158, 305 Mary of Nazareth ​191, 195, 200, 206, 337 Massignon, Louis ​188, 260, 359 Matthijs Bril ​206–207, 209 Mehmed II (Sultan) ​156 Mehmet I (Sultan) ​211 Mehmet III (Sultan) ​211 Meinhold, Johannes ​286 Meiri (see: Menachem ben Solomon) Menachem ben Solomon (Meiri) ​293, 299 Mendelssohn, Moses ​223–224, 287, 292 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino ​254, 258–259 Metatron (Angel) ​30 Michael (Angel) ​30 Michael (Bishop) ​135 Miechowita, Maciej ​176 Milton, John ​257 Montejo (Spanish Muslim) ​119 Moreno Nieto, José 253 Moses (Biblical figure) ​19, 22–23, 28–29, 42, 45, 49–51, 80, 82, 174, 177, 182, 279–280, 315 Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, Rambam) ​5, 21, 37–45, 51–55, 58, 71–85, 240, 243, 260, 279, 294–295 Moshe of Narbonne ​57 Muḥammad ​6, 10, 18–21, 23–27, 33–35, 37–45, 47–53, 57, 60, 83–84, 92, 96–97, 130–131, 136, 143–145, 151, 158, 176, 190–192, 194, 200, 211, 337, 353–361, 364–371, 373–380 Muir, William ​251, 369 Myra, Nicholas of ​115 Nethanel ibn Fayyūmī ​39, 44, 46–49 Neubauer, Jacob ​286–287 Nicholas III (Pope) ​107 Nicholas V (Pope) ​132, 154–156, 327 Nobel, Josef ​275

Index of Names

Orozco, Alonso de ​194–196 Orsini, Paolo ​209 Osma, Guillermo J. de ​259 Paasch, Carl Rudolf ​285 Panfili, Benedetto ​211 Paradin, Claude ​203–206 Paton, Mahomad (Spanish Muslim, father of Yuçef ) ​118 Paton, Yuçef (Spanish Muslim, son of Mahomad) ​118 Paul VI (Pope) ​335, 342 Peter the Venerable ​29, 134–139, 141, 144, 146, 157–159, 267 Philip II of Burgundy (King) ​155, 194 Philip III of Augsburg (King) ​193–194, 208 Philo of Alexandria 190 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (see: Pius II) Pines, Shlomo ​48, 81–82, 221–222, 241–244 Pius II (Pope) / Enea Silvio Piccolomini ​ 133, 147, 154–156, 336, 347 Pius XII (Pope) ​335 Plotinus ​259 Postel, Guillaume ​197–198 Prague, Jerome of ​337 Preti, Antonio ​211 Profayt Duran ​56, 59 Qafih, Joseph ​72, 82, 84 Quevedo, Francisco de ​193–194 Ragusa, John of ​330, 336–338, 345–346 Raimondi, Giovan Battista ​208–209 Rambam (see: Moses ben Maimon) Rashi (Shlomo Yitzchaki) ​279 Rath, Ernst vom ​309 Reinhardt, Max ​316 Ribera (Martín de Ayala), Juan de ​193 Ribera Tarragó, Julián ​249, 254–258, 268 Riccoldo da Monte di Croce ​130, 132, 137, 143, 157, 337 Riḍā, Rashīd ​368 Rodkinson, Michael Levi ​281 Rohling, August ​275, 288 Saadia Gaon ​36, 39, 42, 44–45, 55 Sacy, Silvestre de ​250

397

Saḥnūn (Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd at-Tanūḫī) ​117 Said, Edward 10, 247–248 Sales, François de ​211 Salmon b. Yeroḥam ​29–30, 50 Salomon, Bernard ​203–206 Samson (Biblical figure) ​182 Samuel b. Ḥofni Gaon ​37, 44 Samuel ibn Tibbon  ​75 Sandalphon (Angel) ​29–30 Sanders, Nicholas ​196 Sansovino, Francesco ​199 Sarah (Biblical and Quranic figure) ​176, 187, 189–195, 198–199, 204 Saul (King) ​175 Savigny, Friedrich Carl von ​230–231 Scarlatti, Alessandro ​211 Scholem, Gershom ​56, 224, 321 Schwartz, Adolf ​286 Segovia, John of ​130–131, 146–152, 154–156, 160, 330–331, 337–340, 346–347 Shakespeare, William ​257 Shimʿon b. Ṣemaḥ Duran ​36, 53, 56–60, 233 Shimʿon ben Yoḥai (Rabbi) ​38, 48 Shlomoh ibn Adret (Salomo ben Abraham ben Adereth) ​36, 56 Ṣidqī Tawfīq, Muḥammad ​367 Sieben, Hermann Josef ​328, 339 Siebenrock, Roman ​326, 343 Sigismund of Luxembourg (Emperor) ​ 329 Socrates ​223 Solimena, Francesco ​211 Steinheim, Salomon Ludwig ​232 Steinschneider, Moritz ​18, 33, 42–43, 56, 60, 76, 221–222, 232–238, 241–244 Stern, Ludwig ​275 Strack, Hermann ​275, 296 Suárez, Francisco ​266 Tempesta, Antonio ​209 Tertullian ​25 Theodore Abū Qurrah ​267 Theodosius II (Emperor) ​104–105 Thevet, André ​203 Tillich, Paul ​307 Toledo, Mark of ​130–131, 137, 141–142, 145, 159

398

Index of Names

Torquemada, Juan de ​192, 197 Torre, Patricio de la ​253 Totis, Domenico de ​211 Tournes, Jean de ​203–206 Tugendhat, Maria ​322 Ucko, Sinai ​226, 228 ʿUmar Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb ​41 Urban II (Pope) ​132 Urban VIII (Pope) / Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini ​210 Uzayr (Prophet) ​23 Valdés, Rodrigo de ​118 Varagine, Jacobus da ​190 Vázquez de Menchaca, Fernando ​266 Veitel Ephraim, Heine ​237 Vieira, Antonio ​191, 211 Villani, Giovanni ​191 Vio, Tommaso de (Cardinal Cajetan) ​206 Viterbo, Giles of ​133

Walter, Bruno ​316 Weil, Gustav ​251 Wellhausen, Julius ​250, 277–278, 297–298 Wohlgemuth, Joseph ​277, 287, 290, 298 Wolf, Friedrich August ​231 Wolf, Immanuel ​226–227 Wuyek, Jacob ​177–178 Yaya, Hoçeyne 118 Yça, Don (Faqīh of the Avila mosque) ​ 118 Yefet b. ʿEli (also: Yefet b. ʿAlī) ​36, 44, 50 Yehuda ha-Levi (Judah Halevi, Jehuda ­ha-Levi) 39–40, 45, 51–53, 243 Yitzchaki, Shlomo (see: Rashi) Yohanan (Rabbi) ​295 Yosef ben Yehuda ​71 Yūsuf al-Baṣīr ​36–37, 39, 43 Zachariah (Prophet) ​174 Zedekiah (Prophet) ​51

Index of Subjects Adab literature ​19 Abrahamic religions ​1–12, 82, 188, 192, 197, 200, 211 Aesthetic ​201–204, 212 Africa ​40 Aleppo ​77 Allegory, allegorical interpretation ​76, 187, 189–190, 210 Almohad, see Caliphate Almoravid, see Caliphate Alterity, otherness, other religion ​3–4, 6, 8, 10, 17, 184, 187, 196–197, 208, 210–212, 263, 313, 320, 325, 331, 335, 330–331, 334–336, 356 Ambiguity / ambivalence ​12, 57, 131, 201–202, 359 Angel, see also Metatron ​29, 136, 174–175, 187, 195, 202, 204–207, 210, 212 Anthropomorphism ​22, 58, 251, 264 Anti-Semitism ​11, 20, 106, 225, 273–284, 287, 290, 298– 299, 305–307, 314–316, 321–322 Apologetics ​189, 276, 282, 290, 299, 365 – Christian ​18, 25, 60, 138, 140, 189, 192, 196–197, 209–210, 212, 233, 323 – Islamic ​171, 182, 184, 360, 361–362, 365–366, 369 – Jewish ​18, 36, 39, 41, 46, 54–55, 60, 274–290, 298–299 Arab ​18, 25, 43, 47–48, 60, 95, 142, 146, 176, 191–192, 197, 237, 314, 367 – Arabism ​10, 170, 247–250, 253–256, 258, 268 Arabic (language) ​36, 150, 253, 255, 258–259 – Arabic studies ​129, 236, 268 – Judaeo-Arabic ​36, 38, 71, 236–237 – Literature ​43, 233

Aragon ​8, 34, 54, 108–109, 111, 116, 132, 135, 154 Aryan race ​312, 315 – Aryan Paragraph ​311 Assimilation (Judaism) ​28, 239, 275, 305, 313–318 Atheism ​263 Azhar, al‑ / Azhar University ​9–11, 354, 358–360, 362, 362–264, 368–369, 371, 379 – Modernisation ​360 – Rector of ​359, 362, 379 – Scholarship / scholars / ulama ​9, 11, 354, 358, 362–363 Babylon ​23, 40, 47, 290, 292, 294, 313 Baghdad ​20, 31, 36, 39, 90, 243, 257 Baroque ​201–212 Belarusian language ​169 Bible, see Gospels / Hebrew Bible Burgundy ​154–155, 340 Byzantium / Constantinople ​105, 132–133, 146–147, 154, 160, 264, 267, 327, 336, 345, 374 – Fall of Byzantium ​147, 160 Cairo ​22, 32, 36, 40, 264, 343, 364 Caliphate / Islamic Caliphate ​31, 159, 251, 254–255 – Almohad ​72, 80, 104, 141, 144–145, 159, 256 – Almoravid ​255–256 – Fatimid ​32, 36, 74, 77–78, 80, 151 – Umayyad ​251, 262 Castile ​8, 104, 108–111, 116–117, 120, 122, 134, 142, 148–149, 154 Catalonia ​35, 54 Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens ​274

400

Index of Subjects

Christianity, see also apologetics, council, crusade, exegesis, heresy, polemics, pope – Ad gentes ​334, 343 – Baptism ​195–196, 207–208, 210, 311–312, 318 – Catholic Church ​181, 183–185, 325–348 – Counter-Reformation ​176, 182, 184, 188, 210 – Doctrine ​54, 153, 180, 182, 185 – Evangelization ​132, 157, 209, 343–344 – Faith ​133, 136, 140, 153, 159–160, 189 – Mission / missionary ​7, 9, 132–133, 140–141, 148–160, 189, 208–209, 334, 343, 345 – Protestant Church / Protestant thinkers ​ 11, 179–180, 189, 196–197, 203, 208–210, 212, 277–279, 282, 286–287, 305 309–310, 335 – Reformation ​5, 180, 182–184, 196, 208, 305 – Religious order – – Cluniac order ​134–137, 141 – – Dominican order ​54, 132, 143, 157 – Theology ​132–139, 146–160, 173, 180–182, 262, 267, 285–286 – Understanding of Islam ​129–160, 187–212, 247–268, 325–348 Church Fathers ​25, 138, 285, 322 Civilization / religion as civilization, see Orientalism / Western culture Colonialism / European colonialism ​8, 10, 247–248, 358 Congress of Vienna ​225 Conversion ​5–6, 21, 35, 37, 39, 54, 56, 71–73, 80–84, 107–108, 133–134, 140, 146–147, 152, 158, 160, 185, 195, 200, 314, 318, 342 Córdoba ​71, 106, 124, 142, 243, 262–263 Cosmopolitism ​36, 315 Council, see also Christianity ​8–9, 12, 129, 142, 147, 154, 160 – Council of Basel ​9, 133, 146–148, 154, 325, 326–329, 336 – Council of Constance ​327–328 – Council of Lyon ​157, 328 – Council of Vienne ​118

– Second Vatican Council ​9, 211, 332, 328–335, 340, 342, 345–346 – – Lumen gentium (encyclical) ​326, 333–334, 341 – – Nostra aetate (encyclical) ​326, 333, 341–343, 348 – – Dignitatis humanae (declaration) ​ 326 Creator ​29, 46, 259, 263, 341 Critique (of ) – Orientalism ​234, 247–260, 268 – Reformism, Islamic ​380 – Philosophy, Islamic 259, 262, 380 – Tradition, Islamic ​8, 80, 187, 200, 252, 265, 354, 356–359 Crusade ​6, 123, 129, 131–134, 137–142, 146–147, 152, 154–160, 336, 339, 347 Cultural appropriation and assimilation, see culture Culture, see also Transculturality – Cultural anthropology ​222, 230–233, 238, 244 – Cultural appropriation and assimilation ​ 12, 28, 169, 184–185, 195, 239, 252, 275, 305, 313–318 – Cultural history ​249, 251–252, 254–256, 258, 265, 267–268 – Cultural transmission ​1–12, 87–100, 134–160, 249, 355, 358–359, 363, 380 – Hispanic-Muslim culture ​103–124, 141–156, 247–268 – Western culture ​247, 259, 380 – Kulturkampf ​359 Cultural transfer, see culture Day of Atonement ​291, 298 Death penalty (Bible) ​291 Devil ​156 Dhimmi ​30–33, 77, 105 Diaspora ​292, 305, 313–314 Dina de-Malkhuta Dina (Judaism) ​291 Dogma ​43, 150, 172, 178, 238, 260, 264–266 Edom (Judaism) ​47–48, 193, 296 Egypt, see also Cairo – Modernisation ​360–367

Index of Subjects

– Contemporary Period ​10, 360, 362, 364, 369, – Nasserism ​363, 368, – Infitāḥ policy ​362 – Middle class ​11, 358, 362, 364 Enlightenment (Judaism) ​274, 306, 313–314 Epistemology ​3, 8, 11, 90, 95, 100, 357, 371, 378 Eschatology ​259, 306, 314 Ethics (Judaism) ​287–288, 290, 293, 316 Europe / Europeanization ​1, 4–10, 160, 192, 247–258 Exegesis – Islamic exegesis, see also Islam ​19, 26, 42, 59, 151, 376, – Jewish exegesis, see also Judaism ​18, 42, 55, 189–190 – Christian exegesis, see also Christianity ​ 42, 153–154, 160, 173, 181, 189–190, 310, 330–331 Exil ​5, 23, 28, 40–41, 50, 52, 147, 156, 204, 209–210 Faqīh ​118, 121, 147–148, 151 Fatimid, see Caliphate Fāṭimid rule ​77 Fatwa ​30–33, 88, 105, 147, 362 Fin-de-siècle ​273 Final solution ​317, 335 First World War ​276 Florence ​143, 327, 331–332, 342, 344 French Revolution ​313–314 Gematria ​25, 34, 42 Genealogy / genealogical interpretation ​ 177, 187–188, 190, 192, 194 Gentiles ​37, 273, 281–283, 288–297, 299, 308–309, 314 Gospels ​20, 22, 48, 134, 141, 152, 172, 209, 334 Hadith / ḥadīth literature ​4, 27 – Authenticity ​367–368 – Scepticism ​9, 365, 367–368, 371, 374, 378 – Transmission ​95–96, 98, 367–368

401

Halakha / Jewish law ​6, 11, 20, 31, 44, 56, 79, 273–276, 281–283, 288, 290–293, 295–296, 299 Haskalah / Jewish Enlightenment ​ 221–226, 274 Hebrew Bible ​6, 24, 17–24, 26–29, 35–47, 50–57, 60, 80, 83, 263, 274–277, 279–784, 287, 290–292, 296–299 – Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, see also Anti-semitism ​278–279 – Translation ​177–178, 182–183 Hellenism ​94, 252 Hep-Hep riots ​225, 227 Heresy / Heretics ​140, 208 – in Christianity ​140, 157, 329–331, 339–342, 348 – in Islam ​29, 89, 91, 95, 99–100, 145, 260 – in Judaism (minim) ​84 Historicism ​244, 289 Historiography ​10, 249, 251, 253, 256, 289, 298 Holy Spirit ​160, 172, 180, 182, 328–334 Humanism ​182, 184, 196, 212, 282, 315 Hussite ​179, 329–330, 337–340, 344–348 Hybridity ​11, 244 Iconography ​142, 201, 205–207, 355 Idealism ​279, 282, 294 Idolatry ​7, 49–50, 52–53, 140, 171, 175, 180–181, 183, 293–295, 297 Ijma ​367 Image of God ​180, 289 Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben ​310 Islam, see also apologetics, exegesis, heresy, polemics – Doctrine ​6, 133–136, 139–140, 143–145, 147–148, 151, 158 – Islamic schools (Muʿtazila, Murjiʾa, Shiʿa, Khawārij) ​250, 252, 264 – Islamisation / Islamism ​359, 362–364, 368, 378–379 – Mosque ​7–8, 84, 96, 103–124 – Mission 19–20, 47–48, 80, 355, 358, 365–377 – Normativity (sharīʿa) ​27, 93, 99, 292, 363, 370

402

Index of Subjects

– Philosophy (falsafa) ​7, 88, 98, 259–262, 380 – Rationality of ​57, 60 – Reformism ​10, 359, 378, 380 – Salafism ​12, 87, 360, 363, 368 – Theology ​144–145, 259, 262, 266–267 – Tradition / traditionalism ​359 Islamic reformism ​10, 359, 378, 380 Italy ​107, 109, 132, 143, 189, 209–210, 341 Jerusalem ​23, 32, 36, 50, 70, 79, 84, 132, 159, 190, 224, 280, 292, 313, 316, 319, 321, 328 – Jerusalem Temple ​23, 46, 292 Jewish Question ​11, 273–274, 282–286, 305–323 Judaism, see also apologetics, exegesis, heresy, polemics – Ancient Israel ​40–48, 52, 83, 180, 285–286, 295, 315–321 – Babylonian Exile ​23, 28, 40–41, 52 – Cairo Genizah  ​36 – Culture ​221, 232, 242 – People of Israel / Israelites ​19–23, 41–46, 55, 292, 340 – Reform ​275, 277, 282 Justice (theology) ​76, 83, 251, 286–287 Kalām ​27, 80, 243 Khawārij, see Islam, Islamic schools Knowledge ​3–12, 21, 24, 35, 40, 52, 75, 80–81, 131, 136, 145, 149, 156–160, 173, 178, 183, 198, 200, 247–249, 254, 256, 263, 267–268, 280, 298, 356–257, 364, 367, 371–372, 375, 378 Kol Nidre (Judaism) ​291, 298 Lithuania ​7, 169–185 Maghreb ​34, 54, 71, 73–74, 117 Maliki / Mālikism ​33, 112, 105, 262–263 Mamlūk period ​22, 30–34, 79 Manichean ​263 Martyrdom ​73 Mecca ​26, 35, 41, 43, 50, 58, 199–200 Medina ​19, 41, 47 Messiah ​25, 41, 43, 46, 48–49, 52–53, 83, 145, 173, 179

Metatron (Judaism) ​30 Midrash ​30, 54, 277, 280, 296 Minaret ​114, 118, 144 Mishnah ​27–29, 44, 81, 277, 280 Modernism ​354–355, 364–367, 369 Monotheism ​29, 50, 52–53, 58, 73, 76, 81, 83, 90, 172, 234, 263, 341 Morisco ​122, 189, 192–194, 198, 209–210, 212 Morocco ​30, 34, 81, 151 Mosque ​7–8, 84, 96, 103–104, 106–124, 263 Mozarab ​58, 256, 267 Muhammad, see also sunna – Biography (sīra) ​9, 17, 19, 356–359, 361, 365, 367, 369–371, 373–378, 380 – – Classical ​369–370 – – Modern ​9, 365, 369–371, 376–378, 380 – Image (ṣūra), representation, perception ​ 361, 371, 378 – Miracles (al-muʾjizāt) ​24, 26, 50, 361, 365–366 – Infallibility (ʿiṣma) ​365–366, 372 – Practice and teaching (sunna) ​26, 77, 96, 241, 364–366, 368, 372, 376 – Veneration ​143, 366, 373 Murjiʾa, see Islam, Islamic schools Muʿtazila, see Islam, Islamic schools Mysticism (Islam, Sufism, taṣawwuf) ​12, 29, 88, 251–265 Nationalism ​8, 283 Neophyte ​209, 345 New Testament, see Gospels Noahide laws (Judaism) ​293 Nuremberg Laws ​308, 312, 317, 323 Old Testament, see Hebrew Bible Oral Torah ​27, 45, 291, 299 Orient, see civilzation, Orientalism Orientalism / Orientalist (Islamic studies) ​ 9–10, 247–250, 254, 268, 354–355, 358–359, 364, 369, 375, 378–380 Orthodoxy / Neo-Orthodoxy (Judaism) ​ 273, 277, 279, 282, 289–290 Ottoman ​133, 146, 151, 184, 196–198, 203, 208, 211

Index of Subjects

Paganism ​49, 140, 171, 175, 180–181, 295 Palestine ​295, 313–314 Pantheism ​259 Paul ​152, 187, 189–190, 312, 322, 341 Persia ​39–40, 355, 371 Philosophy ​135, 140, 190, 248, 256–268, 279 – Greek ​7, 84, 252, 254, 260, 262, 265, 380 – Islamic ​87–110, 259, 262, 366, 380, 386 – Modern ​358, 366 – Aristotle ​51, 89, 92, 97, 100, 260, 262 – Metaphysics ​87, 90, 97, 99, 256–257, 307, 372 Poland ​154, 169 Polemics ​5–8 – between Christianity and Islam ​18, 60, 130–138, 143–145, 155, 157–160, 169–185, 233 – between Christianity and Judaism ​ 17–18, 60, 142, 233 – between Islam and Judaism ​17–60 – Corpus Cluniacense ​134, 157–158, 192 Polish language ​170, 177 Politics ​306–307, 320–323, 359–360 – political history ​251, 254–256 Pope / papacy ​105–106, 132–133, 138–139, 146–147, 152, 154–156, 206, 208–210, 212, 310, 327–344 – Bull ​106, 123, 132, 155–156, 326, 332 Portugal ​156, 293, 338 Posek (Judaism) ​273, 279, 283, 289 Propaganda ​6, 33, 49, 133, 137, 154, 157, 160, 283, 298 Prophecy ​21, 25–26, 37–38, 41–43, 49, 60, 80, 84, 175, 251, 315, 353, 356, 360–361, 366, 372–374, 377–378 – Prophethood / Prophetology (Islam) ​6, 9, 21, 23–25, 34, 41, 43, 47–50, 60, 253, 356–357, 359–361, 364–367, 371–374, 377–380 Protestant Church, see Christianity Pseudo-Prophet ​136, 144, 190 Punishment ​37, 46, 78, 171, 181, 316

403

Qurʾān, see also exegesis – Translations of the Qur’ān ​5–6, 129–160, 200 – Qur’ānic commentaries (tafsīr) ​19, 130, 137, 149, 151, 386 Qaraites ​27, 29, 39, 50, 80, 82, 84, 184 Ramadan ​50, 93 Rational argumentation / Rationalism ​ 140, 183, 366, 369, 372 Responsum (Judaism) ​37, 82, 84 Revelation (Islam) ​22–22, 26–27, 47, 49, 51, 53, 79, 137, 356–357, 359, 369–372, 375–376, 378 Rome ​154–155, 208–210, 212 – Romans (ancient people) ​313 Sabbath ​46, 78–80 Salamanca / University of Salamanca ​ 147–148, 155 Salvation history / Heilsgeschichte – Christian salvation history ​11, 141, 146, 159–160, 212, 306, 313, 317–319 – Islamic salvation history ​47, 172, 356, 370–371 Saracen / Sarraceni ​135–136, 144–146, 150–160, 191–192, 199, 338–346 Satan ​156, 372 Savoy ​132, 146–147, 149, 155–156, 327 Schism ​57, 190, 327–328 Scholasticism ​259–260, 262 Science (divine science) ​266 – Modern ​364 – Jurisprudence (Islamic, fiqh) ​26, 28, 87, 99, 263, 363, 366 – Islamic ​249 Secularisation / Secularism ​9, 12, 353 Sefer Toldot Yeshu ​41 Shiʿa, see Islam, Islamic Schools Shiʿur Qomā (Judaism) ​28, 30 Shoah (Holocaust) ​276, 317, 335 Shulhan Aruch ​274, 286–288, 289–290 Sinai / Mount Sinai ​26, 42, 45, 55, 190 Skepticism ​9, 263, 365, 367–368, 371, 374, 378 Socialism ​362, 370, 376 Spain / Iberia ​8, 30, 36, 40, 53, 56, 58–59, 103–124, 132–160, 146, 149

404

Index of Subjects

– Andalusia / al-Andalus ​32, 71, 105, 108, 117, 249, 253–258, 260, 262, 265, 268 – Siete partidas ​109–110, 115 Spirituality (Islam) ​375–376, 379 Sufi ​ 79, 81, 151, 251–252, 257, 259, 266, 361, 365, 373, 377 Sunna ​ 26, 77, 96, 241, 364–366, 368, 372, 376 Sunni / Sunnism ​27, 74. 80–81, 366–367, 377 Sūra ​ 19, 41–42, 147, 170, 199 Synagogue ​7, 29, 31–32, 103–111, 115, 119, 189, 284 Tafsīr, see Qurʾān Talmud ​12, 20, 55, 280–281, 313 – Polemics against the Talmud ​20, 28–30, 54, 60, 274–277, 279, 283–299, 308–309 Tatar (Lithuanian Tatar) ​7, 169–185, 337 Third Reich (Germany) ​307–311 Toledo ​29, 104, 108, 113, 115, 199, 122, 132, 134, 141–146, 159, 267 Translation, see also Qurʾān – History of translation ​5, 146 – Translation of the Christian Bible ​24, 177–178, 182–183, 209 – Translator ​6, 60, 75, 129–131, 133–136, 138, 144, 146, 148–151, 153, 158, 199, 267, 298 – Trilingual ​132–156

Transculturality ​222, 231, 242, 244 Trinity ​21, 172, 177–183, 263, 329, 366 Turkey / Turkic language ​184, 242 – Turks ​132–133, 146, 154, 156–157, 169–170, 189, 197, 200, 209–210, 212, 337 Umayyad, see Caliphate Universalism ​10, 79, 158, 188, 199, 208–212, 221–229, 244, 251–253, 276, 293, 327, 332–334, 374 Valencia ​108–109, 198 Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums ​225 Verein zur Verbesserung des Zustandes der Juden im deutschen Bundesstaat ​225 Violence ​138, 153, 181, 317 Wandering Jew ​321 Waq f ​118 War, see also Crusade ​104, 108, 112, 122–124, 310, 321, 335, 344, 347 Western culture, see culture Wissenschaft des Judentums ​276, 279 Yemen / Yemenites ​40–52, 82–84 Zahirism ​262 Zionism ​273, 277–278, 314, 317 Zoroastrian ​40, 263