xiv, 357 p. : 25 cm

"This volume contains fifteen articles on the communal, social, and intellectual life of medieval Jewry in Islamic lands. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, 'Communities and Their Leaders' is devoted to the old Babylonian center in the East and the Andalusian community in the West. Part II, 'Self-Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Others' investigates the ways in which medieval Jews living under Islam viewed their gentile neighbours and expressed their own identity. Part III, 'Religious Philosophy, Mysticism, and Spirituality in Islam and Judaism' explores the impact of Islamic thought on the Jewish intellectual tradition. The collection depicts a civilization at once unified and diverse, revealing both consistent patterns of leadership and scholarship as well as distinctively local identities and collective memories."

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Varieties of inter-communal relations in the Geonic period / Menahem Ben-Sasson -- The exilarchate / Moshe Gil -- Halakhah and reality in the Gaonic period: Taqqanah, Minhag, tradition and consensus: some observations / Gideon Libson -- Jewish élites in al-Andalus / David J. Wasserstein -- The Judeo-Arabic tradition in Christian Spain / Yom Tov Assis -- Costume as cultural statement: the esthetics, economics, and politics of Islamic dress / Yedida Kalfon Stillman -- Persecution, response, and collective memory: the Jews of Islam in the classical period / Mark R. Cohen -- Saadya Gaon on Christianity and Islam / Daniel J. Lasker

On Jewish intellectuals who converted in the early Middle Ages / Sarah Stroumsa -- The Shoshanim of tenth-century Jerusalem: Karaite exegesis, prayer, and communal identity / Daniel Frank -- Yūsuf al-Baṣīr: theological aspects of his Halakhic works / David E. Sklare -- Ismāʻīlī theology and Maimonides' philosophy / Alfred L. Ivry -- A mystical treatise on perfection, providence and prophecy from the Jewish Ṣūfī Circle / Paul B. Fenton -- Yemenite philosophical Midrash as a source for the intellectual history of the Jews of Yemen / Y. Tzvi Langermann

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