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Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages

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Cohen's book provides a good comparison of the situation of Jews living in Muslim and Christian lands in the Middle Ages. What makes his comparison particularly interesting is the wide range of arenas to which his applies his comparison. After a survey of the historic-theological and legal backgrounds to Christian treatment of Jews and Islamic treatment of Jews, there is a series of discrete chapters on a variety of overlapping aspects of social intercourse. These include economic relations, urbanization, social relations, inter-religious dialogue and dispute, and collective memory.

Cohen's analysis is scholarly, dispassionate, and generally apolitical (unlike some of the reviews of his book!). Moreover, with the exception of an introductory chapter to situate the book in modern debates, Cohen limits his examination to the Middle Ages. So, those readers who complain that he ignores trends in modern (since 1750s) or early modern (1500s-1700s) Christianity and Islam are missing the point. I would certainly recommend this book to an educated lay reader or for classroom use.

Mark Cohen's comparative study of the status of Jews under Christendom and Islam during the Middle Ages is the most sophisticated, nuanced, meticulous, and persuasively-argued study of its kind. The extremely negative customer review on this page betrays the bias of its author. Citing from Bat Ye'or to demonstrate that the Jewish position in Islam has always been wretched is an exercise in futility. Bat Ye'or is anti-Muslim to an extreme. She thanks "Judeo-Christian" values for the positive treatment Jews currently receive at the hands of the post-Holocaust Western world. As if the previous 1800 years of expulsions, libels, massacres, burnings at the stake, forced conversions, and genocidal attacks pursued in various periods by elements (i.e. states or populaces) loyal to the Catholic Church, the various Eastern Orthodox Churches and, in its first two hundred years, the Protestant Churches as well, never occurred or are somehow irrelevant. It was rather the separation of church and state that resulted from the 18th century Enlightenment that allowed for the fair treatment Jews currently experience in Western countries, although that too must be modified by the brutal pogroms in Russia in which thousands of Jewish men, women, and children were slaughtered, as well as the Holocaust perpetrated by European Christians, some of whom (such as in Croatia) were religious, though most were not.

When thousands of Jews across Europe were being burned alive on the streets during the Black Plague (1348 and further), Jews in Muslim lands were able to live and practice their religion, without fear that the local Muslim populations would associate them with the devil and kill them on the basis of outlandish libels. The example of the Black Plague is particularly illustrative of the gap between the medieval Jewish experience under Islam and Christendom, since the Muslim lands were stricken as heavily by this epidemic as the Christian lands, and yet there is not one single recorded instance of Muslims accusing Jews of having been responsible for the plague, whereas in Christian Europe it was just this accusation that was so widespread and consistently served as a pretext for large-scale massacres of Jews. Sure, there were instances of persecution of Jews in Muslim lands, but they were few and far between, and the most significant of the limited number of such persecutions were carried out by heteredox sects such as the fanatical Almohades (Spain, 12th century) and the Caliph al-Hakim (Egypt, Palestine, early 11th century), who was clearly deranged in the most literal sense in the view of most historians. The fact that Jews were discriminated against throughout the Muslim world must be understood in the context of its time: in the Middle Ages, tolerance was not regarded as a virtue, but a weakness, and no one practiced it in the modern sense of the term. Without any doubt, the protected status accorded Jews in return for payment of the discriminatory taxes and other regulations was far better than their brothers in Christian Europe could imagine. Cohen cites numerous primary sources that demonstrate that the self-perception of medieval Jews themselves was that Muslims did not buy into the absurd accusations hurled against Jews in Christendom and that the Jewish experience under Islam was not regarded as "galut" (exile) in the same sense in which it was in Christendom.

If there is any flaw in Cohen's book, it is in his ambiguously-worded statement on the very last page which might seem to suggest that the thirteenth century marked a new era for Jews under Islam, one that might perhaps (though Cohen doesn't say this) rival Jewish life in Christendom. Many of Cohen's own citations and much of his argumentation make it clear that this is not the case, and that instead Jews continued to experience a far more secure existence under Islam until the advent of the modern period of Jewish history (i.e. the 18th century) than they did in Christendom, though they were less secure than they had been in the classical period of Islam. This point will be clear to those familiar with the widespread massacres of the 14th century in Northern Europe, the continued persistence of the blood libel in Europe (absent in Islam), the Spanish Inquisition (including the pogroms that preceded it by a century), the expulsions and massacres following the Protestant Reformation, and the massacres of the 1648-1649 Cossack uprising--and the lack of such horrors in the lands of Islam. This is particularly true of the Ottoman Empire, which was a safe haven for Jews in the 16th and 17th centuries (though Catholic Poland was as well). It is just such nuances (i.e. sometimes Jews were persecuted in Muslim lands and sometimes they found haven in Christian lands) which are missed by advocates of what Cohen terms the "countermyth" of Islamic persecution, like Bat Ye'or. (The original "myth" debunked by Cohen is that Jewish life under Islam was an interfaith utopia when, in reality, Jews were always second-class citizens subject to hardships, though they sometimes rose above that position, as in Muslim Spain during the so-called "Golden Age.") Mainstream scholars such as Bernard Lewis, S. D. Goitein, and Cohen himself reject with equal vigor both myths. This nuanced approach is too complicated for people like Bat Ye'or (and Robert Spencer), who think things had to always have been how they are now.

In short, people like Bat Ye'or are engaged in projectionism of the worst kind: the Muslim world today is teeming with the most virulent anti-Semitism imaginable, so it must have always been that way. However, history doesn't work that way. Trends change; the job of the historian is to analyze them dispassionately, which Bat Ye'or, having been expelled from Egypt in a humiliating fashion in the 1950s, is apparently not capable of. (In fact, it is the consensus of historians that anti-Semitism in its conventional sense did not exist in the Muslim world until modern times and that it was only introduced into it by Christian Arabs in the 19th cenury. See p. 208, note 28 of Cohen's book for sources.) As for the other methodological issues raised in the negative customer review, Cohen's book is so meticulous that all of these issues are treated by Cohen himself, some in the very Introdction to his book! Read the book and see for yourself. Just don't be taken in by polemicists who are more concerned with creating simple answers to complex problems (i.e. why did Jewish-Muslim relations deteriorate in the modern period?) than in analyzing history.

An interesting and scholarly read on the large scale socio-political relationship of Jews in the middle ages. Cohen holds that whereas animosity towards Jews in Christian countries was directed specifically and theologically towards Jews, in the case of the Muslim world Jews generally enjoyed (or suffered) similar treatment to other other dhimmi groups, usually Christians.

Chapter 1 compares modern mythologies. The first is that of the shiny happy dhimmi who was both protected and prospered under Islam. Cohen argues that this originated from 19th century Jews hoping to challenge Christian societies to support political emancipation. This gets picked up in 20th century polemics as a statement that Jews and Muslims co-existed as brothers until the advent of modern Zionism.

The contrasting myth is that Jews were always second class citizens, victims of a specific intolerance. This serves to give a deeper rational for 20th century Arab and Iranian antisemitism and (a conjecture which I found interesting, but arguable) is sometimes used to raise the status of (or level of empathy towards) Oriental Jews with respect to the narrative of Ashkenazic of pogroms and the Holocaust.


Chapter 2 looks at the theological bases for conflict. The Christian vision as the "New Israel" begged the Augustian question that if Christianity replaced Judaism, why were the Jews still around. Islam instead had the doctrine of tarif - that Jews had falsified parts of their Torah and were in error and might still come around. In Christians Muslims had a more numerous competition to deal with than Jews.

Chapters 3 and 4:. The Christian Theodosian (later Justinianic) Code barred Jews from obtaining political power over Christians; however Jewish serfs were better off than Christian serfs having many of the rights of freemen to move around where they chose. Jewish rights eroded from 11th and 14th century where Jews lost the right to bear arms and in France Jews became the property of barons of the territory they lived in. In Muslim jurisdictions, governed by the Pact of Umar (pp55), Jews were sometimes allowed to achieve political office - Muslims found more honor in fighting than in state service (pp67) They were not allowed to bear arms - which made them subject to the whims of Qadi's, Sultans, brigands and soldiers. The hated jizya poll tax was collected from every Jewish male of age and in a manner required to symbolically humiliate the payer. Dhimmi merchants paid twice the commercial taxes paid by Muslims. In certain periods the neck would be stamped as proof of payment; Yet Jews feared that non-payment would lead to canceling the Pact and non-protection.

In contrast Christendom leaders were bribed to avoid violence against Jews. The uncertainly of this arrangement was less preferable and more onerous.

Chapter 5-8 examines money lending, mercantile rights, social relations and residency rights. Both societies got around the prohibition against usury by using lenders from other religious groups, though Jews were more vilified for this in Europe. Men could mix socially, but women were more sequestered in Islam than in Judaism and this was problematic - I would have liked to have had more material on women. Muslim men could marry Jewish women who could privately practice Judaism, but not attend synagogue or raise their children as Jews.

Chapter 9 on public religious debates, was more relevant to Christianity, where Jews were forced to engage in a trial by debate of their religious doctrines - a difficult position as even if they won they lost. Chapter 10 looks at then Jewish response to persecution - European Jews tending more to memorialize victimhood and to weave it into the Jewish national historic memory, whereas Sephardim did not. No satisfying explanation was offered. Perhaps the answer lies in the host society's notions of time and progress vs timelessness.

One concludes that in both worlds oppression took place, that tolerance co-existed with intolerance. Taking the long view, if either society were completely hostile the Jews would not have survived. It is also possible to drown in a river who's average depth is only 3 inches. How one views this depends which parts of the river you happen to be in at the moment.

In this medium-length but magisterial treatment, Cohen seeks the causes of convivencia and the relatively happier lot of Jews under the domination of Islam contrasted with under Christianity during the Middle Ages. His findings are nuanced, equivocal and satisfyingly multi-factored. What he does is to look into causes. What he does not do is try to measure the relative tolerance of the two religious hegemons or ask whether one was more tolerant - he takes this almost as given and seeks to explain it. I regard this as a perfectly legitimate exercise and a perfectly sound starting point, but some reviewers have made it a criticism. If one were trying to rank the two hegemons this criticism would, of course, be perfectly fair, but Gay is not seeking to do this. He is starting from the observation of greater tolerance and looking for reasons.

Of course, "tolerance" is an equivocal term, and the difference is not as clear-cut as some would have one believe. The traditional "lachrymose" (tearful) model of Jewish life under Christianity is not the whole story, nor is that of the Golden Age of Samuel ibn Nagrela in Ha Sefarad. Jews living under Christianity in Southern Europe suffered far less persecution than those in the North; Jews living under the Almohads in North Africa were forced to convert to Islam. And then there is Granada and the fate of the Bani Quryaza. Tellingly, though, these last two are generally the only major pogroms that critics of Islam can name, whereas in Europe they were at times systematic and at others an endemic and recurring hazard. The Jews of North Africa, interestingly, appear to have remained crypto-Jews and to have returned to their religion when Almohad fanaticism subsided, whereas Christian-Muslim converts remained Muslim. Quite why this was the case is not explained to my satisfaction.

So how does Cohen explain tolerance? Well, as I stated his conclusions are satisfyingly multidimensional. There are circumstantial factors. For instance, Jews were only one of many groups of Dhimmi under Islam, but were the only divergent religious group permitted to survive at all under Christianity with the Augustinian doctrine of "witness" and immiseration, thus receiving the full attention of its spasms of intolerance. There are cultural and economic factors predating the respective religious hegemonies - for instance, that the Arabs were already a mercantile culture prior to Islam and had no strong prejudice against the foreign merchant. There were similar factors post-dating the hegemonies, such as that Jews were restricted by a variety of ordnances and commands to roles like that of moneylender under Christianity, whereas under Islam they were fully integrated into the trades at all levels and in all spheres. Also, Muslim and Dhimmi could intermarry and the spouse legally retain her religion - at least at most times. While a Dhimmi could not be the equal of a Muslim as a consequence of Islam's Establishment, much as a minority can never be truly equal today in a state with an Established church - and I speak as a humanist from a country with a Church of England and seats in government for bishops - he could be the business partner or customer, friend or spouse, and often was. Making money together is a strong antidote to bigotry.

Then, there are religious and foundational factors, and here Cohen offers an interesting interpretation of the butchery of Bani Qurayza. Yes, Islam began with confrontations with Jews at its inception. Yes, they are identified as an enemy. However, they are a defeated enemy. The Prophet of Islam killed the Jews; the Jews killed the Prophet of Christianity. (Sorry to put this as if the old libel were legitimate, but this is the differing thinking of the hegemons in a nutshell.) Christians have tended to go through phases of wanting revenge. Muslims have never felt the need.

Cohen's work is serious in its intent and wide in its scope. It does, however, by its very nature in studying the Middle Ages leave some important questions open. Some of them are urgent. Why have Jews largely been integrated since the Englightenment? Why was that integration suddenly shattered in the Shoah by a political movement that did not make an especially religious issue of murdering Jews? (In fact, a purely racial one.) Why has anti-Semitism started to burgeon in the Muslim world since the 19th Century? Cohen hints at some resolutions such as the changing nationalist model of the Muslim world. Pan-Arabism and straightforward nationalism are alien to Islam, with its model of the global Ummah and its exemptions and protections for Dhimmi. Now that Western-style, secular nation nation states have arisen, starting in the 19th Century, it is possible to see Dhimmi as a fifth column.

Moreover, there is an apparently intractable conflict in the Levant. Perhaps if we understand convivencia we can understand how the conflict can be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties? Well, maybe. Islam sees itself as the legitimate hegemon. It has lived in tolerance with other monotheisms, but on the understanding that they did not get above themselves. Even in the secular West a subordinate status raises recurrent tensions among more radical Muslims. Persuading them to accept a monotheistic hegemony not of their making on the site of the Rock itself may be a long haul. At any rate, Cohen's thorough and weighty contribution to understanding historic tolerance is an admirable contribution to the discussion.

Admirably, Professor Cohen proposes "..a broad investigation of Medieval Islamic-Jewish and Christian-Jewish relations that builds on comparative insights..". A serious, objective comparison of these, or any other similar historical relationships requires, at minimum (1) a valid research design; (2) inclusion of ALL the relevant data. Unfortunately, Professor Cohen's scholarship fails to satisfy either of these basic criteria, rendering his analyses completely invalid.

There are intractable flaws in both the basic design and (arbitrarily limited) scope of Professor Cohen's analyses. Cohen acknowledges deliberately choosing northern European Christendom to make "..contrasts..more vivid..", as opposed to southern Europe, where the Jews had an enduring, indigenous presence. Cohen further confesses to omitting discussion of the northern European "..Polish-Jewish experience during the late Middle Ages.." precisely because these Jews enjoyed a status "..so seemingly the inverse of their ..beleaguered brethren in western Latin Christendom..". Cohen's highly arbitrary, selective categorization of an alleged northern European Christian "heartland", should at least in fairness have been compared to its Islamic "equivalent", i.e., Arabia, North Africa, and the Sahara, as opposed to the Islamized regions of the conquered Byzantine Empire with their inherent religious and ethnic pluralism. This geographical arbitrariness is matched by Cohen's highly selective periodization (i.e., 640-1240 C.E.). Clearly, comparing the fate of Jews under Islam and Christendom during the combined historical period covering the Ages of European Enlightenment and Emancipation would result in a completely different view.

Even when one ignores these serious basic flaws, multiple other problems with Cohen's analyses persist. Accepting Cohen's arbitrary periodization, for example, the expulsions of Jews from Christian Europe to which he makes reference, actually occurred AFTER 1240 C.E. (i.e., in 1290, 1306, 1394, and 1492-97, C.E.). Moreover, the first three centuries of Islam in the in the East overlapped the Carolingian rule in Christian Europe (747-987 C.E.), a period recognized by scholars as one when European Jewry experienced a considerable degree of security and prosperity. Muslim chroniclers themselves, in contrast, have described the ongoing jihad conquests during the same period involving the massacre of large numbers of indigenous Jewish populations, the enslavement of women and children, and the confiscation of vast territories. Indeed, the period between 640 and 1240 C.E. witnessed the total and definitive destruction of Judaism in the Hijaz (modern Saudi Arabia), and the decline of once flourishing Jewish communities in Palestine (particularly Galilee), Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Finally, by 1240 C.E. the Jewish communities in North Africa had been decimated by Almohad persecutions.

As documented by the scholar of Islamic history Bat Ye'or, numerous Koranic verses and hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) associate the Jews with hell and Satan. She notes three compelling examples of this association. First, that Ibn Abdun (d. 1134) a Muslim jurist from Spain, quoted from the Koran (58:20) to this effect in a legal treatise, "..Satan has gained the mastery over them, and caused them to forget God's Remembrance. Those are Satan's party; why Satan's party are surely the losers!". Second, a decree by the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (850), directing "..wooden images of devils be nailed to the doors of their homes to distinguish them from the homes of Muslims..". Finally, Jewish cemeteries were considered a part of Hell, to which the dhimmis were destined. Professor Robert Wistrich, a scholar of anti-Semitism, summarizes the overall Koranic image of the Jews as justifying their "..abasement and poverty..". He further notes how the oral tradition (hadith) maintains that the Jews had a "perfidious" and "conspiratorial" nature, being responsible for Muhammads's painful death from poisoning, as well as "...to blame for the sectarian strife in early Islam, for heresies and deviations that undermined or endangered the unity of the umma (the Muslim nations).."

Jihad conquests, and the imposition of dhimmitude on the vanquished Jewish populations, institutionalized these Koranic and hadith conceptions of the Jews as a people meriting humiliation. Thus Cohen errors when he contends that the Jews were somehow degraded "uniquely" under Christendom by being forced to practice usury, which was reviled by Christians. Cohen appears oblivious to the fact that under the yoke of dhimmitude in Muslim countries, the most degrading vocations were set aside for the Jews, including: executioners, grave-diggers, salters of the decapitated heads of rebels, and cleaners of latrines (in Yemen, in particular, this was demanded of Jews on Saturdays, their holy sabbath). Islamic societies also exhibited their own unique forms of severe oppression of Jews, NOT found in Christian Europe, such as: abduction of Jewish girls for Muslim harems; enslavement (including women and children) during warfare, revolts, or for economic reasons (for example, impossibility of paying the jizya, a blood ransom "poll tax" demanded of non-Muslims); the obligation for a Jew to dismount from his donkey on sight of a Muslim; the obligation in some regions (like the Maghreb) for Jews to walk barefoot outside their quarters; prohibiting Persian Jews from remaining outdoors when it rained for fear of polluting Muslims. With regard to enslavement, specifically, from the Middle Ages, right up until their mass exodus in 1948, rural Yemenite Jews were literally Muslim chattel. For example, in her essay, "The Dhimmi Factor in the Exodus of Jews from Arab Countries" (from: Shulewitz, M [editor], "The Forgotten Millions", Continuum, [2000, New York], pages 33-51), Bat Ye'or observes :

"Thus, if a Jew belonging to tribe A, is killed by a Muslim from tribe B, then a Jew from tribe B would be killed by a Muslim from tribe A. So two Jews are killed without the Muslim being arrested, a game that could go on for generations as a form of retaliation. In this legal system, a Jew like an object or a camel is excluded from human justice."

Finally, it is particularly important to note that there has NEVER been in Islam (including up until present times) a current analogous to the movement initiated after the 16th century Protestant Reformation in Europe that lead to Jewish emancipation, equal rights, human rights, and secularization of Christian societies.

It has often been asserted that in medieval times, Jews living in the Muslim lands had it better than their co-religionists in Christendom. Is that assessment accurate? Cohen, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, attempts an answer in this first-ever book on the comparative history of Jewish life in the two civilizations.

Yes, he concludes, Jews were better off in the Muslim world. In part, this was a matter of physical security. "The Jews of Islam, especially during the formative and classical centuries (up to the thirteenth century), experienced much less persecution than did the Jews of Christendom." Living among Sunni Muslims brought other benefits as well, which Cohen meticulously and convincingly documents: in Dar al-Islam, Jews enjoyed a more regular legal status, they participated far more in the mainstream cultural life, and they had more social interaction with the majority community. In all, Jews living among Muslims were less excluded, making them less vulnerable to assault. Of particular interest, while Christians had a horror of intermarriage, Muslims allowed it on condition that the man was a Muslim. Indeed, Islamic law requires the Muslim husband to permit his Jewish wife to observe her religious rituals, to pray within the family house, to keep the Sabbath, and to maintain the kosher requirements. She may also read her Scriptures, on the important condition that she not do so out loud.

Cohen's study ends with the thirteenth century; we would be much in his debt were he to follow this pathbreaking and excellent study with another on the subsequent deterioration of the Jewish position in the Muslim world.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1995