REVIEW: A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews Under Early Islam

A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews Under Early Islam

Uriel I. Simonsohn

Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 306 pp. Cloth $79.95

Reviewed by Luke B. Yarbrough, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, The University of Pennsylvania

A Common Justice is hardly the first study to concern itself with Christians and Jews in Muslim courts, a fact that its author documents with considerable care (p. 218, n. 1 and passim). It seems, however, likely soon to become—and long to remain—a standard work on legal pluralism and its consequences in first four centuries after the rise of Islam. At once theoretically sophisticated and philologically meticulous, A Common Justice offers compelling answers to familiar questions, brings new problems to the fore, and builds a stable platform for comparative work by historians in adjacent and cognate fields.

The book owes its motivating tension to a sociohistorical phenomenon that, though far from unique to the Near East in the four centuries following the rise of Islam, has hitherto been insufficiently

REVIEW: History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean

History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean

Joseph V. Montville

Lanham and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2011, hardcover, xv+192 pp.

Reviewed by Maya Soifer Irish, Rice University, maya.s.irish@rice.edu

The Middle Ages is a magnet for advocates of interreligious tolerance, which has proved to be surprisingly elusive in the age of rapid globalization and the Internet. With confessional divisions still arousing strong passions, and the expectations for a more religiously cohesive world largely disappointed, our attention is drawn to a few enclaves within a similarly divided geo-religious world where the ideal of coexistence was ostensibly realized. These examples of toleration are so incongruent with the popular perception of the Middle Ages as a period of violence and backwardness, that we tend to focus on them almost to an obsessive degree, fetishizing the positive aspects of interfaith relations, and filtering out its inconveniently negative aspects. We ask ourselves: if even in the Middle Ages coexistence was possible, why can’t we match and even surpass our medieval ancestors in toleration? In the new volume of collected works, History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean, the editor, Joseph Montville, argues that

REVIEW: Seride Teshuvot: A Descriptive Catalogue of Responsa Fragments from the Jacques Mosseri Collection in Cambridge University Library

Seride Teshuvot: A Descriptive Catalogue of Responsa Fragments from the Jacques Mosseri Collection in Cambridge University Library

Shmuel Glick et al.

Cambridge Genizah Studies 3; Leiden: Brill, 2012

Reviewed by Amir Ashur

The Cairo Genizah – the hoard of manuscripts found in the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo) contains more than three hundred thousands documents covering more than thousand years of history – is by all means the most important source for the study of the history of Jews under Islam, and for the study of the relations between Jews and Muslim throughout the period, as was emphasized by S.D. Goitein repeatedly.  This vast amount of documents is kept in many collections all around the world. The largest collection is kept in Cambridge University Library – around two hundred thousands documents.

REVIEW: Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures

Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures

 Edited by Glenda Abramson and Hilary Kilpatrick

(Routledge, 2006), 325 pp.

 Reviewed by Muhammad Siddiq, UC Berkeley (siddiq@berkeley.edu)

Although published in 2006, the relevance of this anthology has become only more evident and acute in the ensuing years. This is so, in part, thanks to the recent, historic developments in the Arab world through what came to be known as the Arab Spring, especially perhaps the unprecedented rise to power of Islamic parties and movements in open, free elections in such countries as Tunisia and Egypt.

While they may not be directly implicated in this cataclysmic regional upheaval, neither Israel nor world Jewry is quite immune to its far-reaching consequences. The periodic flare up of sectarian clashes between ultra orthodox Jews and settlers on the one hand, and less orthodox or more secular Jews, on the other, in Jerusalem, Bet Shemesh, and other Israeli towns in recent years confirm what the essays on Jewish literature in this

Interview: Padraic O’hare

Padraic O’Hare

We recently caught up with Padraic O’hare, who is Professor of Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College, and one of the eminent advisers for Intertwined Worlds. In this poignant interview, Prof O’hare tells us about a lifetime of work encouraging cross-religious understanding, and how he believes contemplation practice is a powerful catalyst for this crossing of religious divides.

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Intertwined Worlds: How did you hear of Intertwined Worlds?

Padraic O’hare: I first heard of Intertwined Worlds when Yousef Meri invited me to participate.

IW: What attracted you to serve as an Intertwined Worlds adviser?

PO: I’ve spent most of my professional life seeking to nurture and cultivate reverence among peoples in different religions, and so the invitation was most welcome. To engage in common enterprise with such distinguished people was also a great draw. (Asma, Mark, Ed and Mohamed are known to me personally as well, and are in every instance persons whom I admire and like).