Muslim and Jewish History

One of the most salient features of the Medieval Mediterranean is that it was a zone of intense interaction and long-term co-habitation of members of various ethno-religious communities whose relations are usually conceived of as fundamentally adversarial. Nevertheless, Christians, Muslims and Jews not only lived alongside each other but amongst each other in both the Christian- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean, even during the era of the Crusades. Typically, such relationships have been presented as either fundamentally hostile, or cordial, and as related to the “tolerance” that host cultures were inclined to demonstrate as a consequence of their own religious orientation. By contrast, this paper takes a phenomenological approach by focusing on a specific manifestation of this interaction: the emergence of out-group political elites in confessionally-defined societies. Through the medium of three case studies – a powerful Jew in Islamic Spain, a powerful Muslim in Norman Sicily and a powerful Coptic Christian in Fatimid Egypt – it demonstrates that the status of minority elites was related to concrete political circumstances grounded in the particular environment of the region, and that, in spite of cultural differences that might have distinguished them, these societies developed near-identical strategies for engaging with minority elites. The language of religious polemic, exclusion and marginalization was not absent, but it tended to serve as a post factum rationalization for repression, rather than a cause, and tended to be deployed decisively only in certain circumstances. This provides new insights not only into Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations, but the nature of Mediterranean history and society.

Explaining Islamic architecture was a challenge for early modern Spanish historians. Although many of the buildings were highly valued, they nonetheless represented a defeat and 700 years of Muslim presence in the Peninsula. Consequently, the Islamic legacy was sometimes viewed with a wide range of aesthetic, moral and religious prejudices. This paper aims to analyse the role of these unfavourable narratives of Islamic architecture in the negotiation of the memory of the so-called ‘loss of the Iberian Peninsula’.

This volume brings together articles on the cultural, religious, social and commercial interactions among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval and early modern periods. Written by leading scholars in Jewish studies, Islamic studies, medieval history and social and economic history, the contributions to this volume reflect the profound influence on these fields of the volume’s honoree, Professor Mark R. Cohen.

"The biographical, autobiographical and political books of Essad Bey (1905-42) appeared in Germany and Austria in the 1930s and were widely distributed in Europe, England and America, where they were quickly translated. They presented exotic views of life in the Caucasus, where, in the oil-capital Baku, Essad Bey claimed he was born, a Muslim aristocrat. His books about Stalin, Lenin, Czars, and Shas,  presented intimate portraits and denunciations of the Bolshevik terror and occupation of his native region, and were recommended reading in Germany, Austria and Italy because of their political message. But “Essad Bey” was really a Jewish refugee, Lev Nussimbaum, who converted to Islam in his youth in Berlin and played throughout his life the role he had chosen for himself. His books are a mixture of fact and fiction, highly romanticized accounts, and often suggest as much between the lines. The themes of exile and nostalgia for a lost paradise run through his work, and in this we can see a connection with Modernist Anglo-American exiles and myth-makers, like Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and Lawrence. Essad Bey’s rejection of the contemporary in favor of a more primitive purchase on reality also reminds us of his Modernist contemporaries, as do his reactionary (howbeit doubly ironical) politics. In fact, Essad Bey attracted the interest and support of Ezra Pound, who read his books and in 1942 attempted to recruit him to broadcast Axis propaganda from Rome Radio. But Essad, though willing to contribute to the victory of Italy and Germany, by then was too sick to do so, and he died, an exile in Positano, on 27 August 1942.    Two popular novels, published in Vienna in 1937 and 1938 under the name Kurban Said, are also most probably the work of Essad Bey-Lev Nussimbaum. Titled Ali and Nino and The Girl from the Golden Horn, they have been widely read, especially Ali and Nino, which is in print in many languages and is claimed by some Azerbaijani as their national epic (and attributed to a national poet, though it appeared in German!). These novels repeat the themes of Essad Bey’s works: the contrast between modernity and tradition, West and East, Christianity and Islam, the latter being presented as a utopia, with ironic undertones. Both novels are accounts of a romance between a man and a woman from the two camps, and act out the dream of return. Ali and Nino is told in the first person by Ali, a young Muslim prince who loves a Georgian girl, Nino, marries her and takes her to visit relatives in the 1,001-nights world of Persia, before meeting a heroic death on the battlefield against the Bolsheviks. The lesser known but equally interesting Girl from the Golden Horn is the story of the failed marriage of a young Turkish woman exile in Berlin to a Westernized doctor, and of her fight to reclaim her heritage and marry a Turkish prince who has forgotten his origin. The stories have much in common with Essad Bey’s own biography, real and imagined, and because of their strange origin, structure and themes, can be considered minor classics of international Modernism, works of an exile writing between cultures and languages and erasing his identity while seeking it. This paper quotes extensively from Essad Bey’s unpublished correspondence of the war years with his Italian patron Pima Andreae. The letters (in German) constitute a sizable corpus in which Essad once again tells the story of his life as he imagines it, and actually writes for survival since he depended on Pima’s generosity. This new material allows us to flesh out the image of Essad’s imaginary self, adding many fascinating and moving anecdotes and details, for example about his love-hate relationship with the USA, where he lived for longish periods, and about his movements among (and alleged contacts with) the powerful of the day: Balbo, Mussolini, and Roosevelt."

"During the Last Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times the Kingdom of Valencia -in the Crown of Aragon- lived bloody persecutions against the Jews (1391) and the complete expulsion of Jews (1492) and Muslims (1609). In the last decades of the 20th century, and now, the Land of Valencia becomes the "scenario" of an Anti-catalanist xenophobia...

WITH A PDF OF PRESS ARTICLES (in Spanish language) OF PACO CERDÀ, VÍCTOR ROMERO, ETC.
(www.levante-emv.com)

http://www.levante-emv.com/valencia/2011/12/18/brutal-oficio-inquisicion/865945.html

http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2014/02/21/calvario-valenciano-judios/1082584.html
Acoso y expulsión medieval

http://www.levante-emv.com/valencia/2013/10/16/nobles-acataron-expulsion-moriscos-rentables/1041899.html

http://www.levante-emv.com/mercantil-valenciano/2013/05/13/cuentas-moriscos/997534.html

http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2014/02/19/moriscos-reclaman-derecho-nacionalidad-espanola/1081375.html?utm_medium=rss

http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2011/05/08/invisible-blaverismo/805087.html
"

"The aim of this simulation is to provide visitors to one of the world's most contested places with a rich experience of the ties that bind the Abrahamic religions together by means of mobile augmented reality. What would we gain if people of different backgrounds and beliefs visiting the site could explore and experience this rich history on location directly and simultaneously? And, how may we provide an arena for public discourse about such experiences? The paper reports on the use of a mobile augmented reality simulation that reconstructs some of the most important structures on the central part of the Mount. This situated simulation (sitsim) shows how the various epochs and religions have occupied and exploited the same holy place. We describe our design decisions and experience thus far, and indicate further development of the application.
"