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1. Traditional anti-Judaism in the Islamic World A historical survey of Islamic attitudes toward and treatment of Jews must take into account the facts that Islam is (1) a religion with a corpus of doctrines, beliefs, and practices that have evolved over fourteen hundred years and have been subject to widely varying manifestations and interpretations; (2) a body politic, united at first, but becoming more divided over time; and (3) a civilization that despite local and regional differences has neverthe…

It is virtually impossible to know what was normative Judaism and Jewish practice during the first two hundred years of the Muslim Caliphate, in the seventh through ninth centuries. The great Islamic Arab conquests of the seventh and early eighth centuries brought the majority of world Jewry living at that time from Spain to Persia and Central Asia under the rule of a single empire, the Dar al-Islam (“the Domain of Islam”). The two hundred years immediately preceding the Islamic conquests and fo…

The expulsion of the Jews from Christian Spain in 1492 in a very real sense marked the beginning of modern times for the Jews of the Muslim world. Many of the exiles sought refuge in the Islamic kingdoms of the Maghreb, in Mamluk Egypt and the Levant, and in the expanding Ottoman Empire, which within a generation would take over all of the Middle East and North Africa between the borders of Persia and Morocco. These Sephardic refugees infused new vitality—demographically, culturally, and spiritu…

see Names and Naming Practices - Kurdistan Names and Naming Practices - Yemen Norman A. Stillman

see Zionism in the Maghreb to be combined Norman A. Stillman

see La Buena Esperansa, Izmir, 1874-1917, La Buena Esperansa, Izmir, 1842 Norman A. Stillman

see Banking Norman A. Stillman

see Ibn (al-)Muhājir Norman A. Stillman

see Bābāʾī ben Nūrīʾel Norman A. Stillman

see Iran/Persia Norman A. Stillman

see France Norman A. Stillman

see Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism; Damascus Affair (1840) Norman A. Stillman

see Italy Norman A. Stillman

see United States of America Norman A. Stillman

Tlemcen (Ar. Tilimsān) is a city in western Algeria situated 138 kilometers (86 miles) southwest of Oran, 91 kilometers (56 miles) west of Sidi Bel Abbès, and 63 kilometers (40 miles) east of Oujda across the Moroccan border. Nourished by springs and called Pomaria (city of orchards) in Roman times, Tlemcen lies at the crossroads of major east-west and north-south trade routes. Although Arab historians state that Judaizing Berber tribes lived in the area at the time of the Islamic conquests, there is no evidence for a Jewish presence in Tlemcen at that time.  1.  Middle Ages to the Almoh…

see Sous Norman A. Stillman

see Shalom Norman A. Stillman

see United States of America Norman A. Stillman

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name throughout the Middle Ages for the Iberian Peninsula, including what is today both Spain and Portugal, although with the progress of the Reconquista, the name al-Andalus came to be limited to Muslim-ruled territory, which eventually was only the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The name al-Andalus (Ar. al-Andalīsh) has been connected to the Vandals, who had given the name Vandalacia to the former Roman province of Baetica. Arabic-speaking Jews used the term, and Moses Maimonides, even years after he had immigrated to Egypt, wo…

Prior to the second half of the twentieth century, much of the research devoted to the Jews of the Islamic world followed in the paths established by the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars of the nineteenth century and dealt with the history, literature, and thought of the medieval period. Judeo-Arabic civilization was one of the major foci of Wissenschaft scholarship, as too were aspects of Hispanic Jewish history and culture—but only for the classical Islamic Middle Ages (ca. 850–1250) in the…