Beyond Conflict and Coexistence

For many centuries, the great majority of Jews spoke Arabic and lived under Muslim rule. Until 1880, this group remained the majority even among the growing Jewish community in Palestine. The demographic changes in favour of European Jews, paired with an ambivalence towards Islam in the modern period, have led to polarizing views on the historical relationship between Arabs and Jews in scholarship as well, highlighting either conflict between the communities or a romanticised utopia of coexistence. Our project Beyond Conflict and Coexistence. Entangled Histories of Jewish-Arab Relations brings together six postdoctoral projects based at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Halle Wittenberg, all of which aim to move beyond the polarizing paradigms of conflict and coexistence and instead bring the historical entanglement of Arabs and Jews to the fore.

The perspective of entangled history is particularly suitable to the study of Jewish-Arab history, as religious and everyday practices of Jews and Muslims, and many of their respective traditions, converged in closely cohabited spaces— a shared religious, intellectual, social, linguistic and economic world. As a result, where certain practices and traditions originated and who adopted and adapted them could no longer be differentiated- origins and adaptations were entangled. The religious laws of both traditions (Sharīʿa and Halacha), their liturgies and holy books (Koran and Torah), poetic forms, musical practices, and scientific and philosophical concepts are filled with parallels and resonances.

Subproject: Dr. Teresa Bernheimer (Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München)

Colour Terms in Judaism and Islam 600-1200

What colour is the rainbow? Contrary to common belief, the perception and classification of colours is not objective but culture-dependent. How did colour terminologies develop and change, how were colour terms interpreted and translated as they moved through Greek, Hebrew, Syriac or Arabic speaking cultures? What can adaptions tell us about the entangled histories of the cultures that produced them? On the basis of a broad examination of sources, including religious commentaries, historiography, and scientific works, my project Colour Terms in Judaism and Islam 600-1200 aims to shed light on the intertwining histories of colour in the Near East of Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. I will begin this project with an examination of the rainbow: As the symbol of the renewed contract of God and Noah (Genesis 9,12-16), the rainbow plays a central role in the colour narratives of both Judaism and Islam. Only a handful of studies have thus far examined aspects of this rich and fascinating topic.

Subproject: Dr. des. Anna Busa (Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München)

Medieval Jewish literacy beyond the elite: popular ethical books from the Cairo Geniza

The subproject focuses on two medieval popular works from the Cairo Geniza that were widely distributed in Jewish communities around the Mediterranean. The documentary and literary sources offered by Geniza materials provides a cross-section to all social strata of the Middle Eastern region reflecting everyday life and mentalities of the people and the intercultural exchange of the time. The project asks for the reading habits of the medieval urban population which is reflected by the consumption of these popular books. Who were the consumers of these texts and to which social class did they belong? And above all, what do these Jewish texts and their counterparts translated into Arabic say about the reading ability and reading culture of their consumers? The aim of the project is to show, using the hitherto neglected textual genre of popular ethical books, that the production, appropriation, and wide dissemination of these texts in both cultures produced an educated, multicultural, medieval-urban society that already in the early Middle Ages read this literature outside the academic setting for leisure and edification.

• Carolin Wilimsky
• Caroline Kloos