Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages

The exacerbation of Arab-Israeli conflict at the time of the Six-Day War in 1967 gave birth in some quarters to a radical revision of Jewish-Arab history. At stake was the long-standing, originally Jewish, "myth of the interfaith utopia," in which medieval Muslims and Jews peacefully cohabited in Arab lands - a utopia that many Arabs claimed had continued until the emergence of modern Zionism. Some Jewish writers challenged this notion with a "countermyth of Islamic persecution", suggesting that medieval Jews fared not much better socially and politically under Islamic rule than they did under Christendom. Full of implications for Jewish, Islamic and European historians, both myths form the backdrop of this provocative book, aimed at enriching our understanding of medieval gentile-Jewish relations. It offers an in-depth explanation of why medieval Islamic-Jewish relations, although not utopic, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West. The author presents a systematic comparison of the legal, economic and social situations of Jews in medieval Islam and Christendom, offering fresh insights on issues of hierarchy, marginality and ethnicity, persecution and collective memory. His analysis includes differences in theology that helped influence the way Muslims and Christians treated Jews.

About the Author :
Mark R. Cohen is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His books include Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt and The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi, both published by Princeton University Press.

Review :
"Winner of the 1994 National Jewish Honor Book in Jewish History" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1994" "Cohen's is a polemical text in the best sense of the word: it tries to open debate, not stifle it, and asks questions where they are traditionally shouted away. . . . A reassuringly balanced and judicious assessment of Jewish life in the Middle Ages."---Andre A. Aciman, New York Newsday "Cohen's concern in this important new book is with a historiographically far more interesting and useful question [than the debate over the Jewish experiences in the medieval worlds of Christendom and Islam]: why the difference? . . . Cohen's argument is buttressed with an impressive range of evidence drawn from both Jewish and non-Jewish sources in the Islamic and Christian worlds."---David Wasserstein, The Times Literary Supplement "Cohen advances our knowledge through a fine treatment of the huge literature and the application of social anthropological theory. Scholars will welcome the sound synthesis; general readers will appreciate the lucid style."