Noam (Norman) A. Stillman
Middle Eastern Jewry: The First Four Centuries of Islam: One of the Best Periods in Diaspora History
Summary
At the height of the Islamic empire, Jews experienced unprecedented levels of freedom of movement, communal autonomy and economic and intellectual pursuits. This lecture examines various aspects of Judaism developed during this period that have remained standard to this day.
Noam (Norman) A. Stillman
Noam (Norman) A. Stillman is Schusterman/Josey Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma and an internationally recognized authority on the history and culture of the Islamic world and on Sephardi and Oriental Jewry. His books include The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book and The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, among others. He is executive editor of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. He is chair of the Academic Council of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and sits on numerous boards of academic organizations, think tanks, and journals. He came to Israel permanently in 2016 and teaches each spring semester at the Hebrew University.
A variety of things, but mainly there, in the 10th century already there’s a theologian who comes up against all of this rationalism and so on. His name is al-Ash'ari. His work is not accepted for another hundred or so years, but he basically writes everything in the Quran and in the hadith has to be accepted, without asking why. And this is the very opposite, of course, of this rational period. And also the Islamic world, and again, this is outside the scope of our talk of this flourishing era, but comes more and more under pressure from slave soldier Praetorians, mostly Turks, from invasions by the Franks with the Crusades, and later the Mongols and so on. And basically there’s a hunkering down, and a hardening of Islam.