Abstract
ABSTRACT The early modern period in Morocco is characterised by many interreligious debates, and much academic research has been devoted to this topic. However, the comprehensive scholarship has overlooked the Jewish-Muslim polemic in Morocco in the aforementioned period. The present study seeks to fill this gap, by drawing attention to the sole early modern Jewish-Muslim debate that we know of to date, occurring in Meknes at the close of the eighteenth century between its initiator, an anonymous Muslim scholar, and Jewish respondent R. Petahia Mordekhai Berdugo, who documented the debate in his book. At the centre of the polemic stood one of three claims usually raised in Jewish-Muslim polemics from the Middle Ages onwards: that the Hebrew Bible and the laws of Judaism have been abrogated (nasḫ) and replaced by the Qur'an and the laws of Islam. While both scholars demonstrated proficiency in the prevailing arguments, we also see them make their arguments in some unusual and interesting ways. The current study expands the research discourse on the Jewish-Muslim polemic in the North African space, as well as shedding new light on Jewish-Muslim relations in Morocco in the early modern period and on their intellectual history.
Published Version
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