Jewish-Muslim symbiosis, Islamic Hellenism, and the purpose of Islamic Studies: the humanistic legacy of Samuel Stern’s teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Like all scholars, Samuel Stern was profoundly influenced by his teachers and mentors. This article focuses on four scholars with whom Stern forged especially close relationships: S.D. Goitein (1900–1985), D.H. Baneth (1893–1973), Paul Kraus (1904–1944), and Richard Walzer (1900–1975). Through an analysis of their ideas about Islam, Judaism, and Islamic Studies, this paper aims to situate Stern’s work in its proper context and to offer an analysis of the twentieth-century German-Jewish orientalist tradition of which he was, in the words of Albert Hourani, an embodiment. It proposes that Stern’s mentors constructed a broadly positive and sympathetic view of Islam as a sister religion of Judaism and heir to Hellenic civilization, that their orientalist scholarship was influenced by trends in modern Jewish philosophy, and that their work in Islamic Studies constitutes a humanistic contribution to modern Jewish thought.