Jews as Producers and Consumers of History in the Medieval Islamicate World

Abstract

Abstract The Jews of the medieval Islamicate world were avid consumers and producers of history. In this article, I discuss the major modes of historical writing among the Jews of the period and introduce the question of how that historical writing was used by those Jews. In considering the Sitz im Leben of historical writing, I explore the role of internal communal apologetic, anti-sectarian polemic, inter-religious attack, political support and challenge, entertainment, the contextualizing of philosophy, consolation after adversity, and preparation for eschatological redemption. I pay particular attention to the rewriting of Others’ histories – Christian, Islamic, and Jewish sectarian – and the role these often-popular rewritten histories played in medieval Jewish society. This panoply of historical writing challenges an important scholarly view that Jewish consumption of history was minimal and served a limited range of “religious” needs within the medieval Jewish community.