Jewish Community under the Fatimids (Prof. Frenkel)

Article

Introduction

The Fatimid period marks a defining moment in the history of the Jews of Islam. It is during these years that their status as a minority of protected subjects and of middlemen was shaped. By the tenth century their legal status as dhimmīs was already defined and articulated. They were normally given protection not only due to their dhimmī status, but also as skilful servants of power and as heavy taxpayers. Their proximity to power could, on the other hand, occasionally arouse the jealousy of the legitimate elite and offend the honour of the dominant group. In these cases their protection was negated, and they were exposed as a convenient target for the frustration of the masses, as well as a suitable scapegoat for the rulers. Still, the position of the Jews under Fatimid rule was not exclusively dependent upon the way others viewed and manipulated them. The specific status of a minority is not only a question of objective definitions, but a matter of cognition as well. The minorities themselves also take part in defining their own niches in society (Walter P. Zenner, Minorities in the Middle: A Cross-Cultural Analysis). Jewish history and culture provided the Jews with traditional tactics of adaptation to their minority niche in society, tactics that were structured and developed over long years of diaspora. These involved ritualistic segregation, such as a ban on intermarriage, rejection of mixed offspring, strict dietary laws (kashrūt) which prevented almost any eating with outsiders, and belief in being a “chosen people” accompanied by latent messianic expectations. These long-established cultural and religious resources, accompanied by internal cohesion, the capacity for mutual help, and maintenance of efficient community organizations, afforded the Jews a variety of traditional tools that enabled them to preserve an ethnic and religious identity in their long-standing, precarious position as a minority.

Going Native

The Fatimid period was without doubt an era of paradoxes: growing Islamic religious sentiments versus openness and inclusiveness towards other monotheistic religions, fluctuating relations between Ismāʻīlism and Sunnism, and successive wars versus economic expansion and prosperity (Heinz Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996); Heinz Halm, Die Kalifen von Kairo: Die Fatimiden in Ägypten 973–1074 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2003); Heinz Halm, Kalifen und Assassinen. Ägypten und der Vordere Orient zur Zeit der ersten Kreuzzüge (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014); Michael Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the 10th Century CE (Leiden: Brill, 2001), especially 1–25, and the survey of bibliography mentioned there; Paul E. Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and its Sources (London and New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2002); Shlomo Dov Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967–1993), vol. 1).

1. As illustrated in thousands of Geniza letters by Jewish merchants, it seems that the most significant change for the Jews was their successful integration within the global trade networks established at that time (Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:148–265; Shlomo Dov Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders). Financial prosperity and successful integration in trade apparently involved a strong temptation to assimilate, thus getting rid of all the restrictions imposed on ahl al-dhimma. Very little is known about the conversion of Jews to Islam at this period of time. The Muslim chronicles seem not to consider it worth writing about, while the Jewish sources, including the Geniza documents, refrain from directly referring to those who have chosen to part ways with their religion (Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:33–34; Yaacov Lev, “The Fatimid Vizier Yaʿqub Ibn Killis and the Beginning of the Fatimid Administration in Egypt,” Der Islam 58 (1981): 237–249; Yaacov Lev, State and Society in Fatimid Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 70; Moshe Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099) (Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv University u-Misrad ha-Bitaḥon, 1983), 1:282–283).
2. The Use of Written Evidence
3. Fatimid society was a text-oriented one. Books were highly esteemed and sought after: al-Ḥākim supplied his famous dār al-ḥikma with books, writing materials, and a trained staff of copyists (Assaad, 88), and Barjawān, al-Ḥākim’s wāsiṭa, kept in his fabulous house, beside enormous amounts of clothing, jewellery, and money, also a huge number of books (Al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd Ibn al-Zubayr, Kitāb al-Dhakhāʾir wa-l-Tuḥaf, ed. Muḥammad Ḥamīd Allāh, revised and introduced by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid (Kuwait: Maṭbaʿat Ḥukūmat al-Kuwayt, 1959), 232. For the role of the wāsiṭa in the Fatimid administration, see: Paul Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire, 45–46). But it seems that not only did books matter; writing in general governed the form and language of the discourse. Fixity, brought about by writing, conferred much importance to the written document. The sophisticated Fatimid administration, especially its chancellery, was actually based on written documents (Hamid Mahamid, “The Development of Fatimid Administration” (M.A. thesis, University of Haifa, Haifa, 1988); Geoffrey Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Marina Rustow, “A Petition to a Woman at the Fatimid Court (413–414 AH/1022–23 CE),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 73.1 (2010): 1–27).

1. Inhibited Subversion
2. As already stated above, the Fatimid period was one of much confessional openness, alongside restrictions and persecutions. In 1012 anti-Jewish riots spread all over Egypt. The events that took place in Cairo were described in a literary composition known as “The Egyptian Scroll,” probably intended for liturgical purposes. Medieval Jews learned how to overcome harsh and capricious reality by looking at current events in long-term perspective. It becomes possible to endure many tribulations when one learns to envision them as repeating models of past events, if one assumes that any current event is but a representation of a previous one, old and eternal. This typical anti-historical perception afforded medieval Jews with a comforting paradigm of meaning, which helped them to overcome their complex, sometimes harsh, situation as dhimmīs. The selective Jewish remembrance, constructed as a circular history beyond time, could promise inevitable salvation, and as such it held therapeutic qualities.