A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (11 page)

By the eighth century, most Jews were living under Muslim rule. In the past, they were mainly farmers, like their non-Jewish neighbors. Now, they were considered
dhimmi
and therefore required to pay special taxes on their land. As a result, many Jews could no longer afford to own land. Some moved to towns and cities, where they turned to trade or a craft to earn a living.

Dhimmi
had various rights and responsibilities, which were spelled out in an agreement often referred to as the Pact of Umar. It was a document of surrender supposedly sent by the Christians of Syria to the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khatt
ā
b, or Umar I who ruled from 634 to 644. Many historians believe that the document was actually created by Muslims years later. They point out that the document is written in Arabic, a language Syrians at the time were unlikely to know. The document’s authors also show a knowledge of the Qur’an—the teachings of Islam—that Christians in Syria were unlikely to have. Moreover, it is unheard of for a conquered people to be allowed to set the terms for its own surrender.

Nevertheless, the agreement—whether agreed to or imposed by force—reflects the status of the
dhimmi
under Muslim rule in the seventh century. The document states, in part:

We shall keep our gates wide open for passersby and travelers
.

We shall provide three days’ food and lodging to any Muslims who pass our way
.

We shall not shelter any spy in our churches or in our homes, nor shall we hide him from the Muslims.
⁶

Such promises were important at a time when the Muslims were still establishing control over an area. Other promises are believed to have been added at a later time, including the following:

We shall not build, in our cities or in their [neighborhood], any new monasteries, churches, hermitages, or monks’ cells. We shall not restore, by night or by day, any of them that have fallen into ruin or which are located in the Muslims’ quarters…
.

We shall not hold public religious ceremonies. We shall not seek to proselytize anyone. We shall not prevent any of our kin from embracing Islam if they so desire
.

We shall show deference to the Muslims and shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit down
.

We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims in any way with regard to their dress, as for example, with the… turban, sandals, or the parting the hair (in the Arab fashion). We shall not speak as they do, nor shall we adopt their [surnames]
.

We shall not ride on saddles
.

We shall not wear swords or bear weapons of any kind, or ever carry them with us…
.

Jews have been praying in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo since 882. When it was rebuilt in 1892, workers discovered a
geniza
, or storeroom, containing more than 250,000 fragments of scrolls, books, legal documents, and other works dating to the 800s and beyond.

We shall not display our crosses or our books anywhere in the Muslims’ thoroughfares or in their marketplaces. We shall only beat our clappers in our churches very quietly. We shall not raise our voices when reciting the service in our churches nor when in the presence of Muslims. Neither shall we raise our voices in our funeral processions…. We shall not come near [the Muslims] with our funeral processions
.

We shall not take any of the slaves that have been allotted to the Muslims
.

We shall not build our homes higher than theirs.
⁷

The agreement also contains clauses requiring that the
dhimmi
pay special taxes—a poll or head tax on every male over the age of 15 and/or a tax on land. These taxes were in addition to the ones that everyone in the empire was required to pay.

A letter attributed to one of the governors of the caliph Umar I offers some explanation of the underlying reasons for the Muslims’ acceptance of this pact:

The Muslims of our day will eat [from the work of] these people as long as they live, and when we and they die, our sons will eat [from] their sons forever, as long as they remain, for they are slaves to the people of the religion of Islam as long as the religion of Islam shall prevail. Therefore, place a poll tax upon them and do not enslave them and do not let the Muslims oppress them or harm them or consume their property except as permitted, but faithfully observe the conditions which you have accorded to them and all that you have allowed to them.
⁸

The pact views non-Muslims as people who have been given the opportunity to accept the truth but have willfully chosen to persist in erroneous beliefs. In accordance with this view, the government found ways not only to distinguish Muslims from nonbelievers but also to humiliate the
dhimmi
and constantly remind them of their inferiority.

The new rules affected everyone in the new empire. Christians who had once lived in the Byzantine Empire went from being members of the dominant religion to members of a humiliated minority. In general, they were allowed to practice their religion, follow the professions of their choice,
and live their lives as they pleased. Yet no matter how high they rose or how much they blended into the society, they were never regarded as equals.

Perhaps to escape oppressive taxes and laws that labeled them as inferior, many Christians converted to Islam over the next 150 years. By the end of the eighth century, North Africa and southwest Asia, regions that had been predominantly Christian, had become Muslim.

Jews were also deeply affected by the changes. Approximately 90 percent of the world’s Jews now lived under Muslim rule. Some converted to Islam, but most did not. Many found that the laws of the
dhimmi
gave them some measure of protection. Yet those same laws, along with others imposed by various Muslim rulers, also reinforced their second-class status and publicly humiliated them.

Jews, like Christians, were now a tolerated minority whose safety depended on the whim of a ruler. Before the Arab conquest, most Jews had been farmers. They, like other farmers in the empire, were hard hit by the taxes the Muslims imposed. But as
dhimmi
, Jews were required to pay extra taxes on their land as well as a poll tax. This additional burden overwhelmed many Jewish farmers, who now felt that they had no choice but to abandon their fields and move to cities and towns. By the end of the eighth century, the Jewish population in the Middle East was increasingly urban. Many now worked at a wide variety of trades. They were tanners, gold- and silversmiths, butchers, barbers, blacksmiths, dyers, and shoemakers. Some owned small shops, while others participated in the international trade the Arabs encouraged in their new empire. Trade was a valued occupation in Arabian society. But these were also years when a growing number of Jews began to move beyond the Mediterranean Sea to places in Europe that were still largely wilderness. Some were refugees from discrimination and even persecution, but most were immigrants eager to take advantage of the economic opportunities in the north.

(700
S
–1300)

At the end of the eleventh century, Muslim Turks threatened Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Alexius Comnenus, who was also the head of the Eastern or Greek Orthodox Church, appealed to Pope Urban II for help. The pope, who headed the Roman Catholic Church in the western part of the old Roman Empire, called for a holy war. That holy war would later be called a crusade. It was the first of several crusades. (The cross is the central symbol of the Christian faith and the word
crusade
literally means “a war for the cross.”) Although the crusades did not stop the Turks from taking Constantinople, they did have a profound impact on the way individuals and groups throughout Europe, the Middle East, and beyond saw themselves and others. Jews were deeply affected by the crusades, even though they seemingly had nothing to do with the fight.

In the seventh century, only a few Jews lived in northern Europe. Many of the earliest arrivals were former soldiers in the Roman armies or traders who had followed those armies. By the eighth century, more Jews had settled in the region. Many of them had come by way of the old Roman trade routes. By 900, a growing number of Jewish families were living in the valley of the Moselle River, in what is now France and Germany. And by 1000, some were moving to the Rhineland—the valley of Germany’s Rhine River.

The newcomers found themselves in a frontier society where war was commonplace. As a result of repeated invasions by nomadic tribes from other parts of Europe and central Asia, powerful men, each with an army of warriors or knights loyal only to him, ruled much of the region. Each kept the peace and protected the less powerful in his territory in exchange for goods or services.

This system is known today as
feudalism
; it was based on personal relationships. Those relationships may have had their origins in the bonds between the invading warriors and their chiefs. As they settled into the territories they conquered, some chiefs became nobles who granted fiefs—estates—to their warriors in return for their service on the battlefield. These young men were known as
vassals
. The word comes from the Celtic word for “boy”; in a very real sense, early vassals were “the boys” who fought on behalf of their “chief.”

In time the relationships among these warriors and chiefs created a society roughly arranged like a pyramid, with a king or an emperor at the top. Below him were his vassals—the most powerful nobles in the kingdom. Those nobles, in turn, had their own vassals, and so on down the line to the lowest vassals of all—warriors who had no land or soldiers of their own. One’s rank in society depended on the value of the services provided. At the lowest level, serfs held the right to farm a few strips of land for themselves in return for their work on the lord’s estate. At a much higher level, a duke held the right to the income of his large estate in return for providing the king with a certain number of warriors for 40 days each year.

Then, as now, titles and ranks could be somewhat misleading. A duke with a strong army could become more powerful than any king, and a peasant with a skill that was in high demand could maintain his independence in a world that was, increasingly, anything but free.

The only unifying force in northern Europe in the days of feudalism was the Roman Catholic Church, headed by the pope. The church struggled to unite Christians by keeping alive Roman laws and learning. Missionaries spread out across northern Europe to convert pagans and stamp out heresies. Although the church had members of all ranks, it was organized in much the way kingdoms were—with the pope at the top of the pyramid and bishops and abbots roughly equal to nobles and knights. In fact, they often came from the same families.

Many bishops owned large estates, had many vassals, and relied on serfs to work their land. These church leaders took part in the struggles for power that occurred often throughout northern Europe. A few even went to war themselves. Church leaders also helped kings and other rulers manage their affairs; they were able to read and write at a time when most people in Europe, including many kings, were illiterate.

How did Jews fit into this world? After all, they could not take an oath of loyalty to a great lord and become his vassals; to do so, they would have had to swear their loyalty on the relics of Christian saints, which meant
at least partially accepting Christianity. And they certainly had not moved north to become serfs. They had settled in the north because they saw opportunities there for a better life.

Most Jews arrived in northern Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries. It was a time when the region’s economy was beginning to recover from centuries of wars and invasions. Because Christians had had to concentrate for so long on protecting themselves from invaders, few of them had the skills, experience, or contacts to revive trade with countries along the Mediterranean Sea. For help, a number of rulers turned to Jewish merchants who had lived in the Mediterranean region for generations before making their way north. They were experienced in doing business with both Christians and Muslims.

These Jews had other advantages as well. Unlike most of their Christian neighbors—serfs, peasants, and even dukes—who were tied to a particular piece of land or even to a particular ruler, many Jews were free to move from place to place. Indeed, those who worked as traders needed to travel. They were also literate at a time when the vast majority of Europeans could neither read nor write. Many were also familiar with a new numbering system used in the Muslim world—the decimal system. It sounds like a small advantage until you think about the difficulties of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing long columns of numbers using Roman numerals. Very few Christian merchants were familiar with this new way of working with numbers, because the church considered the decimal system a pagan device well into the 1400s.
¹