Muslim Spain never did cement an alliance with Christian Byzantium, but relations remained cordial, and intermittent trade, facilitated by Jewish merchants, continued. So did the transmission of knowledge and learning. Spain remained a crucial conduit for Western Europe, and in pursuit of translations and manuscripts, creed took a backseat to expertise. No Muslim ruler cared whether the people translating works by the likes of Dioscorides were Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. The only relevant consideration was skill. All who possessed the linguistic tools and intellectual capacity to render these texts into Latin and Arabic were welcome to participate, and they were rewarded for speediness and success. Hasdai may have been charming and politically adept, but what made him stand out was his knowledge of multiple languages.
Throughout this period, the Jewish community of Córdoba was left to itself. Courts were not composed of layers of bureaucracy, at least not by modern standards, and rather than micromanage the affairs of Jews or other religious minorities, Muslim rulers preferred not to get involved with marriage, inheritance, or the social relations of their subjects. While there were laws governing the interaction between Muslims and other People of the Book, there were hardly any for relations between Jews and other Jews, or Christians and other Christians. Jews and Christians were subject to the poll tax, but it was left to each community to collect it. They could not build churches or synagogues outside of their quarter, but within the quarter, they lived in their own world governed by their own laws and traditions.
However, it was necessary for at least a few members of the community to interact regularly with the court. These intermediaries lived in both worlds, and they had to to navigate both. Men like Hasdai formed a bridge between the cultures, and by all accounts, the most adroit of them garnered universal respect.
Hasdai’s position at the court led to at least one odd and unexpected encounter. When Hasdai met with the Byzantine delegates, he was told of a Turkish tribe on the borders of the Byzantine Empire that had, to the surprise and evident fascination of everyone who heard the story, converted to Judaism. The Khazar Turks lived north of the Caspian Sea,
and in time would migrate and become the dominant tribe of the Crimean Peninsula. For reasons that are shrouded in the mists of time, one of their rulers decided that he and his people would become Jews. The Jews of Spain were in the habit of making contact with Jewish communities throughout the world, to explore opportunities for trade and to reinforce the solidarity of the Jews in exile from the Holy Land. So it was natural for Hasdai to write a letter to Joseph, the king of the Khazars, when he learned of the conversion.
“I, Hasdai, son of Isaac, son of Ezra, belonging to the exiled Jews of Jerusalem in Spain, a servant of my lord the King, bow to the earth before him and prostrate myself towards the abode of your Majesty from a distant land. I rejoice in your tranquillity and magnificence and stretch forth my hands to God in heaven that He may prolong your reign in Israel.” Hasdai expressed the hope that regular relations could be established between them, and he asked Joseph to describe how it was that the Khazars had adopted Judaism and if they had any insight into when, if ever, the long exile of the Jews from Jerusalem might come to an end.
It was several years before Hasdai received a response from Joseph explaining the complicated history that had led to the conversion of his people. Apparently, sometime in the middle of the eighth century, the Khazars were visited by envoys from both the Byzantines and the Arabs, each of whom hoped to convert them and make them allies. The king at the time was a cautious man, not easily convinced, and he sent for a Jewish scholar to test the strength of their arguments.
According to Joseph in his letter to Hasdai,
The King searched, inquired, and investigated carefully and brought the sages together that they might argue about their respective religions. Each of them refuted, however, the arguments of his opponent so that they could not agree. When the King saw this he said to them: Go home, but return to me on the third day. On the third day he called all the sages together and said to them, “Speak and argue with one another and make clear to me which is the best religion.”
They began to dispute with one another without arriving at any results until the King said to the Christian priest, “What do you think? Of the religion of the Jews and the Muslims, which is to be preferred?” The priest answered: “The religion of the Israelites is better than that of the Muslims.” The King then asked the qadi [a Muslim judge and scholar]: “What do you say? Is the religion of the Israelites, or that of the Christians, preferable?” The qadi answered: “The religion of the Israelites is preferable.” Upon this the King said: “If this is so, you both have admitted with your own mouths that the religion of the Israelites is better. Wherefore, trusting in the mercies of God and the power of the Almighty, I choose the religion of Israel, that is, the religion of Abraham. If that God in whom I trust, and in the shadow of whose wings I find refuge, will aid me, He can give me without labor the money, the gold, and the silver which you have promised me. As for you all, go now in peace to your land.”
5
This world—of Jewish doctors, Muslim princes, and Khazar kings— is very different from the remembered history of Islam and the interaction between the faiths. Think of it: a Turkish kingdom on the banks of the Volga River in modern-day Russia adopts Judaism after its king listens to representatives from each faith debating the merits of their system. Later, a Jewish official serving at the court of the Muslim ruler of Córdoba writes a letter in Hebrew to the Jewish ruler of the Turkish tribe after learning of their existence from Christian emissaries, sent by the Byzantine emperor, who were hoping to establish an alliance with the Muslims of Spain against the Abbasid Empire in Iraq.
None of this would have struck any of the people involved as strange. While religion was central to their identity, faith did not create absolute barriers to interaction. Even in the realm of marriage, the walls were porous. Muslims, Christians, and Jews weren’t supposed to intermarry, but in places like Spain where the populations lived side by side, they inevitably did, and people found ways to deal with it. Usually, the woman adopted the religion of her husband, but if the woman was Muslim, then the husband would usually convert. These marriages weren’t common, but they weren’t unheard of either.
The historian William McNeill once wrote that vibrant societies are often the product of unexpected and jarring interactions with strangers. His point was that unless people are forced to confront alien groups, different habits, and unfamiliar customs, they become rigid, brittle, and complacent. Spain was a place where such meetings were unavoidable. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side by side, and they in turn were connected to international communities of other Muslims, Christians,
and Jews, whom they visited and traded with and who visited and traded with them. There was also war, which though deadly and violent was also a form of jarring interaction, and it forced rulers to be alert and creative in order to defeat their enemies and remain in power.
The competition between the faiths was one reason for the rapid spread of monotheism beyond the Mediterranean. The Khazar king, if the story is to be believed, would never have converted to Judaism had it not been for Christian and Muslim delegates trying to win his allegiance. The interaction between the faiths also fed intellectual creativity. The Muslims of Córdoba would not have gained the valuable medical wisdom of the ancients if there had not been Spanish Christians and Jews with linguistic skills that no Muslim possessed. And the Jews would not have thrived as merchants throughout the Mediterranean world without the Pax Islamica that extended to Jews the protections granted to the People of the Book.
Trade was the primary focus of most Jews living in the Muslim world, but in Spain, and especially in Córdoba before the eleventh century, they became prominent not just as merchants but as scholars, courtiers, generals, and poets. War and poetry marked opposite ends of the culture spectrum, one devoted to destruction, the other to creativity. Muslim Spain, and indeed much of the Muslim world, celebrated the poet and the warrior in equal measure. Few people were great poets or great warriors. Samuel ibn Nagrela, known as the Nagid, was that rare person who was both. That in itself was extraordinary; the fact that he was a Jew who commanded Muslim armies was even more so.
In the eleventh century, the power of the caliph in Córdoba began to wane, and the political unity of Andalusia disintegrated. The chaos and flux were both a boon and a bane to Jews and Christians. Where most things had revolved around the court in Córdoba, now multiple cities and rulers competed for power. Each of these required not just armies but also translators and administrators, and Jews possessed many of the skills needed to fill these positions. They were literate, multilingual, and loyal to their patrons.
Samuel was the son of a merchant. He learned both Arabic and Hebrew, and prepared for a quiet, prosperous life. Instead, he found his world plunged into turmoil as the caliphate collapsed. Political tumult took a toll on business, and when the situation became so dire in Córdoba
that Samuel could no longer be assured of personal safety, he, along with thousands of Christians, Muslims, and other Jews, fled. He went to Málaga and eked out a living as a shopkeeper near the palace of the vizier of Granada. Word of his skill as a letter writer reached the court, or so later legend claimed, and he soon found himself employed as a counselor to the Berber ruler of Granada. After several timely deaths and various palace intrigues, he became the second-most-powerful person in the city and the general of its armies for more than twenty years, until he died in 1056.
With his rise to power, Samuel earned the title Nagid, which is a Hebrew term for “governor” or “worthy.” As such, he was a central figure in the public life of Granada during a chaotic time. Protected by mountains and situated high above a fertile plain in southeastern Iberia, Granada, an isolated fortress demesne, would eventually be the last redoubt of Islam and the only surviving Muslim state after the peninsula was reconquered by Christian armies in the thirteenth century. During Samuel’s life, however, Granada was simply one of many competing principalities, known as
taifas.
Whether it would survive was very much in question, and had it not been for the Nagid’s skill, it might not have.
Samuel led campaigns against other city-states, both Muslim and Christian. He oversaw public works and buildings, and tried to imbue the fortress of Granada with the glory of Cordoban architecture. Córdoba had been a city of mosques, fountains, courtyards, and palaces, and during Samuel’s time; Granada acquired these as well. He also built a library that housed the greatest texts of Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin. These included Hebrew commentaries on the Torah, Latin works of medicine and philosophy, and Arabic works of poetry, astronomy, and material science. As one later hagiographer wrote, in Samuel’s time, “the kingdom of science was raised from its lowliness, and the star of knowledge once more shone forth. God gave unto him a great mind which reached to the spheres and touched the heavens; so that he might love Knowledge and those that pursued her, and that he might glorify Religion and her followers.”
Samuel did not just collect knowledge; he added to it. He was a grammarian who wrote extensively on Hebrew and its various dialects. He believed in the power of knowledge to transform a man and his society. As he wrote in one of his many poems,
Man’s wisdom is at the tip of his pen,
His intelligence is in his writing.
His pen can raise a man to the rank
That the scepter accords to a king.
He was a scholar of the Torah and of Talmudic commentary. He wrote ballads in Arabic and Hebrew, including one celebrating a recent victory in which he dubbed himself “the David of his age.” Self-aggrandizing, yes, but it was an apt comparison. Like David, Samuel was an unlikely hero who rose higher than many would have believed possible given his origins. He was not only a military leader but a protector and sponsor of Judaism and Jews. He sent money to Jerusalem to help the small Jewish community maintain its synagogues. And he worked to support trade as well as the familial networks that had been so assiduously created over the previous centuries and that were now threatened by the breakdown of the political order in Andalusia.
Yet, Samuel was like David in less flattering ways as well. “And David slew twenty-two thousand men of the Syrians,” says 1 Chronicles, in the Old Testament. Just as David massacred adversaries and showed little mercy for those who opposed the kingdom of Israel, Samuel was an avid warrior. As he wrote triumphantly after one of his many successes on the field,
The slain we left for the jackals, for the leopards and wild boars; their flesh we gave as a gift to the wolves of the field and the birds of heaven. And great was the banquet, all were satiated. Over thorns and thistles were their limbs dragged; the lionesses stilled their young with them…. Great and rich was the banquet prepared, and all were filled, drunk on blood without measure. The hyenas made their rounds, and the night was deafened with the cries of the ostriches.
A David for his age he may have been, but that meant not just power, fame, and culture. It meant reveling in the art of death and pursuing his enemies until they were utterly broken.
6
The world inhabited by Samuel was nasty and brutish. One day of the week, a courtier might compose an ode to the beauty of a fountain, or to the serenity of courtyard lit by the moon. If he was Muslim, he
might have chanted with Sufis the next evening and praised the unity of God. If he was Jewish, he might have prayed with the rabbis. He might even have felt himself stirred by the joy that came with glimpsing the love of the creator. And the next day, that same courtier might have marched out at the head of an army of several thousand men and butchered his adversaries.