Jews, Christians, and the Abode of Islam Modern Scholarship, Medieval Realities |
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Author:
| Lassner, Jacob |
ISBN: | 978-0-226-14318-7 |
Publication Date: | Feb 2014 |
Publisher: | University of Chicago Press
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $43.00 |
Book Description:
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Jacob Lassner examines the triangular relationship that in the Middle Ages defined--and continues to define today--the political and cultural interaction among the three Abrahamic faiths. Looking closely at the social and political status among medieval Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Islamic lands from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, Lassner balances the rhetoric of literary and legal documents with other, newly discovered sources--including private letters and...
More DescriptionJacob Lassner examines the triangular relationship that in the Middle Ages defined--and continues to define today--the political and cultural interaction among the three Abrahamic faiths. Looking closely at the social and political status among medieval Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Islamic lands from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, Lassner balances the rhetoric of literary and legal documents with other, newly discovered sources--including private letters and thousands of other texts--that described life as it was actually lived among the three Mediterranean communities. In Lassner’s account, these documents bear dramatic witness to the relations, borrowings, transfer, absorption, and circulation of cultural artifacts among the three faiths. He paints a very different picture of the interaction among the three religions than much of the scholarship since the eighteenth century has described. Lassner shows just what medieval Muslims meant when they spoke of tolerance, and how that abstract concept played out in the real world of medieval Christian and Jewish communities under Muslim rule.