The Sephardic Frontier by Jonathan Ray
No subject looms larger over the historical landscape of medieval Spain than that of the reconquista, the rapid expansion of the power of the Christian kingdoms into the Muslim-populated lands of southern Iberia, which created a broad frontier zone that for two centuries remained a region of warfare and peril. Drawing on a large fund of unpublished material in royal, ecclesiastical, and municipal archives as well as rabbinic literature, Jonathan Ray reveals a fluid, often volatile society that transcended religious boundaries and attracted Jewish colonists from throughout the peninsula and beyond. The result was a wave of Jewish settlements marked by a high degree of openness, mobility, and interaction with both Christians and Muslims. Ray's view challenges the traditional historiography, which holds that Sephardic communities, already fully developed, were simply reestablished on the frontier. In the early years of settlement, Iberia's crusader kings actively supported Jewish economic and political activity, and Jewish interaction with their Christian neighbors was extensive. Only as the frontier was firmly incorporated into the political life of the peninsular states did these frontier Sephardic populations begin to forge the communal structures that resembled the older Jewish communities of the North and the interior. By the end of the thirteenth century, royal intervention had begun to restrict the amount of contact between Jewish and Christian communities, signaling the end of the open society that had marked the frontier for most of the century.Ray examines the early development of Jewish communities in the various peninsular kingdoms during the transition from Muslim to Christian ruleHe contends that the social, political, and economic factors of the frontier during the second half of the thirteenth century helped to create Jewish communities characterized by a high degree of fluidity.... Insightful and engaging.
* Booklist *Using rabbinic sources and unpublished archives, Jonathan Ray brings Jewish settlement of the southern Iberian peninsula into clearer focus.... This interesting and lively book challenges the image of medieval Spanish and Portuguese society as invariably corporate and religious in its organization. The high medieval Iberian frontier, at least, was a place where the quest of individuals and families for financial and social opportunity took precedence over loyalty to rigidly defined confessional groups.
-- Jessica A. Coope * American Historical Review *Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780801474514 |
| ISBN 10 | 0801474515 |
| Title | The Sephardic Frontier |
| Author | Jonathan Ray |
| Series | Conjunctions Of Religion And Power In The Medieval Past |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cornell University Press |
| Year published | 2008-03-26 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Prizes | Winner of Cowinner of the 2010 John Nicholas Brown Prize (Me. |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |