During the two centuries following the death of Mohammed, Muslim rulers developed conflicting approaches towards their Jewish subjects. The difference in their approaches revealed an internal struggle within Islam, one that swung rulers between the two extremes of protection and intolerance–a struggle that has defined the Muslim–Jewish relationship to this day. This was typified by the beneficence of Caliph Omar ibn al–Kattab (634–644) and the malevolence of Caliph Ja’far al–Mutawakkil two hundred years later.
In 638, under the direction of the second Caliph, Omar ibn al–Khattab, Mohammed’s second father–i n–law, the forces of Islam drew near toJerusalem. The city was then under the rule of Christian Byzantium. Following the victory of the Byzantines over the Persians ten years earlier, Jews had not been allowed to live in Jerusalem, or at least not to spend the night there. On his way to Jerusalem from the north, Omar conquered several Byzantine–ruled cities, including Homs, Damascus and Tiberias. In Homs, the Jews openly aided the Muslim conqueror in the hope of being freed from Christian oppression. Jewish soldiers fought in the Muslim ranks as volunteers, while other Jews acted as guides or provided food and provisions for the Muslim armies.1
When a Christian deputation from Jerusalem travelled to see Omar in the Hauran–today’s Golan Heights–a treaty was drawn up, under which the Christian citizens of Jerusalem were guaranteed security of life and property. The safety of churches was also assured. But all non–Muslim citizens were required to pay a head tax, the jizya, and anyone who rejected allegiance to the Muslims was given the option to leave the city. After the treaty had been drawn up, Omar made his way to Jerusalem. Upon arrival he received the keys to the city from the Christian Patriarch. For the first time, Muslims were the masters of Jerusalem.
The Jews asked Omar for permission for two hundred Jewish families to live in the city. Because the Christian patriarch vehemently opposed this, Omar fixed the number at seventy families. These Jews were assigned a quarter southwest of the Temple Mount, in the same area as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City today.2 This quarter lay near the site of the Temple built by Solomon and later rebuilt by King Herod–prior to its destruction by the Romans–where a magnificent Byzantine church stood at the southern edge. The seventy Jewish families were permitted to build a religious college and a synagogue, and to pray at the surviving western retaining wall of Herod’s Temple enclosure.3 It was at about this time that the Talmudic academy at Tiberias moved south to Jerusalem.
Omar’s concessions at Jerusalem led the Jews to regard him as sympathetic to Jewish needs. According to one tradition, the Caliph’s humane attitude towards non–Muslims inspired Jews to grant him the epithet al–Faruq (‘he who can distinguish truth from falsehood’).4 He was even praised as a ‘friend of Israel’ in a Midrash–a compilation of Jewish teachings based on the Hebrew Bible.5 Other Jewish sources lent further credence to this image. They related that when Omar conquered Babylonia, he allowed the leader of the Jewish community there, Bustanai ben Haninai, to retain his role as the Exilarch–‘Head of the Captivity.’6 After conquering Persia, Omar gave Bustanai a wife, Izdundad, the daughter of Chosroes II, the King of Persia.7 Although the Jews of Khaibar were expelled to Tayma and Jericho under Omar’s caliphate, he is said to have saved them from penury by reimbursing them with half the value of their land.8
Yet Omar drew the same distinctions between Jews and Muslims as had Mohammed. One of the men who entered Jerusalem with him in 638 was a Jewish convert to Islam, Ka’b al–Ahbar.9 At Omar’s request, Ka’b pointed out the rock where the Jewish Temple had been built by Solomon, King of the Israelites, more than 1,500 years earlier. When Ka’b tried to persuade Omar to build the Mosque of Omar north of the holy rock, rather than directly on the spot where the Temple had stood, he was accused of Judaising tendencies. ‘You wish to resemble Judaism’–Omar is said to have told Ka’b–‘but we Muslims have been commanded to pray only in the direction of the Ka’bah’–that is, towards Mecca.10
Omar ibn al–Khattab died in 644, after ten years as Caliph, and before a decision was made to build the dome that bears his name. After Omar’s death, Ka’b stayed on at the court of the third Caliph, Othman (644–656), where his dispute with Muslim religious scholar Abu Dharr, and the latter’s rebukes of Ka’ab’s advice to the Caliph, contributed to Ka’ab’s portrayal by early Muslim writers as ‘the prototype of Jewish opportunism.’11
In 670 the first Umayyad Caliph, Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, ordered the construction of Omar’s planned ‘Dome of the Rock’ on the Temple Mount. Mu’awiya wanted the Dome to be higher and more impressive than any of the Christian churches in the city. It took twenty–one years before the imposing hexagonal structure was completed.
Although sometimes called ‘the Mosque of Omar,’ the Dome of the Rock–Qubbat as–Sakhrah–is not in fact a mosque, but a shrine built on a small outcrop of rock where Solomon’s Temple once stood. It was to this rock that Jews believe Abraham brought Isaac to be sacrificed, and it was also where they believe Jacob dreamed of a ladder ascending to heaven. Later Muslim tradition spoke of Mohammed ascending to heaven from the same rock on his horse Buraq–whose hoof print is shown to visitors to this day–although there is no record of Mohammed having visited Jerusalem.
Caliph Abd al–Malik, the fourth successor to Abi Sufyan, completed the Dome in 691. He appointed Jewish families to be guardians of the Temple Mount–known to the Muslims as Haram al–Sharif (‘The Noble Sanctuary’)–and charged them with maintaining its cleanliness and with making glass vessels for the lights and kindling them. He also decreed that these particular Jews should be exempt from the jizya tax. Like Omar before him, Abd al–Malik thus made concessions to the Jews, allowing certain Jews to hold positions of authority under his rule. A Jew named Sumeir was in charge of minting the Caliph’s coins in Damascus, while another Jew, in 698, was the administrator of the North African city of Bizerta.
Abd al–Malik followed his completion of the Dome by beginning the al–Aqsa (‘The Farthest’) Mosque on the Noble Sanctuary. This was built on the site of a small house of prayer built by Omar–itself erected on the site of an earlier Byzantine church–and was completed in 705 by Abd al–Malik’s son and successor, Caliph al–Walid. The mosque, destroyed by an earthquake in 746, was rebuilt eight years later by the Abbasid Caliph al–Mansur.
It was the al–Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock that gave Jerusalem its importance to Muslims, although they continued to pray facing Mecca, more than one thousand miles to the south. Muslims believed that Mohammed was transported from the Grand Mosque in Mecca to al–Aqsa during the ‘Night Journey.’ In the words of the Koran: ‘Worthy of praise is He who took his servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Distant Mosque, the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our Signs.’12 In contrast, the importance of Jerusalem for ews derived from the site of their two destroyed Temples, towards which the Jews still pray daily. Jerusalem, not mentioned in the Koran, is mentioned 654 times in the Hebrew Bible.
The treatment of Jews in Muslim lands evolved significantly under the eighth Umayyad Caliph, Omar Abd al–Azziz, who formally codified the rules for the dhimmi status. Abd al–Azziz, who reigned from 717 to 720, was a devout Muslim and a popular ruler who shunned the luxury that had become characteristic of Umayyad lifestyle. He redistributed to the people many estates that had been seized by Ummayad officials, left his palace in Damascus for a simpler home and wore plain linen clothes instead of the sumptuous royal robes.
Guided by a deep and sincere piety, Abd al–Azziz laid out rules that were aimed specifically at setting the Muslim and non–Muslim communities clearly apart. He did this in a pact known as the Covenant of Omar, which almost certainly dated from this period, and which formally categorised non–Muslims as ahl al–dhimma–‘the People of the Pact.’ At the core of the Covenant was a promise to protect Jews and Christians–People of the Book–based on three essential benefits: security of life and property, freedom of religion and internal communal autonomy. Each benefit was guaranteed provided certain conditions were met. First and foremost among these conditions, dhimmis had to pay the jizya tax to the local ruler and accept the condition of ahl al–dhimma.
In addition to codifying existing rules, Abd al–Azziz formulated new ones. Several of these were identical to laws against the Jews that were already in place in Christian Byzantium, but they were nonetheless new in the Muslim world. There could be no building of new synagogues or churches. Dhimmis could not ride horses, but only donkeys; they could not use saddles, but only ride sidesaddle. Further, they could not employ a Muslim. Jews and Christians alike had to wear special hats, cloaks and shoes to mark them out from Muslims.13 They were even obliged to carry signs on their clothing or to wear types and colours of clothing that would indicate they were not Muslims, while at the same time avoid clothing that had any association with Mohammed and Islam. Most notably, green clothing was forbidden.14
Although the implementation of these laws varied over time, their basic principles remained constant in the lives of all dhimmis living under Muslim rule henceforth. A dhimmi could not–and cannot to this day–serve in a Muslim court as a witness in a legal case involving a Muslim. The reason for this was set out in Ali ibn Abi Bakr al–Marghinani’s Thirteenth–Century commentary to Muslim law. Al–Marghinani explained that because ‘infidels are unjust, it is requisite to be slow in believing anything they may advance.’ This he showed by quoting the Koran: ‘When an unjust person tells you anything be slow in believing him.’ Al–Marghinani added that ‘a dhimmi may be suspected of inventing falsehoods against a Mussulman15 from the hatred he bears him on account of the superiority of the Mussulman over him.’16
Other aspects of dhimmi existence were that Jews–and also Christians–were not to be given Muslim names, were not to prevent anyone from converting to Islam, and were not to be allowed tombs that were higher than those of Muslims. Men could enter public bathhouses only when they wore a special sign around their neck distinguishing them from Muslims, while women could not bathe with Muslim women and had to use separate bathhouses instead. Sexual relations with a Muslim woman were forbidden, as was cursing the Prophet in public–an offence punishable by death.
The property of a dhimmi who died was to belong to the Muslim authorities–not to the dhimmi‘s community–until the heirs could prove their right to it under Islamic (Sharia) law. If there was no heir, the property would be transferred to the Muslim authority. The leader of the dhimmi communities–Jewish or Christian–acted as the official contact with the ruling Muslim authority, responsible for the collection of the jizya tax and for the loyalty of the community. In 1031, in Babylonia, this duty was the responsibility of the Christian Catholicos and the Jewish Exilarch.17
Under the dhimmi rules as they evolved, neitherJews nor Christians could carry guns, build new places of worship or repair old ones without permission, or build any place of worship that was higher than a mosque. A non–Muslim could not inherit anything from a Muslim. A non–Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman, although a Muslim man could marry a Christian or a Jewish woman. This was justified as Mohammed had taken one Jewish wife–Rayhana–after his defeat of the Qurayzah, and a second–Safiyya–after the Battle of Khaibar. Conversion by a Muslim to either Christianity or Judaism was strictly forbidden. Converts to Islam were welcomed.18
The Covenant of Omar had an enormous impact on everyday life in the Muslim world, imposing restrictions, promising security and defining relationships for Jews and other dhimmis in their contact with their Muslim neighbours and rulers. This omnipresence has been the subject of considerable debate.
Writing in 1962, the Jewish scholar Shlomo Goitein confessed: ‘There is no subject in Islamic social history on which the present writer had to modify his views so radically while passing from literary to documentary sources, i.e. from the study of Muslim books to that of the records of the Cairo Geniza,19 as the jizya.’ Although the jizya tax was plainly discriminatory, Goitein noted how it might appear to modern observers that the tax ‘did not constitute a heavy imposition, since it was on a sliding scale, approximately one, two and four dinars, and thus adjusted to the financial capacity of the taxpayer.’ Nevertheless, he concluded that this impression was ‘entirely fallacious, for it did not take into consideration the immense extent of poverty and privation experienced by the masses, and in particular, their persistent lack of cash, which turned “the season of the tax” into one of horror, dread and misery.’20
Another leading scholar, Professor Mark R. Cohen, painted a broader and more positive image of the dhimmi laws. He observed that dhimmis–unlike their Jewish counterparts in the Christian world–were not excluded from the life of Muslim society. The Covenant of Omar compelled them to distinguish themselves from Muslims, but its intention was ‘not so much to exclude as to reinforce’ the hierarchical distinction between Muslims and non–Muslims. Non–Muslims would simply remain ‘in their place.’ They were not to commit an act that might challenge the superior rank of Muslims or of Islam. Yet they occupied ‘a definite slot in Islamic society–a low rank but a rank, nevertheless. Like Hinduism, Islam recognized and accepted difference as a natural concomitant of the hierarchical order.’21
The hierarchy in Muslim society was founded on Islam’s distinction between insiders and outsiders: the division of the world into the Domain of War (Dar al–Harb) and the Domain of Islam (Dar alIslam). The Domain of War lay outside the Domain of Islam; Muslims were instructed to wage jihad (holy war) against unbelievers of this domain and force them to choose between Islam and the sword.22 Ranked above those unbelievers, however, were the non–Muslims of the Domain of Islam: the ahl al–dhimma or Protected People. This group was given the option of paying tribute in return for protection and the relatively free exercise of religion. ‘Marginal though they were,’ Professor Cohen observed, the Jews and Christians of this domain ‘occupied a recognized, fixed, safeguarded niche within … the Islamic social order.’23
Other historians reached a different conclusion. A leading scholar of Islamic history, Albert Hourani, pointed to how dhimmis themselves experienced the restrictions imposed on them. He wrote that between the Muslim ruler and his non–Muslim subjects, ‘the relationship was not strengthened by a moral bond.’ At the best of times, ‘even if it was a peaceful and stable relationship, there was a sense in which Christians and Jews lay outside the community; they could not give the ruler the strong and positive allegiance which would come from an identity of beliefs and purposes.’24 The historian Bat Ye’or also pointed to the dramatic change in demography over the six centuries after Mohammed, during which ‘the Arab–Muslim minority developed into a dominant majority, resorting to oppression in order to reduce the numerous indigenous populations to tolerated religious minorities.’25
The exclusion and persecution of non–Muslims depended on the severity or leniency of individual Muslim rulers. Certain rulers initiated periods of religious intolerance and of campaigns to conquer new territory for Islam. At such times, dhimmi restrictions were applied with a greater rigour and were even distorted to harsher effect. Synagogues and churches were occasionally destroyed by Muslim authorities who claimed that it had been forbidden to build them in the first place, since they had not been in existence in the pre–Muslim period; it did not matter that no such regulation was described in the Covenant of Omar.
In Baghdad, four Abbasid Caliphs were particularly strict in their interpretation of the dhimmi laws: Harun al–Rashid (786–809), Abdullah al–Ma’mun (813–833), Ja’far al–Muqtadir (908–932) and, especially, Ja’far al–Mutawakkil (847–861). In two decrees, one in 850 and the other in 854, al–Mutawakkil ordered Christians and Jews to fix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves with the ground, wear yellow (‘honey–coloured’) outer garments and ride only on mules and donkeys–not horses–with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate–l ike balls.26 He also forbade Jewish children from learning Arabic.27
Al–Mutawakkil was a striking example of how far Muslim rulers could stray from the beneficent actions of Caliph Omar ibn al–Khattab two centuries earlier. Yet his rule was, at the same time, an example of something very different as well: how the most severe rulers made rare exceptions for a minority of dhimmis. Nearly all Muslim rulers employed the services of Jews with expert knowledge, among them physicians, administrators and clerks. Al–Mutawakkil was no exception. From 850 to 861 he employed a Jew named Ubaidallah ben Yahya as his Vizier, the highest–ranking official in the kingdom.28 Later, Yahya’s son served as Vizier to Caliph al–Muqtadir.
The first of the four Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad, Harun al–Rashid, employed Jewish physicians who were intimately involved with food preparation at his court. Jews were consulted about food at most Islamic courts because of their knowledge of what made up a balanced, wise diet. But in the words of the Egyptian–born Jewish cookery writer Claudia Roden, Harun’s reign was a time when ‘cookery became a high art,’ and in writings of this period, expert physicians were ‘depicted sitting at the table with the caliphs advising them on what food was good for the body and spirit.’29
Easy access to such expertise was an important concern for Muslim rulers. Caliph al–Muqtadir, who came to the throne in 908, promulgated an edict to allow Jews and Christians to serve in two official functions: physicians and bankers. Later Caliphs showed a similar concern for safeguarding Jewish expertise, working around dhimmi laws by claiming that certain Jews were employed to carry out orders (tanfidh) without any personal initiative (tafwid). In these circumstances, rulers who adopted a strict approach to the dhimmi rules also exhibited a split attitude to the laws’ victims–causing suffering for the masses at the same time as granting great privilege and opportunity to a few.
At the start of the Eleventh Century, one Caliph revealed again–in unusually bold fashion–how perilous life could be for dhimmis under Muslim rule. In Egypt in 1008, almost four hundred years after Muslim conquerors first arrived, Caliph al–Hakim bi–Amr Allah (996–1021) broke with his tolerant predecessors in the Fatimid dynasty by ordering the destruction of all synagogues and churches throughout the Fatimid Empire, including in Jerusalem. He then gave his ‘protected’ Jewish and Christian subjects the choice of conversion to Islam or departure from the countries under his rule.30 His cruel persecution of dhimmis was almost certainly the result of mental illness. He showed a similar commitment to terrorising his Muslim subjects. Then, a year before his death, he changed his mind suddenly, allowing Jews and Christians to return to their religion and rebuild their destroyed buildings.
Al–Hakim’s change of mind came too late for the Jews of Jerusalem, who did not find it easy to rebuild what had earlier been destroyed.31 But it served as a reminder to all Jews that although the dhimmi laws made room for both persecution and protection, their effect was decided by the temperament, religious zeal and personal caprice of Muslim rulers.
1 Christian sects (like the Copts) who were persecuted by Byzantine Christian rulers also helped the Muslims against Byzantium.
2 Simhah Assaf, British Journal of the Palestine Exploration Society, issue VII, from page 22.
3 Ben–Zion Dinaburg (Benzion Dinur), Zion (Jewish Historical Quarterly), issue III, 1929, from page 54. That wall, still a focal point of Jewish prayer, is known as the Western (or Wailing) Wall.
4 Eliezer Bashan (Sternberg), ‘Omar ibn al–Khattab,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 12, column 1382. Faruq is a popular Arabic boy’s name meaning ‘wise.’
5 Midrash Nistarot de–Rav Shimon bar Yohai is a revelation given to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (who died in the mid–Second Century CE) during his time hiding in a cave while being sought by Romans. The revelation is regarded by some as an insight into ‘future’ Muslim history, although many scholars point out that it pre–dates Islam by four centuries, and is almost certainly not from so ancient an era. It states that a King will arise who will ‘fix the breaches in the Temple area, will fight a war with the enemy and will destroy its armies.’ This has been taken as referring to Caliph Omar.
6 Those appointed Exilarch were believed to be descended from the biblical King David.
7 Simhah Assaf, ‘Bustanai ben Haninai,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 4, column 1537. Omar himself married the King’s other daughter.
8 Caliph Omar ibn al–Khattab was not the Omar who authored the Covenant of Omar, which codified the status of dhimmi. That was almost certainly issued some eighty years after Omar ibn al–Khattab’s death by another Caliph of a separate dynasty, Omar ibn Abdul Azziz.
9 The designation ‘al–Ahbar’ denotes a non–Muslim scholar.
10 Shlomo D. Goitein, ‘Jerusalem in the Arab Period,’ Lee I. Levine (editor), The Jerusalem Cathedra, page 172.
11 H.Z. Hirschberg, ‘Ka’b al’Ahbar,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 10, column 488. Ka’b was asked by Othman if a ruler is permitted to take money from the treasury when he is in need, and then to pay it back later. When Ka’b said it was permitted, Abu Dharr rebuked Ka’b with the words: ‘You son of Jews want to teach us.’
12 Koran 17:2. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (translator), The Quran, pages 95–6.
13 Eliezer Bashan (Sternberg), ‘Omar, Covenant of,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 12, column 1378–82. For a detailed study of the Covenant of Omar, see Mark R. Cohen, ‘What Was the Pact of ‘Umar? A Literary–Historical Study,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, Number 23, (1999), pages 100–157.
14 The colour green has a special place in Islam. It is used in the decoration of mosques, the bindings of Korans, the silken covers for the graves of Sufi saints, and in the flags of various Muslim countries. There is a Muslim tradition that green was Mohammed’s favourite colour and that he wore a green cloak and turban. The Koran (Sura 76:21) relates that the inhabitants of paradise will be given ‘green garments of fine silk and heavy brockade.’
15 A Nineteenth–Century word for Muslim.
16 Ali ibn Abi Bakr Marghinani, The Hedaya, or Guide–A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws (Charles Hamilton, translator), Volume Two, 1982, pages 362–3.
17 Eliezer Bashan (Sternberg), ‘Omar, Covenant of,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 12, column 1379. ‘Catholicos’ was the title given in the Syrian Church to the head bishop of an autonomous region under the Patriarch of Antioch.
18 A succinct description of dhimmi status can be found in Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, pages 117–9.
19 The Genizah (from the Hebrew word ganoz, to put aside), a store of Jewish sacred books and other written documents. The Cairo Genizah, found in 1854 in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, is the source of more than 140,000 Jewish documents, many in fragments, from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Centuries.
20 S.D. Goitein, ‘Evidence on the Muslim Poll tax from Non–Muslim Sources,’ Journal of the Economic History of the Orient, 1963, issue six, pages 278–9.
21 Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, The Jews in the Middle Ages, pages 111–2.
22 A non–Muslim native of the Domain of War could enter Islamic territory–on business, for example–under a guarantee of safe conduct. Such a person was classified as a musta’min and received an aman, a safe conduct or pledge of security, by which he entered Muslim territory protected by the sanctions of the law in his life and property, but only for a limited period.
23 Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, The Jews in the Middle Ages, pages 111–2.
24 Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, page 141.
25 Bat Ye’or, ‘Islam and the Dhimmis,’ The Jerusalem Quarterly, Number 42, Spring 1987, pages 83–88 (A Rejoinder to Mark R. Cohen, ‘Islam and the Jews: Myth, Counter–Myth, History,’ The Jerusalem Quarterly, Number 38, Spring 1986, pages 125–137). For a documented analysis of this subject, see Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh–Twentieth Century, pages 221–240.
26 Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, page 353.
27 Lieutenant–Colonel P.M. Sykes, A History of Persia, Volume Two, page 82.
28 Vizier (Persian) and wazir (Arabic) mean ‘burden–bearer’ and ‘helper’: the Vizier was a high–ranking political and sometimes religious adviser, often the senior Minister, of a Muslim Caliph or Sultan.
29 Claudia Roden, The Book of Jewish Food, page 185. Among the Jews for whom medicine and food were closely connected was Isaac ben Solomon ha–Israeli, an ophthalmologist who died in the Tunisian city of Kairouan in 932. He was the author of works on fevers, urine and urine analysis, and medical ethics. He also wrote a widely read treatise on the connection between diet and health, the Kitab al–Aghdhiya (‘Book of Foods’), in which he stressed that food had to be ‘really delectable’ if the body and the mood were to benefit from it. Seven hundred years after his death, his book was still being used in the medical schools of Italy. It was printed (in Latin) in Padua in 1487 as Liber Dietetarium Universalium. Ron Barkai, ‘Jewish Medical Treatises in the Middle Ages,’ in Natalia Berger (editor), Jews and Medicine: Religion, Culture, Science, pages 51–2, and Claudia Roden, The Book of Jewish Food, page 189.
30 Eliezer Bashan (Sternberg), ‘Omar, Covenant of,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 12, columns 1379–80. One of the Caliph’s edicts also forced Jews to wear on their clothing the head of a calf, in mockery of the golden calf of the Israelites’ wanderings in the desert.
31 Shlomo D. Goitein, ‘Jerusalem in the Arab Period,’ Lee I. Levine (editor), The Jerusalem Cathedra, page 185.