Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain

The coexistence in Muslim society allowed Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life to flourish into a parallel Golden Age.

María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature at Yale University, claims that "tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society".

[1] Menocal's 2003 book, The Ornament of the World, argues that the Jewish dhimmis living under the Caliphate were allowed fewer rights than Muslims but were still better off than in the Christian parts of Europe.

[2]Mark R. Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, in his Under Crescent and Cross, calls the idealized interfaith utopia a "myth" that was first promulgated by Jewish historians such as Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century as a rebuke to Christian countries for their treatment of Jews.

[3] This myth was met with the "counter-myth" of the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history" by Bat Ye'or and others,[3] which also "cannot be maintained in the light of historical reality".

[4] Prior to 589, the Jewish population of Spain was tolerated by its Arian Visigoth rulers and placed on equal footing with the other ethnic and religious communities of the region.

[citation needed] Immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East bolstered the Jewish population and made Muslim Spain probably the largest centre of contemporary Jews.

Especially after 912, during the reign of Abd al-Rahman III and his son, Al-Hakam II, the Jews prospered culturally, and some notable figures held high posts in the Caliphate of Córdoba.

The jizya has been viewed variously as a head tax, as payment for non-conscription in the military (as non-Muslims were normally prohibited from bearing arms or receiving martial training) or as a tribute.

[10] Other authors criticize the modern notion of Al-Andalus being a tolerant society of equal opportunities for all religious groups as a "myth".

In Letter to Yemen, Maimonides wrote: Dear brothers, because of our many sins Hashem has cast us among this nation, the Arabs, who are treating us badly.

During the reign of the Berber dynasties, many Jewish and even Muslim scholars left the Muslim-controlled portion of Iberia for the city of Toledo, which had been conquered in 1085 by Castille.