History of the Jews under Muslim rule
Under Islamic rule, Jews, along with Christians and certain other pre-Islamic monotheistic religious groups, were given the status of dhimmi (Arabic: ذِمّيّ 'of the covenant'), which granted them certain rights while imposing specific obligations and restrictions.
[3] The introduction of nationalist ideologies (including Zionism and Arab nationalism), the impact of colonial policies, and the establishment of modern nation-states altered the status and dynamics of Jewish communities in Muslim-majority countries.
Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with Iran and Turkey being home to the largest remaining Jewish populations, followed by Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq.
This was due to Zionist recruitment, religious beliefs, economic reasons, widespread persecution, antisemitism, political instability and curbing of human rights in Muslim-majority countries.
[4][5][6] At the end of the 19th century, early modern chroniclers such as Moïse Franco, Samuel Rozanes, and Abraham Galante began documenting various aspects of Ottoman Jewish history.
[7] One of the first works on the subject—at least in French—was Moïse Franco's Essai sur l'Histoire des Israélites de l'Empire Ottoman: Depuis les Origines Jusqu'à Nos Jours (1897).
[12] Additionally, the collective volume led by Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora, A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day, provides a comprehensive perspective by incorporating insights from scholars of various backgrounds.
[20] Israeli further stresses that, unlike in Christian Europe, where Jews were often expelled, Muslim rulers typically allowed Jewish communities to remain but under conditions of perpetual dependency and vulnerability to arbitrary state policies.
By the time of the early Muslim conquests in the seventh century, these ancient communities had been ruled by various empires and included the Babylonian, Persian, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Yemenite Jews.
[24] In the context of day-to-day life, Abdel Fattah Ashour, a professor of medieval history at Cairo University, states that Jewish people found solace under Islamic rule during the Middle Ages.
[25] Social integration allowed Jews to make great advances in new fields, including mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry and philology,[26] with some even gaining political power under Islamic rule.
This in turn led to greater wealth and international influence, as well as a more cosmopolitan outlook from Jewish thinkers such as Saadiah Gaon, who now deeply engaged with Western philosophy for the first time.
Following the Islamic conquests of the 7th century, the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphates unified vast territories, including regions with significant Jewish populations such as the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.
"Urbanization itself thus made life for peasants more difficult, and ultimately, the burden of subsistence farming and the increasing viability of earning a livelihood through crafts and trade encouraged many to move to towns and cities".
"Thousands of surviving letters, legal responsa, and copies of sections of the Babylonian Talmud sent throughout the Mediterranean basin attest to the influence the yeshivot developed outside their immediate geographic orbit".
"The Jewish communities distributed charity, ransomed captives, collected taxes and fees, adjudicated disputes through a system of courts and legal specialists, and elected and appointed leaders".
The Fatimids, particularly under Caliph al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah (r. 953–975) and his successors, generally adopted a policy of tolerance toward non-Muslims, including Jews, in accordance with the dhimma system, which granted them legal protection in exchange for a special tax (jizya).
The Geniza documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat reveal extensive Jewish participation in Mediterranean trade networks, with correspondence between merchants in Egypt, North Africa, and even India.
Described in the ninth century by the Abbasid geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih, the Radhanites were multilingual and traded in luxury goods, including slaves, furs, textiles, weapons, and spices.
[50] The Fatimid conquest of Egypt and the shift of the Islamic economic center westward further strengthened Jewish participation in commerce, as Cairo became a key hub in Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade.
Under Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (r. 996–1021), harsher policies were briefly implemented, including the destruction of synagogues and restrictions on religious practice, though these measures were later reversed.
Hasdai ibn Shaprut, described as "surpassing all the royal servants in his manners, intellectual discipline, subtlety, patience, and intelligence," played a key role in the Umayyad court, where he also contributed to the importation of Hebrew texts from the East.
The Jewish aristocracy in al-Andalus also mirrored the manners and values of their Muslim counterparts, participating in poetry contests, composing qasidas in Hebrew, and engaging in intellectual debates.
The period’s integration of Arabic and Hebrew thought also extended to fields such as philosophy, where figures like Maimonides and Shlomo ibn Gabirol produced works that resonated across Jewish and Islamic scholarly traditions.
Almohad chronicler ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī noted that “no church or synagogue is to be found in the entire Maghreb” and described Jews outwardly practicing Islam while secretly maintaining their faith at home.
In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote of Persian Jews: "…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town…; for they are considered as unclean creatures… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt… For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans… If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults.
The Bukharan Jews, a distinct Jewish community, primarily settled in major oasis cities such as Bukhara, Samarkand, Merv, Khiva, and Balkh, speaking a dialect of Judeo-Tajik, a variant of Judeo-Persian.
Seeking allies against local Muslim rulers, Russian authorities granted Bukharan Jews a privileged legal status, allowing them to engage in commerce across the empire.
[87] By the late 19th century, Russian authorities began reversing some of these privileges due to economic and political tensions, leading to new restrictions on Jewish settlement and land ownership.
Today, the largest groups of Persian Jews are found in Israel (236,000-360,000 in 2014, including second-generation Israelis) and the United States (45,000, especially in the Los Angeles area, home to a large concentration of expatriate Iranians).
