THE JUDEO-ARABIC TRADITION OF SEPHARAD

THE Judeo-Arabic tradition that transformed the cultural and religious life of Iberian Jewry originated in the east but reached its full fruition in the west, in Sepharad, the medieval Hebrew term for the Iberian peninsula. During the socalled 'golden age’ in Al-Andalus, between 950 and 1150, a new trend in medieval Judaism took shape and produced some of the finest works in Hebrew and J udeoArabic literature. No field of scholarship was neglected. Talmud and Bible, ethics and philosophy, Hebrew language and poetry, science and medicine developed during the two centuries following the career of Hasdai ibn Shaprut. This flourishing religious and cultural age, which was the outcome of the Judeo-Arabic encounter, came to an abrupt end with the Almohadic invasion of Al-Andalus in I 148. The Almohads, who came to help the Muslims of Spain to halt the advance of the Christian Hispanic kingdoms, destroyed Andalusian culture and outlawed what they considered Muslim, Christian, and Jewish heresy.

The Jewish survivors of the Almohadic persecutions took refuge in both distant and neighbouring lands. Those who settled in Muslim territories made little impact on local Jewish life, since they belonged to the same general Jewish cultural ambience. The exceptional case of Maimonides should not mislead us. Those who emigrated to Provence caused a cultural and religious upheaval, after acquainting the local Jews with the Judeo-Arabic scholarship which they translated into Hebrew. Jewish historiography has however neglected the largest group of Andalusian Jewish emigrants, who crossed the border and joined their brethren in Christian Spain.

Contacts between Jews in Muslim and Christian Spain preceded the decline of Al-Andalus. Jews moved in both directions, across borders that were constantly changing with the fluctuations of the Reconquista wars. It is a fascinating but often forgotten fact that some of the masterpieces of the ‘golden age’ of Sepharad were produced in Christian Spain, in a different cultural and linguistic environment from the much-studied Andalusian surroundings. Moses ibn Ezra felt the necessity to formulate the essence of the Andalusian tradition as a result of his contact with Jews of Christian Spain. This attempt was the product of the cultural crossroads at which the Jews of the Iberian peninsula found themselves.