Arabic-Speaking Jews in Crusader Syria

Home , Arqa, Ashkelon, Bailo, Banu Munqidh, Bezant, Claude Cahen

ARABIC-SPEAKING JEWS IN CRUSADER SYRIA:

CONQUEST, CONTINUITY AND ADAPTATION IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN

Brendan G. Goldman

A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the

degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore, Maryland

July 2018

Abstract This project asks: What can the documents of Jewish Syrians teach us about the ways medieval Near Easterners experienced the conquest and regime change of the First Crusade? It analyzes the conquest’s impact on five spheres of Jewish communal life: demographics, minority-state relations, commerce, the law and religious authority.

Most of the existing literature on the First Crusade has assumed that the Franks eliminated

Greater Syria’s Jewish and Muslim communities. The Cairo Genizah documents, however, demonstrate that large numbers of Jews remained in the Latin ports after the First Crusade. Moreover, these Jewish Syrians were neither segregated from European Christians nor limited to specific professions (with some very rare exceptions). They traded with Frankish merchants and served as tax- collectors and physicians for Latin lords.

The Jews of Latin Syria are a particularly helpful case-study because they adhered to a different religion from either the conquering Christians or the vanquished Muslims. But far from embracing Latin-Christian culture, Jews continued to speak and write Arabic and issue Arabic legal documents throughout the nearly two-centuries of Frankish rule of the Levant (1098-1291).

This seems paradoxical: Why would a community integrated into the economic and social life of its kingdom decline to adopt the language of its rulers? The answer I have found is practical necessity: After the First Crusade, the Jews of the Latin-ruled Levant continued to seek out commercial partnerships with Arabophone merchants from Cairo, Damascus and Palermo; they continued to solicit religious guidance from clergymen in Baghdad, Mosul and Fustat; and they continued to patronize religious institutions in Iraq, Islamic Syria and Egypt. In other words, they remained part of a broader, Eastern Mediterranean koinē. ii

Primary Reader: Professor Marina Rustow

Secondary Readers: Professor Gabrielle Spiegel, Professor Tamer el-Leithy, Professor Paul

Cobb and Professor Lawrence Principe

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Acknowledgements First, I thank The Johns Hopkins University Department of History for supporting my research and providing me with an academic home over the past seven years. I am also grateful to the department for funding my studies during the 2017/2018 academic year through the Kagan

Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Furthermore, I thank the Association for Jewish Studies for their financial backing during the academic year 2016/2017. I am also grateful to Hopkins’ Programs in

Islamic Studies and Jewish Studies, which have provided generous grants to support my language study.

Since I was a junior in college, I have had the privilege of studying with some of the best up- and-coming—now arrived—scholars in the field of Genizah studies. My most substantive training in reading and analyzing Genizah documents, however, took place under the wing of my primary advisor—and mindfulness guru—Professor Marina Rustow. Marina’s incisive questions, rigorous expectations and painstaking attention to detail have challenged me to become a better writer, problem solver, thinker and teacher. She also has the uncanny ability to explain to me what I am writing before I know myself. Whatever merits this work has, they are a tribute to her mentorship.

Professor Gabrielle Spiegel is a brilliant scholar and an even more brilliant human being.

Professor Spiegel has been there for me throughout my graduate training. She has always been ready to give of her time to read my work, write recommendations, and/or provide professional counsel. She taught me how to read chronicles and literary sources and how to interrogate historical truths (except when lecturing to undergrads). Gaby would want you to know that I remain bearded despite her

iv opposition, which she has expressed every time we see each other, usually at multiple points during each conversation.

Professor Tamer el-Leithy has been my mentor for over a decade—first, as an undergraduate at NYU and, then, as a PhD student at Johns Hopkins. I would never have entered the field of academic history without his guidance, not least because he single-handedly dragged me through my undergrad honors thesis. He remains as valued a teacher today as he was then.

Professor Paul Cobb is an outstanding teacher and a mensch. A few years ago, he not only agreed to let me join his Islamic sources course at The University of Pennsylvania, but also consented to oversee my field on medieval Islamic social history, taking dozens of hours of his own time to sit down and talk history with me. Those hours have proven invaluable in the writing of this dissertation.

Professor Kenneth Moss has been a mentor and advocate for me since I entered Johns

Hopkins. Despite making clear on multiple occasion that he never had and never would have any interests in the Crusades, he came to my seminars and offered ways to put my work into dialogue with broader trends in Jewish history. I am grateful for his time and support.

In addition to my primary mentors, I would also like to thank Professors Lawrence Principe,

Dovid Katz and Pawel Maciejko for their part in my graduate training. I thank Larry for teaching me everything I know about premodern science and philosophy. I am grateful to Rabbi Katz for teaching me how to read sheʾelot and teshuvot and how to rummage somewhat efficiently through the Talmud.

I thank Pawel for introducing me to the world of early modern Jewry and for being an advocate and guide for me in the world of Israeli academia.

In addition to my mentors at Hopkins (and Penn), I am also grateful to the following scholars:

To Professor Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, an exceptional scholar who brought me into the world of the Genizah by convincing me to quit my undergraduate Mandarin class and study Judeo-

Arabic with him. Phil has been a treasured friend and mentor ever since.

To Professor Michael Pregill, a fantastic scholar and teacher who let a bright-eyed, over confident freshman into his senior seminar on Jews and Arabs at NYU. Professor Pregill led me to discover my love of the premodern Middle East—a gift for which I remain ever grateful.

To Professor Jessica Goldberg, who took me on as a research assistant at Penn and thus exposed me to the Genizah merchants’ letters. Jessica’s work has also had a profound impact on how I think about geography, communication and medieval commerce, as reflected in the footnotes below.

To Professor Benjamin Kedar, who was kind enough not only to send me a number of sources of which I was not aware, but also to provide his thoughtful interpretations of them. His substantial contributions to the history of minorities in the Crusader states have also informed much of my analysis below.

I have learned almost as much from my colleagues at Johns Hopkins as I have from my mentors. First and foremost, I want to thank my partner in crime, Jennifer Grayson, with whom I spent long nights drinking mediocre wine, debating obscure Talmud passages and struggling over the existence (or lack thereof) of various types of Genizah formulary.

I have presented a version of almost every chapter of this dissertation to The Johns Hopkins

European History Seminar. I was consistently gratified by the caliber of questions and comments I

vi received at these presentations, especially from scholars whose work was most far afield from my own. I would like to thank my colleagues in the seminar for all they have done to shape my writing and research. These colleagues include: Neil Weijer, Yuval Tal, Yonatan Glazer-Eitan, Jonathan

Megerian, Christopher Consolino, Nathan Marvin, Nathan Daniels, Kalina Hadzikova, Asmin

Omerovic, Alexander Profaci, Meredith Gaffield, Jessica Keene and Jeremy Fradkin.

Special thanks go to Professor Michael Kwass for regularly joining the seminar and providing comments on my work; and to Heather Stein, who provided critical editing and formatting suggestions on this manuscript.

I have also benefited from the insights of a new generation of Genizah scholars among whom I am privileged to count myself. Thank you Oded Zinger, Moshe Yagur and Craig Perry. I offer a special thanks to Eve Krakowski, who has provided guidance not only on writing and researching, but also on navigating the academic job market.

I thank Megan Zeller—the boss—who has kept everything in my professional life (and the department’s) running as smoothly as possible. Her compassion and competence are both beyond measure.

I thank my close friends in Baltimore for making the last seven years a time of fantastic food, dance, drink and conversation. Thanks to Allon Brann, Christopher Consolino, Yonatan Glazer-Eitan,

Jennifer Grayson, Nathan Marvin, Jonathan Megerian, Yuval Tal, Heather Stein and Neil Weijer.

I also thank my brothers and sisters from other mothers in Chicago and Singapore: Daniel

Bender, Daniel Fischer, Sarah Gulezian, Samuel Hunt, Leon Kong, Peter Ruger and Caroline Snyder.

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I thank my brilliant sister, Rabbi Megan Goldman, for being an exemplary older sibling, feeding me, introducing me to her ridiculously large network of friends, bragging about me…etc. And her wife, Paige, for bringing some much needed humor and levity to my life and the lives of my family.

I thank my beloved father, Dr. Morris Goldman, for modeling empathy and critical thinking— two skills that are invaluable to any psychiatrist, historian and human being.

Finally, I dedicate this work to my mother, Professor Hilarie Lieb, without whose unending support I would never have found my way to finishing this work. Her strength, humor and grace in the face of adversity are a source of inspiration for me and all those who know and love her.

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Transcriptions, Translations, Terms and Abbreviations

Transcription

I transcribe Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic per the guidelines of the International Journal of Middle East

when not in a construct. My transcription of )ة( Studies, but I use “(a)h” to indicate tāʾ marbūṭah

,as ṭ ט :Hebrew and Aramaic follows the guidelines of the Jewish Quarterly Review, with the exceptions

.as q ק as ṣ, and צ

I render all Hebrew and Arabic names in the form in which they appear in the original texts (i.e.,

Moshe/Mūsā not Moses).

Translation

In my translations, parentheses ( ) indicate information I am adding to the translation for the sake of clarity, including transcriptions of the original texts. Brackets [ ] indicate parts of the original texts that are impossible to recover because the document is fragmented or the text is illegible.

Common place names and the names of cities to which I refer frequently (e.g., Tyre and Acre) are anglicized. I have transliterated the names of less common cities directly from the Arabic or Hebrew.

If I am translating a part of a document that includes a date, I include both the original Seleucid/Hijri year, as well as the Julian date. Otherwise, I strictly use Julian dates.

Terms

Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187) indicates the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem during its first instantiation until the capture of Jerusalem in 1187.

Kingdom of Acre (1189-1291) refers to the Kingdom of Jerusalem after it lost Jerusalem and moved its capital to Acre.

(Greater) Syria/Levant/al-Shām are used interchangeably. This region includes the modern states/regions of Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Latin or Frankish Syria refer to those parts of Syria that the Franks held.

Islamic/Zengid/Ayyubid/Mamluk Syria refers to regions that are outside of Frankish control.

Crusaders are Europeans who came to fight in the holy land.

Franks are those people who settled in the region permanently.

Abbreviations

I abbreviate both Arabic (ibn) and Hebrew (ben) patronymics as “b”

PGP = Princeton Geniza Project (https://www.princeton.edu/~Genizah/)

FGP = Friedberg Genizah Project (https://fjms.Genizah.org/index.html)

TB = Talmud Bavli

Table of Contents Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Transcriptions, Translations, Terms and Abbreviations ...... ix

Transcription ...... ix

Translation...... ix

Terms ...... ix

Abbreviations ...... x

Table of Contents ...... xi

List of Tables ...... xvii

Introduction ...... 1

Historical Context ...... 3

Scope ...... 5

Historiography ...... 7

The Sources ...... 12

Towards a History of Arabic-speaking Jews in the Latin Levant ...... 20

Part 1: The Demographics of the Jewish Community of Latin Syria ...... 25

1.1: “Those Who Remained among the Slaughtered”: Conquest, Massacre and Population Movement in Southern

Syria (1071-1099) ...... 25

Jerusalem and the Palestinian Interior under the Fatimids and Seljuqs ...... 29

Rereading the Conquest of Jerusalem: Audience, Author and Biblical Typology ...... 30

Nebuchadnezzar’s Turkish Vassals: The Seljuq Conquest of Jerusalem ...... 34

Between Scylla, Charybdis and Leviathan: Seljuqs, Crusaders and Bedouin in Syria (1095-

1099) ...... 37

“The Enemies of God and Haters of His People”: The First Crusade and the Conquest of

Jerusalem ...... 42

Conclusion ...... 58

1.2 Flight in the Wake of the First Crusade: Syrian Refugees Real and Imagined (1099-1124) ...... 60

The View from Fustat: Charity Lists, Refugees and Lack Thereof ...... 62

The View from the Syrian Ports: Refugees in a Communal Context ...... 70

Those Who Never Left: Syrian Jews and the Frankish Conquest of the Levantine Ports ...... 73

Conclusion ...... 77

1.3 An Islamicate Society: Emigration, Immigration and the Jews in the Latin Kingdom (1124-1291) ...... 79

The Europeanization/Rabbinization Narrative and its Lacunae ...... 80

Arabophone Migrants and Jewish Demographics in the Kingdom of Jerusalem ...... 82

A profile of Latin Tyre in the 1170s ...... 85

Arabic-speaking Migrants and Jewish Demographics in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291) ..... 90

A Letter from Acre in the 1190s: A Profile of Migrants to the New Crusader Capital ...... 92

The Zorzi Report: A Survey of Jews in the Venetian Quarter of Latin Tyre (1243-44) ...... 98

The Head of Egypt’s Jews in Acre: The Jewish Community at the End of Latin Rule ...... 101

European Immigrants to the Kingdom of Acre ...... 103

Conclusion ...... 109

Part 2: Administration and Minority-State Relations in Latin Syria ...... 112

2.1—The View from Above: State Building, the Fragmentation of Sovereignty and Minority Privileges in Latin

Syria (1099-1291) ...... 112

The Legend of Godfrey and the Challenge of Source Survival ...... 114

xii

Building a State: Ad Hoc Surrender Treaties ...... 116

The Pact of ʿUmar in the Crusader States ...... 118

No Certificate Required: Taxation, Trade and Travel in the Frankish Levant ...... 122

Servants of All, Servants of None: Jews in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291) ...... 126

The Kingdom of Acre vs. Mainland European States...... 128

Whence the Royal Alliance? ...... 130

A Window on Venetian Tyre: Frankish Government (Not) at Work ...... 133

A Failure to Persecute ...... 136

Loyalty and Solidarity in a Kingless Society ...... 140

Conclusion ...... 143

2.2 The View from Below: Informal Intermediaries and Jewish-State Relations in Latin Syria ...... 146

A Headless Community: Minorities and State Neglect after the First Crusade ...... 150

Local Relations in a Decentralized State: The Redemption of Captives ...... 157

Advocates and Informers: A Tax Farmer and His Lord ...... 164

A Headless Community in a Kingless State: Informal Mediation in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-

1291) ...... 169

Communal Order and the Limitations of State Power in a Kingless Kingdom ...... 174

Conclusion ...... 178

Part III: Commerce, The Courts and The State Beyond Borders ...... 180

3.1 A State Beyond Borders: Syrian Jews in the Courts of the Latin Levant...... 180

Frankish Courts: Baronial Politics and the Prerogatives of Peerage ...... 183

Latin Courts, Arabic Deeds ...... 187

Rabbinic Courts and the Power of Familiarity ...... 191

Qāḍī Documents, Rabbinic Courts ...... 195

Conclusion ...... 199 xiii

3.2 From Hinterlands to Emporia: The Ports of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1098-1187) ...... 201

Previous Studies ...... 202

Arabophone Merchants in Syria before the Crusader Conquests ...... 205

Trade in the Midst of Crusade, 1098-1111 ...... 206

Symbiosis: The India Trade and the Emerging Ports of the Latin Levant, 1110s-1150s ...... 211

Trickle-down Trade: International Commerce and the Local Economy (1160s-1187) ...... 218

Emporia: The Emergence of Tyre and Acre (1160-1187)...... 221

Conclusion ...... 223

3.3 Microcosm of the Mediterranean: Transregional Trade and International Traders in the Kingdom of Acre

(1190-1291) ...... 226

The Context: New Sources, New Geographic Horizons ...... 227

The Impact of the Third Crusade on Trans-regional Commerce ...... 228

Trade and Traders from the Islamic World in the Kingdom of Acre ...... 231

Arabic-Speaking Jewish Traders from Christian Europe...... 238

European Jews and the Levant Trade ...... 242

Trade and Traders from the Greek World in the Kingdom of Acre ...... 245

Trans-Regional Trade, International Merchants and Social Cohesion in Latin Acre ...... 248

Conclusion ...... 252

Part IV: Local and Regional Leadership in the Latin Levant: Rabbinic Authority beyond Borders ...... 254

4.1 Islamicate Jewish Politics in a Latin-Christian World: Rabbis in the Islamic Near East and their Followers in

Latin Palestine (1099-1200) ...... 254

Near Eastern Jewish Leaders and the First Crusade ...... 259

The Flight of the Yeshivah of Palestine to Damascus (1109) ...... 262

Regional Authority over Latin Syria in the Aftermath of the First Crusade ...... 263

xiv

The Revival of the Yeshivah of Palestine (1110-1160s) ...... 265

The Negidut of Damascus ...... 272

Maimonides and the Rabbinic Leadership of Tyre and Acre (1165-1204) ...... 277

The Limits of Rabbinic Authority beyond the State ...... 281

Conclusion ...... 286

4.2: Microcosm of the Mediterranean Part II: The Emergence of Latin Acre (1204-1285) ...... 288

Avraham Maimonides, Head of the Jews of Latin Syria (1200-1237) ...... 291

A Maimonidean Leader and his Anti-Maimonidean Dependents ...... 293

Hodaya the Nasi and the First Steps toward an Independent Acre...... 299

The Controversy Moves to Acre ...... 303

The Catalonian ʿAliyah and the Rise of Acre (1237-1285)...... 306

Conclusion ...... 311

4.3: The Maimonidean Controversy and the Fall of Acre (1285-1291) ...... 313

David Maimonides: From Egypt to Acre ...... 314

The Ideological Controversy: Shelomo Peṭiṭ, Maimonides and Aristotle ...... 316

The Controversy in the Near East—Politics and Regional Authority...... 319

Turning to Church and State ...... 322

Conclusion ...... 327

Epilogue ...... 329

Conclusion ...... 333

Source Survival, Politics and Historiography ...... 336

The Limits of this Study ...... 339

Implications ...... 342

Appendix 1: Maps (all open source) ...... 344

Appendix 2: Genizah Documents ...... 349

Bibliography ...... 353

Printed Sources ...... 353

Secondary Sources ...... 354

Curriculum Vitae ...... 365

xvi

List of Tables

Table 1 - Toponyms from Fustat Charity Lists, 1020-1070 65

Table 2 - Toponyms from Fustat Charity Lists, 1071-1099 66

Table 3 – Toponyms from Fustat Charity Lists, 1107 67

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Introduction The eleventh- and twelfth-century Mediterranean witnessed Latin Christian conquests of

Muslim-controlled territories on three fronts: Sicily and North Africa, Iberia and the Levant.1 This project examines one of those regions, Greater Syria, also referred to as the Levant or al-Shām (See

Appendix 1, Figure 1).2 It asks: what can the Jews of Latin Syria (that is, those regions of Syria that the

Franks controlled) tell us about conquest in the medieval Mediterranean? The central problem that animates this study’s analysis is one of continuity and change: how did the peoples of Latin Syria perpetuate their existing Islamicate3 economic, legal, political and religious institutions or adapt them in order to meet the evolving demands of their post-conquest reality?

This paper analyzes a corpus of both narrative and documentary primary source texts, most importantly documents from the Cairo Genizah. The Cairo Genizah was a storage room for discarded manuscripts located in the Ben Ezra synagogue or Kanīsat al-Shāmiyyīn—the prayer house following the rites of the Jews of al-Shām—in Fustat, Egypt. The Jewish tradition of depositing in a ritualized manner texts carrying the name of God and subsequently burying them has roots going back to at least late antiquity. The Jews of the Ben Ezra synagogue deposited not only texts with God’s name on

1 While some Western scholarship has treated the First Crusade as a distinct development in European history, for Muslim commentators like Ibn al-Athīr, it was the third part of a tripartite Frankish assault on the lands of Islam that began in Sicily (1061), then continued with the Reconquista in Iberia (Toledo fell to the Christians in 1085), and finally overtook the Levant (1098). See Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fʾil-Tārīkh, 12 vols., ed. C.J. Tornberg (Leiden and Uppsala: 1851-1876), X: 185-88. See Paul Chevveden, “The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade: A New (Old) Paradigm for Understanding the Crusades,” Der Islam 83 no.1 (2006): 90-136. This issue is further discussed in Yehoshua Frenkel, “Muslim Responses to the Frankish Dominion in the Near East, 1098-1291,” in The Crusades and the Near East: Cultural Histories, ed. Conor Kostick (New York: Routledge, 2011), 27-55. 2 See Appendix 1, Figure 3. 3 Marshall Hodgson coined the term “Islamicate” in order to describe phenomena that do not convey “something that expresses Islam as a faith” but which refer to “the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and Muslims;” therefore, Jews and Christians in Muslim lands could were part and parecel of an Islamicate society. See Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009 [1979]), I: 59. 1 them, but also texts of a seemingly secular nature. Even more fortuitously, the Ben Ezra congregants did not empty the contents of their Genizah for burial. Therefore, when European scholars discovered the Cairo Genizah at the end of the nineteenth century, the Ben Ezra storage room held almost

400,000 folio pages. Of those pages, approximately 30,000-40,000 thousand are documentary texts of the type analyzed in this dissertation, consisting of genres including public and private letters, court documents and rabbinic responsa.4

Most Cairo Genizah texts were preserved without concern for posterity; they were written for immediate use and disposal (or reuse). Therefore, their authors were rarely invested in presenting abstract historical metanarratives. The Genizah documents instead attest to the pressing concerns of the moment: a hastily folded letter, wet ink staining its fibers, sent from a city under Crusader siege to a leading Egyptian Jew, begging him to get the head of Palestinian Jewry and his children out of harm’s way (Appendix 2, Figure 8);5 or another letter from a Jew from recently conquered Latin Acre complaining that Alexandrian Jewish shell fishermen were spending too much time drinking Egyptian beer at a Christian tavern (and too much effort supporting his local political rival).6 What the Genizah provides, then, are snippets of the lives of hundreds of individuals of diverse professional and

4 The approximate number of 4000,000 folio pages and of 20,000 documentary Genizah texts is based on the Friedberg Genizah Project’s (FGP) ongoing digitization of the Genizah corpus. 5 T-S 20.145 (unpublished), ll. 8-12. Goitein and Menahem Ben-Sasson argue that this text refers to a Fatimid fleet expedition against Islamic Tripoli in 1120 or 1126, but their dating is untenable: Tripoli fell to the Crusaders in 1109. The Yeshiva of Palestine and its leader (the gaʾon) had left Tyre c. 1100 and the only sieges of Tripoli subsequent to that date involve Crusader forces. See S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genizah, 6 vols. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), 1:485.; and Menahem Ben- Sasson, “The axis of the land of Israel and Syria: The formal aspect,” (Heb.) Peʿamim 66 (1996), 14. 6 T-S 18 J 3.5 l. 36-37. See scientific edition with Hebrew translation in S.D. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader times (Heb.) (Jerusalem: Yad Yitsḥaḳ Ben-Tsevi, 1980), 303-5. 2 geographic origins, each figure’s tale eccentric but each informed by the norms of its writer’s society.7

From these documents’ micro-historical vignettes, this study attempts to construct a broader picture of the evolving society of post-conquest Latin Syria.

Historical Context

The people who populated the lands of Syria that the Franks conquered belonged to ethno- religious groups with whom their conquerors were largely or entirely unfamiliar. They included

Melkite, Jacobite, Armenian and Maronite Christians; Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims; and Rabbanite and

Qaraʾite Jews.8 At the time of the First Crusade, the size of European Jewish communities paled in comparison to those of Syria, North Africa and Iberia. An estimated 90% of the world’s Jews at this time lived under Islamic rule.9

Under Islam, Jewish Syrians moved to the new capital of jund filasṭīn (Palestine), al-Ramlah.

Substantial Jewish populations also existed in Syrian ports including Ascalon, Haifa, Acre, Tyre,

Beirut, Byblos and Tripoli. Inland, in addition to Ramlah, Jews lived in Jerusalem, Tiberias, villages across the Galilee, Aleppo and smaller cities across central and eastern Syria.10

The First Crusade was far from the first conflict the peoples of the Levant faced in the eleventh century: Syria had witnessed more than a hundred years of frequent Bedouin raids, dynastic conflicts

7 Most writers of the documents deposited in the Genizah were literate and thus not “average” persons in a society where fewer than 1 in 10 men could read; That said, neither were, most from the aristocratic classes such that their letters allow the researcher to consider a more diverse spectrum of their society. See S.D. Goitein’s discussion of “social classes” in Mediterranean Society, 1:75-80. 8 Moshe Gil, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Heb.), 4 vol. (Jerusalem: Tel Aviv UP, 1997), 1: 81-115. 9 Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2009), 7-13. 10 Gil, Palestine, secs. 275-334. 3 between the Shiʿi Fatimids and Sunni Seljuqs and Fatimid suppression of localized revolts in

Mediterranean cities like Tripoli, Tyre and Acre.11

The forces of the First Crusade achieved their first major victory in Syria in 1097 at Antioch.

Then, the Christian armies largely bypassed the major coastal towns of al-Shām, finding their meandering way to Jerusalem, which they took in July of 1099. The massacre of Jews and Muslims that accompanied the fall of the Holy City is well attested in Muslim, Christian and Genizah texts; the latter also demonstrate that the slaughter was far from systematic and that there were therefore many captives for the region’s Jews to ransom from the conquerors. Non-Christians were subsequently banned from living in Crusader Jerusalem although they were allowed to reside in all other Crusader towns.

It took the Crusaders another twenty-five years to conquer the rest of coastal Syria. Medieval chronicles cited in previous studies of the Jews of the Kingdom of Jerusalem record that the populations of some towns of the littoral Levant, like Acre, faced total annihilation. Genizah documents demonstrate that while such massacres may have occurred, the local populations were never eradicated; instead, it will contend that there was essential continuity of the Jewish populations of the Syrian coast under Islamic and Crusader rule. In fact, Arabic-speaking Jews would remain an

11 Moshe Gil called this period one of “almost unceasing warfare” that “undermine[d] [the] internal security” of the local peoples. This is an overstatement, but it is true that the people of al-Shām at the end of the eleventh century were no strangers to military conflict. See Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634-1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), 1. David Bramoullé has argued that the port cities of Fatimid al-Shām were considered thughūr, border regions vulnerable to enemy attack. See David Bramoullé, “Les villes maritimes fatimides en Méditerranée orientale (969-1171),” Histoire Urbaine, 2:9 (2007): 93-116. Bramoullé’s and Gil’s works challenge the assumption that the Crusader conquests precipitated a dramatic upheaval in an otherwise stable al-Shām. These studies, then, may inform the question of how Jews in these littoral cities would have responded to the Crusader invasions 4 integral part of society of the Latin ports for the subsequent nearly two centuries—that is, until the fall of Acre in 1291.

Scope

This study begins in 1097, when bands of Crusaders first crossed into northern Syria. It ends in

1291, when Latin Acre fell to the Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf Khalīl (r. 1290-1293), thereby heralding not only the end of the Latin presence in the Levant (with the exception of a few minor strongholds), but also the cessation of Jewish and non-Jewish life in many of the port cities of Syria. The Mamluks slaughtered many of these cities’ inhabitants and then chose to dismantle their walls to prevent the

Franks from returning to the ports.12

This project is a study of the Jews of the ports of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and, more particularly, the Jewish communities of Tyre and Acre. The reason I focus primarily on these two ports, first and foremost, is source survival: The Genizah documents deployed in this study overwhelmingly involve figures living in or moving through these coastal cities. This makes sense for several reasons: First, Tyre and Acre had the largest Jewish populations in southern Syria. Second, many of these letters involve trade, and Tyre and Acre were the most important ports for such commerce in southern Syria. Third, there were longstanding historical and political ties between the

Jews of the southern Latin ports and those of Fustat/Cairo.

Fortunately for this study, Acre and Tyre stood at the center of economic and political affairs in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Kingdom prioritized taxes on trade over every other form of state

12 The final Mamluk conquests are discussed in Paul Cobb, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014), 234-9. See also, Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005 [1987]), 240-4. 5 revenue, and trade happened at Acre and Tyre. The ports also hosted many representatives of the major political players in the Crusader states: the Military Orders, the Italian City States, the secular clergy, the mendicant orders and the nobles. While Jerusalem was technically the capital of the kingdom for the first half of its existence (1099-1187), the royal court frequently met in Acre. In the thirteenth century, when the Kingdom of Acre’s absentee monarchs actually bothered to appear in the Holy Land, they also went to Acre.

The populations of Acre and Tyre reflected the diversity of the people who inhabited the wider kingdom. There were Muslims, Arabic-speaking Christians (of a half dozen denominations),

European Christians (speaking dozens of vernaculars), Arabic-speaking Jews and European Jews.

These people lived together in mixed neighborhoods, shared the same market spaces, engaged in joint business ventures and frequented the same courts.

The vast majority of the correspondence between Egypt and Syria that was deposited in the

Fustat Genizah was sent via ships.13 This study, then, is as much one of Mediterranean history as it is a history of the Latin Levant. The Mediterranean eased not only the movement of letters, but also the passage of goods and human migrants. One could argue that the Mediterranean is the protagonist of this story. It made possible almost every facet of the world that is the subject of this study. The

Mediterranean facilitated the migration of foreigners from across the Sea to Latin Acre and Tyre; it allowed the Latin ports to emerge as emporia engaged in international trade; and it enabled a trans- regional “state beyond borders,” in which the Jews of the Latin Levant deployed connections to

13 For a discussion of why Genizah peoples preferred moving goods by ship as opposed to by land, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, I: 301-5. 6 rabbinic, qāḍī and Latin courts to protect themselves when traveling abroad. Horden and Purcell’s theory of “connectivity” binding regions under Muslim and Frankish rule helps explain the maintenance of pre- and post-First Crusade societal and institutional norms among the Jews of the

Latin Levant.14 That is, the Mediterranean is omnipresent in this dissertation and a salient factor in explaining many of the problems examined here.

Historiography

This is the first monograph-length study of the Jews of Latin Syria based on the documents of the Cairo Genizah. It therefore must be situated within two broad historiographies: studies of non-

Latin-Christian populations in the Crusader states and Cairo Genizah studies.

Histories of European Jews and the Crusades

This is not a dissertation about European Jews and the Crusades, nor does it engage with much of the historiography on that subject. As Joshua Prawer noted, for European Jews, almost every

Crusade was accompanied by attacks on their communities.15 Many scholars have written excellent works about these massacres.16 The massacres produced martyrologies and inspired liturgical poems and prayers that Jews still recite to this day. The European Jewish story of Crusader violence and destruction has thus become part of Jewish collective memory.

14 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 5. 15 Joshua Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 107. 16 Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Yisrael Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Robert Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (New York: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996); see the third chapter of David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996). This is far from a comprehensive list—I would posit that most works on medieval Jewish history in Europe discuss Crusader violence. 7

In contrast, there are no recorded massacres, or, for that matter, violent persecutions, of the much larger Jewish communities of the Crusader states after the original invasions.17 I would speculate that the most important factor that explains this difference is the fact that in Europe Jews were the other, the non-believers, and therefore the most obvious group to attack if you were an armed soldier or a peasant en route to a holy war. 18 In the Near East, however, the Jews shared that status with

Muslims—the Franks’ primary antagonists—and Eastern Christians, and therefore were not the sole or even primary targets of violence. Later chapters discuss other political and economic trends that made such persecution of non-Latin populations undesirable to the ruling powers. Regardless of why

Latin Syria’s Jews were spared, it is necessary to bracket the historiography on Jews living in Europe and approach this study with fresh eyes from the perspective of the people of the Levant. The only time I will raise the experience of European Jews will be for a comparative analysis that clarifies what is new or old about the policies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Studies of Non Latin Christians in the Crusader States

Over the last two decades, scholars have published a series of compelling monographs and doctoral dissertations examining how Near Eastern people experienced and understood the

17 Prawer, History of the Jews, 106-7. My research has confirmed Prawer’s original claim about the lack of violent state persecution. 18 Mark Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994). Cohen makes the point about Jews being the sole minority repeatedly, especially in chapters 4-5. 8

Crusades.19 These works have mainly drawn on literary and archeological sources.20 Most frequently, these works have been based on chronicles, which provide an excellent window onto the experiences and worldview of military and state elites, but are largely indifferent to other strata of society.

Furthermore, these texts were often written generations after the events they purport to describe, limiting the questions that scholars can ask about the real-time experiences of everyday Syrians. 21

Few studies have attempted to use the Genizah documents to ask questions about the experiences of Syrians outside the state elite. Prawer’s The Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem is one such work. It is also the only monograph dedicated to the history of the Jews in the Crusader

19 Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998); Adrian Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 1999); Carole Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives on the Crusades (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2000); MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World; Cobb, The Race for Paradise; Uri Z. Shachar, “Dialogical Warfare: Figurations of Pious Belligerence among Christian, Muslim and Jewish Authors in the Crusading Near East” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014); and Ann Zimo, "Muslims in the Landscape: A Social Map of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Thirteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2016). 20 Few scholars have written histories of the Crusades based on Near Eastern documentary sources. Two critical works of diplomatic history based on Arabic documents are M. A. Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades, trans. P. M. Holt, rev., ed. and intr. Konrad Hirschler (Leiden: Brill, 2013); and Peter Malcolm Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260-1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalawun with Christian Rulers (Leiden: Brill, 1995). Cairo Genizah documents from the period of the Crusades are synthesized in S. D. Goitein’s Palestinian Jewry and Joshua Prawer used Goitein’s Genizah editions and other Hebrew manuscripts in writing his History of the Jews. Goitein only published a fraction of the Genizah documents he discovered related to the Crusader states in Palestinian Jewry. Mordechai Akiva Friedman also published an article based on Genizah documents from the Crusader period, “Genizah Sources for the Crusader Period and for Maimonides and his Descendants", in: N. Waldman )ed.), Community and Culture: Essays in Jewish Studies in Honor of the Ninetieth Anniversary of Gratz College (Philadelphia: Seth Press, 1987): 51-66. Goitein translated a few select Genizah documents in "Genizah Sources for the Crusader Period: A Survey," in Outremer (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1982), 306-22. 21 See Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 32. As Hillenbrand notes, few of the authors of Arabic narrative sources lived during the period of the events they purport to describe. There are small collections of poems, the Kitāb al-jihād of ʿAlī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī, and contemporary personal reflections in travelogues like Ibn Jubayr’s Riḥlah and the autobiographical Kitāb al-iʿtibār of Usāmah ibn Munqidh. Ibn al-Qalānisī’s Taʾrīkh Damashq, one of the closest chronicles to a contemporary account, was written toward the end of the author’s life, i.e., four to five decades after the events related here. For a discussion of the challenges of using these late sources to attain historical data, see Konrad Hirschler, “The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative,” Crusades 13 (2014): 37-76. However, as B. Z. Kedar has noted, Hirschler does not utilize evidence from the Genizah documents in his analysis of these histories. See B. Z. Kedar, Crusaders and Franks: Studies in the History of the Crusades and the Frankish Levant (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), Addenda, p. 1. 9 states.22 While Prawer offers an indispensable introduction to the subject of Jewish life in the Crusader states, his work relies on Hebrew and Latin sources and only refers to Genizah documents and most other Arabic texts through the lens of secondary literature. Prawer’s corpus leads him to argue that the Jewish populations of pre-Crusader al-Shām were slaughtered or fled from the Frankish invaders and that the Jewish population of the Crusader states therefore emerged only subsequent to the triumph of the Christian conquerors.23 This argument follows a rational deductive analysis based on the limited source materials Prawer had at his disposal, but it is untenable in light of the Genizah texts analyzed in this dissertation. Prawer was therefore unable to ask how the society of Latin Syria evolved since from the source materials at his disposal, since that society seemed to emerge ex nihilo with the Crusader conquerors. His book, written nearly three decades ago, also does not take into account recent studies that have nuanced scholars’ understanding of the relationship between the

Crusader states and their non-Latin Christian residents.

The innovative approaches of two active scholars of non-Latin Christian populations of the

Latin Levant, Ronnie Ellenblum and Christopher MacEvitt, have challenged Prawer’s argument that the Crusader states constituted what he called “European colonialism in the Middle Ages.” MacEvitt, examining the relationship between Latin and Near Eastern Christians, demonstrates that the Franks in the Levant developed a complicated dynamic of intermarriage and “rough tolerance” in their relations with the autochthonous Christian population. This dynamic, as MacEvitt argues,

22Despite his work’s title, Prawer not only analyzes the history of the Jews of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, but also offers a cursory exploration of the presence of Jews in other Crusader states (Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa). 23 As Ronnie Ellenblum writes: “Prawer believed that there was no continuity in the urban population and that the earlier population ceased to exist, but that the new population, which represented a new culture, continued to function in the same physical surroundings as that which it replaced…” See Ronnie Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 77. 10 undermines Prawer’s claim that the European “colonizers” were essentially segregated from the local peoples.24 Ellenblum’s writings further validate this thesis, establishing through archeological study that Frankish settlers resided in rural autochthonous Christian towns (but not in Muslim ones).25 This projects seeks to use evidence from the Genizah to enrich our understanding of how the society of post-conquest Crusader al-Shām developed in the context of interactions among subject populations and between those populations and Latin Christian elites.

Cairo Genizah Studies

This project strives to contribute to academic studies of the documentary Genizah corpus, a field that emerged in Jacob Mann’s exploration in the 1920s and 1930s of The Jews in Egypt and

Palestine. S.D. Goitein’s seminal work, Mediterranean Society, published in the late sixties through mid-eighties, remains the defining work reflecting on the Genizah as a comprehensive whole. The more recent works of Goitein’s students and their students, however, have illuminated of the daily lives and institutions of Near Eastern peoples—and of Jews, more particularly—including trade networks (Goldberg, Ashur, Friedman, Udovitich, Margariti), legal systems (Lieberman, Zinger, El-

Leithy, Krakowski, Udovitch), familial units (Krakowski, Zinger, Perry), intra-Jewish communal politics (Ben Sasson, Bareket, Frenkel, Rustow, Cohen, Yagur) and Jewish/dhimmī relations with the state (Rustow, Cohen, Grayson).

Goitein’s Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times is particularly relevant to this dissertation, offering a compendium of scientific text editions, Hebrew translations and brief

24 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 14. 25 Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, esp. 3-40. 11 summations of a number of Genizah documents related to Palestine in the Islamic and Crusader periods. The majority of these documents, however, relate to massacres, ransoming and the Jewish community of Ayyubid Jerusalem. Mordechai Akiva Friedman has also published a series of articles on Jews and the Crusades that make substantial contributions to our understanding of this period.26

Besides Goitein and Friedman, Genizah studies have generally neglected the Crusader period, and through this omission perpetuated the belief that the Jewish populations of the Crusader states were either nonexistent, small or insignificant. As Moshe Gil wrote in his history of Palestine, at the end of the eleventh century, “Islam could no longer hold Palestine…The outcome was the destruction of the Jewish population in Palestine by the Crusaders.”27 Alternatively, scholars like Gil and Reiner focus on European Jewish immigrants to the Latin East and suggest that the subject of Jews in the

Crusader states should be the purview of Europeanists. This study argues that these assumptions are unwarranted. The potential contribution of Cairo Genizah texts to scholars’ understanding of Jewish life in the Crusader states is invaluable, since the Jews of Latin Syria were an integral part of the world of the Genizah illuminated in the studies mentioned above.

The Sources

Genizah Documents

This dissertation is based first and foremost on Cairo Genizah documents, both published and unpublished, that relate to Jews living in and traveling through the Crusader states. The Genizah is

26 See above, n. 20; and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “The Nagid, the Nasi and the French Rabbis: A Threat to Abraham Maimonides’ Leadership" (Heb.), Ṣion 82 (2016): 193-266. 27 See Moshe Gil, Palestine, 837. Similarly, Genizah historian Mark Cohen wrote that the family of the Maimonides undertook “a very brief stay in inhospitable Crusader-held Palestine…They relocated permanently in the 1160s to Egypt, a land of relative safety.” See Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, xx. 12 not an archive, but neither is it an “anti-archive”—the term Goitein coined for it.28 Genizah documents were not deposited with any consideration for posterity; however, as Tamer el-Leithy has argued, “[the ‘destruction’ or discarding [of texts] were not accidental events, but part of the deliberate and purposeful manner by which documents were handled.” In other words, historians must interrogate the “life-cycle” of every Genizah document to determine to the extent possible how and why it reached the Ben Ezra storage room.29 Since the Genizah is not an archive, this study’s documentary corpus is not “evenly” distributed in terms of chronology, genre or the provenance of texts examined.

The corpus of Genizah documents from Latin Syria is relatively small. Moreover, the evidence clumps during particular periods, and it disappears entirely from others. This is especially true for the period after 1250, the end of the “Classical Genizah period,” when the Genizah corpus in general declines precipitously. I have therefore ventured to make the most of the texts at my disposal with close readings that illuminate their writers’ and recipients’ roles in different facets of their society. I have also deployed other Latin, Arabic and Hebrew documents and literary works when possible both to contextualize the contributions of the Genizah texts and to try to fill in these chronological lacuna.

Where this is not possible, I clearly state so.

Most of the Genizah sources I use are personal letters. These include the correspondence of merchants, religious scholars, supplicants of various types and family members. These categories are not exclusive: mercantile partners were often members of the same family and their letters thus

28 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:7. Goitein coined the term to indicate that the Genizah is the opposite of an archive since its documents were intentionally discarded, while an archive’s texts are intentionally preserved. 29 Tamer El-Leithy, “Living Documents, Dying Archives: Towards a Historical Anthropology of Medieval Arabic Archives,” Al-Qant̩ara 32 (2011), 424-5. 13 concern both business and domestic affairs; important religious leaders were often merchants, providing support for religious institutions in the form of political clout and financing and receiving in turn the honor and legitimacy of prestigious titles from these institutions; and supplicants came from every sector of society.30

The project also utilizes several public letters. These letters come in the form of circular requests for communal contributions to Jewish pledge drives and public condemnations of individual figures to be proscribed communal contact. Public letters can help demarcate the boundaries of communal solidarity between Jews in Latin Syria, Egypt and the Islamic Levant.

Moreover, this study analyzes two other broad categories of Genizah documents: alms lists and legal texts. Lists of donors and recipients to pledge drives for captives and the urban poor demonstrate the functioning of communal institutions in the context of trans-regional solidarity.

They also can illuminate the presence of refugees fleeing conflict regions.31

Finally, this dissertation’s corpus contains legal texts of various types, including marital contracts (ketubbot), court documents and rabbinic responsa. Court documents provide evidence of the functioning of battei din, Jewish diocesan courts that would have required a critical mass of local residents to maintain. They also can be indicative of such trans-regional jurisdictional prerogatives as when Jews from Crusader Tyre faced charges brought by Jews from Ayyubid Cairo.32 Moreover,

30 For evidence of the overlapping roles of Jewish “notables”—religious leaders, merchants, government servants, etc.—see Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 84-98; and Rustow’s analysis of Qaraite courtiers’ role in Jewish communal politics in Heresy and the Politics, 111-200. 31 This approach has the potential for abuse since the geographic origins of refugees cannot be assumed based on their nisbah, an adjectival component of some Arabic names indicating the person’s regional origin, profession or descent; however, nisab were often kept for generations after individuals’ families left their purported region of origin. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, xv-xvi. 32 See T-S 13J7.9. The document discusses Jews from Tyre that were arrested by agents of the Sultan (l. 6). The text is very fragmentary so many details of the affair cannot be determined. 14 ketubbot, which record marital dowries, can inform an analysis of the relative affluence of partners involved and the social conventions of the regions of their nuptials.

There are significant challenges inherent in any Genizah study that attempts to examine a region outside of Egypt and even outside Fustat: these documents only survive because they found their way to the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat. That does not mean that we do not have documents from the residents of al-Shām—we do. What it does mean is that we have, for instance, a fraction of the number of intra-Syrian correspondences that we have of inter-Egyptian-Syrian ones. It also means that there is a noted bias towards letters of merchants involved in traveling temporarily in Syria and living long-term in Egypt, since partnerships often involved residents of the same town (one itinerant, the other sedentary).33 As a result, it is impossible for this study to speculate on the dimensions—for instance—of Shāmī Jews’ involvement in intra-Syrian exchanges, or in Syrian-Sicilian enterprises, or in Syrian-North-African partnerships.

This dissertation analyzes Genizah documents not only for what their words say, but also for what their codicology and paleography tell us about relationships between letter writers and how these texts were being employed. Judith Olszowy-Schlanger and Marina Rustow have demonstrated the importance of engaging with the physical Genizah document for determining factors like dating, cross-cultural influences, provenance and the relative social positions of writer and recipient.34 The

33 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 64-77. Goldberg argues that Genizah business letters should be considered as “instruments” that conveyed information to and from the (usually sedentary) principal to the (usually itinerant) agent; these roles could be fluid with both partners traveling. 34 See Rina Drory, Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2000); and Marina Rustow, “The Diplomatics of Leadership: Administrative Documents in Hebrew Script from the Cairo Genizah” (forthcoming); Olszowy-Schlanger has offered protocols for evaluating Hebrew manuscript texts via the website http://www.hebrewmanuscript.com. 15

Friedberg Genizah Project’s high-resolution digital images make analysis of the material document more accessible to current Genizah researchers than they have been in the past. Chronicles

Latin and European vernacular Crusader chronicles have been the subject of countless studies and provide the basis for most popular, as well as many scholarly, histories of the Crusades. In the

1970s, historians began to problematize the previously assumed veracity of these accounts. These critics argued that the Crusader chronicles should be appreciated as a more or less independent\ literary genre and analyzed for their modes of structure and ideological orientation.35

This study analyzes these texts to help situate Christian and Muslim writers’ ideological investment in specific portrayals of Jews that can inform scholars’ understanding of the evolving nature of Crusader society in al-Shām. In examining Crusader literary texts, this study analyzes what

Hayden White calls the text’s “emplotment,” the “process of exclusion, stress and subordination of sources” that underlie every narrative work.36 Only when we understand a text’s emplotment can we interrogate what Gabrielle Spiegel calls the “social logic of the text,” allowing us to contextualize the historical factors that gave the narrative’s language significance in its own time.37

Few historians of the Jews have attempted to analyze the Crusading chronicles in terms of what they can tell us about the Franks’ perceptions of the Jews. Instead, they have been deployed as a means to document specific massacres—an approach that this study argues is wanting since they

35 E.g., Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974). Smalley writes on 122 that the Crusades had a “stimulating and liberating effect” on the historiography of Christian Europe, precipitating the writing of a new genre of texts that returned human agency to the progress of history. 36 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973), 6. 37 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “History, historicism, and the social logic of the text in the Middle Ages," Speculum 65 no.1 (1990): 59-86. 16 were never intended to convey historical fact;38 alternatively, this study proposes using the Crusader chronicles as a means to understand the social logic that informed chroniclers’ portrayal of the Jews response to conquest.39 I analyze the Arabic chronicles in a similar manner.40 These investigations should clarify my assumptions about the attitudes expressed in the Genizah letters and better situate the contributions of this study to understanding medieval peoples’ perceptions of the Crusaders and their presence in the region.

Travel Literature

The Holy Land attracted Jewish, Christian and Muslim pilgrims from as far as Iberia and

Normandy, and as close as Alexandria. The accounts of their travels are usually more concerned with describing the holy places than they are in noting impressions of the local peoples.

Almost a third of Joshua Prawer’s monograph is concerned with ten “Hebrew Itineraries of the Crusader Period.”41 Only two of these travelers record visits to the Latin ports—sites devoid of

38 E.g., Prawer’s analysis of Albert of Aachen’s text in The Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 38. Prawer here takes the concept that the Jews single-handedly repulsed a Crusader assault on Haifa literally. Also see Prawer’s reading of Ibn Jubayr in “Social Classes in the Crusader States: The ‘Minorities',” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton, Vol 5: The Impact of the Crusade on the Near East, ed. Harry M. Hazard and Norman P. Zacour (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 61; Prawer assumes that because Jubayr says all the Muslims fled Tyre at the period of the Crusader conquest and then returned that is what happen. I read that description contextually as a literary instrument that Ibn Jubayr uses to emphasize the loyalty of the Muslim Tyrians to his own conception of a pan-Islamic cause opposing the Crusaders; there is corroborating evidence for this position in that Ibn Jubayr subsequently damns all Muslims who choose to remain as permanent residents of a non-Muslim state. 39 This work relies only on accounts of chroniclers who in fact visited the Crusader states and especially those, like William of Tyre, who resided there for an extended period of time. See the list of primary source texts in the bibliography under “Latin and European Vernacular Chronicles” below. 40 While Islamic Studies has generally been slow to embrace semiotic readings of Arabic chronicles or other literary sources, there is precedence for such work in the excellent study of Tayeb el-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999) and Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000). 41 Prawer, The Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 169-251. 17

Jewish religious significance42; however, Benjamin of Tudela, an Iberian Jewish traveler, did visit the

Crusader ports. He notes the names of these cities’ local Jewish elites as well as providing (tenuous) numerical estimates of their populations.43 The other Hebrew accounts demonstrate little interest in the local communities, their most salient commentaries on the society of Latin al-Shām concerning sacred places shared among Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as deafening silence on crossing

“borders” between Muslim and Christian-controlled lands.44

Perhaps the keenest observer of Crusader society among travel writers is Ibn Jubayr, a late- twelfth-century Iberian Muslim who came to the Crusader states on his way to Mecca and Medina.

Ibn Jubayr, unlike most of his contemporaries, records interviews with local peoples, so readers are able to assess the mediated perspectives of the people of al-Shām, not just the view of a foreign interloper.45

Legal Sources

A) Sheʾelot and Teshuvot—Rabbinic Responsa

42 Benjamin of Tudela and the anonymous student of Nahmanides are the only two Hebrew chroniclers that report their stays on the Shāmī coast; Other pilgrims likely did travel through Acre, Tyre and/or other Crusader ports. See Prawer, The Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 178. 43 For issues with Benjamin of Tudela’s estimates, see Phillip Lieberman, “Jewish Demography and Migration in Islamic Lands through the 15th Century,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 5, eds. Marina Rustow and Robert Chazan (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, forthcoming). 44 One notable exception to the invisibility of borders in these accounts is the “Itinerary of Shmuel b. Shimshon” from c. 1210 in which the writer notes he secured a letter from the Ayyubid caliph of Damascus and the king of Jerusalem. This passage bears further investigation. See the Hebrew critical edition in the magazine Ozar Tov, ed. A. Berliner and D. Hoffman (Berlin 1876), 35-38 and the translation in Judah Eisenstein and Elkan Nathan Adler, Jewish Travelers in the Middle Ages: 19 Firsthand Accounts (New York: Dover, 1987), 103-111. Prawer mentions this passage in his work but does not ask why these papers may have been required in this specific context or what the papers contained. See Prawer, The Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 217. 45 Ibn Jubayr is anything but an unbiased observer, but he does record his conversations with locals and notes their attitudes, for instance, towards the Crusaders even when those attitudes contradict Ibn Jubayr’s own strident aversion to Christians. 18

This dissertation analyzes many sheʾelot—[legal]questions—sent from Crusader communities to leading religious figures in Fustat, Barcelona, Mosul, Baghdad and Damascus, and the latter’s teshuvot—rulings on the questions raised. Such correspondences between Latin Syria and the Islamic world are extant in collections of responsa of Maimonides and his son Avraham. These questions tell us about power dynamics between local and regional leaders, as well as the mechanisms at their disposal to enforce their rulings.

B) Non-Jewish Legal Sources

The anonymous Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois (c. 1230s-1240s) presents laws in the

Kingdom of Jerusalem applicable to the burgesses.46 It also includes Jews, Muslims and non-Latin

Christians among their number. Section 3.1 provides a close reading of the parts of this code that apply to Jews and other minorities.

References to Islamic law (sharīʿah) and legal practice also appear throughout this dissertation. Much of this discussion surrounds the canonical Pact of ʿUmar (ʿahd ʿUmar) that lays out the privileges and obligations of the dhimmīs, or non-Muslim “protected people.” 47 I also, where pertinent, refer to qāḍī court practices, but most of these references are based on (other scholars’ studies of) documentary, rather than literary sources. Byzantine law and precedent and even the laws

46 For the formation of the class of burgesses and their legal institutions, see Marwan Nader Burgesses and Burgess Law in the Latin Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus (1099-1325) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). For an analysis of the origins of the Cour des Bourgeois see Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980), 263-95. 47 Even more than other prescriptive sources, the Pact of ʿUmar must be treated with exceptional sensitivity, since it is the product of an intellectual exercise of the ʿulāmāʾ--Muslim religious scholars—in the ninth century who ascribed it to the reign of the second Islamic caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 634-644). See the work of Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011); and Mark Cohen, "What was the pact of Umar? A Literary Historical Study," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 9 (1987): 100-57. There is a critical edition of the Old French manuscript in Recueil des historiens des croisades, ed. A. Beugnot (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1843), 2:5- 226. 19 of the Sassanians are raised periodically throughout this study. I identify Byzantine influence when I

(and other scholars) have extrapolated it.

I use these prescriptive texts and others as points of comparison with evidence of legal practice in the Genizah letters. This analysis helps clarify points of continuity and change in relations between Jews and the state in pre- and post-conquest Syria.

Towards a History of Arabic-speaking Jews in the Latin Levant

This dissertation contends that in order to understand the state and society of the Kingdom of

Jerusalem it is necessary to analyze how its conquered people experienced the regime change brought about by the First Crusade. It maintains that Levantine Jews—the subject of this study—offer a privileged site for this type of analysis both because they are the best documented Arabic-speaking community from the period and because they never constituted a ruling class under either Christian or Islamic rule. This fact facilitates a fruitful comparison between their experiences as a subaltern population under both regimes. The project examines how conquest and regime change shaped state and Jewish communal institutions in the Latin Kingdom in three spheres: administration and law, trade and economics, and religion and religious authority.

Part 1 of the dissertation analyzes trends in the demographics of the Jewish communities of

Latin Syria. The first section (1.1) argues that the Seljuq and Bedouin invasions had a profound impact on the Jewish populations of the Palestinian interior and forced many if not most of them to relocate to the Syrian coast. It further contends that while the Crusaders did expel the Jews from Jerusalem, they did not systematically slaughter them.

The second chapter (1.2) turns to what happened to the refugees from the Crusader conquests of the Palestinian interior. It deploys a quantitative analysis of Syrian nisab (in this case, toponyms) in charity lists from the Cairo Genizah to argue that there was not an influx of refugees from Syria to

Egypt—but there is evidence to suggest that this population resettled in the Syrian ports.

The third chapter (1.3) contends that this continuity in the Syrian population meant that most

Jews of Latin Syria were Arabic speakers with close cultural, religious and economic ties to the Jews of the surrounding Muslim-held regions. The chapter demonstrates that these Arabic-speaking Jews remained the majority of the Jewish population of the ports through the fall of Acre in 1291.

Part 2 of the dissertation addresses administration and minority state relations. The first chapter takes a view from above (2.1) and argues that political elites in the Kingdom of

Jerusalem adapted existing Islamicate laws and institutions and created new ones amenable to their Near Eastern subjects’ expectations of governance.

The second chapter (2.2) looks at minority-state relations from below, that is, from the perspective of Jewish intermediaries with the state. It shows how, without a strong king or a state-sanctioned head of their Jews, Jewish leaders maneuvered to form ties with local lords and elites instead of central state institutions.

Part 3 of the dissertation concerns the legal system and commerce. The first chapter (3.1) focuses on the courts and argues that Jewish merchants in Latin Syria utilized a tripartite legal system, turning to Latin state courts in intra-Syrian contexts, rabbinic courts in local and regional disputes and foreign qāḍī courts when traveling abroad. It contends that this system constituted a state beyond

21 borders that protected Syrians’ property and persons in regions under both Islamic and Latin-

Christian rule.

The second chapter (3.2) turns to Syrian Jewish merchants in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-

1187). It argues that while Arabophone merchants before the Crusader conquests treated southern

Syrian ports as a hinterland of Fustat-Cairo, in the decades following the Crusader conquests,

Levantine Jews became agents of their own at the emerging emporia in Latin Tyre and Acre.

The third chapter (3.3) addresses the same subject, but under the Kingdom of Acre (1192-1291).

It argues that by far the most important factor in facilitating the exceptional diversity of the Latin ports’ populations was not religious ideology or the presence of foreign scholars; instead, it was the cities’ expanding role as centers of trans-regional trade in which Jews form Europe took a proactive role.

Part 4 of the dissertation focuses on local and regional institutions of religious leadership. It illustrates how Levantine Jews turned to regional Jewish authorities beyond their states’ borders to fulfill the tasks of central leadership institutions. The first chapter (4.1) argues that the fact that the

Franks refrained from appointing a head of their Jews forced their Jewish subjects to decide between a series of regional leaders in the neighboring Near East. The chapter traces Syrian Jews’ relations with these institutions and argues that ultimately social capital (jāh) and reputation were the most important factors for regional rabbinic authority beyond borders.

The second chapter (4.2) traces the evolution of Acre’s emergence as a center of rabbinic scholarship and administration over the course of the thirteenth century. It shows how European and

Arabophone scholars in Acre became a united front during a battle for communal authority against a

22 peripatetic nasi—Jewish communal leader. Then, it traces the immigration of Catalonian scholars to

Acre and argues that these were amenable to Islamicate Jewish norms and that secured the communal support necessary to extend Acre’s influence across the broader region.

The third and final chapter of this section (4.3) concerns how these trends in regional and trans regional rabbinic leadership played out during Acre’s Maimonidean controversy (1285-1291). It argues that the struggle was, at its most fundamental, a struggle over who should be the regional leader over the Jews of Latin Syria. It further contends that no side could “win” the controversy since to do so would have required recourse to state violence, and the principalities that comprised the

Kingdom of Jerusalem were too divided, ineffective and indifferent to intervene. Instead, the controversy continued until the Mamluks’ soldiers arrived in 1291.

The conclusion argues that Syrian Jews in the Latin Levant remained part of a broader,

Eastern Mediterranean koinē throughout the two hundred years of Frankish rule of the Levant. Their

Islamicate institutions allowed them to navigate the legal, administrative, linguistic and religious pluralism of the medieval Mediterranean world.

A final note: The fact that this dissertation is not about violence and slaughter leaves it open to the criticism that it provides an overly rosy picture of medieval life that masks violence and resentment. Violence, however, has been the subject of the vast majority of monographs written about the Crusades and the Crusader states. Violence and hatred from Muslims, Christians and Jews appear frequently in this dissertation, but is not the subject of this study. The anachronistic concept of premodern, Lockean tolerance (except as “tolerate the continued existence of x group in my land”) does not appear in this dissertation because it was not a value that any of the examined actors

23 embraced. But that does not change the fact that in the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s primary ports, political decentralization and dysfunction, a surging commerce economy and a ruling class of outnumbered settler-elites created the factors necessary for the cosmopolitan society of Jews,

Christians and Muslims who are the subject of this study. This study aims to transcend the narratives of death and destruction that have defined the scholarly discourse on relations between

Crusaders/Franks and Near Eastern people in order to understand what a regime change meant for communities of the living.

Part 1: The Demographics of the Jewish Community of Latin Syria

1.1: “Those Who Remained among the Slaughtered”: Conquest, Massacre and Population Movement in Southern Syria (1071-1099)

By the time the forces of the First Crusade breached the walls of Antioch on 2 June 1098, the people of Syria had already endured decades of war, regime change and forced emigration. Byzantine emperors, Fatimid caliphs, Seljuq sultans and Bedouin warlords had spent the better part of the eleventh century warring over control of greater Syria. These conflicts took place across an ever- shifting, 500-mile-long battle line that stretched from Ascalon in the southwest of Palestine, to

Antioch off the Mediterranean coast of modern Turkey. In the course of these wars, the combatants’ armies slaughtered or dispossessed thousands of Syria’s Muslims, Christians and Jews.1 During the last decades of the eleventh century, the plunder of the region’s land and the subversion of its maritime trade routes reached the point that communication between Syria and the outside world—for which there is copious documentation in the Genizah corpus for the previous century—was almost completely severed.2

1 Conflict in Palestine began with the Jarrahid wars—invasions instigated by Bedouin tribes that continued until the third decade of the eleventh century (983-988; 996-998; 1011-1014; 1024-1029). During the longest period of “peace” at this time (998-1011), the Byzantines invaded Syria (998-999) and the “mad caliph” al-Ḥakim extorted, dispossessed and/or forced- converted Jewish and Christian communities in Syria and throughout his realm. After 1029, there was relative stability in the region until 1068, when an earthquake destroyed Ramla and much of central Palestine. Fatimid military campaigns continued in northern Syria (mainly Aleppo) and Bedouin raids occurred intermittently. 2 The extent of the destruction wreaked by the Seljuq conquests is evident in the dramatic decline in trade-related documents that Moshe Gil discovered in the Genizah. See Moshe Gil, Palestine, 3:96–331. It is telling that, among the dozens of documents that Gil included in his “letters of merchants” section, there is only one letter (doc. 529) that may date from the period after the Seljuq conquests. There are a few trade-related documents from Ascalon during this period (ibid., 3:463–510), but this is unsurprising since Ascalon never rebelled against the Fatimids, nor was it ever cut off from Egypt. See Moshe Yagur, “Between Egypt and Jerusalem; and Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 300–305. 25

Many of Syria’s most prominent merchants and scholars fled the Palestinian interior at this time for what they presumed to be the relative safety of Levantine ports like Tyre, Tripoli and Acre.3

These ports would offer only tenuous refuge. From the onset of the Fatimid-Seljuq wars in 1071, the cities’ leaders—local qāḍīs and discontented generals—rose in rebellion against the Fatimids and provoked harsh reprisals from the Egyptian caliphs.4 Countless Syrians were killed during these struggles.5 Others chose to flee Syria for Egypt and other, safer locales.6 The Seljuq-Fatimid wars continued until 1098, when the Fatimids regained control of most of Palestine and Jerusalem, only to lose the holy city to the Crusaders the following year.7 The Fatimids’ conflicts with their former port cities of Tyre and Tripoli continued for well over a decade after the Crusaders had seized the

Palestinian interior.8

3 For instance, Tyre accepted refugees, including the leader of the Palestinian Academy, Eliyyahu b. Shelomo, his son, Evyatar and fellow members of their institution. Tyre took in not only Evyatar, but also the leading Shāfiʿī scholar of Syria, Abū al-Fatḥ Naṣr b. Ibrāhīm al-Maqdisī al-Nāblusī. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:201, 562 n. 14; Cohen, Jewish Self- Government, 81–84; Gil, “The Scroll of Evyatar,” 82 n. 6; and Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 329. Furthermore, Tyre and Tripoli came to host many of the wealthiest Jewish merchants of the period. Goldberg notes Tripoli’s role as the main port of Damascus for Jewish traders in her Trade and Institutions, 227–9. For ties between the Genizah merchants and the Muslim leaders of Tripoli, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:310–11; 2:366. 4 On the independent politics of the Syrian ports, see Bramoullé, “Les villes maritimes fatimides en Méditerranée orientale (969–1171),” Histoire Urbaine 2 no.19 (2007), 93–116. On the rebellions in Tyre and Tripoli, see Gil, Palestine, secs. 603–11. 5With regard to causalities, see, e.g., ENA 1822 A 44-45, ll. 14-16 in which the writer, Avraham b. Natan Av notes that there were only three Karaite Jews left in all of Tyre, the rest having “perished in the catastrophe” that befell the city. We are not told what this “catastrophe” entailed, but I would suggest it refers to the Fatimid reconquest of Tyre, which had been under the control of the rebel Munīr al-Dawla. Avraham did not mention how many other Tyrians may have died. There had been a large Qaraite community there, as discussed in Rustow, “Rabbanite-Karaite Relations,” 91-142. 6 See, e.g., John Rylands Library L 213, a letter from Ṣedaqa b. Shelomo b. Yufayʿ to his father, Shelomo b. Seʿadya, also from around 1090, in which the former informs the latter that he is trying to leave Tyre and go to Egypt. See also a comparable letter from Avraham b. Natan Av, ENA 1822 A 44-45 discussed above. Finally, see T-S 8 J 4.18 C line 13, edited in S. D. Goitein, "Tyre-Tripoli-'Arqa: Genizah Documents from the Beginning of the Crusader Period," The Jewish Quarterly Review 66 no. 2 (1975): 69-88. Goitein argues convincingly that the court scribe’s use of the word ṭalūaʽ “to travel up” suggests that the husband intended to move to Fustat because one had to go up the Nile to reach the city. 7 See Cobb, The Race for Paradise, 99-103. 8 The population of Tripoli, for instance, rebelled in the summer of 1108 against the ruling family of qāḍīs, the Banū ʿAmmār, and asked the Fatimids to rule in their stead. See Ibn al-Qalānisī, Taʾ rīkh Dimashq 226/51–55, 88–92; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10:310–12, 355– 56, 452; Claude Cahen, “La Chronique abrégée d’al-Aẓīmī,” Journal Asiatique 230 (1938), 361–63. Rule of Tyre also remained disputed between the Fatimids and the atabeg of Damascus, Tughtakin, until the port fell in 26

Historians of the Crusades—and, more particularly, of the Crusader states—have largely or entirely overlooked this historical context. As a result, they have presented the First Crusade as a radical departure from the norms of war and peace with which everyday Syrians would have been familiar. In this context, the First Crusade appears as a campaign of unprecedented brutality that led to the almost complete destruction of Syria’s Muslim and Jewish communities. This claim leads to the marginalization or dismissal of the roles of these communities in the subsequent development of the

Crusader states.9

The pre-Crusader political history of Palestine and its impact on the region’s demographics is critical to understanding the genesis of the Jewish communities of Latin Syria and its continuities and discontinuities with the populations that had lived there under Muslim rule. This chapter therefore asks: How did Syrians experience invasions of their homeland before the First Crusade? In what ways had those invasions impacted the demographics of the Arabophone – and specifically Syrian Jewish – communities?

Since the best documented capture of a city during the Seljuq invasions and the First Crusade was the conquest of Jerusalem, the chapter turns to those events and asks: How does the space of

Jerusalem—its sacrality and its history—shape narratives about the city’s conquests? How do these narratives differ from descriptions of the conquest of mundane spaces? What can this analysis tell us

1124. On Tughtakin’s role in battling the Crusaders while balancing the demands of the Seljuqs and the Fatimids, see Cobb, The Race for Paradise, 112-114. 9 For Joshua Prawer, the Arabophone Jewish population had been essentially destroyed and was ultimately replaced by a Latinate one. As Ronnie Ellenblum writes: “Prawer believed that there was no continuity in the urban population and that the earlier population ceased to exist, but that the new population, which represented a new culture, continued to function in the same physical surroundings as that which it replaced…” Ellenblum, Crusader Castles, 77. 27 about the scale of slaughter and depopulation associated with the Bedouin invasions, the Seljuq conquests, and the First Crusade?

This chapter approaches these questions through close readings of Genizah documents from the period immediately preceding the Crusader conquests—namely, the Bedouin and Seljuq invasions of Palestine. The purpose of this exercise is two-fold—first, to provide the historical context in which the Jews of Syria faced the Crusaders; and, second, to offer a comparative framework that allows us to access whether the Crusader conquest were exceptionally brutal and involved more slaughter than those of the Seljuqs and Bedouin. Then, it turns to the First Crusade and asks: How did this event impact the Jewish populations of Syria? Were these populations systematically slaughtered? If not, what happened to them?

The chapter argues that the Seljuq and Bedouin invasions had a profound impact on the

Jewish populations of the Palestinian interior and forced many if not most of them to relocate to the

Syrian coast. It further contends that while the Crusaders did expel the Jews from Jerusalem, they did not systematically slaughter them. This argument for continuity is critical to understanding the ongoing mercantile, religious and administrative ties between the Jews of Latin Syria and their coreligionists in the Islamic world examined in the subsequent chapters of this dissertation.

Jerusalem and the Palestinian Interior under the Fatimids and Seljuqs

During the period preceding the Seljuq invasions, the largest Jewish populations in the interior of Palestine—or at least those best represented in the Genizah documents—were located in

Ramlah, Tiberias, the region of the Galilee and Golan Heights and, of course, Jerusalem.10

Even at the best of times, however, eleventh-century Jerusalem was an economic and political backwater. The Fatimids administered Palestine from Ramlah.11 Merchants bypassed Jerusalem by way of other cities in the Syrian interior and the Levantine ports of Ascalon, Acre, Tyre and Tripoli.12

Throughout the eleventh century, Genizah letters are replete with complaints about the lack of opportunities for work in Jerusalem and the poverty that plagued the city.13 As one merchant stated succinctly: “The market is weak (al-kharūj ḍaʿīf) in Jerusalem because it is a weak city (balad ḍaʿīf).”14

The economy that did exist was largely dependent on the periodic influx of pilgrims. Jerusalem, however, remained a tertiary market in southern Syria even during periods of heightened pilgrimage.15 This economic situation explains the relatively small permanent population of the city, perhaps 10,000 even during the peaceful years of the 1040s.16

10 See Gil, Palestine, 169-223. Gil includes Hebron on this list, but the city is almost exclusively discussed in the context of pilgrimage to the Cave of the Patriarchs (as Gil himself notes in ibid., 205-206) 11 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 218-219, 244. 12 Goldberg writes that “[p]ilgrimage was not often combined with trade for merchant visitors; and living in Jerusalem involved a choice to abandon a great deal of mercantile activity for the sake of religious conviction.” Ibid., 220-228 [221]. 13 See, e.g., AIU VIII E 4 r ll. 20-24 and T0S 8J19.23 r. ll. 11-12 (cited in ibid. 222). Both involve merchants firmly stating that they could not find work or partners in Jerusalem. As Goldberg quotes the merchant writer in the latter, “in these lands there is no one who will partner up in trading opportunities, attending to the needs of his friends.” Goldberg further notes that the contents of the letters of merchants traveling through Jerusalem rarely deal with trade but rather communal affairs. 14 ENA NS 48.15 ed. in Gil, Palestine, doc. 477 (3: 158), cited in Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 223. 15 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 222-223. 16 Pilgrimage could triple this number. The pilgrim Nāṣir Khusraw estimates that when he visited Jerusalem in 1047 during the month of Ramadan—and at a time of peace— there were twenty-thousand people there. It is clear from his previous paragraph, however that even were this number accurate, it does not reflect the permanent population of the city, but the many pilgrims. 29

Rereading the Conquest of Jerusalem: Audience, Author and Biblical Typology

Before we turn to analyzing the documents, it is important to contextualize the texts documents that will be deployed in this analysis as well as the histories with which it is in dialogue.

Most historical chronicles on the Seljuq and Crusader conquests were written by, for and about aristocratic and ecclesiastical elites who were often indifferent to the lives of non-elites.17 The latter group includes everyday Syrians, the vast majority of the victims of the Seljuq and Crusader conquests of Jerusalem. This population was, of course, much better situated to tell us about the nature of the conquests, slaughters and expulsions they witnessed than chroniclers who were often born hundreds of miles away from the events they purport to describe and who frequently wrote decades (or even centuries) after the events.18

The documents of the Cairo Genizah offer a rejoinder to the chronicler elites’ narratives by speaking to the life and death of everyday Syrians.19 While a number of historians have discussed

17 Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 2003), 100-02, 118-23, 166-70. Robinson argues that the court histories that emerged after the tenth century, including those of Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ibn al- Athīr and their contemporaries, present a small group of ruling elites to an audience of literate subjects whose support the court hoped to gain by demonstrating that state elites were “upholders of God’s law” and “guardians of the good life” (119). 18 See Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 32. Few authors of the Arabic narrative sources lived during the period of the events they purport to describe. There are small collections of poems, the Kitāb al-jihād of ʿAlī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī, and contemporary personal reflections in travelogues like Ibn Jubayr’s Riḥlah and the autobiographical Kitāb al-iʿtibār of Usāmah ibn Munqidh. Ibn al-Qalānisī’s Taʾrīkh Damashq, one of the closest chronicles to a contemporary account, was written toward the end of the author’s life, i.e., four to five decades after the events related here. For a discussion of the challenges of using these late sources to attain historical data, see Konrad Hirschler, “The Jerusalem Conquest,” 37-76. 19 Carole Hillenbrand laments the lack of contemporary sources in her survey of Near Eastern sources on the Crusades. She does not note the potential role of the Genizah. See Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 32. The majority of the authors of the Genizah documents are members of what S. D. Goitein termed “the middle class.” I prefer the term “notables” since middle class connotes the anachronistic belief that such groups constituted the majority when they constituted a relatively small minority of the population of the medieval Mediterranean world. It is not surprising that they are the group most prominently represented among the writers of the Cairo Genizah documents, since the vast majority of the population was not literate. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:148–266. On the problems of the middle class as representative of Islamicate society, see Phillip I. Lieberman, The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt (Palo Alto, CA.: Stanford UP, 2014), 200–203. 30

Genizah documents from the period, they have read them as a means to check particular facts of the chronicle narratives.20 But the chronicles were never intended to convey verifiable facts as modern histories do. Nor do the Genizah documents provide unmediated data to deploy in such fact- checking. Furthermore, ideological concerns and genre structure these documents in the same ways that they do other historical sources.21 Genizah documents speak to the experience of everyday

Syrians in a way that no other corpus from Christian or Muslim communities can.

The Syrian Jews who appear in the Genizah documents were not insulated from their wider

Islamicate society. They spoke the same languages, practiced the same professions and recognized the same social norms as their Muslim and Christian neighbors with whom they also cultivated personal friendships and business partnerships.22 Yes, Jews (and Christians) were distinguished from

Muslims as dhimmīs (“protected persons”).23 In the context of warfare, however, a Muslim merchant’s experience of conquest bore much more in common with that of his Jewish partner than that of a

20 B. Z. Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades 15, ed. B. Z. Kedar (London: Routledge: 2016), 59-65. 21 Confirmation bias based on a literal reading of chronicle accounts has shaped these scholars’ interpretation of the Crusaders’ brutality to the extent that they have dated many documents that concern violence or the ransoming of captives to the Crusades without a firm evidentiary basis. S. D. Goitein and Joshua Prawer both recognized that the Genizah documents suggested that the Crusader conquests were much less traumatic than the chronicles would suggest; yet, they persisted in claiming that there was systematic slaughter and that most Jews were forced to leave Crusader Palestine. Goitein claims that there was a massive exodus from Syria to Egypt in Mediterranean Society, 2:188-89. Moshe Gil claims that at the end of the eleventh century, “Islam could no longer hold Palestine…The outcome was the destruction of the Jewish population in Palestine by the Crusaders.” See Gil, Palestine, 837. 22 Marina Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” in From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif, eds. S. Bhayro and B. M. Outhwaite (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 289 – 317. As Gotiein writes, “in this period, (Jews) mingled freely with their neighbors and, therefore, cannot have been very much different from them.” See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 770-71 and 2: 289-299. 23 The most onerous obligation imposed on dhimmīs in certain contexts was the jizyah or poll-tax. There were also periodic purges of Jewish and/or Christian courtiers, periodic enforcements of sumptuary laws and other acts intended to cultivate (public) humiliation and contempt (dhull wa-al-saghār). On the whole, the Fatimids were relatively lax in enforcing anti- dhimmī legislation in comparison to other pre-modern Islamic states. See S.D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:273-289; 380-394. On the development and enforcement of dhimmī laws, see Levi-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire. 31

Muslim qāḍī, noble or general—people who were better able to escape the siege.24 This is especially true in the context of the Crusader conquests, when Frankish soldiers made little distinction between

Jew and Muslim.25

Genizah documents present their own challenges for historical analysis. In the specific

context of this study, the mode of expression of the letters and petitions from the Seljuq and Crusader

conquests of Jerusalem are typological.26 Jewish typology in these Genizah documents does not focus

on two individual figures (e.g., the typos King David and anti-type Constantine the Great), but a

collective historical experience of the entire Jewish community of Jerusalem at the period when the

First and Second Temples were destroyed (587 BCE and 70 CE, respectively), which prefigured and

thus gave meaning to the trials that Jerusalemite Jews faced during the Seljuq conquests of 1071/1073

and the Crusader conquest of 1099.27 Many of these texts are also apocalyptic: the conquerors’ acts of

24 For instance, one Genizah document tells us that a small number of Jerusalem’s Jews – most likely, its notable elites – “escaped with [Jerusalem’s] governor under an agreement of safe-conduct” ( kharajū maʿa al-wālī kana bi-amān). T-S 20.113, r. ll. 26–28, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 241–48; translated to English in idem, “Contemporary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,” Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952): 162–77, here 171–75. 25 According to the chronicles, the Franks made no distinction between Jews and Muslims and often failed to identify Syrian Christians—the group for whose sake they had ostensibly launched the First Crusade. See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 19-27; and MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 1-3, 21-26. Latin Christian theologians made a clear distinction between Jews and other religions—Jews were to be humbled but tolerated, their state serving as a reminder of the truth of Christianity (Psalms: 59.11), other non-believers were legitimate targets for extermination. Nevertheless, crusaders slaughtered Jews despite ecclesiastical opposition. See Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 26 On biblical typology in Christendom, see Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), 78-138. I outline the unique aspects of Jewish typology below. The two leading scholars who have written extensively about medieval Jewish historiography, Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi and Amos Funkenstein, disagree over the extent to which Jewish writers deployed typlogy—Yerushalmi claims it was the norm, whereas Funkenstein contends it is rare. I find Yerushalmi’s claim more convincing since it is rooted in a plethora of examples across genres; nevertheless, even if Funkenstein is correct about other genres, he recognizes that the typological mode was common to relating contemporary events to the ninth of Av (i.e., the destruction of the Temples), as well as to (the related genre of) apocalyptic literature. See Amos Funskenstein, Perceptions in Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 10-22. 27 The destruction of the First and Second Temples and the exile of Jews from Jerusalem were the defining events for the development of Rabbinic Judaism, late antique and medieval Jewish politics, as well as Jewish collective memory. The phrase “it was like the day of (the destruction of) Jerusalem” is found in Jewish laments (qinot) about persecutions that 32 destruction portend and facilitate the coming messianic redemption, God’s plan for human history.28

In this context, the period of warfare portends the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the

Jerusalem Temple.29

Jewish typology demanded concrete action based on a collective memory of the biblical past and exhort the Jew “zakhor!”—the imperative form of a Hebrew verb that means both “to remember” and “to act upon memory”.30 In the context of the documents considered here, Eastern Mediterranean

Jews were called upon to remember the experiences of both the typos (biblical Jerusalemite community) and antitype (contemporary Jerusalemite community) as their own. In these contexts, the act of remembering also served as a call to action to ransom the captives of the conquests and to provide for Jerusalem’s Jewish refugees.

occurred even outside Jerusalem, including the Almohad expulsion of Jews from Iberia and North Africa and the Mamluk expulsion of Jews from the coast of Syria. For typological readings related to Jerusalem’s destruction, see, e.g., Ibn Ezra’s canonical qinot about the Almohad expulsions of Jews from Iberia and North Africa, Aha yarad ʿal-sefarad and Esh tuqad be-qirbi, as well as the less well-known, untitled composition of about the destruction of Crusader Acre at the hands of the Mamluks edited in Qoveṣ ʿal-yad 3 (1939), 62-64.When I refer to Jewish politics here, I mean the rabbis’ embrace of quietism and deference with regard to their relations with non-Jewish authorities and their explicit rejection of messianic militarism—all of which are derived, according to the Gemara, from the failure of the revolts against Rome. See Reuven Firestone, Jewish Holy War: The Rise and Fall of a Controversial Idea (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 67-76. 28 Funskenstein, Perceptions in Jewish History, 53-55. As Funkenstein notes, even before the destruction of the First Temple, the concept that God punished the Israelites through the great powers of their age was common in Judahite texts. However, so was the belief that these very powers were ignorant of their role in history (and, ultimately, their part in bringing about Israel’s redemption). 29 Ibid., 70-74. Yerushlami, Zakhor, 23. “Destruction and redemption,” as Yerushalmi writes of (what I am calling) Jewish typology, “[are] dialectically linked.” Yerushlami cites the paradigmatic example of this from a Midrash that relates, “[o]n the day the Temple was destroyed the Messiah was born” (Midrash Eicha Rabba 1:51). On the medieval belief that the blood of martyrs itself demands God act to redeem the Jewish people, see Yisrael Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 94-115. 30 E.g., “Remember (zakhor) the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (Exodus 20.8). “Remember” in the context of the fourth commandment here functions as both a call for cognizance of the Sabbath and as a stand-in for the Hebrew verb to “keep” (shomer). “Memory flowed, above all, through two channels: ritual and recital,” Yerushalmi writes. These were the physical reenactments of Jewish history and an affirmation that one took place in those previous events. This is most notable in the yearly rituals around Passover, in which the common biblical refrain, also repeated in the Seder liturgy—or Hagadah—is read out for Jews to “remember that you were slaves in Egypt”. Exodus 13.3; Deuteronomy 5.15; 15.15; 24.18; 24.22. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 10-11. 33

Nebuchadnezzar’s Turkish Vassals: The Seljuq Conquest of Jerusalem

The first event in the eleventh century to trigger such typological references occurred when the Seljuqs’ mercenary general, Aṭsiz b. Uwaq, sacked Jerusalem. Aṭsiz’s tactics sought to solicit immediate plunder, not to provide a stable basis for rule over a settled population.31 As a result, many of Syria’s people fled to what they presumed to be the relative safety of the fortified Levantine ports of

Tyre, Tripoli and Acre. Those who remained in Jerusalem bore the full brunt of the Seljuq assault in

1073, only to see the Fatimids sack their city again a mere fifteen-years later in 1098.32

After pillaging Jerusalem, Aṭsiz b. Uwaq proceeded to take his war to Egypt, the Fatimid heartland. He underestimated the military acumen of the Fatimid vizier, Badr al-Jamālī (d. 487/1094), and was soundly defeated outside Cairo.33 In 1077, in the aftermath of this Seljuq invasion, Shelomo b.

Yosef ha-Kohen, a Jewish refugee from Seljuq Jerusalem, composed a Hebrew poem that survives in the Cairo Genizah. His composition is, first and foremost, an ode that celebrates the victory of the

Fatimid Caliph, al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–487/1036–1094) and his vizier, Badr al-Jamālī, over their Seljuq

31 Their raid was probably an unsanctioned response to the fact that the Seljuqs had not paid them. That is, they sought plunder as an end to itself. Cobb, Race for Paradise, 84-85. The Turkmen were nomadic warriors whom the Seljuqs employed as mercenaries. The Seljuqs gave their tribal leaders, like Aṭsiz, great latitude to conduct their own conquests. Aṭsiz and his men did not need a civilian population to support them—a fact that facilitated the abuses reported about Aṭsiz’s troops in both Palestine and Egypt. On the role of Artsiz and his Turkmen in Palestine, see A. C. S. Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2015), 61-5. 32 The Great Seljuq state collapsed in the 1090s following the 1092 assassinations of the Caliph Malik Shah and his able vizier, Niẓām al-Mulk. The Seljuq realm fell into disarray and dissolved into minor dynasties. The Fatimids only took advantage of this situation in 1098 when they seized Jerusalem. See Cobb, Race for Paradise, 84-103. For the impact on Seljuq Jerusalem, see Yehoshua Frenkel, “The Seljuqs in Palestine (1071-1098)” (Heb.) Cathedra 21 (1981), 69-70. 33 T-S Misc. 36.174. The first edition of this document is in Julius H. Greenstone, “The Turkoman Defeat at Cairo. By Solomon ben Joseph Ha-Kohen: Edited with Introduction and Notes,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 22 (1906): 144-175. A more recent transcription and translation appears in Johannes Den Heijer and Joachim Yeshaya, “Solomon ben Joseph ha-Kohen on a Fāṭimid Victory: A Hebrew Ode to al-Mustanṣir Billāh and Badr al-Jamālī Reconsidered,” Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 25.2, 2013: 155-183. Mark Cohen argues that Shelomo is a refugee from Seljuq Jerusalem in Jewish Self-Government, 108. Heijer and Yeshaya support this conclusion, but date his flight to a slightly later period. This is a plausible theory but impossible to prove or disprove. 34 enemy, Aṭsiz. Yet within this panegyric is embedded a lament that decries the Seljuq’s sack of

Jerusalem and the gruesome tactics deployed there.34 In the poem, the atrocities the Seljuqs committed in the holy city foreshadow and rationalize the Seljuqs’ defeat at God’s/al-

Mustanṣir’s/Badr al-Jamālī’s hand in Egypt.35 At the start of the lament, Shelomo writes:

And (God) remembered what (the Seljuqs) had done to the people of Jerusalem, That they had besieged them two years, twice36 And burned the heaped corn and destroyed the places… And erected an altar to slay upon it the abominations; And [the Seljuqs] stand on the roads scheming to act like Cain, And cut off the ears, and also amputate the nose… And they impoverished the sons of nobles, and starved the delicately bred (Jeremiah 16.2)… And they had no mercy on widows, and pitied not the orphans… What should they do, where should they seek protection, since their (i.e., the Jews) sins are recorded? Their princes led them astray, their chiefs, the wise ones (Isaiah, 3.12; 9.15)... But God was jealous for his sanctuary (miqdash), and scattered (the Jews) overwhelmed (cf., Psalms 53.5)… Then (God) strengthened the enemy, [in order] to destroy them [later] with utter destruction.37

Although this poem ostensibly describes the Seljuq conquest from the perspective of an eyewitness to that destruction, the politics, topography and demographics of the Muslim majority, eleventh- century city are unrecognizable. That is because the poet’s Jerusalem is not the city the Fatimids lost to the Seljuqs. It is the Jerusalem of the Prophet Jeremiah (c. 640 BCE-c. 570 BCE). It is the capital of

Zedekiah, king of Judah (r. 597BCE-586/7 BCE). The Temple of Solomon—God’s sanctuary—still

34 T-S Misc. 36.174 ll. 63-107. 35 “And the Assyrians and the Northerners, He led them for the purpose of striking them.” T-S Misc. 36.174 l. 104, trans. In Heijer and Yeshaya, “Solomon ben Yoseph ha-Kohen,” 180. 36 There is a scholarly debate over whether this line refers to two conquests, one in 1071 and another in 1073, or two sieges of Jerusalem both of which would have taken place in 1073. 37 T-S Misc. 36.174 ll. 62-4; ll. 74-75; l. 81; l. 84; ll.85-86; l. 89; 103-104; trans. in Heijer and Yeshaya, “Solomon ben Yoseph ha- Kohen”, 180-181. 35 stands on Mt. Zion. Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers have just stormed the gates.38 The Babylonians/Seljuqs commit acts of unspeakable brutality: they butcher Jerusalem’s men and torment their orphans and widows. They violate and destroy Judaism’s holiest site. 39 They make sacrifices to their pagan deities.40 The poet states that the conquerors’ brutality was not unique to the holy city but that such slaughter was carried out across the Land of Israel (“they laid waste to the cities”).41

Zedekiah and his court (“princes”) are responsible for the destruction because “they led (the

Israelites) astray”; that is, per the biblical narrative, they had allied Judah with the Babylonian’s

Egyptian enemies rather than trusting in God.42 But, just as Nebuchadnezzar never recognized he was an instrument of God, so too are the Seljuqs unaware of how their acts advance the Divine plan. For

God has “strengthened them” only to see to their “utter destruction”.43 As such, Shelomo ends his composition on a note of messianic promise: “You (i.e., the audience) will achieve the (re)building of the Temple (tizku le-binyan ha-bayit), its sanctuaries and halls.”44

38 The destruction and siege of the city are recorded in Lamentations and interpreted in the works of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and the later prophets. The poet also refers to the Turks as “the Assyrians,” and “the Northerners,” not only an allusion to the empire that destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel, but also to the fact that the Turks (togarmim) are an enemy form the north. See Genesis 10.3; Ezekiel 27.14 and 38.6. Discussed in Heijer and Yeshaya, “Solomon ben Yoseph ha- Kohen”, 156. 39 The word used for sanctuary here, mikdash, is a short-hand (for syllabic aesthetic considerations) for the bet ha-mikdash, namely, the Temple of Jerusalem. 40 This is, again, an indication of the typological portrayal of the enemy, since Arabophone Jews consistently recognized Islam as a monotheistic faith, though an erroneous one. See Sarah Stroumsa, “Jewish Polemics Against Islam and Christianity in the Light of Judaeo‐Arabic Texts,” in Judaeo‐Arabic Studies: Proceedings of the Founding Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Amsterdam, 1997), 248-250. 41 T-S Misc. 36.174 l. 39; trans. in Heijer and Yeshaya, “Solomon ben Yoseph ha-Kohen”, 178. 42 The latter narrative made perfect sense in the context of the politics of ancient Palestine, where Judah’s princes had allied their kingdom with the Babylonians’ Egyptian enemy despite the warnings of the prophets. See Isaiah, 28.14-22; Jeremiah 2.5-37; Ezekiel 29 and, obliquely, Lamentations 5.6. 43 T-S Misc. 36.174 l. 103, trans. in Heijer and Yeshaya, “Solomon ben Yoseph ha-Kohen”, 180. 44 Idem, l. 144. My translation is more literal than Heijer’s and Yeshaya’s. 36

There is nothing particularly “Seljuq” about Shelomo’s rendering of the Seljuq conquest. Had this lament existed independent of the panegyric in which it is embedded and which indisputably identifies the Seljuqs as the invaders, some scholar would have undoubtedly ascribed the lament to the period of the Crusades.45 That is because the poem would have fit perfectly with the prevailing lachrymose narrative of the First Crusade and the unprecedented destruction it ostensibly wrought in

Palestine. In raising the ways typology dictates rhetoric here with regard to the Seljuq conquests, I am not arguing that the Seljuqs did not slaughter people in Jerusalem. They undoubtedly did.46 My point is that the basis for a medieval instantiation of ethnic cleansing here is not real-time events in the eleventh century CE; it is a biblical narrative.

Between Scylla, Charybdis and Leviathan: Seljuqs, Crusaders and Bedouin in Syria (1095-1099)

Jerusalem did not fully recover from the Seljuq conquests, in part because war continued to ravage the Palestinian interior. As S. D. Goitein writes, “As far as the settlement of Jews (in Jerusalem) is concerned, the Crusaders destroyed an (already) ruined city.”47 By 1098, pilgrims, the lifeblood of the city’s economy, would no longer risk the trip to the holy city.48 Since there is no indication the

Seljuqs singled out any one religious community for persecution, we should assume that the city’s

45 Many undated Genizah documents have been ascribed to the period of the Crusades simply because they relate to warfare, ransoming, refugees and/or massacres. See, e.g., ENA NS 1.62, a document dealing with a Jerusalemite refugee that Gil ascribes to the Crusader-period even though there is no indication in the document that they are the captors. Or ENA 2808, f. 15a, ed. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 310-311a, a document about a family that takes in a young refugee girl. He similarly dates a document concerning a ransoming for captives at Antioch, Halper 466, to the period of the Crusades, even though it could just as well be from the Seljuq sack of the city in 1085. 46 On the overwhelming consensus concerning the Seljuqs’ massacre at Jerusalem, see above, n. 27. 47 “Heḥrivu ha-ṣilbanim ʿir ḥurbah” in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 229. For reasons I cannot explain, Goitein recognized this reality but still insisted that the chronicle accounts of the scale of the Jerusalem massacre were largely accurate. 48 See Bodl. MS. Heb. 2874 b 11.7, ll. 24-29, discussed below, 38-39. Since pilgrims accounted for a significant portion of the population, we can assume this had a substantial impact on the number of people living in the city. 37

Christian and Muslim communities suffered (and fled) in relatively equal proportions to the Jews.49

When the Crusaders finally reached Jerusalem, the city’s population must have been a fraction of what it had been in the mid-eleventh century. Based on the almost complete silence of the Genizah corpus concerning Jerusalem’s Jews during the period of Seljuq rule, it is hard to imagine that more than a few hundred Jews—many or most of whom would have been Qaraʾites—remained among its residents.50

The diminutive size of its population notwithstanding, Jerusalem was Judaism’s (and

Christianity’s) holiest city. Therefore, it remained as potent a literary trope as ever for shaping the compositions of these communities’ writers. This is evident in the draft of a letter written around 1100 by a maghribī traveler, that is, a man from “the west”—i.e., Iberia, Sicily or North Africa.51 The traveler had spent five years in Egypt attempting to reach Jerusalem, during which time he had been largely out of touch with his family, or at least with the unnamed brother to whom he addresses the draft.52

The letter is structured around a series of disasters that occurred during the writer’s travels between 1095 and 1100. Recollections of these events are deployed to justify his ongoing failure to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem—the meritorious act for which he had left his home—as well as his decision to remain in Egypt for so many years and neglect his family.53 The first crisis that prevented

49 Gat, “Jerusalem’s Jews,” 239-245. 50 I have not found any documents from Jerusalem’s Jews that dates to after 1073. For other documents from Syria at this period see Gil, Palestine, vol. 3. On the ongoing settlement of Qaraʾites in Jerusalem at this period see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5: 358-391; and Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 27-33. 51 Bodl. MS Heb. (2874) b. 11.7 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 251-253. I suggest the letter is a draft because A) it survives in Fustat; and B) there is no address on the v. (the paper was a repurposed Fatimid decree whose text survives on the v. ). 52 This is the most plausible explanation for why he would feel obligated to recount five years of (tragic) developments in a single letter. 53 Much of Genizah correspondence is structured around complaints about the recipients’ failure to be in touch and/or longing to be reunited with a partner or family member after an extended period of time. In the context of trade, 38 the author from making pilgrimage to Jerusalem occurred circa 1095, during the last years of the

Seljuq occupation of Palestine:

Many troops appeared in the Levant (arḍ al-Shām) and “those who went and those who came had no peace [from the enemy] (Zachariah 8:10)”. (Things were) such that a man came to us from Syria who had survived (salamat rūḥuhu)— one man out of an entire group (of pilgrims?)— He explained to us that almost no one had escaped because of the great number (of troops) and because (the troops) are present on the roads stopped outside every city. There was further(?) the journey through the desert among [the Bedouin?54] and whoever escaped from the one, fell into the hands of the other.55

This passage conveys the devastation and chaos that enveloped Palestine in the years preceding the

Crusader conquests. Both the Seljuq invasions and the ongoing predations of the Bedouin had a dire impact on communication between Egypt and Syria and the ability of the people of the latter to maintain their livelihoods. The extent of the slaughter described here is likely overstated—that is, while this one group of pilgrims was massacred, it is unlikely that the entire region was completely paralyzed, much less that soldiers or raiders lay at the gates of every city.

But conflict was inescapable. Even in Egypt, the writer found not peace but an intra-Fatimid civil war between the caliphal claimants al-Mustaʿlī (r. 1094-1101) and his older brother, Nizār. This conflict had started in 1095. It ended that same year following the successful siege of Alexandria,

Nizār’s base of operations, where our writer also resided at that time.56 The writer recounts the events surrounding the siege: “Mutiny spread (among the Fatimid soldiers)… reaching Alexandria, so that we

“receiving letters seems to have been a primary indicator… that two men had a functioning association (suḥbah)” (Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 85-7). This was true also for families, cf. T-S 18J2.10. in the missing text. See Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 251البدو Bodl. MS Heb. 2874 b. 11.7, ll. 16. Goitein reads 54 55 Bodl. MS Heb. 2874 b. 11.7, ll. 12-18. 56 The real power behind the struggle was the vizier al-Afḍal, who supported the younger son—al-Mustaʿlī—of the previous caliph al-Mustanṣir, rather than his older brother, Nizār. Nizār’s revolt had some initial success, but ultimately foundered after a failed assault on Cairo. 39 were besieged at times and the city was destroyed (khuriba al-balad)…57 The first part of the author’s statement reflects what we know about the civil war from other sources. The characterization of

Nizār’s supporters as mutineers also tells us that the writer was a supporter of al-Mustaʿlī, at least after his victory. The second part of the sentence is more problematic. While the siege of Alexandria was undoubtedly unpleasant, there is no evidence to suggest the city was “destroyed” (khuriba) in

1095. To the contrary, while it may have been temporarily occupied, the Genizah documents reflect almost no effect on trade and communal affairs.58 Hyperbole is deployed here to make this tale amenable to the writer’s broader claims of his exceptional suffering.

The author’s penchant for exaggeration is expressed again when he describes events surrounding the Fatimids’ and Crusaders’ sack of the holy city. These conquests are deployed to explain his (second and third) failed attempt at pilgrimage:

When God—by (the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustaʿlī’s) hand—conquered Jerusalem the Holy, the situation (i.e., Fatimid rule) lasted only a short time during which it was not possible to travel to (Jerusalem). Then the Franks appeared and killed everyone—both Jews (yisraʾel) and Muslims (yishmaʿel). They captured a small group of people that remained among the slaughtered (qawm yasīr baqīʾyyu min al-maqt[ū]līn). Among (the captives) are those who have now been redeemed, while others are still in captivity in distant lands.59

57 Bodl. MS Heb. (2874) b. 11.7, ll. 12-18. 58 According to most sources, al-Afḍal did compel Nizar’s supporters to surrender after an extended siege. There does not seem to have been an extended battle in the city, however, and there certainly is no suggestion that the population or the city’s infrastructure were destroyed. Miriam Frenkel makes no reference to the siege having a substantial impact on the Jewish community of the period. She has discovered and edited a number of documents from between 1094-1110 including T-S 16.27, T-S 20.121, T-S 20.177, T-S 24.21, T-S 10J6.5 48, T-S Misc 27.19, T-S NS J36 and T-S NS J334. Miriam Frenkel, "The Compassionate and Benevolent: The Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages," (Heb.) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2006); Mark Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 213-219; Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 339-340. Gil does note that there was a plague at this time that left many dead, see Gil, Palestine, Sec. 942. 59 Bodl. MS. Heb. 2874 b 11.7, ll. 24-29. 40

Note that, on the one hand, the text portrays God directly intervening to deliver Jerusalem to the

Fatimids. On the other hand, only men were involved in the affairs of the Seljuqs and Bedouin who had slaughtered travelers across Syria. As a result, the Franks’ subsequent action of massacring all of

Jerusalem’s Jews (except “those who remained among the slaughtered”) is an affront not only to the people of Jerusalem, but to God as well. The writer subsequently moves on from the captives and spends a few lines telling us about his hopes that the Fatimids will retake the holy city so that he can make his pilgrimage.60 He ends the surviving part of the letter by summarizing his travels as a half decade of plague, suffering and other ailments.61

Several scholars have read the passage of the letter discussed above concerning the Crusader conquest in isolation. As such, it seems to affirm Latin chroniclers’ claims that a “wholesale slaughter” of Jerusalem’s Jews occurred.62 This is, indeed, one of our writer’s claims. In the larger portion of the letter dedicated to the depredations of the Seljuqs, Nizār’s rebels and the Bedouins, he also claims that all travelers on Syria’s roads have been killed and that the city of Alexandria had been destroyed.

Although there is undoubtedly more than a grain of truth in all these narratives, there is also no shortage of strategic embellishment employed to justify the writer’s failure to return to (or even stay in touch with) his family and to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The direct intervention of God in the history of the holy city demonstrates how Jerusalem structures even non-literary narratives. It also

60 Ibid., ll. 36-38. 61 Ibid,. margin, ll. 1-4. 62 Goitein, “Contemporary Letters,” 168-170; here 170. Goitein did not read this passage in isolation but still took it at face value. See also, Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 31-32; Kedar, “The Jerusalem Conquests,” 60-61; Gil, Palestine, sec.946.; Elchanan Reiner, “Aliyah ve-Aliyah la-regel, 1099-1517,” (Heb.) (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1988), 28-29. 41 provides support for the author’s claim to helplessness in the face of variables entirely beyond his control.

What we can learn from this letter, then, is that many people suffered during the last half- decade of the eleventh century due to wars between the Seljuqs, Fatimids, Bedouin and Crusaders.

We cannot determine the scale of slaughter in Alexandria, Jerusalem or anywhere else in greater

Syria. If we were forced to rely on this letter as our only evidence of the Jerusalem conquest, we would be at a loss to explain what happened to the city’s Jews. But two letters relating to the ransoming of the Jews of Jerusalem—one that the Jews community of Fustat sent to the Jews of Ascalon and the other that the Qaraʾite community of Ascalon sent to both the Rabbanite and Qaraʾite Jews of

Fustat—have survived in the Genizah.63 Both letters date to late 1099 or early 1100.64 Both speak to transregional communal campaigns (pesiqot, magbiyot) to redeem captives from Crusader-held

Jerusalem.

“The Enemies of God and Haters of His People”: The First Crusade and the Conquest of Jerusalem

The Franks, as noted above, did not capture the largest Syrian ports until years after the fall of

Jerusalem in 1099. Acre fell in 1104, Tripoli in 1109 and Tyre in 1124. Ascalon, the port most easily reinforced from Egypt, did not surrender until 1153.65 All these ports hosted substantial Jewish communities and, as a result, were well-suited to organizing the ransoming of captives from the

63 Rabbanite Letter: T-S AS 146.3 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 255-256; Qaraʾite Letter: T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 241–48; trans. in idem., “Contemporary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,” Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952), 171–75. 64 Goitein convincingly dates the first letter to the end of the Hebrew month of Av, or the beginning of the following month of Elul, that is August or September of 1099. Jerusalem had fallen a month or so before, on 15 July. The second letter is from almost a year later, after Passover of 1100, which is to say late spring or early summer. See Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 254- 255; 233. 65 Cobb, The Race for Paradise, 104-130. 42

Palestinian interior.66 ʿAsaqlān was the closest city to both Cairo and Jerusalem still in Muslim hands.67 The port thus became the center of Egyptian Jewish efforts to ransom Palestine’s Jews. Acre also played a role in this process.68 If the Genizah of a Damascene synagogue had survived, we would undoubtedly have documents that illustrate how the Jewish communities of the Damascene ports of

Tyre and Tripoli organized similar ventures with the backing of their coreligionists in Damascus and

Aleppo.69 While no responses or appeals from/to these congregations survive, we do have documents from Jerusalemite refugees who resettled in these communities and subsequently wrote to relatives in Fustat.70 We also know Damascus played a prominent role in redeeming captives in Palestine in other contexts, including the rescue of Jewish captives whom the Franks seized at Bilbays in Egypt in

1168.71

66 On the prominent role of these ports and their Jewish communities in local and regional politics see Bramoullé, “Les villes maritimes fatimides,” 93–116. On the Jewish communities in the ports before the First Crusade see Gil, Palestine, Secs. 609-611. On the Jewish communities in the ports after the First Crusade see S. D. Goitein, "Tyre, Tripoli,” 79-83. On Ascalon’s role as a hub between Cairo and the cities of Palestine see Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 300–305. 67 On Ascalon’s role as a hub between Cairo and the cities of Palestine, see above n. 2. 68 Jews ransomed a scroll of the Book of Isaiah with a Latin inscription at Acre. It only survives in the Genizah because it happened to make its way to Fustat. Its existence demonstrates that the Palestinian port played an otherwise unrecognized role in redeeming captives. See B. Z. Kedar, “A Commentary on the Book of Isaiah Ransomed by the Crusaders,” (Heb.), in Jerusalem in the Middle Ages, ed. B.Z. Kedar and Z. Baras (Jerusalem, 1979): 107-112. 69 As Goldberg notes, while Aleppo and Damascus hosted large and wealthy Jewish communities, they are relatively underrepresented in the Genizah because they constituted their own economic zone—that is, unlike Palestine, they were not a hinterland of Fustat. Damascus’s primary ports were Tripoli and Tyre. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 215-220, 227-229. 70 For Tripoli, see Westminster College, Cambridge, England, Frag. Cairens., f.- 35; and S. D. Goitein, "Tyre-Tripoli-'Arqa.” For Tyre, see Cambridge University Library, T-S NS 264.15, ed. in Gil, Palestine, 3: 443-444, doc. 576. 71 E.g., T-S -18J2.10, l. 14, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 265-67. In the letter, Ṣadoq b. Namer he-ḥaver writes from Latin Palestine about how the Jewish Damascus, Tyre and Acre had exerted themselves on behalf of foreign (Jews), clearly, in the context, Egyptian captives. This letter likely concerns captives from the Crusader’s sack of the Egyptian city of Bilbays in 1168. 43

The public and private letters relating to the solicitation of funds to support the ransoming of captives are structured according to the demands of the genre.72 The redemption of captives in the medieval Mediterranean world was the responsibility of individual religious communities.73 Medieval

Jewish scholars, including Maimonides, maintained that donating to the redemption of Jewish captives (pidyon shvuyim) was one of the most important legal obligations (miṣvot) a Jew could fulfill.74 Another leading rabbinic figure declared neglecting captives tantamount to manslaughter.75

Genizah letters relating to redeeming captives emphasize the religious merit of donating to these drives and stress the suffering of captives to elicit sympathy for the potential beneficiaries of those donations, thus encouraging future contributions.76 Many of these letters were intended to be performed publicly as akhrazot, sermons in which Jewish leaders exhorted all members of their communities to make donations to the campaigns.77

With the specificities of the genre in mind, we can turn to the first letter, a draft of a document from the Rabbanite leaders of Fustat/Cairo to the Rabbanite leaders of Ascalon.78 The final

72 For an excellent overview of ransoming practices and the ideological motivations behind them see Miriam Frenkel, “‘Proclaiming Liberty to Captives and Freedom to Prisoners:’ The Ransoming of Captives by Medieval Jewish Communities in Islamic Countries,” Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum: Ein interreligiöser Vergleich 19 no. 21 (2015): 83-98. 73 On the context of the medieval Mediterranean ransoming practices in the specific context of the Crusades, see Yvonne Friedman, Encounter between Empires: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), esp. 1-13. 74 Maimonides famously wrote that “there is no greater commandment (miṣvah) than redeeming captives.” Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Matanot ʿAniyim 8:10-11. 75 There is a Talmudic verse that describes captivity worse than death or starvation. In the quoted chapter, the amora Rabbi Yoḥanan bar Nafḥa first cites scripture, “More fortunate were the victims of the sword than the victims of famine” (Lamentations 4:9). He then states: “[a]nd captivity (is worse than all of them), as it includes all of them (i.e., starvation and death).” Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 8b. For the interpretation that to neglect redeeming captives was thus tantamount to murder see R. Yaʿakov b. Asher Arabaʿa Ṭorim, Yoreh Deah, 252:3. 76 See Mark Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005), 109-129. 77 See Frenkel, “Proclaiming Liberty,” 89-91. 78 I suspect the letter is a draft based on the fact that there are words crossed out (l. 2, l. 8) and new ones written above the line (also, l. 17) and the marked indifference to line spacing or other aesthetics. Moreover, the document survives in the Genizah, which, in and of itself, suggests it was never sent to Ascalon. 44 composition was likely intended for public performance. It opens with a flowery Hebrew prologue and a brief Arabic one. The letter then continues in Arabic and Hebrew (italicized in English):

When the (news) reached us concerning the great misfortune (razīʾah) and the general suffering (al-miḥnah al-ʿumūm[ī]ah) that happened to our fellow Jews living in the holy cit[y] –may God establish it forever, selah! (Psalm 48.9), to the holy Torah scrolls, and to the captives (who suffered) from all different afflictions at the hand of the enemies of God and the haters of his people (Numbers 10:35), we gathered before his excellency, our lord…(the leader of the Jews of Egypt) Mevorakh…and we found him, his garments torn, sitting on the ground and crying over this (disaster). And he addressed us, cajoling us and rousing us to donate (money) that would be used in ransoming the Torah scrolls and the people of God who have been given over to the captivity of the people of the wicked kingdom—may God destroy and exterminate it…we gathered 123 dinars to save the Torah scrolls and for the ransoming of the remnant of Israel, refugees of the sword (Ezekiel 6:8) 79…We rushed these lines to you in great haste, for we are afraid lest our sins—God forbid—and our iniquities be visited upon us…Our kidneys are inflamed at the burning of the house of Our God, the house of Our Holy One, the house of Our Glory (sherifat beit Eloheinu, beit Kodsheinu, beit Tifereteinu)…80

To review: The Jews of Fustat had heard about the fall of Jerusalem. They learned how the Franks had killed many people in the city, seized holy texts and captured the survivors whom they now intended to ransom. The head of the Jews of Egypt, Mevorakh b. Seʿadya, then undertook the public enactment of the prescribed Jewish rituals of mourning to rouse the Jews of his communities to “donate funds for

79 This first phrase also appears independently in Jeremiah 31.6; Micah 2.12; Zephaniah 3.13 80 T-S A-S 146.3 ll. 7-16; 19-22. Goitein translates razīʾah as slaughter, but while the word can mean “misfortune” or “(great) loss,” I have not found any dictionary that suggests it could mean “slaughter” or “massacre”. In the first context, the piyyutist Ḥalfon writes the Head of the Jews and another member of the Jewish elite in December, 1137 and uses the term to refer to two discrete personal tradgedies that do not involve death, much less a massacre. The second is a letter from Perahya b. Joseph yiju, also likely mid-twelfth century, in which Peraḥya refers to al-raziʿah al-ʿaẓamī[ah], the great misfortune, where it refers to the death of one prominent individual. In the Hebrew translation, Goitein uses the even more problematic term shoʾah, which means “utter destruction,” as in that of a burnt offering at the (biblical) Temples. The term had eschatological implications in Biblical and medieval Hebrew; but it is also the Hebrew word for the Nazi Genocide, i.e., the Holocaust. True, in modern Hebrew the word is often translated as “calamity,” but Goitein’s English translation reveals his meaning in the Hebrew: He believes this is a systematic massacre. 45 ransoming Torah scrolls and the people of God.”81 In response, the Jews of Fustat donated the substantial sum of 123 dinars to this campaign—the monthly salary of over sixty average people.82

There is no explicit reference here to a systematic slaughter.83 Nevertheless, according to

Goitein, Prawer, Kedar and other historians, this passage affirms the story of certain chroniclers that the Crusaders burnt the chief Jewish synagogue of Jerusalem (perhaps with hundreds of Jews inside).84 A close reading reveals this was not the writer’s intent. On the one hand, neither “house of

Our Holy One” (beit Kodsheinu) nor “house of Our Glory” (beit Tifereteinu) is used in a single digitized

Genizah document to describe a mundane synagogue.85 On the other hand, they are used in Genizah documents, medieval rabbinic literature and the Hebrew Bible to indicate a very specific religious site: the Temple in Jerusalem.86 The passage here bears particularly close resemblance to an excerpt from Isaiah describing the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of The Temple:

81 Ibid., ll. 11-13 82 For the average salary, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5: 190. 83 See above, n. 80. 84 Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 23; Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre,” 63. Goitein expressed doubt about the historicity of the burning in the 50s in his article, “Contemporary Sources,” 166-167. When he discovered the letter above, he retracted this position in his later work. See idem., Palestinian Jewry, 238, 250 and Mediterranean Society, 5:373. 85 I make this claim based on searches of the databases of the PGP (https://Genizah.princeton.edu/pgp/index.php) and Friedberg Genizah Project (https://fgp.Genizah.org/). 86 Beit Kodsheinu, beit Tifereteinu: In piyyutim: ENA 2893.1 - ENA 2893.4 2, l. 11-12. ENA 2917.8MS heb. e.69/37 - MS heb. e.69/40, MS heb. e.69/52 - MS heb. e.69/55; in Rabbinic commentary (Eicha Rabba, i.e., Midrash on Lamentations): T-SAS 92.137; beit Tifereteinu is also used separately in reference to the Temple in a piyyut for the musaf service, CUL: T-S AS 110.269 l. 18, and the final line of another piyyut, Vienna: H 124. Beit Eloheinu (house of Our God), the other term used in letter, is used in one Genizah document to the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat. See T-S 24.49 r. l. 23, ed. in Gil, Palestine, 3: 353-359 (doc. 587); in this context, beit Eloheinu appears to refer to the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat. It is also used in countless places in the Bible and Rabbinic commentaries to refer to The Temple. Beit Eloheinu in the Hebrew Bible as a name for The (First and Second) Temple: Psalms 135:2, Psalms 122:9, Nehemiah 10 (9X); Ezra 8:33; 9:9. See also the over 115 references in early rabbinic literature on the Bar Ilan Responsa Project (https://www.responsa.co.il/). The vast majority of these references refer to The Temple in Jerusalem—including many references to the burning (sherifah) and destruction (ḥorban) of “the house of Our God.” 46

Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. The house of Our Holy One and Our Glory (beit Kodsheinu ve-Tifeteteinu), where our fathers praised You, has been burned with fire (haya le-sherifat eish) (Isaiah 64.9-10).

Isaiah uses the same idiosyncratic vocabulary for both the temple and its destruction here as our writer does. Read in this context, the author of the Genizah letter is not attempting to claim that anyone burned Jerusalem’s main synagogue—much less one full of trapped Jews—in 1099. He is instead deploying a typological device that elides the Crusaders violation of Jerusalem with the

Roman and Babylonian (both referred to as the “wicked kingdom” in rabbinic texts) sacks of the city and the latter’s destruction of Judaism’s holiest site.87

The letter also does not suggest the city of Jerusalem was destroyed.88 Neither does the phrase

“the ransoming of the remnant of Israel, refugees of the sword” imply that most of its Jews were killed. “Remnant of Israel” (sheʿerit yisraʾel) is a common expression in the prophets and rabbinic literature that refers to the entire Jewish diaspora —who were a remnant of the population of the

87 “The wicked kingdom,” moreover, is a standard reference to the empire of Edom and the people of Esau; that is, the genealogy of the Babylonians (destroyers of the first temple) in the Torah and Prophets and the Romans/Byzantines (destroyers of the second temple) in early rabbinic literature. The fear expressed at the end of the poem that the sins of the Jews could worsen their people’s suffering is also redolent of Shelomo’s verse from the Seljuq period, alluding to the criticisms of Jewish elites from Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations discussed above. Yisrael Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006), 20-30; 198-118. 88 For instance, the prayer for God to preserve Jerusalem (“may God establish/build it forever”) does not suggest that as “restore it,” but it is quite clear from the context of theיכונניה Jerusalem was destroyed. Goitein translates the Hebrew psalm that Jerusalem and the Temple still stand, but God will make it permanent. That is, the reference is to a Jerusalem redeemed by God forever—not one restored in temporal time. See also the presentation of the text in Peter’s The First Crusade, 272. Peters uses Goitein’s problematic translation of “restore” Jerusalem as his heading to the whole section on Genizah letters and does not supply the Biblical context, implying, for the readers of his sourcebook, that the restoration and destruction are earthly affairs. This prayer is not even about the rebuilding of the earthly, Fatimid Jerusalem; it is an appeal for the messianic rebirth of the city and the rebuilding of The Temple, the building to which this phrase is expressly connected in the psalm from which it was taken.88 The writer’s choice of this phrase echoes the Seljuq-era poet Shelomo’s decision to end his poem with the promise of the rebuilding of “the house (of God)” (binyan ha-bayit). The following line of the psalm (48.10) is “We have thought on Thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of Thy temple.” 47

Kingdom of Judah following the Babylonian conquest.89 Similarly, “refugees of the sword” (pliṭei ḥerev) is used (less frequently) in rabbinic literature to refer to generic Jews in the diaspora. It is not employed in any text I have found to refer to refugees in particular.90 That is, regardless, of the number or proportion of Jews killed in Jerusalem—indeed, even if none at all had been slain—the captives would still be of “the remnant of Israel, refugees of the sword.”

It bears restating that the captives described here were the product of an invasion during which a massacre had undoubtedly occurred. But the language used to convey their experience is typological; that is, the past massacres once again prefigure the present one. The terminology does not speak to the scale of a slaughter in 1099. Nor, if read in its proper context, does it make any claims to do so.

That said, what can this letter tell us about the people of Jerusalem’s lived experience of conquest in 1099 and how their coreligionists responded to their plight? Not as much as we might like. We learn that there were survivors of the siege. We are reminded that Jerusalem is an exceptional city and that assaults on her people were described in typological terms linking the current period of suffering to textual accounts of earlier traumas in the city’s history. Yet, we are left to wonder: What was the scale of the ransoming effort? Had most of the city’s Jews survived or was

123 dinars all that was required to ransom the lucky few?

89 The trope first emerges in the Torah (see above n. 79 and is more fully developed in the rabbinic literature: Mishnah Masechet Brachot 4.4; Talmud Bavli, Bava Maṣiah, 9.2; ibid. Masechet Brachot, 4.2 etc. The phrase permeates rabbinic literature, appearing a dozen times in the Talmud and thirty-five times in the responsa of the medieval rabbinic works of the Rishonim (1000-1400). See the Bar Ilan Responsa project for more examples (https://www.responsa.co.il/) 90 “Yet will I leave a remnant, in that you shall have some that escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries.” Ezekiel 6:8; For an example of this being used for generic Jews, see the Oṣer Midrashim (Eisenstein) Ḥanukkah, 185. 48

Fortunately, a much longer letter that the Qaraʾite Jews of Ascalon sent to the Qaraʾites and

Rabbanites of Fustat/Cairo in the early summer of 1100 survives in the Genizah.91 The fact that this document survives in the Rabbanite Genizah suggests that the ransoming of the Qaraʾite captives was a wider communal effort for which there was established precedent.92 And the necessity was likely there: while Syrian Rabbanite scholars and the entire institution of the Rabbanite Academy of

Palestine fled Jerusalem for the Levantine ports, Qaraʾite leaders remained. 93 In other words, despite being a minority within the Jewish community of the Eastern Mediterranean, there were likely as many or more Qaraʾites living in Jerusalem at the time of the conquest as there were Rabbanite Jews.

The letter, as we learn in the opening passage, is part of an ongoing correspondence between the communities of the two cities. The Ascalonī Jews write:

We received your letter…concerning the matter of the suftajah (money order) that was attached to (the letter) in connection with our brothers, the refugees from Jerusalem. We received the money (after exchanging it) from the one who had written it and (the donation) to our group possessed a distinguished and respected place (that is, it was generous).94

This introduction, then, tells us that the Jews of Fustat had recently provided another donation (of an unnamed sum) to the Ascalonī redemption campaign. This donation cannot refer to the one referred to in the letter above since the former was given almost a year before the exchange recorded here.95

91 For the edition, see above n. 63. For the rationale behind this dating, see above n. 64. 92 See Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 341-345. A document that also relays a shared Rabbanite/Qaraiʾite appeal is Bodl. MS Heb. a 3.28, discussed in ibid. 188. The document, which dates to December, 1028, was sent from two Rabbanite communities in Alexandria to the Rabbanite leader in Fustat, Efrayim b. Shemarya. 93 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5: 358-391. 94 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.11, r. ll. 6-10. 95 The former donation was sent right after the fall of Jerusalem (July 1099). Whereas the letter was sent almost a year later (early Summer, 1100). 49

Our letter involves a request for more (that is, at least a third round of) donations. A personal messenger from Ascalon carried the letter all the way to Fustat in order to ensure its reception.96 His community hoped he would retrieve a substantial money order (suftajah) from this new appeal— funds that could be put towards redeeming the few remaining captives, caring for the refugees in

Ascalon and repaying the substantial loans the Ascalonī community had been compelled to withdraw for the care of these groups.97 The Ascalon community itself had expended over 500 dinars and ransomed some 40 captives.98 Of those, 20 chose to remain in the city and were placing demands on the community’s limited resources. 99 The community of Ascalon was now in debt for over two- hundred dinars.100

Unlike the Rabbanite letter discussed above, almost half of which is comprised of Hebrew quotations, the first half of the body of the Qaraʾite text is almost entirely in Arabic.101 The reason for this language-choice quickly becomes clear: this section comprises a pragmatic report on how the community of Ascalon had ransomed and cared for the Jerusalemite refugees, in addition to

96 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113, v. l 30-34. 97 On the use of suftajahs, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 241-247. Carrying large amounts of specie was impractical for obvious reasons. As Goitein writes, “[m]uslim lawyers defined the suftajah as a loan of money in order to avoid the risk of transport.” 98 Ibid., r. ll. 40-41. 99 Ibid., v. ll. 9-10 100 Ibid., v. ll. 7-8. 101 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113 r. ll. 13-56. In the context of mercantile correspondence, Judaeo-Arabic was deployed as “a more transparent form of writing (that) seeks to convey information with the minimum of artistry.” See Ben Outhwaite, ‘Lines of communication: Medieval Hebrew letters of the 11th century, in Scribes as Agents of Language Change, eds. E-M. Wagner, (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013), 190. On the use of Hebrew in Arabic Genizah letters, see Esther-Miriam Wagner, Linguistic Variety of Judaeo-Arabic in Letters from the Cairo Genizah (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 110-113. Wagner’s research affirms Halper’s early twentieth-century claim that Hebrew was used less often in eleventh-century than thirteenth-century correspondence. The first half of our letter largely conforms to that standard. 50 redeeming the latter’s Torah scrolls and other holy texts.102 In the process of explaining how funds were deployed, the letter also reveals the origin and state of the captives:

Until (now), all those who could be purchased from [the Franks] were liberated, and none remained in detention except a few individuals …(the narrator now focuses on the story of one captive in particular, the son of a prominent Qaraʾite)…Until this day, (that boy) remains among them; there are also those who were taken to Antioch, but these are a few people; and there are others (ghayr) who apostatized due to the extension of their period (of captivity) and the inability to free them, despairing of their redemption… Among those who survived the incident (i.e., the conquest of Jerusalem) are people who escaped on the second and third days following (the Crusaders’ breach of Jerusalem’s walls) and left with the governor (al-wālī) under a pact of safe conduct. Other people, who, after having been caught by the Franks, remained in their hands for a period and then escaped from them; but these are a minority (qalāʾil). The majority (al-akthar) are those who were ransomed.103

The letter emphasizes the success of the efforts to redeem the captives. The commander of Jerusalem was allowed to escape the Holy City, and we learn that among his entourage were a number of Jews, likely a small group of elites.104 The rest of the population, it is implied, was captured and subsequently ransomed. In another part of the letter, the writer stresses the suffering involved in these exchanges and the exigencies of war. Many people lacked food and died on their way from

Jerusalem; others reached Ascalon only to die in a plague that had struck the city; still others were slaughtered at the hands of the Franks.105

102 Ibid., r. ll. 50-51; cf. T-S A-S 146.3. 103 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113 r. ll. 17-23; 25-28. 104 Raymond of Aguiliers had previously noted that some Muslims holed up in the Tower of David were permitted to escape the siege. John H, and Laurita L. Hill, Raymond d'Aguiliers: Historia francorum qui ceperint Jerusalem (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968) 7.3; trans. in August. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1921), 257-62. See Goitein’s discussion in “Contemporary Letters,” 165 and Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre,” 59-60. 105 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113 r. ll. 28-33; on the plague, see Goitein, “Contemporary Letters,” 167-168. 51

The Franks are mentioned only three times in this letter: Once, with regard to the suffering of refugees (“among those who were redeemed from the Franks and remained in Ascalon some are hungry, naked and in want”);106 subsequently, with regard to killing some of the captives (“some of the people among the prisoners were killed, some in front of the others, the later (victims) with all manner of tortures, in order for (the Franks) to gratify their thirst for revenge”);107 And finally, with regard to not raping Jewish women (“We were not informed, praise be to the Most High, that the aforementioned accursed ones, Western Europe(ans), either violated or raped women, as had the others”).108

This last, matter-of-fact statement, with its implicit reference to previous trials faced by

Jewish captives at the hands of Bedouins and the Seljuqs (and, perhaps, the Byzantines), demonstrates that the writer did not intend to portray the Franks as Edom/Babylon/Rome reborn, but instead to get to the practical business of redeeming the captives in the Europeans’ hands.109 The entire section of the letter makes clear that the business of ransoming from the Franks is the same as the business of ransoming from other powers. Although the descriptions of the Latin Christians’ actions emphasize the anomalous (in terms of the periodic slaughter of captives, charging too little for their prisoners and not raping them), they do not imply the Franks’ actions have placed them beyond the pale.

106 Ibid., r ll. 9-10 107 Ibid., r. ll. 10-11 108 Ibid., r. ll. 24-25 109 Goitein initially claimed these “others” were other groups of Franks based on his reading of Ashkenazim as specific to Germans, but later retracted this claim. See Goitein, “Contemporary Letters,” 167; and the retraction, S. D. Goitein, "Genizah Sources, 312. n. 30. See also, Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre,” 64. 52

In the second half of the letter, the language abruptly shifts from the matter-of-fact to the typological. But typology here is not deployed to explain the acts of the Frankish conquerors. Instead, it is a device to expound on the state of the collective Jewish people as a means to solicit further donations. In the last line of the previous section, we learn that captives were being ransomed at around 12 dinars apiece, instead of the regular price of 30 dinars for two possible reasons. Either the market was so flooded with captives as to not sustain hiring demands and/or the Franks’ military strategy required the immediate unburdening of captives.110 The author suggests that this development was prefigured in Temple times:

May (God’s mercy) surround these miserable people, the oppressed, the captives, the poor and the wretched ones, those who have been fit (maḥqūq) for pain and suffering, crying out for help, as it is written: “You have given us like sheep for the slaughter, and scattered us among the nations; you sell your people for a little gain; you do not profit from their price” (Psalms 44.12-13). And it is fitting (ḥaqīq) that we say, “Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1.9).111

While God has caused the captives of Israel to multiply, He has not allowed them to be wiped out as

He did the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead, He has permitted a small remnant (sharid kimʿaṭ) to survive.112 Here, typology allows the author to elide three communities across time and space—the Jerusalemite survivors of 587 BCE/70CE, the Jerusalemite survivors of 1099 and the latter’s contemporaries in Fustat and Ascalon. All three groups comprise the “small remnant” of the survivors

110 The first point—the flooding of the market—is the argument of Yvonne Friedman and, I would contend, the quotation from the document considered here. Goitein argues for the second point (military exigencies) based on the fact that the Crusaders would have wanted to free their armies of prisoners to be able to confront the Fatimid forces. Probably both the first and third factors played into these considerations. See Friedman, Encounter between Enemies, 148-150; Goitein, “Contemporary Letters,” 165-166. 111 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113 rt. margin ll. 47-53. 112 Note that the word used for remnant here, sharid, is different from the word used above, sheʾerit. Sharid, however, is used in the same manner in Isaiah’s prophecy to refer to the survivors of the Babylonian conquests. 53 of Judah, which is why that phrase is placed in the mouth not of the survivors of the sieges, but of the

Ascalonī/Egyptian Jews.

This rhetorical sleight of hand introduces the main objective of the letter—the solicitation of further donations to ease the plight of the captives and refugees. The charity drive could not have redeemed most of Jerusalem’s Jews based on the donations of Fustat and Ascalon alone. Even at the

“reduced price” of 12-dinars-per-captive, the donations would not have redeemed more than one hundred prisoners. Fustat and Ascalon were not alone, however, in responding to the needs of these captives, as we learn when the writer appeals to the communal pride of Fustat’s Jews to encourage them to donate even more generously:

And you had initiative and persistence (muthābarah) in fulfilling this opportunity that you were granted to perform (i.e., donating to the redemption campaign), which earned you preeminence over the other communities (al-qahalot) and much honor.113

Other Jewish communities then, have made donations to the Ascalonī drive—though, for obvious reasons, the writer claims the Jews of Fustat have been more generous than any other single community.114 We do not know if this is mere rhetorical flourish; however, on a practical level, it is plausible that the city had given the largest amount of money to Ascalon, since, according to most sources, Fustat had the largest Jewish community (both Qaraʾite and Rabbanite) in Egypt.115

113 Ibid., v. ll. 4-6. 114 It was quite common to have multiple communities donate to a ransoming campaign. See Frenkel, “Proclaiming Liberty,” 91-92. 115 For this reason, Goitein thought that it was redundant to state that Egypt had been the most generous community and therefore suggested (before later correcting himself) that the patron community in question here (i.e., the recipients of the letter) was in Alexandria. See Goitein, “Contemporary Letters,” 168. 54

The letter goes on to suggest that the leaders of Fustat had already promised to pay the

Ascalonī community’s 200-dinar debt.116 It ends with an insistence that the text be read publicly in synagogue to bring the situation to the attention to the wider Jewish community of Fustat and to men who had taken vows to do “holy deeds” and could fulfill those vows by donating to the ransoming drive.117 That is, the implication seems to be that the Ascalonī community is hoping to solicit substantially more than 200 dinars so that they can provide for the captives whose plight they had described in the letter. We learn from the introduction to the letter and the above quotation that

Fustat’s Jews had already made several rounds of donations to this charity drive, demonstrating their

“persistence” (muthābarah) in supporting the campaign. While we do not know how much money this amounted to, it is fair to assume it at least met—and likely surpassed—the appeal for the current drive of over 200 dinars, the outstanding debt of the Ascalonī community.

This letter, then, provides insight into one small part of a trans-Mediterranean campaign among the region’s Jews to redeem captives whom the Crusaders seized during the conquest of

Jerusalem in 1099. The two texts alone speak to the expenditure of at least 900 dinars and likely well over a thousand, since we do not know what amount the Qaraʾites of Cairo actually donated the first time, nor do we know whether they and their rabbanite brethren donated substantially more than

200 dinars the second time. Even based on the most conservative estimate of what was donated, these communities were investing substantial specie in redeeming captives and holy texts. To put these numbers in perspective: According to Moshe Gil and S. D. Goitein, the kodesh/heqdesh/waqf of

116 T-S 10J5.6 + T-S 20.113 v. ll. 15-17. 117 On individual vows to the qodesh and the motivation for them as acts of righteousness or repentance see Moshe Gill, Documents of the Pious Jewish Foundations from the Cairo Genizah (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 5-7. 55 the Jewish community of Fustat—the institution responsible for overseeing the care of all the Jewish poor of the city—had an annual income of 10-12,000 dirhams, that is, between roughly 250 and 300 dinars.118

And these are only two letters from two communities that were part of a much wider operation, as the ʿAscalonī Qaraʾite letter’s reference to the contributions of other communities makes clear. Damascus’s and Aleppo’s Jewish communities—which were as large or larger than the communities of Alexandria and Fustat—would have likely donated to drives based out of Tyre and/or

Tripoli.119 To try to estimate the possible contributions of these broader communities, we must enter the fraught and imprecise realm of medieval demographics. My estimates here are based on critical readings of two medieval Jewish travel writers—Petaḥyahh of Regensburg and Benjamin of Tudela— as well as the informed speculations of modern scholars.120 For the sake of a conservative appraisal, let us dismiss the high probability that the largest Jewish communities of the wider Mediterranean, those in Iraq and Anatolia, donated to the Jerusalem drive.121 Instead, we will only consider the populations of Egypt and Greater Syria. The most recent estimates of the Jewish population of Fustat

118 Gil, Pious Foundation, 77; Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 112-121. 119 Rustow, Heresy, xxix-xxxiii; and Zvi Ankori, Karaites in Byzantium: The Formative Years, 970-1100 (New York: Columbia UP, 1959), 98-104. 120 The most recent editions of these texts are Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. and trans. Marcus Nathan Adler (London: H. Frowde, 1907); Petaḥyah of Regnesburg, Travels of R. Petachia of Ratisbon, ed. and trans. Abraham Benisch (London, 1856); idem., Die Rundreis des R. Petachja aus Regensburg, ed. Lazar (Elʿazar) Grunhut, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1904-5). On the challenges of using Benjamin of Tudela’s travels as a historical source, both because of recensions and contradictory editions, see David Jacoby, "Benjamin of Tudela and his 'Book of Travels'," in Klaus Herbers & Felicitas Schmieder, eds., Venezia incrocio di culture. Percezioni di viaggiatori europei e non europei a confronto. Atti del convegno Venezia, 26-27 gennaio 2006 (Rome: Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Ricerche, 2008), 135-164. There are also multiple, contradictory editions of R. Petaḥyah’s travels. On the ways ideology inform these texts’ presentation of data, including demography, see Martin Jacobs, Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2014), 7-10. 121 I say highly probably because we know that all these communities, as well as those of the wealthy ports of Sicily, and regions of Iberia, had historically been in regular contact with Jews living in Jerusalem. See Menahem Ben-Sasson, “The Axis of the Land,” 5-19. 56 are between 1,000-4,000. For Egypt writ large they are between 10,000-20,000.122 On the one hand,

Benjamin of Tudela claimed that Greater Syria in the mid-twelfth century had a Jewish community of approximately 12,000 Jews (or heads of households), while Ascalon had a population of 240 Jews.123

Rabbi Petaḥyahh, on the other hand, estimated that Damascus alone had a population of 10,000

Jews.124 Once again, none of these numbers should be taken at face value. So, let us take the higher end of the Fustat population, and the lower end of the Egyptian and Syrian one. In that case, Fustat and Ascalon housed some 4,240 Jews and the surrounding region had a Jewish population of over

21,700 people (6,000 in the rest of Egypt, 11,760 in the rest of Syria). That is, proportionately, according to this most conservative estimate of the surrounding region’s Jewish population, at least five times as many Jews lived in the region immediately adjacent to Palestine and outside Fustat and Ascalon as lived in those two cities. If these surrounding communities gave in roughly the same proportion to their population as the (very low end) estimate of the Ascalon and Fustat donations (900 dinars), then the campaign would have received a minimum of 4,500 dinars—enough funds to ransom 375 captives from the Crusaders. This sum is certainly depressed, yet should have sufficed to ransom the majority of Jerusalem’s small Jewish population.

Why was an appeal of such proportions necessary? Because the Crusaders did not massacre most of Jerusalem’s population. Instead, they took its non-Christian residents captive (and then

122 Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005), 32. See also Eliyyahu Ashtor, “The Number of Jews in Medieval Egypt,” Journal of Jewish Studies 19 (1968), 12-13; Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979) 48. 123 Benjamin of Tudela claims Aleppo hosted a Jewish community of some 5,000 people. Damascus’s community, according to Benjamin, could count some 3,000 Jews. Benjamin also observed large Syrian Jewish communities in Palmyra (2,000 Jews) and Qalʾat Jaʿbar (2,000 Jews), as well as the wealthy ports of Syria that likely organized these drives—Acre (200 Jews), Tyre (500 Jews), and Tripoli (200 Jews). I also have included here the relatively small Jewish communities of al- Ladhaqiyya, Ḥoms, Ṣidon, and other Syrian cities Benjamin visited. See Benjamin, Itinerary, 26-35; 42-51. 124 Petaḥyah, Travels, 3. 57 expelled them). That is, while Jerusalem’s Jewish community in 1099 was relatively small, all its surviving members, except those who escaped with the city’s governor or on their own, had to be ransomed. The ransoming drives would have solicited money to ransom hundreds of Jews—more than enough to cover the relatively small population of late-eleventh-century Jerusalem.

Conclusion

When the Crusaders seized Jerusalem, they took captive most of the members of the city’s relatively small Jewish community. If we read the Jewish documents considered here literally, then we would conclude that most of these people were killed. But these documents are typological, structured by the sacred space of Jerusalem. They should not be taken at face value as descriptions of the population’s experience of conquest, much less should they be used to extrapolate how the populations of other Syrian cities encountered the invaders. Instead, a close reading of the Genizah texts sensitive to the ways biblical typology and genre shape their rhetoric reveals that these letters do not claim an unprecedented massacre occurred. Instead, we see that most Jews survived the

Crusaders’ conquest of the holy city and were redeemed by the ransoming campaigns of their Eastern

Mediterranean coreligionists.

While the scale of the Crusaders’ massacre at Jerusalem was unexceptional, their conquest of the city was extraordinary in another sense: No Jew or Muslim was permitted to reside in the

Crusaders’ Jerusalem (later the Franks did permit two Jewish dyers to reside there to host pilgrims).

The trauma and affront of the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem in 1099 was repeated when the

Franks temporarily regained the city in 1229.125 These expulsions continued to influence anti-Christian polemics among Mediterranean Jewish writers in the subsequent centuries.126

But Jews were allowed to remain in other Crusader-held regions of Syria. After the success of the ransoming campaigns, many refugees resettled in the ports of Syria. Substantial Jewish and

Muslim communities would remain in the Syrian ports for another century and a half—that is, until the fall of Latin Acre and Tyre in 1291. Many members of these communities would have been descendants of the refugees of the Seljuq and Crusader conquests of Jerusalem. The children of these refugees and their coreligionists would play active roles in shaping the legal, economic and social institutions of the Latin Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The next chapter turns to the story of the early refugees from the Palestinian interior and their coreligionists in the ports of Syria and asks what happened to them when they fell (again) under Frankish rule.

125 As Prawer notes, most Jews and Muslims probably fled in 1219, when the city’s walls were destroyed, and so few were actually expelled when the city changed hands in 1229. Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 85-86. We learn from another Genizah document that a Jewish dyer was also ultimately permitted to reside in the city and host pilgrims at this later period. See ENA 2559.5 r. ll. 1-14 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 300-302. 126 Uri Z. Shachar, “Dialogical Warfare,” 234-263. I am grateful to Professor Shachar for his willingness to share his writing before publication. 59

1.2 Flight in the Wake of the First Crusade: Syrian Refugees Real and Imagined (1099- 1124)

Medieval migrants—like modern ones—voted with their feet; that is, they chose places of refuge based on access to familial and professional networks, economic opportunity and assurances of fair treatment by the state.127 Those who fled invading armies sought safety and security from enemy forces and used their understanding of the prevailing military powers and the merits of urban fortifications to inform their choices.128 They were often wrong. Seemingly impregnable cities like Tyre were starved into surrender. Wealthy ports like Acre were impoverished when enemy ships sank trading boats at harbor. Nevertheless, refugees made the best calculations they could and confronted the whims of historical contingency.

From 1097 until 1099, after taking Antioch (and taking bribes from local Muslim leaders who sought to protect their people along the way), the Crusaders took no other major Syrian cities but instead headed for Jerusalem. This route left the vast majority of Syrian ports in Muslim hands in 1099.

Whereas the Franks quickly occupied much of the Syrian interior, it took two and a half decades to grind down resistance in the Syrian ports. The Franks would ultimately claim almost all of the Syrian coast by 1124. But in 1099, Syrian Jews could not foresee how these events would play out. Many Jews

127 Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 381-387. A comparable case to that of the Crusader states is the situation in Islamic and Christian Iberia. In that region, conquest and economic opportunity, as well as periodic religious persecution from both sides, encouraged Jews and other religious minorities to migrate across different regions of the peninsula. For the context of eleventh-century Iberia and Jewish economic migrants see David Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party- Kings (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985), chapter 6. On the migration of Jews from Islamic to Christian Iberia for both political and economic reasons, see Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006). 128 See my discussion of this issue in the context of the movements of the yeshiva of Palestine in “Mediterranean Notables,” 5-7. 60 from the Syrian interior found refuge in Syria’s ports—cities that would later fall into Frankish hands.129

The previous chapter argued that the majority of Syria’s Jews survived the first Crusade. The question of where Syria’s Jews went in the aftermath of the European invasion is critical to understanding the genesis of later Jewish communities of Latin Syria. This chapter thus asks: Where did these residents of the Palestinian interior resettle? Why did they choose those particular locales?

What happened to the large Jewish communities of the Syrian ports—including refugees from the interior—when the Franks seized their cities? Did they remain in Syria or did they flee abroad?

To answer these questions, the chapter first analyzes Syrian nisbahs (in this context,

“toponyms”) in charity lists from the Genizah—documents that record donations from Fustat’s Jews to named individuals including foreign refugees. This analysis demonstrates that there was an influx of Jews from Syria to Egypt during the Seljuk invasions. There was no such influx following the First

Crusade. This analysis suggests that there never was a mass exodus of Arabophone people from Syria after the Frankish conquests of Jerusalem and the Syrian ports after the Frankish conquests.

The chapter then turns to evidence for where these refugees did go. It presents Genizah documents that illuminate the appeal of resettling in Syria’s ports because of long-standing familial, business and political ties. The chapter investigates the question of what happened to Syrian Jews when the Franks sacked the Levantine ports. I turn to travel accounts and other sources to argue that most of these cities’ non-Christian residents were allowed to remain in their homes. The conclusion

129 Köhler, Alliances and Treaties, 20-90. For an overview of these events from the perspective of literary Arabic sources, see Paul Cobb, Race for Paradise, 105-130. 61 contends that the populations discussed here—Syrian refugees from the Palestinian interior and long-standing residents of the Levantine ports—mostly remained in their (new) homes under

Frankish rule. These people would come to constitute the first Jewish communities of the Latin

Kingdoms.

The View from Fustat: Charity Lists, Refugees and Lack Thereof

Goitein and Cohen, claim that charity lists from Fustat prove that there was an exodus of

Syrians from Palestine to Egypt in the wake of the Crusader conquests. As evidence, they cite the prevalence of Syrian nisbahs, or toponyms, in charity lists from the Genizah in the years immediately following the First Crusade (1100-1110) as suggesting these recipients of communal charity had fled the

First Crusade.130 Both scholars are correct to note that there are a large number of Syrian Jews included among the poor in these documents. They do not compare these lists to other lists from before and after the First Crusade, however. When analyzed in this way, the data do not support their claim.131

The charity lists on which these scholars rely are records of the names of people who were members of what Cohen calls the structural or chronic poor, that is, those who were in need of long-

130 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:188-89. Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 83-85. For reasons that are not clear, Cohen asserts that it the Byzantine (rūmī) Jews that appear in the 1107 refugee were “more likely” refugees of the first Crusade, rather than of the instability in Anatolia following the Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071. Goitein makes an even more far- fetched claim, positing that the rūmī were refugees from the Crusader attacks on Jewish communities in Europe. 131 To Goitein’s credit he recognized that there were a larger portion of Syrian and Anatolian Jews that appear in the charity lists following Seljuk conquests of the 1070s. Philip Lieberman’s work confirms the supposition that the largest influx of Syrians to Egypt occurred in the decades after the Seljuk conquests through an analysis of the corpus of all digitized Genizah documents. Lieberman gave a lecture titled “Jewish Onomastics, Cairo Genizah and Westward Migration in the Medieval Period” in March 2015 at Bar-Ilan University. He graciously shared the database on which he made his claims with me. They will be published in a forthcoming article on “Onomastics, the Cairo Genizah, and Jewish Exceptionalism” (working title). 62 term communal support.132 These poor required food and financial assistance—needs towards which the people of Fustat donated.133 The lists include the names of the recipients followed by a number indicating the amount of money they were allocated—usually in denominations of dirhams, down to fractions of ¼ diraham. Many of the foreign poor included people who had been ransomed from pirates, bandits or state armies, pilgrims on their way to Palestine and refugees.134 Some lists pertained to donations of basic subsistence goods—food and clothes—while others concerned subsidizing the payment of the poll tax (jizyah) incumbent on all non-Muslims.135

While the lists provide few details about the recipients of charity, their names in and of themselves can be telling. Arabic names often include adjectival nisbah that sometimes functioned as toponyms—e.g., the Yosef the Tyrian (that is, of Tyre).136 Toponyms were used almost exclusively to refer to foreigners (i.e. Joe the New Yorker is only “the New Yorker” when he is outside New York, otherwise he is just Joe).137 They were also used to refer to “foreign” Egyptian Jews – that is, Jews who came mostly from the small cities that surrounded Fustat, since the relevant category of local was defined on the level of the city.138

132 Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 34-41. Cohen distinguishes the structural poor from the conjuncturaly poor, i.e., someone who required only temporary assistance from the community. The latter often relied on personal appeals or petitions, rather than on the communal charity connected to the lists of poor. 133 The aforementioned kodesh/heqdesh (Heb.)/waqf (Ar.) also supported the indigent. See Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 218-27 134 Ibid., 72-129. 135 Ibid., 227-39 and, on the poll-tax specifically, see pp. 130-8. 136 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:357-358 137 One real problem is that toponyms could be passed down for generations. That is, even if Joe and Joe’s father were born in Chicago, he would still be called “the New Yorker” because his paternal grandfather was born in New York. Again, however, if we assume relative stability in the population of the people born in Fustat, this need not concern us. See the discussion of the issue of ambiguity and nasab in Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 41-42 . 138 Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 89. 63

How scribes employed nisbah in these lists was somewhat idiosyncratic: sometimes the same individual would be given a nisbah in one list (e.g., the orphan, the Byzantine rūmī), but in another list about the same population, the toponym is removed and he is only “the orphan”.139 On an average list from the corpus considered here, scribes denoted approximately one in ten beneficiaries of charity with a toponym.140 Since the Genizah is not an archive, it is unsurprising that source survival of such lists is uneven. I have divided those lists into six chronological periods: 1020-1070 (10 documents), 1070-1099 (2x), 1107 (6x), 1100-1150 (6x), 1200-1250 (2x), 1290-early 1300s (6x), but have focused my analysis on only the first three groups.141

These include six of the documents that can be firmly dated to the period immediately following the First Crusade (1100-1110) date from November 1107. At least four of them likely once comprised one booklet that recorded donations to charity over the period of one week in August of that year. Some documents, including those from the period of the Seljuq invasions and the years immediately following the first Crusade, include extensive lists of names. Others are fragmented and include only a dozen names.142 All of these issues make a systematic analysis of these texts problematic and my conclusions tentative.

139 See Goitein's discussion of this issue in Mediterranean Society, 2:442-443. 140 See the numbers in the charts below. 141 1000-1070: ENA 2713.26 (1020-1040); T-S 24.76 (1020-1040); T-S 20.23v; TS NS J 191; ENA NS 22.26; T-S K15.93 (1040-1060) ; T-S NS J179; Halper 465; T-S K15.14/T-s5.66; 1070-1099: Halper 468 V.; T-S K15.96T-S NS 226.8 (1040-1080— therefore in, not used in this analysis since it crosses periods); 1107: T-S K15.39; T-S K15.5; T-S K15.50; T-S NS J41; T-S J1.4; T-S K15.15 1100-1150 TS Misc Box 8.25; T-S K15.85; T-S K15.48; TS NS J 403; T-S MISC. 8.9; T-S NS J293 (1139-40); T-S AR. 30.67; T-S MISC. 28.184 (1140-1160) T-S NS 320.30; T-S 8J5.14 (1183). 1200-1300 T-S 13J8.11; T-S NS 320.41; T-S NS J440; TS 8 J 6.3v; T-S NS J245; T-S K15.58 (1290) 142 I only included those documents that could be at least roughly dated and had a substantial number (10+) of legible names. 64

Below, I lay out my findings based on a comparative analysis of the proportion of toponyms from different regions across three chronological periods: the decades proceeding the Seljuq invasions of Palestine (1020-1070); the roughly quarter of a century following these invasions (1071-

1099); and the period immediately after the First Crusade (1107). Unfortunately, it is impossible to have a control group for this study, in the sense that there was no time of peace in Palestine during the eleventh century from which we could determine a “normal” number of Syrians in Egypt. Even during the early-eleventh century, Bedouin raids wreaked significant damage on the people of

Palestine. Nevertheless, we can see some trends over the course of the century, from the relatively stable mid-eleventh century that preceded the Seljuq conquests (1020-1070), to the Seljuk invasions and finally to the First Crusade.

The chart below presents the data I have attained from the first group, that is, from published and digitized charity lists from the period 1020-1070:

Number of Documents 8* Number of Names in Documents 580 Names with Identifiable, Non-Egyptian* Toponyms 65 Maghrebis/North Africans 15 Rumis/Greek/Byzantine 6 Iberians 4 Sicilians 1 Arabians 0 Iraqis/Persians 8 Syrians 32 Syrian Percentage of Toponyms 49% Syrian Percentage of All Names 5.50% 143 Table 1: Toponyms from Fustat Charity Lists, 1020-1070

143 ENA NS 22.26; ENA 2713.26; T-S 24.76; T-S 20.23V; T-S NS J191; T-S NS J179; T-S K15.14+T-s5.66; T-S K15.93 65

Syrians during this period constituted approximately half of all identified foreigners on Fustat’s charity doles. People with Syrian toponyms comprised 5.5% of all the names provided on the lists.

The higher proportion of North Africans vis-à-vis the later lists may reflect the impact of the Bedouin

(ostensibly, the banū Hilāl) invasions of the Maghreb in the mid-1040s and the destruction of such urban centers as al-Qayrawān (1057).144

Documents from the period following the Seljuk invasions (1071-1099) present a another picture of the foreign poor in Fustat:

Number of Documents 2* Number of Names in Documents 297 Names with Identifiable, Non-Egyptian Toponyms 58 Maghrebis/North Africans 2 Rumis/Greek/Byzantine 4 Iberians 0 Sicilians 4 Arabians 0 Iraqis/Persians 16 Syrians 32 Syrian Percentage of Toponyms 55% Syrian Percentage of All Names 10.80% 145 Table 2: Toponyms from Fustat Charity Lists, 1071-1099

Note that although we only have two documents from this period, they are both long and detailed lists. Here, Syrians comprise over half (55%) of all identified foreigners. More importantly, they constitute almost double (10.8% vs. 5.5%) the proportion of all names on the lists from 1020-1070. The doubling of Iraqi and Persian names may indicate a similar flight of refugees from the east in the face

144 On the Jewish community of Qayrawan and their ultimate flight from North Africa, see Menahem Ben-Sasson, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800-1057 (Heb.) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997). 145 *Halper 468; T-S K15.96 66 of the Seljuq invasions of those regions, which would have begun decades before and tapered off after the region stabilized (as we indeed see in the following list).146

Finally, when we turn to the period following the First Crusade, the geographic origins of destitute foreigners shift again147:

Number of Documents 4* Number of Names in Documents 542** Names with Identifiable, Non-Egyptian Toponyms 52 Maghrebis/North Africans 2 Rumis/Greek/Byzantine 10** Iberians 5 Sicilians 4 Arabians 3 Iraqis/Persians 1 Syrians 28 Syrian Percentage of Toponyms 53% Syrian Percentage of All Names 5.10% 148 Table 3 Toponyms from Fustat Charity Lists, 1107 CE

Note a common trend: throughout the eleventh century and into the early twelfth century,

Syrians constituted roughly half of the foreigners to whom Fustat’s pious foundation provided food, clothes and poll tax subsidies. The main list again shows Syrians representing around half of all identified foreigners. Syrians, however, constitute a mere 5.1% of names (even after reducing that number by excluding all Rumis in the aforementioned list). That is, it appears that many of the

146 On the Jewish community of Iraq at this period, see Jennifer Grayson, “Jews in the Political Life of ʿAbbasid Baghdad,” (PhD Diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2017), 88-127. 147 Note that the most prominent group by far on these lists are “rūmīs”, that is, Jews from Anatolia. These refugees receive their own sublists under the heading “rūmī”. None of these Rumis have toponyms because they are included in the aforementioned list so a nisbah would be redundant; however, there are still rūmīs who have toponyms included in the main list. I have therefore only analyzed the latter to keep the numbers from being artificially inflated. 148 * T-S K15.5; T-S K15.15; T-S K15.39; T-S 15.50. Two of these documents include lists of beneficiaries under the subheading “the rūm.” In the first document (T-S K15.5), they constitute thirty-nine names, while in the second, there are forty-two such names. I have decided to remove these names from consideration entirely. I did this because these refugees have their own list and thus a different their relationship to their toponym. As you can see, there were still more rūmī refugees on the general lists than at any other time of the previous period. 67

Syrians who fled to Fustat were no longer on the charity dole, and there is no indication that there was a new wave of refugees following the First Crusade.

To review: there were proportionally more foreigners on the communal dole during the period of the early Seljuk conquests, that is the late eleventh century that comprises group 2 than there were during the previous and subsequent periods. The fact that most of these refugees are from

Syria and Iraq – the areas where the Seljuqs were most active – supports this claim. Recall that though the Syrian proportion of total toponyms rose a mere 6% (49% to 55%), Syrians now constituted almost double (5.5% to 10.8%) the proportion of Syrians vis-à-vis the lists of all names – not just those with toponyms. That is, the absolute number of Syrians, many of whom would have been refugees, doubled, but this change is obscured by the increase of refugees from Iraq as well.

Now, when we turn to the last group of documents, those from the period immediately following the first Crusade, we see that the numbers more closely resemble those of the first group than the second.

That is, people with Syrian toponyms once more constitute a mere 5% of the names on the list.

However, the proportion of Syrians vis-à-vis all people with toponyms has stayed roughly the same.

Some of this persistence may be explained by refugees from the Seljuqs who remained on the communal dole long after they had been forced from their homes. Others may have been refugees from the Crusades.

Also, recall that the number of identified foreigners from the Maghreb increased during the period when Qayrawan fell and that the number of people with Iraqi/Persian toponyms increased during the Seljuq invasions of their homelands. These patterns suggest that, though the sample size is

68 small, the changes it illustrates are consistent with what we would expect based on our knowledge of the political history of the region in general.

But perhaps Syrians who fled to Egypt do not appear on these lists because they were people of means. If that is the case, we should see an increase in Syrian toponyms among all documents from the period. Fortunately, Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman has done exactly such an analysis to support the influx of a large numbrer of Syrians following the Seljuk invasions of 1070 (as well as an earlier spike in Syrian population in the 1020s which was probably due to Bedouin invasions of Palestine at the start of the eleventh century). The influx reached its peak in the 1090s and then dropped dramatically by 1110. If there was a massive influx of refugees following the first Crusade, then we would expect to see a bump in the graph at precisely the point where Ackerman-Lieberman identifies a steep decline. In other words, refugees did flee Syria, but they did so in much larger numbers due to the Bedouin invasions and the Seljuq conquests than in response to the first Crusade. 149

This does not prove, of course, that Jews did not flee Frankish Syria—they may have done so but not gone to Fustat/Cairo. Given the strong economic, religious and social/familial ties between the regions, evident from trade letters, correspondence of religious authorities, and the presence of

Syrians in Fustat, however, it would be shocking if few Syrian refugees came to the Egyptian city.

Moreover, as already established, Syrians did seek refuge in Fustat—that is why they represent around half of all foreigners on charity lists even during periods of relative peace. What these lists suggest, then, is that there was no mass exodus from Syria following the First Crusade, and, therefore,

149 On these early invasions, see above n. 1. Ackerman-Lieberman will present his findings in a forthcoming book. He has also discussed them at several conferences, including the 2016 Association for Jewish Studies Conference (2016). I am grateful to Professor Lieberman for sharing his data with me. 69 there was relative continuity of the Jewish population of the region across Islamic and Christian rule.

This hypothesis is further supported by the subsequent chapters’ analyses of the continuity in Syrian

Jewish institutions before and after the Crusader conquests.

The View from the Syrian Ports: Refugees in a Communal Context

But there clearly were refugees from the First Crusade—if only from Jerusalem. The Genizah – by virtue of being in Fustat – would not record intra-Syrian migration the way in which it captured the necessary data to analyze refugee movement from Syria to Egypt. We have already seen evidence that many Jerusalemites sought refuge in Syria’s’ ports —much as their Palestinian coreligionists had done during the Seljuq conquests less than three decades prior.150 The Genizah document discussed above from the Ascalonī Qaraʾites demonstrates that Ascalon took some refugees. Others, we will see, made it to Tripoli. If the Cairo Genizah had been located in Syria, we would undoubtedly hear about refugees resettled in Tripoli and the other major Damascene-dependent port, Tyre.

A letter from around 1102 survives from one of these refugees—a woman and her young son to whom she dictated the letter.151 The woman had lived in Jerusalem with her husband, daughter and two sons. They now resided in Tripoli. We hear few details about the writer’s experience except when she notes obliquely, “I witnessed great slaughter (qatl ʿaẓīm) and experienced all manner of terrible things.” Goitein assumes this relates to the Crusaders’ conquest of Jerusalem, though there is no

150 See Goldman, “Mediterranean Notables,” 5-7. 151 Westminster College, Cambridge, England, Frag. Cairens., f.- 35 ed. in S. D. Goitein, "Tyre-Tripoli-ʿArqa,” 79-83. 70 mention of the holy city or the Franks in this part of the letter.152 In fact, the only enemy mentioned in this part of the letter are the Bedouins (al-ʿarab).153

We do know that the woman was from the upper-strata of Syrian-Jewish society: her husband had maintained close ties to a leading Muslim official in Tripoli, al-Mustanṣir (not the caliph); her brother-in-law was a wealthy man and resident of Tripoli who had provided for her and her husband when they fled Jerusalem; another relative in the city, “Yosef/Yūsuf,” also continued to send her food, supplies and specie; and she and her family were close to the nagid, that is, the raʾīs al-yahūd (head of the Jews) of Egypt, Mevorakh b. Seʿadya. Indeed, Mevorakh is so familiar that she makes specific requests of him in her letter.154

The familial, professional and communal networks that refugees like this woman could deploy in Tripoli help explain why so many refugees turned to the ports of Syria. The Jewish communities of the port cities, as discussed above, helped organize the ransoming drives that rescued people like this prominent woman. Subsequently, many refugees would have remained in those cities because they had relatives there, many of whom had likely been refugees of the earlier Seljuq conquests. War continued to rage in the countryside—the Bedouin again appear here as a more immediate threat to

Syrian civilians than the Crusaders.155 The populations of the port cities hid behind their high walls.

152 Westminster Frag. Cairens., f.- 35, r. l. 11 153 Abū al-Wafaʾ was taken by the Bedouins (al-ʿarab) at the time when his brother disappeared.” See Westminster Frag. Cairens., f.- 35, r. l. 17 154 Goitein, “Tripoli-Tyre-ʿArqa,” 70-72. The woman’s request to Mevorakh involves redeeming books that were still in Crusader hands, see Westminster Frag. Cairens., f.- 35, ll. 9-17. 155 Westminster Frag. Cairens., r. l. 17; v. ll. 1-2. The Bedouin here appear to still be seizing new captives, while the Crusaders are addressed only as (relatively benevolent) captors whose acts of violence are assumed to be of the past. 71

Their leaders bribed both Christian and Muslim enemies to protect them from the violence of the

Palestinian interior.

Finding refuge with family and business associates did not, however, fully shield refugees from their vulnerable status. Al-Mustanṣir, the patron of our writer’s husband, Abū al-Khayr, died at some time after they arrived, leaving Abū al-Khayr exposed to his political enemies. He was forced to flee

Tripoli. At some point prior to this (the chronology is muddled in the letter), Abū al-Khayr had picked a fight with his brother—the main supporter of his family among the Jews of Tripoli, over control of their father’s inheritance. As a result, his wife lost her most valued sources of support. She wrote the letter to Fustat to appeal to another relative, Abū al-Aʿlā, who had previously helped her when she lived in Jerusalem.156

The letter’s genre and form—a personal appeal for charity—again lends itself to hyperbolic descriptions of personal suffering.157 The woman narrated this letter, and her young son wrote her words down. She claims to be starving, naked and alone—even as she asks the writer to thank her

Tripolitanian relative, Joseph, for supporting her(!).158 In the most striking passage of the letter, she complains:

And, indeed, by the truth (of our religion), it is better to be captives of the Christians (al-rūm159) than to be me, because, if they are captured, they (can) get someone (i.e., a local Jew/the local Jewish community) who (can) give them food and drink, but I, by

156 Goitein, “Tripoli-Tyre-ʿArqa,” 70-72. 157 Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 156-173. Cohen still takes many of these claims at face value, but henotes there are exceptions where we see “exagerat(ions)”. Our letter is one such case based on the writer’s extensive social connections. A comparable example from a Sicilian Genizah document is Bodl. MS Heb. C 28.21, ll.4-13 in which a woman who gave a present of 50 dinars (!), over two years’ wages for an average Egyptian, claims she is impoverished. 158 Westminster Frag. Cairens., r. ll. 4-7. 159 It was not uncommon at this time for Near Easterners to confuse the Franks with the Byzantines. See Nadia Maria El- Cheikh, “Byzantium through the Islamic Prism from the Twelfth to the Thirteenth Century,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, eds. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), 56 72

the truth (of our religion), am completely without clothing, and I and my children are dying of hunger.160

Needless to say, the point of this comment is not praise of the Franks; it is to contrast the efficacy of the Jewish communal networks who provided for nameless Frankish captives against the failure of this woman’s relatives (including the recipient of the letter) to provide for her and her children, their flesh and blood.161

What we learn from this letter, then, is that many captives still remained in Frankish hands a few years after the fall of Jerusalem. They were alive. The Jewish communities of Syria were still providing for them. The Franks had not killed them for killing’s sake—they were waiting to ransom them.

We also learn that refugees from Syria’s interior like the women in our letter sought sanctuary in Syria’s ports. While this letter does not help us define the scale of such internal flight, it does identify the factors that made such intra-Syrian migration attractive to refugees—namely, that these locations allowed them to maintain the social, professional and familial networks that they had relied on in their former homes.

Those Who Never Left: Syrian Jews and the Frankish Conquest of the Levantine Ports

It seems, then, there is a high probability that many of the Syrians “missing” from the charity documents had sought refuge within Syria itself. But what happened when these ports themselves fell

160 Westminster Frag. Cairens., r. ll. 4-7. 161 Cohen identifies this trope of the deserving and undeserving petitioner as a common one endemic to private petitioners. It also emphasizes the hierarchy of obligations to provide charity: first, one’s family; second, people from one’s town; and third, foreigners. That said, as our petitioner (understandably) fails to mention, in the case of redeeming captives (pidyon shevuyyim), the obligation is first and foremost to save the life of those held in captivity. See Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 88-95. 73 into Crusader hands? That is, were these populations spared the travails of the First Crusade only to be slaughtered when the Franks renewed their campaigns against Tripoli, Tyre and Acre? Or did the populations flee once again, perhaps to Fustat and Damascus, the cities that hosted the largest Jewish communities in the region with whom they had long-standing commercial and familial ties?

Chroniclers’ descriptions of the siege of Jerusalem are derivative of biblical accounts, emphasize the trope of slaughter as either consecration (Christian) or desecration (Muslim) and are altogether uninterested in the experiences of the Syrian people except as objects of said slaughter. As a result, these chronicles pose impossible challenges to the reader seeking to derive even the most basic factual information about this population. Even when they do provide some details about the

Syrian populace, these descriptions are contradictory to the point of parody. For instance, in recounting the capture of Tripoli in 1109, we learn that either the Franks killed many or most of the city's people (Fulcher of Chartres); or they enslaved them (Ibn al-Qalānisī); or they expelled them

(Albert of Aachen); or they let them choose whether to stay or leave (William of Tyre).162

We are fortunate, then, to have another type of source—The Journey of Ibn Jubayr (Riḥlat Ibn

Jubayr)—that discusses this period, ostensibly on the basis of eyewitness testimony. The testimony was taken decades after the events themselves occurred, which means it is subject to the frailties of human memory. But this distance from the original events also allows the speaker and his interviewer to be more dispassionate about the period. In this context, the obfuscation resulting from the

162 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, 1095-1127, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), 531-533; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan Edington (Oxford, 2007), xi: 13; William of Tyre, Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1986), 11:10; Ibn al-Qalānisī, Taʾrīkh Dimashq, 163/89; and Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, X: 137. 74 ideological agendas of the conquest-era sources gives way to reveal a different lens on how Syrians experienced conquest.

In 1182, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Jubayr al-Kinānī, scribe (kātib) of the Almohad governor of Granada, passed through Latin Tyre on his pilgrimage to Mecca. The Iberian courtier spoke with

Muslims in the region about their experiences living in the Crusader states. Ibn Jubayr’s zealous commitment to the anti-dhimmī practice of the Almohads did not prevent him from expressing open admiration for how the Franks treated Muslims and how similar their institutions were to those of

Islamic states.163 He also records the existence of substantial Muslim communities in Tyre and the agricultural regions of Palestine that he visits.

When Ibn Jubayr visited Tyre, he met with an old man who could tell him about the fall of the city to the Franks in 1124—the last major stronghold to fall into Christian hands until the surrender of

Ascalon in 1153. He writes:

In other words, according to Ibn Jubayr, the Franks captured Tyre after agreeing to allow the civilians of the city to leave. It is not clear if all Muslims left the city at this time. In any case, among those who left, many chose to return because of their love of their homeland (ḥubb al-waṭan) under an assurance

163 Ian Richard Netton, “Basic Structures and Signs of Alienation in the Riḥlah of Ibn Jubayr,’” Journal of Arabic Literature 2 no.1 (March 1991), 21-37. 164 Ibid., 306-7. 75 of protection (amān). The most logical reason for the Franks’ decision, as will be discussed elsewhere, was their recognition of the economic utility of maintaining the region’s indigenous population.

The populace of Tyre, then, at least according to Ibn Jubayr’s witness, was not subject to systematic slaughter. Nor is there any reason to assume that this situation was unique to

Tyre. On the contrary, even Prawer noted that there was a similar situation at Sidon, hypothesizing that there was a change in Frankish policy ca. 1110 in which they turned from systematic slaughter.165 Prawer is right that there is firm documentary evidence that the non-

Christian populations of Sidon, Tyre and Ascalon never faced expulsion or systemic massacres. I have found no evidence that the populations of al-Lādhiqiyyah (1103), Acre (1104),

Tripoli (1109) or any of the other Syrian ports (besides possibly Beirut) were subject to massacres either.166

A document from less than a decade after the Crusader conquest of Acre confirms that there was a substantial Jewish population there with its own slaughterhouse, cantor and two figures competing for the position of muqaddam, that is, municipal leader.167 We will discuss this document in detail below, but for now I will only note that it is clear that there is still a substantial Jewish community in Acre with established institutions and ongoing connections to their coreligionists in Egypt.168 In other words, the First Crusade undoubtedly

165 Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 93-4 166 On Beirut, see T-S 13J15.10 discussed in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 295 and Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 43. The letter discusses a siege in which Beiruti Jews and foreign Jewish merchants residing in their city were ostensibly slaughtered after a siege. Goitein ascribed it to the period of the First Crusade, but the identity of the people besieging the city is not mentioned. 167 T-S 18J3.5. See Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 302-305; and Gil, Palestine, 3: 511-514 (Doc. #599) 168 See below, pp. 209-212. 76 led to the flight of Jews from the Syrian interior; however, most of Jews in the Syrian ports remained in their homes and provided the necessary communal contacts for the Jews from the Syrian interior to reestablish themselves in the coastal region. Both groups seem to have remained in those regions after the fall of those ports to the Franks.

Conclusion

The last chapter argued that a close reading of Genizah documents that is sensitive to how their authors deploy biblical typology demonstrates that the majority of Syria’s Jews survived the First Crusade. Among the survivors, some, especially those from Jerusalem and perhaps other regions of the Palestinian interior, left their homes.

This chapter first showed how Syrians placed a disproportionate burden on the charity institutions of the Fustat Jewish community for decades before the Crusaders arrived.

This was a fact long known to Genizah scholars, but the quantitative analysis presented here, as well as the research of Ackerman-Lieberman, provides a new lens on these Syrians, suggesting that there was an increase in the proportion of Syrian names on the lists in the aftermath of the Seljuq invasions. No such influx is evident in the charitable documents from after the First Crusade. Given the long-standing contacts between Syria and Egypt and Syria’s ready recourse to Egyptian refuge and charitable support in the past, this evidence suggests that most Syrians did not flee abroad in the wake of the Crusader invasions.

The chapter then turned to anecdotal evidence from the Genizah for where the refugees did go. The documents contextualize why a refugee would have chosen to seek sanctuary in Syria’s ports, namely, because of their high walls, economic opportunities and

77 historic ties—both family and commercial—to the refugees. Over the quarter century following the fall of Jerusalem, these ports fell into Frankish hands as well. Yet, as the last section argued—and unlike during the conquest of Jerusalem—there is no evidence to suggest there was a wide scale slaughter or exodus of Jews from the ports as a result of these conquests. In all likelihood, both the refugees and the original populations that lived in the ports comprised the Syrian Jewish communities of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

This population was little different from the people who had occupied these cities before the Crusade. They were Arabic speakers who had longstanding ties to the Fatimid court; business partners in Egypt, Syria and Sicily; and religious authorities in Iraq, Egypt, and

Islamic Syria (the yeshivah of Palestine, now in Damascus). But they now faced the challenge of adapting to a new regime in their post-conquest society and changes to their communities’ demographics in the face of new ties between Palestine and the Christian West.

1.3 An Islamicate Society: Emigration, Immigration and the Jews in the Latin Kingdom (1124-1291)

The Jewish population of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem did not, of course, remain static during the subsequent two centuries of Christian rule—there was constant immigration to and emigration from the region as was common among Mediterranean populations.169 A minority of

Jewish migrants relocated for ideological reasons—i.e., to make pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Others came for the economic opportunities in the reinvigorated Latin ports or because of the Latin kings’ relatively benign treatment of their minority population.170

How, then, did the demographics of the Jewish population of Syria change in the aftermath of the Crusader conquests and the change to a Latin Christian, monarchical regime? What language(s) did most Jews in the Crusader states speak and use for written texts? What professions did they practice? Where did they live and why? The answers to these questions are critical to the study of the adaptation of Jewish communal institutions in the subsequent chapters of this dissertation.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of why scholars to this point have focused almost exclusively on the European rabbinic elite of the Levantine Jewish communities, implying (or explicitly stating) that this population constituted the majority of the Jews resident in the Crusader states. Then, it turns to the evidence from the Genizah documents for Near Eastern Jews living in and migrating to Latin Syria. The evidence demonstrates ongoing immigration from the Islamic world to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Turning to the Kingdom of Acre sources, it contends that Jews outside of

Latin Syria viewed Syrian Jews as Islamicate in terms of their approach to rationalism; that a

169 Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 342-400. 170 See below, chs. 2.1, 3.3 and 4.2. 79 substantial majority of the Jews in even the most “Latinized” sections of ports like Tyre and Acre remained Arabic speakers; that these Arabic speakers included financial elites such as doctors, merchants and money-lenders, as well as traders, dyers, peddlers and glass-producers; and that the predominance of Arabic-speaking, Islamicate Jews remained until the fall of Acre in 1291.

The next section turns to so-called European Jewish migrants to the Crusader states—and especially, Latin Acre—in the mid to late thirteenth century. It illustrates how Castilian and even some northern French/German rabbis came to represent a disproportionately large number of the rabbinic elite in the Crusader ports. However, it maintains that they remained a relatively small proportion of the Jewish community, functioning in a context in which the lingua franca of their community—both in terms of the language of the street and of Jewish institutions like battei din

(rabbinic courts)—was Arabic. It concludes that when we read the non-rabbinic sources in dialogue with the rabbinic texts, it becomes clear that most of the Jews of Latin Syria were Arabic speakers with close cultural, religious and economic ties to the Jews of the surrounding Muslim-held regions.

The Europeanization/Rabbinization Narrative and its Lacunae

A number of studies have addressed the immigration of European Jewish rabbis to Latin Syria.

Three factors make these migrants attractive to historical study. First, as previously discussed, the study of the Outremer has long been considered the purview of Europeanists, including the few works of Jewish history on this society.171 Second, and more importantly, the European migrants of the

171 Carole Hillenbrand observed the tendency among scholars of the Islamic world to defer to Latinists and Byzantinists in the context of Crusader studies. See Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 1-2. Even a brief glance at the bibliography below reveals that this trend is evident in studies of Jews in the region as well, as most extant studies have examined European Jewish migrants to the Crusader states, not the status of Arabic-speaking Jews. 80 thirteenth century counted among their number some of the most prominent Jewish scholars of the

Middle Ages—Naḥmanides, the students of Rav Yeḥiʾel of Paris and even Isaac of Acre all produced texts that are critical to studies of medieval rabbinics, Jewish-Christian relations and even Jewish social history.172 Third, these migrants ostensibly173 came for ideological rather than mundane economic/political/social reasons: They wanted to be in the Holy Land, the only place where many of the commandments (miṣvot) could be observed and where they believed the messianic Jewish kingdom would be established. This made their narrative particularly attractive to scholars of rabbinics and Jewish intellectual history, and also held a special appeal to Zionist historians— including Prawer—who focused on the commitment of Jews to living in the Land of Israel.174

As a result of this disproportionate attention, the only monograph on this community, as well as most academic articles, assume that Europeans came to constitute the majority of the Jewish community of cities like Acre.175 This picture of a self-sustaining community of rabbinic elites functioning autonomously from Christian society and Jewish economic/political elites was endemic to medieval Jewish histories until relatively recently. They emphasized the centrality of rabbinic thought and rabbinic power—an inaccurate picture both because rabbinic scholars were rarely only

172 See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 149-168; Uri Shachar, “Dialogical Warfare: Figurations of Pious Belligerence among Christian, Muslim and Jewish Authors in the Crusading Near East,” (PhD. diss, University of Chicago, 2014), 171-233; Elchanan Reiner, “Aliyyah ve-aliyyah,” 50-90. 173 In reality, as we will see, another consideration was that Latin Palestine lay beyond the political reach of the anti-Jewish mendicants, nobles and kings then active in France and Castile. See below, ch. 2.1. 174 On two views of how Prawer’s commitment to Zionism shaped his scholarship on the Crusader states, see Ellenblum, Crusader Castles, 57-59; and MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Latin World, 16-18. As Elchanan Reiner told me at a recent conference, his dissertation is among the most popular in the National Library of Israel since it tells the story of the Aliyah of European rabbis—reinforcing a nationalist discourse that seeks the roots of Jewish political and religious ambitions to return to the Land of Israel in the premodern era. 175 Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 273-275. He writes: “In the second quarter of the thirteenth century, the Jewish community of Acre settled down; one has the impression that it became ‘westernized’, in that the leading men of the community were now of European origin.” Leading men here refers to rabbis, as is clear in the following paragraphs. 81 rabbinic scholars (they were also merchants, bankers, etc.) and because they relied on the financial and political support of the greater community.176

Unstated in this theory is the assumption that Arabophone Jews fled from Latin Syria to the surrounding regions of the Islamic world. It is impossible, of course, to determine if the net migration to or from Syria was negative or positive, but we do know that Jewish migrants came from the Arab world to Latin Syria. The Arabophone migrants, with few exceptions, left behind no literary works.177

Most of those whom we will be able to identify were economic migrants, whose experiences are available only because the Genizah documents survive. This evidence is extremely choppy. But it is sufficient to demonstrate that there is no evidence for a massive influx of Europeans to the Levant, nor of an exodus from Latin Syria to the surrounding Islamic world.

Arabophone Migrants and Jewish Demographics in the Kingdom of Jerusalem

In the immediate aftermath of the First Crusade, it would be logical to infer—though evidence is lacking—that the incentive to emigrate from Latin Syria would be strong. But, as demonstrated in subsequent chapters, the economy recovered and political stability returned in relatively short order.178

In fact, the first document to refer to possible Arabic-speaking migrants to the Crusader states is the letter from Latin Acre ca. 1110 mentioned above. Recall that Acre had fallen to the Franks a mere

176 Marina Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” 289-318. 177 There are a few surviving literary works from the Crusader states that Arabic pilgrims composed, including the travel account called Sefer Qabbalat Ṣadiqei Ereṣ Yisrael by Yinaḥesh ben ha-Ḥaver and the famous polemic of Yehudah al-Ḥarizi, the Taḥkemoni (though there is some debate over whether the latter visited all the places he wrote about). Moses Maimonides, who lived in Acre for around a year, was, of course, a prolific writer, and briefly discusses his time in Acre in his Commentary on Rosh ha-Shanah. See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 141-142; 176-184; 227-230. 178 See below, chapter 4.2. 82 six years prior to this letter’s composition. In that letter, the unnamed author, a local leader

(muqaddam), is competing with another Jew (Ibn al-Qāsh) for authority over the community. He mentions that a group of Jewish shell fishermen from Alexandria are supporters of his opponent.

These migrant workers seem to have come to Acre for economic opportunity and then become embroiled in the dispute between the two claimants.179 Whether they in fact resettled in Acre is unclear, but they had taken up at least temporary residence in the port.180

From the 1130s or 1140s, we have further anecdotal evidence of Jews from Islamic lands choosing to immigrate to Latin Syria. In one document from the correspondence of the prominent

Egyptian merchant, Ḥalfon b. Natanʾel, we learn that Ḥalfon’s nephew, Abū al-Faḍl, and his wife were expected among a group of trader associates en route to Alexandria from Acre.181 The fact that Abū al-

Faḍl’s wife was staying with him in Tyre suggests that he had been residing in the city for some time, since itinerant merchants rarely traveled with their families.182 He was most likely a permanent resident there.

A letter from the 1160s offers another instance of such migration. Peraḥya Yijū, of the banū

Yijū of Sicily, wrote to Abū al-Fakhr b. al-Amshāṭī, “splendor of the merchants” (peʾer ha-soḥrim), in

Fustat.183 Peraḥya was a judge (dayyan) in the Egyptian town of Maḥallah al-Kubrá, but life was hard

179 T-S 18 J3.5. See Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, pp. 302-5; and Gil, Palestine, 3: 511-4 (Doc. #599), ll. 35-7. 180 Goitein suggest that they were peripatetic and following their prey—I find this point convincing, although it is clear that they had substantial enough ties to the city to be involved in local politics. See ibid., 304. 181 T-S 8 J 21.7, ll. 8-11 ed. in Frenkel, The Compassionate and Benevolent, 435-436, doc. 44. The date when the letter was written is not indicated, but there is an extended correspondence between Abū Naṣr b. Ibrāhīm and Ḥalfon b. Netanʾel from the Genizah dating to the early 1130s to the early 1140s We may posit, then, that this document also came from this period. This letter, as Frenkel notes, is an addendum to a text that has not survived. 182 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:339. 183 This title is how Peraḥya addresses Ibn al-Amshāṭī in another letter, T-S 8J20.25 l.5, ed. in S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Book III: Avraham Ben Yiju, Trader and Manufacturer (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad ben Zvi and the Rabbi David and Amalia Rosen Foundation, 2010) 3: 386-388 (doc. C. 55). Also available online at the PGP. 83 there; he was unable to leave the city since he had to care for his young wife. “Were it not for the little girl,” Perahya writes Ibn al-Amshātī, “I would move to Sicily or Levant.”184 Perahya, frustrated with his predicament, dreamed of starting a new life in either Sicily—the island from which his family came and a state whose capital city, Palermo, was the wealthiest metropolis in Latin Europe—or the

Levant—all of whose major commercial centers were in Frankish hands.185

But were the Jews who do not appear in the Genizah documents from this period Arabic speaking and culturally Islamicate? For the answer to that question we have to turn to the near contemporary responsa (teshuvot) that the Egypt-based scholar Maimonides sent to R. Efrayim of Tyre and, after the rabbi’s death, to his students. This correspondence took place roughly between the late

1160s and 1180. The legal questions (halakhic sheʾelot) are all written in Judaeo-Arabic. So are all of

Maimonides responses. These include the questions and answers sent after the death of R. Efrayim sometime in the late 1170s.186

The significance of this language choice bears stating: Efrayim, according to Maimonides’ eulogy, was the most prominent scholar in the land of Israel (though, considering Maimonides’ low opinion of the quality of scholarship outside Egypt, Iberia and Northern France, that is not much of a compliment).187 Benjamin of Tudela also indicates that R. Efrayim was a leader of the Jews of Tyre.188

184 Peraḥya refers to his wife as his cousin—my thanks to Eve Krakowski who pointed out she is both the former and the latter. See ENA 4020.1, margin l. 4, ed. in Goitein and Friedman, India Book III, Doc. C52, pp. 381-5. See English translation in S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages (New York: Brill, 2007), 775-9. 185 See Alex Metcalfe, “The Muslims of Sicily Under Christian Rule,” in The Society of Norman Italy, eds. Graham A. Loud and Alex Metcalfe (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 289-321 (289); ibid., margins ll. 6-9. 186 Moshe b. Maimon, Responsa of Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew), 3 vols. ed. Joshua Blau (Jerusalem, 1957), 204- 86; 593. 187 Bodl. OR. 10806, ll. 6-9, ed. in Moshe b. Maimon (Maimonides), Iggerot ha-RaMBaM, ed. Itzhaq Shailat (Maʾaleh Adumim, 1995), 193-4. .(and 20 (in English ל ,Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary 188 84

Since Efrayim and, as far as we can tell, all his students, read (and assumedly spoke) Arabic, it seems clear that the language remained the lingua franca of Latin Tyre’s Jews. This evidence, in turn, suggests that whatever immigration and emigration had occurred, the Jewish population of the city remained predominantly Arabophone.

Moreover, their cultural reference for Efrayim and his students was Islamicate. This is evident in the way Efrayim asks questions like, “Concerning x matter with regard to the non-Jews (al-goyim) and the uncircumcised (al-ʿarelim)…”189 That is, for Rabbi Ephraim c. 1170, the very term non-Jew (goy) was assumed to refer to Muslims, not to Christians (here, designated as “the uncircumcised”). In other words, because the majority of Tyre’s Jews were descendants or immigrants from Jews of Muslim- majority regions, that reality shaped their mental framework despite the fact that they now lived in a

Christian-dominated society (though the majority of their Christian neighbors would have been

Arabic speakers).190

A profile of Latin Tyre in the 1170s

By the time Peraḥya Yijū wrote his letter, Genizah merchants and rabbinic scholars were hardly the only people who recognized that the Syrian littoral had come into its own. Two notable pilgrims and travel writers of the late-twelfth century—the Aragonese Jew Benjamin of Tudela and the Andalusī Muslim Muḥammad Ibn Jubayr—visited the coast of the Latin Levant during this period.

They left their impressions of the region’s port cities and their peoples in their respective travel accounts. These writers’ descriptions, read in conjunction with the analysis of the letters examined

189 Maimonides, Teshuvot ha-RaMBaM, 148. 190 MacEvitt, Christian World of the East, 97-98. 85 above, provide a broader lens on the numbers, professions and origins of the Arabic-speaking populations of the Latin ports.

Frankish Tyre has not received the attention afforded Acre, its sister port twenty-five miles to the south, in histories of the Crusader states. But it is Tyre that both Ibn Jubayr and Benjamin of

Tudela suggest was the economic and cultural capital of the Arabophone residents of the Latin Levant

(and perhaps for their non-resident, coreligionist business partners). Benjamin of Tudela writes:

New Tyre is a wonderful city…There is no harbor like hers in all the world.191 The city is beautiful and contains 500 Jewish (individuals or families), among them scholars of Talmud. … The Jews there own their own ships (ve-yesh la-yehudim sham sefinot ba- yam). … This is new Tyre: a city of trade to which people come from every place.192 Among the Jews are craftsmen of fine glass (umanei zekhukhit ha-ṭov), called “Tyrian glass,” an important (ha-ḥashuv) product in every land (be-kol ha-arṣot). There is also found there good quality sugar that is grown (in the city’s vicinity). People come from every land (mi-kol ha-arṣot) to buy it.193

Benjamin’s Muslim contemporary, Ibn Jubayr, draws explicit comparisons between Tyre and Acre. He traveled in the opposite direction from Benjamin, from Acre to Tyre and writes:

(Acre) is the cornerstone (qāʿidah, lit. “base”) of the Frankish cities in Levant … a port of call for all ships, its magnitude (ʿiẓamiha) is similar to Constantinople’s. It is the focus of ships and caravans and the meeting-place of Muslim and Christian merchants from all regions. … Unbelief and impiousness there burn fiercely, and pigs and crosses are everywhere.194

He then writes of Tyre: (Tyre’s) houses are larger and more spacious (than Acre’s). The situation of the Muslims in this city is easier and more peaceful. Acre is a town at once bigger, more impious, and

191 Ṣor ha-ḥadash, “New Tyre,” as opposed to the Biblical city whose remnants were underwater but still visible to medieval observers. .My translation .ל ,Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary 192 .My translation differs significantly from Adler’s on p.18 of idem .ל ,.Ibid 193 .לא ,.Ibid 194 86

more unbelieving. …The port of Tyre is more perfect, more beautiful, and more animated.195

What is the role that these two cities play in Benjamin’s and Ibn Jubayr’s narratives? What might their function in these narratives tell us about the character of the people who comprised their populations? In order to answer these questions, we must first consider how each author’s ideological commitments inform their portrayals.196

Benjamin’s Itinerary is a triumphalist narrative that emphasizes the strength of the Jewish diaspora. In this light, he portrays a Jewish leader in Baghdad as a figure analogous to an omnipotent

Muslim caliph and depicts Jews in central Asia and eastern Syria as engaged in (almost certainly fictious) military conflicts with their non-Jewish foes.197 The message Benjamin seeks to convey is that the “[s]cepter shall not depart from Judah” (Genesis 49:10)—that is, that Jews are not a beleaguered, powerless minority, but a community with significant economic, political and even military sway.

They are not subservient to their Muslim and Christian neighbors, but their equals.198 Ibn Jubayr’s

Riḥlah, on the other hand, stresses the show the corruption of governments in the Islamic East to

195 Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 303 ll. 6-10; ll. 304, ll. 12-15, 305 l. 11. See the translation in Ronald Broadhurst (ed.), The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), 321. My translation differs slightly from Broadhurst’s. 196 “Emplotment” refers to “the “process of exclusion, stress and subordination of sources” that underlie every narrative work. See White, Metahistory, 6. 197 Arnold Franklin discusses Benjamin’s attempts to draw parallels between the caliph and the exilarch (the head of the diaspora, resident in Baghdad). See Franklin, This Noble House: Jewish Descendants of King David in the Medieval Islamic East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 1-2; 5-8. Benjamin’s description of the exilarch can be found in ;trans., 31 ,מח :trans. 35-42; Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, Palmyra in eastern Syria ,נד-סד ,Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary .trans, 59-62 פג-פח :and Central Asia 198 This verse and its promise of both immediate worldly, as well as future, messianic power was central to Jewish-Christian polemics. In the context of such debates, Jews asserted their ongoing connection to the prophetic promise of redemption. The verse also informed internal Jewish politics in the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds in the form of Jewish Davidic descendants claiming local authority. For the relevance of this verse to Jews in Christendom, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Toward a History of Jewish Hope,” in The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushlmi and the Writing of Jewish History, eds. David Meyers and Alexander Kaye (Waltham: Brandeis UP, 2013), 299-318, esp. 307; originally published as “Un Champ à Anathoth: Vers une histoire de l’espoir juif,” Esprit 104/105 (1985), 24-38. For the Islamicate context, see Franklin, This Noble House, 5-8. 87 emphasize, by contrast, the virtues of his patrons, the Almohads of Iberia.199 He praises the Crusader states and the position of Muslims in order to further emphasize the failings of contemporary Muslim rulers whose Muslim citizens are in a worse state than their coreligionists living under the infidel.200

For Benjamin, Latin Tyre is an exemplar of this message and accounts for why the city receives such disproportionate attention in the Itinerary.201 Benjamin’s Tyre not only contains the largest Jewish community of any port on the Levantine coast, but also has an elite of wealthy Jewish ship owners at a time when only exceptionally affluent merchants could own their own ships.202

Furthermore, even the modest laborers among the population, the glass producers, are praised for the quality and importance of their craft. He also seems to imply that Jews take part in the production or sale of high quality sugar—another prestige item. 203 Finally, Latin Tyre’s Jews provide the fiscal resources to encourage Talmud study. As such, Benjamin depicts Tyre’s Jewish community as marrying financial success and rabbinic scholarship—an ideal that enabled the emergence of local

199 Hence he writes of the corruption of Islam in the Hijāz: “May God soon remedy this in a cleansing which will remove these ruinous heresies from the Muslims with the swords of the Almohads, who are the Followers of the Faith, the Party of God, the People of Truth…Let there be absolutely no shadow of doubt about the fact that there is no Islam except in the lands of the West (i.e., the lands where the Almohads rule).” See Broadhurst, Ibn Jubayr, 18. This passage is discussed in Ian R Netton, “Basic Structures and Signs,” 21-37. 200 Ibn Jubayr writes of Muslims living under Frankish rule along the roads to Tibnīn: “(These) Muslims complain of the tyranny of their own kind (i.e., of other Muslims) and praise the conduct of their Frankish enemy.” Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 275. See Netton, “Basic Structures,” 36. over twice the space allocated to ,(לא and ל ,The description of Tyre takes up nearly an entire manuscript page (Adler 201 other Levantine port cities. Acre receives about 1/3 of a page and Haifa and Ashkelon get approximately ½ a page each (including, for the latter, extensive Biblical references). 202 According to Moshe Gil, only one of the Palestinian Jews mentioned in his corpus of 619 Palestine-related Genizah documents from the Islamic era owned his own ship. See Gil, Palestine, 250 n. 26. 203 While Benjamin does not explicitly mention that Jews were involved in sugar production, we know from the Catholicos Gregory Bar Hebraeus’s Chronicon that Jews were active in bringing sugar to the ports of the Syrian coast. See Gregory Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, trans. Ernest A. Wallis Budge (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1932) 1:342. The point of the anecdote in which this point appears is to convey a pro-Ayyubid message affirming that Saladin was a just ruler: the sultan ultimately forces his followers to return the Jew’s goods, even though the he is a member of that most despised religious group (per Bar Hebraeus)—Jews. Yet the specifics of the story aside, there is no reason to assume that Bar Hebraeus would have used a fabricated phenomenon (i.e., that there were Arabophone Jewish merchants actively plying this routes at this period, carrying sugar) as the background for a story serving his ideological agenda. 88

Jewish centers of study across the medieval world.204 Moreover, Benjamin’s audience would not have failed to appreciate the vindicating irony that Tyre—a symbol in the Hebrew Bible of sin (especially of idolatry and hedonism), as well as of non-Jewish military might—had become by the mid-twelfth century a “new” center of Jewish life.205

In contrast, for Ibn Jubayr, Tyre serves as an example of a different kind of (non-Almohad)

Muslim failure: here Muslims are treated well and mix easily with their Christian neighbors, even attending each other’s weddings.206 This convivencia is not a constructive development, but an indication of moral decay, as Muslims who mix with Christians are more susceptible to temptation

(fitnah) which may lead to perdition (i.e., conversion).207 If Muslim rulers were more cognizant of their responsibilities, Ibn Jubayr implies, other Muslims would never choose to live in Christian territory where they could be exposed to hedonism and idolatry (Christianity).208

What Ibn Jubayr’s and Benjamin of Tudela’s portrayals of Tyre have in common is that they both depict the city as an economic emporium that hosts an eclectic array of interregional figures and

204 In his The Emergence of the Local. Ben-Sasson demonstrates how this process worked in the context of the North African city of Qayrawan. The trends he describes (wealthy merchants facilitating relationships between rabbinic elites) mirror many of the patterns we will see in Latin Tyre and Acre over the next three chapters. 205 While Hiram, king of Tyre, was an ally of the Israelite kings David and Solomon (see 2 Samuel 5:11; 1 Kings 5: 8-11; 2 Chronicle 2:16), the city subsequently became associated with pagan vice and the figure of Jezebel, wife of Ahab, king of Israel, and daughter of the King of Tyre, Ethbaal (see especially 1 Kings 16-21; 2 Kings 9). Subsequently, the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel (7th cent. BCE), portray Tyre as the Israelites’ prototypical enemy, doomed to destruction. It is this narrative that has resonated most in the rabbinic tradition. See Ezekiel 26-28 and Jeremiah 27. 206 The wedding in Tyre is described in Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 305, ll. 15-20 and 306, ll. 1-10. 207 Fitnah, as Netton discusses, can mean either “temptation” or “civil strife.” It is the term used to describe the early wars that divided the followers of Muḥammad in the generations after his death. Ibn Jubayr consistently employs this term when describing actions by Christians that could lead to the conversion of Muslims in the Crusader states and Norman Sicily. See Netton, “Basic Structures,” 36. 208 Ibn Jubayr explicitly states that “[t]here can be no excuse in the eyes of God for a Muslim to stay in any infidel country, save when passing through it (Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 307; Broadhurst, Ibn Jubayr, 321-322).” Despite this statement, implicit in his broader critique is that those who remain in Christian lands have good reasons to do so: they are doing well fiscally and have the benefit of responsible governance—something that Ibn Jubayr believes is lacking in many Muslim lands. 89 thriving Arabic-speaking communities. The international figures that populate Tyre include foreign merchants and Talmud scholars. The Jews in the city are not vassals of wealthy, non-Jewish patrons but owners of their own ships, capable of directing their own enterprises.

These accounts tell us both why Arabic-speaking Jews would have continued to live in Latin

Tyre and why their regional coreligionists would have immigrated there—namely, the Latin-

Christians’ relatively benevolent treatment of minorities and the economic opportunities in the region’s ports. We also get some insights into the occupations of some of the residents (glass production and trade).209 When read in conjunction with Rabbi Efrayim’s Judeo-Arabic sheʿelot, we see that while this community lived under Latin rule in a city populated with figures from across the northern Mediterranean, its Jewish community embraced Islamicate norms and continued to speak and write in Arabic.

Arabic-speaking Migrants and Jewish Demographics in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291)

The impact of Saladin’s conquest in 1187-88 and the subsequent restoration of the Levantine coast to Latin Christian hands from 1189-1192 were not as devastating to the local Levantine populations as the First Crusade of 1098-1100 had proven, or even as the Mamluk campaigns of 1291 would prove to be. The conquests were nevertheless detrimental to both Levantine and foreign merchants intent on trading in the Syrian ports in the years immediately following. The two decades

209 Benjamin states this demographic fact explicitly by declaring that there are 200 Jewish (families) in Acre and 500 in Tyre. Ibn Jubayr notes that there were a number of mosques in Tyre (he stayed in “a mosque in Tyre and [the local Muslims] have others” (wa-lahum fī-hā masājid ākhar, see Riḥlah, 306, l. 14-15). In Acre, he implies there are not any mosques left in Muslim hands (though he does mention the corner of a mosque that had been turned into a church where foreign (ghurābāʾ) Muslims could pray). See Rihlah, pp. 303 l. 13-14). This incongruity suggests that while Tyre had a substantial resident Muslim population, Acre did not. 90 of relative silence from the Genizah corpus (1190-1210) reflect this reality. This silence suggests not only that the economic impact of the conquests (both Ayyubid and then Crusader) was not inconsequential, but also that there was not the kind of unrestrained violence that accompanied the other conquests.210 Such actions would have led to a massive exodus of refugees who would have left a trail in the sources. 211 Saladin likely recognized the economic utility of the local populations remaining in the Levantine ports and thus acted to mitigate the suffering of the Arabophone populations of the conquered cities. The Latin-Christian leaders of the Third Crusade and the local Christian elite seem to have shared the same pragmatic concerns as Saladin with regard to maintaining the local

Arabophone populations. They therefore spared these groups the worst of conquest.

If evidence of Jewish emigration from or immigration to the Kingdom of Jerusalem is choppy, it becomes even more so after the Battle of Ḥattīn and the reestablishment of the so-called Kingdom of Acre (See Appendix 1, Figures 4, 5 and 6). One community of Syrian Jews that we do know about during this period are the Jews’ of Ayyubid Jerusalem, who were allowed to move to the city when it returned to Muslim hands in 1187. The reason we know about this group is first, because Jerusalem was an economic backwater and migrants who moved for ideological/religious reasons could not sustain themselves without outside donations; second, they have received extensive coverage in scholarship. They are relevant to this chapter because their community dissolved in 1219 after al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam had ordered the city’s walls destroyed and left its population exposed to invaders.212 The

210 It is worth mentioning in this context that a document Goitein identified in his examination of the Crusader period, which notes Saladin annulling an exceptional tax placed on Jewish and Christian merchants, makes no specific mention of trade in al-Sham. See T-S 13J26.22, partially edited and discussed in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 296-8. 211 See the discussion above on refugees on charity lists above, pp. 65-68. 212 R. Stephen Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-1260 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977),164-165. On the Jewish community’s exodus see Benjamin Z. Kedar, "The Jews of Jerusalem, 1187-1267, 91

Franks expelled the few remaining non-Christians when they retook the city in 1229. We know that some of the European rabbis who had settled in Jerusalem fled to Acre. 213 We know less about the

Yemenite and Syrian Jews who had settled in Ayyubid Jerusalem.

A Letter from Acre in the 1190s: A Profile of Migrants to the New Crusader Capital

While Jerusalem became a center of scholarship only to then become a ghost town, Acre rose to be the political capital of the Crusader states and remained so even when the Latin forces retook

Jerusalem (1229-1244). As such, Acre’s evolving economy demanded state servants, including physicians, as well as goods to supply the local peoples and new elites.214 One letter from around 1195 concerning a young physician who passed away in Acre in the early 11190s mentions other figures residing in that city including a physician, an upwardly mobile dyer and a scholar—at least two of whom were immigrants from Egypt.215

This letter is one of several that survives in the Genizah that involve members of a prominent family of physicians whose paterfamilias, the judge and physician Eliyyahu b. Zekhariyah, had three sons: Raḍī, Abū Zikrī and Shelomo Abū al-Barakat. After Saladin dissolved the Latins Christians’ ban on Muslims (and Jews) residing in Jerusalem, Eliyyahu’s family moved to the city.216 Subsequently, the brothers scattered while their father remained in Jerusalem.

and the Role of Nahmanides in the Re-Establishment of their Community," (Hebrew) in Peraḳim be-toldot Yerushalayim bi- yemei ha-beinayim (Jerusalem: Yad Yiṣḥaq ben Ṣvi, 1979), 122-136. 213 T-S 6, J3.26, edited and discussed in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 332-5. This document concerns a donation to help rebuild the synagogue of the Yemenites in Jerusalem. 214 On the economic rise of Acre, see chapters 3.2 and 3.3. 215 T-S 24.72, v. ll. 6-11, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 268-75. 216 Ibid., 321-2. 92

Abū Zikrī returned to Egypt and became the court physician of the Ayyubid claimant al-Malik al-‘Azīz (r. 1193-98).217 He wrote a letter to his father in Jerusalem around 1195, informing him of the death of his son (that is, Abū Zikrī’s brother), Raḍī. Raḍī died in Acre after being ill for over three months. A Yaʿaqov cared for Raḍī during his sickness. Abū Zikrī writes:

(Raḍī) fell sick for three months and he died on the 10th day of the (Hebrew month of) Marḥeshvan. He left his cloth (qumāshahu) with Yaʿaqov who was teaching the children of Abū al-Waḥsh al-Sabbāgh (the dyer) how to read. And (Raḍī) advised them to bury him—my dear one—in Haifa.218

Raḍī asked to be buried in Haifa—the most northern city considered part of the land of Israel, but

Yaʿaqov and his companions were unable to honor the request due to unexplained difficulties— perhaps related to the instability in the land even at this time. Instead, they buried him in Acre.219

What was Raḍī doing in Acre? Raḍī, we must remember, was an Arabophone Jew who had connections to the highest echelons of the Muslim Egyptian power structure. So why would he choose to travel to the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s new capital?

Goitein suggests that Raḍī may have been serving as a physician, the same profession that his father, brother and grandfather practiced.220 He may have (also) been a merchant—since the mention of textiles/cloth (qumāsh) in the midst of an otherwise dismal recollection of Raḍī’s suffering suggests

217 See the discussion of this family in Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 81-84; Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 321- 332. 218 T-S 24.72, v. ll. 6-11 219 T-S 24.72, r. margins, l. 4. Acre was considered outside the land of Israel by most rabbinic authorities at this time. This suggests that some factor must have prevented them from burying him in the holy land. On Acre’s status as outside the land of Israel, see below ch. 3.2, n. 121. 220 It was common in medieval Islamic Mediterranean societies for sons to take on their fathers’ professions. This is evident in communities of elites (merchants, physicians, etc.) as well as those of common tradesmen. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 244-5; for a broader view of this tendency among physicians in an Islamicate context see David Wasserstein, “Jewish Elites in al-Andalus,” in The Jews of Medieval Islam, ed. David Frank (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 101-110. Goitein suggests he was in the medical profession in Palestinian Jewry, 261. 93 that it was a significant enough collection to be worth retrieving on the family’s behalf (though textiles were often bequeathed as gifts in kind in dowries, etc., so the qumāsh may also not relate to his chosen profession).221

Who was this Yaʿaqov who was so well known to Eliyyahu and his son? We know he was an educated man as he was working as a tutor for an Abū al-Waḥsh. According to Goitein, most instructors were foreigners, who had been forced to flee their homes and therefore lost the capital necessary to enter other educated professions.222 Yaʿaqov may have been from Fustat or Jerusalem, the places where the family of Eliyyahu ha-Dayyan was most familiar, since Eliyyahu was familiar enough with him that his son did not have to provide him with any professional, geographic or familial modifier (nisbah). Teachers like Yaʿaqov were usually of middling means, receiving the average income of a worker appearing in the Genizah documents.223

The absent figure—Abū al-waḥsh—is called al-ṣabbāgh, i.e., “the dyer.” Those engaged in dye work were generally among the middling classes.224 Yet Abū al-Waḥsh appears to be a man of wealth, since the clear implication of the above passage is that he hired Yaʿaqov as a private tutor. Only the wealthy could afford such extravagance.225 This suggests that Abū al-Waḥsh may have owned his own dyeing workshop.226

221 T-S 24.72 v. l. 8, see, e.g., how clothe is bequeathed/negotiated in ENA 2727.18B l. 12; ENA 4011.5 l. 15; MOSS. VII,28 ll. 7-13. 222 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:188. 223 On the social and economic status of tutors and teachers in Genizah society, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:185- 90. 224 Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 59-63. Cohen notes that dyers appear both among the donors and recipients of charity. He specifically finds those with the nisbah “al-ṣabbāgh” on twenty-seven charity recipient lists and forty-six lists of contributors. 225 See ibid., 2:185-186. 226 On similarly wealthy “dyers” that were in fact manufacturers, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:88-9. 94

What is clear is that Abū al-Waḥsh was a permanent resident of Acre since Yaʿaqov was residing there to teach his children. He may have been from the city since, unlike Yaʿaqov, Abū Zikrī did use a professional nisbah (al-ṣabbāgh) to indicate to his father the specific identity of this Abū al-

Waḥsh—a common moniker that appears in at least thirteen other Genizah documents.227 What this letter suggests, then, is that only a few years after the Crusader conquests, Acre had become a place where local Syrians and Egyptians seeking both middling and elite employment went to pursue economic opportunity.228 That is, the migration of Arabic-speaking Jewish immigrants to the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued after the Third Crusade.

Avraham Maimonides and the Islamicate Jews of the Latin Levant

The evidence above is anecdotal. How, then, can we know whether the majority of Syrian Jews were in fact Arabic speakers with cultural and economic ties to the Islamic world? Fortunately,

Avraham Maimonides, the son of Moses Maimonides, in his Milḥamot ha-Shem (The Wars of the

Lord)—written ca. 1235—provides a more systematic characterization of the linguistic/cultural spheres of the Mediterranean Jewish world. The work is a defense of Moses Maimonides’ ideas concerning the non-corporeal nature of God and the necessity of analogic interpretations of the sections of Jewish holy texts whose plain meaning seemed to imply that the Creator has a body.

227 Based on a search of the digitized texts at the PGP (https://Genizah.princeton.edu/newpgp/). Note that these documents span a chronological period long exceeding that of one human lifetime—i.e., they must refer to several different individuals. 228 We know from the context of Maimonides, discussed in the opening of chapter 2.2, that the Crusader state leaders did request specific physicians for their personal entourages from the Arab world. 95

The specifics of this controversy will be discussed elsewhere. 229 What concerns us here is a remark Avraham Maimonides makes about the coalitions that represented the two sides

(Maimonidean vs. European and anti-Maimonidean). He offers the following explanation for the reason that anti-Maimonideans did not dare raise their voices in opposition against his father in the

Arabic-speaking world:

There is no doubt concerning all this (the nonmaterial nature of God and the allegorical readings of texts ascribing a body to God) among Jews residing in the lands of Ishmaʿel (i.e., the Jews living under the rule of Islam)—from its eastern to western borders. And even the Ishamelites accept this principle and built their religion on it… Word has come to us and our fathers that many overseas—residents of islands and far-off corners (of the world)—go astray on this important matter.230

Avraham claims here that all Jews living under Islam share his father’s conviction that God does not have a body—a position he explicitly associates with the fact that these Jews share norms with their

Muslim (Ishmaelite) neighbors. Note that the younger Maimonides’ claim here is specifically about shared Islamicate norms that transcend the political boundaries of individual Islamic states to encompass the entire dar al-Islām.

But were the mass of Jews living in the Crusader states included among the Islamicate faithful? Or were they, like the residents of the “far off corners of the world” (i.e., non-Mediterranean,

Ashkenazi Jews), simpletons who believed in the Lord’s corporeality? Avraham Maimonides writes:

…The faithful who are confused with regard to these fundamental principles from the lands of Iraq (ereṣ shinʿar), and East 231 (ve-qedem), Syria (sūriyā 232 ), the land of Israel/Palestine (ereṣ ha-ṣevi), Egypt and the Maghreb, are inconsequential because they are so few in number. If they reveal their secret (opposition to Maimonides), even

229 On the specifics of the controversy and the debate over Maimonidean thought, see chapter 4.2, pp. 291-299. 230 See Avraham Maimonides, Milḥamot ha-Shem, ed. Menaḥem b. Baruch (Vilna, 1821),3. The section provided above was adapted with minor changes from Rosner’s translation in The Wars of the Lord, 85. 231 Rosner argues this includes all lands east of Iraq up to India—that is, the known East. Ibid., 89, no. 102. 232 Avraham—either by mistake or by convention—uses the (Judeo-)Arabic (sūriyā) rather than the Hebrew (soryah). 96

before the untutored (ʿamei ha-areṣ), they become targets of scorn, dishonor and laughter…233

Avraham here delineates the geographic regions in which opponents of Maimonides are marginalized

(note that this contradicts his claim above that there were no opponents of Maimonides in the lands of Ishmael). All of these regions, with two exceptions, were then under Muslim rule: The major population centers of Palestine (ereṣ ha-ṣevi) and the preeminent ports of (lesser) Syria (sūriyā) were in the hands of Edom (Christians) rather than Ishmael.234 Nor was Avraham in any way ignorant of this fact: he was intimately involved a comtemporary communal controversy that ensnared both

Arabic-speaking and Latinate Jews.235

Avraham, then, explicitly includes Jews residing in the Latin Levant among the Islamicate

Jews to whom loyalty to his father’s memory is sacrosanct. It is important to note what this geography makes plain: the coalition is Islamicate, not Arabophone, which is why he includes lands east of

Iraq—including Jews speaking Farsi, Turkic tongues, etc.—among his father’s supporters. All these

Jews share the cultural norms (if not intellectual ones since the majority were uncouth ʿamei ha-areṣ), as well as awe and reverence for the family of Maimonides, endemic to regions under the rule of

Islam. Since Avraham acknowledges in this same work that there is opposition to his father among

European rabbis in Acre, it is clear that he considers them a marginal group whose positions in no way reflect the Arabic-speaking, Islamicate populations among whom they lived (and for whom they

233 Avraham Maimonides, Milḥamot ha-Shem, ed. Reuven Margoliyot (Jerusalem, 1931) (Heb.), 54-5; Trans. in Rosner, Wars of the Lord, 89. See also T-S K 10.14, mentioned in Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “The Nagid, the Nasi and the French Rabbis: A Threat to Abraham Maimonides’ Leadership" (Heb.), Ṣion 82 (2007), 290, n. 129. 234 The reason Avraham uses Palestine/the Holy Land and Syria, rather than the more common al-Shām (i.e., greater Syria) may be because this is a religious treatise. On this issue of terminology in mundane versus religious correspondence, see Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 220-221. 235 See below, 4.2, 299-305. 97 often served as leaders).236 The Latin Levant’s maintenance of an Islamicate Jewish population suggests ongoing immigration from the Islamic world to the Latin Levant and/or the continuity of the

Arabic-speaking Jewish population from the period before Saladin’s conquest.

The Zorzi Report: A Survey of Jews in the Venetian Quarter of Latin Tyre (1243-44)

Avraham Maimonides was discussing the Jewish communities of the Levant writ large.

Perhaps Europeans constituted a majority in the Latinized ports of Acre and Tyre where most

European Christian migrants lived? It is fortunate that we have a source that can address this possibility—namely, the 1243-1244 report of Marsillio Zorzi, a Venetian bailo, or high diplomatic consul.237 His report concerns Venetian properties in Crusader Tyre, including Venice’s Jews.238

A brief context for the report is needed. In the 1230s, Tyre had become the “capital” of the imperial party during the struggle between the local feudal elite and the agents of the Emperor

Frederick II and his son Conrad—a struggle that continued into the 1240s. Opposition to the Emperor solidified during the course of the “War of the Lombards” (1239-1242).239 The Venetians had been allies of the baronial party from the outset of the conflict and were therefore expelled from the city

236 See below, 291-299. 237 The office of bailo dates to at least 1225. While often translated as “ambassador” or “consul”, both terms are imprecise: the former is problematic since only one of the bailo’s roles was diplomatic—he was also responsible for juridical and commercial matters; the latter refers to a real Venetian office that was lower in the hierarchy than that of bailo that was rarely concerned with international relations. The translation of “high diplomatic consul” thus offers a more precise, if slightly clumsy, rendering. For an excellent discussion of these distinctions see Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, “The Oath of a Venetian Consul in Egypt (1284),” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 14 (1996): 215-16. Bailos were resident in other major Levantine towns at this period, including Aleppo. The office of the most recognized bailo in Constantinople was not established until 1268, after the fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. 238 See discussion in Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 255-6. Also, note that the concept of Jews being owned by their leaders was hardly unique to the Venetians, but as discussed below, was endemic to European states in the High and Late Middle Ages. See below, 2.1, 130-133. 239 The local barons were led by the Ibelin and then the Montfort families. They counted among their allies the Venetians and Genoese, though the Pisans sided with the Emperor. The war is part of the broader context of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II’s attempt to assert his authority in the Eastern Mediterranean. 98 throughout the course of imperial rule. Their extensive possessions in Tyre were seized. When the wheel of fortune turned in the baronials’ favor and Venice’s allies retook Tyre on 12 June 1242, Zorzi was assigned to reclaim his city’s properties and prerogatives in Tyre.240

Zorzi’s report illustrates that the Jewish community of Tyre was wealthy, stable and integrated both geographically and commercially with the population and markets of the city.241 Zorzi records the number and names of Jews residing in the Venetian-held quarter of Tyre in order to claim back taxes of the capitatio, a poll-tax owed by each Jewish adult male to the Venetian authorities.242 It is not clear whether these Jews were Venetian citizens, but the tax does seem to have been modeled on the

Islamic jizya.243

We learn from Zorzi’s account that there are at least nine adult Jewish males living in or assigned to the Venetian quarter (implying the existence of at least 7 families, since two of the men mentioned are sons of the same adult male).244 Zorzi provides their names: Mahamar, Mahafa, Hebe,

Brahi, Harham, Symo, Moyse, Simol and Daniel. Zorzi’s spelling of these names reflects how a Western

240 Zorzi arrived first in Acre, where he set about reclaiming Venice’s possessions there. At the time of his arrival, Riccardo Filangeiri, the marshal of the Holy Roman Emperor, retained control of Tyre. When the city fell, Zorzi took the prerogative to secure Venetian possessions in that city as well. Zorzi’s report seems to have been structured for the purpose of convincing both the local Latin elites of Venice’s claims, as well as to record such claims for the records of his Venetian superiors. On the former point, see David Jacoby, “Society, Culture and the Arts in Crusader Acre,” in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, eds. Daniel Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (Johns Hopkins UP: Baltimore, 2004), 114-5. 241 Merav Mack, “The Italian quarters of Frankish Tyre: Mapping a Medieval City,” Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007): 147- 65. 242 It is not clear whom Zorzi expected to pay these back taxes—but likely not the Jews, since the claim is part of a broader one for Venetian possessions wrongfully seized. 243 Prawer argues convincingly that the Capitatio was an adaptation of the jizya since there was no permanent Jewish population in Venice from which an inherited model could be adopted. See Prawer, History of the Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 256. On the lack of permanent Jewish residents in Venice itself, see Riccardo Calimani, The Ghetto of Venice, trans. Katherine S. Wolfthal (New York: M. Evans, 1987), 5. 244 Marsilio Zorzi, Der Bericht des Marsilio Zorzi: Codex Querini-Stampalia IV 3 (1064) ed. Oliver Berggotz (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991), 140. 99

European unaccustomed to Arabic and Hebrew would hear guttural letters and other unfamiliar sounds. With the help of a number of other scholars, I have reconstructed the following list of names that Zorzi likely was told: Muʿammar (Mahamar), Muʿāfā (Mahafa), Hibat Allāh (Hebe), Ibrāhīm

(Brahi), Hakham (Harham), Simon (Symo), Moshe (Moyse), Shemu’el (Simol) and Daniel (Daniel).245

The first four names are Arabic. The middle one, ḥakham, is a Hebrew title that implies its holder was a leader of the local Jewish community.246 The final four names are Hebrew.

In all likelihood, Arabic names would only have been used by Arabophone Jews. The Hebrew names and title were used in both the Latinate and Arabophone Jewish worlds. Therefore, at least half—and likely closer to two-thirds—of the Jewish families living in Venetian quarter were

Arabophone.

What can we learn from Zorzi’s survey about the demographics of the Jewish community?

First, in the only case where we have such evidence, Arabophone Jews constituted the majority population of an Italian-city-state-held section of a Crusader port—a region where we might reasonably expect to find the most “Latinized” members of the Jewish community.247 The majority of

Jews would have likely lived in quarters of Tyre that housed Levantine Christians and Muslims. One would expect, then, the demographic balance of these Jewish communities would be even more

Arabophone.

245 My thanks to Karin Almbladh, Haggai Ben-Shammai, Piero Capelli, Mark Cohen, Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Benjamin Hary, Uri Melamed, Marina Rustow, Ortal-Paz Saar, and Esther-Miriam Wagner for their suggestions on deciphering these names. I am also grateful to Piero Capelli for his help with the Latin syntax of the Zorzi account. 246 The title ḥakham (“wise one”) was often used to refer to a religious authority and local leader of a community. See, “Hakham," Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed, Vol. 8 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). 247 Based on Prawer’s thesis that European Jews came to the Crusader cities partially because of cultural affinity with French-speakers. See Prawer, Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 263-5. 100

This evidence, then, suggests that even in the mid-thirteenth century we find few European

Jewish migrants even in the regions of the Crusader ports where they would most likely have resided.

Instead, we find Arabic speakers in the clear majority. This finding supports the thesis that either immigration from the Islamic world to the Crusader states was ongoing and/or those Arabophone

Jews who resided in the Crusader states continued to live in the Latin Levant into the mid-thirteenth century.

The Head of Egypt’s Jews in Acre: The Jewish Community at the End of Latin Rule

But what about the subsequent six decades of Crusader rule? I have found no source comparable to the writings of Avraham Maimonides and Marsillio Zorzi that can illuminate demographic shifts in the Jewish community. This is unfortunate, since some scholars see this period as the highpoint of Latinate Jewish immigration to the Crusader states (though, as I argue below, the only evidence we have for large groups of immigrants comes from the early thirteenth century).248

What we do have are court documents from the Cairo Genizah (all Arabic) and the high court of Acre

(that all involve Jews who requested that a second deed be written in Arabic).249 These documents suggest that at least the economic elite of the city—if not the illiterate majority—were not

Europeans.

Many scholars suggest (or simply assume) that the most famous event in Latin Acre—the city’s Maimonidean controversy—was the product of a lone, ratonalist Egyptian Jew, David

Maimonides, stumbling into a hotbed of anti-Maimonidean, European Jewish mystics. The reality is

248 See below, chapter 4.2. 249 See below, ch. 3.1. 101 more complex. The family of Maimonides, as we have briefly mentioned, had long maintained close ties to the Jews of Latin Syria and especially of Latin Acre: Moses Maimonides lived in Acre for a year; his son, Avraham, had intervened on behalf of Acre’s rabbis in a communal controversy there. It is not surprising, then, that when Maimonides’ grandson, David, had his position as head of Egypt’s Jews

(raʾīs al-yahūd) usurped, he fled his Jewish enemies (and their Mamluk allies) for Acre.250

Why did David choose Acre? Why not Baghdad, or Damascus or Mosūl—all of which had larger Jewish communities headed by allies of the Maimonidean family? Eliyahu Ashtor quickly dismissed this question, noting that Acre lay outside the realm of Mamluk control. But Acre was far from the only major Jewish community in the region not under Mamluk rule—major Jewish centers in Iraq, Iran, Anatolia, North Africa, Sicily and Iberia also lay beyond the Mamluks’ grasp. Perhaps he first went to Acre because it was close to Cairo. But why did he stay there for years on end, almost to the fall of Acre, even in the midst of European rabbis’ attacks on him and his grandfather?

David’s arrival in Acre was not the mistake of a hapless man unaware of the European mystics lying in wait to ambush him at the Crusader port. David made a strategic decision to go to the capital of the Crusader kingdom and there seek refuge among his political allies, Arabic-speaking Syrian Jews.

There, the community’s economic and political elites—money lenders, merchants and physicians, many of whom, as mentioned, still communicated in Arabic—could provide for his livelihood and protect him from potential state persecution.

Moreover, David was not just strategic, he was right: he never had to leave Acre because of the

European opposition to his grandfather. There is no indication of any sort of popular uprising against

250 For an overview of these events, see Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 282-90. 102

David among the Jews of the Latin ports. This is, in all likelihood, because they were, like their forbearers, Arabophone and Islamicate—people among whom the critiques of Moses Maimonides were either heretical and/or incomprehensible and/or irrelevant to the goings on of their daily lives.

European Immigrants to the Kingdom of Acre

During the entire period of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-11187), we see little to no evidence of European Jews settling permanently in Syria. We do have evidence before then of individual

European rabbis who left travel accounts of their time in Crusader Palestine. Benjamin of Tudela also mentions a few European Jews as being among the leaders of the Jews of Latin Syria.

But what of the evidence for European migration in the thirteenth century—the basis of

Prawer, Reiner and others focus on Ashkenazi, rabbinic elites? Before we proceed, it is necessary to define the very term “European,” which is, of course, an anachronism. Many, if not most, of the

“Europeans” I will mention came from Aragon, Catalonia and Mediterranean France.251 The scholars of Iberia and Provence were not from parochial academies isolated from the broader intellectual movements of their time. They were trained at the nexus of the vibrant traditions of the Jews of the

Islamic Mediterranean and the Tosafist academies of northern France. Unlike the bastions of Jewish study in North and Central Europe, scholarship from Catalonia had been shaped by the traditions of

Jewish Islamicate scholars fleeing Almohad persecutions in al-Andalus in the twelfth and early-

251 On relations between these regions, see Pinchas Roth, “Regional Boundaries and Medieval Halakhah: Rabbinic Responsa from Catalonia to Southern France in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 105 no.1 (2015): 72-98. Note that, while Roth argues against the reigning historiographic paradigm that Provence and Catalonia comprises a single Jewish community, he recognizes the substantial role of Catalonian rabbis in disputes over Jewish practice in Provence. 103 thirteenth centuries.252 This meant that Catalonian rabbis could and did claim the intellectual inheritance and traditions of the Islamicate rabbis of al-Andalus as their own.253 Some of these figures spoke—or at least read—Arabic.254

The first immigration of European Jews to the Latin Levant for which scholars claim there is extant evidence found in a Genizah document ca. 1211/12. Goitein, Prawer and other scholars have connected this excerpt to the mythical assent of the 300 French rabbis to the land of Israel (needless to say, there were probably not 300 rabbis alive then in all of Northern France and England).255 We do learn about a group of migrants, however, from a letter that Yehudah b. Aharon al-ʿAmmānī, a close associate of the raʾīs al-yahūd, wrote circa 1212. The pertinent excerpt reads:

Seven (more) rabbis—the scholars, the great ones—with one hundred men, women and children in tow, arrived among us seeking sustenance. (This is) not (counting) the dependents we (already) have in the city (of Alexandria), around 40 (people). Most of the community has been deteriorating from lack of funds (lit. livelihoods). (Now) this great cost entraps them!256

There is no indication of the origin of these rabbis and their followers. Goitein claims these penniless figures were migrants to Jerusalem and that the letter reflects a messier version of reality that would inspire the tale of the 300 rabbis. He makes this claim based on two brilliant, but tenuous, inferences.

252For the ongoing influence of Jewish Islamicate cultural on Jews resident in Christian Spain, see Jonathan Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2007). The most famous of these refugees were the banū Tibbon (1120-ca. 1190), who completed extensive translations of Judeo-Arabic texts (including Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed/dallālat al-ḥāʾirīn) to Hebrew in twelfth and thirteenth century Provence. 253 As Shalem Yahalom writes, “according to Nahmanides, the Spanish tradition was a continuation of the living legacy of the Geonic and Amoraic academies.” See Shalem Yahalom, “Historical Background to Nahmanides’ Acre Sermon for Rosh ha-Shanah: The Strengthening of the Catalonian Center,” Sefarad 68 no.2 (2008): 122-44. This claim goes back at least as far as the Sefer ha-Qabbalah (1161) of Avraham Ibn Dāwūd. 254 There is some debate over whether the most prominent of these refugees, Nahmanides, spoke Arabic, but the point is that Arabic was still in wide enough use in Catalonia at this time that such a debate could occur. See Raphael Jospe, “Ramban (Nahmanides) and Arabic” (Heb.), Tarbiṣ 67 (1987): 67-93. 255 Ephraim Kanarfogel, "The Aliyah of Three Hundred Rabbis in 1211: Tosafist Attitudes Toward Settling in the Land of Israel," Jewish Quarterly Review 76, no. 3 (1986): 191-215. 256 T-S 12.299, v. ll. 16-17; v. margins ll. 1-8. Ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 339-43. 104

First, in another letter he ascribes to al-ʿAmmānī, he mentions sending (a book of?) slichot (special prayers to ask God for forgiveness prior to Yom Kippur) to Marseilles. And, second, because there is a question included in this document about permission to drink Qaraʾite wine, an issue on which some

European Jews tended to fall on one side (abstinence) and Near Eastern Jews (at least those who left in the Genizah) fell on the other (i.e., they drank the wine).257 The first point, needless to say, hardly suffices as a proof text. The latter point would be more convincing if it were not for the fact that legal questions (halakhic sheʿelot) often had no connection to real world concerns but were exercises in abstract intellectual thought engaged in as part of a patron-client relationship—that is, the issue of

Qaraʾite wine was still interesting to discuss halakhically, even if the social practice of most Egyptian

Jews was to drink the stuff.258

Even if we were to concede and accept Goitein’s (unlikely) conclusion that these refugees were Europeans, there are no subsequent Genizah documents that refer to large groups of Europeans en route to Syria. We do know, however, that there was ultimately an influx of scholars to the Latin ports, rabbis who had fled Jerusalem in 1219 after the Sultan al-Kāmil destroyed the city’s walls.259 And, indeed, European representation among the rabbis of the Latin Levant, or at least of Latin Acre, has not been overstated. This is evident from sheʾelot (legal questions) that Yosef b. Gershom, a Frankish

257 Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 338. Goitein mentions the document but—uncharacteristically—does not give the citation or shelf-mark. 258 Oded Zinger, “A Social History of Responsa,” (forthcoming). As Zinger argues, responsa should not be understood as unmediated windows on social and legal practice, but as tools broader context of patron-client relations in which the questions themselves have inherent capital (since they are markers of deference and bestow honor on the recipient, etc.). I am grateful to Oded for sharing his work. 259 As Prawer and Reiner note, most Jews and Muslims probably fled in 1219, when the city’s walls were destroyed, and so few were actually expelled when the city changed hands in 1229. Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 85-86. Reiner, “Aliyah,” 73-78. We learn from another Genizah document that a Jewish dyer was also ultimately permitted to reside in the city and host pilgrims at this later period. See ENA 2559.5 r. ll. 1-14 ed. in . Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 300-302. 105 rabbi, wrote to Avraham Maimonides in the 1230s. These questions concern a torrid dispute between the rabbis of Acre and a peripatetic claimant to Davidic ancestry (nasi) who attempted to usurp the formers authority. 260 The details of this dispute need not concern us here—what matters is that the

Acre rabbis issued a ḥerem (decree) of excommunication against the Davidic pretender. Of the ten rabbis who signed the documents,261 seven were of European descent.262

But, just because these rabbis were “European” does not mean that they maintained their traditions from home—they also changed as a result of their interactions with their broader

Islamicate context. For instance, a Genizah letter reveals that at least four prominent European scholars in Acre, including R. Yosef, publicly practiced prayer posture (bowing and falling on their knees) per Avraham’s recent, controversial reforms—reforms for which Egyptian Jews had accused him of imitating Muslims (which he was).263 In this case, then, we have European rabbis who are more

“Islamicate” than their coreligionists in Islamic Egypt. But why did they do so? Either A) in order to show deference to the head of the Jews of Egypt who was revered among Acre’s Arabic-speaking Jews and/or B) because they themselves felt the need to defer to Avraham who had previously come to their aid and/or C) because they now lived in the Levant, in an Islamicate environment, and had become convinced of the merits of Avraham Maimonides’ reforms. No matter which of these

260 The set of sheʾelot and the Acre responsa are edited in Abraham Maimonides, Teshuvot Rabenu Avraham ben ha- Rambam (Abraham Maimuni Responsa), eds. A.H. Freimann and S.D. Goitein, (Jerusalem, 1937), 13-26. 261 Yaʾaqov b. ha-gaʾon R. Shimshon, Yiṣhaq b. ha-gaʾon R. Yisḥaq, Evyatar b. R. Yosef, Peraḥiah b. R. Shemuʾel, Yehosef b. R. Gershom, Shemuʾel ha-Kohen b. R. Eliezar ha-Kohen, Neḥemiah b. R. Netanyah, Yehudah b. R. Yosef, Avraham b. R. Yeḥiel, Eliezar b. R. Yaʾaqov. See Teshuvot Rabbenu Avraham, 26. 262 See Reiner, “Aliyah,” 75-76; Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 270-2. 263 The political significance of this act will be discussed below. Jacob Mann cited Bodl 2670 and excerpted this quotation in The Jews in Egypt and Palestine Under the Fatimid Caliphs, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1920), 2:371. Elisha Russ-Fishbane cites Mann but provides a different shelfmark, T-S Arabic Box K 15. In any case, Russ-Fishbane discusses the passage in the question in Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt: A Study of Abraham Maimonides and His Times (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015), 178-179. Russ-Fishbane also discussed the controversies over these reforms in Egypt in ibid., 158-186. 106 scenarios is “true” (or if they all are), they are evidence of the ways that Islamicate norms dominated even aspects of religious practice among a rabbinic elite who were by far the most “Europeanized” among the Jews of the Latin Levant.

After this time, European scholars continued to come to Latin Syria. R Yeḥiʾel of Paris, a leading Talmudic scholar from northern France, fled Europe after his failed defense of the Talmud in

Paris in 1240, a trial that was followed by the first mass burning of Jewish texts in medieval Europe.264

Yeḥiʾel subsequently garnered supporters, planning to take them with him from France to the land of

Israel, but he died either before he departed or on the way. His sons and disciples, however, established an academy of Tosafist learning in Crusader Acre that continued to thrive into the late- thirteenth century.265

The most prominent European Jewish scholar to move to Latin Syria—and, in fact, the most renowned Jewish scholar of his age—was the Catalonian rabbi Moshe b. Naḥman (Naḥmanides or the

RaMBaN). In 1263, Naḥmanides was volunteered for the thankless task of defending the Talmud before his King and members of the mendicant orders at the Disputation of Barcelona. 266 After the disputation, Naḥmanides fled his native Iberia, finding refuge in Crusader Acre in 1267.267 Naḥmanides

264 For the Paris disputation and the burning of the Talmud in 1240s Europe see J. Rembaum, “The Talmud and the Popes: Reflections on the Talmud Trials of the 1240s,” Viator 13 (1982): 203-23. 265 See Prawer’s discussion of this academy in The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 159-161, 226-227; and Yahalom, “Naḥmanides Acre Sermon,” 5. 266 On the Disputation of Barcelona see Gilbert Dahan, The Christian Polemic Against the Jews in the Middle Ages (South Bend: University of Notre-Dame Press, 1998), 81-116. 267 On Naḥmanides in Acre see Yahalom, “Nahmanides’ Acre Sermon,” above n. 253. 107 proceeded to train a number of prominent disciples in Acre who continued to shape the landscape of religious authority in the Latin Levant long after their teacher’s death in 1270.268

In addition to the anecdotal of evidence for the small migrations of groups of scholars said to constitute their own academies (yeshivot), there is also evidence that we will explore in detail in later chapters of Jewish merchants from Mediterranean Europe plying their wares in the ports of Syria.269

There is no indication that large numbers of these merchants settled permanently in the ports, but their presence may not have been inconsequential. There are also other teshuvot that provide anecdotal evidence for European Jews remaining a disproportionate part of the region’s rabbinic leadership in the late-thirteenth century.270

These European rabbis made substantial contributions to Syria’s Jewish community—not least of which was turning Acre into a preeminent city for rabbinic scholarship in the Eastern

Mediterranean.271 As such, scholars like Prawer, Reiner and Shachar were right to emphasize the contributions of these migrants. But the scale of the European Jewish presence in the Latin Levant should not be overstated. These migrants—especially rabbis from Ashkenaz and Northern France— were completely deracinated, living in an alien land where their coreligionists spoke an alien tongue and where they had no professional relations. It is inconceivable that the Jews of Crusader Acre could have supported more poor migrants than there were Jews residing in the city. As we have seen, during this period social services were the prerogative of individual religious communities; thus no city could

268 See ibid., Reiner’s discussion of these figures in Aliyah ve-Aliyah la-regel, 80-82., and Prawer, The History of the Jews, i, 276-278 (although Prawer sees the anti-Maimonidean movement as Nahmanides students breaking with their former teacher). 269 See below, chapter 3.3. 270 See below, see below, chapter 4.2. 271 See below, chapter 4.2-4.3. 108 welcome more indigents than those newcomers’ coreligionists could afford to support. The European migrants who came en masse to the holy land were portrayed as essentially penniless and as demanding great financial largess (as is reflected in the document Goitein ascribed to the migrants). It is therefore necessary to view with suspicion the claim that there was a dramatic demographic change in the Levantine communities outside of the rabbinic elite.

What is most remarkable about thirteenth-century Latin Acre then, is not the caliber of the scholars, but the fact that the Arabic-speaking Jews seem to have largely accepted the leadership of

Jews from far off lands, many of whom would not have spoken Arabic. But these rabbis did not simply

Europeanize the majority, Arabic-speaking and Islamicate Syrian Jewish community. They were

“Arabized” in turn. We see this in the cases of Avraham Maimonides’ prayer reform. We also see it in the popular support he ascribed to his father’s ideas in Islamicate Palestine when he argues that

(European) opponents of his father’s ideas would not dare raise their opposition in public. In one case, Europeans adopted Islamicate norms willingly, while in the other the norms of their coreligionists compelled them to do so. Perhaps some of them even learned Arabic, as was the case for at least one prominent Frankish rabbi, Anatoli ha-dayyan, in Egypt.272

Conclusion

When the dust settled from the First Crusade and the early Frankish-Muslim wars, most of

Latin Syria’s Jews lived in the region’s major ports—most notably, Tyre and Acre. There is no evidence

272 See Mordechai Akiva Friedman’s discussion of R. Anatoli ha-dayyan ha-ṣorfati (the Frenchman), in “The Nagid and the Nasi,” 230-1. 109 to suggest that this population fled the region en masse during the entire period of Latin-Christian rule of the cities (Tyre: 1124-1291; Acre 1104-1187/1191-1291).

Moreover, anecdotal evidence demonstrates that Arabophone migrants, including merchants, physicians, menial laborers and scholars, chose to move to the new Latin Kingdom. As will be evident in subsequent chapters, new economic opportunities, as well as the relatively tolerant treatment of minorities under Latin rule, would have served as further incentives for regional migration. It is clear that the majority of the Jews of the region continued to speak Arabic, write in Arabic, produce court documents in Arabic, etc. This is further evidence for continuity among of the population of the region’s Jews and/or of ongoing immigration to the Crusader ports of Jews from the Islamic world.

There was a significant migration of European Jewish scholars to the Latin Levant in the thirteenth century. These rabbis counted among their number some of the greatest minds of their age and thus have received the lion’s share of the (relatively few) historical pieces written about the Jews of the Latin Levant. While these European migrants certainly merit study, it is necessary to place their role in communal and rabbinic politics in their Islamicate context, since they never came close to constituting the majority of the Jewish population of the ports of the Latin Levant.

This dissertation examines the rabbinic, mercantile and administrative institutions of that larger population. As we have seen, most of the Jews considered were not rabbis or scholars who left behind legal works to posterity. Most were engaged in more mundane professions: glass production, trade, money lending, medicine, peddling, dyeing, farming and tax collecting.

The fact that Latin Syria’s Jews spoke Arabic and shared Islamicate Jews’ legal, administrative and religious norms allows us to understand the ways they adapted to conquest and regime change:

110 they looked to precedents in Islamic administration of dhimmīs in their interactions with the Franks; they maintained Arabic legal institutions that protected their economic interests when they traveled throughout the southern Mediterranean; and they looked to the religious institutions of the Arabic- speaking world to appoint their leaders and guide their daily practices. It is to these institutions that we turn next.

111

Part 2: Administration and Minority-State Relations in Latin Syria

2.1—The View from Above: State Building, the Fragmentation of Sovereignty and Minority Privileges in Latin Syria (1099-1291)

When the leaders of the First Crusade reached the Near East in 1098, they had no plans for what kind of state they would carve out in the region. They knew they wanted to liberate Jerusalem, slay the infidel and save the Christian. Despite seemingly miraculous victories on the battlefield, they soon became victims of their own success: the vast majority of the Europeans who had fought in the successful campaign believed they had fulfilled their Crusader vows and returned to the West.1

Moreover, the Papal legate ostensibly at the head of the Crusade, Bishop Adhemar of

Le Puy (ca. 1045-1098), had died in 1098. Leading nobles bade the Pope to take his place, but he refused, thereby depriving the nobility of the direction of the church.2 Moreover, the lords who remained in the Levant were unwilling to return the conquered Syrian territories to the

Byzantines for whose sake they had ostensibly launched their military campaign. Having conquered much of the Levant, none of the Latin lords knew what to do with it. Finally, after the fall of Jerusalem, the nobility came together to elect Godfrey of Bouillon (r. 1099-1100) as the first King of Jerusalem.3

1 Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade: A New History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004), 69; and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 15. 2 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, 1-2. 3 What exactly the First Crusade was and what its goals were is still a source of scholarly contention. From the perspective of Byzantium, the conquered lands should have been returned to the Greek hands. This may have been the Crusaders’ intention; if so, they failed to fulfill it after the fall of Antioch. The Papacy attempted to direct developments in this sphere, but the death of the Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy undermined that ambition. Different accounts provide fundamentally different explanations for the motivations of the Crusaders; it is clear, however, that no one knew who would rule the 112

Military campaigns against the Syrian ports would continue for the following two and a half decades. But more mundane tasks soon occupied the nobles’ attention: erecting a legal system, procuring taxes and governing a conquered population whose numbers eclipsed the small group of remaining Latin soldiers. Most of this process is shrouded in mystery—Latin and Arabic sources from this early period are few and far between. The previous chapters, however, demonstrated that there was no mass flight of Jews from Syria. This fact suggests that the chaos was stemmed in relatively short order.

The first part of this chapter turns to this period and asks: How did the government institutions and laws of the Frankish principalities emerge from the period of the Crusader conquests? The view it takes is one “from above”—that is, from the perspective of Latin and

Old French documents intended for the official consumption of lay and/or clerical elites. The analysis, however, interprets these documents in the specific context of the existing

Islamicate4 political institutions. It argues that the development of the policies of the

Kingdom of Jerusalem towards its conquered peoples must be understood in the context of the Near Eastern populations’ expectations of proper governance. These polices were formed by means of a process of negotiation between the conquerors and the conquered in ad hoc surrender treaties and legislative councils.

After establishing how these high state institutions emerged in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the chapter turns to the ways these institutions changed under the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291), during

conquered territory, much less how they would rule. For an overview of the amorphous character of the First Crusade and its participants’ ambitions, see Christopher Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 1-29. 4 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 1: 59. 113 which time central, royal power disintegrated and the military orders, Italian city-states and local nobility came to fill this administrative vacuum. These players fought over the prerogatives that the absentee kings had willfully abandoned. The chapter asks: How did this dispersal of the prerogatives of governance in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291) impact relations between Arabic speakers and the ruling, Latin-Christian elites? How did the lack of oversight from a powerful monarchy affect their rights, privileges and responsibilities in a Latin-Christian state? It situates these questions in the context of regnant theories about how minorities—and Jews in particular—relied on strong royal authority to protect their interests in medieval Europe. The conclusion contends that the thirteenth- century Kingdom of Jerusalem offers an alternative model to this popular theory that helps explain how minorities could thrive without the protection of the “royal alliance.”

The Legend of Godfrey and the Challenge of Source Survival

The most significant challenge to studies of minority-state relations during the first hundred years of Latin-Christian rule of the Levant is that almost no Frankish legislation from this period has survived.5 There are, however, a number of Latin legal texts from thirteenth- century Syria.6 Until recently, scholars of the Crusader states disguised this predicament: they read mid-to-late thirteenth century legal codes as descriptions of twelfth-century realities and

5 An excellent overview of this issue can be found in Adam Bishop, “Criminal Law and the Development of the Assizes of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century,” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2011), 1-17. 6 These are the so-called assizes of Jerusalem. See Bishop, “Criminal Law,”. 17-77. They are the subject of the second half of Riley-Smith’s The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277, (London: Macmillan Press, 1973), 101-185. Riley- Smith argues convincingly that these works were the product of their time and place (i.e., not the reiteration of a twelfth- century code). 114 prescriptions for them.7 Minority law for the first kingdom (1099-1187), including Jewry law, was extrapolated from these thirteenth-century texts.8

This scholarship was based on the founding myth of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, according to which Godfrey of Boullion (r. 1099-1100) instituted a comprehensive legal system for the Crusader states at the inception of the Frankish kingdom. Historians then took thirteenth-century jurists’ claims that they were restoring the laws Godfrey had promulgated at face value. 9 Recently, Peter Edbury has demonstrated that no such twelfth-century universal legal code exists.10 Moreover, Jonathan Riley-Smith has illustrated that the thirteenth-century codes are a product of the exigencies of their period.11 Even if, as Marwan

Nader has contended, some of the thirteenth-century statutes can be traced to twelfth-century precedents, we cannot recreate twelfth-century minority law from thirteenth-century Latin legal texts.12 This situation demands that scholars turn to other sources outside the legal codes to understand the development of minority-state relations in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This chapter contends that these sources reveal the protracted negotiation of minority law between Near Easterners and Franks. The development of the legend of Godfrey has obscured how the Franks pragmatically deployed Islamicate political institutions in governing Latin

Syria.

7 See MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 112-6; and Bishop, “Criminal Law,” 25-55. 8 E.g.,, Prawer, The History of the Jews, 93-127. 9 See above, n.4 10 Peter W. Edbury, “Law and custom in the Latin East: Les Letres dou Sepulcre,” Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995): 71-9. 11 See above, n. 5 12 Nader, Burgesses and Burgess Law, 36-43. 115

Building a State: Ad Hoc Surrender Treaties

In the last chapter, we introduced Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Jubayr al-Kinānī, the scribe

(kātib) of the Almohad governor of Granada, who passed through Latin Tyre on his pilgrimage (ḥajj) to Mecca in 1182. During his travels, the Iberian courtier expressed his admiration for the consistency and justice (ʿadl) of the Latin lords and noted the “symmetry” between the Crusader states’ treatment of Muslims and Islamic states’ treatment of dhimmīs (non-Muslim protected peoples).13 The origin of these similarities, according to Ibn Jubayr, lay in the period of the conquests during the First Crusade.

The Iberian relates:

One of the elders of the Muslims of Tyre told us that the city had been taken from them in the year 518 H. (1124 CE)… After a long siege and hunger overtook (the populace)…they resolved to leave the city in peace. They dispersed among Muslim lands; however, some of them, lured by love of their homeland, were called to return and reside among (the Latin Christians), after a peace treaty was written for them on the matter with conditions (the conquered peoples) stipulated (bʿad amān kutiba lahum fī dhālik bi-shurūṭ ishtaraṭūhā).14

The last sentence has been consistently translated according to the scenario a modern reader would expect: the conquerors dictated the terms of the amān (the “security pact”) to the

13 Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. William Wright and M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1907), 301-2. By consistency, I refer to Ibn Jubayr’s comment that the Franks impose a simple tax but otherwise “do not interfere in other matters” (lā yaṭrudūn fī ghayr dhālik). He says all Frankish cities and rural areas are managed in this manner (288). I translate al-iʿtidāl here as symmetry. While this word could also mean “temperance,” it is used in a comparative context here that emphasizes similarity more than balance. His comment concerning border management, however, was wrong— a point to which I will return below. 14 Ibid., 306-7 . 116 conquered.15 An analysis of the Arabic syntax, however, suggests that the local peoples were active participants in setting the terms of their surrender and settlement.16

The claim that the conquered dictated terms to the conquerors may seem far-fetched, but it was a frequent occurrence in the premodern Near East. Indeed, in this passage, Ibn

Jubayr uses a number of terms drawn from Islamic legal discourse on such surrender treaties.17

In this context, Ibn Jubayr sees surrender treaties as loci for the negotiation of minority privilege. This process had long been a part of the Islamic tradition of governance. Dhimmī law was articulated in surrender treaties from the period of the early Arab conquests (7th-

9thcenturies CE).18 The authoritative document that emerged from those treaties—the stipulations of ʿUmar (al-shurūṭ al-ʿumariyyah/ʿahd ʿUmar/shurūṭ ʿUmar)—is framed in the form of a petition in which conquered, non-Muslim peoples propose the terms of their surrender to their conquerors.19 Ibn Jubayr, then, suggests that the favorable legal status of non-Latin Christians in Frankish Tyre derived from an analogous process. His word choice

15 Broadhurst’ definitive English translation of Ibn Jubayr reads: “They thereupon decided to abandon the town… but there were some whose love of native land impelled them to return, under the conditions of a safeguard which was written for them to live amongst the infidels.” Broadhurst translated only “amān kutiba lahum” and elided it with “fī dhālik bi-shurūṭ ishtaraṭūhā.” Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, 321. I am indebted for this observation to Paul Cobb and the students of the “Arabic Texts in Islamic History” course at the University of Pennsylvania for a critical discussion of this passage. 16 There is evidence that similar negotiations had occurred at Acre in 1104 and Sidon in 1110. Fulcher of Chartres notes that the locals of Sidon argued for the king to allow them to remain on their land based on their utility to his lordship’s economy as agricultural labor. Fulcher of Chartres, The History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 2, 44 6-7, 548. Discussed in Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” in Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100-1300, ed. James M. Powell (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990), 146. 17 Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empir, 32-34. Shurūṭ, as discussed below, is the term used for the stipulations of the pact of ʿUmar and also was used in the Islamic discourse that preceded the canonizaiton of that document. Amān used in this context is of non-Qurʾanic origin but—as Levy-Rubin demonstrates—was “the most common term in Muslim literature defining the relationship between the Muslim conquerors and the surrendered city” (here, 32). 18 Ibid., 63-66. 19 Cohen, "What was the pact of Umar?”, 100-57. 117 indicates how these policies were successfully translated into terms amenable to local,

Levantine populations. But minorities in the Latin state were not simply treated as ahl al- dhimmah. The Franks did not rely on only Islamic models for their minority law, but also drew on precedents of Jewry law from Latin Europe and the Byzantine Empire.

The Pact of ʿUmar in the Crusader States

In 1120, a council of Frankish nobles and churchmen in central Palestine passed a series of edicts, the Canons of Nablus, that marked the conquerors’ first attempts to impose a common legal structure on the Kingdom of Jerusalem.20 The council was the product of the meeting of the kingdom’s secular lords, including its ruler, Baldwin II (r. 1118-1131), as well as of its clergy, including the patriarch of Jerusalem, Garmond of Picquigny (1119-1128). This meeting would never have occurred in mainland Europe, where churchmen were not involved in legislating punishment for secular crimes.21 This may suggest, as Adam Bishop argues, that secular courts in the Kingdom of Jerusalem remained rudimentary at the time.22

Still, the Canons of Nablus comprise only twenty-five decrees, a fraction of which deal with secular legal issues.23 These laws, then, could not have served as the basis for a comprehensive legal system in any sense of the term. Furthermore, scholars have argued that

20 As Marwan Nader notes, the Council of Nablus and the General Tax of 1183 are two of the only extant pieces of legislation applicable to the entire Latin Kingdom. See Nader, Burgesses, 43-8. 21 For a good overview of the positions of Jews and Muslims in canon law and its (in)applicability to these communities besides tithes on church property, see David M. Freidenreich. "Muslims in Western Canon Law, 1000–1500," in Christian– Muslim Relations: A Bibliographic History, vol. 3, ed. David Thomas, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011): 41-68.. 22 Bishop, “Criminal Law,” 86. 23 The first three canons deal with tithes, representing a compromise of king to patriarch; the final four concern false accusations and theft. 118 these few canons were rarely, if ever, enforced.24 Our argument, however, is not about the laws’ application or enforcement, but what they can tell us about the Latin elites’ evolving view of their relationship to their minority populations.

The canons as a whole intimate their authors’ preoccupation with sexual misconduct, public morality and the breakdown of social boundaries between religious communities.25

Seventeen of the twenty-five canons deal with issues of sexual deviance: adultery and prostitution (four canons), sodomy (four canons), relations with Saracens (five canons) and bigamy (four canons). Benjamin Kedar convincingly argues that most of these laws suggest the influence of the Byzantine code Ecologa (741 CE).26 Of the five canons that concern relationships between minorities (Saracens) and the state, the first four (12-15) deal with sexual relations between Saracens and Christians.27 They prescribe penalties consistent with

Byzantine adultery law. This is unsurprising since the majority of the people living under Latin rule were most likely Eastern Christians, including many Melkites with whom Byzantine legislation would have particular resonance.28

24 Bishop, “Criminal Law,” 84-86; Nader, Burgesses, 43-45. Kedar dissents from this position and argues the canons were the law of the kingdom. See Benjamin Z. Kedar, “On the origins of the earliest laws of Frankish Jerusalem: the canons of the Council of Nablus,” Speculum 74, no. 2 (1999), 330-331. 25 The greatest historian of the Crusader states, William of Tyre, stated that the council of Nablus was convened in response to a series of disasters that had struck the Crusader states: military defeats, earthquake and plague. The participants—he suggests—believed that if they could rectify their peoples’ behavior, such disasters would not recur. See discussion in Bishop, “Criminal Law,” 78. 26 Kedar, “Council of Nablus,” 313, 316-23. 27 12) consensual relations between a free Muslim woman and Latin male (for which she should have her nose cut off and he should be castrated); (13) rape of a Saracen female slave by her master (she is to be confiscated and he is to be castrated); (14) rape of a Saracen slave by another Frank (he is castrated); and finally (15) consensual relations between a male Muslim and female Frank (excision of penis and rhinotomy), or rape of a Frankish female by a Muslim (he is castrated, she is spared). Furthermore, canon 7 concerns men or women luring Frankish wives into prostitution. 28 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World,7-10. 119

But the Crusaders drew from more than Byzantine precedent, as we learn from Canon sixteen. It reads:

If a male or female Saracen (sarracenus aut sarracena) dresses according to the manner of the Franks, they will be fined.29

This canon is the first sumptuary legislation to distinguish religious minorities ever issued in a medieval Latin-Christian state.30 The Byzantines had no such laws for minorities; the precedent for this canon cannot be the Ecologa.31

Sumptuary laws, however, were commonplace in the non-Christian Near East: the

Zoroastrian Sassanians (225-651 CE) and their Muslim successors both upheld such statutes.

For the Sassanians, these laws had served to distinguish nobles from non-nobles—only the former were allowed to wear certain articles of clothing.32 Islamic states adopted such legislation both to impose similar distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims and—as

Albert Nocht argued—to prevent the early Arab conquerors from assimilating among the conquered population.33 “Saracen” here seems to indicate all non-Franks, or at least all non-

Christians, since we know that sexual relations between Franks and non-Latin-Christians

29 Si Sarracenus aut Sarracena francigeno more se induant, infiscentur. Kedar, “Canons of Nablus,” 334. 30 J. Brundage, “Prostitution, Miscegenation and Sexual Purity in the First Crusade,” in Crusade and Settlement, ed. P. Edbury (Cardiff: Ashgate, 1985), 57-65. Prawer also notes the unique status of these laws in Crusader Institutions, 15-17. 31 Amnon Linder, “The Legal Status of Jews in the Byzantine Empire,” in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. Robert Bonifil (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 149-219. 32 Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire, 88-99; 130-164. Levy-Rubin convincingly argues that the Sassanian sumptuary codes, which were concerned with distinguishing economic classes, became the basis for the ghiyār legislation and other aspects of how the Islamic state approached dhimmīs. 33 See ibid. and Albert Noth, “Problems of Differentiation between Muslims and Non-Muslims,” tr. M. Muehlhaeusler, in Muslims and Others in Early Islamic Society, ed. R. Hoyland (London: Ashgate, 2004), 103–25. Discussed in Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 57. For more on the origin of ghiyār and the difficulties of situating these laws chronologically see Luke Yarborough, “Origins of the ghiyār,” American Oriental Society 134, no. 1 (2014): 113-21. 120 were tacitly accepted.34 This legislation existed, in other words, to maintain the proper social order and to secure communal boundaries. The Franks, then, drew on this Islamic-Sassanian tradition to address a similar problem.

But there is a key difference between the sumptuary laws of the pact of ʿUmar and the regulation of the Canons of Nablus: the former prescribes specific articles of clothing that dhimmīs must wear. These articles were often chosen to cultivate dhull wa-al-saghrār— humiliation and contempt.35 The Canons of Nablus, however, only ban “Saracens” from imitating Frankish dress. They do not prescribe particular articles of clothing. This distinction allowed the Franks to preserve communal boundaries through a means amenable to local,

Islamicate norms, while also demanding the least proactive measures in terms of dictating specific markers to their minority populations.

What the Canons of Nablus suggest, then, is that the Franks had begun to govern in a manner that addressed concerns shared with the leaders of their Arabophone population. The

Franks did not, however, institute a system based on blind imitation of dhimmī law or of

34 The Latin word saracenus was used to refer to Arabs since before the rise of Islam and continued to be used to distinguish Arabic speakers from Turkish speakers during the Crusader period. In medieval Western literature, saracenus usually referred to Muslims—as opposed to Jews or Christians. Thirteenth-century Frankish legal codes would distinguish minority groups in the Latin Kingdom by belief and rite (Jews, Samaritans, Syriac-rite Christians, Greek-rite Christians, Muslims etc.). See Jochen Shenk, “Nomadic Violence in the First Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Military Orders,” Reading Medieval Studies 36(2010), 42. John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia UP, 2002), 71-135; and for comparison to the thirteenth-century codes, see E.H. Kausler (ed.), Livre des assises de Jerusalem (Stuttgart: A. Krabbe, 1839); also A.A. Beugnot, ‘Livre des assises de la Cour des Bourgeois’, in RHC Lois, II. 35 Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire, 99-112. Examples of such intentionally humiliating clothing include the prescription that Christians wear necklaces of wooden pigs and Jews of apes in Islamic Sicily. According to the same logic of both maintaining communal boundaries and humiliating non-Muslims, Al-Mutawakkil called for wooden devils to be nailed to dhimmī doors (and Ibn Tūlūn did the same). 121

Byzantine precedent. Instead, they adopted aspects of the law that suited their needs and did not adopt those in which they had no ideological investment.

No Certificate Required: Taxation, Trade and Travel in the Frankish Levant

Sumptuary law was not the only arena in which the Crusader states adopted certain aspects of dhimmī law amended to suit their specific needs. Previous research has established that the Kingdom of Jerusalem imposed a poll-tax on its non-Latin-Christian minorities. This tax was—in all likelihood—an adaptation of the jizya as prescribed in the Pact of ʿUmar.36 It was collected from the individual and not from corporate groups (e.g., “the Jews of Acre”)— another indication that this policy derives from a Near Eastern Islamic model, rather than a

Western-Christian one.37 Dhimmīs recognized the jizya as protection money which they paid to the Islamic state in exchange for their security. The jizya was thus the cornerstone of dhimmī law and of the ahl al-dhimmah’s place in the Islamicate system.38

But the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s poll-tax and the jizya were not interchangeable. Before he passed into Frankish territory, Ibn Jubayr heard from Muslim travelers that:

The Muslims pay a tax (ḍarībah) in their (i.e., the Christians) lands in exchange for their security (amanah). And Christian merchants also pay (a tax) in Muslim lands on their

36 Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 201, 212; Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” 168-171. 37 No comparable treatise to the Pact of ʿUmar existed in the Christian West. The status of Jews was negotiated on a town- by-town and fief-by-fief basis. Every new lord, bishop or king had the opportunity to reaffirm or revoke the charter of his predecessors. Local lords would grant Jews (often, at first, Jewish merchants) a privilege of settlement and protection from extortionate tolls in in return for specific obligations—the most important of which were collective payments to the lord.37 These payments differed from the jizya in that they were collective and the associated contract with the state was contingent on the lord’s approval. 38 Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 70-2. Cohen argues that Islamicate Jews “had in the jizya a surer guarantee of protection from non-Jewish hostility than their distant brethren in the Latin West.” His argument is based on the fact that collection was systematized (versus the situation of the Jews in Europe, where they were reliant on charters that had to be periodically renewed). 122

goods (silaʿihim). There is agreement among them and there is symmetry (al-iʿtidāl) in all cases.39

Ibn Jubayr and his colleagues (including a group of merchants) later arrived at a fortress marking the start of Frankish territory. There, the Iberian traveler reports:

The people were not taxed by an invasive collection. The tax amounted to a Tyrian dinar and a qirat per person. But they did not collect (the tax) from among the merchants in the (group), since they (i.e.,, the merchants) are proceeding straight to the place of the cursed king (i.e., Acre) and there the collection of the tax (on merchandise) is a qirat for every dinar (worth of goods).40

What ibn Jubayr describes here is not the same as dhimmī law as practiced in the Islamic Near

East. In Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt, as elsewhere in the medieval Islamic world, dhimmīs had to carry a certificate (barāʾah) indicating their payment of the poll tax. Agents of the state would check these certificates at ports and other major thoroughfares. If a traveler was found to not be carrying the document, he would have to repay the tax.41 The tax was incumbent on all non-Muslims who traveled through these states and was paid upon their entrance to that state (or one of its port cities).42 A certificate for the jizya for one Muslim state (e.g., the

Fatimid caliphate) was theoretically accepted in other Islamic states (e.g., Zengid Syria), but

39 Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 288 40 Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 301 41 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 384-6. Goitein provides a number of examples of people not being able to travel because the authority who issued the receipts was not present. 42 There were a few exceptions for citizens of the Italian city-states whose governments had signed special treaties with Muslim powers. See the treaty published by S.M. Stern in “An Original Document from the Fatimid Chancery Concerning Italian Merchants,” in Studi Orientalistici in Onoredi Giorgio Levi Della Vida II (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956): 529-38. 123 this was not always the case.43 The enforcement of this tax was one of the most interventionist policies of what Goitein called an otherwise “laissez-faire” state.44

In contrast, the Frankish system that Ibn Jubayr describes did not tax non-Latin-

Christian merchants on their persons upon entering Frankish territory. Non-Latin-Christian merchants would not have had to pay a poll-tax—only taxes on the goods they sold. There is no suggestion that a certificate system was used, and the fact that the merchants would have had no certificate to show state regulators suggests it was not.

A Genizah letter from a Sicilian Jewish merchant in Latin Tyre in the mid-twelfth century reveals the salient contrasts between the Latin and Islamic systems. The letter is from

1155, and it relates the travails of its author, Moshe b. Yijū, who was then returning from a trading venture to his parents’ home in Mazara in the southeast of Norman Sicily. Moshe’s boat was overtaken by pirates. The Jews of Tyre likely ransomed Moshe from the pirates, and he remained in their city for some time. In a letter to his brother, Peraḥya, he writes:

I am (writing to) inform you, my brother, that I intend—God willing—to come and take out a )poll-tax( receipt (barāʾah), but not the one of Binyam, because he is also going up to Fustat.45

Moshe, as a resident of a Christian state (Norman Sicily) was not usually obligated to carry a poll-tax receipt. He had been trading in another Christian state (Goitein suggests Greece), and had once again not faced this obligation.46 He then was captured by pirates and ransomed in

43 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 384-6. 44 Goitein wrote that the medieval Fatimid government “excelled in laissez-faire (governance).” He added “out of indolence, it seems, rather than conviction.” Ibid., 4: 404. 45 T-S 13J20.7 23-25; 30-32. 46 Goitein and/or Friedman suggest Moshe had been selling goods in Greece, but they do not provide evidence for this assertion. Goitein and Friedman, India Traders, 1: 758. 124

Latin Tyre, where, once more, no jizya receipt was required. Finally, he had to go visit his brother in Fatimid Fustat. There, he knew he would have to have evidence of having paid the poll-tax.

How do we explain these similarities and differences? First, there is a fundamental divergence in the revenue systems of the Crusader states and the surrounding Islamic states.

Fatimid Egypt and other Islamic states, as Jessica Goldberg argued, were not invested in taxing merchants qua merchants. Instead, these states derived most of their revenue from agricultural taxes.47 This marginalization of commerce is evident in the barāʾah policy. The

Fatimid caliphs assumed that they would get more revenue from taxing the body of dhimmī travelers like Moshe than they would lose when dhimmī merchants chose not to patronize

Fatimid ports to avoid this tax. The Franks came to the opposite conclusion, which reflects the fact that the kingdom of Jerusalem recognized its dependence on trade for finances.48

Second, the Franks had no ideological investment in the poll tax as minority law—it was a pragmatic adaptation of the existing, pre-conquest administrative infrastructure in

Islamic Syria. For an Islamic state, however, the jizya was foundational to the ideology of dhimmī-state relations. Its enforcement was never only about state revenue, but about dhimmīs’ public recognition of their position in the social and religious hierarchy.49 As we saw with the sumptuary legislation of the Council of Nablus, the Franks did not hesitate to adapt

47 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 351-52. 48David Abulafia, “Trade and Crusade, 1050-1250,” in Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays to Aryeh Grabois on his sixty-fifth birthday, eds. A. Grabois et al. (New York: P. Lang, 1995): 1-20. 49Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire, 94-95. The jizya is the only one of the dhimmī laws referred to directly in the Qurʾan (9:29). A Standard translation of the relevant verse reads: “Fight those who have been given the scriptures…until they pay the jizya out of hand and are humbled.” 125 the Islamic institutions like the jizya when it suited their pragmatic interests. The form that these laws took, however, was not entirely derivative.

Close readings of these three sources have allowed us to see ways in which the Franks adapted their legal system to fit the Islamicate expectations of their subjects. First, they adopted sumptuary laws in response to perceived threats of cross-communal miscegenation.

Second, they maintained the proper balance of hierarchy among communities through the poll-tax, allowing minorities to pay protection money and establishing the legal superiority of

Latin-Christians. The Franks adopted these laws in a form that required the least proactive government interference in the lives of their minority communities because they did not share the Muslim rulers’ ideological investment in the system of dhimmī law.

Servants of All, Servants of None: Jews in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291)

The examples discussed above all involved central state institutions and actors: The King of

Jerusalem was directly involved in the surrender of Tyre, the process of enforcing (or not) the Canons of Nablus, the trade legislation and the jizya-like tax collection. This is because kings of Jerusalem before the collapse of their state in 1187 had greater control over their nobility than the contemporary rulers of Angevin England and Capetian France.50 In the thirteenth century, that situation changed.

After Saladin’s conquests, the order of succession of the Latin kings became unclear and

Levantine nobles sought an alliance with a European monarch who would aid them in their struggles to reconquer their lost Syrian possessions. They thought they had found such an ally in 1212, when their queen, Isabella II (1212-1228), tied the kingdom's fate to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (d.

50 Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordships in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1291 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 1-66. 126

1255) and the house of Hohenstaufen.51 Instead of a powerful ally, the kingdom reaped a series of absentee landlords. Frederick II (r. 1225-1228) spent less than a year in Palestine. His sons Conrad II (r.

1228-1254) and Conrad III (r.1254-1268) never set foot in the Levant at all.52 The Cypriot kings of the

House of Lusignan (r. 1268-1291), who succeeded the Hohenstaufen emperors, proved no more proactive. They soon became exasperated with the upstart Levantine principalities and preferred to stay on their home island.53

In the absence of a strong ruler, the power of the local nobility, the military orders and the

Italian city-states grew. In essence, these institutions became miniature kingdoms onto themselves, principalities that fulfilled all of the essential functions of the medieval state in the territories which they controlled. They retained private armies that defended their subjects against outsiders. They provided court systems that maintained order in their residents’ communities. They promoted the welfare of their people by protecting them from the economic exploitation of outside power. In turn, they received the exclusive right to tax the residents of their quarters and to extract court fees from them.54

But these institutions were not satisfied with their gains. They formed ever-shifting coalitions, fighting wars among themselves over control of the kingdom and its tax revenues.55 The first of these

51 David Jacoby, “The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Collapse of Hohenstaufen Power in the Levant,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 40 (1986): 83-101. 52 Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility, 185. 53 Ibid., 224-228. 54 These responsibilities may seem remarkably minimalist from a modern perspective, but, as Patricia Crone argues, they were all that pre-modern states could hope to achieve. Religious communities and what Crone calls other “self-help groups” (extended families, guilds, etc.) fulfilled many of the other essential prerogatives of our modern state like providing for the chronic poor. See Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015 [1989]), 35-58. 55 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1951-1954), 3: 194-204. 127 on-again, off-again struggles was the War of the Lombards (1228-1243), during which the baronial party—a group of Levantine and Cypriot nobles, the Genoese, the Venetians and the Knights

Templar—challenged the imperial party—a coalition including Richard Filangieri, the bailli of

Conrad II, and his allies the Pisans, the Templar, the Teutonic Order and the lords of Antioch and

Tripoli—over who had the right to rule the kingdom. The baronials held Acre, while the imperialists were based in Tyre and also retained Jerusalem. The popes largely supported the baronial party because it sought to marginalize the excommunicant Emperor Frederick II and his family.56 The baronials won the war in 1243 when they took Tyre and Jerusalem.57

Subsequently, internecine wars erupted again between the partisans of Venice and Pisa (1248-

1250) and Venice and Genoa (the War of Saint Sabas, 1256-1270). These wars divided the nobility and military orders anew. The Venetians expelled the Genoese from Acre and the Genoese forced the

Venetians from Tyre. After both sides had expended countless lives and dinars, the status quo ante remained essentially unchanged.58 Nevertheless, the threat of intra-Christian conflict menaced the

Latin kingdom until the Mamluks breached Acre’s walls in 1291.

The Kingdom of Acre vs. Mainland European States

Three main characteristics distinguish the economic and political policies of the thirteenth- century Kingdom of Jerusalem from the practices of other contemporary European states. First, the

Kingdom of Jerusalem lacked a physically-present, charismatic king—a figure who could serve as the

56 Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997), 48-49. 57 Unsurprisingly, as Riley-Smith notes, she was a figurehead. See Feudal Nobility, 211-213. 58 Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3: 205-236. 128 embodiment of justice in the realm and the ultimate arbiter in his or her subjects’ legal disputes.59

Second, the vast majority of the kingdom’s state revenue came from port-based commerce—not from taxes on rural holdings, or fiefs, as in continental Europe—since most of Syria’s productive agricultural hinterland was now in Muslim hands.60 Third, the kingdom’s port cities were—with a few notable exceptions—not self-administrating. That is, corporate city councils did not run their own affairs as they did in many of the ports of Europe.61 Instead, the principalities claimed different quarters of the Latin ports as their own miniature kingdoms from which they had the right to derive revenue and over which they had legal jurisdiction.62

Nor did the Kingdom of Jerusalem follow European trends in the treatment of its non-

Christian population. On the one hand, England, France and Iberia had forbidden Jewish moneylending, embraced minority sumptuary laws, declared the Talmud a heretical text and

59 Weber argues feudalism is a form of traditional domination. As Karl Dusza notes, for Weber, “All forms of traditional domination, no matter how vast and complex their arrangements for rule may be, ultimately refer to the person of the ruler as the source and locus of authority and as the addressee of feelings of personal devotion (pietat).” See Weber, Economy and Society, 131 as discussed in Gianfranco Poggi, “Max Weber’s Conceptual Portrayal of Feudalism,” The British Journal of Sociology, 39, no.2 (1988): 211-227 (213); As Crone argues, the king in the feudal system was seen as a “general repairman” of last resort and thus the embodiment of righteousness and justice in his realm. Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies, 146-175. 60 The term “fief” provides the etymologic origin of the term feudalism. While fiefs did exist in urban space, the traditional feudal model emphasizes their role in rural spaces, in a pyramid of subinfeudation reaching from kinglordvassalspeasants. Elizabeth A.R. Brown argues that fiefs have been the fall back for defenders of the use of feudalism precisely because they were seen to cohere to this model. But, she points out that even for rural fiefs, we cannot identify a set of coherent “feudal” policies. See Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and the Historians of Medieval Europe,” The American Historical Review 79, no.4 (1974): 1063-1088. 61 The burgesses were part of the short-lived Commune of Acre (1231-c.1244), but Riley-Smith convincingly argues that the commune held no administrative functions. There were also short-lived communes in Tyre, Antioch and Tripoli. See Riley- Smith, Feudal Nobility, 178-84; also Hans E. Mayer, “On the Beginnings of the Communal Movement in the Holy Land: The Commune of Tyre,” in Traditio 24 (1968): 443-57. 62 Henri Pirenne identified the difference between how medieval states treated their cities (burgus) and countryside: the former were essentially independent, free spaces, while the latter relied on a peasant-economy of unfree labor. See H. Pirenne, Medieval Cities: The Origins and Revival of Trade (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980 [1925]. John Baldwin provides an excellent summary of how scholars perceived the disruptive roll of the city in what they called a feudal society. See Baldwin, The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, 1000-1300 (Lexington: Heath, 1971), 35-58. 129 organized the confiscation and destruction of Jewish holy books. 63 In the Latin Levant, on the other hand, Jewish moneylending was an accepted practice.64 Furthermore, there were no state-sanctioned attacks on the Talmud, Jewish religious practice or Jews in general. 65 The Levantine principalities spurned European precedents and contemporary practices in governance and minority law. What explains these differences? And why were these laws relatively favorable to the Latin nobilities’ minority subjects?

Whence the Royal Alliance?

One answer to that question lies in the political fragmentation of the thirteenth-century Latin

Kingdom. It seems paradoxical that a kingless kingdom could be “good for the Jews,” since historians of the Jews have long argued that the reason that medieval Jews made vertical alliances with their kings was that only a strong monarch could secure the Jewish communities’ protection, prosperity and political influence. Salo Baron (1895-1989) first articulated this argument for a long-standing, mutually beneficial alliance between medieval Jews and their kings.66 According to Baron, Jews provided their monarchs with tax collectors, physicians, translators and courtiers. They also paid for

63 William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Phillip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 56-177. Robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973), 63-154. For the more general context of the rise of this anti-Jewish sentiment in the context of the war on heresy and the new intellectual movements, see Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989); Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982); and R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (New York: John Wiley & Sons Press, 2007 [1987]). H. Maccoby, Judaism on Trial (Oxford: Littman Library, 1982); J. Rembaum, “The Talmud and the Popes,” 203-23. 64 See to court document discussed below, 188-190. 65 Joshua Prawer, The History of Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 107-10. 66 For Baron, the roots of these alliances went back to the diasporic communities in the Roman Empire. He first mentioned the “royal alliance” in A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., 18 vols. (New York: Columbia UP, 1952–83), 2: 36-43, 28–29, 48–50, 63, 70–75, and 87–88. I was pointed to these citations after reading the brilliant explanation of the evolution of the concept of the royal alliance in Lois C. Duben, “Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, the Royal Alliance, and Jewish Political Theory,” Jewish History 28 (2014): 51-81. 130 the privilege to reside in a Christian state. In turn, the kings protected their Jews from their enemies and allowed them access to the halls of power. 67 Jewish ties to the government varied based on the needs of regional monarchs. For instance, in Iberia during the High Middle Ages, Jewish notables— especially Jewish Arabic speakers—grew more closely associated with the kings of Aragon and Castile, for whom they served as translators, diplomats and counsellors.68 Meanwhile, in central Europe, Jews under the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220-1250) became servi camerae regis (“serfs of the royal chamber”)—meaning that all their property technically belonged to the crown and that any attack on a Jew was an attack on the emperor’s property.69 In this context, monarchs in Western and

Central Europe used their Jews as tools in their project of consolidating royal authority. They claimed possession of all their kingdoms’ Jews, including those outside the royal domain, meaning that they could interfere in the affairs of their vassals’ estates.

67 See Baron, A Social and Religious History, 1:190-191 and the references above. See also Duben, “Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi,” 55-6. 68 Elka Klein, Jews, Christian Society and Royal Power in Medieval Barcelona (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006); and Yom Tov Assis, The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry: Community and Society in the Crown of Aragon, 1213-1327 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1997). 69 Salo W. Baron, “Medieval Nationalism and Jewish Serfdom,” in Ancient and Medieval Jewish History ed. Leon A. Feldman (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1972), 308-22. Baron argues for the generally ameliorative effect of servitus Judaeorum, the “serfdom of the Jews”, on the status and security of the Jewish population in medieval Europe. But he makes a critical distinction between the new “nationalist” states (i.e., France and England)—where state-building based on Jewish serfdom led ultimately to their expulsion and the situation in regions under the influence of the Papacy and Holy Roman Emperor, who he says competed over who had authority over the Jews. For this more optimistic (anti-lachrymose) perspective, see Baron’s previous essay in the above volume, “‘Plentitude of Apostolic Powers’ and Medieval ‘Jewish Serfdom’,” 284-307. 69 Salo W. Baron, “Medieval Nationalism and Jewish Serfdom,” in Ancient and Medieval Jewish History ed. Leon A. Feldman (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1972), 308-22. Baron argues for the generally ameliorative effect of servitus Judaeorum, the “serfdom of the Jews”, on the status and security of the Jewish population in medieval Europe. But he makes a critical distinction between the new “nationalist” states (i.e., France and England)—where state-building based on Jewish serfdom led ultimately to their expulsion and the situation in regions under the influence of the Papacy and Holy Roman Emperor, who he says competed over who had authority over the Jews. For this more optimistic (anti-lachrymose) perspective, see Baron’s previous essay in the above volume, “‘Plentitude of Apostolic Powers’ and Medieval ‘Jewish Serfdom’,” 284-307. 131

Baron’s student, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, asked what this alliance meant to the self- conception of medieval Jews. He found that the royal alliance provided a source of pride and consolation for Jewish elites, who could claim to be “servants of the king” not “servants of servants

(i.e., servants of Christian subjects of the crown).”70 For Yerushalmi, medieval Jews’ identification with the “uniform jurisdiction of the highest governmental power available” was “thoroughly realistic” since “their ultimate safety and welfare could be entrusted neither to the erratic benevolence of their gentile neighbors nor to the caprice of local authorities.”71 Yerushalmi explained that “Jews realized that the greater the number of jurisdictions over them, the greater their obligations and taxes, as well as the risk of arbitrary exactions on behalf of local authorities.”72

Baron’s and Yerushalmi’s arguments are compelling in the European context they study.

According to their theory, however, thirteenth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem should have been a world of lawlessness where Jews and other minorities trembled before the whim of fickle nobles. This was not the case.73 Even the twelfth-century kings of Jerusalem had made few universal claims over their non-Latin subjects and enforced even fewer. 74 In the thirteenth century, what little significance royal authority had held for Levantine Jews and other minorities disintegrated completely. Therefore, it was precisely to Yerushalmi’s local authorities that these parties were obligated to turn.

70 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Servants of Kings and Not Servants of Servants: Some Aspects of the Political History of the Jews (Atlanta: Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, 2005). 71 Ibid., 7. 72 Ibid., 15. 73 David Jacoby, “The Fonde of Crusader Acre and its Tariff: Some New Considerations,” in Dei gesta per Francos: etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, ed. B. Z. Kedar et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 277-93. Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 142-3; 155-6. 74 Aimery of Lusignan (r. 1197-1205) did claim the vassalage of all subjects in the legal compilation Livre au Roi (c. 1200). But Aimery never exercised these powers, and the law set an even more impractical standard for his absentee successors. Riley-Smith contends that these laws were uncharacteristic of the period and suggests that this explains why they were frequently broken (ibid., 155-6.). 132

This fragmentation of royal authority did not create a dystopia. Nor did it discourage Jewish immigration and settlement in the Kingdom.75 The Jews did fall under the jurisdiction and beneath the political authority of quarreling local institutions. They paid taxes and court fees to these principalities in exchange for protection and legal rights. In this context, the minorities’ power lay precisely in the plurality of their masters and the contestation among them over who controlled the

Jews’ taxes and tolls. In other words, as servants of all, the Jews and other non-Latin-Christians became servants of none.

A Window on Venetian Tyre: Frankish Government (Not) at Work

In order to understand how minorities were able to thrive in the Latin Levant, it is necessary to outline how Latin Lords governed their non-Latin-Christian populations. In Latin Syria, non- nobles—both Latins and Syrians—paid taxes to their regional overseers, who could be an individual

(e.g., the countess of Tiberias) or an institution (e.g., the Teutonic Order).76 These institutions and lords could gift or exchange the right to the perpetual taxes of non-nobles as a form of currency among themselves. For instance, Bohemond III, prince of Antioch, made donations of Jews, Greeks,

Armenian Christians and Latin-Christians to the Knights Hospitaller in the late-twelfth century.77

These human offerings were not serfs traded as chattel; they were freemen whose tax payments were bartered as a form of currency. The legal system for non-nobles was based on a similar profit-oriented rationale: the military orders, Italian city-states, local nobles, etc., all maintained legal institutions that

75 See above, chapter 1.3. 76 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 136-56. 77 Delaville le Roulx, (ed.), Cartulaire general des Hospitaliers, vol. I, #783 491-496; see also #648, 436-437. Discussed in MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 121-2. 133 their subjects could use—for a price.78 In theory, certain forms of criminal law were restricted to the royal courts, but in reality, the judges of the Italian city-states and the nobles also dealt with criminal cases.79

In the course of the wars discussed above, the right to the taxes and court fees of non-nobles became one of the many spoils over which the warring coalitions fought. For instance, after Venice sided with the baronial party in the 1230s, the imperialists seized the third of Tyre hitherto under

Venetian control, and divvied up the neighborhood among their supporters. Included among these spoils were the right to the taxes and court fees of Tyrian Christians and Jews who had been subjects of the Venetians. Recall from Part 1 how in 1243, when the Venetians’ baronial allies retook Tyre,

Venice’s resident ambassador (bailo), Marsiligio Zorzi, sought recompense for his city’s losses.80 Zorzi’s record of Venetian grievances notes that:

Jews, who have resided in our territory now for more than 50 years, were detained by the bailli (i.e., Richard Filangieri), against God and our rights. Thus, (the Jews) were not judged in our court, nor was any recompense made (for their taxes and court fees). But now, by the grace of God, they can be judged in our court. In everything (the Jews) are ruled over by us, just as those Jews who live in the king’s section (of Tyre) are ruled by him.81

Note the parallels here between Venetian and royal authority: Both are entitled to the taxes and court fees of their residents. Both have complete control of “their” Jews. Both claim the loyalty of the

78 Marsilio Zorzi, Der Bericht des Marsilio Zorzi: Codex Querini-Stampalia IV 3 (1064) ed. Oliver Berggotz (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991), 139-40. On courts as a means for the medieval state to secure revenue—and the high costs for litigants involved in court cases, see Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity and Legal Culture in Marseilles, 1264-1423 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003), 29-89. 79 Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 241-249. 80 See above, 98-101. 81 Zorzi, Der Bericht des Marsilio Zorzi, 139-140. Alice never granted the Venetians their demands. See Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 212. 134 residents of their respective quarters.82 Similarly, both maintain armed forces that protect their citizens from outsiders. In other words, both parties—kingdom and principality—held the responsibility to uphold the basic prerogatives of medieval governance in their respective domains.

But this clean demarcation of royal/principality authority is not an adequate reflection of the messy reality on the ground. Zorzi’s assertion that any power exercised a monopoly over the courts to which “their” Syrians had recourse is baseless. Among the Jews whom Zorzi listed as the heads of households is a “Harham”—i.e., ḥakham—a Hebrew title for a communal official whose duties often included overseeing court cases.83 Furthermore, we learn from a Latin document from 1271 that many

Venetian Jews in Acre refused to live in the Venetian quarter, suggesting that Syrians were happy to pay taxes and receive privileges from the city-state, but were capable of rejecting decrees that did not serve their interests.84 In fact, defiance of the principalities was the norm for both Arabic speakers and

Franks. David Abulafia has shown that it was common for both local and foreign merchants to falsely claim the citizenship of one state/principality or another in order to secure associated privileges and tax exemptions.85 Similarly, David Jacoby has illustrated how Syrians disregarded laws designed to limit their trade to specific city markets and residence to specific quarters. Arabic speakers continued to live and trade in every quarter of Frankish ports like Acre.86

82 Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, eds. Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel and G. M. Thomas 3 vols. (Vienna, 1856-57) 2: 151, 360 discussed in Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 248. 83 We know that the Jews of late-thirteenth-century Tyre had their own Arabophone court, and there may have been one located in the Venetian quarter as well. 84 R. Cessi (ed.), Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio di Venezia, vol. 2 (Bologna: Niccola Zannichelli, 1993), VIII, i. 14-16. Discussed in Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 212; and Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 262. 85 See two articles in David Abulafia, Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100-1500 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993): “The Levant trade of the minor cities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: strengths and weaknesses,” XI: 183-202; and “Narbonne, the lands of the Crown of Aragon and the Levant trade 1187-1400,” XIV: 189-207. 86 David Jacoby, "Aspects of Everyday Life,” 73-105. 135

Why did the principalities permit such impertinence? Perhaps the ports were a lawless dystopia? Perhaps the lords were incapable of enforcing order? More likely, the principalities simply did not care to do so. After all, they were making exorbitant profits in the prevailing system. In 1240, profits from taxes on the royal-controlled regions of Acre alone may have surpassed the annual revenues of the entire kingdom of England.87 Moreover, the Frankish principalities were not inclined to impose top-down decrees, since such an authoritarian approach was precisely what their philosophy of governance and legal principles sought to protect against.88

A Failure to Persecute

The Jews of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin Europe witnessed unprecedented persecutions of their communities and suffered massacres, expulsions, blood libels and mass incinerations of their holy texts.89 Scholars have offered such divergent explanations for these phenomena as Western Christian intellectuals’ increasing familiarity with Greek epistemology and its potential applications to theological disputes;90 the new confidence of Western

87 Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Survival of Muslim Administration in Frankish Palestine,” in The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades, ed. P.M. Holt (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1977), 17; and Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 64. 88 On this issue, see the section on Frankish legal codes below, 183-187. 89 Massacres of Jews in the Rhineland (1096; 1146), France (1146; 1236) Aragon and England (1190); the first blood libel accusations in France (Blois, 1171) and England (Norwich, 1144; Gloucester 1168; etc.); the first mass expulsions of Jewish populations from a European states (France, 1182; England 1290), the first trials of the Talmud (Paris 1241, Barcelona 1263) and, subsequently the first mass incineration of Jewish holy texts. R.I. Moore placed this trend in the context of a broader “rise of a persecuting society” against heretics and lepers in his The Formation of a Persecuting Society. 90 Anna Abulafia holds that the new polemical tact was the product of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance and the exposure of Christian theologians to Greek thought and its dialectical scientific approach to inquiry. These theologians, having interrogated their own religious traditions according to Greek scientific methods and having subsequently concluded that Christianity’s logic and truth are self-evident, determined that the Jews’ unwillingness to recognize this Christian truth meant that they were incapable of logical reasoning and hence were less than human. Anna S. Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1995). 136

Christendom following its military victories over Islam;91 the rise of mendicant orders and associated missionary zeal;92 and the conflation of Jews with the policies of Christian kings.93

Much of this violence was associated with the Crusades. The Jews of the Latin Levant, however, faced no (documented) incidents of persecutory state violence.94

Mark Cohen compares Jewry law in the Islamic world and Christian west and argues that the

Jews, as the sole ethnic minority in Christendom, were the target of Christian anxiety in ways that

Jews in the Islamic world—where they shared their position as dhimmīs with Christians, Zorastrians and others—were not. Latin Christians also held an inherent suspicion of commerce which fed their disdain for Jews, whose most prominent members in Europe were merchants. Finally, Jews in the

West were often held collectively responsible for the crime of any member of their community, whereas in the Islamic world only the individual was punished. This was the product of the system of corporate charters that granted privileges to the Jews as a community, versus the poll-tax payments in the Islamic world which bought protection for the individual dhimmī.95 As we have seen, none of these Western-Christian developments applied to the Crusader states.

91 Robert Chazan argues that an increasingly confident Christian west— emboldened by economic growth and military victories over Islamic forces in al-Andalus and the Levant—was eager to confront its monotheistic predecessor whose adherents’ presence posed a constant rebuke to its sense of its own divinely-ordained primacy. See Chazan, Daggers of Faith. 92 Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism. 93 This was discussed above in the context of the emergence of the institution of servi camerae regis. See 131-133. In a local context, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 43-69. 94 As Prawer writes: “Most remarkable…is the fact that at the time when every Crusade was accompanied in Europe by anti-Jewish pogroms…there was no anti-Jewish pogrom in the Levant in two hundred years of Crusader domination.” Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 107. 95 Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 77-84; 115-124. Cohen’s conception of Jewish life in the Islamic world is deceptively rosy, but his observations about the structural roots of anti-Judaism in Europe are compelling. For a critique of his argument, see Norman Stillman, “Myth, Counter-Myth and Distortion,” Tikkun 6 (1991): 60-4. 137

But there are other reasons that the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not witness large-scale persecution of its Jews. Christopher MacEvitt and Bernard Hamilton offer the most convincing explanations of the ideology behind this absence; namely, the Crusader states did not cultivate elite churchmen, as the twelfth-century renaissance did in Europe, but instead relied on “theological ignorance” to suppress knowledge of difference.96 While MacEvitt addressed local Christians’ status, his observations are equally pertinent to the position of Levantine Jews and Muslims. But we must also consider how state institutions’ relationships with minorities—relations that I have endeavored to outline here—also shaped this phenomenon.

First, the policies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s vis-à-vis minorities were not born of a universal legal code but were instead conceived in ad hoc surrender treaties. These treaties retained the agency of the conquered and allowed them to negotiate a more favorable position in their new state. Second, the Franks were willing to adopt Islamic laws that upheld the proper boundaries of communities, including sumptuary legislation and the jizya—which, as we will see in the next section, also addressed anxieties among the local Jewish leadership. The very act of instituting the jizya served as a form of protection for minorities, since accepting payment of the poll-tax, as Cohen argues, was a concrete expression of the state’s commitment to minorities’ security. But the Franks adopted these laws in a form that was less invasive than their Islamic archetypes because Latin

Christians did not have the same ideological investment in these institutions and were preoccupied with commerce as a basis for revenue.

96 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 20-26; Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church (London: Routledge, 1980), 134. 138

Third, the Franks cultivated relations with minority elites on the local, not state, level. This meant that minorities did not become associated with unpopular royal policies, as the “king’s” Jews did in some places in Latin Europe. Since there was no state sanctioned Jewish leader and no significant Jewish presence at all in the Latin court, Jewish elites were less visible to the public and therefore did not evoke the animosity they often faced in Europe and the Islamic world.

The fact that alliances between minorities and their rulers were contingent on local factors explains the failure of the royal alliance paradigm to explain the situation of Jews in the Crusader states. In both the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem, local authorities were not the dreaded figures of arbitrary justice, but the cornerstone of the protection of minorities and their privileges.

This relative tolerance continued under the Kingdom of Acre following the emergence of the principalities. The rise of these mini-states could just as easily have worked to the detriment of the

Jews and other non-Franks. For instance, if any of these institutions had been committed to persecuting its minorities, no power could or would have come to their rescue—as medieval

European monarchs often did. But neither is it sheer coincidence that events in the Latin Levant worked out as they did. The Levantine Franks wanted “taxes and loyalty, not likeness.”97 These are important points to recognize both because of the prevailing perception of Jewish-Crusader relations

97 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010), 11. As they argue, pre-modern empires (as opposed to many modern colonial states) were not interested in homogenizing their population, but in ensuring their loyalty. 139 and because some scholars of the Latin Levant impose anachronistic models (e.g., South African

Apartheid) on their studies of the Crusader states.98

Loyalty and Solidarity in a Kingless Society

If the Jews of Latin Syria were able to function so well under Frankish rule, why have scholars continued to insist that Near Eastern Jews during the period of Frankish rule of the Levant were loyal to the Fatimids and Ayyubids and actively opposed to the Franks?

Arabic-speaking Jews did frequently express loyalty to the head of an Islamic state in Genizah documents—something that we have not seen in our corpus from Frankish Syria.99 Moreover, one

Jewish eschatological work (purportedly) from this period presents the Christians as the enemy whom the Muslims (here, Saladin) would expel from Palestine to herald the beginning of the messianic age.100

But these texts are from outsiders—what was the perspective of the Jews living under Latin rule? There was, of course, no single Crusader state to which Jews could have been loyal—at least not in the manner that they could be to Muslim caliphs/sultans. As we have seen throughout this chapter, ties of patronage (benefaction for loyalty) were conducted on the level of individuals, not corporate groups; that is, these were what Mottahedeh calls “acquired loyalties,” entered into freely that ended upon the death of either party.101 Especially in the thirteenth century, when the effective powers of the

98 Prawer wrote that the Franks followed a policy of “non integration, or, more exactly, Apartheid” in Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 524. 99 For instance, different permutations of the phrase khallada Allah mamlakatahu—i.e., “may God make his reign eternal”—appear after the names of Sultans and caliphs in at least fourteen different documents digitized by the PGP. 100 Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 65-69. Prawer writes that “the Jewish view of the Crusades” was essentially eschatological (which is unsurprising for he draws this conclusion largely from messianic texts) and that the Muslims were conceived as the redeemers who would restore the Jewish Kingdom. 101 Roy Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980), 40-96. 140 king disappeared, there was no ruler to whom all people were bound in (individual or corporate) patronage ties (which, it should be noted, Mottahedeh posited was critical to the social order).102

But, if we move beyond political conceptions of loyalty to the modern state and/or the medieval king/kingdom, we can speak to a third category of loyalty—that of societal solidarity. That is, given the relative beneficence of the Crusader state(s), did Syrian Jews identify with the political and military interests of their Frankish neighbors?

At least one Genizah document suggests they did, a Hebrew letter from the Genizah that also includes two halakhic questions (sheʾelot).103 The author lived in Acre and wrote to a “rav ha-ḥasid, the son-in-law of R. Avraham ha-Levi” in Fustat.104 Following common practice, the writer, as a merchant, helped transport sheʾelot and teshuvot (responsa) on behalf of rabbinic scholars residing in the regions of the Mediterranean in which he traded.105 The document opens with a poem of the author’s own composition that he wrote shortly after the disastrous Fifth Crusade (1217-1221). The Crusade, which was directed against Egypt, was defeated when the Nile rose and flooded the Crusader camps. The

Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil subsequently made quick work of the invaders.106 When news of these events reached Latin Acre, the residents of the city were despondent. Our author writes:

102 Ibid., 175-190. 103 ENA 3372.1, ed. in Shmuʿel Galik, Remnants of Responsa from Sages of the Ottoman Empire from the Cairo Genizah (Heb.) (Tel Aviv: Bar Ilan UP, 2016), 589-593. I am grateful to Benjamin Kedar for bringing this document to my attention. 104 The author mentions a number of merchants in the body of the letter dealing with the halakhic questions. Moreover, the questions themselves are all asked from the perspective of merchants. Given these facts, and the fact that the author was itinerant, we can reasonably posit that he was himself a merchant. See ENA 3372.1 ll. 7-33. 105 On the ways rabbinic institutions relied on mercantile networks for the movement of responsa, see Ben Sasson, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community. For the context of the economic and political relationships that shaped merchants’ relationships to the rabbinic leaders for whom they carried responsa, see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 134- 55. 106 The events as described here are thirteenth century (based on the rabbinic sources mentioned) and could refer to either King Louis’ Crusade (1250-1251) or to the Fifth Crusade (1220-1221). The way the Nile is personified sweeping away the 141

Tears pour out while gladness drowns— moaning and woe are fixed 107 and roll over the children of Esau (banei Esav) (i.e., Christians), How the finger of God108 came over them! It consumed some of them with hunger, others with suffocation (lit., drowning). For the river Nile swept them away,109 and the rest were utterly desolated. The city of Acre fell into confusion110— they wailed a lament (ve-yikonenu eichah) because the King’s (i.e., God’s) wrath had poured out.111 He sent from heaven His anger and jealousy and a curse on (the Frankish soldiers) until their souls withered within them (halakh ruḥam be-qervam).112 Therefore, the land (of Israel) mourns (lakhen teʾeval ha-areṣ),113 and her furrows weep. 114

The writer provides a poetic description of the drowning and destruction of the Crusader forces

(children of Esau) on the Nile—a clear reference to the Fifth Crusade.115 The poem ends at the last line translated here. The remainder of the letter is concerned with the sending, receiving and answering of halakhic questions.

The tone of this poem is that of a qinah, or lament, that also invokes a Deuteronomistic understanding of sin provoking divine punishment.116 The text makes over a half-dozen allusions to biblical books concerned with suffering including Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Job. These allusions invoke

soldiers clearly refers to the flooding of the Nile that occurred during the Fifth Crusade. I am grateful to Benjamin Kedar for his help dating this text. 107 Ezekiel 2.10 108 See Exodus 8.15, in which Pharaoh’s defeated magicians call Moses’s staff the “finger of God.” 109 Judges 5.21 110 Esther 3.15 111 Esther 7.10 Yonatan Glazer-Eitan convinced me that the writer made an error and intended .נבקה רוח מצרים בקרבו ,Cf., Joshua 15.3 112 here to write a bet, not a vav, before kerev. I am grateful for both his help and friendship. 113 Derivative of Jeremiah 4:28, in which the prophet speaks to the destruction God will bring on the land of Israel. 114 Job 31:38; ENA 3372.1, ll. 1-5 115 See above, n. 105. 116 Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 45-46. On qinot, see Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature, 39-71. 142 previous events in Israelite history when God’s wrath had fallen on the Jews. The poem thus portrays the wider community of Latin Acre standing in for the people of Israel. Even the land of Israel itself weeps—as it did in Jeremiah’s vision of God’s/Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem.117 As is often the case for medieval rabbinic and ecclesiastical writers, the implication is that the destruction is self-inflicted—God’s wrath was spurred by man’s sins.118 That sin is not the subject of the poem in no way trivializes the suffering it reaped.

This poem, then, suggests that at least some Jews in Latin Acre identified with the suffering of their Frankish neighbors. It may seem surprising that the letter was addressed to a Jew living in

Ayyubid Fustat—that is, in a region of Egypt that would have fallen to the Franks had the Fifth

Crusade succeeded. But the writers’ loyalty—in the sense of solidarity—was to Acre, not Fustat, and he made no attempt to claim otherwise to his Egyptian colleague. Thus, while the kingdom’s political coherence was based on individual ties of acquired loyalties, there was still some sense of a common commitment to a corporate body of people in the cities Syrian Jews called home.

Conclusion

When I first began to consider how the Kingdom of Jerusalem approached minorities and Levantine Jews specifically, I thought the policy I observed was one of “benign neglect”— that is, I supposed that indifference was the most salient variable in the Latin state policy. The

Genizah documents, Latin and Arabic sources have convinced me otherwise— that it was

117 Jeremiah 4:28 118 Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 21-3. 143 only when the Franks were proactive and fulfilled their peoples’ Islamicate expectations of governance that benign policies could emerge.

That is not to say the Franks “went native.” They maintained distinctive, Western

European traditions that kept power in the hands of local lords and out of the control of centralized institutions. Yes, they adopted aspects of dhimmī law, but in a form that required minimal intervention in minorities’ lives. Furthermore, they emphasized collecting revenue from non-Latin Christian merchants over regulating and taxing the bodies of their minorities.

Most Jews living under Latin rule seem to have found these policies amenable: There was no mass exodus of Jews from the Kingdom of Jerusalem following the period of the First Crusade.

In the following century, Jewish immigrants, including refugees from Europe, came in growing numbers to Syria’s shores.

After the Third Crusade, the central power of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (now Acre) and its royal institutions collapsed. Impotent or absentee monarchs were unwilling or unable to uphold the responsibilities of the medieval state: defending their citizens against outsiders, promoting their peoples’ welfare and maintaining order among their residents’ communities. These failures led the

“principalities”—Frankish nobles, military orders, Italian city-states and the church—to assume these state prerogatives. The principalities fought among themselves over the right to tax and receive court fees from residents of their domains. Jewish notables were able to exploit the dispersal of the prerogatives of governance in Latin Palestine in order to negotiate political concessions from local lords and other institutions.

144

In the next chapter we will see how the collapse of central state power also prevented Jewish notables from exercising control over their communities through state coercion. This diminished these elites’ influence and power over their Levantine followers and coreligionists across the

Mediterranean. As such, the Jewish community’ politics came to resemble that of its Frankish overseers: decentralized, divisive and ineffectual. But despite such limitations—or, perhaps, because of them—Jewish scholars, merchants and everyday people thrived in this medieval world without the protection of the royal alliance. Minorities did not cower before the “caprice of local officials.” Instead, they imposed their own order (and disorder) on this fragmented system. They exploited contestation among their Frankish masters to appropriate privileges. They became the servants of the many and thus the servants of none.

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2.2 The View from Below: Informal Intermediaries and Jewish-State Relations in Latin Syria

Around 1171, Moshe b. Maimon (Moses Maimonides, 1135-1204) was called before the

Fatimid court in Cairo. The thirteenth-century Muslim scholar, Jamāl al-Dīn Abū- l Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm -al Shaybānī- l Qifṭī (Ibn al-Qifṭī, 1172-1248), portrays the subsequent events in a profile of Maimonides in his tārikh al-ḥukamāʾ (History of Learned Men):

In the last days of the Fatimid caliphate (9o9-1171) (lit., “the Egyptian ʿAlid state”), (the Fatimids) wished to include Maimonides among their physicians and to send him to the king of the Franks in Ascalon—for (the Frankish king) had requested a physician from (the Fatimids). The Fatimids picked (Maimonides), but he chose to refrain from government service (imtanaʿa min al-khidmah) and from associating with this affair (ṣuḥbat al-wāqiʿah).119 And when the Ghuzz (i.e., the Turks—in this case, the Ayyubids) ruled in Egypt after the (Fatimid caliphate) collapsed, al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil ʿAbd al-Rahīm b. ʿAlī al-Baysānī included (Maimonides) (in his service) and took care of him and assigned him a salary.120

Ibn al-Qifṭī here portrays Maimonides refusing Amalric’s offer to become the Frankish king’s personal physician, as well as declining to serve the Fatimid court in any capacity.121 Why did

Maimonides do so? The juxtaposition here of the anti-Fatimid coup suggests that Ibn al-Qifṭī thought Maimonides was both prescient and pragmatic—he knew his ally, al-Qadī al-Fādil,

119 On the use of khidmah for government service in the world of the Genizah, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:60; Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 187-8; and Marina Rustow, “Formal and Informal Patronage in the Islamic East: Genizah Evidence,” Al-Qanṭara, 29 (2008), 356-357; and eadem., “Benefaction (Niʿma), Gratitude (Shukr), and the Politics of Giving and Receiving in Letters from the Cairo Genizah,” in Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions, ed. Miriam Frenkel/Yaacov Lev (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 384-385. For a non-Jewish context in which khidmah also denoted a patron-client relationship between an individual and head of state, see Jürgen Paul, “Khidma in the Social History of pre-Mongol Iran,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57 (2014): 392-42. 120 Ibn al-Qifṭī, Tarikh al-hukumaʿ, ed. Julius Lipper (Leipzig: 1903), 318. Available at archive.org. Translated in Bernard Lewis, “Maimonides, Lionheart, and Saladin,” Ereṣ-Yisraʾel 7 (1964): 70-1. My translation is more literal than Lewis’s. 121 With regard to the latter point, it is the clear implication of the Arabic syntax here: Maimonides first refuses to partake in any government service khidmah under the Fatmids and then refuses to be associated with the Franks or their offer. Whether any of this ever happened, of course, is unknowable. As Lewis notes, previous scholars have claimed that Maimonides served the Fatimid court, but this cannot be verified. See ibid., 74. 146 was a close associate of Saladin and foresaw the overthrow of the Fatimids. Therefore, he refrained from serving both the Fatimids and their Frankish allies.122

These factors explain why Maimonides would refuse to enter the Fatimid’s service.123

But why did he also reject the offer of a position at the Frankish court when al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil’s offer was contingent on the success of the anti-Fatimid coup? The position in Latin Syria was guaranteed and was equivalent to the highest court job Maimonides could have hoped to achieve in Egypt— that of personal physician to the sultan/king.

Many tentative theories have been proposed to explain Maimonides’ reasoning. 124

These theories overlook the basic, structural reason that an ambitious Jewish leader like

Maimonides would never have seriously considered Amalric’s offer. Maimonides at this time was on the verge of becoming the head of Egypt’s Jews (raʾīs al-yahūd)—an official position at

Islamic court. He had, in fact, already taken on many of that positions’ prerogatives.125

Maimonides, who had lived in Frankish Acre for a year, knew that there was no central, government-sanctioned authority over the Jews of Latin Syria remotely comparable to that of

122 On Maimonides role in the Ayyubid court, see Joel Kramer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 187-215. Kramer seems to assume that Maimonides was part of the Fatimid court and repeatedly asserts that Maimonides “remained loyal” to them until the end. He does not, however, provide any evidence of such, except that he was already associated with al-Qāḍī al-Fādil, who did serve the Fatimids in an administrative capacity. However, al-Qāḍī al-Fādil, and not the Fatimid caliphate writ large, was Maimonides patron. Therefore, his loyalty, as such, was based on the benefaction (niʿmah) of his patron, not of the state. 123 The pragmatic considerations would bear out: as a result of honoring his alliance to al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, Maimonides would soon become a court physician to Saladin’s right hand man and eventually rise to the position of personal physician to Saladin’s successors. Moreover, with the support of his Ayyubid patron, Maimonides was able to secure the position of head of the Jews (raʾīs al-yahūd) of Egypt around 1172. 124 These theories include: Maimonides did not speak a Latinate language; the Jewish community of Fustat was larger than that of Acre; and the Crusaders were intolerant of Jews. 40-41; Lewis, “Maimonides, Lionheart and Saladin,” 70; Kramer, Das Problem, 160-161. 125 Menahem Ben-Sasson, “Maimonides in Egypt: First Stage,” Maimonidean Studies, vol. 2, ed. Arthur Hyman (New York: Yeshiva UP, 1991), 3-30. 147 raʾīs al-yahūd. Instead, in Latin Syria minority-relations were negotiated on the level of the local, between (Jewish) Syrian notables and the king’s noble vassals. Therefore, while Amalric may have been able to assuage Maimonides’ ambition for power in the non-Jewish world, he had nothing to offer him in terms of leadership over a community of his coreligionists.

As a result of the Franks not conceding to Islamicate norms in appointing a head of their Jews, Syrian Jews would never attain a courtier-rabbi leader like Maimonides.

Furthermore, they were deprived of having any coreligionists in Latin Jerusalem, where the royal court (at least in theory) met. Indeed, I have found only one example of a Jewish courtier in my entire corpus—a reference in a fragmentary letter to a Provencal courtier (sar, “lord” or

“prince”) in 1220s Acre.126 This situation demanded new strategies for cultivating ties to the state and created new opportunities for potential intermediaries.

This chapter therefore asks: How were Latin Syria’s Jews able to negotiate their privileges and obligations to the state? Who occupied the role of intermediaries with the

Latin-Christians? And how did the dispersal of the prerogatives of governance after the Third

Crusade impact the ways these intermediaries with the ruling, Latin-Christian elites functioned?

The first half of the chapter offers close readings of a series of texts from the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187) that illuminate the roles merchants, scholars, municipal leaders, tax collectors, money-lenders and other laymen played as leaders of the Jewish community who

126 ENA 3372.1, ll. 9-10, ed. Shmuʿel Galik, Remants of Responsa from Sages of the Ottoman Empire from the Cairo Genizah (Heb.) (Tel Aviv: Bar Ilan UP, 2015), 589-593. Galik believed that the sar was the ruler/governor of Acre, but the Hebrew term in the Near East always refers to Jews (and there was no governor of Acre). On the use of this title, see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 85-6. The poetic introduction to the letter is discussed above pp. 141-143. 148 had to interact regularly with the Franks. Jewish leaders maneuvered to form ties with local lords and elites instead of central state institutions. As in Buyid Iraq, these ties were based on acquired loyalties between individuals, not on loyalties of category (e.g., “the Jews of Acre”) between Jews and their rulers.127 Because the Genizah was located in Fustat, the extant documents primarily capture these intermediaries as agents attempting to secure the release of Egyptian Jews whom the Franks held captive. These documents illustrate how the system of local, acquired loyalties allowed Syrian Jews to successfully execute large public drives to protect the Egyptians Jews whom the Crusaders had captured.

The second half of the chapter turns to the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291) and illuminates how changes in Frankish high politics (namely, the collapse of the monarchy and rise of the principalities) impacted the roles that Jewish intermediaries played in negotiating minority privilege. It argues that the political fragmentation allowed Jews and other non-

Franks to exploit contested political sovereignty among the principalities and reap concessions including the right to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem (and even settle some of their coreligionists there). The final section considers situations in which the lack of central state power worked to the detriment of Jewish notables. It argues that the same factors that provided the basis of Jewish privilege also mitigated against communal leaders’ influence in

127 On Iraq, see Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership, 40-96. Vassalage may also have been expressed as a tie between individuals, even though relations between Jewish communities and the state in Europe were conducted on the level of privileges for the corporate community. Such critics of the concept of feudalism as Susan Reynolds have argued that much of the ideas of individual ties is a fabrication, but even she recognizes the role of individual, lord-vassal relations. See Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994) 30-8. 149 contexts when the notables required (but were unable to procure) the exercise of central state power.

A Headless Community: Minorities and State Neglect after the First Crusade

Before the First Crusade, minority relations with the Fatimid state were negotiated through a network of elites: courtiers, bankers, merchants and religious leaders all served as intercessors.128 The Fatimid government tended to favor centralized institutions of minority leadership that allowed the state to delegate specific aspects of administration to dhimmī elites. For Jews, these institutions included the geʾonut of Palestine in the eleventh century and the riʾāsat al-yahūd of Egypt from the eleventh century onward.129 The gaʾon and the raʾīs al-yahūd derived much of their legitimacy from ties to the state and cultivated relations to

Jewish elites throughout the Fatimid realm based on connections to state power.130

The Kingdom of Jerusalem never elevated any religious minority to a position of central leadership over their coreligionists, as the Fatimids did with the gaʾon of Palestine and the raʾīs al- yahūd of Egypt. This policy was consistent with the decentralized structure of the Crusader states and may suggest their affinity for Roman precedents. (The Byzantines had abolished similar institutions in their territory as early as the fifth century.)131

128 See Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” 312-314. Rustow calls this model the “jagged shape of the Jewish community,” which she contrasts with the longstanding assumption that Jewish centralized institutions (like the gaʿonate) were powerful and exercised sole discretion in such matters. 129 Mark Cohen argues for the impetus of the Fatimid state in the formation of the office of the head of the Jews of Egypt, holding that they favored a centralized institution in close geographic proximity to the caliphal court. Cohen, Jewish Self- Government, 50-79. 130 Mark Cohen, Jewish Self-Government in Medieval, 84-98; and Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 111-200. 131 The Byzantines dissolved the office of the Jewish patriarch of the Galilee around 420 CE. Seth Schwartz argues this was because he became a political threat to local Byzantine government. See Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004), 103-29. The Persian Sassanians (224-651 CE) (and subsequently Islamic 150

While many scholars now reject the founding myth of the Kingdom of Jerusalem mentioned above—namely, the story that Godfrey of Boullion immediately imposed a fully-formed legal system on the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099—few have attempted to determine how this system looked in its inchoate state in the years immediately following the First Crusade. This is unsurprising since there are almost no Latin sources from this period to illuminate this situation. In contrast, a Judeo-Arabic letter from the Genizah written in Latin Acre around 1110—only six years after the city fell to Crusader forces—reveals a great deal about the inchoate institutions of the Latin state at this time. In the letter, a Jewish muqaddam (municipal leader) in Latin Acre petitions Yūsuf b. Yaḥyā, nezer ha-sarim (“crown of the princes”), in Fustat. Yūsuf’s title indicates he was a courtier of the Fatimid caliphate (969-1171).

He was also a close associate of the raʾīs al-yahūd.132 In the petition, the muqaddam recalls his interactions with an Ibn al-Qāsh, a rival in Acre who came from a prominent Alexandrian family.133 He writes:

Everyone covets what I hold (i.e., his position as muqaddam), especially (Ibn) al-Qāsh, who has supporters among the Alexandrian shellfishermen. 134 They do nothing but drink beer (mizr) in a brothel (mākhūr) and similar (activities)…(Ibn al-Qāsh) says things devoid of truth, even inventing a story concerning (my inappropriate actions in)

states), in contrast, appointed/confirmed leaders like the Nestorian Catholicos and the Jewish Exilarch (resh galuta). See Geoffrey Herman, A Prince without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 1-20, esp. 11-16. 132 As Rustow notes, Egyptian Jewish leaders regularly conferred titles involving the term sar (prince or minister) on courtiers working with the Fatimid state. See Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 85-6. 133 C.f. Frenkel, The Compassionate and the Benevolent, 173. 134 Observant Jews cannot consume shellfish according to ritual law (halakhah). But the reference here is, as Goitein suggests, is clearly to Bolinus brandaris, or the “purple dye murex,” a carnivorous gastropod mollusk that has been used in the Levantine coast for the production of purple dye since the days of ancient Tyre (ca. 1500 BCE). 151

the slaughterhouse (al-majzir). (This story is clearly) baseless since the uncircumcised (al-ʿarelim135) (i.e., Christians) did not authorize us to butcher animals.136

In order to understand the events the muqaddam describes, it is necessary to outline the role of ritual butcher (shoḥeṭ) in medieval Near Eastern Jewish communities. Due to the sensitivity of the position (and the amount of money the shoḥeṭ could earn), the geʾonim of Palestine and the ruʾasāʾ al-yahūd of Egypt had long claimed the prerogative of appointing these figures.137

The state was also critical to the shoḥeṭ’s job since it granted him the privilege to maintain a slaughter house (majzir) and to delegate a specific part of the market for kosher slaughter. S.

D. Goitein suggests that the state market regulator (muḥtasib) could revoke these personal and communal privileges without malice. 138 Nevertheless, the two examples he and Jacob

Mann have identified from the Genizah of such actions both are clearly motivated, from the perspective of the Jewish participants, at least, by sinut—that is, “hatred (of Jews).”139

That is not the case here. The critical passage reads al-ʿarelim mā yakilū lanā dhabīḥah.

Goitein translated mā yakilū lanā in Hebrew as “(The Christians) do not allow us to

Contextually, as Goitein .(ערילם ) The writer mistakenly switched the yud from before to after the lamed in ʿarelim 135 argued, ʿarelim is almost certainly the intended meaning, since the word as it appears here is nonsensical in both Hebrew and Arabic. ʿArelim is a Hebrew word meaning the uncircumcised. While the term could have negative connotations, it usually did not in the context of Genizah letters; instead, it was used to distinguish Christians from Muslims. The Muslims in these texts are referred to as goyim (non-Jews) or Yishmaʿelim (Ishmaelites). See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 277-8. 136T-S 18J3.5 l. 33-39, ed. in Gil, Palestine, 3: 511-4; and in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 303-5. 137 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:225-6. As Goitein notes, documents of appointment (e.g., T-S Misc box 24.137) of shoḥets have survived as has a letter (T-S 8J13.25) from a gaʾon (asserting his right to appoint all shoḥets and their assistants). A discussion of the politics of kosher slaughter and the related financial considerations can be found in Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 283-7. Rustow here addresses the issue in the context of Qaraʾite/rabbanite relations, but the same issues apply in inter-rabbanite politics. 138 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 282. 139 Ibid., and Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine, 1: 154-15; 213-5. The documents are T-S 13J26.11 (ed. in 2: 175-76) and Oxf. Ms. Heb d.68.27-30 (cp. Bodl. 2836.10) (ed. in 2:260-263). 152 slaughter.”140 But the verb the writer used, wakila, does not mean “to allow”, but “to entrust or assign to.”141 That is, the Christians (i.e., the Franks) had not authorized anyone among the

Jews to slaughter animals. Furthermore, they had not allocated a slaughterhouse for this purpose. Without such authorization, the community could not get meat and the muqaddam was out of a job.

There is no indication that the Franks were targeting the Jews and the author’s word choice suggests they were not.142 Instead, this appears to be an act of negligence, a failure to allocate space for the sale of kosher meat and a failure to see that the right man (our writer, not Ibn al-Qāsh) received state sanction to continue his practice. The charge being that as a result of this neglect, upstarts had begun to challenge legitimate leaders.

The silence about state action here is an indictment of its failures. As Roy Mottahedeh has argued, what medieval Near Eastern peoples feared most was not an active state but a negligent one— that is, a government that failed to maintain the proper balance of interests among its communities.143 As Mottahedeh writes, “(people) assumed that a yearning for independence threatened the rights of every man and, if not held back by authority, would encourage men to oppress each other.”144

.Goitein translates yakilū as noten—to give or permit ."הערלים אינם נותים לנו לשחות" .Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 304 140 141 The verb is in the I form and the translation is confirmed from both standard Arabic and Judeo-Arabic dictionaries. 142 Dhabīḥah, the term the muqaddam uses for slaughter is the Arabic term used for all forms of slaughter or sacrifice, as opposed to sheḥiṭah—the Hebrew term for kosher slaughter.142 In the documents from Islamic cities in which the right to sheḥiṭah is denied Jews because of anti-Judaism, the term the writers use is sheḥiṭah. It is possible that our muqaddam is eliding this distinction since he is writing in Arabic not Hebrew (both of the texts from areas under Muslim rule are in Hebrew). More likely it indicates that Jews and kosher slaughter were not singled out on this occasion. See T-S 13J26.11 l. 10, ed. in Mann, Jews in Egypt and in Palestine, 2: 175; also Oxf. MS Heb d.68 27-30 ll.10-11. 143 Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership, 175-90. 144 Ibid., 175. 153

Moreover, the accusation of Frankish negligence is not merely that they are overlooking the appointment of a ritual slaughterer. The author also implies that the new rulers are evading their obligation to maintain public morality. Acre’s Jews and their foreign coreligionists are depicted here as engaging in public drinking and sexual relations with (non-

Jewish?) prostitutes. I have not found the term makhūr (brothel) anywhere else in the digitized Genizah corpus and Goitein could not find it in any of the thousands of unpublished documents he surveyed.145 Furthermore, there are few other examples in the Genizah of public intoxication.146 When such occurrences did happen, the Islamic state took action to stop its proliferation. Jewish elites cooperated with the state in order to prevent further discord.147 The

Franks, however, permitted a collapse of local leadership, ignored public consumption of alcohol and allowed the open solicitation of prostitutes.

More fundamentally, what is broken here is the basic governing mechanism of

Islamicate states—namely, ties of patronage between state officials and minority leaders.

Under the Fatimids, the head of the state (the caliph or his vizier) bestowed niʿmah

(benefaction) in the form of specific priviliges on leaders within the minority communities.

These leaders then reciprocated this gesture with expressions of loyalty. These expectations

145 I have found no reference to a makhūr in a search of all the documents on the PGP as well as the Friedberg Genizah Project. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:261. Discussed below, n. 60. 146 Muslim elites, of course, did often consume wine as is well known from Arabic poetry. Wine was also publically sold in Egypt. See Goitein’s discussion of this issue in Mediterranean Society, 4:253-261. There is a mention of a drunken brawl in T- S NS J24 ed. in Frenkel, Alexandria, (doc. 88): 598-602. Goitein suggests that this may have occurred, but not among the people who left their documents in the Genizah (i.e., it was a class issue). This explanation is not satisfactory, and the answer should be sought in the different regulations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and of the Islamic states in Egypt. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 4: 261. 147 In T-S NS J24, those engaged in drunken antics are only stopped when faced with the wālī (local governor). The muqaddam is then forced to intervene with the state to release them. Goitein mentions how Egyptian Jewish leaders prevented the sale of beer at their local pilgrimage site in Dammūh. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 4:261. 154 were shared among Jews and Muslims in Fatimid Egypt and Palestine.148 This system only worked if there was reciprocity, as we see in an example from the Genizah of a Jewish leader who threatened to withdraw his loyalty to the Fatimid caliph when the latter did not intervene to assure his leadership of his community.149

Why, then, is our letter addressed to a Jewish leader at the Fatimid court, and not to a

Jew who could intercede with the Frankish king or his proxies (Acre was part of the royal domain)?150 Because Acre’s muqaddam has withdrawn (or never offered) his loyalty from the

Frankish state. He has dismissed its leaders as actors to be petitioned. Instead, he entreats

Yaḥyā to use his influence at the caliph’s court to convince the head of Egyptian Jewry to back his leadership of the community. Had the Jews of the Latin Levant had a central leader like the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt, or any other effective intermediary, this letter would never have been written.151 The muqaddam does not bother to ask Yaḥyā, as he would have if the Fatimids controlled Acre, to beseech the authorities to appoint him as slaughterer and reserve a section of the city’s market for kosher meat.152 In fact, he does not seem to expect the matter of the sheḥiṭah ban to be resolved. He may have assumed, as other Arabophone Jews did, that

148 Rustow, “Formal and Informal Patronage,” 341-82. 149 Ibid., 357-60. Rustow discusses the case of the Palestinian gaʾon Shelomo b. Yehudah al-Fāsī, who threatened to withdraw his loyalty to the Fatimid caliph if the latter did not uphold his obligation to him and his community. 150 Ibid. 151 Cultivating such intermediaries would have been a particular challenge for the Jews of Acre in the first decades after the port fell to the Franks since their city was part of the royal domain and the Latin king resided in Jew-free Jerusalem. Furthermore, no bishop had been appointed to oversee the city. None would be until 1135. See Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States, 70; Mayer, “Concordat of Nablus,” 533. 152 Asking the authorities to intervene and prevent a local governor from intervening with Jewish slaughter is precisely the purpose of one of the letters Mann cited mentioned above (T-S 13J26.11). 155

Frankish rule was ephemeral and that when the forces of the Egyptian caliphate returned the matter would resolve itself.153

The muqaddam’s actions, then, illustrate how the Jewish community could function as what Goitein called “a state beyond a state”—though not in the manner Goitein intended.

The Jews here are not, as Goitein imagined, an autonomous entity with their own government functioning independent of state affairs. They are the opposite: Faced with a new regime indifferent to their community and its leadership, Latin Acre’s muqaddam had to turn to Jews associated with his former (Muslim) rulers to solidify his position.154 This scenario illustrates how medieval peoples could maintain their loyalty to a state after it lost control of the territory in which they lived if they believed they could still benefit from the prestige of association with their former rulers.

When the Franks arrived in Palestine they were not familiar with Islamicate conventions concerning proper relations between the state and minority communities. They did not involve themselves in the appointment of minority leaders. Furthermore, their lack of familiarity with the political expectations of Near Easterners led them to permit violations of the social order that evoked anxieties among local communities. The Latin elites would come to share these anxieties and to recognize their failure to prevent the breakdown of boundaries

(especially sexual ones) between religious communities. This spurred the Franks turn to

153 The long letter is a fascinating account of a North African pilgrim who is waiting for the Fatimids to retake Jerusalem so he may visit the city. See T-S 20.113 in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 241-248. Goitein notes that many Jews regarded Frankish rule as a “transient phenomenon” in Goitein, “Genizah Sources for the Crusader Period, 312-3. 154 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:1. See Rustow’s analysis of the limits of the model of communal autonomy in Heresy and the Politics, 67-108. 156 sumptuary laws (acts regulating permitted consumption) in the Canons of Nablus, as discussed above. These canons reestablished proper social order and demonstrated a willingness to adopt the legal precedents of Islamic law to suit their pragmatic needs.

Local Relations in a Decentralized State: The Redemption of Captives

But changes in the legal system alone could not address minority grievances vis-à-vis negotiating their privileges and obligations to the state. The primary cause for the anxiety of the Acre muqaddam was not only that the Franks were negligent, but also that he had no ties to Frankish political actors who could address his complaints. Such relationships did form in the subsequent decades, as we learn in Genizah letters that record Syrian Jews’ attempts to redeem their Egyptian coreligionists from Frankish captors.

As discussed above, the redemption of captives in the medieval Mediterranean was the responsibility of religious communities. 155 It was advantageous to have coreligionists in the area where the captives were held to function as intermediaries with their captors. There were, of course, no Syrian Jews with ties to the Latin elite at the time of the First Crusade and the fall of Jerusalem in 1100. This is evident in the disorganized process of ransoming of captives at this period that we see in Genizah letters: Egyptian and Palestinian Jews struggled to locate their relatives; captors reneged on commitments to free prisoners,156 some captives

155 Friedman, Encounter between Empire, 1-13. Also, Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:329-30; and Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 109-23. 156 E.g., T-S 24.65, published in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 285-9. In this document Ṣadoq, formerly the third of the yeshiva, claiming to work on behalf of the captives, makes clear that he is in fact exerting his efforts on behalf of his son-in-law, a wealthy Jew of the Tustari family. 157 converted out of desperation while others were sold into slavery or faced death by sword or starvation.157 Part of the reason for this confusion is that the Franks were alien to the region and its established system for ransoming prisoners.158 Another contributing factor was that

Egyptian and Palestinian Jews lacked local intercessors with the captors who could find and redeem captives before such maltreatment occurred.

The Jewish community would face a similar crisis necessitating the redemption of captives from Frankish hands was in 1168—seven decades after the First Crusade. In that year,

King Amalric I (r. 1163-1174) took the Nile Delta city of Bilbays from the Fatimids. In the aftermath of the battle, local captives were brought back to the Crusader states, where they awaited ransoming.159

In response to the fall of Bilbays, Maimonides (who was not yet the head of Egypt’s

Jews) rallied the region’s Jews to raise money to secure the captives’ release.160 Maimonides had lived in the Crusader states for over a year and had maintained relations with its most

157 See T-S 10J5.6, published in Gil, Palestine, 3:557 (pp. 445-455); trans. in Goitein, “Contemporary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem,” 162-77. In that letter there is mention of the Franks refusing to turn over a young boy whose ransom had been paid since they were trying to convert him. Mention is also made of captives who converted out of desperation. Furthermore, there is a hint that some captives had been tortured, while others had fled the Franks only to die of starvation. 158 Yvonne Friedman argues that it took a few decades for them to adopt the norms of ransoming then prevalent in the Near East. Friedman, Encounter Between Empires, 10-12. One Genizah letter notes that the Franks are not charging the standard rate of 33 1/3 dinars a captive. The writer is both grateful and shocked at this turn of events. See T-S 20.113, ed. in Palestinian Jewry, 241-8, trans. in Goitein, “Contemporary letters on the Capture of Jerusalem,” 171-5. 159 For an overview of the complicated political stakes involved in this invasion and the nature of Frankish-Fatimid-Zengid relations at this period, see Kohler, Alliances and Treaties, 188-203. 160 Maimonides—like his patron, al-Qāḍī al-Faḍil—served both the Fatimids and the Ayyubids after the later took power in Egypt in 1171. See Kramer, Maimonides, 187-216. Maimonides’ official title and prerogatives with regard to his leadership of the Jewish community at this period are unclear, but he did function as head of the Jews in relation to the ransoming campaign. See S.D. Goitein, Moses Maimonides, Man of Action: A Revision of the Master's Biography in Light of the Genizah Documents, (Louvain: Peeters, 1980). 158 prominent Jewish rabbinic leaders.161 Maimonides appealed to these leaders when faced with the task of ransoming Jews from Frankish hands.

Maimonides or his scribe, Mevorakh b. Natan, explains the process of ransoming to their Egyptian coreligionists in a Judeo-Arabic communal appeal from around 1169. In this letter, Maimonides notes that:

We have written to two judges in the Levant (al-Shām), two honored princes, the judges, the honorable (ones), our master and our teacher, the magnificent Ḥayyim ha- Dayyan the brilliant scholar, crown of wisdom, champion of understanding; and our master and teacher Efrayim ha-dayyan…(similar honorifics follow)… the judges are undertaking (to assist) the prisoners, and we said to them: “Take care of redeeming (the prisoners) and appoint for (the prisoners) one who will release them, and set free these broken (captives).” He will go and receive the money with their signatures.162

Maimonides here describes a precise and efficient process of ransoming that would have been inconceivable for Jewish agents a half century before at the time of the First Crusade. Cohen and Goitein credit Maimonides’ organizing genius for this feat. The letter suggests a more important variable than intellect: Maimonides knew Syrian Jews who had connections to the captors.163

Maimonides designates two Levantine rabbis to oversee the process of ransoming captives. R. Efrayim, who, as we know from other texts, was a leader of the Jews of Latin Tyre, and R. Ḥayyim, who may have been the leader of the Jews of Latin Acre or of another prominent Frankish city, perhaps Antioch.164 A close reading reveals that these are not the

161 See below, 276-283. 162 T-S 16.9, ll. 7-13 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 314-315. 163 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5: 54-55; and Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 115-118. 164 On Rav Ephraim and his extensive correspondence with Maimonides see above, n. 160. Benjamin of Tudela mentions a R. Ḥayyim in Antioch, but Ḥayyim is a common name. See Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 26-27. 159 only Levantine Jewish leaders to whom Maimonides refers. He writes that he told Efrayim and

Ḥayyim to “appoint for (the prisoners) one who will unbind them (wa-yuqīm lahum man yafukkuhum).”165

In order to determine whom Maimonides had in mind for this task, we must consider how such a substantial sum of money as was raised for this drive (likely hundreds of dinars)166 would have been transported in the medieval Mediterranean. The syntax of the final sentence translated above—“[The designated redeemer] will go and receive there the sum of money with their signatures” (wa-yajīʾ wa-yatasalam hunā mablagh bi-khuṭūṭihim)—is opaque; however, it implies the use of credit involving the signature of the recipient. This is consistent with Genizah evidence that people rarely traveled with this much specie on their persons, but instead used bills of exchange (suftajahs) or, more frequently, orders of payment (ruqʿas) to move substantial sums across these regions. Suftajahs were issued by large banks with regional influence, while orders of payment were only issued to those who already had dealings with the particular banker.167 What this tells us, then, is that our potential agent had to be someone of substantial financial means who had relations with the financial elite.

Furthermore, he had to be someone whom the Franks trusted, since the transfer of money from credit to specie could take time and local leaders stood in surety for the interim.168

165 T-S 16.9 l. 11-12. 166 I refer here to a series of appeals that Maimonides sent out for the captives to communities throughout the Nile delta and the rīf. See ENA NS 8254.7 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 312-314 and trans. in idem, “Maimonides, Man of Action,” 156-157; T-S NS Box 309.12, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 316-318; T-S 12.238, ed. in Mann, Jews in Egypt and Palestine, 2: 317; and BM Or 5533. Discussed in Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 115-118. 167 On these bills, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 241-247. As Goitein writes, “Muslim lawyers defined the suftajah as a loan of money in order to avoid the risk of transport.” 168 The delay in credit payments was why the price in cash for goods was always lower than the price in credit. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 114-5; and Avraham Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton: 160

Whether our anonymous negotiator was a money lender, a merchant, a state official or someone else with requisite connections is impossible to ascertain from the letter. In any case, his role in this process demonstrates that prominent Jews had begun to establish (largely informal) relationships with the Frankish state (or, at least, with local nobles). It was precisely the absence of these relationships that had led Acre’s muqaddam to dismiss the Franks as political actors five decades prior. These new relationships, then, were critical for the local governance of Syria’s Jews, as well as for looking after the interests of their foreign coreligionists in the hands of the Franks.

While Maimonides’ letter provides only limited information on the profession of

Syrian intermediaries, two other Genizah letters from Latin Syria that concern the redemption of these same captives tell us much more about Levantine Jewish figures who had relations with the Latin state. The first is from a wealthy Jew of Ascalon and the second is from the father of a tax farmer.

At around the same time that Maimonides wrote his appeal, a resident of the

Palestinian port of Ascalon, Abū Saʿd b. Ghanāʾim, wrote his brother, Abū al-Bahāʾ in Bilbays.

Ascalon was the last major Palestinian port to fall to Frankish forces and had only been under

Latin rule since 1153. Abū Saʿd informs his brother:

I am residing in Ascalon and am in perfect wellbeing…169 Musallam b. Abū Sahl came to me and I went up with him to Nablus. I paid (the ransom) of his sister and it cost me 60 dinars. He fell down before me and said: “I beg you, by God, permit me to go up with (my sister) to Fustat. Perhaps (my sister) may receive some (money) for her ransom

Princeton UP, 1970), 77-86. There is an example of a local leader standing surety in a comparable situation in a question sent to Maimonides. See Teshuvot ha-Rambam (Responsa), ed. Joshua Blau, 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1957-61), 2:733-4; discussed in Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 113-4. 169 T-S NS J270, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 308-309, l. 4. Literally: “six-thousand health” (sitt ālāf ʿāfīyah). 161

payment (there).” So he departed. He disappeared and left me alone. The sixty dinar (debt) remained and the Frank came (to receive payment). I sought someone who could lend me the sum, but I could not (find) anyone. So I sent my son out and I asked that someone take him as surety (for a loan to be paid) with interest, but I was not able (to find) anyone who would take him as such…I desire, by your favor, that you conclude (the matter) with [Musallam] and tell him to not delay with this matter further, but to pay me the gold (owed), or, if (he is) not (able) (to give me back) his sister (lit. al- saghīrah, “the little one”). Reproach him with every method and raise doubts about him with the judges…do this for me with vigor for I am [ ] familiar with (taʾalīf maʿa) the owner of the debt (ṣāḥib al-dīn).170

Abū Saʿd helped Musallam b. Abū Sahl, an Egyptian Jew from Bilbays, rescue his sister from her Frankish captor. The fact that the captive’s brother is from Bilbays allows us to date this letter to after 1169—the year when Amalric captured that city. Why this particular girl was not ransomed with the other captives discussed above is not clear, but it may have to do with the exorbitant ransom (almost twice the going rate) the captor was asking for her.171 In any case,

Abū Saʿd stood surety for the money Musallam owed—much as the appointed redeemer above may have done. The Egyptian, however, failed to return with the money. Abū Saʿd asks his brother to have the Egyptian court in Bilbays pressure Musallam to pay what he owed or return the girl so that Abū Saʿd will not be held accountable to the Frank—a man he knows personally.

The aesthetics of Abū Saʿd’s letter follow what Marina Rustow has called “Hebrew

Chancery Script”—a style modeled on Fatimid petitions that suggests the author was part of

170 T-S NS J270,v. ll. 3-17 and margin. 171 Three captives were traditionally exchanged for 100 dinars or 33 dinars for one captive. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:137; see also Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 109-10. 162 the Jewish scholarly elite (See Appendix 2, Figure 10).172 Furthermore, his brother had ties to the judges of Bilbays, which indicates his family’s connections to the Egyptian rabbinic hierarchy. Finally, Abū Saʿd is wealthy enough that the Frank who had taken his Egyptian

Jewish associate’s sister captive was willing to trust him with a debt of sixty dinars (more than two-and-a-half years’ earnings for an average Egyptian family).173 Abū Saʿd’s statement about having to send his son out to stand surety for his debt should probably be taken as a rhetorical device that emphasizes the inconveniences he faces as a result of the money he is owed.

Without any outside information, our knowledge of Abū Saʿd’s status would suggest that he was either a merchant, a money-lender, a government official or a physician (in addition, possibly, to being a rabbinic scholar).174 The first profession is most likely since

Ascalon was not an important political center, but did sit at a critical junction for trade between the Crusader states and Egypt. 175 Abū Saʿd’s vocation must have been a profession like commerce that demanded he travel for his work, allowing him to become familiar with a

Frank based in Nablus in northcentral Palestine—some sixty miles from Ascalon as the crow flies. The nature of Abū Saʿd’s ties to this Frank are ambiguous, but it is clear that Musallam felt that Abū Saʿd’s intervention would be critical in getting his sister’s release.

172 This document is not a perfect example of Rustow’s model, but it does have the characteristic large top and right margin, wide line spacing, word stacking at the end of lines and slight curvature to the lines. There is, however, an address on the back. See Rustow, “The Diplomatics of Leadership,” 306-51. 173 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5:190. 174 Ibid., 1: 75-80. 175 The Iberian Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited Ascalon around this time and writes that the city had a large Jewish population (around 200 families) and that “people come to the city for trade from every place because it is located on the edge of the border of Egypt.” Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 43-4. 163

It is not apparent whether the Frankish captor is a government official or even a member of the nobility. The negotiations took place between individuals without any indication of involvement from the state. Nevertheless, this letter is indicative of the formation of mutually beneficial relationships between Jews and Franks in Latin Syria. These relations were crucial for Abū Saʿd’s (likely economic) interests—which is why he emphasizes the importance of repaying the debt to his familiar. In doing so, a regular Syrian Jewish layman became an intermediary between a member of a foreign minority (local and foreign) and the Latin elite. Abū Saʿd could have played a similar role for his fellow Syrian Jews, though the Genizah would be much less likely to include documents reflecting his role in an intra-

Syrian context.

Advocates and Informers: A Tax Farmer and His Lord

The examples above concern informal mediation where none of the Jewish actors appear to be directly employed by state institutions. Some Jews did, however, become part of the state administration, as we learn from a letter that Ṣadoq b. Namer he-ḥaver wrote from

Acre or Tiberias to his son-in-law, Abū al-Ḥusayn b. Abū al-Khayr in Fustat around 1171. After a short introduction including standard niceties, Sadoq condemns Abū al-Ḥusayn for his long absence from the Levant and for his failure to redeem his wife and son from captivity. He writes:

If we had known that you would forget your son and wife and discard them from your heart we would not have permitted you to travel. But we wished you well and said: surely you will hurry and come (back)… What (have) the people (ahl) of Damascus (al-Shām), Tyre and Acre done except act in solidarity (yataʿaṣabū[n]) with foreign (Jews) (al-ghurabāʾ)?! (Therefore,) we said:

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perhaps you will not need (to find) one who knows you (to get assistance) and you will go and come (back) in any case. Then, perhaps, by your presence, we could reassure the count and the lady, the countess of Tiberias (ṣāḥibat Ṭabarriyah). If only (wa-lau) we paid them a bribe of 21 dinars eventually they would release [your son and daughter]! Later, you could pay in full what you owe them. None of this calamity would have befallen them if you had not done nothing for all this time during which you could have traveled to India and back… Did you not know that [your wife and son] had been made prisoner (ṣārū usarāʾ) during your absence (bi-ghaiyibatika)?! And when you say, “God, demand recompense from the one who exposed us (shār ʿalayna) (to the authorities)!” I say to you: “You have done nothing (to help the situation) for over a year!”176

Abū al-Ḥusayn, a Jew from Acre,177 left his father-in-law, son and wife in Northern Palestine and traveled to Egypt178 in order to get money to pay a debt he owed the Countess of Tiberias,

Eschiva (1118-1187), and her husband, the Count Gautier.179 When he failed to return, his wife and son were taken as surety for the money he owed. Over the following year, Abū al-Ḥusayn failed to acquire the money necessary to ransom his family. At the end of this letter, we learn that all these events occurred after someone informed on Abū al-Ḥusayn to the Count and

Countess concerning some illicit action.

176 T-S 18J2.10 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 265-7, r. ll. 5-8; 16-23; margins ll. 10-15. 177 The writer does not tell us where exactly he is writing from, but three factors—the family is entangled with Eschiva, Abū al-Ḥusayn’s nisba (al-Akāwī, i.e. of Acre, T-S 18J2.10 v. l. 1), and the mention of Tyre and Acre as the cities that sponsored foreign captives—suggest that the writer is resident either in northern Frankish Palestine—likely in the Galilee—or in Tyre or Acre along the Syrian coast. He had likely moved to Tiberias since the principality of the Galilee had no claim to Acre. But the family had maintained strong ties to the Shāmī ports—as is evident in the pride Abū al-Ḥusayn takes for the actions of the Frankish ports rescuing foreign Jews. 178 T-S 18J2.10 ll.23-25. Here, Sadoq accuses Abū al-Ḥusayn of spending all his time enjoying the games and drinks of the Egyptians instead of working to get the money to redeem his family. 179 Based on the mention of a countess of Tiberias (l. 19), which, as Goitein argues, indicates that it was written during the reign of Eschiva of Bures (r. 1158-1187). Goitein further argued, based on the mention of a count (l. 18) that this document was written after Eschiva married Raymond of Tripoli in 1174. But there is no indication that the “count” has any association with Tripoli, so he could just as well be Eschiva’s first husband, Gautier of Saint Omer (d. 1171). The probability of the latter scenario is supported by the mention of the support of Syrian Jews in ransoming Egyptian ones, something the Genizah records c. 1169. There were no invasions of Egypt after 1171, so Goitein’s suggestion that the letter was written between 1174-1187 seems less plausible. I would suggest the document should be dated to c. 1170-71, after the captives had been brought to al-Shām and ransomed. Cf. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 259-60. 165

The sum that Abū al-Ḥusayn owed the count and countess was significantly more than the twenty-one dinars the father-in-law believed would be necessary to free his daughter and grandchild. As Goitein argues, whatever that sum may have been, it was much too high to be from a backlog of personal or family taxes owed the secular authorities. Abū al-Ḥusyan, he convincingly argues, was a tax farmer since the details of his biography fit this mold.180 Tax farmers were the officials best positioned to make off with large sums of the local lord’s money. Furthermore, Sadoq’s remark about the actions of an “informer” is consistent with what we know about tax farmers’ often fraught relationships with other local peoples.

Moreover, Claude Cahen suggests that the Franks preferred to use tax farmers who were members of the same religious communities as the people they were farming. 181 We know from modern archeological reports (as well as from medieval travel accounts) that there were Jewish villages in the Frankish Galilee and a medium-sized Jewish community in

Tiberias itself. 182 In this context, Abū al-Ḥusayn may have been chosen for this job because he was a member of the Jewish community.

The institution of tax farming in the Palestinian countryside remained almost unaffected after the regime change of the First Crusade, although some terminology for

180 Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 259-60; also Goitein, “Genizah Sources for the Crusader Period,” 318. In the Hebrew text, Goitein only suggests they had a shared venture, but in the English he adds “[Abū al-Ḥusayn] was probably a tax farmer who, as so often happened with tax farmers, was unable to pay what he had promised.” He does not elaborate, but the evidence considered below bears out his argument. 181 Claude Cahen, Notes sur l'histoire des Croisades et de l'Orient latin, II: Le regime rural syrien au temps de la domination franque, 29 (Strasbourg: Faculté des Lettres, 1951), 286-310. Discussed in Robert Ignatius Burns, Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia (Princeton, Princeton UP, 2015) 225-6. 182 Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, 260; Benjamin of Tudela mentions fifty Jewish (families) in Tiberias and another fifty in the Galilee town of ʿAlmah. Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 44-6. 166 officials and institutions necessarily changed.183 Under this system, a ruler

(caliph/sultan/vizier) delegated to the treasury (dār al-ṣarf) the responsibility of tax collection; these responsibilities were in turn delegated to high local officials; these officials then allocated tax farms (ḍamān) to tax famers (ḍāmin). These tax farmers were most often elites (merchants, bankers, etc.) who continued to practice their professions, but used the position of dāmin to make additional money on the side.184 Abū al-Khayr’s full-time profession likely involved commerce based on an offhand comment his father-in-law made that he

“could have traveled to India and returned” to Syria in the time he had been gone. As Goitein notes, people did not travel to India for leisure, but as part of the Indian Ocean trade.185 A ḍāmin occupied a lucrative vocation, but also a dangerous one: those who could not deliver on the revenues promised were at the state’s mercy.186 This placed their loved ones at the whims of state administrators, as was the case in the scenario here.

If there was one Jewish dāmin in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there were likely others.

The fact that we do not see evidence for them in the Genizah is not surprising: we only know about Abū al-Ḥusayn since he happened to flee to Egypt provoking his father-in-law to write

183 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World, 142-156; and Riley-Smith, The Crusade, 108-109. Riley-Smith suggests, for instance, that a dāmin may have been called scribanus. 184 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 358-63 185 Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 259-60. 186 Their families stood as surety for their debt to the state. Officials would monitor where tax farmers’ families lived in order to ensure that the government kept a hold on them. During periods of fiscal instability, the state compelled ambitious candidates for ḍāmin to bid for the position based on the promise of securing the government higher revenues from taxpayers. Carrying out these promises could alienate the ḍāmin from his neighbors. Failure to do so could mean imprisonment for the ḍāmin or his family. The political and economic fortunes of the Principality of Galilee (for which Tiberias was the primary city) were in a rapid decline at this period. Abū al-Ḥusayn may have found himself caught up in just such a predicament. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 361-3. On the economic situation in the Galilee, see Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordship, 153-168. As Tibble demonstrates, during this time the Principality was selling off more and more tax-paying towns to the military orders and the price of defending the territory was ever increasing. 167 this letter. Dāmins would have been well placed to act as an intermediary with the state, since their work obligated them to have contact with high government officials. In a state like the

Kingdom of Jerusalem that lacked centralized institutions of minority leadership, these positions would have been critical for addressing communal concerns.

For instance, when Sadoq refers to the “solidarity” of the Jews of Acre, Tyre and

Damascus and their acting on behalf of “foreigners” (read, from the context, “Egyptian Jews”), he is likely referencing the ransoming of captives from Bilbays. While the role Sadoq’s family played in redeeming the foreign captives is not made explicit, Sadoq’s sense of entitlement— his expectation that Egyptian Jews should reciprocate his Shāmī Jews’ generosity by helping his son-in-law—suggests that the family had played an active role in facilitating the effort. As we have seen in the Maimonides’ letter, it was crucial for the redeemers to have connections to financial elites with ties to the state—elites like this family of merchants/tax farmers.

The three examples considered above—Maimonides’ appeal, the letter of the Jew of

Ascalon and the letter of Sadoq b. Namer—suggest continuity from the period of Fatimid rule in the sense of the “jagged shape” of Jewish communal authority. That is, while Jewish histories have tended to privilege the authority of the rabbis—emphasizing the authority of figures like Maimonides and R. Efrayim—the reality in the Near East was that there were multiple loci of authority among Jews: not only rabbis, but also merchants, government officials and physicians.187 That said, while the Jews of Egypt and pre-Crusader Syria had state- sanctioned religious leaders appointed by and with ties to the highest Egyptian authorities,

187 See above, 150, n. 127. 168 the Jews of the Latin Levant were entirely dependent elites who cultivated relationship with individual Franks involved in local governance.

A Headless Community in a Kingless State: Informal Mediation in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291)

The previous section illustrated how the collapse of centralized, royal power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem led to a fundamentally new political situation in the Kingdom of Acre. From a top-down perspective on minority-state relations, we saw how each principality competed for the tax dollars and court fees of Syrian Jews and other Arabic-speaking subjects. They therefore sought to create policies that were amenable to the interests of these populations, encouraging them to seek the patronage of their principality.

But did the dissolution of central state power advance the political interests of Jews and other minorities in the Levant, or did it work to their detriment? In a kingless kingdom, who would protect minorities from “the caprice” of ambitious nobles? Who could enforce the privileges that they were granted?

The tendency of Arabic-speaking notables in the Kingdom of Jerusalem to negotiate communal privileges on the local level—namely, with minor nobles—was outlined above in our discussion of Jews and state politics in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century, the significance of this model grew, since political fragmentation meant that local nobles could now make deals with minorities concerning matters that would otherwise have been the prerogative of the king and central state.

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The potential advantages of this dynamic are evident in a Genizah trade letter from a merchant traveling and trading in Latin Jerusalem in the winter of 1236.188 Jerusalem at this time was in the hands of the imperialists—the confederation of Frederick II’s partisans based in Tyre fighting the baronial party that was based in Acre. In 1229, Frederick II had negotiated with the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil to secure the return of Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem to Christian hands.189 The Franks expelled Jews and Muslims from Jerusalem again, though most of the city’s population had already fled in 1219 when al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam had ordered the city’s walls destroyed.190 By 1236, Jerusalem was underpopulated, isolated from the affairs of the coastal kingdom, and connected to other

Christian holdings only through a small strip of land running through the Judean mountains. In this situation, the city had neither strategic nor commercial value (besides the traffic of pilgrims).191 All these considerations meant that Richard Filangieri, Frederick’s bailli, and his allies among the nobility, military orders and Italian states, had little incentive to directly interfere in the affairs of the city. It was in this context that the merchant arrived in Jerusalem.

The writer addresses his business partner then in Fustat or Cairo. The two partners had last seen each other in Egypt in Bilbays.192 Only the bottom portion of the two-sided letter survives. The surviving section of the verso contains a long and detailed list of goods—specifically colored cloth and

188 ENA 2559.5 (Alt. L 178). Goitein edited part of the r. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 300-302. We have the date rosh ḥodesh which, as Goitein notes, is 20 December 1236. That, however, is when the letter was sent, not when our אתקמ"ח Tevet writer visited Jerusalem. The letter gives no indication from where the letter was sent. 189 Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3:192. Many local Franks opposed Frederick’s treaty since its terms left Jerusalem indefensible and Muslim military power remained intact. Latin Christians were said to have pelted Frederick and his followers with rotting vegetables when they left Acre for Europe. 190 On the Jewish community’s exodus see Kedar, "The Jews of Jerusalem,” 122-136. 191 Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 107. 192 ENA 2559.5 There are numerous references to goods that the writer wants his partner to buy that were like the ones we saw in Bilbays (alladhī raʾā maʿanā fī Bilbays). 170 silk—that the writer is asking his partner to buy for him in Cairo and Fustat.193 Goitein edited part of the recto. The preceding section of the letter has not survived, so the text begins in media res:

…Jāndār came and the lord (ṣāḥib) said: exchange th[ese______] your desires. And they gave us fruit and other things and I met with them and the conversation came to the significance of their preventing the Jews from entering Jerusalem. Then we had a long conversation (lit. the long words came) and at the end of the conversation (sof davar) we determined that they would allow the Jews to make the pilgrimage (al-ziyārah) (to Jerusalem) and that one Jewish dyer could come (live there to house pilgrims). The matter was decided according to this (agreement) and now there is a Jewish dyer in Jerusalem—Blessed be the Good and Beneficent one.194

There is a small, intentional space left in the text after this passage. Then, the writer begins (or continues) his list of the products he wants his partner to buy.195 After finishing his list, he adds in cryptic fashion:

The master (i.e., business partner) asked about the one who arrived from Tripoli because of this thing that they informed us about and the raʾīs (al-yahūd) (i.e., Avraham Maimonides)—may his strength be made permanent—had corresponded with them concerning this matter...And so we chose in Tiberias [ …. ]196

To review, then, an Arabophone Jewish merchant was traveling through Jerusalem when he met a

Frankish lord with whom he exchanged goods. In the course of this meeting, the Jewish merchant convinced the lord to restore the right of Jews to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

This story sounds simple enough, but it leaves us with a number of questions. The first quandary concerns the identity of the merchant, who was not representing his religious

193 The Friedberg Genizah Project misidentifies the r. and v. . See ENA 2559.5 r. ll. 1-14. The author has a long series of sentences stating “yishtarī lī __”—i.e., "buy me x" followed by specific qualifications about color and quality. At the end, he offers to render his partner services, which was standard protocol in the Genizah trade letters. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 127-133. 194 ENA 2559.5 v. ll. 1-6. 195 ENA 2559.5 v. ll. 6-7. He immediately follows the break with “as we said: what is bought should be grey and have a seam as ornamentation…”. It is not uncommon for Genizah writers to differentiate sections of their letters with spaces as this writer did. 196 ENA 2559.5 ll. 12-13; 16. 171 community in any official capacity yet still managed to negotiate these significant privileges on the Jews’ behalf.197 The merchant and/or his colleagues had to have been able to communicate with the lord to discuss the weighty matters they did. This would be possible only if the Frank understood Arabic (a rarity)198 or if the merchant and/or his partners were from a Latin port and could communicate in the lord’s tongue. The latter possibility is more likely based on the fact that the merchant visited (and was perhaps based in) Tripoli, which had been in Latin hands for a century and a half and was then aligned with the imperialists.199

The second quandary concerns the identity of the lord/commander (ṣāḥib) with whom the merchants met who claimed to have the right to reopen Jerusalem to Jewish pilgrims. Goitien argues that the lord and Jāndār are one and the same, and that they refer to a noble named

Gunther.200 Prawer, based on Goitein’s translation, suggests that Jāndār was instead Gerald of Sais, governor of Jerusalem, which would make him ṣāhib al-Quds, “the lord/governor of Jerusalem”.201

Alternatively, Jāndār could be another prominent Frank, perhaps a burgess, named Gunthur

(which is closer phonetically to Jāndār than Gerald (Gerhalt)), who happened to have connections

197 The merchant and his partner were prominent men, connected to the head of the Jews of Egypt (Abraham Maimonides) and to a local nasi (ENA NS 2559.5 r. ll. 13-14). Elchanan Reiner therefore suggests that the merchant was on an official delegation sent to negotiate the return of Jews to Jerusalem. Reiner, “Pilgrims and Pilgrimage to Ereṣ Yisraʾel, 1099- 1517,"44.45. The content of the letter argues otherwise: The Arabic the writer uses makes clear that the conversation about the ban on Jews entering Jerusalem only arose by chance, personifying the subject of conversation as arising on its own accord (wa-jarī hadīth fī maʿaná manʿihim al-yahūd min al-dakhūl al-quds) (ENA NS 2559.5 r. l. 3). Also, the broader context of the letter demonstrates that the writer was engaged in a business venture, not a diplomatic one, which is why he relayed market orders to his partner. 198 Kevin James Lewis, “Medieval Diglossia: The Diversity of the Latin Christian Encounter with Written and Spoken Arabic in the ‘Crusader’ County of Tripoli, with a Hitherto Unpublished Arabic Note from the Principality of Antioch,” al-Masāq, 27, no.2 (2015): 119-52. 199 Also, the merchant had visited Tiberias in Northern Palestine, which occupied a liminal space between Frankish and Ayyubid Syria. Tiberias was held by the Christians until 1187 and returned to their hands in 1240. In between this period, the city lay on the border with Latin-Christian held territories. 200 Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 301-2. 201 Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 91. 172 to Gerald of Sais. What we can say for sure is that neither Jāndār nor Gerald nor any other Frank involved in these "negotiations" ever sent a letter to Tyre to ask Frederick's bailli, Richard

Filangieri, if there could be a major change in the kingdom's policy concerning the presence of non-believers in Jerusalem. The Genizah letter makes clear that the discussion between the Jew and Frank happened in one sitting, not over the course of several days (the time necessary to travel back and forth between Jerusalem and Tyre).202

What that means is that a casual conversation between a prominent Jewish merchant and a Frankish notable restored the coveted right of Jews to make pilgrimage to their holiest city. It did not matter that neither the merchant nor the Frank seems to have represented their community in any official capacity. If the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem had not been a kingless kingdom, our Frankish noble and/or our merchant would have had to submit a formal petition to the king on behalf of the Jews of his kingdom. The monarch in turn would have had to consider the opinions of the church and his vassals with regard to the divisive subject of the presence of nonbelievers in Jerusalem. In this context, winning the king over would have required a substantial bribe at the very least.203 But in the politically fragmented reality of the Crusader states, none of this was necessary. A petty noble could grant this significant concession on a whim. This exchange, then, embodies the power of the local and the informal in a kingdom that

202 Jerusalem to Tyre is a trip of over a 100 miles as the crow flies. Of course, by road it would be substantially longer, especially considering the hilly terrain around Jerusalem. It took Benjamin of Tudela at least four days to make the journey and likely longer. See Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 30-4. 203 It was common for Jewish communal notables in both the Islamic world and in medieval Western Europe to make large “donations” to the crown to prevent the enforcement of decrees inimical to their communal interests. For Christian Europe, see, in the Iberian context Assis, Money and Power, 104-5; French Jews attempted to bribe the Capetians to let them stay in France and subsequently to allow them to return; see Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 23-73. And, for the Islamic world, see Grayson, “Jews in the Political Life of Abbasid Baghdad.” 173 was not a kingdom, but a conglomeration of waring principalities. In this context, the prerogatives of governance were diffuse—something that offered opportunity for those willing and able to seize it.

Communal Order and the Limitations of State Power in a Kingless Kingdom

There were thus obvious advantages that minorities reaped from the collapse of central state power in the Latin Levant. There were also significant drawbacks. One advantage of a strong, centralized state for its residents was that it could deliver in situations that required the exercise of coercive power and/or the utilization of resources from multiple sectors of a kingdom. Unsurprisingly, the thirteenth-century Latin principalities proved wanting in these contexts. Jewish notables’ failures to get what their communities needed in situations that required the exercise of central state authority diminished these notables influence in the eyes of their coreligionists—both locals and foreign, Near Eastern elites. These failures also permitted the rise of heterodox religious views and practices among Jews in the Latin ports that the notables could not suppress. The Levantine Jewish community and its leadership soon mirrored the devolved politics of their Christian state. These many players formed mutually-antagonistic coalitions that were more concerned with vanquishing members of their own religious community than confronting the threats of outsiders.

The problems of dealing with the Latin principalities in situations requiring the exercise of central state power are evident in a Judeo-Arabic query sent to the head of the Jews of Egypt, Avraham

Maimonides (r. 1204-1237). The query concerns the ransoming of Egyptian-Jewish women whom the

Franks had captured, perhaps when they sacked Damietta during the course of the Fifth Crusade

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(1213-1221).204 In order to contextualize this document, we should recall what Avraham’s father, Moses

Maimonides, did following the Franks’ invasion of Egypt in 1168. After the Latin Christians had captured a many Jews from the city of Bilbays, Moses Maimonides raised money from Jewish communities throughout Egypt and Latin Syria on their behalf. He then appointed two Levantine

Jewish leaders who could facilitate the exchange of their donations for the Bilbays captives. The process was streamlined and effective. The Jews achieved their desired end.205

Maimonides’ efficient organization of the redemption of captives in c. 1170 can be fruitfully juxtaposed with the anarchic process described in the query by an anonymous Egyptian to his son in c. 1220. It begins:

What does our master and teacher, our lord and our nagid, Avraham…say concerning the matter of (Jews) who work for the state (ashkhāṣ kāna lahum khidmah)206 whom the women took refuge in (yaludhū bi-him), because (these women) had been captured, sent to Acre and sold as slaves,207 and (their master) took (them) to Acre and Haifa. These captured women have holdings in Alexandria208. So the (civil servants) and the court of Alexandria came together in a place, and fetched an amiable man whose wife was among the captured women, and asked him to go to Acre to investigate the situation. If he found a way, he was to free the women or buy them, providing for their price...They ordered him to bribe [the Franks] for the sake of the women in order to achieve the goal of liberating them by any means. And this (matter) happened after al- Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam sent a letter to the king of Acre concerning their (i.e., the Jewish women's) release and those like them from among the Muslim prisoners. So the aforementioned (envoy) went to Acre but found no way of releasing the women— neither by gift nor bribe—so he then went to [ ] and stood before al-Malik al- Muʿaẓẓam....209

204 ENA NS 29.26, ed. trans. in Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “New Sources from the Genizah for the Crusader Period and for Maimonides and His Descendants,” [Hebrew] Cathedra 40 (1986), 77. 205 See 159-161; 277-279. 206 As Friedman notes, Khidmah in this context almost certainly refers to (government) service. See Friedman, “New Sources,” 79 n. 49. Also Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 6:60. ”.literally: “They were acquired as the property of men ;חצלן פי מלק אשכאץ 207 ,which, as Friedman argues, meant port and was frequently used as a short-hand for Alexandria. See Friedman אלתג̣ ר 208 “New Sources,” 79 n. 51 209 ENA NS 29.26 ll. 1-8; 11-17. 175

Here is the document’s basic narrative: The Franks captured Jewish women during a military campaign and they were then sold as slaves in Latin Acre.210 The women’s plight became known to

Alexandrians with ties to the Ayyubid state, most likely because their relatives raised the issue. The

Alexandrian courtiers and their local court then dispatched one of these relatives (a husband of a captive) to redeem the women, providing him the necessary means to pay for their ransom and additional funds to grease the wheels of Latin officials.211 But the envoy failed at his task. Therefore, he went to the Ayyubid leader of Damascus, al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam (r. 1218-1227) to enlist his support. This was a move of desperation, since the Muslim leader had already failed to redeem these same captives despite sending a personal letter to the "king of Acre."

The initial mission, then, was unsuccessful even though substantial resources were placed in the hands of the Egyptian-Jewish envoy. But why did it fail? We know Avraham Maimonides had as many or more allies among the Jews of Acre than his father.212 Yet there is a deafening silence about

Levantine Jews who could have acted as interlocutors in this query. The best explanation for the failure of the mission and the absence of Levantine Jews’ intervention is that there was no “king of

210 Women rarely traveled with their husbands, must less on their own. This makes it much less likely that the woman were captured by Christian pirates—an otherwise common scenario— since then their men would be with them. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 211–217, 273–352; 3:339. Selling captives into slavery, while common, usually occurred only after a captive’s communities had failed to redeem them, since the amount of money a captor could get for a captive was usually more than the price he could get for a slave. Therefore, it is likely the women had been captives for some time. Craig Perry, “The Daily Life of Slaves and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969-1250 CE,” (PhD diss., Emory University, 2014). 211 This information is given in the section above that I did not translate, ENA NS 29.26, 9-10. They gave him money both to pay for the captives and to bribe the necessary people to access them. 212 We know that A. Maimonides had many connections in Acre both because of his involvement in the nasi controversy discussed below, and because he discusses these relationships in his Milkhamot ha-Shem, a treatise he wrote in defense of his father’s works. See Avraham Maimonides, Milḥamot ha-Shem, ed. Menaḥem b. Baruch (Vilna, 1821), 3-5. There is another letter from around this time may suggest that Levantine Jews and/or Egyptian Jews trading in the region were providing information on the captives, but their role appears ancillary. See T-S 20.138, also ed. in Friedman, “New Sources”, 76. 176

Acre” resident in the city during any period of al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam's rule—the query's claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The Kingdom of Jerusalem did have a queen, Isabella II (r. 1212-1228), also known as Yolande. Her father, John of Brienne, was acting regent, but he was a divisive figure among the Frankish elites, and thus could never have compelled every principality, city-state and military order in the kingdom to hand over its captives. As Riley-Smith has argued, by this period "regalian rights had been whittled away and in practical terms had become almost non-existent."213

The impotence of royal institutions proved an insurmountable challenge, since only a centralized state, like the one that existed during Moses Maimonides' days, could hope to deliver captives en masse to prospective redeemers. All the connections in the world between Levantine and

Egyptian Jews could not change that fact. The Latin principalities’ libertine treatment of Levantine

Jews could not provide these enslaved Egyptian women their freedom. In fact, they were victims of the very decentralization that was the cornerstone of their Levantine coreligionists’ privileges.

But the failure of the state to deliver captives would not only have been detrimental to

Egyptian Jews—and these enslaved women in particular. As I have suggested above, Levantine Jews derived influence from their role as patrons of foreign Jewish captives. Their failure to appear in this query, therefore, is also an indictment of their feebleness. This episode foreshadows the drama of the

Maimonidean controversy in Acre discussed in the Epilogue to this project—a contest that would broadcast Levantine notables’ weaknesses to all of Mediterranean Jewry.

213 Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 147-148. 177

Conclusion

Prior to the First Crusade, Syrian Jews had relied on both secular and religious authorities— notably, the geʾonim of the yeshivah of Palestine and the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt—to negotiate their privileges and obligations to the Fatimid state. The conquest and regime change of the First Crusade forced Syrian Jews to adapt to a new reality in which the Latin Kings—following European and/or

Byzantine norms—did not appoint heads of minority communities. Unlike in the context of courts and legal privileges discussed above and below, it was the Arabic speakers who did all of the adapting here—the Frankish state never bent to Islamicate precedent in this particular context.

At first, neither the Franks nor the Jews knew how to handle this situation—the former essentially permitted social chaos, and the latter turned to foreign patrons to try to reign in this anarchy. But, the Franks soon learned to accede to certain demands from their Arabic-speaking subjects (per the Canons of Nablus), and the Jews and other minorities established new intermediaries with the state. The Genizah documents provide a window onto a few of these functionaries, including merchants, money lenders, tax collectors and rabbinic scholars who stepped forward to negotiate the redemption of captives from the Franks.

The collapse of central state power and rise of the principalities forced Syrians to adapt again to a new political reality in which power was further dispersed among the local nobility. But this did not work exclusively to their detriment, since the revenue-oriented policies of the principalities facilitated the development of a permissive environment for the kingdom’s Syrian minorities, including the Jews. Nevertheless, the lack of a central state power did prevent Syrians from being

178 effective intermediaries in contexts like the redemption of large groups of captives that required them to invoke the power of the head of the kingdom.

Jews and other Syrians not only learned to exploit the principalities and their institutions— their own political culture was also shaped by their interactions with the Franks.214 Thus, in the thirteenth century, the Jewish community’ politics came to resemble that of its Frankish overseers: decentralized, divisive and ineffectual. But these limitations, as we saw in the last section, did not prevent Jewish merchants, laborers, money-lenders and rabbis from immigrating to Latin Syria’s shores. That is because the root of the inefficacy of the Syrian Jewish leaders—namely, the fragmentation of the Latin state— was also the basis for Syria’s appeal to minorities: First, that there was no central state persecution. Second, that the principalities’ policies were all economically oriented and therefore centered on nurturing the growing economies of the ports. And, third, because, as we will see in the next section, the Syrians exploited the Frankish parties’ conflicting claims over their communities to forum shop among different courts, choosing those venues which would best serve their interests.

214 Tamer el-Leithy’s writing on Copts interaction with Islamic institutions inspired my rereading of these Jewish-state interactions to consider the possibility of the ways Latin institutions influenced Jewish political cultural and legal practice. El-Leithy’s forthcoming book will discuss this issue at length. I thank him for sharing some of his preliminary work. 179

Part III: Commerce, The Courts and The State Beyond Borders

3.1 A State Beyond Borders: Syrian Jews in the Courts of the Latin Levant

During the eleventh century, Arabic-speaking Jews discarded hundreds of trade letters in the

Cairo Genizah. These letters demonstrate that these merchants invested most of their capital and efforts in trade within Egypt, and with Syria and North Africa. Some merchants traveled thousands of miles from home to trade with Islamic Iberia (al-Andalus).1 There is no evidence that any of these merchants traveled to Latin-Christian states for business.2 Then, in the twelfth century, following the

First Crusade and the stabilization of Norman Sicily, this pattern suddenly changed: Over two dozen letters from the Genizah involve Jews traveling and trading in Latin Sicily and the Crusader states.3

Why did Genizah merchants in the eleventh century refrain from business travel to

Christian Europe? What changed in the twelfth century that facilitated Arabic-speaking Jews’ trade with the new Latin kingdoms?

In her comprehensive study of eleventh-century trade letters from the Genizah,

Jessica Goldberg tentatively posited that Arabophone Jews rarely traded in Christian countries because they feared moving outside a realm where the legal validity of their documents would

1 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 185-336. 2 Ibid., 19-20. See also Armand O. Citarella, “A Puzzling Question concerning the Relations between the Jewish Communities of Christian Europe and Those Represented in the Genizah Documents,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 91, no.3 (1971), 390-7. Citarella argues unconvincingly that geographic factors are the explanation for why Jewish communities from Southern Europe did not engage with trade with the East. 3 Examples of documents from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Sicily that concern or mention trade and/or traders from Sicily include: T-S 8J21.7, BODL. MS HEB. D 66/139, BODL. MS HEB. D 66/139 DUP, ENA 1822A.48, ENA 2557.151, T-S 12.337 VER. 2, T-S 13J6.15, T-S 8J21.7, T-S 8J21.7, T-S 8J36.3 VER. 2, T-S AR. 7.18, T-S AS 147.24. On the documents from Latin Syria, see below, pp.__-__, as well as the subsequent two chapters. 180 be recognized—leaving their persons and property open to exploitation.4 She did not delve into the implications of her theory for trade with Latin states in the twelfth and thirteenth century. This chapter argues that not only was Goldberg’s theory about eleventh-century trade correct, but that her hypothesis also provides the explanation for the rise of trade with Latin-

Christian states in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Arabic-speaking Jews had not traveled to the Christian West before the Crusades because they did not have access to Islamicate legal venues there. In twelfth and thirteenth centuries, large, Arabic-speaking Jewish (Muslim and Christian) populations found themselves under Latin rule in Norman and Hohenstaufen Sicily, Reconquista Iberia and the

Crusader states. These Jews continued to speak, write and issue documents in Arabic throughout hundreds of years of Latin-Christian occupations. Their Islamicate court systems produced mutually-intelligible—and thus enforceable—deeds that allowed Jews from Latin kingdoms to feel secure trading in the Islamic world, and Jews from the Islamic Near East to feel secure trading in the Latin kingdoms.

This chapter brings to light the ways this system functioned. Jewish merchants in

Latin Syria utilized a tripartite legal system, turning to Latin state courts in intra-Syrian contexts, rabbinic courts in local and regional disputes and foreign qāḍī courts when traveling abroad. The chapter first turns to Frankish courts, for which our evidence comes exclusively from the thirteenth century. It argues that there was no single Frankish state court system;

4 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 19-26. Goldberg does not make the distinction between the eleventh and twelfth/thirteenth centuries, but the change bears out her intuition about the role of the courts in facilitating trade. 181 instead, the military orders, the local nobility, the Italian city-states, the secular clergy all maintained their own legal fora. The baronial ideology of the Latin jurists, the decentralized political structure of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the revenue-oriented policies of the

Frankish courts empowered Jews and other non-Latin Christians to receive the same protection under the law afforded to Frankish burgesses. Furthermore, because these institutions sought to attract the patronage of Syrian litigants, they produced the Arabic documents such litigants desired—documents that could later be deployed in rabbinic and/or qāḍī courts.

Syrian Jews also exploited the principalities’ conflicting claims and general indifference to religious difference to maintain a parallel rabbinic legal system that functioned and produced documents in Arabic—both Hebrew- and Arabic-script deeds. Rabbinic courts were most effective when Syrian merchants maintained personal and professional relations with Jews living in the Islamic Near East. These connections allowed them to raise cases against their adversaries in the latter’s home towns in disputes foreign coreligionists.

Sometimes the protections of rabbinic courts—which could not offer immediate recourse to state power/violence—were considered insufficient. In these cases, Syrian courts could draw up Arabic deeds that could then be submitted to (or, if in Hebrew script, read before) qāḍī courts in the Islamic world, protecting Syrian merchants from potential exploitation while abroad. The Syrian Jews’ system created a state beyond borders that protected Syrians’ property and persons in regions under both Islamic and Latin-Christian rule. The state beyond

182 borders, in turn, provided the foundation for the extensive role of Jews from Latin Syria in trans-regional trade.

Frankish Courts: Baronial Politics and the Prerogatives of Peerage

Most of the Latin Levantine jurists who composed the extant thirteenth-century legal codes were prominent members of the baronial party. Recall that the baronial party comprised a group of

Levantine and Cypriot nobles, the Genoese, the Venetians and the Knights Templar. Their opponents were the imperial party, whose leaders included Richard Filangieri, the bailli of the absentee Holy

Roman Emperor/King of Jerusalem Conrad II, the Pisans, the Teutonic Order and the lords of Antioch and Tripoli.5 Since the rightful king sided with the baronials’ enemies, their jurists turned to the law as a means to legitimize defiance of their ruler.6 The baronials were based in Acre and took Tyre in 1242, so, for the course of the mid-thirteenth century, their domain included the largest Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Much of the existing historiography has sought to read these jurists’ works as descriptions of court practice, but the evidence for their application is circumstantial at best. Our analysis will therefore focus on what these codes can tell us about how their authors’ conceived of the rights and obligations of Arabic-speaking minorities in a Latin-Christian state.7

5 For more detail on this struggle, see above, 127-128. 6 J. A. Brundage, “Latin Jurists in the Levant: The Legal Elite of the Crusader States,” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth- Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 18-42. 7 Phillip of Novara only mentions non-Latin Christians to dismiss them as witnesses in the high court. Phillip of Novara, Le Livre de Forme de Plait, ed. trans. Peter W. Edbury (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Center, 2009), no. 9, 42-43; trans. 212-213. John of Ibelin raises their presence in two contexts: once, to provide the mythological origins of the independent courts of Syrian Christians—according to which Godfrey of Boullion granted the Syrians the right to their own court at the time of the First Crusade. The second time to confirm that they cannot be witnesses before the high court. John of Ibelin, Le Livre de Assises, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149-150. MacEvitt, however, has argued that there were local Christian 183

Four legal compendia, the so-called “assises of Jerusalem,” have survived from the Kingdom of

Acre. Three of these codes—the anonymous Livre au Roi (c. 1200), the Livre de Forme de Plait (c. 1250s) of Phillip of Novara and the Livre des Assize (1264-1266) of John of Jaffa—concern the functioning of the high court (haute cour), which served the kingdom’s nobility. The Livre au Roi was the last hurrah of the centralized monarchy of the twelfth-century kingdom. The fourth code, the anonymous Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois (c. 1230s-1240s), presents laws applicable to the burgesses.8

Two of these codes’ authors, Phillip of Novara and John of Ibelin, were the most influential of the leaders of the baronial party in the mid-thirteenth century. Peter Edbury has established that John of Ibelin’s code conceives of every noble’s court as functioning as the king’s court writ small. The lord, in other words, was king over his own domain. We already saw one manifestation of this ideology in the report of the Venetian bailo, Marsillio Zorzi, who claimed that Venetians had all the privileges of kings in their quarter of Tyre.9 Similarly, Jonathan Riley-Smith has revealed how John’s code was part of his and his contemporaries’ broader vision of a system of peer judgement, according to which only the accused’s equals could stand in judgement of his or her crimes.10

For John, this rule of law based on peer judgement was the fundamental contract binding the

Kingdom of Jerusalem and therefore was relevant to its non-Latin population too. In his Livre des

Assize, John imagines that the founder of the kingdom, Godfrey of Bouillon, established the cour des

Syriens—an independent court for Arabic-speaking Christians (and perhaps Jews and Muslims),

nobles who were not Latin-Christians and may have thus been able to appear before the high court. See MacEvitt, The Crusades and The Christian World, 153-156. Phillip of Novara, Le Livre de Forme, Section 9, 42-43; trans. 212-213. 8 For the formation of the class of burgesses and their legal institutions, see Nader’s Burgesses and Burgess Law. For an analysis of the origins of the Cour des Bourgeois see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 263-295. 9 Edbury, John of Ibelin, 163-176. 10 Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 13; 16-17; 27, 34-37, 110, 130-1, 142-143, 150-151, 157-9, 170-171, 182-183. 184 where Arabic speakers would be responsible for their own affairs according to their own laws. In all likelihood, Godfrey “established” nothing. He simply allowed the existing court systems of dhimmī communities and their Muslim neighbors to continue to function as they had under the Franks’

Muslim predecessors.11 But what matters for our purposes is that John viewed these independent dhimmī courts as part of his broader vision of the maintenance of the rule of law based on peer judgement. This was true not only for the cour des Syriens, but also for burgess courts that could hear disputes between members of different ethno-religious groups.

The Acre-based author of the Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois portrays a system consistent with Johns’ conceptions of proper justice by peer judgement, but does not recognize the existence of the cour des Syriens (which, to his credit, was most likely a fiction). In fact, the baronial- party author’s code does not admit the existence of the non-Latin courts that were functioning at this time, nor does it recognize the presence of the legal institutions of the Italian city-states and military orders.12 He therefore advocates a more interventionist role for the courts in the lives of non-Latin

Christians.

The jurist insists that all people outside the Law of Rome (i.e., the Latin church) should be judged concerning commercial matters in the cour de la fonde and concerning criminal ones in the cour des bourgeois. This may seem strange since Jews and Muslims did not fall under the legal category of burgesses since they could not own landed property—or borgesies. But from the peerage-

11 Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Some Lesser Officials in Latin Syria,” English Historical Review 87, no.342 (1972): 1-26. 12 Riley-Smith and Edbury have argued that the cour des Syriens was incorporated into the cour de bourgeois, but even were that was the case, there were still a plethora of other institutions available to litigants at this time. Edbury, John of Ibelin, 156; Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 85-7. 185 centric view of the Frankish jurists, these minorities’ salient category was non-noble and not non-

Christian.13

The system that the code prescribes for non-Frankish litigants is simple: They are to go to a court composed of two Latin-Christian judges and four Syrian-Christian ones. The procedure for minorities coming before the court is articulated as follows:

A Saracen cannot be a guarantor against a Jew, nor a Jew against a Saracen, nor a Saracen against a Jacobite, nor a Jacobite against a Syrian, for a debt, or for an inheritance, or for any other business…the guarantor must be of the same group as the one who makes the claim.14

In other words, any accuser (including a Latin Christian) could not bring a case against a member of another religious community without a witness from the defendant’s community to attest to the veracity of the plaintiff’s case. I have found no direct analogue for this system in either contemporary Europe, the Byzantine Empire or the Near East. It bears some resemblance to qāḍī- court practice and is even more similar to secular court procedures in Aragon.15 But substantial

13 Nader notes that non-Christians could not own borgesies and therefore could not be part of this class in Burgesses and Burgess Law, 4. For Nader this is indicative of the fact that the Crusader states were determined to create a class of non- noble colonists who felt superior to natives. He does not contend with the fact that in the court all of these people were— at least according to the code—treated as equals. 14 Recueil des historiens des croisades: Lois, Vol. II, Assises de la cour des bourgeois, ed. A.A. Beugnot (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1843), 53-6. The translation here is by Emilie Amt in The Crusades: A Reader, ed. S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 93-5. 15 Prawer asserted that most of the code for the court of the bourgeois derives from the Provencal Lo Codi based on Justinian’s legal code, but his claim does not extend to the sections dealing with minorities. Justinian was stricter than the Franks, forbidding Jews from testifying against Christians, but allowing Christian testimony against Jews. Pope Innocent III reiterated Justinian’s position at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Nor is the model derivative of the Islamic court system, which forbade dhimmīs from testifying against Muslims in court, relying instead on professional court witnesses (ʿudūl), who had to be upstanding, Sunni Muslim men. Christian Iberia’s legal system bears greater resemblance: In the thirteenth-century Kingdom of Aragon, Jews were allowed to testify against Christians, whereas Christians were not always permitted to testify against Jews. At other time, Jewish courts were allowed to hold trials between Jews and Christians—something the livre de assize did not permit. Furthermore, Aragonese Jewish elites had secured these exceptional privileges through their close ties to the king, which cannot explain the development of the system in the kingless Kingdom of Jerusalem. 186 differences remain, suggesting that this system may have emerged organically in the Latin, Near

Eastern milieu of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

How did it develop? Why did the Franks (or at least this one jurist) believe it should be applied in the Kingdom of Jerusalem? I would argue that the answer should be sought in the context of the kingdom’s competitive market for litigants. That is, the courts were vying among themselves for the business of native litigants and therefore had to be amenable to those litigants’ interests. This cognizance of the demands of litigants is evident when the code relates:

[Litigants,] be they Syrians or Greeks or Jews…are people like the Franks, to pay and to restore what will be adjudicated, precisely as it is established in the Court of the Burgesses in this book in which are established all the rules for all the people.16

That is, the assertion of equal treatment of all litigants as people who pay for court protection and receive it is the basis for the courts claim to universal authority over all communities. These litigants would come before the burgess courts because they recognized that they shared a common set of rights with their Frankish and non-Frankish neighbors.

Latin Courts, Arabic Deeds

While not mentioning other legal institutions explicitly, the livre des assises implicitly recognizes that its courts functioned in a world of “forum shopping”. The code assumes that Jews,

Muslims, Latin Christians, Syrian Christians and others were doing business with each other in the

Levantine ports and making legal agreements concerning these activities outside state courts.17

16 See above, n. 14 17 Since the court is primarily concerned with financial disputes, the assumption that different religious groups had shared businesses is self-evident. What is even more interesting is that it assumes that these businessmen would have multiple acquaintances/partners from these other communities who could testify on their behalf against their coreligionist. 187

The non-Franks’ exploitation of multiple legal institutions is consistent with how Jews and

Christians conducted themselves in other regions of the Islamic Near East.18 The code further acknowledges that conflicts over these non-burgess-court agreements would (and should) be subsequently brought to the state court for adjudication. Furthermore, the code instructs that the majority of the courts’ justices should be Arabic-speaking Christians, and the court likely produced Arabic documents.19 These documents could in turn be presented to other Arabophone courts for adjudication.

Thus, in spite of its assertion of a monopoly on justice, the Frankish state courts had to compete with the legal institutions of the military orders, the Italian city-states, other nobles and the local religious communities. The jurists wanted Arabic-speaking litigants to use their courts because such patronage served their and their lords’ fiscal and political interests. They thus promised to treat all parties as equal before the law. Still, the burgess judges’ sought a monopoly over native litigants that was unattainable—as the Latin jurists themselves implicitly recognized—since Arabic-speaking litigants understood that religious and principality courts might better serve their interests depending on the context.

While almost no court documents have survived from the cour de la fonde or the cour des bourgeois, the archives of the military orders and high nobility allow us to get a sense of how Latin

18 Uriel I. Simonsohn, A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 19 The Iberian Muslim traveler Ibn Jubayr also noted that civil-servants responsible for overseeing the legal process for merchants were capable of writing in Arabic. He writes, “[t]hey write Arabic, which they also speak. Their chief is the ṣāḥib al-diwān, who holds the contract to farm the customs. He is known as al-Sahib [the Dir. r or Master], a title bestowed on him by reason of his office, and which they apply to all respected persons, save the soldiery, who hold office with them. All the dues collected go to the contractor for the customs, who pays a vast sum (to the Government).” See Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (hereafter, Riḥlah), ed. William Wright and M. J. de Goeje (New York: AMS, 1973), 302. And Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, 317. 188 courts recognized and took part in an Islamicate legal system. In one such document from 1280, Count

Jocelyn of Scandelion came to Latin Acre to ask Preceptor20 Johannes of the Teutonic Order for a loan of 17,000 bezants (bisantiorum)21—an amount that could have supported approximately twenty average families living in the port city for their entire lifetimes.22 Johannes sought this substantial sum from a group of Jews and merchants from the Italian city-state of Siena (a Judaeis et mercatoribus

Senensibus). The two parties agreed to put up a loan at heavy interest (usuris gravibus). A public notary wrote out a Latin deed recording this exchange and the Arabic scribe of the Teutonic Order

(scriba in Arabico in dicta domo Theutonicorum), a Syrian Christian named George (Georgius), drew up a parallel legal text for the Jewish lenders.23 These agreements affirmed a loan previously made before the archdeacon of Acre.24 The deed’s witnesses included three representatives of the Teutonic

20 The preceptor was the head of the order in his region, standing in place of the master of the order (as Johannes here is locum magistri tentis). The preceptor often served as treasurer, overseer of provisions and second-in-command to the grand master. See Jochen Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars: History, Organization, and Personnel (1099/1120-1310) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 252-255. 21 The bezant was a gold coin roughly equal to the Islamic dinar. The Franks used the currency of the Byzantines and the Muslims, striking this imitation currency to gain associative legitimacy for their coinage. Goitein argued that the average medieval family in the Islamic world took in around 2 dinars a month at this period. If we assume that most primary income earners started working consistently around 15 and continued to do so through their deaths at around 50 (to be very generous) we come up with (2 x 12) x (50-15) = 840 then 17,000/840 = 20.2. For the Franks’ use of Byzantine and Islamic currencies see A. Malloy, I. Preston and A.J. Seltman, Coins of the Crusader States, 1098-1291 (New York: Attic Books, 1994). For the average salary Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5: 190. 22 Reinhold Röhricht (ed.), Regesta Regni hierosolimitani, 1097-1291 (Innsbruck: Libraria Academica Wageriana 1893), no. 1435. Joshua Prawer briefly mentions these texts in Prawer, The History of the Jews, 126-7. He misidentifies the sum involved in the exchange as 1,700 bezants—it is 17,000 (XVII millia). He also dismisses the general significance of the text, saying it is one of few examples of Jews in this collection. This argument is unconvincing because Röhrich’s collection is exclusively about high noble affairs, a class that Jews could not enter. 23 This is the only logical explanation for why this scribe would be present and act as a witness. There are no other explicit mentions of an Arabic scribe in the Regesta Regni Hierosolimitani, though a Georgius again appears in the only other case involving a Jew (1399) bearing an Arabic name—Helya, i.e., Ilyā (Elijah). Prawer mentions this texts in ibid., 126, but he gives the wrong number for it (1398) and argues that the name is Hebrew, Eliyyahu, which is phonetically less similar than the more probable Arabic alternative. 24 The Latin grammar is complicated due to a plurality of subclauses, but the pluperfect tradiderant seems to suggest that the case in the archdeacon’s court refers to an early exchange. My thanks to Neil Weijer for his assistance with this clause, his insights into the text and his friendship. 189

Order, one representative of the Hospitaller Order, one burgess,25 a Dominican friar, a Cypriot knight

(perhaps a representative of the absentee king26) and at least one Syrian Christian.27

These witnesses represented a wide spectrum of social classes and institutions in the Kingdom of

Jerusalem. The parties’ diverse institutional and communal associations were no coincidence. The lenders, the debtor and their Teutonic hosts orchestrated these witnesses’ participation because they recognized that the thirteenth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem was not a single state, but one in which multiple principalities maintained their own legal bodies and their own means of enforcement to which litigants might appeal.28

Nor was it a coincidence that an Arabic scribe was present to provide a parallel deed for this exchange. We should not assume that this Arabic document was a simple, word-for-word translation of the Latin text—its diction, layout and formulary would have most like been converted to an

Islamicate form that Jewish lenders could deploy in their religious courts—and foreign qāḍī courts— if necessary. This would allow them to treat the debt as fluid capital that they could sell or bequeath in their wills.29 This is evident in the only original Arabic document preserved in the Christian west—a lease agreement between a Frank and a Melkite priest—although in this case the vocabulary is

25 Henricus de Bolande drapparius—that is, “Henry the draper of Bolande.” Bolande is a small French village northeast of Orleans. 26 Raymond the Cypriot Knight (Raimundus Cyprensis milites) may have stood in the place of Henry II (r. 1270-1291), the king of Cyprus and Jerusalem who spent very little time in Latin Palestine, preferring to rule through proxies. See the discussion of royal absenteeism above, 126-128. 27 In addition to the Arabic scribe Georgius, there is also an Horriguonis, which is not a Latin name, though I have not found an Arabic cognate. 28 As Prawer points out, there is nothing about the pacts made between Venice and the Kingdom of Jerusalem that suggests that the Italians did not have full jurisdiction, including the enforcement of the law. Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 222-3. 29 Joseph Rivlin, Inheritance and Wills in Jewish Law (Heb.) (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan UP, 1999). Deathbed declarations often included a statement of what was owed the dying party or of what the dying party owed so that his or her descendants could see that payment was made. 190 explicitly Christianized as it was intended for intra-Christian consumption.30 The Latin principalities recognized that employing Arabic scribes made their venues more appealing to Arabic speakers, and they thus had their courts issue deeds that these litigants could deploy in their own, parochial courts.31

Rabbinic Courts and the Power of Familiarity

For religious courts in the medieval Islamic world, law was personal rather than territorial— that is, people were judged according to the law of their religious community regardless of whether they were home or abroad.32 This factor is one explanation for why Jewish courts in Latin Syria continued to issue Arabic documents throughout the nearly two-centuries of Frankish rule—namely, so they could be deployed in the rabbinic courts of the surrounding regions of the Islamic Near East where Syrian merchants traveled. While qāḍī courts and Latin courts put legal penalties backed by state-sanctioned violence on the table for potential litigants, they also were limited by the fact that they lay under two different regimes, complicating the process of having one deed enforced in the other. For Jewish courts, political boundaries were relevant only if the court was compelled to turn the case over to the state. In other contexts, they could rely on different types of enforcement mechanisms, like reputation, whose efficacy was contingent on the social capital of the litigants and

30 E.g., the basmallah reads “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” rather than “in the name of God/Allāh.” Jamil and J. Johns, “An Original Arabic Document from Crusader Antioch (1213 AD),” in Texts, Documents, and Artefacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D.S. Richards, ed. C. F. Robinson (Leiden: Brill 2003), 170-88. 31 There are two other examples of Arabic-script court documents purportedly from the Latin Levant in the fifteenth- century chronicle of Ṣāliḥ ibn Yaḥyá. See Ṣāliḥ ibn Yaḥyá Kamal S. Salibi and Francis Hours, Tārīkh Bayrūt wa-huwa akhbār al-salaf min dhurriyat Buḥtur ibn ʻAlī Amīr al-Gharb bi-Bayrūt (Beirut: Dār al-Mashraf, 1969), 47-48, 73-74. 32 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:66; 2:1. 191 the willingness of the court to apply social pressure through means like ḥerem/niddui

(excommunication).33

One example from the Genizah of a Jewish court functioning in a trans-national context comes from the letter from Frankish Ascalon to the Egyptian city of Bilbays discussed above.34 Recall that the writer, the merchant Abū Saʿd b. Ghanāʾim, wrote his brother, Abū al-Bahāʾ and explained that he had provided a loan to an Egyptian Jew who came to Palestine to ransom his daughter from the Franks. He writes:

Musallam b. Abū Sahl came to me and I went up with him to Nablus. I paid (the ransom) of his sister and it cost me 60 dinars…He then disappeared and left me alone…I desire, by your favor, that you conclude (the matter) with [Musallam] and tell him to not delay with this matter further, but to pay me the gold (owed), or, if (he is) not (able) (to give me back) his sister (lit. al-saghīrah, “the little one”). Reproach him with every method and raise doubts about him with the rabbinic judges (tuʾakhidhuhu bi-kūll(sic.) wajh tushakkuhu ilá al-dayyanin)…35

Musallam b. Abū Sahl succeeded in convincing Abū Saʿd to pay the funds necessary to redeem his daughter from Frankish captivity. He then returned to Egypt, promising to pay the writer back. When he failed to do so. The writer in the section highlighted here implores his brother to go and “raise doubts” about the debtor with local Egyptian judges.

In this last sentence, we see how inter-regional ties allowed Abū Saʿd to seek redress for his grievance against another Jew (Musallam b. Abū Sahl) who lived under a different regime (that, by the way, had just been engaged in an extended war with the kingdom under which he lived).36 Abū Saʿd

33 On the use of ḥerem for social control and bolstering rabbinic authority among Near Eastern Jews, see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 204-6. As Rustow notes, the efficacy of such excommunications was dependent on the community’s willingness to enforce the ban, which is why social ties like those discussed above were so critical. 34 See above, 161-164. 35 T-S NS J270, v. ll. 3-14 36 I refer here to Amalric’s crusade against Egypt. See above, 158. 192 relies specifically on reputation as his enforcement mechanism here—he asks his brother to “raise doubts” about the character of Musallam to the leaders of the Egyptian community. Avner Grief argued that the potential undermining of an individual’s reputation was the most important enforcement mechanism for Near Eastern Jews (in the context of his thesis, merchants).37 Whether one accepts the supremacy of this “reputation-mechanism” or not, it is clear that in our context it is precisely the threat to reputation, and the willingness to publically challenge him in court, that Abū

Saʿd expects will pay dividends.

The fact that Abū Saʿd knew fellow Arabophone Jews—in this case, his brother in Egypt— allowed him to pursue this case in the manner he did; namely, via reputation and the threat of communal sanction. Abū Saʿd had likely migrated to Latin Ascalon, but his brother had remained in

Bilbays. Thus, migration and population exchange reinforced the social ties between Fatimid Egypt and the Latin Levant and enabled Jewish legal mechanisms to function beyond the borders of either state.

It is clear, then, why Abū Saʿd thought he could get his money back without having to turn to a state court. But this is not the only reason litigants turned to rabbinic courts. The most common cases before parochial courts in the Islamic world involved family law, especially, in the case of Jews, when dealing with documents like ketubbot (marriage certificates) and gittin (divorce certificates). While these cases might seem matters of purely local significance, trans-regional connections could be the

37 Avner Greif, "Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders," The Journal of Economic History 49, no.4 (1989): 857-82. Greif’s concept of the “reputation mechanism” has been challenged by a number of scholars, including Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie, who have argued that mercantile contracts were instead enforced by state authorities. See Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Contract Enforcement, Institutions and Social Capital: The Maghribi Traders Reappraised,” The Economic History Review 65, no. 2 (2011): 1-24. Grief then addressed their critique in Avner Greif, “The Maghribi traders: a reappraisal?” The Economic History Review 66, no. 2 (2012): 445-69. 193 salient variable, as we learn from a ca. 1280 query that Rabbi Eliyyahu of Acre sent to the leading

Iberian sage of the second half of the thirteenth century, Shelomo ibn Adret. The question concerns a merchant from Latin Syria who died somewhere in the Islamic world. Ibn Adret paraphrases the query from R. Eliyyahu. He summarizes the case as follows:

Reʾuven38 went traveling some distance and left his wife. Later, a man came and said, “I saw Reʾuven, the husband of such-and-such a woman, killed when traveling in Muslim lands (harug ba-derekh be-ereṣ Yishmaʿelim).” I came to him and confirmed that [the dead man] was so-and-so. You (R. Eliyyahu) said that you all (i.e., the scholars of Acre) were divided over whether the women is permitted to remarry or not.39

This case concerns the status of an ʿagunah, or “chained woman,” a Syrian Jewish wife whose husband died abroad in the Islamic world—most likely pursuing trade— and whose death was thus difficult to confirm.40 As a result, the woman remained in legal limbo—unable to divorce and remarry since her husband had not issued the necessary divorce document (a geṭṭ) and with no proof that he died.

Fortunately, while her husbands’ mercantile ventures had taken him far off geographically (halakh le- merḥakim), there was still another Jew in the region—perhaps a fellow trader—who either witnessed

Reʾuven’s murder or was informed about it from a colleague.41

This case demonstrates the importance of ties among Jewish communities in the Latin Levant and the surrounding Muslim regions in protecting the legal interests of Syrian Jews like this widow.

That is, aside from the shared jurisdiction that bridged the Jewish communities of the Frankish

38 Reʾuven does not refer to an individual but is a generic referent for a party in a legal case. This does not mean the case was theoretical—it is standard practice to leave out the names of litigants in responsa. The specific detail that the man was killed in Islamic lands suggests this was a real case, but there is no way to prove that one way or another. 39 Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 1:497, 293-4. 40 The issue is the legal protocols for confirming her husband’s death. 41 While we have no direct evidence of the informant’s profession, merchants and (less frequently) scholars are the only professionals likely to be traversing such areas in the medieval Mediterranean. 194 kingdom and the Fatimid and Ayyubid states, the very fact of the regular movement of merchants between Christian- and Muslim-held lands provided protection for a merchant’s family in the (all too common) case of a traveler’s untimely demise.42 This evidence, then, illustrates how the Jews of the

Latin Levant could have maintained the rights of their merchants traveling abroad—and, even when such protraction failed— it ensured the rights of those (like the wife in this query) who depended on such peripatetic merchants for their livelihood. These ties allowed Arabophone Jews in Frankish Syria to maintain a common legal community with the Jews of the broader Islamicate region—a community that was reliant on not only rabbinic, but also state courts.

Qāḍī Documents, Rabbinic Courts

Jewish courts in the Islamic world did not simply produce Arabic documents— they had to follow specific formulaic and linguistic norms to legitimize the contents of the deeds. Travelers reliant on business that required travel to the Islamic world needed to be able to produce deeds that would be recognized in Islamicate forums in those regions.43 Levantine Jews addressed this need by producing Islamicate documents in Jewish courts under Latin rule.

This strategy is evident in a Jewish court document from Latin Tyre in 1235. The case deals with a group of Arabic-speaking Jews from Tyre who traveled to Egypt and were subsequently arrested, imprisoned and forced to pay a large fine (200-500 dinars) to “agents of the sultan”

42 The dangers of travel (shipwreck, piracy, Bedouin raids, etc.), as well as the threat of instability in foreign regions, made the death of merchants abroad a relatively common phenomenon that was part of their risk assessment. See Goitein’s discussion of this issue in the course of his analysis of methods of travel in Mediterranean Society, 1: 273-332. See his comments on how this informed merchant’s cost benefit analysis in ibid., 1: 346-352. 43 Before the First Crusade, Jews from the Islamic world rarely traded in Christian ports. See Citabella, “A Puzzling Question,” 390-397. Jessica Goldberg argues convincingly that the reason Islamicate Jews did not trade in Christian ports was because they lacked legal protections there. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 178. 195

(nuww[ā]b al-Sūlṭān).44 The surviving text is fragmentary and it is impossible to recover many details of what happened. We do know that the document most likely reached the Genizah because Latin

Tyre’s Jewish court sent it to Fustat/Cairo to be used in an Egyptian legal forum.

What matters for our purposes is the deed’s legal formulary and word-choice and how they compare to contemporary court documents from Islamic Egypt. The text has clauses in Arabic,

Hebrew and Aramaic.45 In my translation below, the Arabic is rendered in Roman script, the Hebrew in italics and the Aramaic in bold:

We have written our signatures] at the end of this [document] in the last third of the [month of x] in the year 1536 [according to the era of documents] in the city of Tyre on the great sea (the Mediterranean)[ ]the case of Shemuʾel b. Surūr al-Malaṭī [ ] Abū al-Faraj b. Assad was held there [ ]agents of the Sulṭān (nuwwāb al-Sulṭān)— may God make (the Sultan’s) reign eternal.46

Note that Arabic is the language of most of the opening formulary. It is also the language of the entire body of the text that detailed the events relevant to the case. The dating, a critical detail for legal fora, however, is relayed in Hebrew according to the accepted calendar of most of Islamicate Jewry—that of the Seleucid era. Finally, see how the location of the court—another central tenant of any legal document—is given in Aramaic according to the cities position vis-à-vis a major landmark, namely, the Mediterranean Sea. All of these linguistic idiosyncrasies are not idiosyncratic at all—they are exactly what we would expect to see in contemporary documents from Jewish courts in the Islamicate

44 T-S 13J7.9 l 7. trans. on PGP site from S. D. Goitein’s typed notes. 45 The forefront of Genizah research is examining such formulary in petitions and legal documents in order to understand the social and institutional contexts in which they were written. This research has convinced me of the importance of thinking about formulary as a shared tool for Islamicate Jewish institutions under Latin and Muslim rulers. See Eve Krakowski and Marina Rustow, “Formula as Content: Medieval Jewish Institutions, the Cairo Genizah, and the New Diplomatics,” Jewish Social Studies 20, no. 2 (2014): 111–46. 46 T-S 13J7.9 ll. 1-7 196 world.47 In other words, if the clause indicating that this document was from a Levantine Jewish court under Latin rule had not survived, we would have assumed that this deed was produced in a Jewish court in the Islamic world.

The writers of this document were not merely aware of their Jewish audience, but also seem to have recognized that this deed could come before a Muslim court. Note that the Tyrian Jewish judge—a man living under Latin-Christian rule—prays that “God make eternal the reign” (khallada

Allah [mamlakatahu]) of the Ayyubid sultan, al-Kāmil (r. 1218-1238). He did not write this line because he was oppressed by the Franks and praying that their lands would return to Islamic sovereignty— even if this would be the conclusion of the lachrymose histories of Latin Syria’s Jews.48 The Tyrian scribe picked this common expression because he was aware that his Egyptian coreligionists often chose to take cases to Muslim courts—especially in a situation like this one that seems to have been a dispute between Jews and agents of the state.49 Since the most significant sections of the text are in

Arabic, it would have been intelligible if read aloud in a qāḍī or maẓalim court. The entire document could also have been rewritten in Arabic script with minimal changes to its contents and then submitted to a Muslim authority.50

Though this theory that Latin Levantine Jews could and did submit documents to Muslim state courts is speculative in this case, it is substantiated by a second Genizah court document from

Fustat in 1276. The document tells of an Arabic-speaking Jewish merchant from Angevin Sicily moving

47 On the form of such documents, especially court deeds related to trade, see Lieberman, The Business of Identity, 156-93. 48 E.g., Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 110-11. 49 Oded Zinger’s work has demonstrated the prevalence of Jewish use of Islamic courts. See forthcoming article “‘She Intends to Harass Him’: Jewish Women in Muslim Legal Forums in Medieval Egypt.” 50 Krakowski and Rustow, “Formula as Content,” 115. 197 a small quantity of precious metals from Latin Acre to Fustat with partners from both Frankish Syria and Mamluk Egypt. The Sicilian conveyed these goods to an Egyptian Jewish merchant and was owed money for their receipt.51 He went to the Fustat court in order to secure a legal document recording his Egyptian partner’s obligation to pay him back. The relevant section of the deed reads as follows:

(The scribe) is writing a deed (according to) non-Jewish (law) (ḥujjah bi-l-goyyim). It will be obligatory for (the debtor) (to pay his first installment) when (the month of) Adar passes. (The Sicilian lender) is permitted to bring (his case)52 before a non-Jewish court (yarfaʿuhu li-dinei goyim) at that place and to take from him what he is entitled (al-mustaḥiqq) according to this document 53 Similarly, (after the time) when the installment is compulsory for (the debtor to pay), (the lender) is permitted to bring everything before a non-Jewish court.54

This Judeo-Arabic deed explicitly allows a Sicilian Jewish lender, a resident of a Latin-Christian state, to bring his case before a non-Jewish court if the Egyptian Jew who owes him money does not repay him what he is due. For this purpose, the scribe made another copy of the deed in Arabic script

(yaktub bi-dhālik ḥujjah bi-l-goyim).55 The scribe follows his permission for the lender to go to the non-

Jewish court by suggesting that the non-Jews can “take (yakhudh) what (the lender) is entitled.” In other words, the scribe grants the lender permission to go to a state court explicitly because he recognizes that in certain context only the threat of state-sanctioned legal penalties could secure the favored litigant’s desired outcome. These documents could thus protect the merchants in three

51 For the role of Sicily as a hub for trade connecting Egypt, the Levant and the Western Mediterranean, see below, 218. The details for this are in T-S NS 254, ll. 2-10. Partly ed. with Hebrew trans. in Eliyyahu Ashtor, The History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria under the Mamluks, 3 vols. (Heb.) (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1944-70), 2: #26 (pp. 47-48). .)يرفعه) Ashtor’s transcription does not note the tāʾ marbūṭah indicating the direct object of the verb 52 .שטר but the word appears to be צטר T-S NS 254 l. 15. Ashtor read 53 54 Ibid. ll. 11-17 55 Ibid. ll. 11-13. 198 different contexts— in the rabbinic courts of the Kingdom of Sicily, in the rabbinic courts of the

Kingdom of Jerusalem and in the rabbinic and qāḍī courts the Mamluk Sultanate.

Conclusion

These deeds explain why Latin courts could never exercise a monopoly over Syrian litigants.

Arabophone Jewish courts—and perhaps courts of other non-Franks—continued to produce

Islamicate documents because they allowed Arabic speakers under Latin-Christian rule recourse to

Jewish and state courts when they traveled for trade in the Islamic world. These courts prevented the

Syrians’ antagonists from seizing the Levantine merchants’ goods, reneging on their debts to Syrians or otherwise abusing Syrians’ foreign status. The crucial point here is that Levantine litigants had recourse to state courts in the Islamic world, which they could use to coerce their opponents when all other options failed.

But Levantine Jews’ recourse to Arabophone Jewish and Islamic courts did not obviate their dependence on the justice of principality institutions when they returned to Latin Syria. They required the burgess courts to protect their rights when a dispute arose with Syrian Christians,

Muslims or Franks. They needed the military order courts when they made loans under their auspices to the Frankish nobility.

Just because a litigant chose to use a Latin, rabbinic or qāḍī court in a specific case did not exclude the possibility that the litigant would later turn to another court venue to continue litigating the same case. That is why the Latin and Jewish courts produced Arabic deeds: These courts recognized that their functions were compatible and even codependent with the Arabic courts, though they continued to compete with them for litigants. For Arabic speakers in the Latin Levant,

199 then, Islamic, Latin and parochial religious courts formed a trans-regional system made up of interlocking and contested jurisdictions. The litigants gave this system its coherence, choosing the forum to which they turned based on the specific context of the case: where it occurred; who was involved; and what means were necessary to enforce the final decision.

Not only did this system protect Syrian Jews, it also protected Arabic-speaking Jews from the surrounding regions of the Islamic world who came to Syria for trade. These merchants knew that their legal deeds would be accepted in Syrian rabbinic courts; they may also have known that the

Latin courts produced Arabic deeds and were likely amenable to accepting Arabic legal documents. In other words, the Syrian Jews’ state beyond borders served the interests of both their own merchants and those who did business with them.

200

3.2 From Hinterlands to Emporia: The Ports of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1098-1187)

By 1100, the Levantine economy was in shambles. The First Crusade had ravaged the Syrian countryside. The major Levantine ports had either been sacked or were under siege. Thousands of

Syrians had been killed, captured, exiled or enslaved. 56 But a few decades later, the economies of the

Levantine ports were flourishing. Their rural environs were thriving and able to supply products to

Levantine merchants ferrying Syrian goods across the Mediterranean. Traders from the Islamic world, eager to take part in this exchange, flooded the ports of the Crusader states.

One aspect of the story of the economic rise of the Crusader states has attracted generations of scholars: the significance of Levantine ports and trans-Mediterranean commerce in reinvigorating twelfth-century Europe’s economy and introducing a plethora of new goods to the continent’s markets.57 Yet no study has asked: what role did the Levant’s autochthonous population—its Arabic- speaking Jews, Muslims and Christians—play in this twelfth-century economic renaissance? How did this commercial resurgence shape these communities’ relationships to their coreligionists in the Near

East and the broader Mediterranean?

This chapter argues that the First Crusade and the subsequent establishment of the Crusader states transformed the economic role of Arabophone merchants in the Latin Levant. Arabophone merchants before the Crusader conquests treated southern Syrian ports as a hinterland of Fustat-

56 See above, section 1.1 and 1.2. Even if we recognize the tendency of chroniclers to exaggerate savage behavior for ideological purposes, the people residing in the ports of Levant clearly had faced the brutal realities of medieval conquest. 57 As Henry Pirenne writes, “[t]he one lasting and essential result of the Crusades was to give the Italian towns, and to a lesser degree, those of Provence and Catalonia, the mastery of the Mediterranean…[T]hey enabled Western Europe not only to monopolize the whole trade from the Bosporus and Syria to the Straits of Gibraltar, but to develop there an economic and strictly capitalistic activity which was gradually to communicate itself to all the lands north of the alps.” See Henri Pirenne, Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (Histoire du Moyen Age), trans. I.E. Clegg (Orlando: A Harvest Book Harcourt, 1937 [1933]), 29-32. 201

Cairo, dependent on the Egyptian emporium for the re-export of Syrian goods to broader regional markets.58 In the decades following the Crusader conquests, Levantine Jews became agents of their own at the emerging emporia in Latin Tyre and Acre. They sold Levantine products to merchants from across the Mediterranean. They also participated in networks linking the Levant to Indian Ocean trade. Previous studies based on Latin corpora have suggested that the commercial rise of the

Crusader states did not occur until the 1180s.59 The Genizah texts and other Hebrew and Arabic documents considered here, however, challenge this consensus. I argue that the trajectory of the region’s economic ascent was evident as early as the first decades after the Crusader conquests.

Previous Studies

Why have there been no academic studies on the role of Jewish and Muslim merchants in the

Latin Levant at this period? The lacuna is the result of a regnant narrative in the historiography about twelfth-century Mediterranean trade. This narrative holds that European Christian (especially Italian) merchants replaced Arabophone traders who had long plied Mediterranean trade routes.60 Prominent scholars of the Genizah have argued that in recognition of the Europeans’ ascendancy, the merchants

58 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 220-227. 59 Riley-Smith identifies and discusses the consensus among scholars of the medieval west that the Crusader states were only significant players on the economic stage between 1180s-1250s in his “Government in Latin Syria and the Commercial Privileges of Foreign Merchants,” in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Baker (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1973), 109-32, esp. 122. Claude Cahen first articulates the argument for the relatively late development of the Crusader states’ economies in “Notes sur l’histoire des croisades,” 328-416. 60 For Pirenne’s perspective, see above n. 57. See also John H. Pryor, Geography, Technology and War: Studies in the Maritime History of the Mediterranean, 649-1571 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 112-135.; David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011), 294-99; and Eliyyahu Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). 202 who left their letters in the Genizah turned to the Indian Ocean trade as compensation as they were unable to compete with the European traders in the Mediterranean sphere.61

While European merchants did come to occupy an important, even predominant, role in twelfth-century Mediterranean trade, the assumption that their rise led to a commensurate decline in

Arabic-speaking merchants’ activities is flawed.62 European traders came to Latin, as well as Fatimid,

Ayyubid and Mamluk ports, in order to buy goods that Arabophone merchants from the wider region supplied.63 Their relationship to these merchants, in other words, was one of symbiosis.

In Genizah studies, the narrative of the twelfth-century decline of Arabophone merchants is also the result of uneven source survival. As other researchers have noted, there is a steep decline in the number of trade-related documents contained in the Genizah in the twelfth century. This diminutive corpus shrinks even further in the thirteenth century.64 In all likelihood, this pattern of source survival has as much or more to do with local issues facing Fustat—the city’s demographic decline (due to plague, natural disasters and emigration) and the loss of Jewish elites emigrating to

Cairo than it does with macro, trans-Mediterranean economic developments, i.e., Arabic-speaking merchants no longer participating in Mediterranean trade.65

61 Goitein and Friedman argue that the fact that Muslims and Christians were fighting in the Mediterranean undermined Mediterranean Jews’ “prominence in maritime undertakings”. This resulted in their turn to the India trade. See Goitein and Friedman, India Traders, 136. Jessica Goldberg similarly argues for the detrimental consequences of Italian merchants’ involvement in the Mediterranean trade. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 335-336. 62 Goldberg—despite her statement noted above—notes that the “India traders” were in often active in both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 305. 63 For Italian merchants active in Egyptian ports at this period see T-S 10J31.13 and ENA 2738.7. The former document voices the complaint that specific Jewish merchants were monopolizing Italian trade. This may be indicative of the special relationships formed between Arabophone and Italian merchants at this period. 64 See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 36-37; and Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:7 65Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:141-142The most thorough discussion of the issues Egypt faced at this period is in Russ- Fishbane, “Between Politics and Piety,” 34-66. 203

Autarky is a concept alien to the economies of the Levantine littoral.66 Markets in the region have been linked to trans-Mediterranean and trans-Asian networks of exchange for as long as merchants have bothered to record these transactions.67 One pitfall of the zero-sum market assumptions mentioned above is that they can elide redistribution and decline. At this period, for instance, there may have been an abatement of Arabophone merchants’ endeavors in the

Mediterranean region (e.g., Alexandria-Palermo-al-Mahdīyah) in favor of an intensification of investment in the Indian Ocean (e.g., ʿAydhāb-ʿAdan-Mangalore).68 But merchants’ reallocation of effort and capital does not necessarily imply they were forced out of a market. Nor does it necessarily suggest that their “antagonists” pursuits were inimical to their own.

In this context, this chapter offers a significant emendation to the current narrative of the

Crusader states’ role in Mediterranean commerce. It seeks to illustrate that Levantine, Arabic- speaking merchants continued to participate in Mediterranean trade from the period of the Crusader conquests through Saladin’s occupation of Jerusalem in 1187. As such, they also played a central role in reviving economies of Western Europe at this period.

66 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell convincingly refute the assumptions of autarkic economics in even minor Mediterranean markets (i.e., not major ports). See Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 112-5. 67 This premise is amply demonstrated in David Abulafia’s The Great Sea. Abulafia documents Mediterranean trade from as early as the Bronze Age to demonstrate his argument that the Mediterranean functioned as a commercial “super highway.” 68 I adapt the terms “abatement” and “intensification” from Horden and Purcel’s Corrupting Sea, 263-70, but use it here in a different context, namely to demonstrate the applicability of comparative advantage. Arabophone merchants had easier access and pre-established ties to the Indian Ocean markets, whereas Europeans (mainly Italians) had invested extensive capital in their Mediterranean fleets. Therefore, Arabophone traders benefited from intensifying their investment in the Indian Ocean while Europeans benefited from doing the same in the Mediterranean. 204

Arabophone Merchants in Syria before the Crusader Conquests

During the course of the eleventh century, southern Syria—a region stretching from Tyre to

Ascalon—was dependent on the emporium of Fustat for its most basic material needs. It relied on agents of the Egyptian city to buy (and resell) Syrian produce. As Jessica Goldberg writes:

Fustat supplied Levant with Mediterranean goods despite the fact that the area had a coast and ports of its own to link it to markets…The lack of foreign buyers who regularly used any city in the (Levant) as an emporium also shows the role of this region as hinterland…. (Merchant letters from Levant) only discuss local demand.69

The ease of movement of goods and letters from southern Levant to Egypt perpetuated the former region’s status of hinterland. Under the Fatimids, southern Syria was linked to Fustat and the Nile

Delta via the kutubī system—a government sanctioned network of couriers who quite literally left their mark on the vast majority of Egyptian-Levantine correspondence extant in the Genizah.70 This kutubī system seems to have collapsed in the face of the Seljuq conquests of Palestine in the early

1070s.71 In the following decades, a number of Levantine cities, including the region’s largest ports—

Tyre, Acre and Tripoli, rose in rebellion against the Fatimids under the leadership of local judges

(qāḍīs) and disgruntled governors.72 Throughout this period, Fatimid Levantine ports were considered

“border regions” (thughūr) vulnerable to enemy attack.73 The turbulent late-eleventh century concretized that designation. Not surprisingly, Levantine port cities’ separation from the Fatimid

69 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 191-2; 224. 70 David Bramoullé, “Les villes maritimes fatimides,”93-116. 71 This trend is demonstrated in the dramatic decline in trade-related documents in Moshe Gil’s corpus of documents from Palestine. See Gil, Palestine, 3:96-331. It is telling that in this section on “letters of merchants” there is only one letter (doc. # 529) that may date from the period after the Seljuq conquests. There are a few trade-related documents from Ascalon during this period (Palestine, 3: 463-510), but it is not surprising that trade continued with Ascalon given its proximity to Egypt. On Genizah documents from Ascalon at this period and the general state of the Jewish population of the city, see Moshe Yagur, “Between Egypt and Jerusalem.” 72 See Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634-1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), 409-420. 73 See the introduction, n. 11. 205 capital seems to have had detrimental implications for Genizah merchants’ trading ventures in the region.

The ports of the Levant at the time of the Crusader invasions had gone from subsidiaries of

Fustat to isolated commercial entities. Many of these cities’ leaders were at odds with the Fatimid state. Some trade continued during this period, but merchants faced significant restrictions on their movements. Consequently, Levantine merchants and foreigners who wished to trade in the region faced considerable risks and restrictions during the decades before the Crusaders arrived.

Trade in the Midst of Crusade, 1098-1111

The apocalyptic anecdotes of the Arabic and Latin chronicles of the First Crusade have created an image of Levant in 1104 as a region of razed cities and corpse-strewn roads. Both Arabic and

Latin accounts portray groups of Crusaders murdering local peoples at will. Section 1 demonstrated that many of this claims are exaggerated, but the impact on the population was not trivial.

Unsurprisingly, then, some Genizah documents suggest that there were Arabophone merchants who chose not to traverse the region at this time.74 Other travelers, however, were undeterred.75

74 One example of the detrimental impact of the Crusades on Genizah trade is a letter of Barukh b. Yiṣḥaq—leader of the Jews of Aleppo—to a Jewish court in Fustat. The letter concerns the care of an orphaned girl resident in Aleppo. Barukh seeks to secure for the orphan the right to a small house in the Syrian city owned by her Fustat-based uncle. Barukh wrote during a period of military conflict, either the First Crusade (per Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:271; 4:277), or the Seljuq- Fatimid wars (per Shelomo Assaf, “A Responsum and a Letter from R. Baruch ben R. Isaac of Aleppo “(Heb.), Tarbiṣ 19.2 (1947): 105-8. For our purposes, the dating is less significant than Barukh’s statement that “[the uncle] should order the leader (muqaddam) of the city to have this document (lit. his letter) sent to me concerning what he will be allocating to this orphan because the letters of the merchant (kutub al-tujjār) are having great difficulty (mutaʿadhdhirah) reaching Aleppo [my emphasis].” See Bodl MS Heb D 66.3, ed. in Assaf, “A Responsum” and available online at PGP. 75 See T.S. 20.114, a letter from around 1105. In the letter, the rav, or leader, of the Jews of Narbonne, Yiṣḥaq Benveniste, addresses Yehoshuaʿ b. Dosa, a prominent Egyptian Jew with connections to the Fatimid Vizier al-Afḍal. Benveniste, then in Alexandria, requests that Yehoshuaʿ b. Dosa contact al-Afḍal and ask the vizier to facilitate Benveniste’s travel to the Holy Land. Benvensite notes that he would travel to a Levantine port, either “Tripoli or Jabla” (Jabla was still under Fatimid rule and Tripoli was held by an anti-Fatimid qāḍī). He then intended to continue on to “the land of Edom or the land of 206

One such willful adventurer was a young Egyptian merchant of some means, Aharon, who came to Acre in 1104.76 Acre at the time was one of a number of Levantine ports still in Muslim hands, but the city faced the constant threat of Crusader forces.77 Aharon wrote to his mother and father shortly after he left the Levantine coast. In a poignant gesture, he divided his letter into two notes— the first addressed to his father and the second (following a small physical break in the text) to his mother.78

Aharon and his father, following the practice of many of their contemporaries, were mercantile associates.79 The first section of the letter thus concerns mostly business. After noting the purchases he had made for his family and for their business, Aharon ends his address to his father with the banal note that “despite financial loss, I am well (ṭayyib ʿalá qalbī).”80 One gets the impression from this section of the letter, then, that Aharon had a relatively successful trip without any exceptional excitement.

Ishmael”—i.e., to the recently formed Crusader states or to the Islamic Levant. See Halper, 393 ll.32-44, published in PGP. Al-Afḍal is mentioned in l. 33. 76 In his letter, Aharon speaks of a trade involving some 70 dinars, a substantial sum in a world where the average family lived off 2 dinars a month. See ENA 2727.28 r. 22, Goitein’s transcription is available at PGP. We do not know Aharon’s father’s name, so we cannot give his patronymic. 77 See Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 2: 87-8. Runciman notes that the city was vital to the Frankish kingdom’s attempts to secure shipping and resupply. There were constant attempts to take the city, including a major siege in 1103, probably only a few months before Aharon arrived. 78 The break is between r. l. 22-23. It is clear from the topics addressed in the second half of the letter (including the facts that Aharon continued to use the second-person plural and ends the letter by sending regards to business colleagues) that Aharon wrote that section expecting his parents to read it together. His use of the second person plural in the first section suggests that he may have intended that section to be read by his mother as well. 79 See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 135-6. Goldberg notes that young merchants like Aharon most often would serve as apprentices under their fathers’ partners, becoming junior associates—a role that required extensive travel. While Goldberg argues that most fathers had their sons act as associates of their partners and not of the fathers themselves, it appears that in this case Aharon may have been serving directly under his father. 80 ENA 2727.28, r. l. 23. 207

The second section, however, addressed to Aharon’s mother, offers an entirely different lens on the merchant’s experience. Here, Aharon writes:

From the moment that I arrived in the Levant, before Acre was taken (by the Crusaders), the city was in the midst of conflict (nizāʿ) and my slave and I nearly died (kunā fī maut). We spent a day and night with (partners in the city). We heard their words and they heard ours. Our bread was drenched in blood. I begged for my food. I set out to be with you a hundred times, but fate was not with me (wa-mā yusāʿadunī al-zamān). We were at the end of our rope (wa-naḥnu fī ṭaraf al-ḥabl). We had already sent the package of goods we had with us and we remained destitute for the time [ ]. It was said, “Get out!” Although I would have profited (wa-lau jarartu), we were te[rrified] [ ] I left [ ]…81

After this section, there is a break in the text that prevents us from knowing more about Aharon’s travails in Acre.82

Aharon’s comments to his father indicated that he was traveling to the Levant to pursue mercantile ventures. It is worth noting that he states above that his intended destination was the

Levant not just the city of Acre.83 This may suggest that he was in the port city on his way to trade in the Syrian interior. We can speculate that Aharon had business partners in Acre, and that these were the people who may have helped him escape from the city.84

Was Aharon merely an imprudent youth whose letter reflects an exceptional endeavor that reveals little about broader trends at this period? While the decision to enter a besieged city for trade may seem inexplicable, the evidence offered in the letter makes it clear that Aharon was prosperous

81 ENA 2727.28 r. ll. 29-37. 82 After the lacuna, Aharon turns to activities involving some high ranking figures (a raʾīs and a physician) and praises his slave. See ibid., v. ll. 1-18. While the letter’s state of preservation makes it difficult to surmise the activities that prompted Aharon to flee Acre, it is clear (based on the small size of the lacuna) that he never provided much more detail to clarify the portion of the letter translated here concerning his experiences during the siege. 83 ENA 2727.28 ll. 29-30; see translation on previous page. 84 Goitein read “their speech” (kalāmahum) as the speech of the Crusaders to suggest that Aharon was so near the besiegers that he could hear their words (see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 132). This claim seems to have little basis in the text since there is in fact no mention of the enemy in the extant sections of the letter at all. 208

(he owns a slave and discusses the disposal of large sums of money), well-connected (he refers to relations with merchants and a physician—well-regarded professions) and on warm terms with his business partner, his father. Therefore, Aharon was not a desperate speculator seeking profit where none was likely to be found. He had too much to lose. Consequently, Aharon’s risk assessment—his calculation that it was worthwhile to travel to Levant despite the Crusader campaigns—is likely indicative of his contemporaries’ perspectives. Other merchants accustomed to trading in Syria would similarly have considered the opportunity cost of neglecting trade with the region to be prohibitive.

Aharon’s letter thus not only intimates that his trip was unexceptional, but also suggests that despite (or because of the) conflict, foreign merchants still had profits to gain in the war-ravaged

Levant. So too did their local Levantine partners, including the people with whom Aharon stayed.

While the section of the letter is fragmentary, it seems that Aharon sold (or sent away) some of his goods from the city at the early stages of the siege. Still, he “could have” (or “would have,” Ar. wa-lau jarartu) accrued further profit, he posits, if he had not felt compelled to leave.85 Wartime profiteering and its potentially substantial profit margins may help explain the ongoing activities of merchants like

Aharon in the region at this time.86

85 ENA 2727.28, r. l. 37. As Wehr notes, wa-lau can also be optative (e.g., If only I had profited…!) but it is difficult to determine in this context how exactly the expression is being used because of the lacunae. 86 As the Iberian Muslim pilgrim Ibn Jubayr would write about merchants, both Muslim and Christian, continuing to trade during Saladin’s attack on the Frankish fortress of Kerak: “Long the siege lasted, but still the caravans passed successively from Egypt to Damascus, going through the lands of the Franks without impediment from them. In the same way, the Muslims continuously journeyed from Damascus to Acre (through Frankish territory), and likewise not one of the Christian merchants was stopped or hindered (in Muslim territories). The Christians impose a tax on the Muslims in their land which gives them full security; and likewise the Christian merchants pay a tax upon their goods in Muslim lands. Agreement exists between them, and there is equal treatment in all cases. The soldiers engage themselves in their war, while the people are at peace and the world goes to him who conquers.” See Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (hereafter, Riḥlah), ed. William Wright and M. J. de Goeje (New York: AMS, 1973), trans. in R.J.C. Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), 301. I follow Broadhurst’s translation here. 209

Less than a decade after Aharon left Acre, a Jewish notable living in the Syrian city wrote a petition to a leading dignitary in Fustat that reveals how much (and how little) had changed in the port since the young Egyptian merchant’s brief excursion there. We have discussed this letter in detail in previous chapters. Recall that it concerns a dispute between the writer and an Alexandrian Jew,

(Ibn) al-Qāsh, who the writer claims is seeking to usurp the writer’s position as municipal leader

(muqaddam) of Latin Acre. What concerns us here are two seemingly offhand remarks that the writer makes in the course of his description of his dispute with Ibn al-Qāsh.

The first observation appears when the writer delineates the members of the coalition supporting his opponent. Among these opponents he mentions a gang of Alexandrian shellfishermen

(maḥārīn Iskandariyyīn87), who, he indicates, spend their days drinking beer at a local brothel.88

Shellfish (more specifically, Bolinus Brandaris) were native to the Syrian ports and prized as ingredients for making dye including lavish purple colorings.89 Shellfishermen, however, were not regarded as part of the economic or scholarly elite.90 In any case, these shellfishermen’s presence is indicative of the ease of movement between Frankish and Fatimid lands.

The second comment paints a decidedly less sunny picture of the economic situation in the

Latin port. The writer’s last insult aimed at Ibn al-Qāsh is wedged in the margins of the letter. There, he notes: “When cheese arrived in Acre, Ibn al-Qāsh did not avail himself of the opportunity of

87 “Shellfishermen” (dayyagei ṣedfei ḥilazon) is Goitein’s convincing translation of the term based on an Arabic term for shellfish, maḥār. See Mediterranean Society, 2:62, 536 n. 130; and Palestinian Jewry, 304. 88 T-S 18J3.5 l. 36-37, ed. Gil, Palestine, 3: 511-514; and in Goitein, Palestinian Jewrry, 303-5. 89 Bolinus brandaris, or the “purple dye murex,” is a carnivorous gastropod mollusk that has been used in the Levantine coast for the production of purple dye since the days of ancient Tyre (ca. 1500 BCE). 90 E.g., T-S 16.272 r. ll. 23-27, where shellfishermen (mahārīn), dyers (ṣabbāghīn), and the poor (safāsif) are portrayed as a coalition of riffraff confronting the established leaders of the Jewish community in Alexandria, ca. 1180. Transcribed at PGP; discussed in Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:62, 105. 210 receiving a reward from God (thawāb) by providing for (poor) children.”91 Cheese was the best source of protein readily available to the poor.92 Ibn al-Qāsh may have been involved in the cheese trade, in which case the writer would be criticizing him for not being more munificent with his wares, failing to share them with the local poor.

In any case, Latin Acre does not appear here to be an affluent city, at least as far as its

Arabophone Jewish population is concerned. Its people are the beneficiaries of charity from distant regions, not the benefactors of foreign Jews.93 Its leaders turn to Egypt for validation. Silence is also significant: there is no mention of foreign or local merchants involved in the leadership dispute. This is telling since in other, similar disputes recorded in the Genizah, merchants are often among the most prominent participants in resolving (or instigating) such contests.94 This silence then suggests that there may have been few merchants around. Latin Acre at this time thus remained a hinterland, at least for Syrian Jews, who continued to look to Egypt for leadership and financial support. In only a few short decades, however, the ports of the Latin Levant would start to come into their own and become centers of trade tied to disparate ports from India to Sicily.

Symbiosis: The India Trade and the Emerging Ports of the Latin Levant, 1110s-1150s

In the period of the Crusader states, demand from Europe for Near Eastern, Indian and

Chinese wares fostered networks of economic exchange that invigorated Latin ports like Acre, as well

91 T-S 18J3.5 r. l. 40 and margin l. 1. 92 Goitein, Mediterranean Society. 1:46. 93 Goitein argues that the cheese was donated by foreigners—perhaps even Egyptians familiar to the letter’s recipient. Goitein’s suggestion is convincing since the general subject of the letter is how Ibn al-Qāsh is interfering with the writer exercising his responsibilities as muqaddam—responsibilities which would have included dispersing these donations to the needy. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 304. 94 Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” 289-318. 211 as Egyptian ones like Alexandria. Often ships visited both Frankish and Fatimid ports on a single trade run.95 The documents of the Genizah remind us that trade with the Crusader states was not a merely unidirectional phenomenon in which Europeans exchanged specie for Near Eastern goods. Instead, residents of the Crusader states exploited the industries of the regions they occupied to derive profits from trade with their neighbors.

This context helps explain how a wealthy Egyptian merchant resident in ʿAdan, Yemen could write his partner in Fustat in the 1130s and request that the latter secure for the ʿAdan merchant’s personal use “a set of red—or if there are none, white—glasses from Beirut” (al-kīzān al-ḥamar

Bayrūtī wa-illā bīḍ).96 Beirut at this period had been under Frankish control for at least two decades.

The writer was involved in trade with India and had likely not been in Fustat for some time, yet he was confident a specific good (white or red glasses) from a specific Latin port (Beirut) would be available in Fustat. His statement implies that trade between Fatimid Egypt and the Crusader states was likely extensive and consistent. We do not know how exactly these glasses from Beirut got to

Fustat, but we do know from documents analyzed below that Arabophone Jewish merchants were involved in moving goods to and from the ports of the Crusader states.

The evidence for these Mediterranean ties emerges in the Latin-held city of Tyre in the 1130s.

Tyre had only fallen to Frankish forces in 1124 and therefore may seem an unlikely candidate to have become one of the most active ports in the Latin kingdom. Four factors, however, help explain Tyre’s commercial reemergence within a decade of the city’s fall. First, Tyre’s experience of war and

95 Ashtor, Social and Economic History, 195-19. Ashtor makes the connections between the rise of the India trade and the demand of Christian Europe for goods explicit (though he still characterizes this period as an age in which the Arab- Islamic world’s economy was in decline). See also David Abulafia, "Trade and Crusade,” 6-15. 96 L-G MISC. 9, v. ll. 28-29. English translation in Goitein and Friedman, India Book, 413-429. 212 surrender was relatively benign: its people were neither massacred nor do they appear to have ever been systematically expelled.97 Second, Venice had been guaranteed control of one-third of Tyre as part of a series of commercial concessions received in exchange for its critical role in providing naval support to the Crusaders during their successful siege of the city.98 As will become evident in the following chapter, the Italian city-states were key players in promoting trade in Latin Levantine ports like Tyre, and thus the Venetian presence would have facilitated the port’s economic development.

Third, Tyre had the finest natural deep-water port in the Levant.99 The city was also nearly impregnable. These factors made it an obvious place for the undermanned and trade-dependent

Franks to invest. Finally, Tyre’s Arabophone population had a long tradition of involvement in

Mediterranean trade that made the transition to trading under a Latin state more seamless than in other port cities.100

We should not be surprised, then, that Tyre hosted a group of merchants associated with the

Fustat-based trader Ḥalfon b. Netanʾel, one of the most prominent of the Genizah merchants involved in trade with India and Yemen (as well as Spain and North Africa).101 He was active ca. 1125-46. Around

97 Wallace Bruce Fleming, The History of Tyre (New York: Columbia UP, 1915), 97, 98; see also, Prawer, The History of the Jews, 42. 98 For a discussion of the Pactum Warmundi that gave the Venetian these rights see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 222-226. 99 Ruthi Gertwagen, "The Crusader Port of Acre: Layout and Problems of Maintenance," in Autor de la Premiere Croisade: Actes du Colloque de la "Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East," ed. Michel Balard (Paris: Publ. de la Sorbonne, 1996), 553-82, esp. 578. Gertwagen stresses archeological evidence that the port of Tyre was deeper, better protected from the elements and more secure than the port of Acre—its only serious competitor in southern Syria. This assessment of the excellence of Tyre’s harbor is affirmed in the accounts of Ibn Jubayr and Benjamin of Tudela discussed below. 100 Moshe Gil argues that Tyre was the primary port of southern Syria before the Seljuq conquests. See Gil, History of Palestine, 249. The Persian traveler Naṣr-i Khusrau wrote ca. 1048 that “Tyre is renowned for its wealth and power among all the port cities of [al-Shām].” Translated from the Persian in Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems: A description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500 (London: Alexander P. Watt for the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1890), 343. 101 See Goitein and Friedman, India Book, 13-14. 213

1130, Ḥalfon’s Alexandria-based agent, Abū Naṣr b. Ibrāhīm, sent a letter to Ḥalfon in Fustat.102 The letter begins by recounting a trade venture involving cloth sent from Norman Sicily. Abū Naṣr then remarks:

Today a boat arrived from Tyre and a number of our merchant colleagues were on it (wa-fīhi jamāʿah min aṣḥābinā). They said that my master, the shaykh Abū al-Faḍl, your nephew, set out with them on another boat that has yet to arrive. When he and his wife arrive here—may God grant him peace—I will let you know and inform you how they made it to Alexandria.103

This letter is tantalizingly vague, but the Genizah corpus allows us to put it in a context that gives the brief missive great significance. Abū Naṣr was Halfon’s agent in Alexandria—Egypt’s largest port and a departure point for many merchants. The Arabic term Abū Naṣr uses to describe the group of his and

Ḥalfon’s business colleagues active in Tyre is asḥāb. This term in the parlance of the Middle Arabic of the Genizah merchants means “(minor) trade associate.”104 It is clear from this letter that more than one ship was plying the trade route between Fatimid Alexandria and Frankish Tyre, since the asḥāb inform Abū Naṣr that Ḥalfon’s nephew left Tyre around the same time that they did and would be arriving in Egypt soon. The fact that Abū al-Faḍl’s wife was staying with him in Tyre suggests that he had been residing in the city for some time, since itinerant merchants rarely traveled with their families.105 He may have even been a permanent resident there.

102 T-S 8 J 21.7 ed. in Miriam Frenkel, The Compassionate and Benevolent,435-436, doc. 44. The date when the letter was written is not indicated but there is an extended correspondence between Abū Naṣr b. Ibrāhīm and Ḥalfon b. Netanʾel from the Genizah dating to the early 1130s to the early 1140s. We may posit, then, that this document also came from this period. This letter, as Frenkel notes, is an addendum to a text that has not survived. 103 Ibid., ll. 8-11. 104 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:169. 105 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:339 214

What were these merchants doing in Latin Tyre? Were they merely transferring products from the Syrian interior to the Egyptian capital for resale, as Egyptian and Levantine merchants had done in the region before the Crusader conquests? Or were they based in Tyre, selling goods from Egypt,

North Africa, and/or India directly to Syrians (including Franks), while also buying Syrian products to send back to Egypt?

There are two factors that suggest the second scenario is more likely. First, we have the evidence of glasses from Beirut being sold in Fustat, as discussed above, which suggests that someone was bringing those goods to Fustat. Second, the Frankish authorities regulated the movement of merchants attempting to trade in the Syrian interior because the state wanted such exchanges to occur in major port cities where such goods could be most easily observed and taxed.106 Therefore, it is unlikely that the Franks would have allowed foreign merchants to roam the interior as they had during the Fatimid period.

But what were these merchants selling? We know European traders visiting the Crusader states were often interested in purchasing goods from India and China. Ḥalfon’s coalition was also involved in moving goods from India to the Mediterranean. The merchants mentioned in the letter, then, may have been selling goods from the Indian trade to traders (or residents) based in the Latin ports.107

106 Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Government in Latin Syria and the Commercial Privileges of Foreign Merchants,” in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Baker (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1973): 109-132. 107 We also have evidence from this very same letter that Ḥalfon’s agents were involved in trade with Norman (that is, Latin-Christian) Sicily, including moving goods to Egypt. This suggests, then, that Ḥalfon’s coalition had no qualms trading with Christian states. 215

Ḥalfon b. Netanʾel and his associates were not the only prominent mercantile coalition involved in Egyptian-Levantine trade. The banū Yijū—a family whose most prominent member,

Avraham b. Peraḥya, was one of the most prominent of the India traders (as well as one of this group’s most prolific writers)—were also involved in this trade.108 Their associates included a network of

Arabophone merchants who were taking part in trade with the Crusader territories and Norman Sicily as well.

In 1155, Moshe b. Yijū was returning from a trading venture to his parents’ home in Mazara, a port in the southeast of Norman Sicily, when his boat was overtaken by pirates. The Jews of Tyre likely ransomed Moshe from the pirates and he remained in their city for some time.109 Moshe and his brother, Peraḥya, seem to have exchanged several letters during the former’s stay in Tyre that have not survived.110 In the extant letter, Moshe writes:

I collected (qabbaḍtu) 17 dinars. I am informing you also that I have written many letters in Tyre and I sent them—including a letter to you—with Avraham b. al-Qarīḍ. I also sent letters, including your letter, with Avraham of al-Mahdiyya, and I let him know about my redemption (khalāṣī) (from the pirates)… I was sick from the day I left the ship and became so ill that I did not reckon I would live. I would not have written these letters except out of necessity, but God, for the sake of His name, acted on the fifth day, and I recovered.111

108 Members of the banu Yijū, the family of Moshe and Peraḥya, are prominently represented in over 80 Cairo Genizah letters. Most of these documents relate to the brothers’ uncle, Avraham ben Peraḥya ben Yijū, originally from the North African port city of al-Mahdiyyah. Moshe, Peraḥya and their family moved to Norman Sicily in 1148 following the Norman invasion of their hometown. The lack of professional opportunities in Mazara later led the two brothers to seek their fortunes in Egypt. By 1156 they had left Mazara permanently. Moshe was a merchant, as indicated in a later Genizah letter in which he is mentioned as engaged in selling lac, a dye made from insect secretions (see TS 13 J 18.13). Goitein suggests pirates had captured Moshe returning via Fustat from a mercantile venture, perhaps in Greece. See Goitein and Friedman, India Book, 52, 72, 80, 81, 83, 758, 756. 109 A Norman fleet ultimately caught up with the pirates and seized their spoils. This led to further complications since the banū yijū had to get their property back from the Sicilian qāḍī who had taken them from the pirates. 110 This would explain the reference to the delight Peraḥya’s letters brought Moshe (T-S 13J20.7, r. l. 10), as well as the fact that Moshe does not seem to feel obligated to explain to Peraḥya how he ended up in Tyre; he instead only divulges such details incidentally as they relate to other events. 111 T-S 13J20.7 ll. 25-32; margin l. 1. 216

One might expect Moshe to have been in poor sorts. He had been ransomed from captors, suffered from a life-threatening illness and been left stranded, alone, in a foreign city. Except he was not alone.

As we see in the excerpt of the letter translated above, Moshe had a network of contacts in Latin Tyre who were able to see to his needs. These needs were not insubstantial: the seventeen dinars he collected could sustain an entire Egyptian family for over eight months.112

Who were these colleagues who sustained Moshe? One was Avraham b. al-Qarīḍ, who seems to have been based in Norman Sicily or was traveling there for trade purposes, which explains how he could have taken Moshe’s letter to his brother. The second, Avraham of al-Mahdiyyah, seems to have been traveling elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Therefore, Moshe sent other letters with him, including a letter his brother wanted him to forward. A third colleague, Binyam (perhaps, Binyamin, i.e., Benjamin), planned to lend Moshe his poll-tax receipt so he could travel to Egypt, but he backtracked on his offer since he had to use the receipt to travel to Fustat himself. 113 A fourth colleague, David b. Yiṣḥaq, wrote a personal message to Peraḥya in the margins of the letter, congratulating him on his marriage.114 David’s intimate manner suggests he was a close, mutual friend of the two Yijū brothers and therefore perhaps a fellow Sicilian. Based on the fact that all these men knew Moshe—a merchant active in the region—and that they were itinerant themselves, we can safely deduce that most if not all of them were engaged in trade.

This letter, then, suggests the emerging contours of economic networks of Arabophone merchants linking the Latin Syrian littoral to Sicily, Egypt and perhaps North Africa in the early-to-

112 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:359. 113 T-S 13J20.7 ll. 24-25. 114 Ibid., margin ll. 21-27. 217 mid twelfth century.115 These traders included men of substantial means with ties to some of the most prominent Jewish mercantile families in Egypt—the banū Yijū and Ḥalfon b. Netanʾel. They were comfortable trading not only in Latin Levant but also in Christian Sicily. There is almost no evidence of Genizah merchants traveling to Christian territory for trade during the pre-Crusader period, so this pattern is ground-breaking.116

It is also worth noting that Sicily served as a transition point for Western Christian goods coming to the Crusader states in the thirteenth century and likely at this earlier period as well. This suggests that Arabophone merchants may have been involved in transferring goods from the Crusader states to Norman Sicily (and then on to Christian Iberian and Provence), and vice-versa. This letter, then, gives us a window onto Arabophone merchants’ involvement in wider economic networks linking the Latin Levant to the rest of the Mediterranean.

Trickle-down Trade: International Commerce and the Local Economy (1160s-1187)

Regardless of how wealthy Syrian ports like Tyre and Acre would become, the majority of

Arabophone Jews residing in these ports would never be well-off, itinerant merchants. Most were likely still involved in dyeing, glass production and local sales—the professions Jews had practiced in these cities since long before the Crusader conquests.117 Yet even for these more modest laborers, the

115 The possibility of a North African connection is based on Avraham of al-Mahdiyyah’s nisbah, an adjectival component of some Arabic names indicating the person’s regional origin, profession or descent, indicating his connection to the North African city of al-Mahdiyya. This assumption is not particularly robust since the geographic origins of refugees cannot be assumed based on their nisbah because nisab were often kept for generations after individuals’ families left their purported region of origin. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, xv-xvi. 116 For the lack of evidence of trade with Christian Europe, and especially of Genizah merchants traveling to the northern Mediterranean, see Citabella, “A Puzzling Question,” 390-7. Also see, Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 178. 117 For an overview of the professions Jews occupied in medieval Near East at this period based on Genizah documents see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 75-116. Prawer discusses the prominence of Jewish dyers in the Crusader states in Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 122-123. As both Prawer and Goitein note, dyeing was a traditional Jewish profession in the Islamic 218 economic rise of Acre and Tyre as a trans-Mediterranean mercantile centers had benefits. The

Aragonese Jewish travel writer, Benjamin of Tudela, writes of such figures in 1170s Tyre:

Among the Jews are craftsmen of fine glass (umanei zekhukhit ha-ṭov), called “Tyrian glass,” a valued (ha-ḥashuv) product in every land (be-kol ha-arṣot). There is also found there good quality sugar that is grown (in the city’s vicinity). People come from every land (mi-kol ha-arṣot) to buy it. 118

While Benjamin does not explicitly mention that Jews were involved in sugar production, we know from the Catholicos Gregory Bar Hebraeus’s Chronicon that Jews were active in bringing sugar to the ports of the Syrian coast.119 Furthermore, Maimonides’ responsa to Tyre, as well as the chapters of his law code (Mishneh Torah) on the Hebrew Bible’s agricultural laws concerning the Sabbath year

(sheviʿit), tithes (maʿaserot), and the prohibition of cross-breeding (kilʾayim) suggest Jews in the region were involved in large-scale commercial purchase and redistribution of agriculture goods.120

Both the glass-makers and sugar producers in Latin Tyre seem to have been thriving since their product was sold in “every land (be-kol ha-arṣot).”121 The structure of this sentence mirrors that of

world. It was one held in little esteem due to its limited profit margins, as well as the smell associated with dyes’ production. .Trans. p. 18. My translation differs significantly from Adler’s .ל ,Benjamin of Tudela 118 119 See above, 3.2 n. 203. 120 See Teshuvot ha-RaMBaM, 1: 230-246 (n. 128-130). Prawer (Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 122) reads these queries to imply that Jews were involved in agriculture, despite the fact that all three of these questions from Latin Tyre concern how to conduct oneself in buying “agriculture products grown by non-Jews” (asher yazraʿo ha-goyim). A more convincing explanation in the context of the Genizah documents is that these Tyrian Jews were involved in redistribution. This theory is supported by Maimonides’ law code, Mishneh Torah, where he writes, “When (a caravan) of donkeys brings produce to Tyre, the agricultural laws of the land of Israel (demai) are obligatory, (since we assume that the produce) came from the land settled (literally, “seized”) by the Jews who emigrated from Babylonia (after c. 538 BCE).” The issue here is that Tyre is considered outside the land of Israel, but it is proximate to areas that are part of the land of Israel because Jews returning from the Babylonian exile settled there. Tyre, as an emporium and place of redistribution for the larger region is a site where such goods are exchanged. Therefore, the agricultural laws of the land of Israel apply. See Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Zeraʿim, Hilkhot Maʿaser, 13:5. 121 At the time of his arrival in Tyre, Benjamin had already traveled across the east coast of Iberia, through Provence, down the west coast of Italy, across the Greek archipelago, through Constantinople, and along the Anatolian coast. In other words, he had first-hand knowledge of the markets of most of the major Mediterranean metropolises. 219

Benjamin’s description of Tyre as a city of trade to which merchants come “from every land” (mi-kol ha-arṣot).122 This suggests the symbiotic relationship between craftsmen and merchants, the latter buying and distributing the formers’ products across the broader region.

Similarly, modest Arabophone Jewish peddlers occupied an essential position in this network of redistribution: they sold goods merchants brought from abroad to the Arabic-speaking villagers in the small communities and larger towns surrounding the ports of Acre and Tyre. As such, these peddlers, like their more affluent merchant colleagues, used their familiarity with Arabic to fill a niche role in the Crusader states’ market. A query (sheʾelah) sent from the rabbinic court (bet din) of Acre to

Maimonides around 1170 illuminates the activities of one such peddler:

Reʾuven was accustomed to hawking goods outside (Latin Acre). 123 One day he went out to the villages around Acre to sell his wares as was his custom. He came (to the home) of a certain Jew and deposited his wares there after taking some of his goods with him. He then went to sell his wares in another town nearby. (The Jew who was holding his goods) waited a day, then another, and then a third, but Reʾuven did not return. So the man brought the remainder of the goods (from his home) to Reʾuven’s wife.124

Although Latin Acre had a large Christian population, the villages surrounding the city remained predominantly Arabic-speaking Muslim.125 Our anonymous peddler, undoubtedly an Arabic speaker, thus had a clear advantage over Frankish competitors in the realm of this local economy.

.trans. p. 19 ,לא ,Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary 122 123 On the use of Reʾuven, see above 3.1 n. 38. 124 Teshuvot ha-RaMBaM, 2:627-628 (n. 350). We later find out that Reʾuven was killed by marauders. The legal quandary that instigates the query is that the only witness to his murder was a non-Jewish woman whose testimony is of dubious value. The problem is that Reʾuven’s wife is now a “chained woman” (ʿagunah) (i.e., she cannot remarry though her husband is gone) since Reʾuven’s death cannot be confirmed. Maimonides rules in favor of leniency, allowing the non-Jew to testify, so that the ʿagunah can find another husband. 125 Evidence for this demographic situation comes from Usāmah ibn Munqidh, who notes that Muslims prisoners that were inconspicuously freed from Acre fled to the surrounding villages for protection. He adds, “the inhabitants of the villages of Acre are all Muslims.” See Usāmah ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades, trans. Paul Cobb (New York: Penguin, 2008), 95. 220

What this query illustrates, then, is how the economies of these villages were linked to the markets of the emporium (Acre). The fluidity of markets and the movement of goods suggest that these modest peddlers benefited from participating in a Jewish community where they could have access to large-scale importers. Similarly, the importers would have benefited from relationships to men like Reʾuven who could traffic their goods in the countryside.

Moreover, complementary economic investments were not the only means to achieve mutual benefits for merchants and their coreligionists—patronage also provided a way for the former to develop social capital. Centers of learning were rarely, if ever, self-sustaining, so the fact that there were “scholars of Talmud” in Tyre suggests that the wealthy—likely merchants—were providing the material sustenance for these scholars. Benjamin does not mention any other Jewish communities in the Latin Levant supporting Talmud study. But wealthy Jews in the Latin Levant were also supporting competing Jewish regional authorities and their associated scholars in Fustat, Damascus and

Baghdad, as we will see in the following chapters.

Emporia: The Emergence of Tyre and Acre (1160-1187)

By the time Peraḥya Yijū wrote his letter, Genizah merchants were hardly the only people who recognized that the Syrian littoral had come into its own. Two notable Iberian pilgrim travel writers of the late-twelfth century—Benjamin of Tudela and Muḥammad Ibn Jubayr—visited the coast of the

Latin Levant during this period. They left their impressions of the region’s port cities and their peoples in their respective travel accounts. These writers’ descriptions, read in conjunction with the analysis of the letters examined above, illustrate how the Arabophone residents of Latin Levant—both Jews

221 and Muslims—played a prominent role in the economic system of the booming Latin ports. Benjamin writes:

New Tyre is a wonderful city…There is no harbor like hers in all the world.126 The city is beautiful and contains 500 Jewish (families), among them scholars of Talmud. … The Jews there own their own ships (ve-yesh la-yehudim sham sefinot ba-yam). … This is new Tyre: a city of trade to which people come from every place.127

Benjamin’s Muslim contemporary, Ibn Jubayr, traveled in the opposite direction from Benjamin, from

Acre to Tyre. Ibn Jubayr writes:

What do these narratives tell us about economic realities on the ground in Acre and Tyre?

Ibn Jubayr and Benjamin of Tudela both portray the ports as economic centers that host an eclectic array of interregional figures. The international figures that populate these ports include many foreign merchants. According to Benjamin, the local Arabophone Jewish traders of Tyre are not just involved with trade, but themselves owners of ships.129 According to Moshe Gil, only one of the

Palestinian Jews mentioned in his corpus of 619 Palestine-related Genizah documents from the tenth and early eleventh centuries owned his own ship. Therefore, the fact that Jews in Tyre were able to own these vessels suggests both the extent of their wealth and the relative freedom they would have had to direct their own economic enterprises.

126 Ṣor ha-ḥadash, i.e., “New Tyre,” as opposed to the Biblical city whose remnants were underwater but still visible to medieval observers. .My translation .ל ,Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary 127 .לא ,.Ibid 128 129 Gil, Palestine, 250 n.26 222

Neither of these Levantine port cities could be considered “hinterlands”—regions dependent on a foreign metropolis for economic subsistence. These cities, like their Jewish and Muslim residents, are portrayed as vibrant, independent entities, selling products from the Syrian interior and thereby partaking in broader trans-Mediterranean economic exchange. They are sites where “Muslim merchants” (i.e., the Arabophone population of inner Syria) bring their goods and “Christian merchants” (i.e., the residents of the cities) buy those goods for redistribution.130 The cities’ wealth is reflected in the plethora of international merchants that move through them. In a word, Benjamin’s and Ibn Jubayr’s Tyre and Acre had become “emporia” in which Syrian Jews and Muslims stood at the center of the ports’ engagement with regional trade.

Conclusion

The First Crusade left an indelible mark on the economy of the twelfth-century Levant. Like a forest fire, the conquest first left only destruction in its wake, but subsequently allowed new economic networks to emerge. Even cities like Tyre, Sayḍā and Ascalon that were spared the worst of the

Crusader conquests benefited from the economic restructuring those conquests facilitated.

In the decades after the First Crusade, the Latin Levant rose to become an integral player in the Mediterranean economy. Its Arabic-speaking residents played a crucial role in catalyzing these developments. Arabophone merchants allowed Levantine ports to maintain their longstanding

130 Ibn Jubayr, for the ideological reasons discussed above, works in binaries. He describes the population of the Crusader states as consisting of (Arabophone) Muslims and (Latin) Christians. These populations fill specific roles while other groups (Jews, Arabophone Christians) are elided within the existing parties or are ignored completely in order to fit within his paradigm. 223 economic ties with the surrounding Islamic world, while also facilitating new opportunities for trade with the broader region.

Before Saladin’s successful campaigns against the Crusader states in 1187, the ports of Latin

Acre and Tyre emerged as the emporia of southern Syria. Arabic-speaking Jews played a significant role in this process. Jews practiced diverse trade-related professions, including those of itinerant merchant, producer of Syrian products for export and modest peddler importing and exporting goods from the Syrian countryside. These Arabophone Jews used their ties to their coreligionists to integrate their economic endeavors in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt, Norman Sicily, the Indian Ocean and the

Crusader states.

Genizah documents and other Arabic sources from the twelfth century can only speak to economic exchange with Egypt and associated regions with large Arabophone populations (like

Norman Sicily) where Genizah merchants visited. They cannot tell us about Levantine Jews’ ties to economic partners in Iberia or the northern Mediterranean. As we will see in the following chapter, when trade documents from Europe do begin to emerge in the following century, it is evident that

Arabophone and non-Arabophone Jews residing in the Crusader states, Aragon and Provence took part in trans-Mediterranean economic exchange. It is impossible to know whether such exchange was an entirely new phenomenon, or was ongoing from the twelfth century.

After the Syrian coast was restored to Frankish hands in 1192, the government of the Latin

Kingdom of Jerusalem was transferred to Acre, where it continued to foster trans-Mediterranean trade. Acre replaced Tyre as the center of Arabophone Jewish life as Levantine Jews looked farther afield to Provence and Iberia for mercantile opportunities. These trends and the ties they forged

224 between Jews in the Latin Levant and their coreligionists across the broader Mediterranean are the subject of the next chapter.

225

3.3 Microcosm of the Mediterranean: Transregional Trade and International Traders in the Kingdom of Acre (1190-1291)

The Jewish communities of thirteenth-century Latin Acre and Tyre were among the most cosmopolitan in their world. Yes, Arabic speakers remained the majority of the local population.131 But new, Greek-speaking, Western European and Near Eastern merchants took up residence in the ports to profit from the cities’ ever-expanding economies (and who were undeterred by the threat of the

Latin Kingdom’s ever-shrinking borders). From their base in the Latin ports, these merchants created trading networks that reached every corner of the Mediterranean—from Iberia and Provence, to

Sicily, Rhodes and southern Anatolia, onto Alexandria and Fustat.

Previous scholarship has recognized the exceptional character of the Jewish community of thirteenth-century Latin Acre. Joshua Prawer wrote that “[t]he Jewish community at Acre in the last quarter of the thirteenth century was…more heterogeneous than any other community in the Jewish world.”132 For Prawer, this heterogeneity was the result of the presence of northern European and

Provencal rabbinic scholars; it was the product of religious movements that extolled immigration

(ʿaliyah) to Palestine.133 This chapter argues that by far the most important factor in facilitating the diversity of the ports’ populations was not religious movements or the presence of foreign scholars; instead, it was the cities’ expanding role as centers of trans-regional trade.

The chapter first turns to Saladin’s campaign and the Third Crusade. As discussed in the previous two sections, sacking of cities like Acre during the course of these campaigns devastated

131 See chapter 1.3. 132 Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 282. For Prawer, “Palestinian Jews”—i.e., Arabophone ones—were still present in the ports but played a minor role in comparison to European—and in particular French—Jews. 133 Ibid., 251-92. 226 trade networks in Latin Syria; however, the economy recovered in relatively short order. In the subsequent decades, the revenue-oriented policies of the principalities facilitated an economic boom in the Levantine ports that benefited Arabic-speaking, Western European and Greek-speaking Jewish merchants residing in those cities.

The chapter profiles the role of each of these ethno-linguistic groups in turn, sketching the thirteenth-century trade networks that bound the Levant to the Northern, Southern and Western

Mediterranean. The last section provides an overview of responsa relating to the role of these merchants’ in the ports’ communal politics. It argues that the cities’ increasing cultural diversity led to conflicts based on varying social practices. Furthermore, the merchants’ wealth provoked both respect and resentment among a rabbinic elite dependent on them for financial support.

The Context: New Sources, New Geographic Horizons

In the last chapter, we traced the transformation of Latin Acre and Tyre from subsidiaries of

Fustat to independent emporia. Arabic-speaking merchants used the Latin ports within trade networks that stretched from Mangalore to Palermo. The Jews of Christendom—with the exception of the Arabophone Jewish communities of Norman Sicily—played no documented role in this twelfth-century transformation. Jews of the Northwestern Mediterranean—Iberia and Provence— and of Byzantine Anatolia were similarly absent from the sources. Furthermore, as noted in section 1, we saw little evidence for immigration from these areas to the Crusader states. It is only in the decades after Saladin’s conquests that evidence for Jewish involvement in trade with the Southern

Mediterranean and immigration from these regions begins to emerge.

227

The nature of the trade-related sources from the Cairo Genizah changes in the thirteenth century. There are almost no merchant letters from the Latin Levant at this time – a reflection of the general decline in the number of documents in the Genizah, and especially of trade letters, in the thirteenth century.134 What we do have, however, are court documents relating to cases that Levantine merchants brought before the Jewish court of Fustat. Moreover, we have anecdotal evidence of trade from documents relating to the ransoming of captives.

Early twentieth-century historians of Medieval Latin Europe recognized that trade between the Levant and Europe expanded during the thirteenth century. 135 As summarized in the previous chapter, however, for many of these scholars this trade seemed to materialize ex nihilo from a relatively trade-impoverished twelfth century. The Genizah documents have allowed us to identify ongoing trade ties between Islamicate centers and the Crusader ports from this early period. The analysis of the previous chapters thus provides a context for this chapter’s analysis of trade between the Latin Levant and the wider Mediterranean in the thirteenth century.

The Impact of the Third Crusade on Trans-regional Commerce

In July of 1187, the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin (r. 1174-1193) achieved a decisive victory over the armies of the Crusader states at the Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn in the Lower Galilee. In the aftermath of the battle, many Latin cities in Syria lay defenseless before the Sultan’s armies. In the few short months

134 See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 36-7; Goitein delineated the period 1000-1250 as the “classical Genizah period” because of this decline (see, e.g., S. D. Goitein, “The Documents of the Cairo Genizah as a Source for Mediterranean Social History,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 80, no. 2 (1960), 95. 135 Pirenne, Economic and Social History, 29-32; Robert Henri Bautier, The Economic Development of Medieval Europe, trans. Heather Korolyi (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971); W. Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen Age, trans. F. Raymaud, 2 vols., 2nd ed., (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1936), I, 131–90, 310–59; etc. 228 following Ḥaṭṭīn, Saladin seized Jerusalem, Acre, Sidon, Beirut and countless smaller towns along the

Syrian coast. Furthermore, most of these city lost their rural hinterlands to the Ayyubid forces. In response to these losses, Europeans launched the Third Crusade (1189-1192), which succeeded in returning many of the ports to Latin hands, but failed to capture the lands of the Syrian interior and

Jerusalem.

In contrast with the Crusader conquests of 1098-1100 and the Mamluk invasions of 1291, there is little documentary evidence that Saladin’s conquests caused the flight of refugees from any region of the Levant. Similarly, there seems to be no evidence that the Latin-Christian reconquest of the

Levantine coast in the course of the Third Crusade (1189-1192) led to the kind of widespread enslavement, (coerced) conversion, and general suffering associated with the two aforementioned periods.136 Furthermore, local Latin forces managed to retain their hold of Tyre and a few other Syrian fortress until the armies of the Third Crusade arrived; these regions therefore never experienced the travails of Ayyubid conquest and the Christian reconquest.

In the 1180s, the Andalusī traveler Ibn Jubayr had marveled at the fact that in the Crusader states merchants from across the Mediterranean—Muslims, Christians (and Jews)—were willing and able to trade with each other even when the very roads they used to bring their goods to market were teeming with their captive coreligionists.137 But Ibn Jubayr wrote when the boundaries of the Crusader

136 There are examples of all of the debacles mentioned above in Genizah documents from the First Crusade (see chapter 1.1), as well as more limited evidence for similar experiences in the aftermath of the Mamluk invasions (see Epilogue). 137 Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlah, 201-202 trans. in The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, 313. 229 states had been relatively stable for decades.138 Would such pragmatism in commerce prevail when

Latin cities fell one after the other under Muslim control?

Arab historians note that Saladin attained significant resources from sacking Latin ports like

Acre. Bahāʾ al-Dīn b. Shaddād writes that when Saladin’s soldiers took Latin Acre in 1187, they seized

“possession of what was in it in the way of riches, treasures and merchandise because it was the location of trade.”139 Ibn al-Athīr adds that Saladin’s men took what the Frankish inhabitants had

“been unable to carry,” including “vast amount of goods” since the city was “a destination for…traders.”140 He later mentions that he himself owns a Frankish slave girl who had been captured when Saladin took Haifa.141

The conquests were thus likely detrimental to both Levantine, local Latin and foreign merchants intent on trading in the Syrian ports in the years immediately following Saladin’s conquests. Furthermore, the two decades of relative silence from the Genizah corpus (1190-1210) suggest that the economic impact of the conquests of the Ayyubids and the Third Crusade on

Levantine trade and travel was not inconsequential.142 It also indicates that there was not the kind of unrestrained violence that accompanied the other conquests, since such actions would have led to a

138 He probably is writing here at the time of Saladin’s siege of Kerak in 1184—one of the campaigns that heralded the beginning of the tide turning against Latin forces; however, we must avoid the teleological assumption that such a trajectory was evident to historical actors at this period—especially since there is no evidence of such in Ibn Jubayr’s prose. See Carol Hillenbrand’s discussion of this passage in The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, 399-400. As Hillenbrand notes there, one of Saladin’s official (i.e., state patronized) biographers—noted this same phenomenon and accused such [Muslim] merchants of unintentionally aiding the interests of the enemy. 139 Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād, al-Nawādir al-Ṣulṭāniyya, ed. J. El-Shayyal (Cairo: 1964), III: 98; trans. Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 401. My translations for this and the following footnote follow those of Hillenbrand. 140 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, XI: 356; trans. in Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 401. 141 Ibid., XI: 541; discussed in Nader, Burgesses and Burgess Law, 136. 142 It is worth mentioning in this context that a document Goitein identified in his examination of the Crusader period, which notes Saladin annulling an exceptional tax placed on Jewish and Christian merchants, makes no specific mention of trade in the Levant. See T-S 13J26.22, partially edited and discussed in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 296-8. 230 massive exodus of Syrian refugees who would presumably have left a trail in the sources.143 Saladin and the Crusaders both saw their conquests as (re)establishing their permanent presence in Syrian cities, so they had no reason to adopt the scorched-earth policies of the eleventh-century Seljuqs,

Bedouin and (First) Crusaders. Instead, they likely recognized the economic utility of the local populations remaining in the Syrian ports and thus acted to mitigate the suffering of the people of the conquered cities.144

Trade and Traders from the Islamic World in the Kingdom of Acre

The Cairo Genizah is our primary source for information on Arabic-speaking merchants from

Latin Syria trading with the Islamic world. As previously mentioned, the corpus of trade letters from the Genizah writ large drops dramatically at this time. 145 If we had a Damascene Genizah—that is, a

Genizah from a region actively allied with and economically dependent on the Franks—our picture of

Arabic speakers’ trade would undoubtedly be much fuller. However, even with only the Egyptian sources, it is clear that trade between these regions and Arabic speakers role in it was sustained.

Throughout the thirteenth century, the rulers of Egypt and the Franks engaged in countless wars—conflicts that one might reasonably imagine would have suffocated commerce. The reasons the Franks persisted in making war on the Egyptians was their recognition that their position in the

143 See the discussion on the charity lists above, 1.2. 144 As I argued in 1.2 that surrender treaties like the one Ibn Jubayr noted from the decades following the First Crusade made clear that the primary reason conquerors allowed local residents to remain in their cities were economic considerations. 145 This would not be surprising, since, as Goldberg notes, the commercial corpus of the Genizah shrinks dramatically from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Goldberg, whose knowledge of this corpus is unparalleled, writes, “letters among various members of the merchant group being to appear in earnest around the year 990, papers become most numerous in the period 1040-1080, arrive in lower but significant numbers until around 1150, then decrease to a small trickle that dries up in the early thirteenth century” (my emphasis), Trade and Institutions, 37. 231

Near East could only be sustained if they toppled the strongest Islamic state in their region. The Fifth

Crusade (1213-1221) attempted to achieve this goal. The crusaders succeeded in taking the port of

Damietta in 1219, but failed to secure Cairo in 1221 after the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil (r. 1218-1238) flooded the Nile, impeding their progress. The crusaders recognized their failure and signed an eight- year treaty with al-Kāmil after the invasion.

It is ironically at exactly this time that the first evidence of ongoing economic ties between the

Latin Levant and Egypt emerges. In the early 1220s, Shelomo b. Eliyyahu ha-Dayyan, a close associate of Avraham Maimonides—then the head of the Jews of Egypt (raʾīs al-yahūd)—wrote from Fustat to a

Jew in Alexandria. His letter concerns a group of female Egyptian Jewish captives, likely taken when the crusaders seized Damietta in 1219. That is, this letter is likely from ca. 1221-1222, after the crusaders had left the region following the signing of the peace treaty.146 Eliyyahu writes:

With regard to the female captives (al-shevuyot), may God grant their freedom: No news has come concerning them, despite the fact that Acre’s ships are coming to (Alexandria) many times (marrat ghāyah).147

Shelomo here expresses disappointment in the recipient for not sending news about the captives, especially since boats were regularly arriving from Acre. In order to understand the significance of this passage, we must remember how news was carried in the medieval Mediterranean between regions held by different political powers. 148 Most mail (and thus news) would have been carried by individual

146 T-S 20.138. I agree with Mordechai Akiva Friedman’s dating in M.A. Friedman, “New Sources,” 75-7. Goitein suggested a later date (in Goitein, “Genizah sources for the Crusader Period,” 316) based on a campaign of the Crusaders in Palestine, but since the writer is communicating the desire to ransom from Alexandria, Egypt is more likely to be the origin of the captives. 147 T-S 20.138, ll. 30-32. Partially edited and translated in Hebrew in Friedman, “New Sources,” 76; also translated into English in Goitein, Genizah Sources, 316. My translation is indebted to both. 148 See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 189-193. As Goldberg notes, communication was constrained by structural barriers. It was easiest between areas where state-sanctioned communication systems of couriers like the kutubī networks 232 travelers—therefore the reception of information was dependent on the regular movement of human beings (mostly merchants) between the locations of the sender and recipient. The author is here expressing disappointment that despite the fact that ships have come regularly from Acre, no news has arrived. In other words, he would have expected that those involved in freeing the captives or their business associates would have been traveling back and forth between these areas bearing news as to the progress of the negotiations. Trade is the most compelling explanation for why ships would have been regularly plying this route. This letter then suggests that trade between Acre and Egypt remained vigorous even after a period of prolonged conflict and that Jewish merchants were actively involved in plying this trade route.

But were Syrian Jews also coming to Egypt for trade? And what was the scale of their endeavors? Some insight into these questions can be gained from a court document from Latin Tyre a decade later in 1235. At this time, Latin Syria’s ports enjoyed a period of unprecedented economic prosperity. This affluence is well-documented in Latin sources. Indeed, according to one chronicler, the royal revenue from Acre alone in 1241 may have surpassed the income of the entire crown of

England.149 The Ayyubids of Syria, increasingly at odds with their brethren in Egypt, were dependent on the Crusader ports for exports from their major cities, including Damascus. This was, of course, a symbiotic co-dependence that favored peace.

The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had retaken Jerusalem via negotiation with the Sultan al-Kāmil in 1229. But this did not win Frederick friends among the local Latins. They (correctly)

(discussed in chapter 205-206) existed. It was most difficult—or even impossible—between two regions that travelers rarely if ever moved between. 149 Riley-Smith, “Survival of Muslim Administration in Frankish Palestine,” 17; and Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 64. 233 recognized that Frederick’s achievement was an empty victory: without defeating the Muslim powers in Egypt, the Latin Christians of Syria could not hold a landlocked Palestinian city like Jerusalem. In

1231, the local barons established the Commune of Acre (1231-c.1244), essentially declaring the city independent from the Emperor’s rule. Tyre became the “capital” of the imperial party—the base for

Frederick’s forces to launch raids on the barons. Acre and Tyre remained under different rulers for the better part of a decade. What did these political divisions mean for merchants invested in trade between the Crusader states and the Islamic world? The court document from Tyre in 1235 suggests that trade between the “imperial capital,” Tyre, and Egypt remained intact.

How did this document reach the Genizah? Most likely, it was forwarded from the court in

Tyre to the court in Fustat, since it deals with the property of Jewish merchants from Tyre who were traveling in Egypt. The text, as discussed above, follows standard Islamicate Jewish formulary that makes it indistinguishable form a court testimony from contemporary Egypt.150

The right side of the testimony has been torn off and the ink has faded in a number of places.

The text is so fragmented that it is impossible to capture a coherent narrative, but the value of the details revealed therein still make it worth translating in full:

We have written our signatures] at the end of this [document ]in the year 1546 (i.e., 1235 CE) [according to the era of documents (i.e., the Seleucid calendar) ]in the city of Tyre on the great sea (the Mediterranean) ]the case of Shemuʾel b. Surūr al-Malaṭī (the plasterer?) [ ]Abū al-Faraj b. Assad was held there [ ]agents of the Sulṭān—may God make his rule eternal— [ ]the above mentioned Abū al-Faraj. We were sitting in [ ]there. Ḥanina said to a Muslim: “Oh [

150 See above, 196-197. 234

]to my enemy the last [ ]they brought him and in this [ ]he destroyed his house and the houses of ] may God make his rule eternal [ ]Before the agents of the Sulṭān (nuwwāb al-Sultān) [ ]500 dinārs and but for his mercy ] 200 dinārs and [?] charity ] thus he perished (qad halaka); however he was ] a number of times and they imprisoned him ]what came. They now wrote ]verdict of Abū ʿAlī ] this claim. So Abū [] accused him (?) ] this document before…151

The amount of money discussed here is huge: five hundred dinars could support an average Egyptian family for twenty years.152 The fact that the characters mentioned here were carrying so much money

(or valuable goods) suggests they were very wealthy. The fact that they were seemingly carrying such sum—either in specie, or in kind, indicates they were merchants. Three of the four named actors in the testimony have Arabic names—Ḥanina is the Hebrew name of a renowned Talmudic scholar— thus, we know nothing of his origins. We do know, however, that he spoke Arabic since he directly addresses an Egyptian Muslim in the body of the testimony.

The events described almost certainly took place in Egypt.153 What seems to have happened is that Jews from Latin Tyre were trading in Fustat when they violated some law, perhaps involving the importation of goods. Then again, maybe the Sultan’s agents (nuwwāb al-Sulṭān) mentioned here simply sought to appropriate their assets. In any case, their family sought to recover some of the

151 T-S 12J7.9 ll.1-22. The translation is mine. The document has not been previously published. 152 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5: 190. 153 It is possible “Sultan” in this context does not describe an Ayyubid leader and his agents, but rather the agents of the Emperor Frederick II or his son Conrad—but both Frederick and Conrad ruled in abstentia and thus would likely not have been familiar to Levantine Jews. 235 remaining valuables. An informed speculation suggests this text involves inheritance, since it mentions someone who possessed significant funds dying and such disputes commonly appeared before Jewish courts.154 This document, then, was likely sent to Egypt to secure those rights.

This case suggests that Arabic-speaking merchants then resident in Latin Tyre were engaged in large-scale trade with Egypt. Unfortunately, the nature of the goods they were carrying is unknown.

But the scale of the venture is considerable—in fact, unprecedented, in our corpus. The evidence from this fragmentary document only survives because the Syrians got in some sort of trouble, not because they necessarily had Fustat-based trade partners.

Due to contingencies of source survival and the economic decline of Fustat, we have no

Genizah documents attesting to trade between Egypt and Palestine for the subsequent four decades.

Again, this dearth of documents should not necessarily be taken as an indication that trade declined; however, the merchants who would have produced these documents were likely no longer based in

Fustat. They may have moved to the growing metropolis of Cairo, or to Alexandria.

That said, when evidence does reemerge in 1276, it involves multiple partners from different regions of the Mediterranean, who likely had been active in the Egypt-Levant trade for some time. The year 1276 was once again a period of military conflict. The Seventh Crusade had failed to conquer

Egypt and facilitated a military coup that led to the ascent of the Mamluk dynasty (1250-1517). Mamluk forces quickly became the most dangerous enemy of the Latin Christians of the Levant. In the 1260s, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars (r. 1260-1277) launched a series of successful attacks against Latin cities

154 Inheritance is an issue of family law, which, like marriage and divorce, was most often handled by parochial courts in the Islamicate world. See Rivlin, Inheritance and Wills in Jewish Law. 236 including Antioch. The local barons at this time were more divided than ever. In the midst of this chaos, Charles of Anjou (1227-1285), King of Sicily, brought the Crusader states under Angevin control in 1277, uniting the island and the Levant under his rule.

The Genizah document is a draft of a court testimony relating to a debt accrued during trade between the Latin Levant, Sicily and Egypt in the period immediately preceding this annexation. 155

The text is wedged in the upper right corner of the document, surrounded by financial calculations.

Its form is that of a court testimony:

It was recorded (lit. said) for Abī al-ʿAlāʾ b. Hillel al-Bannāʾ (the mason): 201 nuqra (dirhams) and brass buttons arrived for him from Acre (ʿAkkā) with Menaḥem al- Masīnī (i.e., of Messina, Sicily), who submitted them to Abū Nasr b. al-Maṭār[ī] b. Rabbenu Avraham.156

The first part of the document, then, records the movement of a shipment of nuqra dirhams (high quality silver coins)157 and brass buttons (perhaps, per Ashtor, another form of currency)158 to Fustat with a Sicilian Jewish merchant (or at least a merchant of Sicilian descent), Menaḥem of Messina.

Hohenstaufen Sicily, as discussed below, was the central hub for European trade with the Levant at this time.159

The scale of the trade in this document—in terms of the value of goods exchanged—pales in comparison to that of the court testimony from 1235. It is essentially cabotage—the port-to-port

155 T-S NS J 254, ed. in Ashtor, Mamluks, 3:47-48 (#27). Ashtor made this significant find, but he was only interested in the documents implications for Mamluk history. Its significance for the history of the Crusader states and trans- Mediterranean trade is also evident. Ashtor dated the document to 1276. 156 T-S NS J254, ll. 1-8. 157 See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 253, 256, 360, 377 (exchange rate estimated), 386. See also Werner Diem and Hans- Peter Radenberg, A Dictionary of the Arabic Materials of S.D. Goitein’s Mediterranean Society (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1994), 215. As the latter points out, nuqra was often used as a qualifier for good, as compared to adjectives indicating poor quality currency (ʿaswad, sawād, etc.). 158 Ashtor, Mamluks, 47 n. 2 159 See the discussion of the Manduel archive below, 243-245. 237 exchange of small amounts of goods between micro-regions that was probably responsible for moving a larger quantity of goods than the large-scale, interregional trade recorded in European charters.160

These modest, intra-Near-Eastern ventures that would never have reached the archives of Genoa, Pisa,

Venice and Marseilles which provide the evidentiary basis for studies of trade in the age of crusade.161

But this document reminds us that just because such evidence does not survive, does not mean that cabotage did not play an integral role in the movement of goods within the Eastern Mediterranean.

The challenges of source survival resulting from the decline in the size of the Genizah corpus have prevented us from recreating the networks of trade between Latin Syria and the Islamic world— particularly, Egypt—in the kind of detail that is possible for the twelfth century. This lack of sources, however, should not be read as indicating a decline in trade. The few pieces of extant evidence indicate that this trade was ongoing on the level of both the large-scale shipment of goods valued in the hundreds of dinars and the modest-scale peddling of goods worth a fraction of these sums in port- to-port cabotage. Moreover, trade with Damascus would have been booming, providing further incentive for Arabic speakers to trade with and even settle in the Latin Levant.

Arabic-Speaking Jewish Traders from Christian Europe

The twelfth-century Genizah merchants, as discussed in the previous chapters, made no hard distinction between trade from “Latin” Europe—as defined by the linguistic and religious norms of the ruling hierarchy—and trade with the Islamic Near East. Instead, the salient variable was legal protections provided by fora producing and accepting documents from Jewish courts in the Islamic

160 Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 149-152. 161 In his Commerce and Conquest, David Abulafia critiques the overreliance on these archives and seeks evidence from “minor cities” like Marseilles. See above, 135 n. 84. 238 world. In the thirteenth century, the Jews of Sicily, central and southern Iberia and the Latin-Kingdom of Jerusalem remained predominantly Arabophone, and the courts of the Levant (and, most likely, of the other two regions) continued to produce and accept the same types of documents.

Trade between Syria, Sicily and the Islamic Near East was discussed in detail above with regard to the family of the banū yijū, who traded in all three regions. Again, in the court document from 1276, we see this same type of movement—merchants moving freely between the three realms.

In the previous chapter, however, we saw no indication of trade with Arabophone Iberians. Trade with Iberia in general appears relatively rarely in the Genizah corpus writ large after the early eleventh century.162

We are fortunate, then, to have evidence for such traders from Shem Ṭov b. Yiṣḥaq’s Hebrew translation of Kitāb al-taṣrīf li-man ʿajiza ʿan al-taʾlīf , that is, The Book of the Arrangement [of Medical

Knowledge] for One Who is Unable to Compile [His Own], an eleventh-century Arabic composition from al-Andalus on medical diagnostics and surgical practice.163 Shem Tov was a polymath: a merchant, a

Torah scholar, a physician and a philosopher.164 He was born in the city of Tortosa in the Kingdom of

Aragon—a city that had fallen into Christian hands in 1148, a little over a century before he wrote his work.

162 See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 305-316. As Goldberg notes, while the Ibn Awkal coalition of the early- to mid- tenth century did have commercial contacts with Iberia, the subsequent generation of the Nahray generation did not. 163 The Andalusī physician Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī (d. 1013) wrote the eleventh-century Arabic text to explain his approach to medical diagnostics and surgical practice. Little is known about al-Zahrāwī except from his massive medical compilation. The work had already been translated into Latin in 1187 and would find an enthusiastic reception in Europe (though less so in the Islamic world). See Emilie Savage-Smith. "al-Zahrāwī." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Online, 2015. 164 Oṣer Yisraʾel Encyclopedia (Heb.), ed. J.D. Einstein, (New York: 1913) 10: 143. Also see Avraham Ofir Shemesh, Medical Materials in Jewish Literature of the Middle Ages and Modern Times (Heb.) (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan UP, 2013), 16. 239

In his introduction to his translation of Kitāb al-taṣrīf, the Aragonese Jew recalls how, in his youth (c. 1226), he decided to pursue a living as an itinerant trader. He writes, “I forgot my Talmud, which my father taught me in my youth, because I chose the business of trade over the wisdom (of

Torah).”165 Reflecting on this period of his professional development, Shem Tov describes the seminal moment that led him to reevaluate his life priorities:

I had been consumed with trading by water and land. I crossed the (Mediterranean) Sea (and came) to the city of Acre. (While there,) I asked the most eminent of my colleagues (ve-ʾeshal me-ḥavrei nikhbad mi-kulam) a question concerning a matter of Jewish law (halakhah), but he repudiated me, for he was then (busy) studying geometry (hokhmat ha-tashberot).166 I was ashamed (of my lack of knowledge), and I swore to return to Torah study. I was then 30 years old. I crossed the sea (again) and went to the city of Barcelona, where I turned from my business (in trade).167

As early as 1226, then, Latin Acre hosted a substantial group of Iberian Jewish merchants who traveled the length of the Mediterranean to trade in the Levant. Based on the fact that Shem Ṭov traveled to

Acre for trade, I read the Hebrew ḥavrei, or “colleagues,” here to be the functional equivalent of asḥāb, the Arabic term for colleagues that was often used to indicate trade associates.168 The fact that the

Iberians were in a group makes sense: when Iberian merchants do appear in the Genizah, they are

165 The text of this introduction is recorded in Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 9 vols., (Leipzig, 1902), 7: 113-114; available online at http://archive.org. It is discussed and translated in Prawer, The History of the Jews, 265 n. 38. Prawer incorrectly states the page number of Graetz’s work there as 103-4. My translation differs significantly from Prawer’s. 166 Hokhmat ha-tashberot is sometimes translated as “mathematics,” but in the examples I have seen from the contemporary Near East, it consistently refers to geometry in particular. In the context here, it seems that Shem Ṭov’s colleague was studying this discipline to apply it to the interpretation of holy texts, perhaps including those on agriculture commonly studied in the land of Israel; cf., Maimonides commentary on Mishnah Kilʾayim 2:2:1. I am grateful to Zvi Kunshtat for pointing out the halakhic applications of geometry. 167 Shem Tov tells us that he later became a full-time scholar. He was not only a scholar of Jewish texts, but also the secular sciences, especially medicine. In this context, he taught Christian (and Jewish?) students. See Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 7: 113. 168 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:169. 240 almost always found traveling in groups—i.e., they rarely work with local partners (perhaps because the distance between the regions made maintaining such relationships particularly difficult).169

Note that Shem Ṭov’s colleague is not only a scholar, but also a merchant. In this context, the city that inspires Shem Ṭov’s revelation to turn from profit chasing to Torah reflects Iberian Jews’ vision of the best of their regional subculture—that is, it exemplifies both outstanding rabbinic (and secular) scholarship and material prosperity.170

The fact that we know about these Iberian merchants is a product of happenstance—their role in trans-Mediterranean trade with Latin Acre would never have reached the Genizah, much less the archives of the Italian states. We do not know whether these particular Iberian Jewish merchants were a permanent fixture in Acre. Nor do we have explicit evidence that Iberian Jews’ involvement in the Levant trade continued into the later parts of the century. We do, however, know that throughout the last quarter of the thirteenth century scholars from Acre halakhic questions (sheʾelot) were regularly sent to the greatest rabbinic scholar of their generation, Shelomo ibn Adret of

Barcelona. Ibn Adret, in turn, sent back dozens of responsa (teshuvot).171 As discussed above, the only way such a correspondence could be possible is if people—most likely merchants—were traveling back and forth between Acre and Barcelona. The halakhic addressed problems including relatively

169 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 315. 170 This belief that Spain stood at the center of the Jewish world and that such a position resulted from the marriage of its wealth and scholarship is articulated in Avraham ibn Dāwūd’s Sefer ha-Qabbala. Again and again, Ibn Dāwūd emphasizes the relationship between donations or “stipends” and Spain’s rise to influence. See Avraham ibn Dāwūd, Book of Tradition: Sefer Ha-Qabbalah, trans. Gerson Cohen (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967). Cohen argues that the Iberian Jews viewed as the ideal man a scholar equally comfortable in the realm of secular (i.e., “Greek”) sciences and in Torah and Talmud study. See Cohen, Sefer ha-Qabbalah, as well as the discussion of this models limitations in Klein ha-Levi’s description of Jewish elites in Jews, Christian Society and Royal Power, 52-71. 171 On these teshuvot, see Simcha Assaf, “The Responsa of the Rashba,” (Heb.) Tarbiṣ 83, no. 3 (2015): 465-89. 241 time-sensitive issues like the redress of an active court case.172 Therefore, the existence of these responsa—and especially the time-sensitive ones— suggest that Catalonian Jews continued to regularly travel for trade to the Levant until the final years of the Crusader states.

European Jews and the Levant Trade

As discussed above, there is no evidence for Western European Jews trading in the Levant during the first hundred years of Latin rule. To some extent, this is unsurprising: Most of the sources for historical studies of European trade with the Crusader states come from the archives of the Italian city-states—cities that hosted either no Jewish residents (Venice), or very few (Pisa and Genoa).173 The ports of southern France and northeastern Iberia, however, had substantial Jewish populations with longstanding cultural and economic ties to Arabophone Jews in the East.174

David Abulafia has established in a series of articles how a number of minor cities (not Venice,

Genoa or Pisa) from these regions (Narbonne, Montpellier, Marseilles, etc.) were able to find niche

172 E.g., Shelomo ibn Adret, Sheʾelot u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba, ed. Aharon Zalzanik, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1997), 6:15-17 (n. 69). This responsum is discussed in greater detail below, 288-289. The ideal length of travel from al- Andalus to Cairo was two months, so time-sensitive is a relative term. See DK 327 a-d r. ll. 4-9, trans. in Goldberg, Trade and Traders, 314 173 For Venice see above 99 n. 245; for Genoa, see the itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela’s itinerary, where the traveler reports that there were only two Jews in the city. Similarly, he records that there were 20 Jewish families in Pisa. See Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 6. By the thirteenth century, there was an “alley of the Jews” in Pisa, which suggests the possibility that the community may have been more substantial then. 174 For Catalonia and eastern Iberia, see especially the works on the established Jewish community in Barcelona and the wider region, see above, 131 n. 67. For the Jewish community of Provence at this period, see Roth, “Regional Boundaries and Medieval Halakhah,” 72–98. As Roth argues in this article, the Jewish communities of Catalonia, Narbonne and Provence in some sense formed a common whole, though they retained significant regional markers of difference. The Arabophone character of these regions, as previously mentioned, was largely the result of the influx of refugees from Almohad al- Andalus from the mid-twelfth century. 242 markets in the Levant trade during the thirteenth century. These cities’ subjects obtained privileges granted to Venetian, Pisan and Genoese merchants through under (and over) the table methods.175

When archives from these areas emerge in the thirteenth century, then, we should not be surprised that they provide some evidence of Jewish merchants from these locales traveling and trading in the Latin Levant. Their presence is evident in documents from the family archive of the

Manduel merchant family of Marseilles. The Manduels were one of the most prominent merchant families of the city at this time. They were also involved in local politics.176 The documents of their family archive include contracts involving Jews and non-Jews that they joined in investing in trade with Acre and other regions of the (Christian and Muslim-held) Levant.177

One document from the archive dated to 1248 records the participation of an Acre-based

Jewish merchant, Moses (Mosse), “a Jew and citizen of Marseilles (Judeus civis Massilie),” in a commenda with a Christian investor, Petro Christeng. Moses is to take forty cloaks, sewn in the

Northern French city of Metz, and bring them to market in Sicily.178 This contract provides but a small snapshot of Moses’s activities: it records only those ventures of immediate interests to investors linked to the Manduel family. But we can deduce that since Moses was based in the Levant and was moving goods from Provence to Sicily, he would most likely also have been involved in shipping other

175 These articles are collected in David Abulafia, Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100-1500. See specifically “The Levant trade of the minor cities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: strengths and weaknesses,” XI: 183-202; and “Narbonne, the lands of the Crown of Aragon and the Levant trade 1187-1400,” XIV: 189-207. 176 Faith Camelleti, “Notarial Convention in the Facilitation of Trade and Economics in Mid-Thirteenth Century Marseille,” Tiresias 2 (2013), 28-29. Marseille became a significant participant in Mediterranean trade in the mid-thirteenth century partly as a result of its role as a primary port of disembarkation for the Seventh Crusade (1248-1254). 177 See chart in ibid. 29-30. There are generic references there to endeavors in Syria, the Outremer, and Aleppo—a city that never fell to the Christians. 178 L. Blancard (ed.), Documents inédits sur le commerce de Marseille au Moyen Age, 2 vols. (Marseille, 1895), 2: 105-106, n. 576-77. Mentioned in Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 125. Wool was of course one of the primary exports of Northern France and Flanders at this period, so the choice of merchandise is not shocking. 243 materials to the Latin ports. There is evidence for Provencal Jewish merchants’ involvement in the movement of goods from Marseilles to Sicily and then onto the Levant in this same archive.179

Moses may have been a local Syrian Jew who managed to become a subject of Marseilles (as

Jews in Acre had done under the Venetians). The more likely scenario, however, considering his ties to

Provence, is that he is a Jewish citizen of Marseilles who immigrated to Latin Syria. In any case, Moses then could have used his citizenship and the concessions obtained by merchants of the “minor city” to support his business endeavors.180

If Moses was a Provencal Jew, he was not alone in Acre.181 Previous scholars have recognized the settlement of these Frenchmen in Acre but have identified them as member of the religious elite who immigrated for ideological reasons and/or to escape persecution.182 Yet we must also consider the pull of economic opportunity that the Latin Levant exercised. I have found at least one example of a

Jewish Provençal courtier (sar) in a fragmentary letter from 1220s Acre. Courtiers were almost exclusively from the economic elite—physicians, merchants and moneylenders—suggesting that the

179 Ibid. 2: 415, n. 15 180 On the presence of Jews in the Venetian and Genoese quarters of the Latin ports, see the discussion of the Zorzi report above. It was not uncommon for merchants to make these types of exchanges to protect their partners and coreligionists, e.g., the letter T-S 13J20.7 concerning the exchange of poll-tax receipts discussed above, 124-125. Similarly, local Sicilian Jews were accused of using their resident privileges to protect their foreign Jewish colleagues from a tax during the last years of Islamic rule of the island. See T-S 16.13, Ed. in Gil, Kingdom of Ishamel, 4: 167-173 (doc.#654). 181 Reiner, “Aliyah va-ʻAliyah,” 51-54. 182 The argument for ideology is made in ibid., 118-191. Prawer similarly subscribes to this perspective, though allows for the possibility that persecution may also have contributed to the movement. See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 143-168. Robert Chazan has argued that the immigration is best explained as the product of anti-Jewish legislation in contemporary France in Medieval Jewry in Northern France. There were a number of discriminatory measures against Jews enacted in France at this period that may have encouraged immigration. Part of the assertion of the crown of its authority over the entire realm was articulated in its power to expel and/or fine the Jews. The first monarch to take these measures was Phillip II (“Augustus”) (r. 1180-1223). They continued through the final expulsion of the Jews in 1306. See Elizabeth Hallam, Capetian France, 987-1328 (New York: Longman, 1980), 164, 173, 178, 210. The decrees were applied inconsistently in Toulouse, Provence and the rest of southern France due to the long streak of political independence in these regions that began to decay in the aftermath of the Albigensian Crusade (1220-1229). The latter even led to the eventual incorporation of much of this region into the French royal domain. 244 sar’s primary employment was not rabbinic scholarship (though it is not unlikely that he engaged in such on his own time). The Manduel Archive also contains many references to Jewish merchants from

Marseilles investing in trade with Sicily and Acre.183 While the archive is uninterested in partners not associated with its proprietor, it is likely that these Provencal Jews had business ties to coreligionist traders in Sicily and the Levant—émigrés like our sar living in Acre and capable of assisting in such endeavors.

There were, then, Jews from the Northern Mediterranean—including non-Arabic-speaking communities—who traveled, traded and perhaps even settled in the Latin Levant. Given the biases of the historiography, it bears restating that the evidence for these trade networks in no way suggests a massive immigration of European Jews to the Levant. Nor does it imply that their involvement eclipsed that of local, Near Eastern Jews—that is, both their Arabic-speaking and (in northern

Syria/southern Anatolia) Greek-speaking coreligionists.

Trade and Traders from the Greek World in the Kingdom of Acre

Greek-speaking Jews have made few appearances in the documentary corpus examined in this dissertation. This is not surprising: Greek Jewish merchants do not appear because this study is based mostly on Genizah documents and Byzantine Jewish merchants, like their Iberian coreligionists, rarely appear in Genizah trade letters in general.184 It is clear from the letter analyzed

183 Blancard, Documents inedits sur le commerce, 2: 16 (doc. 388), 2: 27 (doc. 411), 1: 317 (doc. 127), 1: 322 (doc. 140), 1:328 (doc. 277), 1: 289 (doc. 65). Discussed in Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 125. 184 Joshua Holo, Byzantine Jewry in the Mediterranean Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009). Holo notes that while the Byzantine texts speak often of Jewish merchants, little evidence survives about them, including from Genizah letter which he closely surveyed. 245 below, however, that they did comprise a part—and possibly a substantial one—of the cosmopolitan

Jewish mercantile community of thirteenth-century Latin Acre.

Following the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221)—that is, at approximately the same time that Shelomo b. Eliyyahu ha-Dayyan wrote Avraham Maimonides about the regular movement of merchants’ ships between Latin Acre and Alexandria—a letter from the Genizah provides a window on these

Levantine Jewish merchants from the Greek world.185 The document’s author was a Jew living in Acre, most likely a merchant himself. He had recorded two halakhic questions (sheʾelot) delivered orally by fellow merchants in Acre. The purpose of his letter was to convey those questions to a Rabbinic scholar, “ha-rav ha-ḥasid,” the son-in-law of R. Avraham ha-Levi, then resident in Fustat.186

Following a brief poetic opening, the writer delves immediately into the sheʾelot, both of which concern the ritual purity (kashrut) of wine—an issue of some complexity since rabbinic law regulated the involvement of non-Jews in the production, movement and sale of this product.187 Both queries discuss the arrival of kosher wine from Rhodes. In the first case, the problem began when the questioner was not there to receive the wine (and verify the contents) because he was in Cyprus

(kifros), having “left Acre to sell (his) goods.”188 Then, the questioner was waylaid again: immediately upon leaving the ship, he was told that he had received several letters from Antalya—a major port in south-central Anatolia.189 All three of the regions mentioned here (Rhodes, Antalya and Cyprus) had

185 ENA 3372.1, ed. in Shmuʿel Galik, Remnants of Responsa from Sages of the Ottoman Empire from the Cairo Genizah (Heb.) (Tel Aviv: Bar Ilan, 2015), 589-93. See the discussion of this document and its dating above, pp. 140-143. 186 Ibid., 589. 187 Wine was of concern for specific historical reasons that have to do with its use in the performance of non-Jewish religious rituals (yayin nesekh). The law came to be widely interpreted in a manner that required rigorous standards of observance for the agricultural laborers, those who oversaw the wine’s sale. Concern extended even to those who might touch the wine (stam yayinam). See Mishnah and Tosefta, Ḥullin 1 and 2. 188 ENA 3372.1, l. 7 189 Ibid., ll. 7-8. 246 substantial, Greek-speaking Jewish populations.190 Whether the author was European, Greek or Near

Eastern is not stated, though he likely spoke Greek since all the mercantile colleagues he mentioned had connections to that region.191

While the Byzantines had ruled Cyprus, Rhodes and Antalya for centuries, they were all lost to the empire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Leo Gabalas, the “Caesar” of Rhodes, had taken advantage of the chaos in Constantinople following the Fourth Crusade to establish himself as the de facto ruler of the island.192 The Seljuq Sultan of Rum, Kaykhusraw, had seized Antalya in 1207 as part of a broader campaign during which the Turks conquered much of southern, coastal Anatolia.193 The

House of Lusignan, whose members also comprised the ruling nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at this time, had seized Cyprus in 1199 and created an independent kingdom there.194

This fraught political reality, however, is notably absent from the merchants’ accounts, suggesting that, once again, state conflicts did not deter the merchants. The first questioner was a merchant who maintained professional relationships with colleagues in Muslim, Greek and Latin-

Christian regions of the Northern Mediterranean. The letter, then, provides a small window on a

190 Holo, Byzantine Jews, 185-6 (he calls Antalya “Attaleia,” the city’s Greek, rather than Turkish, name); Benjamin of Tudela mentions the presence of 400 or 500 Jews (or Jewish families) in Rhodes and a community of three Jewish groups in Cyprus in his Itinerary, 16, 23, 25). 191 The author mentions the position of R. Shimshon of Sens, a Frankish rabbi who had moved to Acre in 1211, but there is no reason to assume that only Arabic speakers studied with the French rav, and the handwriting paleographically appears similar to that of contemporary Egyptian Jews. 192 During the Fourth Crusade, the Venetians and their Crusader allies sacked the Byzantine capital in 1204, creating the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The Latins were unable to suppress all Greek opposition, which solidified around the Byzantine rump-state of the Empire of Nicaea. Gabalas remained nominally loyal to the Empire of Nicaea. 193 Claude Cahen, The Formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rum, Eleventh to Fourteen Centuries (London: Routledge, 2014 [2001]), 47-9. 194 Peter Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991), 1-2; 23-38. 247 world of Syrian (Jewish) trade with the Greek world otherwise invisible to scholars of the Egyptian

Genizah.

It is possible that these Greek-speaking Jews had a parallel Greek/rabbinic court system not unlike the Arabic one discussed above. Such a system would have protected their property and persons when traveling in these regions, and thus explain their willingness to travel to Greek-speaking lands.

In any case, even though this document concerns Jewish law, it is clear that the merchants that appear therein are not in Acre for “religious” reasons—they are there because it is a booming center of trade with the broader Mediterranean. Unfortunately, there is little information on this community, and the previous rabbinic-focused studies do not mention the presence of Greeks at all.

That said, source survival should not lead us to dismiss the role such communities may have played in

Acre’s mercantile and Jewish communities.

Trans-Regional Trade, International Merchants and Social Cohesion in Latin Acre

One word that does not describe the Jewish community of Acre in the final decades of Latin rule in Syria is “decline,” as studies focused on the Crusader states’ political fortunes might suggest.

This chapter has provided profiles of Arabic-speaking, Greek-speaking and Latinate Jewish traders and the networks and institutions that sustained their involvement with trade with the Crusader states. This analysis has lead us to an expansive look at the geography of such exchange. While the previous chapter’s examination of trade was limited largely to the Levant, the exchanges profiled spanned the breadth and length of the Mediterranean. Moreover, not only did these merchants trade in Latin Syria, but also some of them seem to have settled there.

248

We argued in the previous chapter that the social anxieties expressed in the 1170s responsa of

Maimonides to Latin Tyre enrich our knowledge of the emerging role of Acre and Tyre as emporia of local Levantine goods. But the responsa of Ibn Adret from the late thirteenth century mentioned above also enable us to consider how these merchants’ participation in this Mediterranean exchange informed developments on the ground in the Latin Levant.

What is striking is that when we examine the queries sent to Shelomo ibn Adret three quarters of a century after Maimonides’ death, many of the same anxieties that the Latin ports’ transitions from backwaters to emporia provoked in the late-twelfth century continued to confound the Jews of

Latin Acre in the late-thirteenth century. These anxieties manifest over concern with the purchase and sale of agricultural produce grown by non-Jews in lands close to Acre.195 These lands include regions that may fall under the strict statutes governing the growing of produce in the land of Israel.196

As such, they indicate Acre’s ongoing (and expanding) role as regional emporium.

But there are new anxieties evident in Ibn Adret’s responsa as well that are clearly the product of differences of practice among the diverse groups that comprised the city’s Jewish elites. Some of these questions emerge from the increasing importance of trade with regions farther afield and the resulting proliferation of products whose provenance was difficult to discern. In this context, concerns emerge over imported wine and cheese, two goods that due to the idiosyncrasies of Jewish

195 Teshuvot ha-RaSHBA, 1: 588-592 (289-91)—on wine production and sale; 4:101 (40); 5: 56 (31); —on ʿarlah and kilaʾim. 196 For a discussion of these laws and their relevance to cultivation and sale in relationship to the sanctity of the land of Israel see 219-220. 249 law demand particularly stringent oversight during their production.197 For instance, Ibn Adret thus paraphrases one case that R. Eliyyahu of Acre brought to him:

According to you, all the distinguished merchants (ha-tagarim ha-meṣuyyan (sic.)) among you are suspected of (selling the) cheese of non-Jews. The accepted practice (halakhah ravaḥat) is that one suspected of something may neither judge nor testify about it (lo dano ve-lo meʿido) but that the cheese of non-Jews is forbidden.198

The issue here is complicated by the specific laws governing the production of kosher cheese, which are nearly as idiosyncratic as those governing the sale of kosher wine. The local Jews wonder if merchants suspected of selling cheese produced with the rennet of a defective animal are similarly suspected of selling other impure products.199 There was a wide spectrum of opinions with regard to the stringency of kashrut laws for cheese. Rabbis in Provence, for example, long held that there was no legal objection to the consumption of non-Jewish cheese.200 Jews in the Islamic world and northern

France held a more stringent position.201 Economic migration and the presence of foreign merchants

197 On wine, see above 246 n. 187. The issue of cheese is quite different. Here, the concern involved gevinat akum (“cheese of idolaters”) concerns over the slaughter of the animal providing rennet used in the production of the cheese. This concern then leads to anxiety over the role of non-Jews in the production of said cheese. 198 See Teshuvot ha-RaSHBA 1: 64 (36-37), Another similar issue about cheese and kashrut is raised in 1: 67 (38) 199 See Bechorot 29 B-30 B. The issue here discussed is how one suspected of violating one precept is then suspect regarding others. 200 Rabbeinu Tam, the father of the Northern French school of the Tosafists, wrote: “In many places Jews eat cheese produced by non-Jews since the non-Jews use flowers to curdle the milk and the geʾonim of Narbonne [southern France] permitted this practice. However, in our places [Northern France and Germany]. there is reason to be strict since they use stomach linings to curdle milk.” Tosafot Avodah Zarah 35a s.v. 201 We have clear evidence of the fact that Egyptian Jews in the thirteenth century demanded kosher cheese certificates (and, therefore, Jewish made/supervised cheese) from the Genizah. See T-S 12.620 and T-S 13 J4.8; two thirteenth-century Sicilian kashrut certificates for cheese. See also T-S AS 147.24, a court document from Fustat referring to the movement of a large shipment of kosher Sicilian cheese that was to be sold in the Egyptian countryside. Available on PGP. Also, see Nadia Zeldes and Miriam Frenkel, “The Sicilian Trade: Jewish Merchants in the Mediterranean in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Gli ebrei in Sicilia dal tardoantico al medioevo: Studi in onore de Monsignor Benedetto Rocco, ed. Nicolo Bucaria (Palermo: Flaccovio, 1998), 254-5. The Genizah also provides evidence of Sicilian Jews selling cheese to Fustat- based traders from well before the Norman-Christian conquests of Sicily (1060s-1091). See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 46, 124; 4: 251-252. Finally, for the Halakhic position, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Maʾachalot Asurot 3:14. 250 with ties to regions with diverse legal practices, therefore, likely complicated the nature of the rabbis’ role here.

The merchants were of course largely personally responsible for assuring that the products they sold were ritually pure, as we saw was the case with the Greek-speaking merchant discussed above. Their reputation in this matter could secure or undermine their business interests. Eliyyahu writes, “We explained to the merchants…that one suspected of a minor (offense) is not suspected of indiscretion in other matters.”202 That is, he makes clear in this context that he wishes to answer this question in the negative and to give the merchants the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately for R.

Eliyyahu, Ibn Adret rejects his position, citing a line of the Talmud that states that merchants trading abroad (ironically, Syrians in the original Talmudic context) should not be trusted if they are suspected of selling ritually impure cheese.203 We do not know if R. Eliyyahu followed Ibn Adret’s advice—or, for that matter, if he did so, whether the merchants or their customers actually listened to him.

Besides the suspicion generated by interaction with foreign goods, what is evident here is the close relationship between the religious and economic elites.204 Eliyyahu writes that the merchants of

Acre are “distinguished” (ha-miṣuyyan) but also “suspect” (he-ḥashodim). For cities like Fustat and

202 Ibid., 64 (36) 203 Nor, for that matter, should they be trusted to sell kosher wine, fish sauce or even milk…Ibid., n. 64 (36); reference is to ”אין לוקחין ימ"ח מחג בסוריא...“ TB, Avodah Zarah, 39 B 204 Perhaps this is because, as some scholars have argued, the legal tradition coalesced before the political developments that solidified the close ties between the rabbis and the non-rabbinic elite—i.e., the rabbis were engaged in claiming a wider definition of their own power in a period when this was far from taken for granted. Generally, those accruing great wealth were viewed with suspicion in the Jewish (and Christian) traditions from antiquity. The realities of the Middle Ages demanded a more pragmatic approach to this class. For the classical context, see Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 103-29. For a discussion of the new demands of the Middle Ages, see Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” 308-310. 251

Acre, the price of greater access to imported goods was more imperfect knowledge of those products’ production. It seems that in this context the rabbis of Acre were trying to avoid a confrontation with the merchants in a context in which variation in regional practice could become the basis for social and religious strife.

Conclusion

This chapter outlined the expanding geography of the trading networks that linked thirteenth-century Latin Syria to the wider Mediterranean. In so doing, it also provided the context for the rise of a wealthy, cosmopolitan and multi-lingual Jewish community in Latin Acre and Tyre. These processes were largely dependent on the functioning of the legal state beyond borders discussed in this section’s first chapter.

The impact of Saladin’s conquest in 1187-88 and the subsequent restoration of the Levantine coast to Latin Christian hands from 1189-1192 were not as devastating to the local Syrian populations as the First Crusade of 1098-1100 had proven. But these invasions do seem to have caused a downturn in the region’s trade economy that lasted through the first decade of the thirteenth century.

In the subsequent decades, the Levantine ports reemerged as regional emporia. The transfer of the Frankish government to Acre and the rise of the principalities fueled ever-greater economic growth and revenues from trade. These ventures and their profits soon eclipsed the trade economy of the twelfth century.

What distinguished Latin Acre’s Jewish community from its twelfth-century counterpart was not merely the scale of its wealth, but also the trans-Mediterranean ties and origins of its mercantile elite. Arabic-speaking merchants continued to ply the routes from Egypt to Syria and Sicily.

252

Arabophone traders also took up trade with Iberia. Furthermore, Jews in Latin Europe invested in the

Levantine trade. Finally, Greek-speaking Jews also took up new roles in these networks, creating economic and cultural ties to lands (formerly) held by the Byzantine Empire.

Trade then—not theology and rabbinic immigration—provided the basis for the cosmopolitan community that emerged in Latin Acre. That said, this cosmopolitanism had a profound impact on the religious politics of the ports. Regional Jewish leaders in Iraq, Islamic Syria and Egypt continued to assert their right to tax and socially regulate these cities’ Jewish communities.

The strains between the Levantine Jews’ loyalty to regional, Islamicate leaders and their elites’ trans-

Mediterranean economic orientation provide the context for the struggles over religious authority discussed in the following chapters.

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Part IV: Local and Regional Leadership in the Latin Levant: Rabbinic Authority beyond Borders

4.1 Islamicate Jewish Politics in a Latin-Christian World: Rabbis in the Islamic Near East and their Followers in Latin Palestine (1099-1200)

The decision of the rulers of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to abstain from appointing heads of their religious minority communities—as Islamic states had done for centuries—created uncertainty in two critical spheres of Syrian Jewish life. The first crisis was over Jewish-state relations

(discussed in section 2). The second was one of local rabbinic authority—the subject of this section.

Communal Syrian rabbis and other officials before the First Crusade had turned for regional leadership to authorities like the Levant-based yeshivah of Palestine and the Egypt-based negidut/riʾāsat al-yahūd (headship of the Jews). The state invested these figures and institutions with their specific prerogatives. 1 An Arabic document of investiture from Saladin’s oldest son, al-Afḍal (r.

1193-1196), outlines the responsibilities of one such leader. It reads:

We have placed you at the head of the people of your community and of the local leaders of your denominations (ṭawāʿif) (in this context, Rabbanite and Qaraʾite Jews, as well as Samaritans), every one, whether near or far, commoner or notable (ʿamm wa- khaṣṣ)…with regard to the execution of judgements, the equitable treatment of the elite and the commoners, the administering of justice…seeing to judgements that your community requires in connection with marriage, circumcision (i.e., family law), charitable donations and taxes (rasm)…for you are a guide for the community as is the head for the body below it…Set right anyone who needs to be set right and discipline anyone who deserves to be disciplined. Transfer anyone whom you do not approve of to a place that is appropriate for him…it is the duty of these (Jewish/Samaritan) denominations to recognize your position, obey your word and follow your example and guidance….with regard to prevention regulation, correction and discipline. The

1 For a discussion of these roles, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:5–40; Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 67–108; Gil, Palestine, secs. 746–761; and Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 28–29, 34–35, 40, 45–46. 254

governors, emirs, deputies and other officers…shall take steps to help you, assist you, grant you aid and support you…2

A regional leader, in theory, then, held the responsibility of overseeing all Jews of his geographical area—most often (but not always) coterminous with the political boundaries of his state. He was responsible both for maintaining justice in his community’s courts and for preserving social order. He was required to collect alms from his people and to see these funds used accordingly in support of charity for the less fortunate, ransoming drives, the upkeep of communal buildings, etc. He was also responsible for collecting taxes from his Jews on behalf of the state. He had to oversee Jewish courts and appoint judges and other leaders whom he trusted to oversee the legal system and communal governance. If those leaders failed, then he was tasked with removing them. Finally, if the people refused to listen to his decrees, then he was to deploy the state power and violence at his disposal— through the support of the “emirs (umarāʾ), deputies (nuwwāb) and other officers (sāʾir al-aṣḥāb)”—to maintain the communal hierarchy and social order.

From the perspective of local leaders, then, regional heads accomplished a number of discrete tasks: to appoint them to offices; to legitimate their rulings; to intervene with the state when other local leaders or commoners refused to follow their decrees; and to ensure the collection and distribution of revenue for charity and for state finances.

2 T-S Ar. 38.93 ll. 1v. ll. 16-18; 2 r. ll. 3-18, ed. and trans. in Geoffrey Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006[1993]), 460-6 (doc. 121). My translation differs only slightly from Khan’s excellent one—notably in the translation of ṭawāʿif, which he renders as “sects” but contextually refers to something more like schools of law (madhāhib), as Marina Rustow has argued. I have rendered this here as “denominations”—which is more value-neutral in reflecting the balanced power dynamics of Rabbanite/non-Rabbanite relations in the medieval Jewish Near East. See Marina Rustow, “The Qaraites as Sect: The Tyranny of a Construct” in Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History, ed. Sacha Stern (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 149-86. 255

That does not mean that regional leaders functioned independently as the exclusive heads of their communities. In the Fatimid context, we know that the gaʾon and raʾīs al-yahūd relied such other notables as courtiers, merchants and bankers, both Qaraʾite and Rabbanite Jews alike, to enforce their rulings through appeals for state-sanctioned coercion, as well as to defend their interests at Fatimid court.3 Their reliance on intermediaries strengthened the efficacy of this system and its centrality to the day-to-day governance of Near Eastern Jewish communities in Fatimid-controlled areas.

In the Christian Mediterranean—that is, in both the Byzantine Empire and Latin Europe—no state-sanctioned regional Jewish leadership had existed since the fifth century.4 Instead, communal authority largely functioned on the local level.5 The rabbinic leaders of the Jews of the Latin Levant thus faced a conundrum: Their local, Islamicate leaders and their institutions relied on a central, state-appointed regional leader; but, in the aftermath of the First Crusade, their Christian state was essentially indifferent to Jewish (and all minority) communal leadership.

In the century following the First Crusade, a number of regional Jewish authorities based in the surrounding Islamic states stepped forward to fill the role of regional leader for Latin Syria’s Jews.

These leaders included first, the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt; second, the head (gaʾon) of the yeshivah of

Palestine in Damascus; third, the gaʾon of the Babylonian yeshivah in Baghdad; and fourth, the peripatetic descendants of King David (nesiʾim) from Mosul, Damascus and Baghdad who periodically

3 Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” 289–318. 4 Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 103-29. See above, 150 n. 130. 5 On the contrast between the ways in which Near Eastern and Western Jewish communities were structured, see Mark Cohen, “Jewish Communal Organization in Medieval Egypt: Research, Results and Prospects,” in Judeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (London: Routledge, 2013). As Cohen notes, the historiography tended to present Islamicate Jewish leadership as “autocratic” and European Jewish leadership as “democratic.” 256 appeared in the Latin ports. These leaders sought both the financial support of these communities and/or the prestige of being able to claim another community—especially one located in the Land of

Israel—among their followers.6

How did the local leaders of Latin Syria adapt to the fact that they no longer had a regional, centralized rabbinic leader within their state’s political borders? To whom—if anyone—did they turn to fulfill the prerogatives of regional leadership? And, if the rabbinic regional authorities that served the Jews of the Frankish Levant were located outside the Crusader states, how could they legitimate the rulings of leaders inside, or appoint justices and maintain social control without recourse to state power?

The first section of this chapter will argue that in the early years immediately following the

Crusader occupation, Levantine Jews turned to the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt to fulfill the prerogatives of regional leader. They did so because the yeshiva of Palestine was located in war-torn Tyre and Tripoli, and was thus in no position to provide support or guidance. Subsequently, the yeshivah of Palestine was reestablished in Damascus in the 1110s, but it is impossible to determine how large a role it did or did not play in the lives of Latin Syria’s local leaders from 1116 to the late 1160s because of the Genizah documents’ Egypt-centric biases.

The second section turns to the period of 1170-1204, when sources reemerge and four regional leaders, the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Palestine, the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Baghdad, the head of the

Jews of Syria (nagid/raʾīs al-yahūd), and the independent, Egypt-based scholar Maimonides all

6 E.g., Shmueʾel b. ʿAli’s claim to rule in a vast geographical area including “even” the Holy Land (ereṣ ha-Ṣvi) in Benjamin of Tudela’s account discussed below, 268-271. 257 claimed regional authority over the Jews of the Latin ports. This section argues that while Maimonides did not hold the formal title of raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt for most of this period, he still was able to secure the (non-exclusive) loyalty of the rabbinic leaders of the most important Latin ports—Tyre and

Acre. His success was based on his networking skills—that is, personal relationships and jāh, or social capital—as well as his ability to convert his scholarly prestige into political gravitas among those cities’ Arabic-speaking laypeople.7 Maimonides’ opponents recognized his influence in the Latin ports and seem to have ceased their campaigns to solicit funds and halakhic questions from these cities.

Maimonides unofficial role, however, meant that he lacked recourse to the coercive power of the state in Latin Syria. This limited the effectiveness of his decrees—a fact that he recognized in encouraging his Levantine subordinates to overlook popular heterodox religious practices among their followers.

This chapter will therefore illustrate how conquest and changing relationships between religious minorities and the states under which they resided could shape the leadership institutions of the conquered populations. It further illustrates how Levantine Jews could turn to regional Jewish authorities beyond their states’ borders—even in “enemy” territory—to fulfill the tasks of the central leadership institutions. This is surprising: many of these leaders’ authority was at least partly based on their relationships with Muslim state officials. While the regional leaders were able to overcome that hurdle, the lack of recourse to state coercion did impact their and their local agents’ abilities to enforce rulings and safeguard normative religious practices.

7 For the significance of jāh for authorities in the Islamic World, see Ibid See Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership, 152; 158. For a reference to the use of this term in an Islamicate Jewish context see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 254. 258

The previous chapters’ analyses of demographics, trade and minority-state relations are all critical to understanding the course of the struggles over regional authority in Latin Syria discussed here. The leadership expectations of Latin Syria’s Jews and their leaders were those of Arabic-speaking people from the Islamicate realm; ongoing trade between the Latin Levant and the Islamic Near East sustained the communication networks between these Syrian rabbis and their regional leaders; and

Latin administration and Jews’ changing relationships to the state directly impacted the efficacy of these local and regional leaders’ attempts to carry out their decrees.

Near Eastern Jewish Leaders and the First Crusade

There were three major centers of regional Jewish authority in the late eleventh century Near

East. First, the yeshiva of Palestine, based successively in Tiberias (862[at the latest]- 933/85),

Jerusalem (ca. 933/85-ca. 1073), Tyre (ca. 1077-ca. 1102), Tripoli (ca. 1102-1109) and finally

Ḥadrak/Damascus (1109/10-ca. 1200).8 Second, there was the (much weakened) Babylonian academy/ies based in Baghdad.9 Furthermore, there was the riʾāsat al-yahūd based in Cairo-Fustat, which became the primary institution for appointing Jewish judges and municipal leaders from at least the late 1070s.10 There was also the resh galuta (Aramaic)/rosh ha-golah (Heb.)—the exilarch or

“head of the exiled (Jewish communities)” in Baghdad. The exilarch’s claim to leadership was based

8 On these centers and the ways in which Jews interacted with these institutions in their daily lives, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:5-40; and Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 67-108. On the dating for the Palestinian yeshivah, see Goldman, “Mediterranean Notables and the Politics of Survival, 4-7. And Gil, “The Scroll of Evyatar,” 45–46, 72. 9 There is some debate as to whether either/both the academies of Sura and Pumbedeita functioned at all from 1038 until the geʾonut of Shmuʾel b. ʿAlī (r. 1164-1194) in 1164. In any case, the lack of documentation of their existence in the Eastern Mediterranean suggests that regardless of who was called themselves gaʾon at this period, their influence did not extend much outside Baghdad. 10 Cohen, Jewish Self-Government. This is the central thesis of Cohen’s work. 259 on his bloodline, ostensibly going back to King David.11 The ʿAbbasid and Fatimid caliphs provided documents of investiture for the raʾīs al-yahūd, the exilarch, and—upon request—for the gaʾon of the

Palestinian yeshivah. At least until the mid-to-late twelfth century, the Iraqi geʾonim did not receive state investiture. They too were still involved in these communities, however, for they exploited their ties to bankers and courtiers to appeal to the state.12

Before the First Crusade ever reached Syria, the balance of power between the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Palestine and the head of Egypt’s Jews had already begun to swing decisively in the latter’s favor. Most of the reasons for this shift in power are beyond the purview of this chapter.13 What does concern us here is the role that military conflicts in Syria played in this power-shift. How does a fuller military context help explain the yeshivah’s lack of influence during the events immediately preceding and following the First Crusade?

In the 1060s, the ports of Tyre and Tripoli had revolted against Fatimid rule and formed autonomous city-states under rebel qāḍīs in the 1060s.14 When the Seljuqs sacked Jerusalem in 1073, the yeshivah—that is, the gaʾon and its other leaders—relocated to Tyre.15 In 1089, however, the

Fatimids retook Tyre, only to see their victorious general, Munīr al-Dawlah al-Juyūshī, rebel against their rule and claim the port for himself. Subsequently, three different rebel factions ruled Tyre in turn over a period of eight years (1089–97).16 Evyatar and his Academy only managed to flee Tyre ca. 1102.

11 See Franklin, This Noble House, 3-10. 12 See Jennifer Grayson, “Jews in the Political Life of ʿAbbasid Baghdad.” 13 These include the raʾīs’s proximity to the Fatimid court, the charisma (or lack therefore) of individual figures involved in these eleventh century disputes and the close relationships between the raʾīs and viziers (many of whom were Qaraʾites) at the Fatimid court. See Cohen, Jewish Self-Government; and Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 100-107. 14 Bramoullé, “Les villes maritimes fatimides,” 93–116; Gil, Palestine, secs. 603–11. 15 Gil, Palestine, secs. 249–50 16 Ibid., 418-419 260

These events explain why, though in theory both Evyatar and the raʾīs al-yahūd, Mevorakh b.

Seʿadya (ca. 1079-82 and 1094-1111), could and should have claimed the right and responsibility to organize pesiqot—charity drives—to redeem the Franks’ Jewish captives, the gaʾon was stuck in no position to do so. He was stuck in a city torn by internal rebellion and separated from the Fatimid metropole. He was so powerless that even his closest followers appealed to the Egyptian leader for help escaping Tyre.17 Therefore, the prerogatives of regional leadership fell on the shoulders of the raʾīs al-yahūd, Mevorakh b. Seʿadya alone.

Mevorakh’s role is evident in the letter from the Jews of Ascalon written around 1100. The letter describes the raʾīs al-yahūd appearing before the other Jewish leaders of Fustat, “his garments rent, sitting on the floor and shedding tears over (the fall of Jerusalem).”18 Mevorakh’s public enactment of the prescribed Jewish rituals of mourning is not just an indication of his desolation; it is calculated to rouse the Jews of his communities to “donate funds for redeeming Torah texts and the people of God.”19

Clearly, Mevorakh believed that it was incumbent on him as the leader of the Jews of the

Fatimid state to protect the interests of Syrian Jews who had lived as Fatimid subjects for most of the twelfth century. Mevorakh’s actions, organizing pesiqot and circular appeals, receiving and responding

17 T-S NS 264.15, ll. 10; 17, in Gil, Palestine, 3:576. A member of the yeshiva based in Tyre wrote a petition c. 1100 to someone close to the raʾīs Mevorakh b. Seʿadya asking for help in leaving Tyre for Fustat and in ransoming his (perhaps Crusader- held) son. This action is only explicable if the yeshiva itself was incapable of helping even its own. T-S NS 264.15, ll. 10; 17, in Gil, Palestine, 3:576. 18 T-S AS 146.3, ll. 10-11, ed. in Gil, Palestine, 2: 285, (doc. 161). 19 Ibid., ll. 11-13 261 to petitions from individual captives20 and dispatching envoys to deliver funds21 demonstrated that he conceived of himself as the regional authority over the community of the Jews of the Latin Levant.

The Flight of the Yeshivah of Palestine to Damascus (1109)

While Mevorakh was organizing pledge drives, Evyatar was on the run. Around 1102, the

Palestinian gaʾon fled Tyre and resettled ninety miles northeast in the Syrian port of Tripoli. Tripoli proved a relatively stable base until 1108, when the Frankish threat became acute and the port’s residents decided to rebel against the rebel qāḍī who controlled the city in favor of the more powerful

Fatimids.22

The Franks subjected the city to a months-long siege anyway. In the midst of this siege,

ʿAmram ha-Kohen b. Aharon, Evyatar’s son-in-law, scribe and the seventh (ranking member of the

Palestinian Academy) (ha-sheviʿi) wrote a petition to the third (ranking member of the Academy) (ha- shelishi), most likely Ṣadoq b. Yeshayahu, in Fustat.23 In the petition, ʿAmram implores Ṣadoq to appeal to the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt, Mevorakh, and beg him to ask the commander of the Fatimid fleet to rescue Evyatar and his children from Tripoli. The petition’s language emphasizes Mevorakh’s close ties to the Fatimid state and the influence he derives from those relations thereby implying that the Palestinian gaʾon is lacking in ties.24 The text exemplifies the powerlessness of the yeshivah of

20 West. Coll. Frag. Cairens 35, in Gil, Palestine, 3:527-530 (doc. 605). The document involves a refugee woman from Jerusalem residing in Tripoli. She mentions that she had petitioned the Nagid (ll.14-15) to ask him to gather funds from his community to support her. 21 Harper 466, published on PGP. This document refers to a pledge drive organized on behalf of the children of a man from Antioch who were likely being held by the Franks. 22 See Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta ʾrīkh Dimashq 226/51–55, 88–92; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10:310–12, 355– 6, 452; Cahen, “La Chronique abrégée d’al-Aẓīmī,” 361–3. 23 See Goldman, “Syrian Notables,” 10. 24 Ibid., 8-12. 262

Palestine at this time, as well as the ascendance of the riʾāsat al-yahūd as the authority with most direct access to the Fatimid state.

Mevorakh failed to intervene in time to save Evyatar—a fact we know because the commander to whom the petitioner referred never arrived in Tripoli. Instead, the gaʾon was captured when the Franks breached the city’s walls, and subsequently he was ransomed by the Jewish community of Damascus.25 In Damascus, his successors would attempt to reestablish the influence of the yeshivah of Palestine over the wider Levant, both Muslim- and Christian-held regions of Syria.

Regional Authority over Latin Syria in the Aftermath of the First Crusade

How did these developments impact day-to-day life for Syrian Jewish leaders who attempted to carry out the basic prerogatives of communal governance (e.g., preventing open transgressions of the social order, providing for the poor, maintaining a kosher slaughterhouse, etc.) in the Latin ports?

Some answers to this question can be found in a letter from ca. 1111 from a claimant to municipal leadership over Latin Acre to Yūsuf b. Yaḥyā, nezer ha-sarim, “crown of the princes” (i.e., a courtier) in

Fustat.26 Our petitioner is the son of the deceased Yaʿaqov, formerly a ḥazzan (cantor) of Acre. He writes that prior to the Crusader conquest, his father, Yūsuf’s father and a number of other officials with ties to the Palestinian yeshivah were political allies in Acre.27

When our writer took over his father’s office, he inherited his allegiance and connections to the Palestinian yeshivah and sought its sanction for his communal leadership. In the recent past, the petitioner recalls, “every time (the Palestinian gaʾon’s) letters came to the community (of Acre) there

25 Ibid., 12-15. 26 T-S 18J3.5, ed. in Gil, Palestine, 3: 511-4; and in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 303-305. 27 Ibid., r. ll. 26-9. Ḥ 263 was a decree for his servant (i.e., the writer) that obligated (the community) to support my livelihood.”28 It becomes clear in the subsequent paragraphs that this decree related to affirming the writer’s privilege to oversee Jewish ritual slaughter in Acre and receive a lucrative salary for that service.

Now that the gaʾon of Palestine was in exile, our writer claims that the community had fallen into disarray. He writes that a pretender, an Ibn al-Qāsh the Alexandrian, now sought to usurp his leadership position (and, thus, cutoff his livelihood). This figure had gathered a group of undesirables to intimidate our petitioner and his allies, despite the fact that, as he writes, “[n]o man has vexed me in my work in all my years of serving the Jewish community (khidmat Yisraʾel).”29 Therefore, facing this unprecedented problem, the writer asks that Yūsuf bring his case before the raʾīs al-yahūd so that, “I may have an official document that stops every one of my opponents (from challenging me) and also appoints me (lit., “(the raʾīs’s) slave”) (as leader).”30 In appealing to the raʾīs al-yahūd for a document of investiture, our writer recognizes him as the regional leader of Latin Acre, the highest authority from whom he derived his station.

The fact that our writer addresses his plea to the Egyptian leader is particularly telling considering that our petitioner’s entire argument for the validity of his claim is based on the fact that he had previously received documents of investiture not from Egypt, but from the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Palestine. Even his personal appeal to Yusūf is rooted in ties between their fathers, both of whom were officials appointed by the yeshivah. Amid the writer’s appeal for continuity in his office as

28 Ibid., ll.34-5. 29 T-S 18J3.5, ll.39-40. 30 Ibid., margins, l. 1. 264 local leader and his invocation of longstanding family alliances between his family and the recipient’s, what is easily (and perhaps intentionally) lost is where the petitioner has innovated: he is no longer turning to the Palestinian gaʾon as his father did. Instead, he adapts to post-conquest realities, dropping his father’s patron, the Palestinian gaʾon, in favor of the head of Egyptian Jewry, the raʾīs al- yahūd.

In the decade following the exile of the yeshivah of Palestine from Tyre, Jews in the Latin

Levant only had one regional leader to whom they could turn for investiture—the raʾīs al-yahūd of

Egypt. The other option—at least from our petitioner’s perspective—was chaos, a world where communal leadership fell to those most willing to use violence and coercion to get it (i.e., Ibn al-Qāsh and his supporters). This letter indicates the extent of local Latin leaders’ continued reliance on the legitimation of Near Eastern regional rabbinic authorities in the first decades following the formation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Revival of the Yeshivah of Palestine (1110-1160s)

The raʾīs al-yahūd did not long remain the sole regional leader to whom Latin Syrian officials could turn. Following the sack of Tripoli, the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Palestine and his followers moved to Damascus, where they settled permanently. Did the gaʾon return to the roles he and his predecessors had long fulfilled as regional authorities over Fatimid and Seljuq Syria? The nature of the sources at our disposal make this impossible to know. The reason for this is simple: the Genizah was located in Fustat, where the heads of the Jews of Egypt (ruʾasāʾ al-yahūd) remained the predominant religious authorities. Therefore, there was little reason for the Damascene geʾonim to write to Fustat

265 when they had few followers there. As a result, little evidence pertaining to the Palestinian yeshivah survives from this period.

There is only one Genizah document from the yeshiva during the first fifteen years the institution was based in Ḥadrak/Damascus. That document is a responsum sent in 1116 from the gaʾon of the yeshiva of Palestine, Shelomo ha-Kohen b. Eliyyahu, brother of the previous gaʾon, Evyatar, to an Egyptian dayyan (judge) in Fustat. While other texts attest to ongoing donations from Egypt to the yeshiva, the dearth of documents coming the other way has led scholars to dismiss the institution’s relevance to Islamicate Jewry at this period.

But the lone responsum may hint at the yeshiva’s ongoing relevance to Jewish life in Islamic

Syria and the Crusader states. The responsum traveled via the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. There is no other plausible way it could have gone from Damascus to Fustat.31 If a letter from the yeshiva could reach Fustat via Frankish territory, it would have been all the easier for yeshiva correspondence to travel the short distance to Crusader cities like Tripoli, Tyre and Acre—the Syrian capital’s historic ports. It is highly unlikely, of course, that this correspondence would have found its way to the

Genizah.

It is the character of the responsum itself that suggests the plausibility of such intra-Shāmī correspondence.32 The gaʾon deploys a hybrid calligraphic style that imitates the norms of both Iraqi geʾonic correspondence and the Fatimid chancery script documents common to twelfth-century

31 The Crusaders controlled all routes of access between Damascus and Mediterranean ports, as well as the land route between Damascus and Egypt. See Appendix 1, Figure 3. 32 BL OR 5535.1, ed. in Gil, Palestine, 3: 541-542 (Doc. 611). 266

Judeo-Arabic petitions from Egypt.33 It has a large top and right margin, a right-center tarjamah (a line including the author’s name and associated titles) after the top margin with little line spacing, a body of text with broad line spacing, and inconsistent stacking of words at the end of lines (see Appendix 2,

Figure 9). The strokes are broad and lucid. The document’s semiotics do not just appeal to the eye; they endow the document with authority, an authority modeled on that of both the Iraqi geʾonim and the Fatimid state.

The contents of the letter are unfortunately fragmentary, but this much can be reconstructed: the gaʾon writes in Hebrew to instruct an Egyptian judge how to handle the case of an ʿaguna, a

“chained woman” ( a wife whose husband had died but whose death could not be proven, leaving the wife without a certificate of divorce, and thus in legal limbo).34 This is an unambiguous assertion of the ongoing relevance of the gaʾon’s legal expertise to the Jewish courts in Egypt, where the raʾīs al- yahūd’s influence was strongest. The gaʾon’s syntax is similarly strident: “Don’t be negligent in this matter,” he writes. “Inform us of all developments.”35

If the gaʾon was confident enough to assert his leadership in Egypt, then it is likely that he did so in the more proximate (and unclaimed) ports of Latin Syria. We do know that trade between

Damascus, Tyre, Tripoli and Acre was booming and likely eclipsed commercial exchanges between

Latin Syria and Egypt. It is plausible, then, that at this time the gaʾon or other regional leaders in

Syria—including negidim/ruʾasāʾ al-yahūd (heads of Syria’s Jews) based in Damascus discussed

33 The tarjamah is right/center, not left, which indicates a geʾonic, not Fatimid, precedent. Furthermore, the left margin is periodically justified, and the stacking of words is inconsistent. Therefore, this comprises a transitional style between what Marina Rustow has called “Hebrew Chancery Script” and the preexisting, Babylonian-style norms. See Rustow, “The Diplomatics of Leadership,” 306–31. 34 For more on this issue and on halakhah related to the ʿagunah cases, see above 221 n. 124. 35 BL OR 5535.1, margin ll. 6-7. 267 below—played a role in the legitimation of the authority of local leaders in the Latin ports. Similar documents do not appear in the Genizah in the subsequent centuries, suggesting that the gaʾon recognized that Egypt was beyond the purview of his regional leadership prerogatives.

A Geʾonic Revival? ʿEzra b. Avraham and Shemuʾel b. ʿElī

We hear very little of the Palestinian geʾonim during the subsequent four decades of the twelfth century. All we know for sure is that there were geʾonim of the Palestinian yeshivah at this period, but their administrative roles and geographic influence are impossible to determine—beyond the fact that such influence clearly did not reach Fustat.36

It is only in the late 1160s that new information about the yeshivah begins to emerge. These sources concern two major figures: the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Palestine, ʿEzra b. Avraham, and his

Iraqi ally, the gaʾon Shemuʾel b. ʿElī. According to the German Jewish traveler Petaḥyahh of

Regnesburg, Shemuʾel had appointed ʿEzra gaʾon of the Palestinian yeshivah. Petaḥyahh claims it is

36 Some scholars have claimed that the yeshivah disappeared during the reign of Maṣliaḥ b. Shelomo (r. 1127-1139), who became raʾīs al-yahūd after moving from Damascus to Fustat, claimed the title of gaʾon (the head of an academy); We have no indication from his vast correspondence, however, that he ever claimed, as Jacob Mann notes, the title of rosh yeshivat ereṣ Yisrael, “the head of the yeshiva of the land of Israel” nor rosh yeshivat ereṣ ha-ṣevi, the (analogous) “head of the yeshiva of the desired land.” This point is not inconsequential: Maṣliaḥ did not claim that title because there was another who still held it: his brother-in-law, the gaʾon Abū Ṭāhir Avraham b. Mazhir, who had remained with other members of the yeshiva of Palestine in Damascus. Mann, Texts and Studies, 1: 255-59. The advantages of modern search engines allowed me to check Mann’s previous findings and confirm his assertions based on current documentary databases. 268

Shemuʾel b. ʿAli, not ʿEzra, who appoints judges in Syria.37 This subordination of the Palestinian yeshivah to the Iraqi one would have been unprecedented; it is impossible to confirm or deny.38

When Benjamin of Tudela describes the city ca. 1168, he portrays the Damascene yeshivah as a seemingly independent institution. He writes of ʿEzra and his yeshivah:

There are around 3,000 Jews in (Damascus), and among them are scholars and wealthy men. And there (resides) the rosh yeshivat ereṣ yisraʾel (head of the yeshivah of Palestine) R. ʿEzra39, and his brother Sar Shalom the av bet din (second in the yeshiva), and R. Yosef the fifth of the yeshiva, and R. Maṣliaḥ rosh ha-seder (a Babylonian title meaning “head of the order”) the exegete, and R. Meir peʾer ha-ḥaverim (“splendor of the ḥaverim”), and R. Yosef b. al-Faltah (?), yesod ha-yeshiva (the “foundation of the yeshiva”), and R. Ḥayman (?) the Parnas and R. Ṣadoq the physician.40

The titles of the hierarchy of the yeshiva of Palestine described here emphasize the institutions continuity with its past. As Mann notes, most of the titles that Benjamin mentions are identical to terms used to describe the hierarchy of the yeshiva of Palestine in the pre-Crusader period.41 Benjamin also stresses the wealth and influence of the Damascene community and its leaders. This presentation

37 Petaḥyah writes: “The head of the yeshiva (academy) is R. Shemuʾel ha-Levi b. ʿAlī, (ʿAlī, his father, having also been the) head of the yeshiva. (Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī) is a prince, full of wisdom of the written and oral Torah…In all the land of Ashur and Damascus, in the cities of Persia and the land of Babylon, (the Jews) have no dayyanim (judges) except those whom R. Shemuʾel, the head of the yeshiva, appoints. (Likewise,) in every city, only he may give permission (to those who wish) to judge or teach. His power reaches to every land, even to the land of Israel (emphasis mine). All hold him in awe.” Travels of Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, ed. A. Benisch (London: The Jewish Chronicle, 1856), 17-18. Ashur includes Northern Mesopotamia, Babylon includes most of modern Iraq, and Damascus includes the entire region of al-Shām; it is common in the Islamic world to refer to a region by its chief city. The borders of the land of Israel are ambiguous, but always encompass the Galilee, Judea, Samaria and (parts of) the coastal plain of Sharon. 38 There is one letter from ʿEzra b. Avraham to Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī that survives. In it, he uses self-deprecating language that Mann and Assaf argue indicates his subordinate status. I find this conclusion unconvincing, since such expressions were not outside contemporary epistolary conventions. See Mann, Texts, 1:251-3. The letter is in Simha Assaf, Letters of R. Samuel b. Eli and his Contemporaries (Heb.) (Jerusalem: 1930), 134. 39 Some manuscripts seem to include a yud and thus read “Azaryah,” but we have other verification in Shmuʾel b. ʿAlī’s letters of R. Shmuʿel b. ʿAlī. 40 The readings, here, are uncertain, because of the manuscript. See Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 48 (according to the manuscript page numbers). 41 One striking exception—as Jacob Mann notes—is R. Maṣliaḥ rosh ha-seder. This title is unambiguously Babylonian. Mann, Texts and Studies, 1: 252. 269 suggests that ʿEzra b. Avraham was a powerful, independent leader—though, we must take into account Benjamin’s general proclivity to portray Near Eastern Jewish communities as validating his theme that “the scepter” has not “departed from Judah” (Genesis 49:10)—that is, that Jews are not a beleaguered, powerless minority, but a community with significant economic and political sway.42

Regardless, both Benjamin and Petaḥyah imply that ʿEzra (or Shemuʾel b. ʿElī) are the regional leaders of the Jewish communities of Syria and Palestine. In Petaḥyahh’s account this claim is explicit.

He enumerates Shemuʾel’s prerogatives there and includes the appointment of judges and other local leaders as well as halakhic guidance to all subordinates. The yeshivah of Palestine (or Iraq) here appears to have (re)claimed all the mid-eleventh-century prerogatives that it had held in greater Syria before the institution of the riʾasat al-yahūd had emerged in Egypt.43

But did these claims have any basis in reality on the ground in Latin Syria? One Genizah document suggests they may have. Recall that in ca. 1170, Ṣadoq b. R. Namer ha-ḥaver in Tiberias wrote to his son-in-law, Abū al-Ḥusayn b. Abū al-Khayr, who had traveled to Fustat. Abū al-Ḥusayn was a tax collector who found himself in debt to the count and countess of Tripoli. Therefore, Abū al-

Ḥusayn fled Latin Palestine, ostensibly to secure financial support from Egyptian Jews. After a year of searching for funds, Abū al-Ḥusayn remained in Egypt.44

Ṣadoq, frustrated with his son-in-law’s inability to rescue his family, lashes out at the miserliness of the Egyptians whose support Abū al-Ḥusayn sought. He writes:

42 See the discussion in 1.3, 87-88. 43 Jacob Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History, 2 vols., eds. Jacob Mann and Gerson D. Cohen (New York: KTAV, 1972) 1: 251-2. 44 See above, 164-167. 270

What (have) the people of Damascus (al-Shām)45, Tyre and Acre done except act in solidarity with the foreigners (i.e., the Egyptian captives taken by Amalric)?! Now then, we said: Perhaps we will not require one who knows you (among the Egyptians to get financial assistance)….But there is no doubt you have enjoyed mixing with the Egyptians, (eating) their food, (drinking) their drinks, and (playing) their games….46

The father-in-law’s frustration is based on the fact that Damascus, Tyre and Acre had exerted themselves on behalf of foreign (Egyptian) captives. It is not the religious elite but the ahl—the

“people”—to whom the father refers here as acting in solidarity with foreign Jews. This statement suggests that Syrian Jews had given substantial material support to the cause of ransoming Egyptians caught up in the Franks’ invasion of Egypt, much as the Egyptians did for Shāmī Jews some eight decades before. The writer’s frustration derives from his resentment that after he and other Syrians acted on behalf of Egyptian Jews, all the latter had done was corrupt his (utterly corruptible) son-in- law.

Who could have organized these Levantine pesiqot on behalf of the Egyptian captives? The inclusion of Damascus in the Ṣadoq’s statement is telling. So is the appellation ḥaver attached to the writer’s father’s name that suggests his family’s longstanding ties to the yeshiva of Palestine. The head of the yeshivah would have been one of the only figures able to bring western Syria’s largest cities—

Tyre, Acre and Damascus—together for such a purpose despite the geographic and political borders that divided them. The other possibility is that the drive was organized by the raʾīs al-yahūd of Syria as discussed below. Either possibility would have required close personal and administrative ties between the Jewish leadership of Tyre, Acre and Damascus to pull a successful ransoming campaign.

45 Here “al-Shām” is translated as Damascus, since, as Goitein correctly translates in the Hebrew, it clearly refers to the city. Tyre and Acre are also in al-Shām, and therefore to restate the region would have been unnecessary. Damascus is frequently referred to by the name of its region. T-S -S 18J2.10, l. 14, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 265-67. 46 Ibid., ll. 16-17. 271

The Negidut of Damascus

Even if ʿEzra did play a role as a regional head of the Jews of Latin Syria, his influence did not long survive him. Shemuʾel b. ʿElī names his son, Avraham, as the head of the yeshivah of Palestine

(ereṣ ha-ṣevi) in a letter from 1191. 47 This is the last evidence we have of the existence of the yeshivah.

Its disappearance from the historical record has remained an unresolved issue in the historiography.

I posit that the reason for the yeshivah’s disappearance stems from the regime change from

Zengid to Ayyubid rule of Damascus in 1174 and the city’s subsequent reemergence as a capital of political administration.48 In 1193, al-Afḍal ʿAlī b. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (r. 1193-1196) became the emir of

Damascus and titular head of the Ayyubid sultanate—an empire that stretched from North Africa to southern Anatolia onto the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Afḍal faced opposition from an entrenched elite in

Damascus. He therefore set out to establish a new governing elite that owed their loyalty directly to him.49

47 Mann argues convincingly that Assaf misunderstood the Hebrew letter from Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī and therefore thought that ʿEzra was the last gaʾon of the yeshiva of Palestine. See Mann, Texts and Studies, 1: 220 n.43; 252-3 n. 14. The letter is ed. in Assaf, Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī, 67-70. As Mann and others have noted, Yehudah al-Ḥarīzī does not mention a yeshiva in Damascus when he notes the local leaders there c. 1215. This is notable because al-Ḥarīzī is otherwise exacting in his documentation of the region’s leadership—if only either to praise or (more frequently) deride them. Goitein argues that one document (TS 10J12.27) suggests some vestige of the yeshiva was still in Damascus during Avraham Maimonides’ (1204-1237) rule. See S.D. Goitein, “Abraham Maimonides and his Pietist Circle,” (Heb.) Tarbiṣ 33, no. 2 (1967), 186-7. The letter is a fascinating appeal to Avraham from a family member of a scholar looking to work in Damascus. It requests that the raʾīs al-yahūd recommend one of the writer’s family members (Barakāt ibn Ismāʿīl) to the “rosh yeshivat gaʾon Yaʾaqov” (T-S 10J12.27 ll.4- 11). Unfortunately, neither the name of the name of the Syrian gaʾon nor the date of the letter’s composition survive. 48 The political geography of the Islamic Near East changed substantially in the decades immediately preceding and following the Ayyubid conquest of Aleppo in 1183. While Syria and Egypt had been bound together for over a century under Fatimid rule, they subsequently endured a century of political separation. When Damascus fell to the Ayyubids in 1174, the city was again a center of administrative control, something that it had been deprived of under the Alepp0-based Zengids’ rule (1154-1174). On these conquests see R. Stephen Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-1260 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), 72-85. 49 Ibid., 91-3. 272

Shortly after he ascended to power, al-Afḍal issued a document of investiture for one such civil servant, Abū al-Maʿālī ʿAbdallah that granted him the headship of the Jews—both Rabbanite and

Qaraʾite—as well as of the Samaritans. His geographic sphere of influence included all of Syria (jamīʿ al-Shām)—a region that would have included both the Latin ports of Tyre and Acre and Aleppo and its environs, where the sultan’s brother and political opponent, al-Ẓāhir, ruled.50 In other words, this document asserted Abū al-Maʿālī’s (and thus al-Afḍal’s) authority over lands that the sultan had yet to conquer.

Who is this Abū al-Maʿālī ʿAbadallāh? His Hebrew name appears in two Genizah documents as ʿOvadya b. ʿUllah.51 One list describes his father both as “the trusted one” and “the trusted one of the rabbinic court.”52 These are honorifics derived from ʿUllah’s Arabic, state-given title (al-shaykh al- thiqah or “the trusted shaykh”), which appears in the Arabic-script decree.53 ʿUlla’s name also appears with the honorifics “friend” (yadid) and “desired one” (raṣui) of the (Palestinian) yeshivah. These honorifics are not titles to formal positions in the yeshivah’s hierarchy; instead, they indicate that

ʿUllah donated generously to the institution. A final honorific is “the splendor of the charitable”

(hadar ha-meʿutar), indicating that he was wealthy and used that wealth to support the Jewish community—meaning its institutions and its poor.54 Abū l-Maʿālī’s brother Ḥalfon was also a “trusted one,” who appears to have been alive at the time of the list’s composition.55

50 Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 53-54. 51 This occurs in ENA 2592.xx. Khan did not give a complete shelf-mark, and I am still searching for the original document. His name, however also appears on another list, T-S 8K22.6, 2v. ll. Ed. on PGP. 52 T-S 8K22.6 ll. 10-11. 53 T-S Ar 38.93 1v. l. 4. 54 Gil, Palestine, 198 55 Unlike his brother and father, his entry does not include zikhrono li-vrakhah, i.e., “of blessed memory”). 273

Abū l-Maʿālī/ʿOvadya b. ʿUllah, then, came from a family of wealthy courtiers who had supported and exercised influence over the Palestinian yeshivah. Abū al-Maʿālī’s own profile reads:

ʿOvadya… the great nagid (ha-nagid ha-gadol), prince of the assembly (sar ha-teʿudah56), the nagid of the land of Israel and Judah, of blessed memory.57

Abu al-Maʿālī here is identified as nagid of the land of Israel (raʾīs al-yahūd of Palestine and Syria—as confirmed below). He is a high-ranking official, yet he bears no titles nor honorifics from the yeshivah.

This is surprising, both because prominent officials almost always received such designations and because his father, ʿUllah, had been a patron of the Palestinian institution. The document of investiture clarifies why he does not bear such honorifics.

The part of the document of investiture translated at the start of this chapter indicated that

Abū al-Maʿālī’s leadership prerogatives included all those of a regional leader. Other parts of the decree inform us further about Abū al-Maʿālī’s prerogatives and the origins of his office:

….Since, oh Shaykh,, the most elevated, unique and distinguished leader, trust of the kingdom (thiqat al-mulk), upright servant of the state, support of rulers, pride of the administrators …Abū al-Maʿālī ʿAbadallāh, son of the trusted elder (al-shaykh al-thiqah) Abū al-Riḍā, son of Faraḥ, … your being granted…(this office to) pass on to your descendants the pride of your rule: the leadership of the community of the Jews and their denominations, the Rabbanites, Qaraʾites and Samaritans in Damascus, the protected city, and all Syria, and al-Salṭ and its district (east of the Jordan river)…. …follow the habits of the he who/those who proceeded you (ʿalá ādah man taqaddamaka) in this office with regard to the execution of judgements, the equitable treatment of notables and the common people, and the administering of justice…58

To summarize: Abū al-Maʿālī was a courtier who had held office in Damascus for some time during which he demonstrated his loyalty to al-Afḍal. His father, as we noted above, was also a courtier,

56 C.f., Isaiah 8.16.; also, Dead Sea Scrolls—see Steven E. Fassberg, “Dead Sea Scrolls: Linguistic Features”, in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, ed. Geoffrey Khan (accessed online). 57 T-S 8K22.6, 2 v. ll. 15-18. 58 T-S 8K22.6, 1 v. 1-18; 2 r. 1-4. 274 though there is no reason to assume he was the raʾīs al-yahūd. It is possible that this document was a renewal of an existing agreement between Abū al-Maʿālī and Ṣalāḥ al-dīn, since dhimmī leaders frequently requested the renewal of a document of investiture following the death of their sovereign.59

The decree instructs the new raʾīs to “follow the habits of those who proceeded you (ʿalá ādah man taqaddamaka) (in this office).” The Arabic man or “who” here, like its English counter-part, could refer to an individual predecessor or to many. Khan speculates that the predecessors are the heads of the Jews in Egypt, but this seems unlikely: There was still a raʾīs al-yahūd in Egypt; the Egyptian leader had only resided within the same political state as Damascus for one generation; and, most importantly, we have no evidence for substantial numbers of Damascene Jews turning to Fustat for

60 legal and/or administrative guidance.

But is also impossible to backdate the office of raʾīs al-yahūd of Syria to a specific time.

Whether there had been a head of Syrian Jews for decades or its creation was relatively recent we cannot say. What we can say is that Abū al-Maʿālī’s prerogatives include all of the duties expected of a regional Jewish leader. That is, while it is possible that the Palestinian yeshivah still technically existed, in practical terms it had lost all power. Abū al-Maʿālī and his Ayyubid ally had seized what would have been the yeshivah’s most important prerogatives as an institution of regional leadership.

In other words, the reason Abū al-Maʿālī bears no titles from the yeshivah of Palestine is that it had

59 Marina Rustow, “The legal status of dhimmīs in the Fatimid East: A view from the palace in Cairo,” in The Legal Status of ḎimmĪ-s in the Islamic West, ed. Maribel Fierro and John Tolan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 311-2. 60 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 466. Damascus had only fallen to Saladin in 1172; much of the rest of Syria took nearly another two decades to subdue. On the lack of Damascene documents in the Genizah, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:20; there are also few trade letters from Damascus to suggest that communication between the regions Jewish communities may have been limited. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 213-220. 275 functionally ceased to exist. It disappeared from the historical record because the negidut of

Damascus made its role redundant.

Abū al-Maʿālī’s victory was fleeting. His patron, al-Afḍal, lacked basic competence in both governance and war. Three years after this decree was issued, al-Afḍal’s brother, al-Ẓāhir, easily dispatched his brother’s armies and claimed his Syrian territories and Damascus.61 When Muslim regimes changed, the dhimmī courtiers of the previous regime were often replaced—as we saw in the case of Maimonides’ first term as raʾīs al-yahūd under the Ayyubids.62 We have no evidence of whether this occurred in Abū al-Maʿālī’s case. While the title “raʾ(ī)s” is given to a figure who follows Abū al-

Maʿālī’s on the genealogy list, the land, community or bureau over which he was raʾīs is not indicated.63 That said, it is possible that the position continued to exist for another generation or more.

What we learn from these documents, then, is that in 1193 Abū al-Maʿālī, a prominent, wealthy

Damascene Jew in the employ of the state, was appointed the head of the Jews of Syria—including, in name, the Jews of Latin Palestine (jamīʿ al-Shām/yisraʾel ve-yehudah). Based on his leadership prerogatives, it is clear that the yeshivah of Palestine ceased to have any substantive administrative role after this point—a conclusion reinforced by the fact that the yeshivah is never heard from again in the historical record. Because of the geographic biases of the Genizah sources, we are here left with a list of prerogatives, but no indication they were carried out within the Ayyubid realm, much less in the Latin ports. Certainly it is plausible that Abū al-Maʿālī and his predecessors and successors

61 Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, 94-98. 62 See above, 146-148. 63 T-S 8K22.6 v. 2 ll. 19-20. 276 exercised some influence in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, both because their title gave them the right to do so, and because there was regular communication between these proximate regions.

Maimonides and the Rabbinic Leadership of Tyre and Acre (1165-1204)

If the rabbinic leaders of Damascus were exercising regional leadership prerogatives over

Latin Syria’s Jews at this period (1170-1204), they were not alone. First, they faced the geʾonim of Iraq and Palestine. But the more serious competition came in the form of a young leader in Egypt who had cultivated personal ties to the Latin ports’ rabbinic elite and whose brilliance was earning him

Mediterranean-wide renown.

The raʾīs al-yahūd of Damascus and the geʾonim of Iraq and Syria had formal claims based on state titles to Latin Syria. For most of this period, Moses Maimonides lacked both title and claim.

When Maimonides first arrived in Latin territory in 1165, he was a twenty-seven-year-old Andalusī refugee, a crypto-Jew who had converted to Islam. He fled Almohad Fez and arrived around 1165 in

Latin Acre.64 Maimonides only lived in Acre for less than a year, but the personal relationships he cultivated between his family and Levantine Jewish leaders persisted for generations after his death.

They informed the role he, his son and his grandson played as regional leaders over the Latin ports.

Recall that Maimonides came to Egypt at an opportune—though precarious—moment: The

Crusaders attacked Fatimid Egypt in 1163, 1164 and 1167-1169. The last invasion resulted in the capture of a many Jews from the city of Bilbays. The Franks took these captives back to the Levant. The

64 Kramer, Maimonides, 83-145; Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009), 7-9; and Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man, 29-32. Davidson says it is impossible to confirm when Maimonides stayed in the Holy Land, only that he did so. He disputes the validity of the letter. For our purposes, the point is that he did spend time in Latin Palestine and that his personal familiarity with Rabbis like Eliyyahu of Acre demonstrates that he had established relationships there. 277 responsibility for organizing the ransoming drive fell to Maimonides. Where was the raʾīs al-yahūd— the leader who should have been handling such pesiqot? There may have been an interregnum period between the reigns of the raʾīs al-yahūd Netanʾel ha-Levi b. Moshe (1159-1169) and his brother Abū

Zikrī Sar Shalom b. Moshe ha-Levi (r. 1169-1171; 1173-1195). Alternatively, Sar Shalom may have been a raʾīs who neglected his responsibilities—a trait for which he is criticized in Genizah letters.65

What matters is that this is the first time we see Maimonides functioning as something akin to a regional authority over Latin Syria. Recall that in an epistle to Jewish communities in the Egyptian rīf (countryside), Maimonides (or his scribe, Mevorakh b. Natan) writes:

We have written to two dayyans in al-Shām, two honored princes, the judges, the honorable (ones), our master and our teacher, the magnificent Ḥayyim ha-dayyan the brilliant scholar, crown of wisdom, champion of understanding; and our master and teacher Efrayim ha-dayyan … (similar honorifics follow) …. The judges are undertaking (to assist) the prisoners….66

Maimonides here articulates the mechanisms of a trans-regional ransoming campaign to bring

Egyptian prisoners back from Syria—one not dissimilar from the one that ʿEzra b. Avraham likely organized contemporaneously. In this context, the praise that Maimonides heaps on the two local rabbinic leaders of Latin Syria’s largest Jewish communities (Tyre and Acre), is a form of legitimation of their authority, though one that in this context is for internal Egyptian consumption. That does not mean that Maimonides functioned as the regional leader of Latin Syria at this time. But we do see this leadership in an incipient form.

65 See the edited edition of Megillat Zuṭṭa in Adolf Neubaur, “Egyptian Fragments,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 8 (1895–96): 541–61. This scroll describes Sar Shalom (as the majority of scholars identify him) as exploiting his position as raʾīs to further his own material gain. See also Marina Rustow, "Sar Shalom ben Moses ha-Levi,” Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 66 T-S 16.9, ll. 7-10. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 314-5. 278

Maimonides subsequently held the office of raʾīs al-yahūd from 1171 until 1173, but he was then forced out by Sar Shalom.67 Maimonides’ official title, however, seems to have held little bearing for the role he played as an ally to Syrian rabbis attempting to exert their authority over their local populations. This is evident from the early 1170s, when Maimonides corresponded with one such colleague, Rabbi Efrayim of Tyre.

One letter between Maimonides and R. Efrayim highlights the Egyptian leader’s role in legitimating his Syrian subject’s authority. Maimonides’ language choice and the letter’s hortatory tone suggests that this was an epistle intended to be read out loud in his synagogue.68 The epistle concerns ḥol ha-moʿed, “the profane (days) of the festival,” the days of Sukkot or Passover that are not full days of rest but are still considered part of the holidays. Jewish religious law dictates refraining from certain kinds of business on ḥol ha-moʿed. Businessmen in Crusader Tyre were insisting on continuing to do business as usual, taking advantage of leniencies enumerated in the law to protect

Jews from devastating financial loss. Efrayim and his supporters, in response to these infractions, took the extreme step of issuing a ḥerem, a ban of excommunication, against any Jew in Tyre who continuing to work as they had before, violating ḥol ha-moʿed.

Tyre’s leading Jewish citizens, as we know, were well-to-do merchants.69 Not surprisingly, then, Efrayim faced significant opposition from the mercantile elite of his community who had the most to lose from his decree. They could have incurred substantial losses as a result of not being able to buy and sell wares quickly during the period of rest. Maimonides’ response to Efrayim must be

67 See above 277 n. 65. 68 See Outhwaithe, "Lines of Communication," 183-198. 69 See chapter 3.2. 279 quoted at length in order to access the strategies he employed in response to the merchants’ challenge and his motivations for doing so:

Concerning the matter of ḥol ha-moʿed, you (i.e., R. Efrayim) acted correctly in issuing this ḥerem, and it is forbidden to annul this (decree of) excommunication, for there is no permission (to do work on ḥol ha-moʿed) except for the sake of a legal obligation (miṣvah) or great need (i.e., to avoid devastating financial loss). But to permit the transference (of merchandise)—no such thing is allowed!...To permit thus violations of ḥol ha-moʿed entirely, like the minim (“heretics,” i.e., Qaraʾite Jews) do, God forbid this should happen in Israel, especially in a place where there is a great scholar among the sages of Israel like you! Indeed, I say to all of the land of Israel and its satellites that because you reside there, blessed be the Lord who does not stop a savior from working for you today. Therefore, all of you (the congregation) need to make an effort concerning this (decree), and if anyone who trespasses (the decree), you must remain (at least) four cubits from him…. And, finally, I will send them (i.e., the merchants of Tyre) a letter concerning this matter.70

Maimonides opens the letter by endorsing Efrayim’s position unequivocally. He then turns to praise

Efrayim for his wisdom. These lines should not be read as evidence of the high regard in which

Maimonides held Efrayim.71 They instead reflect the rhetorical strategy of a regional leader wanting to boost the legitimacy of his subject and ally. In doing so, he hoped to contribute to Efrayim’s effort to assert control over the merchants who had long led their community.

What was the basis of Maimonides claim to coerce the Jews of Tyre? The fact that he was

Maimonides—one of the greatest scholars of his age and a figure whose reputation inspired reverence among Jews living in surrounding regions of the Arabic-speaking world. Efrayim’s status is derived here from his association with Maimonides. Yet Maimonides recognizes that Efrayim’s words and

70 Shilat, Iggerot ha-RaMBaM, 193. 71 Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom 52-53. For Maimonides’ epistle in which he dismisses the caliber of scholarship in Palestine and other areas of the Near East. See Shilat, Iggerot ha-RaMBaM, 491-8 (doc. 34). Maimonides here is addressing the scholars of the French community of Lunel. 280 even this one epistle may still be insufficient to overcome the economic elite’s opposition. He therefore adds: “I will send them a letter concerning this matter.” “Them” here indicates the Jewish community of Latin Tyre in general, and Efrayim’s opponents more specifically. What kind of “letter” could this be? Perhaps it was an epistle on the laws of ḥol ha-moʾed. Perhaps it was something akin to a document of investiture that would reaffirm Efrayim’s position as leader of his community. In either case, we see Maimonides functioning here in the practical capacity of a regional leader who was committed to upholding the rulings of leaders who derived (at least part of their) authority from him.

The Limits of Rabbinic Authority beyond the State

Did the merchants of Tyre yield to Maimonides? Unfortunately, we cannot say. Recent scholarship has argued convincingly that the ḥerem was often utterly ineffectual in achieving its ends.72 Frequently, this lack of efficacy resulted from the local community’s refusal to conform to the statutes of the excommunication (e.g., as above, “if anyone who trespasses (the decree), you must remain (at least) four cubits from him”). It is possible that the merchants of Tyre pulled off such a coup.

Maimonides recognized the limitations of his authority in other responsa (teshuvot) that he sent to Efrayim and—after their master died—Efrayim’s students. On a number of occasions, Efrayim and/or his students attempted to proscribe longstanding local religious customs in Tyre that they believed to be heretical. They wrote to Maimonides to confirm the legal basis for their opposition to these customs and to solicit his support for proscribing them.

72 E.g., Ray, The Sephardic Frontier, 135; 173. Ray notes, in a region comparable to the one discussed here (a territory that Christians recently conquered from Muslims), that rabbinic authorities were often incapable of enforcing their decrees. See also Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 204-206; 230-231. 281

For example, Efrayim et al. attempted to prevent Tyre’s residents from reading the Scroll of

Esther twice over two days for the holiday of Purim. According to the halakha, the scroll should be read once in cities that had walls at the time of the Prophet Joshua, or once on the following day in cities that did not have walls in Joshua’s time. 73 Since it was unclear whether Tyre had walls in

Joshua’s time, the local people read the scroll on both days, saying a blessing over it twice, once for each respective reading. Maimonides, responding to Rabbi Efrayim, notes that the local custom involves a berakhah she-eynah ṣarikhah, “a superfluous blessing,” which is asor de-oraita, “forbidden according to the laws of the Torah,” because it results in using God’s name in vain. Having made the case that this act violates one of the most central tenets of Judaism, Maimonides continues:

But if the public—the majority of people—prevail and cleave to the minhag (custom) and continue saying the blessing, it is obligatory for all the wise and God-fearing people to turn from this (local practice), and refuse to answer “amen” to this blessing and similar (redundant blessings). And anyone who answers ‘amen’ risks allowing a redundant blessing (berakhah le-vaṭalah), or dubious blessings with regard to their incumbency (berakhot mashkūkah fī wujūbiha), indeed (this violator) will be punished in the future.74

Maimonides here recognizes the limitations of his and R. Efrayim’s authority, conceding that the people may choose to continue to violate the law despite the local and regional leaders’ opposition; therefore, instead of advising R. Efrayim and his students to issue a ḥerem, Maimonides tells them to abstain from engaging in the forbidden practice. The message is clear: the violators will get what’s coming to them in the (amorphous) future, but Maimonides and Efrayim themselves will not (read: cannot) prevent the practice or punish the reprobates in the present.

73 Blau, Teshuvot ha-RaMBaM, 221, ll.3-4 (doc. 124). 74 Ibid., ll. 14-22 (emphasis mine). 282

Why, then, did Maimonides make a stand in the first scenario concerning ḥol ha-moʾed?

Perhaps because Efrayim had already issued a ḥerem and it presented an opportunity both to legitimize the influence of his subordinate ally in Tyre and to undermine the entrenched influence of

Tyrian merchants. Maimonides was well-connected with Egyptian merchant communities and may have held particular sway over this class.75 Then again, perhaps Maimonides calculated that because

Efrayim had already enacted the ḥerem, he would lose more by abandoning his ally and their professional ties than he would if his ḥerem proved ineffective. Maimonides was a pragmatist. While his opponents claimed authority over Latin and Islamic Syria based on formal title, the Egypt-based sage acted to assert his influence in the Levant through his proxies—men who knew Maimonides personally. These local leaders also recognized that many of their city’s residents revered Maimonides for his scholastic reputation. Maimonides was able to convert his scholarly prestige and social capital

(jāh) into political authority, playing the role of regional leader over Syria by legitimating the rulings of those to whom he delegated (formally or informally) local authority.

But there were limits to what Maimonides could do for his allies. This was also true in Egypt, but to a lesser extent for in Cairo-Fustat Maimonides served at the royal court and was the personal physician of the Sultan’s right-hand man. In such a capacity, Maimonides could have had recourse to state coercion if the situation demanded. By contrast, Latin Syria lay beyond the rule of the Ayyubid

Sultans; therefore, all he could do for his allies there was assert their legitimacy based on the fact that he—the greatest mind of his age—supported their position.

Conceding the Latin Ports: Shemuʾel b. ʿEli in Syria

75 Goitein, “Maimonides: Man of Action,” 162-165. 283

Did Maimonides’ opponents recognize his influence over the Latin ports? A letter from

Shemuʾel b. ʿElī suggest that his most prominent and vociferous opponent did.

Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī was the first Iraqi gaʾon since Hayya b. Sherira (939-1038) whom the Genizah documents substantiate attempted to project his influence across the wider Islamic world.76 The semiotics of Shemuʾel’s letters substantiate his broader ambitions by imitating Hayya Gaʾon’s style and associating his stature with that of his predecessor (see Appendix 2, Figure 11).77 Jewish elites may have thus recognized in Shemuʾel’s writings the textual manifestation of the Iraqi gaʾon’s claim to leadership of the wider Islamicate Jewish world.

Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī did not limit his imitation of earlier geʾonim to aesthetics. His letters demonstrate that he was proactive in appointing peqidim (local representatives of the yeshivah in charge of collecting donations) and dayyanim (judges). Shemuʾel also made such appointments in

Islamic Syria. 78 These appointments were the practical expression of his ambition to attain regional leadership. Those designated communal leaders recognized that they were given these honors by the grace of the gaʾon. The gaʾon in turn relied on them for donations.79 In this context, Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī wrote a revealing letter to the communities of Syria in 1191. The letter is divided into three sections: first, a polemic against the Baghdadi exilarchate; then a recommendation for Shemuʾel’s close adviser

76 In fact, the Genizah retains few documents related to the Iraqi geʾonim during the century between Hayya and Shemuʾel’s respective reigns. The evidence of Shemuʾel’s ambitions reaching even Egypt (perhaps one reason why so many of his documents survive) is BL OR 5542.35, which Moshe Gil argues is an appeal from Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī to the community of Fustat. See Moshe Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 2:206 doc. 77. 77 Marina Rustow and Tamer el-Leithy have argued convincingly that the documents of prominent personalities were kept and subsequently deposited in the Genizah for the purpose of imitation. See Marina Rustow, “A Petition to a Woman at the Fatimid Court, 413-4 A.H./1022-3 C.E.,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 73, no. 1 (2010), 1-27. On analyzing the life-cycle of documents via source survival, see El-Leithy, “Living Documents, Dying Archives,” 424-425. 78 See below n. 80. 79 For the social-historical importance of this exchange, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:5-40; Rustow, Heresy and the Politics, 67-108; and Ben Sasson, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community. 284 and future successor, the av beit din Zekharyah b. Berakhʾel; and, finally, a plea for financial support for the yeshivah. 80

Although the letter is addressed to the communities of al-Shām (i.e., the Levant), none of the cities under Frankish rule are mentioned.81 This seems strange, since the Latin ports hosted some of the largest and most populous and prominent Jewish communities in Syria outside Damascus. Part of the reason Shemuʾel did not include them may have been that the letter was written in the midst of the Third Crusade (1189-1192).82 But we have seen that war rarely prevented trade and thus routes of communication. The more important factor was likely that the leading rabbinic figures in Acre and

Tyre—R. Efrayim of Tyre and his students and R. Eliyyhau of Acre and his—were close associates of

Maimonides, and therefore had no need for a second regional authority for legitimation.

From the late 1170s until his death in 1204, Maimonides was the most influential regional leader of the Jews of Acre and Tyre. The reason for this was not because of his formal title or even association with the Ayyubid court—factors that were critical in an intra-Egyptian context.

Maimonides’ influence over the Latin ports, on the other hand, derived from the prestige and awe of his person and scholarship—a reputation that local leaders could use to legitimize their leadership by association. By contrast, Shemuʾel b. ʿAli’s both held a formal title and was embraced as regional leader in surrounding areas of Islamic Syria, but he never seems to have inspired such loyalty in the

80 Ed. in Assaf, Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī, 49-57. The page numbers are according to a manuscript of letters that were written by Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī and subsequently copied (which is the form we have them in). The Polemic: 12, v., ll. 10-23; l. 13, r., ll. 1-23; l. 13, v. ll. 1-24; l. 30(!) r., ll. 1-17; recommendation: 30, r., ll. 18-35; l. 30 v. ll. 1-3; donations r. l. 30, v., ll. 3-18 . אלרקה, אלקלעהת סרו̣ ג, מנב̣ ג, אלבירה, בזאעה, תדמרת, חמה, חמץ, בעלבק, אלרחא, חראן The letter mentions the settlements of 81 Shemuʾel concludes “ve-kol ereṣ soryah”—i.e., “and all the lands of Syria”. Some of these towns must have hosted quite small Jewish communities since, as Assaf notes, they are not mentioned elsewhere in the Genizah. See Assaf, Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī, 50, 12 r. : ll.15-16. 82 Acre fell briefly to the Muslims, but returned to Christian hands in 1191. Tyre remained in Crusader control throughout this period. Both cities faced constant warfare until the peace treaty was signed. 285

Latin ports. This is likely because he lacked personal connection to the cities’ leadership who already were loyal to Maimonides.

Conclusion

In the aftermath of the First Crusade, no central rabbinic authority existed in Latin Palestine.

The gaʾon of the Palestinian yeshivah was trapped in war-torn Tyre, and the geʾonim of Baghdad had fallen into obscurity. Therefore, the Jews of Latin Syria turned to the raʾīs al-yahūd to fulfill the roles of a regional leader—most notably, running pesiqot—which would otherwise have been shared between him and the gaʾon. Subsequently, local Jewish leaders who had relied on the Palestinian geʾonim for appointments to their leadership positions turned instead to Egypt for the legitimation of their authority.

In the 1110s, the yeshivah of Palestine reemerged and likely played an active role in the rabbinic politics of the Crusader states. Unfortunately, the Fustat-based Genizah provides little evidence for the intra-Syrian correspondence that could contradict or verify this theory. The

Palestinian yeshivah was revitalized in the 1170s, only to disappear in 1193, when the Damascene courtier Abū al-Maʿālī became the raʾīs al-yahūd of the Jews of Syria. We similarly have no evidence of the possible influence exercised by the city’s ruʾasāʾ al-yahūd (heads of the Jews of Syria), including

Abū al-Maʿālī.

That said, in the last third of the twelfth century, neither the yeshiva of Palestine nor its allies in Iraq could compete with the influence that Maimonides exercised in Latin Syria. That influence was based on personal ties between the ports’ leaders and the young Andalusian exile. Maimonides invoked these personal connections when he sought to organize pesiqot in the aftermath of the fall of

286

Bilbays in 1169. Subsequently, as Maimonides rose to prominence, the leaders of the Latin ports, including R. Efrayim of Tyre and R. Eliyyahu of Acre, turned to him to legitimate their authority.

These relationships between Maimonides and the Latin leaders set important precedents that would shape the contest for Jewish regional authority over Latin Syria during the subsequent century.

Maimonides son and grandson would continue to claim his role as overseer of the Latin ports, drawing on Maimonides’ popularity with local Syrians to enforce their decrees.

But there were also important differences between religious authority in these two centuries.

Whereas during the course of the first hundred years of Latin rule, the communities of Acre and Tyre neither produced nor hosted rabbinic scholars capable of commanding the kind of prestige necessary to assert independence from the institutions of regional rabbinic authority in the surrounding Islamic

Near East, in the thirteenth century, some of the most prominent rabbis in the Christian world took up residents in Acre. These figures would struggle to establish their own autonomy and would adapt their philosophical and legal positions in order to win over the Arabic-speaking majority of their communities.

287

4.2: Microcosm of the Mediterranean Part II: The Emergence of Latin Acre (1204-1285)

Sometime between 1270 and 1285,83 a perplexing case of Levirate marriage came before a

Jewish court in the Syrian port city of Jubayl—a city then controlled by the Cairo-based Mamluks.84 In brief, a pre-pubescent girl and her sister were engaged and married (respectively) to two brothers.

When the husband of the older sister died, the law obligated the younger sister to perform a legal act of renouncing (miʾun) her betrothed.85 In defiance of the law, the child bride refused to relinquish her groom, declaring, “I will never renounce this man!”86

The scholars of Jubayl wanted to physically coerce the pre-pubescent girl to renounce her marriage, but they were unsure whether the law permitted them to do so. Their uncertainty and the possibility of public spectacle led them to turn the case over to the rabbinic court of Latin Acre.87

83 The start date is Joshua Prawer’s, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 281, n. 85. He notes that the rabbinic scholar Naḥmanides is mentioned in this responsa as “of blessed memory”—meaning it must be from after his death in 1270. The latter date, 1285, is mine. In that year David Maimonides, the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt, was forced flee to Acre with some of his prominent followers (see below). Since he was a leading halakhist and is not mentioned in the responsum among the scholars consulted, it is unlikely to have been written after that date. 84 The case is relayed in a question to Shelomo Ibn Adret and has been collected in edited volumes of his responsa. See Shelomo ibn Adret, Sheʾelot u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba, ed. Aharon Zalzanik, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1997), 6:15-17 (n. 69). Jubayl or Byblos had been under Crusader rule for over a century and a half (although it was occupied by Salāḥ al-Dīn before being recovered by the Third Crusade). It was taken by the Egyptian-based Mamluks in 1266. Prawer argues that the reference is not to Byblos since the scholar writing the query used the Arabic name for the city (Jubayl— This argument is not convincing. It derives from Prawer’s assumption .(גבל—instead of the Hebrew one (Geval (גביל (addressed elsewhere) that Arabic-speaking Jews were a small minority in the Crusader states. See Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 280-1. 85 The surviving brother was now legally obligated to marry the older sister; however, since the groom and his widowed sister-in-law were legally siblings, Jewish law dictated he could neither marry the older sister nor remain betrothed to the younger. The discussion of this issue takes place in TB, Yevamot, 109, A; 29, A. These are the passages cited in the Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 6:16. 86 See Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 6: 15. 87 This is the central issue in the query. The position of those who support coercion is based on the concept in an analogous case that “all instruction (to renounce a husband) is (physical) coercion”; therefore, because of this precedent, the court could coerce the girl. This argument is based on Talmud Bavli, Yevamot, 110 A. Both the questioner and (ultimately) the Rashba reject this analogy. 288

The court of Acre affirmed the decision of the lower court of Byblos. But not all the local scholars agreed. One dissenter wrote to Shelomo ibn Adret, the leading rabbi sage of the

Mediterranean world who was based in Barcelona, (1235-1310) and attempted to gain the Iberian scholar’s support for his position that the young girl could not be coerced. The Acre rabbi explained to

Ibn Adret that the reason the case had been brought to Latin Acre was that:

It is the custom (minhag) of all the sages of the land of Israel and Iraq that when they are asked a question, not one of them is willing to make a decisive ruling (yaḥtom bah). Therefore, they say, “[t]he scholars of Acre will instruct us on such-and-such (a case).”88

The implication of the Acre scholar’s statement is clear: Acre’s rabbinic court was now the reigning regional Jewish authority for Palestine, Syria and perhaps even regions of Iraq. It was to this court that rabbinic scholars in both Muslim- and Christian-ruled Jewish communities in those regions turned to legitimate their positions. The dissenter therefore turned to the most renowned scholar of his age, whose voice alone might convince Acre’s rabbis to reevaluate their ruling.

The dissenter’s comments about Acre’s regional leadership are made in passing, a fact he seems to take for granted. But the idea of Acre—for centuries a merchants’ city with little tradition of great scholarship—as a center of scholarship would have been inconceivable a century before.89 When and how had Latin Acre become this center? Why would Near

Eastern Jews accept the leadership of predominantly European scholars? Where were the

88Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 6:15. 89 Acre is mentioned in many Fatimid-era Genizah documents, but as a center of trade, not a city of religious scholarship. It was known in similar terms in the Islamic World. See F. Buhl, "ʿAkkā," Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman et al. (Brill Online, 2014). 289 long-standing regional leaders of the Near East? The gaʾon of Baghdad? The raʾīs al-yahūd of

Egypt? The Babylonian exilarch?

This chapter traces the evolution of Acre’s emergence over the course of the thirteenth century. It begins in 1204, when Avraham Maimonides was the effective regional leader of the Latin ports. He appointed and legitimized the rulings of European rabbis in both

Egypt and Acre. He also used his popularity among the Latin ports’ Arabic-speaking majority to suppress any opposition from his European subjects to the works of his father, Moses.

Nevertheless, under Avraham’s rule, the city of Acre took its first steps towards regional leadership, when a controversy erupted in 1235 over the role of a peripatetic nasi (claimant to

Davidic ancestry) who attempted to usurp the prerogatives of both Acre’s court and Avraham

Maimonides. The controversy brought Acre’s European and Arabophone rabbinic leaders together to issue a decree that they declared was applicable to “their land”—i.e., Latin (and perhaps Greater) Syria. But this was a second-tier form of regional leadership, since both the

Europeans and their Arabic-speaking counterparts recognized Avraham as their raʾīs al-yahūd in the same decree.

These events provided the foundation of Acre’s leadership. Subsequently, European scholars of the highest caliber continued to immigrate from northern France and Catalonia to

Latin Acre, creating a growing community of elite scholars in the port. These scholars were able to win over the local Arabic-speaking population because 1) most of them were Iberian or

Provençal and therefore shared many of the Islamicate norms of the local Syrians and 2)

Acre’s population had been Mediterraneanized; that is, as we have seen, after over a century

290 of Latin rule, while most Jews remained Arabic speakers, their religious practices—like their economic networks and political norms—reflected the influences of the wider world of

Mediterranean Jewry. These factors catalyzed the emergence of Acre as a center of regional rabbinic authority from the 1270s until the city’s fall in 1291.

Avraham Maimonides, Head of the Jews of Latin Syria (1200-1237)

The Europeans Arrive in Acre (1200-1219)

Recall that Saladin liberated Jerusalem in 1187 and subsequently, Jews and Muslims were permitted to resettle there. Following the restoration, Jews from across the Near East settled in the city. Rabbis from southern and northern France soon joined them. 90 The new Jewish settlement in

Jerusalem proved short-lived. By 1219, the armies of the Crusader states were again threatened the

Ayyubids. The Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil (r. 1218-1238) believed that the Franks would soon attack

Jerusalem and decided to destroy the city’s walls. He hoped to prevent the Christians from taking a well-fortified urban center that they would then be able to easily defend. As a result, most of the local residents fled the (now defenseless) city.91 Later, al-Kāmil traded Jerusalem to the Holy Roman

Emperor, Frederick II, for a ten-year peace. The Franks banned Jews from living in the city for the nearly two decades (1229-1244) they ruled there.92

90 Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 69-70; 75-80. See also Reiner, ʿAliyah, 50-60. Al-Ḥarizi in his maqāmah notes that there was a substantial community of Europeans in Jerusalem when he visited there. See al-Ḥarizi, Taḥkemoni, xlvi. 91 Prawer, Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 85-7. 92 Adler 2559.178 ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 300-302. The letter writer implies that the Christians were inclined to completely forbid Jews even coming on pilgrimage to Jerusalem at this time, but that Jewish contacts were able to secure this privilege. See ll. 3-5. 291

After al-Kāmil destroyed Jerusalem’s walls, many of the European rabbis who had settled in the Holy City resettled in Latin Acre.93 Why did they choose Acre? The choice was not an obvious one.

The port—according to Maimonides and the traditions of local Syrian Jews—was outside the land of

Israel.94 Acre had no tradition of great scholarship. It was an unruly metropolis committed to commerce and the production of commodities. Acre had other major advantages. First, its economy was booming; therefore, its local Jewish community was wealthy and had the means to provide for rabbinic scholars. Second, it was the destination of trade and pilgrimage routes that reached across the Mediterranean. Because of this complex and vibrant network, European scholars would be able to communicate with leading rabbinic figures across the Jewish world. And, third, the Jews in Acre did not have to worry about state persecution. The Latin principalities were too divided and/or too indifferent to religious difference to restrict Jewish immigration, impose anti-Jewish legislation and/or proscribe Talmud study. Avraham Maimonides took advantage of the presence of European rabbis in

Ayyubid Alexandria and Latin Acre to appoint them as judges over these cities’ Arabic-speaking communities.

93 Reiner, ʿAliyah, 69-73. 94 Maimonides argued in Mishneh Torah that since areas like Tyre were never conquered by the Israelites, they were not part of the land of Israel. This position is also evident in Maimonides’ responsa to Rabbi Efrayim. This view was shared by most Arabic-speaking Jews in the city as is indicated by the fact that Jews from Acre would bury their dead a few miles south in Haifa because it was considered part of the land of Israel. It was also the position in the twelfth century of Evyatar gaʾon, which is why he traveled from Tyre to Haifa to oversee pilgrimage festivals. For the Israelite conquest defining the borders of the land of Israel, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Ḥilkhot Terumot 1.b. For Maimonides’s responsa regarding the borders of the land of Israel, see Responsa of Maimonides (Judeo-Arabic), 3 vols., ed. Joshua Blau (Jerusalem, 1957), 1:228-247, doc. 127-131. For Jews being buried in Haifa because it was part of the land of Israel and for Evyatar’s traveling to Haifa see Gil, “Scroll of Evyatar” and Prawer, History of the Jews of the Latin Kingdom, 253. 292

A Maimonidean Leader and his Anti-Maimonidean Dependents

When Moses Maimonides died in 1204, his son Avraham (1185-1237) was only eighteen-years old. Nevertheless, he was immediately affirmed as raʾīs al-yahūd. The riʾāsat al-yahūd (headship of the

Jews) subsequently became a hereditary office that descendants of Maimonides continued to occupy for over two centuries.

Avraham Maimonides, like his father, demanded that the Islamicate Jews under his leadership respect the European scholars who settled among them.95 Moses Maimonides had held a positive opinion of the caliber of rabbinic scholarship in Catalonia (going so far as to suggest, in one epistle, that the scholars of Provence would soon guide the future of the Jewish people). His son was more circumspect after Provence became a hotbed of anti-Maimonidean sentiment in the early-thirteenth century.96 These reservations, however, did not prevent Avraham from appointing Europeans to judgeships and upholding their rulings and their position when they faced challenges to their authority.

Avraham Maimonides was loyal to his appointees, but he was frequently distracted by ideological and political struggles at home. Avraham was a pietist and mystic deeply influenced by contemporary Sufism. He was also an Aristotelian rationalist and nature philosopher. He therefore

95 Russ-Fishbane notes the great veneration that Maimonides had for French rabbis. See Russ-Fishbane, Abraham Maimonides, 82 n. 52. One example of this reverence can be seen in Maimonides’ epistle to the Provençal Rabbi Pinḥas ha- dayyan. See Shilat, Iggerot ha- Rambam, II: 433-464. See also his correspondence with the Alexandria-based European rabbi Anaṭoli ha-dayyan in ibid., 465-73. 96 Maimonides makes this statement in his Epistle to the Sages of Lunel (in Languedoc). See Shailat, Iggerot ha- Rambam, הרי אני מודיע לכם שלא נשאר בזמן הזה הקשה אנשים להרים דגל משה ולדקדק בדברי רבינא ורב אשי אלא אתם וכל .(II: 555-564 (558-59 Some scholars have interpreted kol he-ʿarim sevivoteykhem—“all the cities around (the scholars of הערים אשר סביבותיכם. Lunel)”—to refer to all Europe; however, this line probably refers to the unique rabbinic culture that emerged under significant Islamicate Jewish influence in Catalonia and Provence (areas of the “Catalonian” school). 293 embraced an “intellectual mysticism” that recognized no inherent opposition between pietism and rationalism. 97

Avraham’s advocacy of “intellectual mysticism” provoked controversy at home and abroad. He had to fight a two-front war that lasted for most of his reign as raʾīs al-yahūd. On one flank, the raʾīs al- yahūd faced local Egyptian opposition to his pietistic and liturgical reforms;98 on the other, he confronted a Mediterranean-wide anti-Maimonidean movement that emerged in opposition to the

Aristotelian works of his father, including The Guide of the Perplexed .99

In the context of the latter struggle, Avraham wrote a polemic, Milḥamot ha-Shem (The Wars of the Lord), in 1235 attacking the scholars who challenged his and his father’s Aristotelian rationalism.

He paints the opponents of his father’s works as European Jews who embraced a crude, literalist reading of the holy texts and therefore ascribe a physical body to God.100

Avraham’s virulent critiques must be understood in the context of the events of 1231 in

Montpellier. In that year, a group of radical anti-Maimonideans allied themselves with Church authorities engaged in the Albigensian inquisition. Together they collected and burned Maimonides’

97 Russ-Fishbane, Judaism, Sufism and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt, 53-55. The term itself was coined by David Blumenthal. 98 These reforms are the primary focus of Russ-Fishbane’s thesis. 99 D. J. Silver offers an excellent summation of the issues at stake in the controversy, as well as their place in the broader Islamicate intellectual milieu in Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 28-36. Opposition also emerged to Maimonides Sefer ha-Maddaʿ (one of the books in his law code, the Mishneh Torah; it deals with the messianic age and the resurrection of the dead). Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī had also criticized Maimonides for the latter work in the late-twelfth century. 100 “There is no doubt concerning all this (the nonmaterial nature of God and the allegorical readings of texts ascribing a body to God) among Jews residing in the lands of Ishmael—from its eastern to western borders. And even the Ishmaelites accept this principle and built their religion on it…Word has come to us and our fathers that many overseas—residents of islands and far-off corners (of the world)—go astray on this important matter.” See Avraham Maimonides, Milḥamot ha- Shem, ed. Menaḥem b. Baruch (Vilna, 1821), 3. The section provided above was adapted with minor changes from Rosner’s translation in The Wars of the Lord, 85. 294 writings (the details of what happened are disputed, but this summary reflects what Avraham believed occurred).101

Avraham writes in Milḥamot ha-Shem that while Near Eastern Jews and Muslims “repented from the folly and stupidity of their ancestors who worshipped idols and erred in the unity of His name and His greatness,” Jews who live at “the corners of the earth…(still) err in this fundamental principle.” In Montpellier, these Jews had found allies among the Christians “because their belief is not too distant from theirs”; i.e., they both believe in a corporeal God.102 Avraham Maimonides’ rhetorical strategy here is to caricature the opponents of his father’s works as backward, marginal,

Christian-influenced heretics.103 This narrative intentionally neglects the very Islamicate origins of the critique of Maimonidean rationalism in Shemuʾel b. ʿAlī’s Iraq, the continued thirteenth-century opposition of associates of Shemuʾel to Maimonides’ works, as well as the many opponents of

Maimonidean rationalism who lived in areas of Iberia and Provence that were deeply influenced by

Islamicate thought.104

Though Avraham Maimonides was blunt in his criticism of European Jews, he was not insensitive to the exigencies of local politics, which demanded that he, as a regional leader, legitimize the local leadership of his subjects, including the Europeans whom he had appointed to judgeships.

101 Silver argues convincingly that there were no major rabbinic figures that supported the burning of the Maimonidean works—at least after the event occurred. See Silver, Maimonidean Criticism, 148-198. 102 Avraham Maimonides, Milḥamot ha-Shem, 2 trans. in The Wars of the Lord, 85, 92. 103 Avraham that “this group of people from the (Jewish) community of Montpellier burned (his father’s works) through the power of the Christians who assisted them since their faith (i.e., of the anti-Maimonideans) is not far from their faith (i.e., of the Christians).” See Milḥamot ha-Shem, 4-5; trans. in The Wars of the Lord, 92-3. 104 Ironically, Avraham himself mentions this opposition in Milḥamot ha-Shem. He refers to Daniel ha-Bavli, who wrote a commentary on Ecclesiastes that was very critical of Maimonides’ teachings. See Milḥamot ha-Shem, 5; also Rosner’s translation, The Wars of the Lord, 91-2. The actions of the prominent Iberian opponents of Maimonidean thought will be discussed in detail below as they concern Crusader Acre. 295

One Genizah document reflects how Avraham was quick to support a besieged European judge whom he had appointed when that leader faced popular dissent.105 In Milḥamot ha-Shem, he clearly distinguishes his subjects—European rabbis who resided in Egypt and the Latin ports—from their brethren in Europe.

Avraham makes this point by praising his allies among European émigrés living in Latin

Levant and Egypt:

When the French scholars arrived in this country—our lord Yosef (b. Gershom) the great rav (then resident in Crusader Acre) and his other brothers of blessed memory…we observed that they were great scholars, wise and discerning, having reverence and intelligence. We rejoiced at their (presence) and they rejoiced at ours and we honored them per our obligations. 106 Avraham here affirms his and his father’s long-standing position that European scholars of exceptional merit were to be honored and even given positions of leadership within the community.

The raʾīs al-yahūd had already done precisely that, appointing Yosef b. Gershom (mentioned above) as a judge in Ayyūbid Alexandria and subsequently in Latin Acre. Avraham, then, had a personal investment in the welfare of Yosef and his followers. He therefore refused to associate them with the positions of other anti-Maimonidean Europeans. He writes:

We heard concerning Rabbi Yosef (b. Gershom) and his brother Rabbi Meʾir that when Rabbi Yehudah al-Ḥarīzī translated The Guide of the Perplexed into the Holy Tongue (Hebrew) in Jerusalem, (Yosef and Meʾir were able to) understand it and rejoiced in its topics. But they instructed that it not be revealed to all the disciples in their academy who did not have (the ability) necessary to understand its hidden meanings and intimations (emphasis mine).107

105 The incident is relayed in TS 18 J 3.15, and ENA 2744; See Goitein’s discussion in Mediterranean Society, 1:67; and A. L. Motzkin’s in The Arabic Correspondence of Judge Elijah and his Family (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), 160-1; and Russ-Fishbane’s in Abraham Maimonides, 81-3. 106 Emphasis mine. See Milḥamot ha-Shem, 3. Adapted from Rosner, The Wars of the Lord, 88. 107 Ibid. Milḥamot Ha-Shem, 3. Adapted from Rosner, The Wars of the Lord, 88. 296

A close reading of this paragraph in its historical context indicates that Avraham here engages in intellectual gymnastics to gloss over major differences with the rabbis whom he had praised above. It is clear from this paragraph that Yosef and Meʾir were “obscurantist anti-Maimonideans.”

Obscurantists constituted the vast majority of anti-Maimonideans. 108 The obscurantist anti-

Maimonideans did not deny the merits of Maimonides’ contributions to Jewish thought, but held that if non-learned people were exposed to Maimonidean ideas (e.g., allegorizing portions of the Torah and Talmud, especially those related to God’s corporeal traits), then they would misread the holy texts and potentially fall into heresy or unbelief.109 Avraham knew that most anti-Maimonideans were of the obscurantist variety; nevertheless, he generally chose to paint his opponents with broad strokes to depict all anti-Maimonideans as espousing a literal reading of the holy texts and as holding that Moses

Maimonides’ writings were heretical.

He therefore makes an exception here for his allies and adds nuance to the position he outlines in the earlier and later pages of the polemic. Still, after praising his (obscurantist) allies, he makes clear that their positions should not be voiced publically. He writes:

…The faithful who are confused with regard to these fundamental principles from the lands of Iraq (ereṣ shinʿar), the East (ereṣ qedem), Syria, Palestine (ereṣ ha-ṣevi), Egypt and the Maghrib, are inconsequential because they are so few in number. If they reveal their secret (opposition to Maimonides), even before the untutored (ʿamei ha-areṣ), they become targets of scorn, dishonor and laughter… For this reason, the discerning of the scholars who visited with us from overseas, whether France (Ṣarfat) or other kingdoms, did not mention this confused faith; it did not (even) pass their lips. “But the Lord evaluates their motives” (Proverbs 21:2); “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel, 16:7).110

108 This is in fact Silver’s central thesis: anti-Maimonideans were not anti-Maimonides but were primarily concerned about the religious repercussions of exposing his works to the unlearned masses. See Silver, Maimonidean Criticism, 1-18. 109 This is a concise formulation of Naḥmanides and others position on this issue. See ibid., 41-9. 110 Milḥamot ha-Shem, 4. Adapted from Rosner, The Wars of the Lord, 89. 297

As noted in our analysis of demography, the Latin Levant—both lesser Syria and the land of Israel—is presented here as an integral part of the Islamicate world. While Avraham Maimonides’ statement that there were barely any anti-Maimonideans among Islamicate Jews is tendentious, he remains confident that in the regions where he exercises greatest influence—i.e., the Islamic Near East— opposition to his father’s works would not be tolerated. That is not, as Avraham himself admits here, because all Islamicate Jews in Egypt and the Levant were well-informed concerning the nuances of

Maimonidean thought and natural philosophy. Rather, it was because even the ʿamei ha-areṣ, “the untutored,” would act in solidarity with their patrons, the raʾīs al-yahūd and his (deceased) father.

As a result, even members of the European rabbinic elite in Latin Acre who were obscurantist anti-Maimonideans and opposed unread people being exposure to Maimonidean thought had to tread lightly and be mindful that expressing this opposition could lead to their association with the actions of the radical anti-Maimonideans of Montpelier. Such circumspection could lend itself to accusations of duplicity—a charge that Avraham articulates none too subtly above in his choice of

Biblical quotations. Avraham Maimonides is willing to overlook such duplicity, but he retains the implicit threat that as raʾīs al-yahūd he is the authority over Latin Syria and therefore can sanction his enemies and/or his allies at his discretion.

Milḥamot ha-Shem portrays Avraham Maimonides fulfilling the essential roles of a regional leader for the local rabbis of the Latin Levant. He appointed judges and legitimized their positions and rulings. Moreover, he appears—at least in his self-portrayal—to have been a popular leader among

Syria’s Islamicate Jews, deriving support from the ʿamei ha-areṣ who acted as his agents. Avraham’s

European subjects here appear competent, humble and pragmatic, willing to refrain from expressing

298 opposition to Maimonides’s works even as they denied their less capable students access to his writings. Such pragmatism among European scholars would ultimately be the basis for Acre’s emergence as a seat of regional rabbinic authority in the Near East.

Hodaya the Nasi and the First Steps toward an Independent Acre

The Origins of the Conflict: Yosef b. Gershom and the Nasi Hodaya in Ayyubid Alexandria

In Milḥamot ha-Shem, Avraham Maimonides appears more than capable of keeping his

Frankish rabbinic subjects in line. He proved less able, however, to curtail the influence of a renegade nasi (claimant to leadership based on their purported royal Davidic lineage), who was traveling through Ayyubid Alexandria and Latin Acre at roughly this same time.111

Before we discuss the specifics of this conflict, it is necessary to understand the role of nesiʾim in the politics and communal life of Syrian Jews. The most important nasi in the Jewish world was the exilarch (resh galuta/rosh ha-golah/raʾs al-jālūt), who was based for most of this period in Baghdad.

There were also dynasties of nesiʾim that claimed leadership over major Jewish communities in Mosul and Damascus. Finally, there were individual nasis from these dynasties who traveled from community to community across the Jewish world to solicit donations and involve themselves in communal administration. The Genizah captures such figures everywhere from Jerusalem and Aleppo in Syria, to Aden in Yemen, to Tabriz in Khourasan, to Qayrawan in North Africa.112

As Arnold Franklin has argued, the role of nesiʾim in the Near East was a product of a unique

Islamicate “cultural matrix” in which genealogical ties to “royal” figures (i.e., Muḥammad or King

111 On the role of nesiʾim in the Near East, see Franklin, This Noble House. 112 Ibid., 55 299

David) were understood to be a basis for claims to communal authority.113 European Jews and the Jews of Islamicate Iberia were less disposed to viewing Davidic lineage as a basis for authority than their coreligionists in the Islamic East.114

Individual nasis periodically claimed privileges like collecting taxes, investing local people with communal leadership, issuing legal rulings and circulating bans against members of the Jewish community.115 That is, they claimed the most coveted privileges of regional Jewish authorities, as well as those of the local rabbinic courts. In 1235, Hodaya b. Yishai ha-nasi, a peripatetic Davidite from the nesiʾim of Mosul, made exactly this claim in Alexandria (and, later, Latin Acre). This was the same year

Avraham Maimonides finished his Milḥamot ha-Shem.

Hodaya first established himself in Alexandria, where Avraham and/or the local Muslim governor acquiesced to his presence and offered him a judgeship. Hodaya accepted. He then proceeded to take bribes from litigants, acting in a manner unbecoming to his high office. Therefore, when the local governor, the nasi’s patron, fell out of favor, Avraham replaced the nasi with the

French rabbi, Yosef b. Gershom (mentioned above). 116 The nasi, however, refused to cede his judgeship.

113 Ibid., This Noble House, 34-67. 114 In the West, according to Franklin, “claims to Davidic ancestry developed only as an afterthought to or as justification for the attainment of power by particular dynastic groups in specific communal contexts,” Ibid., 31. 115 Ibid., 85-8. 116 See T-S NS J29, ed. in Frenkel, The Compassionate and The Benevolent, 603-7. Franklin argues convincingly, based on the context of the location (Alexandria), the date, and the character’s involved that this letter referred to Hodayah, although the letter only refers to a nasi, but does not explicitly name him. See Franklin, Noble House, 48. We unfortunately do not have Hodayah’s perspective on this controversy except through the lens of Josef’s tendentious recollection of events. Genizah documents may suggest, however, that Hodayah may have acted out of concern for the finances of his family, whose home in Mosul had been recently destroyed in an earthquake and who faced the Mongol hordes bearing down on the gates of Iraq. On the Mongols, see T-S 10J16.3, edited in S. D. Goitein, “Nesiʾei Mosul ve-ḥurban batehem bi-reʾidat adama,” (Heb.) in Sefer Yosef Braslavi: Meḥqarim be-miqra, be-lasho uve-yediʿat ha-areṣ mugashim lo be-hagʿo le-seva, eds. Yisrael Ben-Shem et al. (Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1970), 486-501. 300

Yosef b. Gershom wrote a series of sheʾelot (legal questions) to Avraham Maimonides that provide intimate details of the torrid dispute that followed. 117 Before a crowd of local peoples, Hodaya accused Yosef of taking bribes, cursed Yosef and his ancestors, and finally “called all the people of

France heretics (minim), apostates (kofrim), and people who ascribe a physical body and form to the

Creator (ʿosim la-Boreh guf demut ve-ṣurah).”118 Hodaya, here, portrays the struggle between himself and Yosef over the judgeship as one between an anti-Maimonidean European and his allies, and a

Maimonidean nasi and his Near Eastern supporters. This strategy drew on the assumption Avraham

Maimonides made above that the local people rejected criticism of Maimonides, the father of their raʾīs al-yahūd, regardless of whether they knew anything about his writings or philosophy.

After engaging in this public cursing, Hodaya invoked the Talmudic passage that “one who is banned by the nasi is banned by all Israel” and proceeded to place all French and Byzantine (rūmī)

Jews in Alexandria under ḥerem (interdiction).119 Specifically, he forbade the local people to associate with European and Greek Jews, including in any situation in which the non-Islamicate Jews could derive financial benefit.120 He subsequently demanded ten dinars from “the people of Alexandria”— i.e., local (Islamicate) Jews—to release them from the obligations of upholding the ḥerem. Yosef tells us that, “(the local people) brought (Hodaya) eight dinars, but he swore he would not overturn the ḥerem for less than ten.” As a result, “most of the (local) people trespassed the ḥerem (i.e., continued to

117 The set of sheʾelot and the Acre responsa are edited in Abraham Maimonides, Teshuvot Rabbeinu Avraham ben ha- Rambam (Abraham Maimuni Responsa), eds. A.H. Freimann and S.D. Goitein, (Jerusalem: Mirkizei Nirdamim, 1937), 13-26. 118 Ibid., 15 ll. 11-12 119 Talmud Bavli, Moʿed Qatan 15 a. See also Franklin, This Noble House, 48. ibid, 15 ll.12-13. Yeyhaneh (to derive benefit) likely refers here to financial ̣והחרים כל מי שי]י[הנה מנכסיו לא רומי ולא צורפתי 120 endeavors. 301 interact with European and Greek Jews) and the name of God was thus desecrated (since a ḥerem was being ignored).”121

The existing historiography has taken Hodaya’s argument at face value.122 But a close reading makes clear that R. Yosef and the foreign merchants, not the nasi, had popular Egyptian opinion behind them. That is why Hodaya’s attempt to exploit (what these scholars characterize as) latent, anti-European sentiments among the Islamicate Jews proved ineffective. In the end, the locals ignored the ḥerem and kept trading with the Europeans. Avraham Maimonides sided with Yosef, the judge whom he had appointed, as well.123

What we learn from this dispute, then, is that in this case the ties between a regional leader and his subject trumped any (purported) Islamicate solidarity between Avraham and Hodaya. We know that Avraham recognized that Yosef was an obscurantist Maimonidean. But he was unwilling to let such ideological differences undermine their political relationships. Equally importantly, we see that the neat lines drawn between “Islamicate” and “European” politics were no longer so neat following the growing presence of European Jews in Syrian, Anatolian and Egyptian ports. In this context, Alexandria’s Jews were less susceptible to appeals for Islamicate solidarity, since their livelihood was coupled with the welfare of these foreigners. Egypt’s Jews had become accustomed to some degree of cultural hybridity, though their non-Jewish and Jewish neighbors remained

121 Ibid., 15 ll. 15-18 122 As Franklin writes, “[s]immering beneath this person conflict were also deeper tensions between the religious traditions of the indigenous Jewish populations of the East on the one hand, and those of the recent Jewish arrivals from France on the other.” See Franklin, This Noble House, 48. See also the position Franklin cites from Reiner in ʿAliyah, 76. Prawer barely touches on this conflict, but he does characterize the later Maimonidean controversy in terms of European vs. Arabophone—see History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 282. Russ-Fishbane similarly ascribes the conflict to “xenophobia”. See Avraham Maimonides, 83. 123 Teshuvot Rabbenu Avraham, 18, l. 17. trans. Franklin, This Noble House, 50. 302 overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking. For the Jews of the Latin ports, on t engaging in relationships with non-Islamicate peoples was their lived reality on a day-to-day basis.

The Controversy Moves to Acre

As a result of Yosef b. Gershom’s appeal, Avraham Maimonides issued a decree that banned nesiʾim from issuing ḥerems without the approval of a court of three scholars.124 A short time after the

Alexandria controversies ended, Yosef b. Gershom moved to Latin Acre. Whether he did so due to the pressures of the dispute, or because he wanted to be closer to the holy land or because he had associates in the city, we have no way of knowing.

At this same time, Hodaya and his brother, Shelomo, were traveling around cities in Islamic and Latin Syria. Local communities greeted them with celebration and generous donations.125 At some point, either/both Hodaya and/or his brother came to Acre, where R. Gershom now resided.126 It was in this context that Acre’s rabbinic court, including R. Yosef b. Gershom, issued a decree affirming the document that Avraham had issued in Cairo. The rabbis appended Avraham’s respona (teshuvot) to R.

Gershom’s legal questions (sheʾelot) to their decree to provide halakhic justification (and the raʾīs al- yahūd’s sanction) for their decree.127 The Acre document reads:

After we saw the decree (of Avraham Maimonides) and the agreement (between him and R. Yosef) as written in the queries and responsa recorded above, as well as that (the Egyptian court) issued (this decree) in agreement with our lord, the nagid (Heb. of the Ar. title raʾīs al-yahūd) Rabbi Avraham son of the gaʾon, the rabbi, and the teacher of justice, R. Moshe b. …Maimon (Maimonides)…We—members of the community of

124 The responsa collection does not actually contain Avraham’s decree, but the rabbis of Acre expressly state that they are affirming the raʾīs al-yahūd’s position in his decree. The contents of the responsa make clear that Avraham sided with Yosef. See Teshuvot Rabbeinu Avraham, 20-6. 125 See and T-S 20.15 ed. in Mann, Texts and Studies, 1:408-9. See also, Franklin, This Noble House, 56; 176. 126 See T-S 13J21.8 ll. 3-10, ed. in Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries, 2:259-261 (96). 127 At least that is how they appear in the surviving manuscript. 303

Acre, located on the border of the inheritance of (the Israelite tribe of) Asher—also saw that their sayings were correct…Thus, we also agreed to declare the same decree in this land, in every city, so that no man, no nasi, and no scholar (on his own) may excommunicate or place under ḥerem any Jew unless there are three important (male) witnesses (to condemn him). And if the three witnesses excommunicate him because they found he trespassed (the law) with clear evidence, all (will) excommunicate him.128

The rabbis of Acre state here that “we also agreed to issue the same decree in this land.” This line indicates that in making this decree Latin Acre’s court asserts its (clearly delineated) autonomy and affirms its own limited authority over the region (“this land”). In doing so,

Acre’s scholars are careful not to challenge the raʾīs al-yahūd. Rather, the rabbis of Acre assume the necessity of affirming Avraham’s ruling, thereby tacitly recognizing Avraham’s stature as the highest court over their land. At the same time, they confirm their own position as the regional authority in Syria immediately below the raʾīs al-yahūd. This created a two-tier system of regional authority that allowed the rabbis of Acre to portray themselves as regional leaders (though of a second rank).

Of the ten rabbis who signed the documents, seven were of European descent.129 We should not be surprised that many of the leading religious authorities of Acre were Europeans, since a disproportionate number of the European migrants to Acre were distinguished scholars. The presence of two Arabic-speaking rabbis, as well as the explicit reference to the jurisdiction of the raʾīs al-yahūd, indicate that this was not a “European” decree, but a community-wide one. The fact that European

128 Teshuvot Rabbenu Avraham, 25-26. The text of the taqanah was appended to the collection of sheʾelot and teshuvot concerning the incident in Alexandria. 129 Yaʾaqov b. ha-gaʾon R. Shimshon, Yiṣḥaq b. ha-gaʾon R. Yisḥaq, Evyatar b. R. Yosef, Peraḥyah b. R. Shemuʾel, Yosef b. R. Gershom, Shemuʾel ha-Kohen b. R. Eliʿezer ha-Kohen, Neḥemyah b. R. Netanyah, Yehudah b. R. Yosef, Avraham b. R. Yeḥiʾel, Eliʿezer b. R. Yaʾaqov. See Teshuvot Rabbenu Avraham, 26. See also Reiner, ʿAliyah, 75. As Reiner argues, the two definitely Arabophone rabbis are Peraḥyah and Evyatar. These are both Hebrew, not Arabic, names, but they are Hebrew names that were not used in contemporary Europe. 304 rabbis were permitted here to take part in representing the broader community of the Jews of Latin

Acre is not indicative of an Islamicate-European clash, but the opposite: it demonstrates that local

Syrians had accepted the European rabbis as full members of their community. Granted, this may have been contingent on the Europeans respecting the Syrian’s regional leader. That is why, when the religious authorities of Acre cite the support and precedence of Avraham Maimonides to legitimize their decree, they call him our lord, (our) nagid, that is our raʾīs al-yahūd. The rabbis of Acre recognized that the ultimate authority in their region was the head of the Jews of Egypt. Their decree thus confirmed their community’s place within the hierarchy of Islamicate, Near Eastern institutions.

To review: In the first part of the century, Avraham Maimonides drew on both his personal popularity among Latin Syria’s Arabic-speaking Jews, as well as his patronage of individual

(European) Levantine scholars, to assert himself as the undisputed regional authority over the Latin ports. Avraham’s stature is most clearly expressed in the way he handles the Maimonidean controversy, affirming the leadership of his subjects, the European judges, while tacitly threatening to use his popularity with their Arabic-speaking Jewish neighbors to keep them from criticizing his father’s writings. At the same time, the conflicts in Alexandria and Acre over the role of the Mosulī nasi, Hodaya b. Yishai, demonstrate the limits of Avraham’s ability control events in the Latin ports.

Therefore, while the court of Latin Acre affirmed that Avraham was their raʾīs al-yahūd, they also claimed their independent right to issue a decree in their “land.” This decree marks the first stage of the emergence of Latin Acre as a regional center of rabbinic authority.

305

The Catalonian ʿAliyah and the Rise of Acre (1237-1285)

Avraham Maimonides died in 1237. His son, David, inherited the office of raʾīs al-yahūd. There is no evidence that David ever inspired the kind of loyalty from Latin Syria’s rabbinic elite that his father and grandfather had come to expect. The subsequent immigration of prominent scholars from northern France and Catalonia in the mid-to-late thirteenth century made the role of other regional rabbinic leaders in Acre’s politics redundant.

The first prominent scholar of this second generation (post R. Yosef b. Gershom and the

Ayyubid Jerusalem settlers) of immigrants never actually reached Acre, but left a substantial legacy there all the same. R. Yeḥiʾel of Paris was a leading Talmudic scholar in northern France. He was compelled by the Crown to defend the Talmud in Paris in 1240, a trial that was followed by the first mass burning of Jewish texts in medieval Europe.130 In the aftermath of the trial, Yeḥiʾel either feared for his life or decided to go to the land of Israel for ideological reasons. Either way, he garnered a number of followers whom he planned to take with him from France to the land of Israel, but he died either before he departed or on the way to the Holy Land. Nevertheless, his sons and disciples established an academy in Latin Acre that continued to thrive into the late-thirteenth century.131

Subsequently, in 1263, the Catalonian rabbi Moshe b. Naḥman (Naḥmanides), perhaps the greatest Jewish scholar of his age, was, like R. Yeḥiʾel, compelled to defend the Talmud before his King and members of the mendicant orders at the Disputation of Barcelona. 132 After the disputation,

Naḥmanides fled Barcelona and found refuge in Latin Acre in 1267. Naḥmanides proceeded to train a

130 For the Paris disputation and the burning of the Talmud in 1240s Europe see J. Rembaum, “The Talmud and the Popes,” 203-223. 131 See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 159-161, 226-7; and Yahalom, “Naḥmanides Acre Sermon,” 5. 132 On the Disputation of Barcelona see Dahan, The Christian Polemic, 81-116. 306 number of prominent disciples in Acre who played leading roles in the port’s politics and administration after their teacher’s death in 1270 and until Acre’s fall in 1291.133

Latin Acre, then, not only benefitted from the prestige of its greatest rabbinic immigrants, but from the subsequent generations of scholars who had studied under the likes of R. Yeḥiʾel and

Naḥmanides.134 While, the Jewish court records of Latin Acre do not survive, the literary works of a number of its leading scholars do. The contents of these works is beyond the purview of the current study and have been written about elsewhere.135 What matters for our purposes is that such works were written and that they circulated around the Mediterranean thereby demonstrating that Acre had become a leading center of rabbinic study.

But did Acre’s rabbis translate their prominence in the realm of high-brow scholarship into real-world, administrative influence akin to that of the Islamicate regional authorities to whom their city had turned in the past? The sheʾelah that opened this chapter—in which all of Syria and Iraq turn to Acre for guidance—indicates that they did. What factors allowed them to do so?

That answer lies, first, in the ways that the Jewish society of the Latin Levant had changed in the mid-to-late thirteenth century. The Latin ports’ Jews were no longer strictly “Islamicate.” It is true that the majority were undoubtedly Arabic-speaking, but most of the families of those Arabophone

Jews would have lived under Latin rule for over a century and a half. Their political and legal status vis-à-vis the state was based exclusively on neither Islamic, nor European, nor Byzantine statutes. That

133 See Reiner’s discussion of these figures in Aliyah, 73-80. 134 See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 150-2; 252-4; Reiner, ʿAliyah, 73-80. For R. Yeḥiʾel, we have explicit references to his yeshivah of Paris, whatever that institution may have been. For Naḥmanides, it is clear that leading scholars of Acre like Shelomo Petit and Isaac of Acre cited him as their teacher or the teacher of their teachers. 135 Shachar, “Dialogical Warfare.” See also Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 278-82. 307 status was a product of the fusion of all three based on ad hoc negotiations on the ground. Their courts produced documents that reflected this cultural-linguistic diversity. Nor were their economic endeavors limited to the Islamic world. Their business networks spanned Southern Europe, Anatolia and the Islamic Near East. Finally, Greek and European Jews had settled in Acre and established themselves there too. They were familiar to the Syrians as fellow merchants, physicians, courtiers and rabbis.

Second, the majority of Acre’s most prominent rabbinic scholars came from areas that had extensive contacts with Jews in Muslim lands. Naḥmanides and his students are often conflated with other “Europeans” residing in Crusader Acre, but the adjective “European” is less informative in this context than the descriptor “Catalonian.”136 The scholars of Iberia and Provence were not from parochial academies isolated from the broader intellectual movements of their time. They were trained at the nexus of the vibrant traditions of the Jews of the Islamic Mediterranean and the Tosafist academies of northern France. Unlike the bastions of Jewish study in North and Central Europe, the academies of Catalonia and Provence had been shaped by the traditions of Jewish Islamicate scholars fleeing Almohad persecutions in al-Andalus in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.137 As

Naḥmanides made clear in a sermon he delivered in Latin Acre, he and his followers claimed the intellectual inheritance of the Islamicate rabbis of al-Andalus.138 The Catalonians, as claimants of these

136 Yahalom uses the term “Catalonian” to describe Nahmanides’ school in his “Historical Background to Naḥmanides Acre Sermon.” On relations between these regions see Roth, “Regional Boundaries,” 72-98. 137For the ongoing influence of Jewish Islamicate cultural on Jews resident in Christian Spain see Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature. 138 As Yahalom writes, “according to Nahmanides, the Spanish tradition was a continuation of the living legacy of the Geonic and Amoraic academies.” “Nahmanides Acre Sermon,” 328. This claim goes back at least as far as the Sefer ha- Qabbalah (1161) of Avraham Ibn Dāwūd. 308 various intellectual inheritances, were more than willing to criticize both Maimonides and the

Tosafists. In this context, the Catalonians had much in common with the (Islamicate and non-

Islamicate) Jews of the Latin Levant. Both Catalonian and Levantine Jews were familiar with cultural, linguistic and legal hybridity and had been exposed to the religious practices of coreligionists from across the Mediterranean world.

After Naḥmanides’ died, Acre’s Jews sent legal questions to R. Shelomo ibn Adret in Barcelona, who was now the most prominent sage in the Jewish world. Ibn Adret, like Naḥmanides, was

Catalonian. The fact that Syrian Jews even had recourse to this Iberian scholar was only possible because of the expanding trade routes that had facilitated much of the “Mediterraneanization” of

Acre’s society.

The questions Acre’s Jews asked Ibn Adret concern issues that were subjects of dispute between Islamicate and European Jews, including relations with slave girls,139 levirate marriage,140 and male-female relations outside the public sphere (yiḥud).141 That is, while Acre had become a regional rabbinic center, the Jews there could still turn to an outside authority to settle disputes over exceptional issues that divided their community. In doing so, both sides submitted to an authority who would have had experience reconciling just such hybrid traditions in his own society.

139 Sheʾelot u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 1: 29-31(53); 38 (68). Jewish authorities in both the East and West condemned extramarital relations with slave women, but, as Craig Perry has convincingly demonstrated, such relations were still relatively commonplace in the Islamic world and therefore Jewish authorities could not extricate the practice. See Perry, “The Daily Life of Slaves,” 66-105. 140 Sheʾelot u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba, 1: 163-64 (358). In the Christian West, widows only had the loophole of yibbum, while in the Islamic world, the practice of Levirate massage still occurred periodically. The origin of this difference may be the fact that Jews in the Christian West did not practice polygamy (because of Christian cultural influences or state laws), while those in the East (relatively rarely) did. 141 Ibid., 1:547-548 (1212). Yiḥud refers to a series of laws that prohibit men and women who are not married from spending time unchaperoned in private areas together. 309

Acre’s role as a center for regional rabbinic administration was confined to the Near East, never matching the international prestige of its scholars. But Syrian rabbis no longer had to turn to regional leaders located in foreign states to legitimize their authority. Acre had come into its own—it was a city to which outsiders from across the Islamic Near East turned for guidance. This development, as we have seen, was only possible for three reasons. First, because of the immigration of prominent rabbis from northern France, and, more importantly, Iberia and southern France

(“Catalonia”). Second, because of the Mediterraneanization of Acre’s community following the economic, political and demographic changes documented in previous chapters. In this context, it makes sense that Acre’s (largely European) court was able to exercise such influence over Levantine

Jews. The concessions each side had to make to the other were relatively modest.

The dearth of Genizah documents from this period makes it difficult to assess how Acre’s rabbis interacted with regional Jewish leaders in the surrounding Islamic Near East. David

Maimonides (1222-1300), who replaced his father as raʾīs al-yahūd (r. 1235-1300), seems to have maintained close relations with the community based on his decision to seek refuge there. The specifics of these relationships remain impossible to recover from the extant sources.

What we do know is that Acre’s rise as a regional center did not go unnoticed nor was it readily accepted by the established Near Eastern institutions. The tensions between the new and old came to the fore in 1285, when David Maimonides was deposed from his position as raʾīs al-yahūd of

Egypt and fled to Acre. His move set off Acre’s great Maimonidean controversy, the subject of the next

(and final) chapter.

310

Conclusion

By 1204, the death of Shmuel b. ʿAlī and the disappearance of the negidut and geʾonut of

Palestine from Damascus left the rabbinic authorities of Latin Syria with few regional leaders to whom they could turn. Avraham Maimonides, like his father, stepped forward to fill this void, deploying his connection to Acre’s (increasingly European) rabbinic elite and its (majority Arabic-speaking) laypeople to maintain order in the Latin ports. He also used his position to suppress opposition to his father’s works in Latin Syria.

When Hodaya b. Yishai ha-nasi challenged the authority of the Frankish judge, R. Yosef

Gershom, in Alexandria, he also excommunicated all French and Byzantine Jews in the city, accusing them of being crude anti-Maimonideans who worshipped a corporeal God. The local Egyptian Jews, however, ultimately sided with the Jews from Christendom and their Frankish judge. Avraham, as raʾīs al-yahūd, acted to support his ally by issuing a decree banning any individual—including nesiʾim— from issuing their own edicts of excommunications (ḥerems). But when R. Gershom chose to move to

Latin Acre, Hodaya and/or his brother, Shelomo, followed him. The presence of the nasi in Acre provided the Latin port its first opportunity to express itself as an emerging rabbinic center with

(clearly circumscribed) regional influence. Acre’s rabbis issued a decree reiterating that already issued by their raʾīs al-yahūd, Avraham Maimonides. In doing so, they asserted that Avraham’s decree now also applied to “this land”—meaning Palestine or Greater Syria. The presence of both European and

Arabophone judges among the rabbis who signed the Acre decree indicates that this decision was a communal one. It also reflects the willingness of the local population to accept foreigners as rabbinic

311 leaders so long as they acted within a political and legal consensus shared with their Arabic-speaking colleagues.

In the second half of the thirteenth century, scholars from France and Catalonia immigrated to Latin Syria, bringing with them students who would shape local scholarship and rabbinic politics until the city’s fall in 1291. In this context, Acre emerged as a center of both rabbinic scholarship and regional leadership. Its court provided guidance to the courts of the surrounding Latin and Mamluk communities of Syria. The ability of Acre’s court to assert such regional influence was the result of the economic, political and demographic “Mediterraneanization” of the Latin ports discussed in the previous chapters. It was also the result of the shared norms of the Arabic speakers of Acre and their

Catalonian leaders.

312

4.3: The Maimonidean Controversy and the Fall of Acre (1285-1291)

From 1265 until 1291, the Latin rulers of the Crusader states faced the prospect of their kingdoms’ eminent annihilation. The Mamluk Sultan Baybars had sacked Antioch in 1268 and razed the ancient city to the ground. Wars between the coalitions of the Genoese and the Venetians constantly threatened to send the ports into chaos. Yet the fortunes of the Jewish community of Acre showed little sign of decay. Its merchants still crisscrossed the sea from Iberia and Provence to

Anatolia and Alexandria; its money-lenders still loaned thousands of dinars to the local nobility and military orders with whom they had cultivated close ties; and its scholars were still writing works of eschatology and Kabbalah, as well as providing regional leadership for the Latin Levant and much of

Mamluk Syria.

In 1285, David Maimonides, the son of Avraham Maimonides and grandson of Moses

Maimonides, arrived in Acre. A group of Acre’s rabbis saw David’s arrival as an opportune moment to publically condemn the works of David’s grandfather, Maimonides. These anti-Maimonideans claimed the right to collect and destroy the Egyptian sages’ writings. David’s supporters in the city demanded that the anti-Maimonideans end their incitement and turn over their anti-Maimonidean writings for destruction. The controversy quickly reached the ears of Jewish scholars in northern

France, Catalonia, Italy, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. These foreign rabbis rushed to intervene. They issued a series of excommunications and counter-excommunications.

Until now, this struggle has been treated as an ideological one between anti-Maimonidean,

“French” rabbis, and pro-Maimonidean, Near Eastern Jews. In this context, Frankish Acre appears as a lone citadel of anti-Maimonidean Frenchmen (ostensibly the primary occupants of the port) in the

313 sea of a uniformly-Maimonidean Near East. This chapter argues that this picture is both inaccurate and incomplete. The anti-Maimonideans drew from the same Catalonian teachings that were familiar to both Arabic-speaking and European Jews in Tyre. There is absolutely no indication in the sources that they were mostly Europeans, nor that Acre’s Maimonideans were disproportionately Near

Eastern. Moreover, this dispute was as (or more) about politics than ideology. It was, at its most fundamental, a struggle over who should be the regional leader over the Jews of Latin Syria. David

Maimonides’ plea to the regional leaders of the Islamic Near East invited them to claim the region.

The language of the decrees reflects their authors’ political aspirations and belief that they were the sole legitimate regional authority over Latin Syria. The Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans attempted to do what regional leaders normally would—namely, bring the state and its violence to their aide. They turned to the king, the nobles and even the Pope. But their efforts were an exercise in the absurd: there was no single Frankish state to which they could appeal; no single ruler who could use coercion to restore social order. Therefore, no Jewish leader could (re)claim Latin Syria as his own.

Instead the conflict continued until the Mamluk’s breached Acre’s walls in 1291.

David Maimonides: From Egypt to Acre

David Maimonides (1222-1300) became raʾīs al-yahūd in 1237 after the death of his father,

Avraham. He was sixteen years old at that time. David’s life is poorly documented compared to that of his father and grandfather. We have no direct evidence of David’s correspondence with Syrian rabbis prior to his arrival in Acre; then again, as far as I have been able to determine, the Genizah contains

314 almost no personal correspondence from David at all.142 Even his literary works are largely lost.

Therefore, whether prior to 1285 he was in regular contact with Syrian rabbis, or in no contact at all, is impossible to determine. That said, it is hard to imagine that David would have chosen to move with his family to Acre if he did not have extensive contacts there. Moreover, as we will see below, many of the rabbinic elites did support David.

When David reached Acre in 1285, he was already sixty three years-old and had occupied his office for nearly half a century. David did not flee to Acre by choice. An Egyptian Jewish physician and courtier, Abū al-Ḥasan b. al-Muwaffaq, forced him out of his position as raʾīs al-yahūd. Abū al-Ḥasan and his Muslim patrons toppled David in June 1285.143 Abū al-Ḥasan’s Mamluk allies then appointed him the new raʾīs al-yahūd.

Why did David choose to flee to Acre? Ashtor and Mann identify the size of Acre’s Jewish population, its proximity to Fustat and the fact that Acre was still being a beyond the reach of the

Mamluk state as three factors encouraging his decision.144 Moreover, the city was a center of trade, finance and scholarship—all relevant considerations for a refugee seeking to maintain his prominence and ultimately retake his position in Egypt. Finally, David’s father and grandfather had been the regional leaders of Latin Syria. They had secured the loyalty of both European and

Arabophone rabbis in the Latin ports. David thus had every reason to expect a warm welcome when he reached the Latin port.

142 Works that do survive—like his Judaeo-Arabic commentary (whose authorship is disputed) on the Mishnah and court documents from his bet din—would have nothing to say about his relationship to the Latin Levant. 143 Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, 12 vols., ed. M. Ziyada (Cairo, 1934-73), 1: 728; discussed in Ashtor, Mamluks, 130. 144 Ashtor, Mamluks, 131. 315

The Ideological Controversy: Shelomo Peṭiṭ, Maimonides and Aristotle

Shelomo Peṭiṭ, the leader of the anti-Maimonideans of Acre, spoiled any hopes David may have had for finding respite in the Latin port. Shelomo viewed David’s arrival as an opportune moment to publicize his critiques of the works of the deposed raʾīs al-yahūd’s grandfather. Who was this upstart? Shelomo was born in France but received his rabbinic training in Catalonia. He had been a student of Naḥmanides and was an associate of Ibn Adret. He had also served as the head of a yeshivah of Toledo, a mixed Islamicate-Latinate city.145

Why did Shelomo oppose Maimonides’ works? Isaac of Acre, Shelomo Peṭiṭ’s most famous student, recalls his master’s lecturing on the issue of Aristotelian thought in Latin Acre. Isaac writes:

“When I was in Acre—let her be rebuilt and reconstructed—we students were one day sitting and studying (lessons) before my master, R. Shelomo Peṭiṭ the Frenchman (ṣorfati).” Isaac and his fellow students then turned to the figure of Aristotle, his sublime wisdom and his qualities as a moral man.

Shelomo overheard their conversation and rebuked his students.146 He then told them the following story:

Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great.147 He lived in Alexander’s home and desired his wife, whom he aggressively pursued. She, however, refused Aristotle’s advances and chastised him:

“Where is your wisdom and your fear of God (ayeh ḥomatekhah ve-yirʾatekha mi-ha-Elohim)?!”

145 Toledo had only fallen into Christian hands in 1085. On Shelomo Peṭiṭ, see Reiner, “Aliyah,” 84; Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 283-291. 146 Isaac of Acre, Divrein ha-Yamim, most of this work was lost, but it is preserved in editions of his Kabalistic work, Sefer Meʾirat ʿEinayim, and quoted in Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 7:415. 147 Aristotle did tutor Alexander the Great from 343 BCE, but the length and influence of that tutelage is unclear. See Carlo Natali, Aristotle: His Life and School, ed. D. S. Hutchinson (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990), 32-33, 42-46, 134-135, 141, 143-145, 163-164. 316

Nevertheless, Aristotle continued to harass her. Finally, Alexander’s wife came up with a ruse: She would agree to have sexual relations with Aristotle on one condition. He must walk on all fours like a horse and allow her to ride on his back. Aristotle agreed and Alexander’s wife set a time for them to rendezvous in the near future when, she said, Alexander would be away hunting. Alexander’s wife then went to her husband and explained her ruse. She told the Emperor that his teacher was not a

“man of God (ish Elohim)” as he believed, but rather a pervert who was committed to having sex with another man’s wife. Later, she led Alexander to catch Aristotle in the act of walking on all fours thereby confirming the details of her accusation. Alexander was incensed and wished to “bash in the head” of his teacher. He realized, however, that he had conquered the world only because of the latter’s instruction. Therefore, Alexander decided only to inflict unspecified “troubles and torments” on him.

Shelomo insists this quirky anecdote is a record of true events and that he had heard it from

“honest men (anshei emet)” (c.f., Exodus 18.21). While I hesitate to impugn Shelomo’s chain of transmission, it is patently obvious that it derives from the popular European story, The Tale of Phyllis and Aristotle (c. 1220 CE). In the original story, however, Aristotle is not the villain, but the victim. The villain is the King’s mistress (not his wife), who seduces Aristotle. That story’s moral, then, is Eden- esque: Women are temptresses whose evil can compromise even the best men, including Aristotle the wise.148

148 Jane Sutton, “The Taming of Polos/Polis: Rhetoric as an Achievement Without Women,” The Southern Communication Journal 57, no. 2 (1992), 103-6. 317

Shelomo explains to his (undoubtedly bewildered) students that his tale has a rather different lesson:

Indeed, you hear about this Greek (Aristotle) that he was a believer (lit., “fearer of heaven”), but the scoundrel said in his heart “there is no God.” Do not be enticed by his wisdom. Do not even go near it (lit, “pass by his house), lest you get caught in his trap to remove from you the yoke of God. (God) was the first, created (everything) from nothing, and renews every day the work of creation and the yoke of the Torah.149

Aristotle, then, was an immoral adulterer who feigned belief in God. He was a sinful atheist whose

“wisdom”—that is, intellectual legacy—aims to destroy the true faith through two heretical postulates: the claim that the universe was not created ex nihilo (i.e., Aristotle’s argument that matter is eternal); and the belief that the Creator made the world according to His laws, and now essentially lets his creation (maʿaseh bereshit) run on its own—that is, he does not intervene with miracles, revelation, etc. The “yoke of God” and “yoke of the Torah” here are service to God and his laws— contrasted, implicitly, with the yoke of the (non-Jewish) state and the yoke of worldly concerns that distract from Torah study and lead to perdition. Shelomo Peṭiṭ’s anti-Mamionidean and anti-

Aristotelean critiques are neither new nor innovative. They are the same points that Jewish, Christian and Muslim anti-Aristotelian scholars had raised for centuries.150

149 See above, n. 146. 150 William E. Carroll, “Creation and Science in the Middle Ages,” New Blackfriars 88, no. 1018 (2007): 678-689. The most prominent Muslim critics of Aristotelian natural philosophy included the mystic al-Ghazali (1058-1111); the Damascus- based Shafiʿī ḥadīth scholar Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (1181-1245); and major Ḥanbalī scholars in Syria and Iraq. See also, Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasid Society (London: Routledge, 1999 [1998]), 166-174. In the Christian West, prominent bishops attempted to restrict specific Aristotelian teachings in 1210 and 1277. See Daniel H. Frank, “Maimonides and Medieval Jewish Aristotelianism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 136- 156; and Gregg Stern, “Philosophy in Southern France: Controversy over Philosophic Study and the Influence of Averroes upon Jewish Thought,” in idem., 281-304. 318

What Shelomo does with the Tale of Phyllis and Aristotle is novel and brilliant. His rendition of the tale not only impugns Aristotle qua Aristotle, but also delegitimizes the work of Maimonides by association. Maimonides called Aristotle the greatest philosopher of all time. He particularly admired his moral philosophy, which he sought to reconcile with the norms outlined in Jewish holy texts.151

Shelomo’s story portrays Aristotle as an amoral, bumbling fool, calling into question any contributions he might have made to Maimonides’ philosophy. Shelomo, like the Shafaʿī scholar Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, believed that those who studied these works were themselves heretics.152 That is, those who embraced

Aristotle, necessarily rejected revelation and God’s laws.

This tale, then, delineates the ideological stakes of the Maimonidean controversy for the anti-

Maimonideans of Acre. For Maimonides’ critics, the faith of the Jewish people and their service to God was in question. That is why Shelomo was willing to risk the ire of Acre’s residents and rabbinic scholars across the Jewish world to publicize his opposition to Maimonides’ writings.

The Controversy in the Near East—Politics and Regional Authority

Shortly after David Maimonides arrived in Acre, Shelomo Petit rallied a group of anti-

Maimonidean scholars and proposed that Acre’s court ban the works of Maimonides. The court balked at his request. Shelomo’s failure to attain the necessary support for his proposal in Acre suggests that there was significant opposition to his agenda among the local rabbis.153 Shelomo

151 Maimonides did criticize Aristotle, particularly for what he viewed as his unempirical claims about creation and the heavens. Many of Maimonides’ critics believed that these critiques were duplicitous and that Maimonides also embraced Aristotle’s understanding of creation and nature. 152 Edward Grant, “The Fate of Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Islam and Western Christianity,” The Review of Metaphysics 61, no. 3 (2008): 503-26. 153 Reiner, ʿAliyah, 84; Ashtor, Mamluks, 132-140. The initial rejection of Shelomo’s position is suggested in the taqanah of the gaʾon of Baghdad as well as the Ṣafad court’s addendum to the taqanah of the exilarch of Damascus. This sequence of events would explain why Shelomo subsequently departed for Europe to garner support among rabbinic authorities 319 subsequently left for Europe to garner foreign rabbis’ endorsements for his plan. He returned sometime later (ca. 1287) with substantial backing from these foreign rabbinic leaders. He and a group of followers then proceeded to issue a ban against Maimonides’ works.154

Shelomo’s attacks roused David Maimonides to action. He wrote directly to regional leaders across the Islamicate world to ask them to intervene and suppress the anti-Maimonideans.155 By invoking the authority of these foreign Jewish leaders, David conceded that he was not the reigning leader over Latin Syria since he was unable to restore social order on his own. In other words, his action placed the regional leadership of Syria up for grabs.

Unsurprisingly, many regional institutions answered David’s call, including the (self- proclaimed) exilarchs of Mosul and Damascus, the leading scholars of those cities, the gaʾon of the yeshiva of Baghdad and his city’s leading sages, and even the court of the Galilean city of Ṣafad.156 The response from these regional authorities was ostensibly unanimous: they tripped over each other to issue bans condemning Shelomo and his followers and calling for the destruction of all anti-

Maimonidean works discovered in Acre.

There are few philosophical arguments in these decrees. What there are, however, are claims to power. None of the bans mentions the other authorities issuing bans. In their decrees, both the

abroad for his proposed ban. See the Ṣafad addendum in Kerem Ḥamad, 3: 172-173 (172); and the Mosul decree in Yosef Yitzchak Kobak (ed.), Ginzei Nistarot, 4 vols. (Bamberg, 1868-1878), 3:124-128 (127). 154 Ashtor, Mamluks, 135-6. 155 While there is no direct evidence for David’s appeal, it is clear that he sent such a missive since the ban that all four authorities (including the court of Ṣafad) issue refer to the same stipulations for the anti-Maimonideans: they must submit all of the works criticizing Maimonides to the nagid, his family or his appointed officials. It is thus clear that David sent letters to all three authorities explicitly laying out the stipulations he sought. See the Ṣafad decree, Kerem Ḥamad, 172; the Damascus nasi’s decree, ibid., 170; the Mosul nasi’s decree, Ginizei Nistarot, 123; and the gaʾon of Baghdad’s decree, ibid., 124. 156 The Ṣafad decree is an explicit affirmation of the nasi of Damascus’s one, affirming their support after the city’s court received the letter from the nasi. See Kerem Ḥamad, 172. 320 exilarch of Mosul and the exilarch of Damascus, David b. Daniʾel and Yishai b. Ḥizqiyyah respectively, claim the title rosh galuyot kol Yisraʾel—the head of the exiled communities of all Israel—as well as the Aramaic title reish galuta—head of the diaspora.157 These titles claiming exclusive Davidic authority over all the Jews had traditionally been reserved for the exilarch of Baghdad.158 The gaʾon of the yeshiva of Baghdad, Shemuʾel b. Daniʾel, similarly issued two bans neither of which makes mention of the decrees of the dueling “exilarchs.”159 Thus, the seemingly “unanimous” response of

Islamicate Jewish leaders turns out to be a series of parallel decrees, each author intentionally ignoring the other’s pronouncements because to have recognized the others’ proclamations would have implicitly conceded his own authority.

The vocabulary the bans use to characterize the anti-Maimonideans is the language of rebellion. The nasi of Mosul, for instance, writes: “(Shelomo Petit) is a pursuer of high office (serarah) and a seeker of elevated status (maʿlah gedolah), like the party (ʿedah) of Qoraḥ”.160 Qoraḥ is the consummate biblical rebel who challenged the authority of Moses (and God) in Numbers 16–18. The gaʾon of Baghdad similarly suggests an analogy to Qoraḥ’s rebellion in comparing the anti-

Maimonideans to the Israelites who “spoke against God and Moses” (Numbers 21:5).161 The ideological nuances of the conflict thus became secondary to the political implications of the “anti-

Maimonidean” challenge to legitimate, even divinely sanctioned authority.

157 Kerem Ḥamad, 170; Ginizei Nistarot, 3: 117. 158 Franklin, This Noble House, 4-6. 159 Ginzei Nistarot, 124. 160 See Ginzei Nistarot, 121. 161 Ginzei Nistarot, 124. 321

But against whose authority were these anti-Maimonideans in Latin Acre ostensibly rebelling?

The people of Acre were rebelling against the authority of the institution (exilarchate, gaʾonate/yeshivah) that issued the decree. That is why, despite gratuitous honorifics extolling

Maimonides (the grandfather), all of the Islamicate regional leaders imply that his grandson, David, is their subject, not their equal. Shemuʾel b. Daniʾel refers to David simply as “our rav,” but there is no indication that he recognizes him as the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt (much less of Syria).162 The exilarchs refer to David as nagid, but they also state that he needs their permission to overturn their bans, making explicit their own claims to jurisdiction over the Levant.163

David Maimonides thus inadvertently precipitated a trans-Near Eastern struggle over regional authority in Syria. The fact that each of these regional leaders issued, in practical terms, the same ban, does not suggest a uniform ideological stance concerning an abstract dispute over Maimonides and

Aristotelianism. This superficial uniformity reveals the real subject of debate: Who was the regional leader responsible for and capable of restoring social order in Latin Acre? In order to actualize that leadership, both these “Maimonidean” regional leaders and the anti-Maimonideans of Acre turned to the Christian state and the pope to forcibly suppress their opponents.

Turning to Church and State

The actions of the Dominicans (ostensibly) allying with the anti-Maimonideans of

Montpellier in 1235 set a precedent that informed how both parties tried to secure church and state intervention. Both Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans from outside Acre seem to have believed

162 Ibid., 124. 163 “I do not give permission (eyn le-ben adam reshut mimeni—literally, “there is no permission to any man from me”) for any man besides the great rav David to overturn (this decree).” Ginzei Nistarot, 123. See also Kerem Ḥamad, 170. 322 that the Church would be a powerful ally to whichever side convinced it of their arguments’ merits (or of their opponents’ heresy). Had they asked Acre’s Jews, they would have come to a different conclusion. Acre’s politics were not Montpellier’s. The institution of the inquisition was absent from the Latin port and the local Levantine lords, military orders and Italian city-states only honored papal law in the breach.

Nevertheless, around 1288, European Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans came to Rome to beg Pope Nicholas IV (r. 1287-1292) to intervene in the Acre controversy on their behalf. The

Maimonidean petitioners included two Italian scholars and courtiers, R. Yeshaʿyahu and R. Meʾir.164 A supporter of the Maimonideans sent a Hebrew missive to Avraham Maimonides in Acre describing the events as follows:

I am informing my lord…about the bitter enemy, his allies and friends who thought that through their plot all was possible. But they collapsed and were defeated, while we persevered and were strengthened. For on the fifth (day) of the month of Tammuz, the Lord woke the spirit of the great bishop, the patriarch of all bishops (i.e., the Pope). [The pope’s] voice carried forth from the ancient prayer house—and he also wrote on this matter—saying: “So says the great bishop: Authority, might, power and fortitude were given to me by the God of Heaven, and He commanded me to be the bishop of all Christians (goyyim)… )The Pope then praises Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed for its insights into the Bible and its mysteries.)…Therefore, it is permitted to every scholar interpreting (the nature of) God to examine the Guide to the Perplexed, for it is the essence of the Torah…Every person who disobeys and does not listen to our words…will pay 100 pieces of silver to the court of the bishop. Any man who speaks in error about the Guide, or prevents the study of it in public or in private, will be punished according to the aforementioned fine”…(Rabbi Yeshaʿyahu) went to the court of the bishop (i.e.,

164 Albert Harkavy, Ha-Qedem 3 (1912), 111-114. The two rabbis are referred to as “ha-sarim,” the princes or ministers, which in medieval Hebrew usually indicates a position with the government. We are told that Shelomo and his partisans heard all that had happened—but it is not clear whether he was present in Rome or elsewhere. Generally, we know Shelomo Petit tried to rally European rabbis to his cause, but there is no other indication that he sought state support, perhaps because he knew the political situation in Acre too well. 323

the Pope) and took the revealed document sealed with the stamp of the bishop (Pope).165

The writer then notes that the pope dismissed the members of the anti-Maimonidean delegation who had also come with the hope of soliciting written documents (ketavim) from the Christian leader endorsing their position.

What should we make of this story? It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what really happened in Rome. No record of this brief (breve) has been found in the papal archives— though that does not mean it never existed.166 What we do know is that this account of the events likely circulated among Jews in the Near East, since there is Arabic script on its back and it eventually made its way to the Cairo Genizah.167 What matters for our purposes is that both parties—the Maimonideans and their opponents—sought the support of the Pope to strengthen their positions. The Maimonidean rabbis here claim to have successfully solicited a decree from the Pope affirming their position and sent it to David Maimonides in Acre.

The author of the letter presents the Maimonidean delegation’s mission as an unmitigated success. We learn from three other documents from Near Eastern regional leaders, however, that the Maimonideans’ main ambition remained unfulfilled. What they really wanted was not to have the anti-Maimonideans pay a fine to the church, but to have their opponents submit all works criticizing Maimonides to David Maimonides, his family or his appointed officials in Acre. These

165 Ibid., 111. ST Petersburg RNL Yevr. III B 711. 166 Kenneth R. Stow, “Old and New Views: An Introduction,” in Popes, Church, and Jews in the Middle Ages: Confrontation and Response, vol. 4, ed. Kenneth R. Stow (London: Ashgate, 2007 [1984]) 4: 7-8. 167 Harkavy mentions that there is Arabic writing on the text. Unfortunately, the original document is in Leningrad and has not been digitized. In any case, the writing indicates that the document circulated in some form among Near Eastern Jews. See ibid., 114. 324 writings would then be systematically eliminated—perhaps burned.168 The wording of the Near

Eastern decrees (taqanot) is draconian: any book with even a single word against Maimonides is to be included on the list of works to be eliminated from the city. These works would have comprised the major commentaries of the most prominent thirteenth-century Jewish scholars, including Acre’s favorite son, Naḥmanides.169

The Maimonideans were not willing to stop at seeking the Pope’s assistance to meet their ends. Yishai b. Ḥizkiyyahu writes in his decree, “I permit every person to do all that he is able to bring forth (these books) from their domain, even by the force of non-Jewish courts (ba-koaḥ

ʿarkaʾot umot ha-ʿolam).”170 At roughly the same time as the decrees discussed above, the Iraqi

Exilarch David b. Daniel proclaimed that any anti-Maimonidean who informed (hilshin) on

Maimonideans to non-Jewish authorities would be placed under interdiction (ḥerem).171 That is, at the same time that the Maimonideans were going to the Christian state, they were demanding that their opponents refrain from doing so. What the Maimonideans were seeking, in other words, was a monopoly on recourse to the state. What they hoped to achieve was to replicate the outcome of the previous Maimonidean controversy in Montpellier in 1235, only in the reverse.

168 Keren Ḥamad, 170. 169 Naḥmanides tried to walk a line between the two sides of the controversy, but he did openly criticize Maimonides in his Torah commentary and was critical of the study of philosophy. Shelomo Petit may have studied with Naḥmanides and could certainly trace his intellectual lineage to him. Shelomo ibn Adret was sympathetic to obscurantist anti- Maimonideanism, especially with regard to the Guide. In 1305, he issued a decree calling for all men under twenty-five to cease studying philosophical works including those of Maimonides. See Gregg Stern, “What Divided the Moderate Maimonidean Scholars of Southern France in 1305?” in Beʾerot Yitzhak: Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. Jay Michael Harris (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005), 347-376. 170 Ginzei Nistarot ed. Kabaq, 1872, 3:124-128 171 Ibid., 122. 325

This time, the non-Jews would destroy the works of Moses Maimonides’ adversaries “by force” (ba- koaḥ)—that is, through state power.

Needless to say, no such book burning ever occurred. Furthermore, had the papal decree ever existed, no principality would have bothered to enforce it. After all, which of Acre’s courts could the Maimonideans have complained to in order to get their opponents to pay Acre’s bishop a fine? The military orders who were facilitating Jews’ openly usurious loans? The burgesses who had responded to the Pope’s decision to place all of Acre under interdiction by threatening to turn to Eastern-Christian rites?172 The Levantine nobles who refused to enforce any of the anti-

Jewish/Muslim legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council?173 Or the Italian city-states, who demonstrated their strength by protecting “their” minorities from other powers?

Nor, despite the Iraqi gaʾon’s threat, could anyone hope to get a decree from all of Acre’s non-Jewish courts supporting the collection of anti-Maimonidean works. As we have seen, the

Latin Christians were too divided to articulate a unified policy on almost any issue—much less on an abstract intellectual quarrel within a minority community whose members constituted a fraction of their city’s population.174 In this context, the Near Eastern and European

Maimonideans’ attempt to vanquish their opponents through state violence appear absurd.

172 Riley-Smith, Feudal Nobility, 204-205. 173 As Prawer notes, there is no indication that the imposition of sumptuary laws was enforced after the Council of Nablus, as discussed above 118-121. See Prawer, History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom, 104-105. 174 It is impossible to even estimate what proportion of the population of Acre the Jews constituted. Benjamin of Tudela tells us that there were 200 family heads—around 800 people—when he visited the city in the 1180s. See Benjamin of Tudela, Itinerary, 30-31. This population grew significantly in the thirteenth century, but the Jews remained a relatively small minority in a city that some have estimated at 40,000 people. 326

This episode, then, tell us a great deal about how different the government of Acre’s relationship to minorities was from minority-state relations in the centralized kingdoms of the

Islamic and Christian worlds. European and Near Eastern Jewish partisans failed to comprehend the implications of these differences. Acre was too diverse and too divided—both in its ethnic composition and in its legal venues—to respond like a “normal state” to appeals from Jewish notables to intervene in such controversies. The same political dysfunction that had allowed

Acre’s Jews to flourish in the port also mitigated against their being able to suppress dissident voices in their community.

We do not know how the Maimonidean dispute in Acre ended.175 It is possible that it was never settled, but came to an end only when the Mamluks sacked Acre in 1291. The city’s population was slaughtered, its women enslaved and its survivors scattered across the Mediterranean. At least one participant in the controversy, Isaac of Acre, would continue the battle against Maimonidean rationalism in Europe. Others—Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans alike—perished together under the sword.

Conclusion

When David Maimonides arrived in Acre in 1285, he had no intention of starting an international controversy over the merits of his grandfather’s work. He was seeking refuge from political opponents in Fustat in city that had wealthy merchants, prominent scholars and a long history of supporting his family. Shelomo Peṭiṭ’s decision to launch his attack on the writing of David’s

175 We do know that David Maimonides was reinstated as raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt in 1289, so it is a fair assumption that he returned to Fustat-Cairo then. However, there is no reason to assume that David’s departure would have ended the crisis. See Mann, Texts and Studies, 1: 421-422. 327 grandfather precisely when the deposed raʾīs arrived was a brash one. But, for scholars like Shelomo

Peṭiṭ, something much more important than personal loyalty was on the table—the Aristotelian natural philosophy that Maimonides’ writings extolled threatened the existence of the true faith.

While the conflict began as an ideological affair, politics entered the equation when David

Maimonides appealed for support from the regional Islamicate Jewish institutions across the Near

East. Since Avraham Maimonides’ death, no regional leader had succeeded in attaining control over the rabbinic leaders of the Latin ports. This is precisely what the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Baghdad, the nesiʾim/“exilarchs” of Damascus and Mosul and even the local court of Tiberias attempted to do by intervening in this conflict. Their bans of excommunication (ḥerems) do not dwell on ideology, but instead focus on the fact that Shelomo and his followers were rebelling against their authority as head of the Levant’s Jews.

Several of these decrees permit the Maimonideans of Acre to invoke the power of the state to suppress the anti-Maimonideans. There was no single Christian state in the Levant to which they could turn; instead, there were the mutually antagonistic principalities of the Templars, the Teutonic

Knights, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans, the crown and the local nobility. None of these parties were particularly inclined to listen to each other, much less to the Church. Therefore, both

Jewish regional authorities and Jewish state intermediaries failed to suppress the controversy.

It is impossible to understand the ideological and political nuances of the Maimonidean controversy in Acre without the context of the previous chapters’ studies of demographic, economic and political developments among the Jews of Latin Syria. Acre during the last decades of the thirteenth century stood at the center of the Jewish world. Its merchants and scholars were renowned

328 across the region. Its trade and communication networks reached every corner of the Mediterranean.

What happened in Acre, in other words, did not stay in Acre.

It was precisely Acre’s “Mediterraneaness” that made the Maimonidean controversy an international affair. The flourishing city’s diverse demographics, international scholarly elite and hybrid political culture were not a reflection of either the Jews of Christendom, nor those of the dar al-Islām; they were a fusion of both. As such, Acre’s community became a microcosm of the Jewish

Mediterranean. That is why Jewish leaders from the Rhine to the Euphrates felt obliged and entitled to issue decrees over the city’s internal struggle. They knew that what was at stake in Acre was not only the fate of a dying Frankish port with a few eccentric anti-Maimonideans; it was the future of

Jewish practice and belief in the broader Mediterranean world.

Epilogue

In 1291, the Mamluks captured Acre and Tyre and razed the Latin ports to the ground. They did so to prevent the Franks from returning to their walled strongholds. The scale of the destruction may be exaggerated in the chronicles, but it was substantial. Acre’s and Tyre’s prosperous Jewish money lenders, influential rabbis, wealthy merchants and common people—glass makers, sugar producers and dyers—are lost to the historical record. Instead, we hear of ransoming efforts to redeem the survivors and poems written to honor the dead.

A rough draft of a ketubbah—a marriage contract—provides a window on the experiences of one Jewish captive (the bride) when Acre fell in 1291. Unlike most ketubbot, this contract offers a great deal of biographical information about the bride, likely because it concerned extraordinary

329 circumstances.176 The text was written in 1292, approximately a year after Acre’s fall. The groom had ransomed the bride from the Mamluks after David Maimonides himself assured him (based on his experience living in Acre) that she had not been previously married in the Latin port.177 The fact that

David had to assure the groom that his future wife had not been engaged or married implies that many men had died when Acre fell. The document makes reference to the bride’s experience during the Mamluk conquest, noting:

The bride….whose virginity was lost in Acre…because she was taken by the gentiles (goyyim, i.e., Muslims) with the women (repeated) of Israel, who were taken captive from Acre a short while ago.178

The matter-of-fact way in which the document refers to the Mamluk soldiers’ mass rape of Jewish women at Acre is a reflection of the fact that this is a legal text—and the bride’s virginity is pertinent for halakhic considerations. It also justifies the 90-day waiting period that we are told occurred before the document was signed—a period sufficient, as Friedman notes, to demonstrate that the bride was not pregnant.179

Nor was this the end of her travails. While the document insists that the bride was free to refuse the groom, it is clear, as Friedman argues, that the act of ransoming meant the groom had essentially bought his bride.180 Further evidence for her powerlessness comes from the wedding contract, which gives her no right to refuse her husband from taking more wives or hiring a slave girl

176 Mordechai Akiva Friedman, who edited and translated the contract, recalls that S. D. Goitein called it “the most bizarre Genizah document, both in its content and outer appearance, I have ever seen.” What he likely meant is that it contains so many personal details. See Friedman, “Genizah Sources for the Crusader Period, 60-3. 177 T-S 8K13.11, D, ll. 2r., ll.12-15. Ed. and trans. in ibid., 62. 178 T-S 8K13.11, B, ll. 11-15. See ibid., 63. I have followed Friedman’s translation. 179 T-S 8K13.11 A 16-17—the text notes the husband left her in the hands of the goyyim (i.e., Muslims) for 90 days. 180 Friedman, “Genizah Sources,” 61. 330 she despises.181 And it could have been even worse: Our bride at least had someone to redeem her.182

Others were undoubtedly less fortunate and remained in slavery.

The last chapter focused on the Maimonidean controversy and how conflict could reveal the contours of central rabbinic leaders’ competing claims to regional jurisdiction. Yet crises could also precipitate expressions of solidarity among regional institutions. For instance, an Islamicate Egyptian

Jew, Yosef b. Tanḥum Yerushalmi, wrote a qinah, a dirge, for Acre shortly after the city’s destruction.

Yosef had spent time in Acre when his patron, David Maimonides, was in exile. His son married a woman (perhaps a local) while residing in the Crusader city. Mann has called Yosef the “house poet” of the family of Maimonides. 183 Yosef and his father, in other words, were Maimonideans’

Maimonideans. Yet in his poem Yosef expresses no malice towards the people of Acre, only admiration for their piety and scholarship. He does not refer to “Europeans” or “Syrians,” “Arabic speakers” or “Frenchmen.” His patron, David Maimonides, had every reason to resent the people of

Acre, and yet he permitted or even instructed his house poet to write this dirge. In Yosef’s verse, then, we can perhaps hear the lament of the raʾīs al-yahūd, who knew the Latin port so well:

O! For the scholars whose mouths were filled with wisdom, pleasing as nectar, (who were) lashed over and over. Great tragedy! Bitter in the eyes of all that hear! It was as the day (of the destruction) of Jerusalem. A community of nobles (aṣilim) killed for their love of God. They did not stretch out their hands (for mercy). Also into captivity… Went young women who were nursed at the bosom of the Holy Tongue (Hebrew) since they themselves were breastfed.

181 T-S 8K13.11 C 1-5; trans. in ibid., 62. 182 Furthermore, her groom was a man who came from a wealthy family of courtiers who had relations with David Maimonides. Ibid., 60. 183 Mann, Texts and Studies, 2: 420. 331

.…184

The perspective of these verses is that of the Jewish world reflecting on the loss of Acre’s collective scholarly capital. Even the city’s women were educated in Hebrew for text study—an anomaly in the medieval Jewish world.185 The poet later mourns for the young children who were slaughtered before they knew right from wrong—a lost generation of Torah scholars.186

The poem thus falls within the tradition of such other, more famous qinot as Aha yarad ʿal-

Sefarad, that similarly emphasize the degradation of the Jewish religion rather than focusing on the plight of individual victims.187 Yosef summons the broader worlds of Islamicate and Mediterranean

Jewry to bemoan the loss of their coreligionists, Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans, servants of the nagid, the gaʾon and the nasi. In the ashes of Acre lay of one of the Jews’ great centers of learning in the Islamic East, cut down just as it was coming into its own.

184 Koveṣ ʿal-Yad, ed. Aharon Freimann et al., (Jerusalem, 1939), 3.1: 62-64 185 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2: 183-185. As Goitein notes, even the letter ostensibly from female writers were often written by male family members. 186 Koveṣ ʿal-Yad, 64. 187 Aha yarad ʿal Sefarad mourns the destruction of Andalusi Jewish communities at the hands of the Almohads. It speaks in terms of destroyed houses of study and anthropomorphizes the Talmud and Mishna as suffering defamation and destruction. See Jonathan Decter’s excellent analysis of this poem in Iberian Jewish Literature, 66-72. 332

Conclusion This dissertation has followed the development of the Jewish communities of the Latin

Kingdom of Jerusalem from their inception in 1099 through their destruction at Acre in 1291. In the wake of the regime change of the First Crusade, Syrian Jews maintained many of their existing

Islamicate institutions including trade partnerships with Near Eastern colleagues, Arabophone rabbinic courts and relations with regional Jewish leaders in Egypt and Islamic Syria. But they also proved pragmatic in adapting to a decentralized Frankish kingdom, creating new roles for local state intermediaries, making recourse to the courts of different principalities and, ultimately, creating their own center of regional rabbinic leadership in Latin Acre.

The study began by demonstrating that the First Crusade did not eradicate most of the Jews of

Syria; it did, however, create a refugee crisis in the Palestinian interior—most notably, Jerusalem.

Many of these refugees sought sanctuary in Syria’s ports. When the Franks captured these ports in the years that followed, they spared most of the local population. The refugees and the existing Jewish populations of the Syrian ports then formed the basis of the “new” Jewish community of Latin Syria.

For the subsequent two-hundred years, most of the Jews living in the Kingdom of Jerusalem remained

Arabic speakers. They also maintained their familial and professional ties to coreligionists living in the surrounding Islamic Near East.

Just as there was continuity in the Arabic-speaking population, so there was continuity between Syria’s pre- and post-First Crusade state administrations. The Franks demonstrated a willingness to adapt existing Islamic institutions of governance from the 1110s; they did so in part as a response to demand from their conquered subjects who had Islamicate expectations of minority-state

333 relations. Surrender treaties provided sites of negotiation for the terms of settlement of Near Eastern peoples.

In the thirteenth century, the fall of the centralized Latin monarchy precipitated the growing independence of the principalities. Each principality (local nobility, military orders, secular clergy,

Italian-city states, etc.) maintained their own courts and protected “their” Syrian populations. The principality and royal courts were revenue-oriented such that they created laws that gave non-

Frankish litigants equal protection under the law and proved willing to produce Arabic deeds.

Syria’s Jews responded to vacuums in state-sanctioned political leadership by relying on local

Jewish elites to negotiate with local Frankish ones—that is, they adapted the structure of their community to match that of the decentralized Frankish state. Money lenders, merchants and tax collectors all filled the role of informal intermediaries. These local leaders proved more than able to organize large-scale charity drives, to redeem captives and to negotiate privileges for their local Jewish communities.

Prior to the First Crusade, Genizah merchants rarely, if ever, traveled to Christian lands for trade. After the First Crusade, Arabic-speaking Jews appear in the ports of Sicily and the Latin

Kingdom. These Jewish merchants facilitated a system of interlocking legal jurisdictions among qāḍī,

Latin and rabbinic courts that I have called a “state beyond borders.” It was this system that protected the merchants’ properties and persons when they traveled to Islamic states, and when Arabic- speaking merchants traveled to the Latin Levant.

In the aftermath of the First Crusade, commerce in the Levantine ports soared. Tyre and Acre went from being the hinterlands of Fustat-Cairo under the Fatimids to independent emporia of the

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Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Arabic-speaking Jews—and, undoubtedly, other Near Easterners— played a critical role in this process on the level of both large-scale, trans-Mediterranean exchange and micro-region cabotage. In the thirteenth century, trade networks of Jewish merchants based in the Latin ports stretched from Iberia to Anatolia. Greek, Iberian and Provencal merchants settled permanently in the city, making it their base for trans-Mediterranean trade.

Syria’s local rabbinic leaders reacted to the lack of centralized rabbinic authority by turning to the regional leaders of the surrounding Islamic Near East. During the First Crusade, this meant the raʾīs al-yahūd of Egypt. In the late 1160s, three contenders for regional leadership of Syria emerged:

ʿEzra b. Avraham, the gaʾon of the yeshivah of Palestine, Moses Maimonides, who briefly held the office of raʾīs al-yahūd, and Abū al-Maʿālī, the nagid/raʾīs al-yahūd of Syria. Maimonides triumphed over the other contenders because he developed personal relations with Latin Syria’s leaders during his stay in Acre and because he inspired reverential awe among the port’s Arabic-speaking Jewish majority.

Moses Maimonides and his son, Avraham Maimonides, were the head of the Jews of both

Egypt and the Latin ports; however, they also both recognized that their ability to enforce the rulings of their Syrian subjects was limited by their lack of access to state-sanctioned coercion. When a peripatetic nasi came and challenged Acre’s court, Avraham’s decree proved insufficient to stop the upstart; therefore, both Arabic speakers and Europeans in Acre issued their own decree for “(their) land,” affirming Avraham’s earlier one. In doing so, they continued to recognize Avraham as their raʾīs al-yahūd, but also claimed the right as (second-tier) regional leaders to confirm his decrees in Syria.

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Over the subsequent decades, a group of rabbinic elites from Catalonia and northern France under the leadership of the followers of the (deceased) R. Yeḥiʾel of Paris and Naḥmanides of

Barcelona immigrated to Acre. They or their students established schools that attracted and produced scholars who transformed Acre into a center of rabbinic study. These rabbis were able to convert their scholarly prestige into influence as regional rabbinic leaders. This was possible because they were embraced by the local Syrian populations. As a result, Acre’s court became the favored regional authority not only for local Near Eastern Jewish courts in Latin Syria, but also for communities in

Mamluk Syria.

All that came to an end in 1285, when David Maimonides was ousted from his position as raʾīs al-yahūd in Egypt and fled to Latin Acre for refuge. Shelomo Peṭiṭ and a group of anti-Maimonideans took David’s arrival as an opportune moment to attack the works of David’s grandfather, Moses

Maimonides. David Maimonides appealed to the regional Jewish readers in the Near East and they unanimously condemned the anti-Maimonideans; in doing so they were actually laying claim to regional authority over Syria. None of these leaders, however, could enforce their claim because the principalities that ruled the kingdom of Jerusalem were too dysfunctional, divided and indifferent to coerce either party to surrender. These were, ironically, the very same factors that had allowed the

Jewish communities of the Latin ports to thrive in the first place. The controversy continued until 1291, when the Mamluks captured or killed all those concerned.

Source Survival, Politics and Historiography

This dissertation is an over three-hundred-page testament to the fact that Arabic-speaking

Syrian Jewish communities not only survived the First Crusade, but also thrived under Frankish rule.

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Christopher MacEvitt’s work on eastern Christians under the Franks has demonstrated that those communities also survived and prospered in eleventh-century northern Syria. No such history has been written about Latin Syria’s Muslims for two reasons—source survival and politics.

On the first point, I can only say that my initial investigation of ṭabaqāt, Islamic biographies

(in this case of ʿulamāʾ from Latin Palestine) suggests that there is at least an article, and perhaps a dissertation, to be written on that subject. The second point concerning the politics of the historiography needs to be addressed in three contexts: Jewish, Western Christian and Muslim responses to the Crusades. As I discussed in the introduction, for Jewish historians and Jewish collective memory, the Crusades are associated with slaughter, forced conversion and persecution.

This picture is an accurate reflection of what happened to the Jews of Europe, but it is only half the story of the Jews and the Crusades. The assumption that Crusaders killed all Jews helps explain why historians have been so willing to assume that Latin Syria’s Jews were nonexistent or insignificant.

In the Christian West, Protestant scholars began an extended assault of the brutality and senselessness of the Crusades from the sixteenth century. Those critiques sparked a response from

(largely French) scholars in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries who portrayed the

Crusaders as tolerant soldiers who brought civilization to the East—much as they envisioned the mission civilisatrice in the French colonies. This association of the Crusades with colonialism, in turn, sparked a fierce anti-colonial critique of the Crusades and the Crusaders as forerunners for the horrors of the twentieth century (including French soldiers murdering hundreds of thousands of Algerian civilians). This critique still resonates in academic circles to this day.

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A similar and complimentary anti-Crusade polemic emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth century among Arab nationalists struggling against European colonialism. In this context, the figure of (the Kurdish) Saladin was resuscitated as a pan-Arab hero. Nationalists also deployed the purported brutality of the crusaders to suggest that the (largely secular) project of European colonialism was but one part of a thousand year Christian assault on the lands of Islam. The fact that in the centuries immediately following the Crusades, Islamic states like the Ottoman Empire were the equals or betters of the Christians on the field of battle, and thus occupied more “Christian” territory (in

Anatolia and the Balkans) than Christians did “Islamic” territory, was conveniently forgotten.

The anti-colonial and Arab nationalist critiques of the Crusades—from the perspective of the standards of the medieval world (including the medieval Near East)—are inaccurate. That is, the massacres of the First Crusade were not different from those that occurred in hundreds of other struggles during the Middle Ages. It was equally unexceptional when the Mamluks subjected Acre (a city of 30,000 to 50,000 people) to slaughter, rape, pillage and enslavement as bad or worse than what the Crusaders had done in Jerusalem in 1099 to a city of 5,000 to 10,00 people. What was (slightly more) exceptional was the Mamluks decision to destroy the infrastructure of the ports to prevent the return of the Franks.

The arguments for systematic slaughter deployed in anti-colonial discourses have prevented scholars from appreciating the active agency of the subaltern (the conquered Arabic speakers) in shaping the policies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and adapting their own economic and religious institutions. This is ironic because one of the major contributions of post-colonial theory is precisely a

338 new attentiveness to the agency of subalterns. In this limited sense, this is a work of post-colonial history that undermines the assumptions of an anti-colonial discourse.

While the medieval world was often an ugly place, its horrors pale in comparison to those of the modern era. I would suggest that historians’ readings of medieval descriptions of Crusader massacres are inflected by their knowledge of the industrial genocides of the twentieth century. The human and infrastructural casualties of modern warfare also meant that it took decades for regions to recover economically from invasion, a twentieth-century truth that—as we have seen—does not necessarily apply to the medieval period. Medieval slaughters were not and could never have been as systematic as their twentieth-century counterparts. First, the perpetrators were most often leaderless soldiers, looters armed with swords raging through the streets and homes of a conquered city. Their actions thus lacked the structure—much less the genocidal ideology—of modern mass murder. Even if such structure and ideology had existed, medieval people lacked the means to feasibly carry out slaughter on such a scale: there were no machine guns, no weaponized poison gasses, no explosives and no cattle cars.

The Limits of this Study

This is a Cairo Genizah study about a region that is not Egypt, Cairo or Fustat. The documents are relatively few in number, and I have therefore ground them down to the extent possible to derive as much information as I could about the institutions examined in this study. Nevertheless, there are many chronological lacunae in the four sections of this dissertation. For instance, we know next to nothing about regional Jewish leaders’ relationships to local leaders of Latin Syria between 1116-1168.

We know little about Syrian Jews involvement in trade between 1110-1125, 1187-1197 and 1200-1230. We

339 know little about how Saladin’s conquest and the Third Crusade impacted the lives of the people of the Syrian ports. What is even more frustrating is that it is impossible to know whether these silences are significant or simply the product of the contingencies of source survival and the Egypt-centric biases of the Genizah corpus.

Moreover, we know next to nothing about the relationship between the Jews of Latin Syria and those of Islamic Syria. The vast majority of such documents did not and could not have made it to the Genizah. If we had a Damascene Genizah, our understanding of the phenomena discussed here would be infinitely richer, especially in the context of trade and the influence of regional institutions of religious authority.

The majority of the documents examined here come from or deal with Jews living in or moving through Acre and Tyre. There are a few Genizah documents from Ascalon, Tiberias, Beirut,

Tripoli and Jerusalem discussed in the body or footnotes of the text. I have been unable to find any documents concerning the Jewish villages that we know existed at this time in the Galilee. Indeed, rural areas in general do not appear at all in our corpus, except in oblique references to Syria Jews’ involvement with agriculture.

While the Genizah documents do allow us access to the experiences of people outside the state elite, most of its texts record the actions and concerns of literate people—perhaps 5-10% of the population of urban centers. Mark Cohen, Oded Zinger, Eve Krakowski and other scholars of the

Genizah have attempted to recover the voices of the other 95%; however, the documents they employ—appeals for charity, court cases that record the voices of women and the poor, dowries, etc.

340 either do not exist or are too few in number for me to say anything substantive about the lives of non- literate people in the Latin ports except as they appear in texts mediated by the literate writer.

Moreover, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know which of this study’s findings are applicable to Near Eastern people outside the Jewish community. Near Eastern Christian and Muslim characters—at least characters identified as such—appear infrequently in the documents discussed here. Muslim and non-Latin Christian merchants were undoubtedly trading with Jewish partners, and it is more than possible that some of the merchants mentioned in the letters whom I have assumed were Jews were, in fact, members of these communities. Many of the phenomenon discussed here are not inherently “Jewish” in any way except the fact that they are being done by Jews. But commonalities would have to be verified by hard evidence.

Finally, my research has relatively little to add about European Jews living in the Latin ports outside the rabbinic elite. This is unfortunate, if only because previous studies on Jews in the Crusader states have already focused—to the exclusion of other groups—on the role of European rabbis.

Whenever it has been possible for me to do so, I have identified these non-rabbinic European figures.

But they would have been much less likely to be engaged in partnerships with Arabic-speaking merchants in Egypt, and therefore much less likely to appear in our documents. The same issue exists for Greek-speaking merchants, who we know were settled in large numbers in Latin cities like

Antioch, but who appear only a few times in the corpus of documents and other sources examined here.

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Implications

This study has examined how one group of Arabic-speaking Jews experienced conquest and the regime change from Islamic to Christian rule, and how one Latin-Christian regime responded to the challenges of ruling a conquered population of Islamicate Muslim, Christians and Jews. It has argued that the ideology and priorities of the state were important for how minority institutions evolved, but that the opposite was also true—demand from below shaped Latin state institutions.

The findings outlined here should contribute to other studies of populations experiencing conquest and regime change from Islamic to Christian rule, and vice-versa, in the premodern world.

That is, its findings should help raise questions and identify issues about how conquered people and their new administrations functioned in the aftermath of the Arab conquests, the Reconquista, the

Norman occupation of Sicily and North Africa, the Ottoman occupation of Anatolia and the Balkans, etc.

This study emphasizes that where there is continuity in the population, there is likely continuity of institutions tying the conquered populations to their colleagues and family living in the surrounding regions and under their old regime. This was especially true in a Mediterranean context in which the sea facilitated the movement of people, goods and ideas across micro-regions. This movement mitigated the effects of hard political boundaries.

The state mattered to the functioning of minority communities and individuals, but state borders were not always significant. For instance, for the Jews of Latin Syria’s legal system, state courts/violence were a salient factor that protected them from being exploited in Christian-controlled territories. But it was also the involvement of Latin state and qāḍī courts that made political

342 boundaries a non-factor for these merchants, creating a “state beyond borders” in which their property and persons were protected in foreign territories.

The dissertation also contributes to understanding relations between minorities and the medieval state—in post-conquest regimes and otherwise. Minorities did not necessarily need an alliance with a strong, centralized monarchy (i.e., the royal alliance) to thrive in their new kingdoms.

Political decentralization (and, frankly, dysfunction) could serve them just as well or better than reliance on the caprice of a single, royal figure.

When I first began this study, I intended to write a comparative analysis of Arabic-speaking

Jews’ experiences of conquest and regime change from Islamic to Latin Christian rule in Iberia, Sicily and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Needless to say, that idea proved to be too ambitious for a dissertation project. I still believe such a study would be fruitful and intend to pursue it in the future. The analysis would clarify many of the assumptions I make here and provide a firmer evidentiary basis for my claims about the impact of conquest and changes of regime on medieval subalterns.

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Appendix 1: Maps (all open source)

Figure 1: Al-Shām/Greater Syria by Province

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Figure 2: The Routes of the First Crusade (1095-1099)

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Figure 3: Crusader States at Largest (1135 CE)

N.B.: The Kingdom of Jerusalem is in blue. Ascalon should not be included in Crusader territory, as the city only fell in 1153.

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Figure 4: Saladin’s Conquest (1189 CE)

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Figure 5: The Third Crusade (1189-1192)

Figure 6: The Kingdom of Acre

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Appendix 2: Genizah Documents

Figure 8: T-S 20.145 Petition concerning Evyatar’s Family Trapped in Tripoli (1109 CE)

Figure 7: T-S 20.145 (Full) Petition concerning Evyatar’s Family Trapped in Tripoli (1109 CE)

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Figure 9: BL OR 5535.1 Responsa from the Yeshivah of Palestine to an Egyptian judge (1116 CE)

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Figure 10: T-S NS J270 Letter from Ascalon to Fustat (ca. 1170 CE)

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Figure 11: BL OR 5542.35v Letter from Shmuʾel b. ʿAlī (r. 1164-1194 CE) to Fustat following the epistolary norms of Ḥayya Gaʾon.

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Curriculum Vitae Brendan G. Goldman (b. 1/31/87, Chicago, IL) Department of History Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218 (708) 302.1318 [email protected]

EDUCATION

2018 Ph.D., History, Johns Hopkins University Dissertation: “Arabic-Speaking Jews in Crusader Syria: Conquest, Continuity and Adaptation in the Medieval Mediterranean”

2013 M.A., History, Johns Hopkins University

2010 B.A. with honors, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT

2018-2019 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Princeton University, Program in Judaic Studies

PUBLICATIONS

“Mediterranean Notables and the Politics of Survival in Islamic and Latin Syria: A New Genizah Petition from Tripoli under Crusader Siege,” Crusades 16 (2017): 1-20

FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS AND AWARDS

2017-2018 Kagan Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University

2017 Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University

2016-2017 Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) Dissertation-Writing Fellowship

2016-2017 Butler Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University (Declined)

2013 Islamic Studies Language Training Grant

2012; 2013 Stulman Jewish Studies Research Fellowship

2011-2015 Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Top-Off Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Primary Instructor: Spring 2017 Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Politics of Conquest under Crescent and Cross

Winter 2014-15 Re-Reading the Crusades: Chronicling a Century of Holy War 1096-1195

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Teaching Assistant: Spring 2015 The High Middle Ages

Spring 2013 Ancient and Medieval Jewish History

Fall 2012; Fall 2013 The Medieval World

PRESENTATIONS

2015 “Paupers and Provocateurs: The Jews of the Latin Levant and the Politics of Immigration (1187– 1291),” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, England.

2015 “Arabic Speakers in the Crusader States,” Association for Jewish Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, December 2015.

2016 “The Crusaded and the Caliph: A Fragmentary Petition from a Syrian Port under Siege,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2016.

2016 “The Crusades and the Geopolitics of Jewish Authority in Latin Syria (1099-1187),” The Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies International Conference, Nashville, TN, August 2016.

2017 “Constructing ‘the enemy’ in the Medieval Mediterranean: A Cairo Genizah Study,” The Society for the Medieval Mediterranean Conference, Brussels, Belgium, July 2017 (Panel Organizer)

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

2017- Participating Scholar, Revised Regesta Regni Hierysolimitani (Project Directors: Benjamin Kedar and Jonathan Riley-Smith)

2016- Research Associate, PGP (Project Director: Marina Rustow)

2015 - Research Associate, NEH Grant, “The Cairo Genizah as a Source for the History of Institutions and Documentary Practices in the Medieval Near East” (Project Director: Marina Rustow)

2009-2011 Research Assistant, Digitizing Cairo Genizah Texts, University of Pennsylvania (Project Director: Jessica Goldberg)

SERVICE TO PROFESSION

2014-2016 Coordinator, European Seminar, Johns Hopkins University

TEACHING AREAS

Comprehensive Exams: Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, May 2012 Mediterranean History and Medieval Jewish History, 2013 Medieval Islamic History, 2013 Medieval Historiography, 2013

LANGUAGES

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English (native), Arabic, Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic (proficient), Aramaic, Latin, French (reading knowledge)

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