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Marina Rustow - Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate - 9780801456503 - V9780801456503
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Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate

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Description for Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate Paperback. Series: Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past. Num Pages: 472 pages, 14, 12 black & white halftones, 2 maps, 1 charts. BIC Classification: 1FB; HBJF1; HBLC1; HRAX; HRJ. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 245 x 171 x 26. Weight in Grams: 828.

In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic rule, split decisively in the tenth century and from that time forward the minority Qaraites were deemed a heretical sect. Qaraites affirmed a right to decide matters of Jewish law free from centuries of rabbinic interpretation; the Rabbanites, in turn, claimed an ... Read more

Rustow draws heavily on the Cairo Geniza, a repository of papers found in a Rabbanite synagogue, to show that despite the often fierce arguments between the groups, they depended on each other for political and financial support and cooperated in both public and private life. This evidence of remarkable interchange leads Rustow to the conclusion that the accusation of heresy appeared sporadically, in specific contexts, and that the history of permanent schism was the invention of polemicists on both sides. Power shifted back and forth fluidly across what later commentators, particularly those invested in the rabbinic claim to exclusive authority, deemed to have been sharply drawn boundaries. Heresy and the Politics of Community paints a portrait of a more flexible medieval Eastern Mediterranean world than has previously been imagined and demonstrates a new understanding of the historical meanings of charges of heresy against communities of faith. Historians of premodern societies will find that, in her fresh approach to medieval Jewish and Islamic culture, Rustow illuminates a major issue in the history of religions.

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Product Details

Publisher
Cornell University Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2014
Series
Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past
Condition
New
Weight
828g
Number of Pages
472
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801456503
SKU
V9780801456503
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Marina Rustow
Marina Rustow is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and History at Princeton University. She is a 2015 MacArthur Fellow and coeditor of Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition.

Reviews for Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate
Rustow's book provides us fascinating new insights into the history of Jewish Eastern communities of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine during the crucial and politically unstable period of the rule of the Fatimid caliphs.... Her focus on documentary and epistolary sources and on the caliphal administration allows Rustow to present a picture of Rabbanite-Karaite relations which differs from the more standard ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate


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