Religious Minorities in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Laws (5th-15th Centuries) edited by Nora Berend, Youna Hameau-Masset, Capucine Nemo-Pekelman and John Tolan, (original) (raw)
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The fruit of a sustained and close collaboration between historians, linguists and jurists working on the Christian, Muslim and Jewish societies of the Middle Ages, this book explores the theme of religious coexistence (and the problems it poses) from a resolutely comparative perspective. The authors concentrate on a key aspect of this coexistence: the legal status attributed to Jews and Muslims in Christendom and to dhimmīs in Islamic lands. What are the similarities and differences, from the point of view of the law, between the indigenous religious minority and the foreigner? What specific treatments and procedures in the courtroom were reserved for plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses belonging to religious minorities? What role did the law play in the segregation of religious groups? In limiting, combating, or on the contrary justifying violence against them? Through these questions, and through the innovative comparative method applied to them, this book offers a fresh new synthesis to these questions and a spur to new research.
This volume shows through the use of legal sources that law was used to try to erect boundaries between communities in order to regulate or restrict interaction between the faithful and the non-faithful; and at the same time show how these boundaries were repeatedly transgressed and negociated. Muslim law developed a clear legal cadre for dhimmīs, inferior but protected non-Muslim communities (in particular Jews and Christians) and Roman Canon law decreed a similar status for Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe. Yet the theoretical hierarchies between faithful and infidel were constantly brought into question in the daily interactions between men and women of different faiths in streets, markets, bath-houses, law courts, etc. The twelve essays in this volume explore these tensions and attempts to resolve them. These contributions show that law was used to try to erect boundaries between communities in order to regulate or restrict interaction between the faithful and the non-fai...
Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies 1
In the middle ages, from Baghdad to Barcelona, significant communities of religious minorities resided in the midst of polities ruled by christians and muslims: Jews and christians throughout the Muslim world (but particularly from Iraq westward), lived as dhimmis, protected but subordinate minorities; while Jews (and to a lesser extent Muslims) were found in numerous places in Byzantine and Latin Europe. Legists (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) forged laws meant to regulate interreligious interactions, while judges and scholars interpreted these laws. Religion and Law in medieval Christian and muslim societies presents a series of studies on these phenomena. our goal is to study the history of the legal status of religious minorities in medieval societies in all their variety and complexity. most of the publications in this series are the products of research of the european Research council project Relmin: The legal status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (5th-15th centuries) (www.relmin.eu). au moyen âge, de Bagdad à Barcelone, des communautés importantes de minorités religieuses vécurent dans des etats dirigés par des princes chrétiens ou musulmans : dans le monde musulman (surtout de l'Iraq vers l'ouest), juifs et chrétiens résidèrent comme dhimmis, minorités protégées et subordonnées ; tandis que de nombreuses communautés juives (et parfois musulmanes) habitèrent dans des pays chrétiens. Des légistes (juifs, chrétiens et musulmans) édictèrent des lois pour réguler les relations interconfessionnelles, tandis que des juges et des hommes de lois s'efforcèrent à les interpréter. La collection Religion and Law in medieval Christian and muslim societies présente une série d'études sur ces phénomènes. Une partie importante des publications de cette collection est issue des travaux effectués au sein du programme ERC RELMIN : Le Statut Légal des Minorités Religieuses dans l'Espace Euro-méditerranéen (Ve-XVe siècles) (www.relmin. eu).
Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies: Between Theory and Praxis
2016
The articulation between sacred text and legal manifestations may vary according to whether a certain group constitutes a minority or a majority. For instance, Biblical principles on relations between Christians and non-Christians may take different forms in Christian societies, where they hold the majority and can design the policies of the state, than the ones they would adopt when Christian minority communities live in Muslim societies. Certain details of these aspects are addressed in the articles by Johannes Pahlitzsch, David Wasserstein, and Ana Echevarria. In a sense, and complementing this field of analysis, Echevarría's article discusses the role played by the quḍāt during the Mudejar period through the transmission and application of Islamic texts among Muslim communities living under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. She concludes that the qāḍī is treated in greater detail in the Llibre de la çuna e xara, a kind of local law written for Mudejars under noble jurisdiction which even includes a formulary for their sentences, better than in a general royal code such as the Leyes de moros, or the more religiously oriented Breviario sunní. Monferrer-Sala's contribution focuses on the diachronic use of the terms namūs and sharī'ah among Christian authors embodying a double meaning, firstly, in relation to the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad, who is represented as a legislator, and secondly in relation to the Qur'ān, which is conceived as a legislative corpus. Those concepts prove the value that Christian authors gave to the nuances of law related to the Prophet and the Qur'ān. Wasserstein's contribution deals with the relationship between minorities, subjected languages, dominant language and legal texts. In his article he discusses what he calls 'refinements' , i.e. those cases where differences from the norm are to be expected but define the norm itself. These differences, according to Wasserstein are explained from their geographical location of the minorities under the strength of the Arabic language imposed by the conquerors. hundreds of medieval legal texts (fueros, fatwās, ḥisba manuals, legal treatises, parliamentary ordinances, etc.) as well as narrative texts (chronicles, hagiography, etc.) describe day-today contacts between Jews, Christians and Muslims. In the second section 'Negotiating daily contacts and frictions' , the authors give some examples of these dealings and their contribution to the demarcation of religious groups. Although distinctions were enforced between religious groups, they did not remain the same over time, as daily interactions changed in response to changing political and cultural mores. For instance wine-drinking, studied by Myriam Wissa and Arcas Campoy, seems to have been widespread among Iberian and Egyptian Muslims until the late eleventh century despite legal pressure, and the same was true for other food regulations. Marisa Bueno takes up this problem of evolution by analysing the regulations for the use of public bath-houses for dhimmīs in al-Andalus and contrasting them with Christian fueros in Iberia, to determine whether Christian uses were stricter than former Islamic ones. This volume is based on a conference organized by the Cordoba Near Eastern Research unit (CNERu), universidad de Córdoba; the project 'Los mudéjares y moriscos de Castilla (siglos XI-XvI)' (uNED/MINECO hAR2011-24915), and the European Research Council Project RELMIN. The sessions took place on the 28 th to 30 th April 2014 at the Casa Árabe (Córdoba), whom we thank for their warm reception. We thank all the institutions involved in the financial support of this endeavour. We are also grateful to all the chairs and contributors who accepted our invitation to participate even if for various reasons they could not attend the conference or participate in the volume. We also wish to express our
The legal status of ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West (second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries)
2013
In the middle ages, from Baghdad to Barcelona, signiicant communities of religious minorities resided in the midst of polities ruled by christians and muslims: Jews and christians throughout the Muslim world (but particularly from Iraq westward), lived as dhimmis, protected but subordinate minorities; while Jews (and to a lesser extent Muslims) were found in numerous places in Byzantine and Latin Europe. Legists (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) forged laws meant to regulate interreligious interactions, while judges and scholars interpreted these laws. Religion and Law in medieval Christian and muslim societies presents a series of studies on these phenomena. our goal is to study the history of the legal status of religious minorities in medieval societies in all their variety and complexity. most of the publications in this series are the products of research of the european Research council project Relmin: The legal status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (5th-15th centuries) (www.relmin.eu). au moyen âge, de Bagdad à Barcelone, des communautés importantes de minorités religieuses vécurent dans des etats dirigés par des princes chrétiens ou musulmans : dans le monde musulman (surtout de l'Iraq vers l'ouest), juifs et chrétiens résidèrent comme dhimmis, minorités protégées et subordonnées ; tandis que de nombreuses communautés juives (et parfois musulmanes) habitèrent dans des pays chrétiens. Des légistes (juifs, chrétiens et musulmans) édictèrent des lois pour réguler les relations interconfessionnelles, tandis que des juges et des hommes de lois s'eforcèrent à les interpréter. La collection Religion and Law in medieval Christian and muslim societies présente une série d'études sur ces phénomènes. Une partie importante des publications de cette collection est issue des travaux efectués au sein du programme ERC RELMIN : Le Statut Légal des Minorités Religieuses dans l'Espace Euro-méditerranéen (Ve-XVe siècles) (www.relmin. eu).
The legal status of religious minorities in the medieval Mediterranean world: a comparative study
2010
Throughout the Mediterranean world in the Middle ages, Jews, Christians and Muslims interacted in streets and in marketplaces, shared meals, undertook joint economic ventures, traveled together. These interactions were, in theory, governed by a host of legal strictures. Yet the clerical elites who were often the guarantors of these religious/legal traditions often reacted with realism and pragmatism, adapting the seemingly rigid constraints of religious law to specific needs. Two examples are used to illustrate this, from the writings of twelfth-century ifriqiyan mufti al-Māzarī and thirteenth-century canonist Raymond of Penyafort.
The Legal Status of Ḏimmī-S in the Islamic West
Brepols eBooks, 2013
In the middle ages, from Baghdad to Barcelona, signiicant communities of religious minorities resided in the midst of polities ruled by christians and muslims: Jews and christians throughout the Muslim world (but particularly from Iraq westward), lived as dhimmis, protected but subordinate minorities; while Jews (and to a lesser extent Muslims) were found in numerous places in Byzantine and Latin Europe. Legists (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) forged laws meant to regulate interreligious interactions, while judges and scholars interpreted these laws. Religion and Law in medieval Christian and muslim societies presents a series of studies on these phenomena. our goal is to study the history of the legal status of religious minorities in medieval societies in all their variety and complexity. most of the publications in this series are the products of research of the european Research council project Relmin: The legal status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (5th-15th centuries) (www.relmin.eu). au moyen âge, de Bagdad à Barcelone, des communautés importantes de minorités religieuses vécurent dans des etats dirigés par des princes chrétiens ou musulmans : dans le monde musulman (surtout de l'Iraq vers l'ouest), juifs et chrétiens résidèrent comme dhimmis, minorités protégées et subordonnées ; tandis que de nombreuses communautés juives (et parfois musulmanes) habitèrent dans des pays chrétiens. Des légistes (juifs, chrétiens et musulmans) édictèrent des lois pour réguler les relations interconfessionnelles, tandis que des juges et des hommes de lois s'eforcèrent à les interpréter. La collection Religion and Law in medieval Christian and muslim societies présente une série d'études sur ces phénomènes. Une partie importante des publications de cette collection est issue des travaux efectués au sein du programme ERC RELMIN : Le Statut Légal des Minorités Religieuses dans l'Espace Euro-méditerranéen (Ve-XVe siècles) (www.relmin. eu).