Description: Jacob Lassner examines the triangular relationship that in the Middle Ages definedand continues to define todaythe political and cultural interaction among the three Abrahamic faiths. Looking closely at the social and political status among medieval Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Islamic lands from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, Lassner balances the rhetoric of literary and legal documents with other, newly discovered sourcesincluding private letters and thousands of other textsthat described life as it was actually lived among the three Mediterranean communities. In Lassner s account, these documents bear dramatic witness to the relations, borrowings, transfer, absorption, and circulation of cultural artifacts among the three faiths. He paints a very different picture of the interaction among the three religions than much of the scholarship since the eighteenth century has described. Lassner shows just what medieval Muslims meant when they spoke of tolerance, and how that abstract concept played out in the real world of medieval Christian and Jewish communities under Muslim rule."
Brief description:
Jacob Lassner is the Phillip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor Emeritus of Jewish Civilization and professor of history and religion at Northwestern University.
Review Quotes: "Jacob Lassner [is] one of the greatest authorities on medieval Islam. . . . [These] essays, with their mass of fascinating information and their challenging and often provocative suggestions, are immensely stimulating."--Alastair Hamilton "Times Literary Supplement"