In the 7th and 8th centuries, the Arabs conquered the Persian Empire, the territories in Asia and North Africa that were part of the Byzantine Empire, and finally the rest of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Most of these territories, with the exception of Spain and Sicily, have remained within Islam to this day. At that time, the Jews in the Muslim world were a prosperous community, not much persecuted, economically integrated into their environment, with the self-confidence to adapt to internal and external factors, without fear of assimilating into the world around them.

The strongest Jewish institutions in the Arab Empire at that time were the yeshivot, two in Babylon and one in Eretz Israel. Rabbis were trained there to serve as community administrators, judges, and religious authorities. At first, each of these yeshivot had its own sphere of influence, but in the end, those of the former Persian Empire took over from those of Eretz Israel. Their authority was not only legal but also administrative, as they appointed the heads of each community from among their students. These were called “Nagid” and the heads of the yeshivot, “Gaon.”

What was taught most in the Babylonian academies was religious law based on the Talmud Babli, which took over from the Talmud Jerusalem. The prayer books used throughout the Jewish world also came from these academies. The rabbis of Babylon and those of Eretz Israel recognized each other as religious authorities, however, there were groups that opposed the authority of the Gaon and in general all of Rabbinic Judaism, such as the Karaites, a sect within Judaism that denied the authority of the rabbis and the Talmud, since they only recognized the Torah as the only and true foundation of Judaism.

One of the most influential gaonim was Saadiah ben Yosef (882-942), the Gaon of the Sura yeshivah. Saadiah Gaon left us many writings. He managed to impose the yeshivoth of Babylon over those of Eretz Israel and strongly fought the Karaites, who sought to undermine the authority of the rabbis. In the intellectual sphere, his work represents almost a complete reorganization of Jewish religious knowledge, influenced by the great scholars of Islam.

After Saadiah, the Jewish community in Babylon began to decline and the centers of learning moved to other areas of the Arab empire, such as the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and Egypt. Great scholars emerged in all three places. Maimonides was one of them.

The Islamic conquerors brought the Arabic language with them. The conquered populations adopted Arabic as their everyday language. The Jews were no exception and used it both to communicate with their Muslim neighbors and to write exceptional scholarly works. For them, speaking and writing in Arabic was not “Chinese.”

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: “Merchants and Intellectuals, Rabbis and Poets: Judeo Arabic Culture in the Golden Age of Islam” by Raymond P. Scheindlin.