How Islamic expansion changed the fate of Jewish communities

The harsh trials and twists of history took European Jews through economic prosperity, numerous disasters and expulsions, finding a new home and economic niche in Poland and a new catastrophe of war and the Pale of Settlement. The vicissitudes of fate divided the paths of European Jewry into three: assimilation without loss of identity, extreme conservatism and isolation with the rejection of economic progress, and the desire for the formation of an independent Jewish state. The history of the Jews in Muslim countries was also dramatic, but still much more straightforward, and the stagnation of Jewish communities in the Muslim world was slow enough that by the end of the 19th century they did not form any revolutionary movement and were eventually forced to accept political and economic ideas created in Europe.

From a historical point of view, the birth and spread of Islam occurred instantly: in 622 the first circle of Muslim monotheists was created in Medina, 20 years later Muslim armies conquered Egypt and Iran, and 100 years later Islam was already the state religion of a single caliphate in the territory from India to Northern Spain. The speed of spread of Muslim rule in areas comparable in area to the territories once captured by Rome and earlier by Macedonia was 5-6 times higher than the speed of Roman expansion and only 2 times slower than the rapid campaign of Alexander the Great – while the unified caliphate (in one form or another) lasted 300 years – 10 times longer than the empire of Alexander and only slightly less than the period from Rome’s occupation of Britain to its collapse in Western and Eastern Empires.

Such speed and stability could not be the result of random circumstances or the managerial genius of individual leaders. Islam was born in the territory lying between the giant economies of the Mediterranean and Central Asia and China, during a period when the territory was a patchwork of small, often nomadic tribal states. The geographical location and relatively low soil fertility naturally pushed the population of these territories to form an economy based on trade. Fragmentation, differences in languages ​​and beliefs, archaic, often xenophobic customs greatly hindered such development. Islam carried uniform rules, and the expansion of its carriers – the Arabs – temporarily eliminated intertribal and interstate borders, providing – through the creation of a network of military settlements and garrisons – relatively safe routes for the movement of goods, people and information.

Paradoxically, Islamic expansion was successful due to its initial problem: the conquerors of gigantic territories were well-organized and ideologically charged, but extremely small in number compared to the local population, Arab tribes. There were enough of them for capture (largely due to the fragmentation of local state formations and their inability to unite in confronting an external threat), but certainly not for successful retention and control of the captured spaces. Cooperation with the conquered peoples (and not total extermination or enslavement) was the only way out, and the religious structure of Islam, which presupposed, at least formally, equality of all converts, and preferences for followers of other Abrahamic religions compared to pagans, helped build this cooperation in a significantly more effective way than the Romans did, and at the same time in a no less controlled manner.

It is unclear whether this was part of a deliberate development plan, or a reflection of the fact that the conquerors, in order to control the conquered areas, quickly created a network of quasi-urban settlements in which they stationed their military units and Arab settlers, while the local residents mostly lived in the countryside and worked the land – or it may simply be a consequence of the fact that agriculture was not a significant business in the Arabian Peninsula, but the taxation imposed by the Arabs on the territory caliphate, clearly discriminated against agriculture and thereby contributed to the processes of rapid urbanization. To a large extent, as in Europe, urbanization and the growing importance of international trade gave a significant advantage to Jewish communities living in the territories of the caliphate (and then caliphates), bound by a common language, largely urbanized by the 7th century, consisting mainly of literate men.

Unlike Europe, where the transition of Jews to engage in trade, finance and fine crafts was caused to a significant extent by the ban on other professions and occupations, in the Islamic world it was associated, on the one hand, with the significant advantage that Jews (as representatives of the Abrahamic religion, a protected minority) had over the majority of local pagan residents, on the other hand, with the fact that trade was already their specialization due to connections between the communities of various centers of the Islamic world, and finally with the fact that the elite of the new society, the Arabs, for a long time did not seek to be involved in business processes – they were economically satisfied with the position of winners, managers and tax collectors. As much later in Poland, and for other reasons, during the heyday of the Islamic world, Jews played a significant economic role due to the fact that the elites simply did not seek to compete for it.

Muslims’ initial tolerance of Abrahamic religions and preferences for trade made Jews active supporters of Muslim expansion. In a number of places (including, for example, Isfahan), chronicles documented the attitude of local Jews to the transfer of power to Muslims as liberation; Jews actively helped the new authorities and often became intermediaries between the Arabs and the local population, temporary managers and officials. On the borders of the Islamic world, Jews became intermediaries in communication and trade with Christians – in large part through their connections with the Jewish communities of Europe.

As in Poland, the basis of financial interaction between Jewish communities and the authorities in the caliphates was the payment of a tax – here called jizya (tax on a protected minority). The tax varied widely, but averaged about 8% of income for the poor, was twice as high (but was about 5% of income) for the middle class, and twice as high for the rich (but, of course, was a small percentage of earnings). It must be said that this tax was not just an additional financial burden – it was levied in return for compulsory military duty (for the development of trade and crafts, the exemption of men from military duty was an undoubted advantage).

In the period before the 15th-16th centuries, despite (or perhaps thanks to) the disintegration of the Islamic Ummah into separate countries, the emergence of several large quasi-empires and the division of the Islamic world between the old Arab and new Mongol and Turkic elites, the role of Jewish communities in the Islamic world only grew, as did the role of trade between East and West. The free practice of Judaism made it possible to create several large religious schools on the territory of the Ummah (among which the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Andalusian stood out), which existed in close connection with the most powerful communities that openly competed with each other for markets and profits (this competition was fully reflected in the competition of religious thinkers and philosophers). The constant influx of refugees from Europe in the period after the 13th century fueled the opportunities for community development.

Of course, the position of the “protected minority” was not only profitable and convenient. In general, the attitude of the authorities and the population of the Islamic world changed depending on what was more profitable at the moment – relying on Jews to develop the economy or robbing them to quickly replenish budgets. The Koran allowed for both, depending on how you read it: while prohibiting friendship between believers and Jews, it nevertheless left room for “friendship of necessity” as a form of hypocrisy to achieve its goals. In the well-known story of the dispute between the devout Hazrat Abada and the “famous hypocrite” (apparently a businessman) Abdullah ibn Ibai about whether it is possible to be friends with Jews, Muhammad directly tells the latter that it is “his job” to be friends with Jews, while in the absence of such a need, Hazrat Abada should not do this. But both this changeability and the attitude towards Jews as second-class citizens inherent in Muslim laws had their commercial advantages – in particular, the opportunity for Jews to engage in “low” professions and occupations prohibited for Muslims. A prime example of this advantage was the opium trade, in which Muslims were not allowed to participate. The chronicles speak of extremely significant and sustainable profits that Jewish traders made from importing opium from China.

The position that Jews and Jewish communities periodically achieved can be generally judged from the many statements that have come down to us from Muslim contemporaries who feared Jewish influence and were envious of Jewish success. Abu Saad at-Tustari in the middle of the 11th century in Cairo writes literally: “The Jews of our time have realized their deepest hopes and become in power. Fame accompanies them, money belongs to them, advisers come from their ranks [власти] and managers.”

Unlike the Muslim world, whose economic advantage was built on geography, uniform laws and standards, and thus a monopoly on trade between East and West, Christian Europe had no sustainable advantage, and was doomed to build one over time simply to survive. The chain of accidents and features of Europe (the construction of a system of independent universities by the Christian Church due to a shortage of priests, the epidemics of the 14th century, which laid the foundation for the development of centers of independent scientific thinking and significantly reduced the influence of the church, fragmentation, which caused fierce competition and required a constant search for new solutions, primarily in the military field) led, on the one hand, to the development of information transmission technologies (and the emergence of the printing press), on the other hand, to the beginning in the 15th century of the rapid technological development of the European civilization, and the third – to the active development of sea trade routes by Europeans.

All these innovations not only did not arise in the Muslim world, but even their adoption was dramatically delayed – sometimes for 200-400 years: the massive traditional economic system, which had benefited from its undoubted advantages for 800 years, simply refused to change, and the clerical elite, which retained intellectual control through state (unlike Europe) madrasah universities, cemented its position with the principle of “closing the gates” independent judgment” and the requirement of “blind imitation”, effectively deprived the Islamic world of the opportunity to innovate and adopt innovations.

As a result, by the 16th century, the historical economic advantage of the Islamic world ceased to be a monopoly – transporting goods to Europe by sea became cheaper and more convenient; the discovery and exploitation of the Americas and European expansion into central and southern Africa significantly reduced the importance of supply channels from the East. In response, the authorities of Muslim states provided significant benefits for European (by that time already Christian) traders. The latter brought with them not only technology, but also a history of competition with Jews in Europe, and an attitude towards Jews as poorly tolerated enemies, and an accumulated baggage of anti-Semitic myths.

Starting from the 16th-17th centuries, Islamic states experienced a consistent decline in the role of Jews and Jewish communities in the economy and politics – in parallel with the economic stagnation of the entire Islamic world, the formation of their own class of traders and artisans and the active penetration of Christians – partly as privileged traders, partly as colonialists. As a result, by the end of the 19th century, the economic role of Jews in Islamic countries became little distinguishable from the role of other communities and Muslims themselves – while (unlike Western Europe, there was no noticeable assimilation of Jews, or (unlike Eastern Europe) the formation of new ideological paradigms in the Jewish environment of the Islamic world did not occur. By the time assimilation made Western European Jews part of the local elites, Eastern European Hasidism formed the face of the new conservative wing of modern Jewry with its own peculiar “collapsed” economy civilization,” and Zionism began to open the way to the construction of a Jewish national state, the Jews of the Islamic world lived in the same economic order as 100-200 years ago; they were certainly part of further epochal – great and tragic – events, but they were not at their origins.