BOOK REVIEWS 163

costing around 4 to 6 dinars. A common workingman could not. Very few

Jews were in a position to purchase thoroughbred mules and elegant
saddlery, which in any case was considered to be dangerously ostentatious
for a non-Muslim. A man who heard rumors that his brother had received
an expensive mule and saddle from an Arab chieftain wrote to warn his
brother of gossip and prayed that God would preserve him from the evil eye.
In citing this Geniza letter, Goitein in one stroke has taught us about family
ties, material culture, social relations, and the concerns of Jews living in
medieval Muslim society not to be overly conspicuous. Here, as in so many
instances, Goitein's discerning eye finds those personal details that breathe
real life into his historical reconstruction.
Professor Goitein was a great humanist, a master teacher, and a consum-
mate artist. In Volumes III and IV of A Mediterranean Society, he offers us a
remarkable and indeed a majestic vision of the ordinary aspects of the life of
the Jews of the medieval Muslim world.

Norman A. Stillman
State University of New York
Binghamton, N.Y.

Allan Harris Cutler and Helen Elmquist Cutler. The Jew as Ally of the Mus-
lim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1986. x, 577 pp.

There is much in this volume to be admired, including the broad sweep

of the scholarship, which ranges from antiquity to contemporary affairs, the
highly idealistic tone that animates the study, and the consistent call for
comparative analysis of historical issues involving the Jews. For students of
Jewish history, who are all too often prone to treat the issues of Jewish his-
tory in isolation, the insistence upon comparative analysis is especially salu-
tary. In setting out a methodology for the study of papal-Jewish relations,
the Cutlers suggest as a sixth and final demand that "each pope's general
policy toward the Jews should be understood in the light of what we know,
from the most recent research, about his policy toward other non-Catholics,
whether pagans, Christians (medieval Western Christian heretical move-
ments, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Middle Eastern Christians), or
Muslims." Adopting this stance would surely advance the understanding

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 164 BOOK REVIEWS

not only of papal-Jewish relations but of all ecclesiastical and secular poli-
cies toward the Jews during the Middle Ages. These virtues notwithstand-
ing, the critical issue in the book is the provocative thesis that it advances,
and it is to an examination of this thesis that we must proceed.
The Cutlers present their thesis in the very title of their study. The mean-
ing of their title and the thrust of their thesis are spelled out clearly in the
introductory chapter.

Because of their similarities to the Muslims [emphasis in original], the Jews

were viewed by Christians as allies of the Muslims [emphasis in original],
Islamic fifth columnists in Christian territory and agents of the dangerous for-
eign Islamic conspiracy. As such, the Jews had to be degraded, converted,
exiled, or killed. Had there been no great outburst of Christian hatred against
the Muslims in the Crusades, there might well have been no great outburst of
anti-Semitism in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. Indeed, had
there been no such outburst of Christian hatred against the Muslims, anti-
Semitism might well have died out altogether in Western society, for anti-
Semitism was dormant during most of the previous period in Western
European history, the Carolingian-Ottonian (circa 7001000). [p. 6]

To be sure, the Cutlers acknowledge that there were other factors in

medieval resentment of the Jews. They identify four such factors.

(1) religious factors, such as the deicide charge (the charge that the Jews killed
Christ), Christian Messianic expectations (according to which the Jews had to
be either converted or annihilated as agents of Antichrist before the Second
Coming could take place), and Christian resentment of Jewish proselytizing
activities; (2) economic factors, such as economic competition between Chris-
tians and Jews and/or Christian resentment of Jewish money-lending activi-
ties; (3) political factors, such as the struggle for power between the monarchy,
the nobility, and the urban middle class, and later the urban lower class, in
which struggle the Jews were often caught; and (4) psychological factors, such
as the deeply felt human need to find scapegoats for individual and/or societal
shortcomings, the fear of what is different, and the Freudian-Oedipal interpre-
tation of medieval anti-Semitism, [p. 89]

While recognizing the impact of these other factors, the Cutlers reiterate
their thesis.

However, a hitherto rather neglected factor which may well have made the
most decisive contribution of all to the great outburst of anti-Semitism in the
High Middle Ages was the following. Medieval Christians seem to have asso-

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 BOOK REVIEWS 165

dated Jews with Muslims from the very beginning of the Arab conquests of
Christian territory in the 630s; and, at times of special distress, to have consi-
dered the Jews allies of the Muslims and Islamic fifth columnists in Christian
territory. Once the great anti-Muslim movement known as the Crusades
began in the eleventh century, it was inevitable that the Jews, who had often in
the past been looked upon as agents of a foreign Islamic conspiracy, would be
considered more dangerous than ever and would be degraded, converted,
exiled, or killed, [pp. 89-90]

I have quoted the Cutler thesis at some length and in two versions. What is
the evidence adduced for this important thesis? The key chapter, as noted by
the Cutlers themselves, is the fourth, entitled "The Association of Jew with
Muslim by Medieval Christians: A New Comparative Approach to the
Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism." This crucial chapter is divided into
three sections: (1) "Twentieth-Century Revivals of the Association of Jew
with Muslim by Medieval Christians" (8 pp.); (2) "Why Did Early Medieval
Christians Associate Jew with Muslim (circa 600110 A.D.)" (9 pp.);
(3) "Additional Medieval and Modern Examples of the Christian Equation
of Jew with Muslim (circa 10001975 A.D.)" (23 pp.). The organizational
pattern of this key chapter is immediately disquieting. If the central thesis of
the book is the medieval Christian perception of the Jews as allies of the
Muslims, then why are only nine pages devoted to the allegedly critical
period in the development of this supposed perception? Indeed, why do
these nine pages set out to answer the question of why the perception devel-
oped? It would seem that the primary task is to prove the existence of such a
perception.
In fact a mere three pages are devoted to examples of this proposed
Christian perception of the Jews as allies of the Muslims. Let us look closely
at the evidence. The following items are adduced: (1) Byzantine persecution
of the Jews in the 630s; (2) the Spanish accusation of Jewish collusion with
the Muslims in the 690s; (3) purported ninth-century complaints against the
Jews in southern France; (4) the Bodo-Elazar affair of the ninth century;
(5) an eleventh-century tradition that the Jews betrayed Toulouse to the
Arabs in 848; (6) a ninth-century complaint that the Jews betrayed Barce-
lona to the Muslims in 852; (7) Byzantine persecution of the Jews in the
930s; (8) the persecutions around the year 1010; (9) the persecutions atten-
dant upon the First Crusade. This is not an overwhelming set of materials
upon which to base the far-ranging thesis proposed by the Cutlers. What is
more, upon careful examination, some of the items, including the most
important ones, tend to evaporate.
It is surely understandable that, during the period of Muslim conquest,

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 166 BOOK REVIEWS

the Jews might have been perceived as allies of the new conquerors. Thus,
items 1, 2, 5, and 6 certainly do reflect Christian perceptions of the Jews as
allies of the Muslims. This, however, is a phenomenon limited to a special
set of circumstances and hardly substantiates the broad claim of the Cutlers
that perception of the Jews as allies of the Muslims is the central factor in
the development of anti-Jewish views in the Middle Ages.
As to item 3, the Cutlers document in their footnote the Zuckerman
thesis (noting but not recognizing sufficiently, it seems to me, the telling cri-
ticisms of Jeremy Cohen in this journal, vol. II), but they fail to document
their claim of a Christian perception of a Jewish alliance with the Muslims.
Likewise with regard to item 4, the Cutlers claim that the conversion of the
court chaplain Bodo to Judaism "served to strengthen the tendency to
associate Jew with Muslim," but they fail to afford us evidence of that asso-
ciation. The same is true with regard to item 7. The sources noted by the
Cutlers fail to advance any notion of a Jewish alliance with the Muslims as
the grounds for the Byzantine persecution of the Jews.
The most important instances for the Cutlers and the most problematic
are the last two. They are important because they are so far removed from
the period of Muslim conquest. Both, however, are highly problematic. The
Cutlers assert that the persecution of 1010 "is clearly and unequivocally
attributed by the Christian primary sources to the charge that the Jews were
in league with the Muslims (specifically, in league with al-Hakim, the Fati-
mid Caliph of Egypt, who destroyed the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem circa
1010)." Now, for this persecution, which is nowhere near so important an
event as the Cutlers make it out to be, there are five available primary
sources, three Christian and two Jewish. Of the five, only one, Raoul
Glaber, tells the story of alleged collusion between the Jews and the Muslims
(the Cutlers claim that this perception is reflected in Adhemar of Chabannes
as well, but this is simply not so). Appearance of this motif in one Christian
source hardly constitutes evidence for a perception so widespread as to form
the key element in the development of medieval anti-Jewish sentiment.
Finally, we come to the attacks of 1096, which are yet more important to
the Cutler thesis. Here we possess substantial evidence, both Christian and
Jewish. According to the Cutlers, this persecution "seems to have been
primarily the result of the association of Jew with Muslim by medieval
Christians (although our primary sources are not as explicit about the oper-
ation of this factor in 1096 as they are about its operation circa 1010)." For
this contention the Cutlers offer no proof whatsover from the sources. In
fact, after studying exhaustively these First Crusade sources for the past
decade, I can find no testimony at all to support their claim.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 167

Thus, looking back over the minimal evidence presented, we are left with
a number of instances that are obvious, stemming from the period of
Muslim conquest, and a larger number of instances where the purported
perception of the Jews as allies of the Muslims does not appear in the man-
ner claimed. It seems to me that the core thesis of the book has simply not
been substantiated.
There is a bit more to be said. The second version of the Cutler thesis
quoted above provides in effect a two-stage development of anti-Jewish
sentiment based on anti-Islamic animus. In the first stage the Jews are asso-
ciated with the Muslims; in the second they are seen as allies of the Muslims.
There is, to be sure, a great difference between these two stages, a difference
often blurred in the Cutlers' argumentation. It is one thing to suggest that
the Jews were associated in Christian thinking with the Muslims, and
another to say that Jews were perceived as allies of the Muslims. This critical
difference is often lost in the flow of the Cutlers' claims. Thus, for example,
it is surely accurate to suggest that the Jews were associated with the Mus-
lims in the minds of those crusaders who attacked them in 1096. All the
versions of the slogan with which the crusader assaults were justified make
mention of that associationit is an association that begins with reference
to the Muslims as the enemies against whom the crusade was called and pro-
ceeds to argue that the Jews were both nearer and more hostile enemies who
should therefore be attacked first. This association of the Jews and the
Muslims as enemies of Christendom never, however, reaches the point
alleged by the Cutlers, the point of seeing the Jews as enemies in alliance
with the Muslim enemies. It may well be that part of the error in the Cutlers'
argument stems from a loose extension of association of Jews with Muslims
(which is in the sources in a significant measure) to perception of the Jews as
allies of the Muslims (which does not appear in the sources in a significant
measure).
Part of what I perceive to be the weakness of the Cutlers' thesis may flow
from their book's disjointed style of presentation. Each chapter is identified
as the embodiment of prior papers or articles. One senses that the weaving
of these disparate elements into a cohesive statement has not been satisfac-
torily accomplished. To argue in sustained fashion the provocative and
significant thesis which the book advances would have taken a fuller effort
at integration of the disparate sections of prior research.
Indeed the thesis of the Cutlers, which I find unsubstantiated in the
sources, does lead in a direction that might be more fruitful than the one
that they pursued. To cite again their formulation noted above: "Had there
been no great outburst of Christian hatred against the Muslims in the

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 168 BOOK REVIEWS

Crusades, there might well have been no great outburst of anti-Semitism in

Western Europe during the High Middle Ages." For the Cutlers, this is an
implication of their argument that medieval anti-Jewish sentiments flowed
in large measure from Christian perceptions of the Jews as allied with the
Muslims. I would venture to suggest an alternative. The heart of the issue, it
seems to me, lies not in the "great outburst of Christian hatred against the
Muslims," but simply in the "great outburst of Christian hatred." Put differ-
ently, I would propose that a marked upsurge of Christian belligerence
against the non-Christian world altogether resulted in manifestations of
both anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish sentiment. Not surprisingly, this ani-
mosity toward the outsider often resulted in the association of Muslims and
Jews in Christian eyes. This linkage, however, did not include a significant
perception of the two as united in an anti-Christian alliance (except under
very limited circumstances). The broader phenomenon of rampant medieval
anti-Jewish sentiment has more to do, it seems to me, with the powerful
vitalization of western Christendom during the eleventh through thirteenth
centuries and the striking emergence of anti-outsider antipathy that was an
unfortunate concomitant of that vitalization.

Robert Chazan
New York University
New York, N.Y.

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