The Sephardic frontier
Subtitle: the reconquista and the Jewish community in medieval Iberia
By: Jonathan Ray.
Series: Conjunction of religion and power in the medieval past; Conjunctions of religion & power in the medieval past.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Ithaca, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 198
ISBN-13: 9780801444012
Subjects: Jews -- Spain -- History -- To 1500; Jews -- Portugal -- History -- To 1500; Spain -- Ethnic relations -- History; Portugal -- Ethnic relations -- History; Spain -- History -- 711-1516; Portugal -- History -- To 1385
Description: "No subject looms larger over the historical landscape of medieval Spain than that of the reconquista, the rapid expansion of the power of the Christian kingdoms into the Muslim-populated lands of southern Iberia, which created a broad frontier zone that for two centuries remained a region of warfare and peril." "Drawing on a large fund of unpublished material in royal, ecclesiastical, and municipal archives as well as rabbinic literature, Jonathan Ray reveals a fluid, often volatile society that transcended religious boundaries and attracted Jewish colonists from throughout the peninsula and beyond. The result was a wave of Jewish settlements marked by a high degree of openness, mobility, and interaction with both Christians and Muslims."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, 2002.
Table of contents: title: The migration of Jewish settlers to the frontier; title: Jewish land ownership; title: Moneylending and beyond : the Jews in the economic life of the frontier; title: Royal authority and the legal status of Iberian Jewry; title: Jewish communal organization and authority; title: Communal tensions and the question of Jewish autonomy; title: Maintenance of social boundaries on the Iberian frontier.