so we just finished talking about the geoneck period and one of the communities that was
most heavily influenced by the geonin of baghdad were the jews of north africa
let's take a few moments to look at the origins of that community and understand how they were
shaped by the muslim conquest and we'll conclude this lecture with one of the high points of the
history of the scholarship that emanated from north africa so when we speak about north
africa there's actually a term that's used in the scholarly literature the maghreb which is referr
means literally the west and it's an arabic term uh the hebrew word maharav that encompasses these
countries here in modern day terms basically libya algeria morocco in particular are the most
significant for jewish purposes and as you can see uh the population density is highest on the
coast itself as you move further south you get to the sahara desert much more forbidding much less
population growth there but there are jews who are living for example uh on the southern side
of the atlas mountain range in morocco and so on let's have a look here at a satellite photograph
so we can talk a little bit about the origins of these long-standing communities now much of this
is shrouded in legend there is definitely however a significant semitic influence in north africa
from the first millennium before the common era like let's say 8 900 bce but it's not necessarily
jewish it is phoenician you have phoenicians are a a maritime civilization that of course
were involved in israel as well and they have settled many places along the coast their language
is closely related to hebrew and so that was kind of like a cultural and linguistic entree to north
africa that was especially significant as we have more migration there now one of their most famous
cities is carthage which would be in tunisia today the legends of the earliest semitic settlement
suggests that some of the earliest populations to settle there after the phoenicians were some
of the early canaanite peoples josephus suggests that some of abraham's children who did not form
let's say the mosaic israelite jewish branch that is abraham's children through by katura
his second wife the the torah describes his children by katura as having been sent east
with gifts obviously they returned bringing with them asian food but it's also possible according
to josephus to think of them traveling west so they would have been descendants of abraham
augustine in the 4th century we spoke about him he's one of the church fathers a while ago
he refers to the local term that people use for themselves in his region of khanani
saying that this actually comes from which means canaanite that some of the earliest peoples were
those that may have been expelled in the conquest under joshua there's a legendary thought that the
peoples of north africa may have descended from the girgashi people that are mentioned
in the torah as one of the seven canaanite nations that are expelled in the context of the
jewish conquest of the land of israel in terms of jewish settlement per se joshua himself his
tomb is apparently venerated in flem sen which is in algeria it's unlikely that joshua actually
moved to the west but nevertheless this is kind of like part of the lore of the region but the
the fact that there were hebrew speakers in the region not aramaic speakers suggest that it is not
at all impossible to imagine migration there from the 6th century bce and onward that is after the
destruction of jerusalem under never had nazar and the expulsion of jews to babylonia it is in that
persian period that you begin to develop aramaic as a lingua franca of jews having hebrew as the
spoken language would suggest that yeah in fact these peoples would have come quite a bit earlier
but at any rate whatever you make of these various legendary possibilities there's no question that
we have strong populations there in the first and second centuries lots of documentation
of boatloads of captive jews after the first roman jewish war being sent throughout the mediterranean
uh you have the uh migration after the barakah rebellion we know of jews for example in kierenica
that currente that actually had a revolt against the romans in the year 117 the ketos rebellion
which we spoke about a while ago so there's no question there's lots of jews living here
around the turn of the millennium there's some interesting archaeological discoveries such
as a mosaic that was originally thought to be of a church that was discovered in tunisia but
looking at it a little bit more closely you can see it says right there in the middle of the text
sancta synagogue it says holy synagogue and in the little medallions on either side of the text
there is the very classic jewish representation of the menorah
which makes this a prime candidate of course for first century jewish settlement in the region the
muslim conquest in the seventh century is especially interesting because we have a lot
more historical treatment of the discovery of jewish tribes living in north africa
a muslim historian even khaldoon says they came across these berber tribes now the term berber
is acceptable in english although it is originally a derogatory term that was applied by the greeks
to the indigenous peoples of north africa lacking you know respect for their local terminology
they referred to their language as being kind of like a gibberish they would say barbar bar and
hence we get the term in english barbarian uh but ultimately the term was trans-valued and it was
used to refer to these peoples without necessarily having a negative connotation now among these
multiple tribes several of them were actually practicing judaism and the muslims were surprised
to see wow significant jewish populations among these peoples the earlier semitic context the
earlier migrations of jews no doubt had an impact on the local populations the conversion to judaism
was especially pronounced among the nomadic forms of the berber civilization the so-called butter
branch uh that were less sedentary and actually quite warlike which is fascinating to to see
in particular you see there's a lot of legends regarding queen kahina of a tribe called jarawa
that is associated with judaism in fact the term gerard may be related to the hebrew term gare
gere means convert and although there are lots of questions surrounding queen kahina and trying to
understand whether or not she was actually jewish if the jarawa were actually jewish at this time
but she is nevertheless a major part of 7th century history for her ferocious defense of
her tribe from the muslim invaders she actually fell in battle herself but it is significant
in terms of describing the extent to which judaism had penetrated the local populations now
just thinking about north africa in terms of these kind of exotic warrior clans is a
bit of a distortion of what else is going on in north africa as well there's actually a lot of
scholarship developing especially on the coast as you have more and more scholars coming together in
in the welcoming environment of islam to engage in religious studies perhaps the most famous
is roberto gananel ben khushiel who was an 11th century commentator who actually wrote the first
full commentary on the talmud if you study talmud today in the traditional printing you will see
rabbenu right on the side the outside margin of every page of talmud which is prime real estate
for commentaries he actually wrote his commentary before rashi which gives you an indication of
the antiquity of his work now he may have been originally from rome uh and that just indicates
how important the community of cairo which is not the same as cairo cairon is located in
tunisia today but that the community was strong enough to attract the scholar of his standing
even more famous than robin hananel it's impossible to talk about medieval north african
jewry without referring to rabbi yitzhak penakov al-fasi al-fasi means the one from fez fez is in
morocco and he wrote a brilliant and very widely used talmudic commentary that is still you know
incredibly essential to studying the talmud rabbi al-fasi's commentary is interesting in that you
know as we've discussed in previous lectures the talmud is a very unusual document in which there's
a lot of discussion of halachic practice how one should behave as a jew and a back and forth
of debate looking at the ambiguities of the text and arguing different positions and and sometimes
but certainly not all the time coming to a clear and resolved conclusion but the talmud also
includes a tremendous amount of material which seems really quite tangential in nature that goes
off and talks about metaphysics or biographies or recipes or observations from the natural universe
all kinds of things which are kind of a miscellany that are attached with very very thin connections
to the previous material and uh i think it makes the talmud absolutely fascinating to read but the
alfasi said wait a second you know it's really important that we get to the bottom line how we
should behave here so he went through the entire talmud and he removed all of that other stuff
called a gata which i personally i find that you know much more appealing in many ways but that's
just me he removed all that stuff and he recorded the debate in the talmud back and forth back and
forth inserting his commentary as necessary in the narrative sometimes with clearer conclusions
and he made a much more strapped down pragmatic this is how the talmud derives
the final legislation that eventually became a major building block in the entire firmament
of jewish law hugely influential text that is usually printed at the back of every tumblr
tractate in traditional printings today i should mention before we leave this that uh another
author about 500 years later named ibn khabib said you know what all that other stuff is so good so
whereas the whereas the al-fasih removed all of the gata and kept only the halakhah even khabib
said you know i'm going to do the opposite i'm going to keep all of the agata in a separate book
which is published under the title enyakov he and then later his son completed the work and
that was a widely studied text for many hundreds of years it is somewhat faded in recent centuries
but hopefully it will get some renewed attention uh because it is an absolutely fascinating work
okay so that's a very quick look at the jews of north africa i hope you enjoyed this brief video