the pact of umar is a hugely consequential document that had a huge impact on the way
in which jewish life was regulated in muslim lands it was not necessarily adhered to according to the
letter of the text in every place and every time a lot of variations from the pack both in terms of
leniencies and in terms of stringencies seems to have been related to the specific inclinations of
a particular ruler or particular time and place but nevertheless it does give us a sense of the
location that jews had within the socio-economic hierarchy of muslim lands and really contributed
quite a bit to their survival under these conditions the pact is attributed to the second
caliph uh who reigned between the years of 634 and 644. khalif essentially means successor and this
is a reference to the rulers of muslim lands after muhammad it might also refer to the
khalifa known as umar ibn abid al-aziz who ruled in the 8th century however there is a problem
with the text because most scholars note that the document is not cited before the early 9th
century so in other words we're not entirely confident that it was really pertaining to
periods prior to the 9th century but what's especially important for our purposes
at least from the early 9th century onward this document both defines and regulates dimma status
for jews dim essentially means protected class and it refers to the jews and other so-called
peoples of the book that have a place in muslim society which is not as high
as believers as muslims but nevertheless they have certain protections within that realm as well
people of the book includes the christians and later the zoroastrians as well and in certain
contexts it refers even to the hindus although it doesn't seem to entirely correspond to the same
reasons as the monotheistic faiths of judaism and christianity in particular the idea is that their
earlier interaction with the divine is recognized by the pact of umar and as a result of people who
pertain to that faith are therefore guaranteed certain privileges and certain rights as well
as being burdened by some responsibilities the specific items in the pact of omar show
the influence of byzantine regulations and also of sassanid that is persian regulations as well
what's exactly in the pact so there are three basic areas uh that are described in this pact
that uh define what jews and christians and zoroastrian so on are allowed to do and not
allowed to do in muslim society and i let's look at those three areas the first is basically they
are restricted from engaging in public religious activity especially activities that might lead
to proselytism or disturb the public sensibility that this particular land is muslim in nature so
examples of this are synagogues and churches could not be built anew they could only be repaired now
of course as i mentioned earlier quite often this was observed in the breach and jews did frequently
engage in building new synagogues in muslim lands often for an exchange of funds but nevertheless
the idea was that judaism was to be maintained in its status quo and not expand very important
i should mention that the protections that were granted to jews were offset by a special tax
called the jizya which was frequently quite onerous but not universally so in muslim lands
but to continue jews and christians could not engage in loud public displays of their
religious activities you know like outdoor parades or the pact also refers to using noisemakers like
clappers during services and so on this was perhaps more relevant to christian activity
than jewish activity but the holiday of purim of course does involve the use of noisemakers these
kinds of things were prohibited by the pact of umar obviously for the purpose of not attracting
muslims to features of the non-muslim faith so in other words jews could preserve and observe their
own religious activity which is of huge value to the jews but they have to kind of like constrain
it to make sure that it doesn't impinge on the religious sensibilities of the dominant population
jews were particularly happy about that and very pleased to accept it in the sense that
you know jewish practice was protected secondly a range of small symbolic discriminatory
practices and social distinctions for example jews were not allowed to bear arms to carry a sword
to wear certain colors or certain types of clothing that were associated with muslims in
fact they had to wear distinctive clothes that set them apart from muslims again quite often
these practices were simply ignored or bribed out of existence jews could not ride with saddles they
had to use bareback and whether or not these rules were enforced really depended a lot on
local conditions so the idea though however is that while jews were a protected class the dema
nevertheless they were a subjugated class at the same time but overall you know fairly limited
restrictions on things like economic activity you know so on the whole positive and third
certain preferential support for muslims both in terms of financial support for example in
the jizya but also in you know maintaining muslim travelers jews were required for example to extend
a certain amount of hospitality to muslim travelers they were prohibited from engaging
in certain economic activities like the sale of alcohol which of course is prohibited in islam
and then there were you know things like they could not build their houses taller
than muslim houses the same would apply of their religious structures as well so this kind of like
put in place another reminder that muslims were the dominant population and had superior rights
and jews and christians and so on were a subordinate population again protected and this is
something that jews really appreciated it allowed for islamic lands to achieve the status of being
a rechtat a society governed by law because the pact of umar at least defined areas where jewish
activity was protected the implications are huge because this meant that jews could rely on certain
structures being in place for their maintained activity it's true that there were at least
symbolic placements that kept them in a second class status and theoretically prohibited them
from expanding in size building new synagogues and things like that but by and large these things
were not especially strong prohibitions to their advancement what i think is especially interesting
is to contrast the pact of umar with the doctrine of witness that we discussed when we looked at the
church fathers because this provides us with a kind of point counterpoint that illustrates the
difference of jews and muslim lands as opposed to jews in christian lands jews and muslim lands
had to recognize their subordinate status but nevertheless had a tremendous amount of freedom
within those boundaries in christian lands jews were to be preserved in order to later
provide testimony for the truth of christianity a theological purpose which posited their future
existence but at the same time kept them in that subordinate status in christian lands as well
so ironically the pakta umar is kind of like the muslim version of the doctrine of witness that
very similar socio and economic implications and we'll have to see in the next few lectures
exactly how that played out within muslim society in the next lecture however we're going to go to
the continent of africa to look at the fascinating and not well studied history of african jews
and much of this takes place within the muslim orbit thank you very much for watching
you