I consider myself a cultural and intellectual historian of Mediterranean Jews living between the Islamic world and Christendom. While my early research focused on late antiquity, I later made a transition similar to that of other classical historians who become more and more fascinated with the Middle Ages. Now I feel that my solid basis in rabbinics gives me the necessary tools to better understand medieval and early modern Jewish intellectuals who frequently drew on and reappropriated classical Jewish literature. At the same time, I continue to explore questions of historiography, asking, for example, how premodern Jews engaged with both Jewish and non-Jewish cultures; and how information derived from extraneous sources forced them to reevaluate their own authoritative canon. My current research interests include (but are not limited to): religious and cultural encounters between Jews and Muslims; medieval travel writing and perceptions of alterity; premodern Jewish notions of history and geography; and Sephardic diasporas.
“Flying Camels and Other Remarkable Species: Natural Marvels in Medieval Hebrew Travel Accounts.” , 2021
Focusing on Hebrew travel writings from the late Middle Ages to the early sixteenth century, this... more Focusing on Hebrew travel writings from the late Middle Ages to the early sixteenth century, this book chapter explores Jewish representations of foreign fauna and flora in the sense of both the wondrous and the exotic. How were natural marvels refracted through the prism of medieval Hebrew literature, when compared to pertinent Latin, vernacular, and Arabic sources?
As I argue, literary portraits of exotic animals and plants played a pivotal role in medieval conceptualizations of the center and the margins of the world. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, Christian and Jewish travelers from Europe would similarly use descriptions of flora and fauna in their attempts to define the relationship between the Levant and their countries of origin. Was the Holy Land part of the known world, its center or its periphery? Or was it a liminal region, on the boundary between the familiar and the foreign? While Jewish authors shared with their Christian and Muslim contemporaries empirical and imaginary data about distant lands, they aimed to appropriate this information for the sake of a Hebrew reading audience and tied it to the Jewish literary canon as the ultimate source of all knowledge
This study explores the notions of space underlying a famous Hebrew travel account from the twelf... more This study explores the notions of space underlying a famous Hebrew travel account from the twelfth century: Benjamin of Tudela’s Sefer masa‘ot (Book of Travels). Instead of reading it as an eyewitness report documenting the human geography of the medieval world, I seek to understand the “aggregatory” character of a literary work that contains both empirical and imagined information about distant places and lands, some of which it shares with medieval Arabic and vernacular literatures. By means of this knowledge, the Sefer masa‘ot reflects on almost the entire geographic trajectory of the then-known world. Highlighting how the book constructs the Mediterranean basin as an interconnected, Jewish space I, furthermore, challenge the positivism that still dominates the scholarship on this book. My argument, which is partly based on GIS data, is that its “hodological” representation of geography according to routes does not necessarily reflect Benjamin’s own movement in time and space, but rather functions as a way of illustrating the connectivity of Jewish diasporas. In order to contextualize its narrative, I also compare Benjamin’s Hebrew work to the Arabic Rihla (Journey) by Ibn Jubayr, a contemporaneous Muslim traveler from Granada, as well as other medieval sources. Arguably, both Benjamin and Ibn Jubayr use the (loosely-defined) literary genre of the travel account to envision an interconnected and unified Jewish and Muslim oikumene, respectively.
This study explores the reading and writing practices of Joseph Ha-Kohen, a sixteenth-century Jew... more This study explores the reading and writing practices of Joseph Ha-Kohen, a sixteenth-century Jewish chronicler from Genoa, against the background of his Italian and Spanish sources: in what ways and why did he adapt, change or subvert their narratives? It focuses on two of Ha-Kohen's major works: his Franco-Turkish Chronicle, and his Hebrew adaptation of López de Gómara's account of the Spanish conquests in the Americas. Based on these writings, the essay asks how the author’s Sephardic identity and migration experience inform his ideas about the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Notably, the Jewish chronicler applauds the Ottomans’ conversion of churches into mosques, while he condemns the forced Christianization of the Amerindians. At the same time, Ha-Kohen shares cultural attitudes with Gómara and voices qualified support for a Spanish civilizing mission. These ambiguities in Ha-Kohen’s writings—oscillating
between praise and repudiation of imperial ideology—prove to be emblematic of post-expulsion Sephardic Jewry.
“Flying Camels and Other Remarkable Species: Natural Marvels in Medieval Hebrew Travel Accounts.” , 2021
Focusing on Hebrew travel writings from the late Middle Ages to the early sixteenth century, this... more Focusing on Hebrew travel writings from the late Middle Ages to the early sixteenth century, this book chapter explores Jewish representations of foreign fauna and flora in the sense of both the wondrous and the exotic. How were natural marvels refracted through the prism of medieval Hebrew literature, when compared to pertinent Latin, vernacular, and Arabic sources?
As I argue, literary portraits of exotic animals and plants played a pivotal role in medieval conceptualizations of the center and the margins of the world. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, Christian and Jewish travelers from Europe would similarly use descriptions of flora and fauna in their attempts to define the relationship between the Levant and their countries of origin. Was the Holy Land part of the known world, its center or its periphery? Or was it a liminal region, on the boundary between the familiar and the foreign? While Jewish authors shared with their Christian and Muslim contemporaries empirical and imaginary data about distant lands, they aimed to appropriate this information for the sake of a Hebrew reading audience and tied it to the Jewish literary canon as the ultimate source of all knowledge
This study explores the notions of space underlying a famous Hebrew travel account from the twelf... more This study explores the notions of space underlying a famous Hebrew travel account from the twelfth century: Benjamin of Tudela’s Sefer masa‘ot (Book of Travels). Instead of reading it as an eyewitness report documenting the human geography of the medieval world, I seek to understand the “aggregatory” character of a literary work that contains both empirical and imagined information about distant places and lands, some of which it shares with medieval Arabic and vernacular literatures. By means of this knowledge, the Sefer masa‘ot reflects on almost the entire geographic trajectory of the then-known world. Highlighting how the book constructs the Mediterranean basin as an interconnected, Jewish space I, furthermore, challenge the positivism that still dominates the scholarship on this book. My argument, which is partly based on GIS data, is that its “hodological” representation of geography according to routes does not necessarily reflect Benjamin’s own movement in time and space, but rather functions as a way of illustrating the connectivity of Jewish diasporas. In order to contextualize its narrative, I also compare Benjamin’s Hebrew work to the Arabic Rihla (Journey) by Ibn Jubayr, a contemporaneous Muslim traveler from Granada, as well as other medieval sources. Arguably, both Benjamin and Ibn Jubayr use the (loosely-defined) literary genre of the travel account to envision an interconnected and unified Jewish and Muslim oikumene, respectively.
This study explores the reading and writing practices of Joseph Ha-Kohen, a sixteenth-century Jew... more This study explores the reading and writing practices of Joseph Ha-Kohen, a sixteenth-century Jewish chronicler from Genoa, against the background of his Italian and Spanish sources: in what ways and why did he adapt, change or subvert their narratives? It focuses on two of Ha-Kohen's major works: his Franco-Turkish Chronicle, and his Hebrew adaptation of López de Gómara's account of the Spanish conquests in the Americas. Based on these writings, the essay asks how the author’s Sephardic identity and migration experience inform his ideas about the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Notably, the Jewish chronicler applauds the Ottomans’ conversion of churches into mosques, while he condemns the forced Christianization of the Amerindians. At the same time, Ha-Kohen shares cultural attitudes with Gómara and voices qualified support for a Spanish civilizing mission. These ambiguities in Ha-Kohen’s writings—oscillating
between praise and repudiation of imperial ideology—prove to be emblematic of post-expulsion Sephardic Jewry.
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Books by Martin Jacobs
Papers by Martin Jacobs
As I argue, literary portraits of exotic animals and plants played a pivotal role in medieval conceptualizations of the center and the margins of the world. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, Christian and Jewish travelers from Europe would similarly use descriptions of flora and fauna in their attempts to define the relationship between the Levant and their countries of origin. Was the Holy Land part of the known world, its center or its periphery? Or was it a liminal region, on the boundary between the familiar and the foreign? While Jewish authors shared with their Christian and Muslim contemporaries empirical and imaginary data about distant lands, they aimed to appropriate this information for the sake of a Hebrew reading audience and tied it to the Jewish literary canon as the ultimate source of all knowledge
between praise and repudiation of imperial ideology—prove to be emblematic of post-expulsion Sephardic Jewry.
As I argue, literary portraits of exotic animals and plants played a pivotal role in medieval conceptualizations of the center and the margins of the world. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, Christian and Jewish travelers from Europe would similarly use descriptions of flora and fauna in their attempts to define the relationship between the Levant and their countries of origin. Was the Holy Land part of the known world, its center or its periphery? Or was it a liminal region, on the boundary between the familiar and the foreign? While Jewish authors shared with their Christian and Muslim contemporaries empirical and imaginary data about distant lands, they aimed to appropriate this information for the sake of a Hebrew reading audience and tied it to the Jewish literary canon as the ultimate source of all knowledge
between praise and repudiation of imperial ideology—prove to be emblematic of post-expulsion Sephardic Jewry.