27 - Judaeo-Arabic literature

Summary

The medieval period witnessed a vigorous and variegated output of Arabic literature written by Jews, which in virtue of both its intellectual and linguistic enrichment of Jewish and Arabic culture deserves to be included in any historical survey of Arabic letters.

Judaeo-Arabic literature arose at a time when the majority of Jews lived beneath the dominion of Islam, when the latter itself was at the height of its cultural achievements. A decline began to set in at the end of the ʾAbbasid period, when the employment of Hebrew for literary purposes started to gain ground. There were two factors, one external, the other internal, that caused the decline of J udaeo-Arabic letters. First cultural introversion and a subsequent inadequacy in Classical Arabic, and secondly the fostering of an elaborate Hebrew culture in the wake of the Hispanic schools of translation, which was then propagated throughout the Mediterranean after the expulsions from Spain in 1391 and 1492. However a distinctly vernacular brand of Arabic continued to be written, albeit among the culturally less favoured classes, right down to modern times, when in the wake of the European enlightenment the Jews experienced a cultural renaissance (nahḍah) and the revival of a certain form of literary Arabic. In north Africa a “classicized vernacular” was employed to express the new themes inspired by the European Haskalah, whereas in the East the Arabic employed, sometimes in Arabic characters, was nearer the standard language.