9
Jewish Mysticism in
the Lands of the IshmaelitesA Re-OrientationRonald C. KienerDuring the last quarter century, the discipline known as the history of
Jewish mysticism has produced a significant mass of evidence indicating
the importance of Islamic and Middle Eastern culture for the shaping of
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. As a result of this international scholarly
investigation, the foremost scholar in the field today, Moshe Idel of the
Hebrew University, was able to declare in 1991: “Muslim culture is the
primary source of influence upon Jewish mysticism.”^1 This pronounce-
ment is a far cry from the state of the field only fifty years ago, when
most eyes looked to Europe in order to provide narrative explanations
for the history and development of Jewish mysticism. Thirty years ago,
Marshall Hodgson noted this Eurocentric gaze, correctly attributing it
to Gershom Scholem, the pioneering researcher of the twentieth century
who bestowed on the field its credibility. Hodgson wrote in 1974: “Scho-
lem’s magnificent Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [published in 1942] is
based largely on manuscripts from Italy and Germany, and hardly pro-
fesses to say much of Judaism in Islamdom except where there were di-
rect contacts—as with the exiles from Spain.”^2 Even as Hodgson penned
this observation, some of Scholem’s contemporaries and disciples were
beginning to widen the net, so to speak.^3 Twenty-five years after Hodg-
son’s comment, and despite an enormous international effort to bring
Jewish mysticism into the discourse of Middle Eastern religious history,