Jewish Mysticism in the Lands of the Ishmaelites: A Re-Orientation r 149the surviving Jewish literature that the Jews fared the transition to Muslim
rule rather well. There was no great upheaval with the arrival of the Mus-
lim conquerors and their subsequent Umayyad regime. Indeed, all the
major Jewish communities survived intact, and all the major communal
institutions—the rabbinic academies of Sura and Pumbedita, the institu-
tions of the Gaonate and the Exilarchate—flourished. More important,
what was taught in the Jewish academies was left untouched by the new
regime. What was preached and inculcated by rabbis of Sassanid Iran and
Byzantine Palestine continued to be preached and inculcated by rabbis of
Muslim Iraq and Palestine.
So it should come as no surprise that the magical and mystical tra-
ditions of late antique Judaism, which had been promulgated for many
centuries, should pass into what would henceforth be Middle Eastern Ju-
daism. And this presumption is borne out by the data: the agglomeration
of texts, archived magical papyri, amulets, and incantation bowls both
before and after the Muslim conquest all attest to the popular survival of
hoary Jewish magic and learned meditations, even as the ancient Hebrew
and Aramaic formulae began to be peppered with Judeo-Arabic.^5
Going back to Greek and Roman Palestine, there is solid textual evi-
dence that some Jews, inspired by the fantastic descriptions of heaven
found in the prophetic book of Ezekiel, had engaged in visionary tours of
heaven, thereby encountering heretofore undisclosed secrets of the divine
realm. Socially unorganized but fairly widespread, these early Jewish mys-
tics pondered the mysteries of the celestial heikhalot (throne rooms) and
meditated on the imagery of the heavenly merkabah (the divine chariot
of Ezek. 5). Pseudepigraphical and anonymous texts recount these pneu-
matic celestial visitations, ascribed to both ancient biblical and legendary
rabbinic figures. For over a thousand years, from Hasmonean times until
well into the tenth century, these so-called merkabah texts were produced
and recopied in the lands of eventual Islamic domination.
The merkabah homilies eventually consisted of detailed descriptions
of multiple-layered heavens (usually seven in number), often guarded
over by angels and encircled by flames and lightning. The highest heaven
contains seven palaces (heikhalot), and in the innermost palace resides
a supreme divine image (God’s Glory or an angelic image) seated on a
throne, surrounded by awesome hosts who sing God’s praise.
The ascent texts are extant in four principal works, all redacted well af-
ter the third century but certainly before the ninth. These texts all recount