The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

Jewish Parody and Allegory in Medieval Hebrew Poetry in Spain r 211

poetry of Spanish Jewry as they lauded the luxuriant gardens of Spain
with her majestic mountains, warbling birds, and fleet-footed animals.
One of the many themes that Hebrew poets explored in biblical litera-
ture was the allusion to the marital relationship between God and Knesset
Israel, the Jewish people, his acknowledged bride. This relationship, how-
ever, is replete with betrayal and recommitment, rejection and restora-
tion, deception and redemption.^15 Themes of perfidy and unrequited love,
therefore, are both explicit and implicit in human male-female relation-
ships, and both found their way into medieval Hebrew poetry, whether
openly or disguised.

Influence of Arabic Maqāma Literature on Hebrew Mahbarot

Another genre of poetry found in the extensive works of Andalusian Jewry
and directly influenced by Muslim culture and literature is maqāmāt (Ar-
abic) or mahbarot (Hebrew) literature in rhymed prose and metered po-
etry. These compositions contain descriptions of travels and wanderings
undertaken by Jews to many places in the Maghreb (west) and the Mashriq
(east), wherever Jews lived, the communities the travelers encountered
there, and their raucous adventures in faraway places, real or imagined
(bidayon).^16 These literary creations found responsive audiences and fol-
lowed very closely upon what is regarded as the close of the golden age of
Andalusian poetry, when literary activity began flourishing in northern
Christian Spain following the traumas created by the upheavals of the Al-
moravid (1090) and Almohad (around 1147) invasions, which decimated
Jewish communities in southern Spain and forced many Jews northward
into Christian Spain and elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula as well as to
other countries. These “wanderings,” different from those (imaginative)
tales in maqāma literature, were poignantly recorded by Andalusian po-
ets such as Moses ibn Ezra, who was forced to leave Andalusia and who
penned many poems detailing his previous unfamiliar solitude.
The master composer of Hebrew maqāmat (henceforth mahbarot)
was Judah Alharizi (1165–1225). With his translation of al-Hariri’s Arabic
maqāma into Hebrew, known as Mahberot ’Iti’el and the subsequent au-
thorship of his own Sefer Tahkemoni in elegant, polished prose and po-
etry, the stage was set for other medieval Spanish Jewish scholars to follow
in his footsteps.^17 One such author was Alharizi’s contemporary and fellow
Toledan, Jacob ben Eleazar (Abenalazar, c. 1170–1235).