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

One Thousand Years of Cultural Harmony between Judaism and Islam r 245

The Historical and Cultural Scope of the Mishaf

The Poets: General Description

Discovering the names of the poets and establishing their chronologi-
cal order reveals that the Mishaf covers one thousand years of Hebrew
religious poetry, dating from the tenth century. It contains poetry written
by the most prominent poets. All produced their work within the Arabo-
Islamic civilization and were much influenced by it.
Seventy-two poets, whose work collectively comprises over 270 poems,
were identified in the Mishaf. The poems written between the tenth and
sixteenth centuries remain the most popular among Arab-Jews, including
the Babylonians, and also in some Ashkenazi communities. In particular,
these include poems by the most prominent poets of the golden age of
Muslim Spain, during the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, such as Ibn
Gabirol, Yehudah Halevi, and Avraham Ibn ̔Ezra. The fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries, which ended with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain,
are not represented in the Mishaf.
The presence of the Babylonian poets in the collection is evident only
from the eighteenth century onwards. It is known that Hebrew poetry
continued to be written in Babylon of the post- ̔Abbasid era (twelfth
and thirteen centuries) and mainly in the quasi-muwashshah style (shir
me ̔eyn-ezori) (Tobi 1981, 51). It is also known that after the expulsion of
the Jews from Spain, the poets of the East, especially the Babylonians,
continued to write in the Spanish style (Tobi 2000, 19). Yet this period of
Babylonian religious poetry is not represented in the Mishaf. A possible
reason for this finding might simply be the lack of documented informa-
tion regarding rabbinical scholarship of any sort, including poetry, be-
tween the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. According to Benayahu
(1993, 9), neither books nor manuscripts from this period, or even earlier,
have survived. This is because Babylonian works of religious scholarship
were not copied throughout this period, as was the custom with Jewish
scholarship and poetry of Muslim Spain. However, the reason for the ab-
sence of earlier poems is not yet known definitely.
As to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Rosen-Moked (1982,
132) affirms that it is even possible to say that a certain kind of renais-
sance of the Spanish school took place among the Babylonian poets. This
is evident in the work of three nineteenth-century poets, ̔Abdallah Ben