One Thousand Years of Cultural Harmony between Judaism and Islam r 249known today as Iraq (Rappel 1978, 31).Between the eighth and the tenth
centuries, various caliphs implemented different policies, for or against
the Jews; nonetheless, and despite all the restrictions, many Jews adopted
the values, manners, and customs of Arabic culture. By the tenth century,
Jews were using Arabic for nearly all forms of writing, both secular and
religious (Stillman 1997, 83). And the first blossoms of Arabo-Islamic in-
fluence on Jewish life, thinking, and writing, including religious poetry,
had started to be apparent (Ben Ya ̔akov and Cohen 1971, 1445).
The period between the mid-seventh and mid-eleventh centuries wit-
nessed the golden age of the geonim, the heads of the prospering acad-
emies of Jewish learning in Sura and Pumbedita, which were located in
southern Iraq and moved at the beginning of the tenth century to the
̔Abbasid capital, Baghdad (Fawzi 1993, 193). This era coincided with an
unparalleled efflorescence of Arabic culture during the Umayyad and
̔Abbasid dynasties. The strong influence of this culture on Jewish life
contributed to the growing importance of the Jewish leaders in Baby-
lon. Thus Baghdad also became the spiritual capital of the Jewish people.
It was the place where rashey hagolah (the leaders of the Diaspora), the
highest authorities on Jewish law, lived. Here, Hebrew poetry encountered
Arabo-Islamic culture and as early as the ninth century, it started to come
under its influence (Tobi 2000, 40).
Dunash Ben Labrat (915–70), a poet, linguist, and musician, was a na-
tive of Fez. He received his education in Baghdad at the feet of Sa ̔adyah
Gaon (882–942). In 960, he moved to Cordoba, where he became an influ-
ential figure whose role in establishing the foundations of the new Span-
ish school of Hebrew poetry was significant. As the earliest poet whose
work appears in the Mishaf, Dunash represents the first stage at which
Jewish scholarship was influenced by the Arabo-Islamic civilization. As
a devoted disciple of the Sa ̔adyah Gaon, Dunash absorbed much of the
literary doctrine of the late Hebrew Babylonian poetic school (Fleischer
1975, 337). In this same cultural environment, he made his most revolu-
tionary step, introducing Arabic poetic meter to Hebrew poetry (Tobi
2000, 55).
Arabo-Islamic Influence
Tobi (2000, 11) describes Dunash as the poet from the East who opened the
door to the Arabic influence on Hebrew poetry which became completely