THE UMAYYAD REGIME 201Hebrew was their liturgical language but by the late tenth century
the common speech of the Jewish communities in Al-Andalus was
Arabic, as it was for the Christians, replacing the Latin of the Visigothic
period. Cultured Muslims, such as the caliph Al-J:lakam II, displayed
an interest in Jewish learning, and a pupil of Rabbi Moses, called
Joseph ibn Shatnash, is said to have interpreted the whole of the
Talmud in Arabic for the Umayyad ruler.^43 The same caliph sent a
Jewish doctor Ibrahim ibn Jacob to bring back for him an account of
the lands of central Europe. In the course of these travels Ibn Jacob
had an audience with the Emperor Otto 1.^44 The network of their
communities that stretched from Al-Andalus to Persia made Jews
invaluable as diplomats and obtainers of information, with contacts
that extended over both the Islamic and Christian worlds.
Relations between Jews and Christians in Spain under Umayyad
rule, so dramatically transformed by the events of 711, are poorly
documented and there is little evidence for the attitudes that existed
on both sides. However one strange episode from a slightly earlier
period does suddenly light up an underworld of intellectual tension
between the two religions. This comes from our knowledge, limited
as it is, of the remarkable career of Bodo-Eleazar.^45 Of eastern
Frankish origin, Bodo was a Christian deacon at the court of the
emperor Louis the Pious (814-840), by whom he was well esteemed.
However he became convinced of the error of his religious adher-
ence thanks to arguments put to him by certain unnamed Jews, who
were enjoying considerable tolerance at the hands of the Frankish
monarchs at this time, and he secretly prepared to accept their faith.
Despite the favour then extended to the Jews, an open conversion
would have been illegal in Francia, and so Bodo persuaded the
emperor to let him undertake a pilgrimage to Rome, in the course
of which he made public his change of religion, obtained the conver-
sion of his nephew who accompanied him, and, according to embit-
tered Frankish accounts, sold his attendants into slavery. He escaped
Christian wrath by flight to Al-Andalus, where he established himself
in Zaragoza, completing his conversion by circumcision, marriage
and the growth of a beard. He also changed his name to Eleazar.
With the enthusiasm of a neophyte, he threw himself into conflict
with his former co-religionists. He attempted to persuade the amir
'Abd al-Ral).man II to force his Christian subjects to abjure their faith,
expecting that they would thereby be driven into the folds of Islam
or Judaism. Christians, for whom the Frankish ruler was the only