40 CHAPTER TWO
Abraham Ibn Daud and Judah Halevi.^53 Rabbanite authors sometimes
use the term min to denote the Karaites. For instance, an autographed
letter by Judah Halevi explains his initiative to write the Kuzari as a re-
sponse to a “min from the land of the Christians (ahad muntaqili al-
minutbi-bilad al- rum), a statement understood by most scholars as a
reference to a Karaite from Christian Spain.^54 In the Kuzari itself Halevi
calls the Karaites khawarij (dissenters) whereas the term minim is used to
denote Talmudic sects, such as the Sadducees. This later usage is by nature
more ambiguous, as one could argue that Halevi associates the emer-
gence of the Karaite heresy with earlier Talmudic sects.^55
The heated ideological debate, however, was not always paralleled by
an equal social animosity. As Marina Rustow has shown, during the fi rst
half of the twelfth century Karaites and Rabbanites in Fustat “not only
married one another; Karaites also frequented the Rabbinical courts, and
the scribes who ran them uncomplainingly wrote documents in confor-
mity with their specifi cations.”^56 In many ways, this was also the situa-
tion in Maimonides’ Cairo, where the two communities lived side by side
quite peacefully. Muslim sources describe Maimonides as “Head of the
Jews” (rais al- yahud), an administrative position that, since the end of
the eleventh century, united all the Jewish communities in Egypt and
Syria. Although we have no explicit evidence of that, it is likely that in
his capacity as rais al- yahud Maimonides represented also the Karaites
toward the Muslim authorities.^57 The disagreement, however, remained,
(^53) See G. D. Cohen, The Book of Tradition (Sefer ha- Qabbalah) by Abraham ibn Daud
(Philadelphia, 1967), xlvi; Judah Ha- Levi,Kitab al- radd wa’l-dalil fi’l din al- dhalil (al-
Kitab al- Khazari), ed. D. H. Baneth and H. Ben- Shammai (Jerusalem, 1977), 2:22– 63,
112–137 (En glish translation in H. Hirschfeld, The Kuzari, 2nd ed., New York, 1964);
J. D. Lasker, “Judah Halevi and Karaism”, in J. Neusner et al., eds., From Ancient Israel to
Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding. Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox,
(Atlanta, 1989), 3:11– 123; idem, “Karaism in Twelfth- Century Spain,” Jewish Thought and
Philosophy 1 (1992): 179– 95; and see H. Ben- Shammai, “Between Ananites and Karaites:
Observations on Early Medieval Jewish Sectarianism,” Studies in Muslim- Jewish Relations
1 (1993): 19– 29.
(^54) See, for instance D. H. Baneth, “Some Remarks on the Autographs of Yehudah Hallevi
and the Genesis of the Kuzari,” Tarbiz 26 (1956– 57): 297– 303 [Hebrew]; S. D. Goitein,
“The Biography of Rabbi Judah Ha- Levi in Light of the Cairo Geniza Documents,” PAAJR
28 (1959): 41– 56; M. Gil and E. Fleischer, Yehuda ha- Levi and His Circle— 55 Geniza
Documents (Jerusalem, 2001) 324– 26 [Hebrew]; but see Y. T. Langermann, “Science and
theKuzari,” Science in Context 10 (1997): 501, who questions this identifi cation.
(^55) See Lasker, “Judah Halevi and Karaism,” 112n4.
(^56) M. Rustow, Rabbanite-Karaite Relations in Fatimid Egypt and Syria: a Study Based on
Documents from the Cairo Geniza (Ph.D. Diss. Columbia University, 2004), 390, 397.
(^57) See IQ, 392; Ben- Sasson, “Maimonides in Egypt,” 15 ff.; M. R. Cohen, Jewish Self-
Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Offi ce of the Head of the Jews, ca.
1065–1126 (Princeton, 1980), 35; J. Levinger, “Was Maimonides ‘Rais al- Yahud’ in