Jewish - Muslim Mystical Encounters in the Middle Ages With Particular Attention to al-Andalus
Mysticism among Jews in the Islamic Middle Ages until 1500 For the Cambridge History of Judaism vols. 5 and 6 Jewish - Muslim Mystical Encounters in the Middle Ages With Particular Attention to al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) Sara Sviri (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 1. Introduction In the thirteenth century, Judaism and Islam gave birth to two monumental works which had a lasting impact on their respective mystical systems: within Judaism and the Kabbalistic tradition it was the Zohar, the Book of Splendor, “which was destined to overshadow all other documents of Kabbalist literature by the success and the fame it achieved and the influence it gradually exerted”. [1] According to Yehuda Liebes, who has studied the method and process of its compilation and the identity of those who participated in this process, it seems to have been compiled by “the mid-thirteenth century circle of ‘Gnostic Kabbalists’ in Castile.” [2] Within the Muslim mystical tradition, it was