Acknowledgments
Only once in a lifetime one gets to write a first book. I am fortunate in having been supported by numerous institutions and many individuals and it is my pleasant duty to express my utmost gratitude to them.
My years as a student at the University of Cambridge, where I earned my doctorate, were a fascinating intellectual journey which was supported by the Cambridge Overseas Trust, the ORS Award Scheme and the Wingate Scholarship, St. Edmunds’ College and the Faculty of Music. My special thanks go to these institutions, which helped me to pursue the research which yielded this book.
During these years, I have been privileged to come across many leading scholars in Islamic and Jewish religions, cultures and histories. Their work and personality left a lasting impression on me, but I can list only a few.
In the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Professor James Montgomery’s piercing and open approach to medieval Arabic poetry and literature encouraged me to investigate contemporaneous Jewish religious poetry in its Arabo-Islamic cultural context. He honoured me with his scholarly attention, challenged me with his erudition, and helped me to give form to my thoughts.
Professor Geoffrey Khan’s unparalleled knowledge of Semitic languages inspired me to explore different linguistic layers, structures and patterns of Hebrew, both in its written and oral traditions and in its historical and cultural contexts. He graciously read my work at its early stages and my book has benefited from his suggestions and constructive remarks.
I gained enormously from discussions I had over the years with Dr. Timothy Winter, of the Divinity Faculty. The rigorous demands of his scholarship in Islamic theology and ethics provided important directions in my endeavour to understand Jewish and Islamic traditions within the Middle Eastern cultural domain.
Professor David Ford, of the Divinity Faculty, opened for me a wide door to Islamic and Christian scriptures. Attending his project, The Cambridge Interfaith and Scriptural Reasoning Theory Group, allowed me to explore closely Islamic and Christian scriptures and to develop new thinking and a deeper understanding of religious scriptures in general, and of honest intellectual discourse over religious matters in particular.
My first introduction in depth to the history and culture of Jews in Arab lands was made through the work of Professor Norman Stillman, of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma. I benefited enormously from his boundless knowledge of Arab-Jewish history and culture, particularly in the understanding of the complexity and dynamics of the relationship between Arabo-Islamic culture and Jewish life and identity throughout the long centuries within this Diaspora.
Thanks are also due to Professor Angelika Neuwirth, of the Department of Arabic Studies at the University of Berlin, who drew my attention to some of her recent works on the Qur’ān, and clarified a few of her concepts regarding qur’ānic studies in general. Her approach to textual analysis helped me in developing a new perspective in the analysis of the paraliturgical text.
I also wish to thank several scholars who provided various forms of assistance. In particular, I would like to single out Professor Michael Laskier (Bar-Ilan University), Professor Ephraim Hazan (Bar-Ilan University) and the prominent Arab-Jewish cantor and musician Mosheh Ḥabushah.
Whatever training I have acquired as a musicologist, I must credit to my mentor, of blessed memory, Professor Habib Hassan Touma, whose strong and persistent conviction regarding my future in the field of research on Arabic music and culture has founded the fruits of this book. In his last book he wrote me a dedication which expresses the very essence of his life and research and of this present book:
To remember and to be remembered.
Tel-Aviv, 20 April, 1998
I am particularly grateful to my friend and colleague Dr. Daniel Davies for his intellectual companionship and helpful comments on my work.
This book is dedicated to my parents who inspired me with their noble spirits and lives, to write this work, which reflects the fruitful coexistence that Jews and Muslims shared in the past. It is my hope that this book will encourage new scholarly and political thinking on how this shared past can help in creating a shared future at which ‘… hope and history rhyme.’ (Heaney 1990: 77). And I believe ‘that a further shore is reachable from here.’ (ibid.).