Atlas of Medieval Jewish History

by Haim Beinart

For the first time in English, here is a comprehensive visual introduction to the history of the Jewish people in the Middle Ages. The Atlas includes more than one hundred maps, with accompanying text, that give an in-depth review of Jewish history throughout the world from the 5th to the 17th centuries.
The Atlas covers milestone events of Jewish history during this the dispersion of the Jews in the fourth and fifth centuries up to the Crusades; the Black Death; the expulsion from Spain; the persecutions of 1648 in eastern Europe and the Sabbatean movement. The maps and text illustrate the sequence of persecution, expulsion, migration, and destruction, on the one hand, and a spiritual, religious, and cultural flowering, on the other.
For students, scholars, and the general reader, the Atlas of Medieval Jewish History is a welcome new reference that will be an indispensable guide to this era.

Genres: Jewish, Medieval, Judaica, History

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Daniel A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Haim Beinart, now deceased, was, at the time of the writing of the Atlas Of Medieval Jewish History, Professor of Jewish History in the Middle Ages at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. From the reading of the Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, one can tell that Beinart was an academic; from the fluidity of the accompanying text and illumination of the maps and figures, one can tell that Beinart was probably a good one.

While not perfect by any stretch, the Atlas of Medieval Jewish History is that rare beast, a reference book that reads less like a textbook and more like a conventional book on history. It's still a bit dry in places, and it suffers from fragmentation—perhaps to be expected given its raison d'être as an atlas, focused on maps rather than a cohesive narrative—but the Atlas more or less accurately conveys the everyday status of Jews in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and more far-flung locales from the fall of the Roman Empire to the middle of the seventeenth century. And therein, ironically, lies the chief problem with the book. While admitting that evidence of day-to-day Jewish life is lacking—though more generalized documentary evidence is apparently more plentiful—Beinart implies that the Jewish communities during the Middle Ages faced crisis after crisis, persecution after persecution, and tragedy after tragedy. While persecutions and tragedies befalling the Jews were rather more frequent that we, in 2013, are used to, particularly (like myself) as Jews in the United States, the reality is more nuanced than the Atlas of Medieval Jewish History can really give shrift to. Yes, day-to-day life for most Jews was pretty lousy; day-to-day life for the average, non-titled, subsistence person, period was pretty lousy. At least the book conveys—at least to some smaller extent—that there were times, even amidst the Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, or the like, when Jews enjoyed a relatively uneventful existence, even if only briefly.

One thing the book excels at, perhaps to be expected given Beinart's having written this text at an Israeli university during the beginning of the First Intifada, is its reiteration many times over of the Jews' constant connection to the land of Israel. The Atlas repeatedly demonstrates that even as conqueror after conqueror overran the Holy Land, often deeming it peripheral to their greater agenda, the Jews were a constant presence there, constantly settling where they could despite poverty and other adversity.

In general, the Atlas of Medieval Jewish History paints a vivid picture of the Jewish experience for much of Jewish history, and remains a vital, if flawed, addition to the library of any serious scholar of Judaism.