Sarah Stroumsa

Freimann Lecture: “The furthermost West”: Recalibrating Jewish Thought in Medieval North Africa

The prevailing account of the origins of medieval Jewish thought is built upon the assumption that it emerged and flourished within a unified Arabic-speaking cultural sphere. The conventional narrative of modern research traces the development of the early medieval Judeo-Arabic culture through centers located first in the Levant, particularly Baghdad and Palestine, before leaping, as it were, to the so-called golden age in al-Andalus. This lecture intends to modify this basic account by drawing attention to the Judeo-Berber symbiosis of the medieval Maghreb, and to the imprints this symbiosis left on Jewish philosophy and theology.