From Bibliography to History: The Early Study of Andalusi Judaism in the Modern Era

The Jews of Al-Andalus can arguably be considered an emblematic community in the history of Judaism, not only for their remarkable achievements in different areas of knowledge and for their outstanding Hebrew poetry, but also for the ideological implications that its study has had within Jewish and Spanish scholarship. In this contribution, the author describes and analyses the emergence and development of the study of Iberian Judaism in the modern era. First, she focuses on the work developed among Spanish bibliographers and librarians in the period between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Secondly, she describes and compares the two academic circles that concentrated nineteenth-century research on Iberian Judaism: Spanish historians and Jewish scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in Central Europa. The latter can be considered the founders of the scientific study of the intellectual and literary production of the Jews of al-Andalus even though, as in the Spanish case, their ideological agenda left a mark on their methodological approaches and the general perception of this historical period, as is examined in this contribution.