Research
"Jews and Christians in the East: Strategies of Interaction between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean"
About the Project
The encounters and interactions between Jews and Christians in the Middle East, Ethiopia, India and the Caucasus, which have hitherto been only insufficiently researched, is the subject matter of the project “Jews and Christians in the East: Strategies of Interaction between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean” (JewsEast) ... continue reading.
General aims and research questions
Subproject Caucasus
Medieval Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Asia Minor have rarely taken center stage in Jewish studies. Those regions are at best studied sporadically, with the exception of the history of the Khazar Kingdom, its establishment and the reactions against it from surrounding polities and cultures ... continue reading.
Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asia Minor
Subproject Horn of Africa
Nearly nothing is known about the actual advent of Judaism in the Horn of Africa, but since the ancient kingdom of Aksum and its eponymous capital were a well-known hub within the Red Sea trade, it has been assumed that it was also home to a Jewish Diaspora community even in pre-Christian times. Moreover, the geographic proximity to the Yemenite coast, with its long-standing Jewish population ... continue reading.
Subproject Middle East
The Cairo Geniza has proven to be a treasury of information for the history of Jews and Muslims in Cairo and the surrounding regions. Nevertheless, little has been done to utilize it in studying Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Egypt and beyond it across the trade-centers of medieval West and East Asia ... continue reading.
From the Arabian Peninsula to Egypt and Iran
Subproject South India
At the outset, Jewish and Christian communities along the West Coast of South India evolved out of the elaborate trade networks involved in maritime trade in the Indian Ocean since the ninth century. Networks of Jewish traders, the “Rādhanites” were already noted as being heavily engaged both in land and sea trade between the Mediterranean and South and Southeast Asia ... continue reading.