Short Course Description
This seminar is dedicated to the emergence of pietistic trends in medieval Judaism and Islam, emphasizing the intertwined histories of these trends between the 9th-13th centuries. We will trace the origins of the movements and the transformation they underwent, discuss the relationship between asceticism, pietism and mysticism, and analyze the tensions between the individual and the community as they came to be expressed among Jewish pietists and Muslim ??f?s. In the course of the seminar we will examine sources from Islamic zuhd literature; the great ??f? compilations, and works of prose and poetry written by Jewish authors, in order to understand both the inner dynamics that took place in Judaism and Islam separately, as well as the migration of practices and knowledge from Islam to Judaism that led to the renewal of Jewish life in the lands of Islam.
Full syllabus is to be published
