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Reviewed by:
  • Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain
  • Jonathan P. Decter
Ross Brann . Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 194.

Textual representation is a central subject of inquiry for literary theorists and cultural historians alike. At the most basic level, scholars have investigated the ways in which objects may be represented by verbal structures and have noted that all representation is necessarily partial and selective. Cultural theorists have applied the selective nature of representation to the dynamics of minority/majority relations and the construction of cultural Others. Majority representations of minority figures often serve to define the minority's place within majority culture and, perhaps more significantly, to use the minority's place as a mirror for defining and ensuring the majority's position. Reading minority representations of majority figures affords a glimpse into the minority's notion of itself as a subculture within or on the margins of the majority culture. Representation of the Other occurs not only when the differences between majority and minority are obvious but also, as Jonathan Z. Smith has noted, when the overwhelming similarity of the two groups induces anxiety.1

Ross Brann's Power in the Portrayal is an outstanding application of poststructuralist theory to the dynamics of Muslim-Jewish relations in al-Andalus and the Maghrib during the medieval period. The first three chapters treat Muslim representations of Jews, particularly the numerous and shifting accounts of the prominent Jewish courtier of Zirid Granada Isma'il ibn Naghrila (a.k.a. Samuel the Nagid, 993–1055 or 1056), while the last two chapters treat the relatively rare representations of Muslims by Jews. Brann's theoretically informed readings offer a fresh and sensitive look at a host of sources that have often seemed beyond synthesis.

Before D. S. Sassoon's discovery of the poetic dīvān of Samuel the Nagid circa 1924,2 this illustrious figure of eleventh-century al-Andalus [End Page e78] had been largely forgotten by Jewish history. Since then, scholars and laypeople have been fascinated by the author's remarkable poetic skill and his rise to political power in the Berber Zirid kingdom. Ibn Naghrila became an icon for Diaspora Jews, who marveled at the success of his acculturation and mastery of his host culture, and for Zionists, who admired his military prowess and zealousness in protecting Jewish causes. He was also the topic of considerable discussion during the medieval period, both by Jews and Muslims. Jewish literary historians such as Moses ibn Ezra (c. 1055–after 1085) and Sa'adia ibn Danan (fifteenth century) extol his poetic skill while the chronicler Abraham ibn Daud

(b. ca. 1110), an Andalusian refugee from the Almohad invasion writing in Christian Toledo, recounts ibn Naghrila's rise to power under Badis ibn H. abbus. Isma'il, and all that he signified, was discussed for centuries after his death in Muslim texts belonging to genres as diverse as literary history, historical chronicle, heresiography, and polemical literature.

Scholars have long been bewildered at the muddle of information the texts by Muslim authors yield, ranging from admiring portrayals of an intelligent and well-integrated courtier to rancorous denouncements of a seditious heretic who ridiculed Islamic tenets and even sought to overthrow the Zirid state to create a Jewish polity. Brann departs from the positivist approach of earlier scholars who generally privileged the favorable depictions over the unfavorable and attributed ''distortions'' to corruption of transmission and unbridled anti-Semitism. Instead, Brann argues that the mutable and fluctuating depictions of ibn Naghrila may be linked with the political climates in which the various texts were composed. In particular, Brann sees portrayal as a product of the different approaches taken by Muslim dynasties to the possibilities and limitations of minority leadership. Thus, textual representation was more deeply affected by the political perspective of the author than the literary genre in which he was writing.

Following the breakdown of unified Umayyad rule and the rise of numerous party kingdoms in al-Andalus (1013), the boundary...

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