Reflecting His Time: Nineteenth-Century European Anti-Semitic Stereotypes in Jurji Zaydan's 1903 Arabic Novel, The Conquest of al-Andalus

Introduction

Myths and stereotypes about Jews and the Jewish community as a whole have existed for at least two thousand years. In Europe, they spread widely and acquired negative connotations after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Jews were known as "having killed Christ" and for being the devil's allies, and were accused of avarice, cruelty, and following strange rituals. As a minority who resisted conversion, they were often demonized and attacked by religious authorities in Christian-majority countries. The French Revolution of the late eighteenth century opened a new stage in the elaboration and development of these myths and stereotypes. What has been called "the Jewish world conspiracy" took a predominant role. Jews started to be seen as a unified entity that controlled the economy and the political order, that worked secretly, and that manipulated every corner of society.

These myths and stereotypes were not confined only to European countries. The nineteenth century was a period of rapid European expansion, and Europeans carried their cultural and religious attitudes with them. This was especially the case in what is now the Middle East, which was exposed to the influences and struggles of every European power, particularly France and England, but Germany and Russia as well. In Lebanon, for example, France supported Catholic communities, Britain found its allies mostly in the Druze community, and Russia supported the Greek Orthodox community. Citizens and subjects of these European powers benefited from agreements between the Ottoman authorities and some countries, and they used the privileges granted to them to establish institutions of higher learning where they could spread their culture and values. In this way, segments of the local population became strongly influenced by European thought, including the modern European form of anti-Semitism. French influence was strong among Christian communities, especially Catholic but some Orthodox as well, and these communities were the ones which introduced, and culturally and linguistically adapted, this modern European form of anti-Semitism in the Near East. The first anti-Semitic literature here was written by Arab Christians. For example, the translator of the first full version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Arabic in 1925 was a Maronite priest.

It is in this context that Jurji Zaydan's novel, The Conquest of al-Andalus or Tariq b. Ziyad, was first published in 1903. The novel begins in 710 ad, during the last period of the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, and ends with the first major victory of the Muslim armies in the south of today's Spain. Jurji Zaydan (1861-1914), a Greek Orthodox from Beirut, belonged to the group of Arab intellectuals who took part in the Nahda or Arabic Renaissance in the late nineteenth century. Zaydan became famous for his encyclopedic works on Arabic language and literature and his historical novels. The noted historian and scholar Albert Hourani said about him, "Perhaps it was Jurji Zaydan who did more than any other to create a consciousness of the Arab past, by his stories and still more by his series of historical novels, modeled on those of Scott and creating a romantic image of the past as Scott's had done." Zaydan made the Arab past available to the general public in his historical novels, which portrayed different historical episodes through individual lives and actions. In The Conquest of al-Andalus, for example, Zaydan describes the loss of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania as a direct result of the king's lascivious desire for the daughter of one of his noblemen.

The central role of the Jewish characters in The Conquest of al-Andalus is what makes this novel the focus of this article. In the novel, the whole Jewish community in Hispania conspires to overthrow the Visigothic King Roderic and facilitate the victory of the Muslim armies. The conspiracy involves secret agents, underground meetings, and stockpiling gold.

It is historical fact that Hispanic Jewry was discriminated against and brutally treated under the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, especially after...