Hamdala Case Study

interact with one another. For example, despite official segregation, documents report that Muslims attended Jewish festivals, such as Purim, and vice-versa. Additionally, alongside the sacred Jewish texts found in the Cairo Genizah, there were also pages from the Quran as well as pages from Islamic mystical manuscripts; Jews not only read these text, but were also attracted to the idea of Islamic Sufism, and some even imitated the Islamic custom of kneeling and bowing. In what ways is Yahya’s petition representative of this mosaic? To begin with, the petition is written in Judeo-Arabic, which means that Jews living in medieval Egypt evidently spoke, and if they could write, wrote in Arabic. Secondly, it is clear that many Jews, such as Ulla ha-Levi, had two names–a Jewish name and an Arabic name. Additionally, the content of the petition reveals that Jews and Muslims had frequent economic interactions, whether it was through trade or moneylending. Yahya is forced to flee …show more content…
Great Salvation.” As Cohen points out, this differs from the Islamic closing which is much longer and focused more on God or the Prophet and his family, rather than the recipient of the petition as in the case of the Jewish closing. The Islamic closing consisted of the hamdala (“praise be to God alone”), followed by the tasliya (“blessings of God be upon our lord Muhammad, his prophet, and his family”). While the form of the petition remained mostly unaltered, the conscious choice to replace certain parts of the Islamic petition, allows us to hear the Jewish voice behind this petition. Furthermore, it shows that while Jews were willing to incorporate many elements of Islamic traditions and practices into their daily lives, they refrained from some perhaps more controversial aspects such as utilizing the Islamic closing sentence since it contained parts about the prophet