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16 - Hebrew Sources

from Volume II Part 1 - Literary Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

By
Naʿama Ohanna-Arom
Edited by
Michal Biran  and
Hodong Kim
Michal Biran
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hodong Kim
Affiliation:
Seoul National University
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Summary

The Mongol advance is described from an unusual viewpoint in the Hebrew sources. The writers either witnessed Mongol activity, as in the Jewish communities of Iraq and Armenia, or heard of it from afar, as in Sicily, Provence, Spain, and Morocco. The texts, scant in number yet diverse in nature, are traced according to genre – letters, poems, tomb inscriptions, eschatology and Kabbalah, exegesis, and sermons. They touch the early Mongol raids in Iraq and the vast invasion of Eastern Europe, the conquest of Baghdad and the advance into Syria, and the activity of the Ilkhanate and its conflict with the Mamluk Sultanate. Since the Jews had neither state nor army, they were not considered a target or a threat, and their texts therefore provide a sort of neutral, and often positive, description of the Mongols as a raiding force, a conquering army, and a state.

Keywords

JewsJerusalemIlkhanateearly Mongol raidsconquest of Baghdadinvasion of Eastern Europeinvasions of SyriaKabbalahrumors
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire , pp. 1261 - 1272
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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