and tropes; certain continuities exist across Islamic and Christian domains on the level of both literary history and the construction of legitimacy.83 This project is therefore grounded in a relatively concrete kind of “connectivity,” the term given by Horden and Purcell for justifying a Mediterranean study, and demonstrates the coherence, at some minimal level, of Jewish culture throughout the region over the centuries.84 I therefore see differences among Jewish groups across the regions of the Mediterranean not as differences between but rather as differences within. At the same time, this is a study in regionalism: for example, distinct features in the representation of Jewish legitimacy emerge in Christian domains due to the different place of Jews and Judaism within Christian theology and the nature of Jewish-Christian debate. Concentrating on the practice of panegyric and the representation of legitimacy over space and time allows for significant, if subtle, changes in Jewish culture to emerge.
Outline of Chapters
Dominion Built of Praise begins with two chapters on the social function of Jewish panegyric in the Islamic Mediterranean. The first, “Performance Matters: Between Oral Acclamation and Epistolary Exchange,” studies how Jewish panegyric texts were patronized, received, performed, and circulated. Were they delivered orally, either before small or large audiences, or read privately by their mamdūḥs? What relationship exists between the written testimonies and oral/aural experiences? Here I consider the function of panegyric within Jewish political rituals, such as the appointment of a man to office, less formal social gatherings, and within epistolary exchange in which it helped forge and maintain bonds over distances.
Chapter 2, “Poetic Gifts: Maussian Exchange and the Working of Medieval Jewish Culture,” reflects upon the metapoetic trope by which medieval Jewish authors referred to their panegyrics as “gifts.” Jewish culture in the Islamic Mediterranean may be said to have operated according to a complex “economy of gifts” wherein goods and favors were exchanged among people over distances and at close proximity to one another. The rhetoric of gift giving permeates panegyrics and reveals a great deal about the functions that their authors and readers ascribed them. I argue, based on the theory of gift exchange first advanced by Marcel Mauss (a theory that has already been applied to Greek, Latin, and Arabic panegyric), that portraying panegyrics as gifts constituted them as material objects whose value served as or demanded reciprocation, thus initiating or perpetuating a cycle of loyalty. Toward the end of the chapter, I consider the specific implications of describing gifts through the language of the sacrificial cult of ancient Israel, as though these gifts were offered not for their human recipients but rather for God.
Chapter 3, “‘Humble Like the Humble One’: The Language of Jewish Political Legitimacy,” reviews dominant characteristics ascribed to idealized Jewish figures and interprets the cultural resonances of these virtues through diachronic and synchronic representations of power and legitimacy. Thus, the chapter considers such elements as associating the mamdūḥ with biblical predecessors (e.g., Moses, David, Samuel) and offices (priests, prophets, kings) as well as resonances with contemporary images of Islamic legitimacy. Further, the chapter considers ways in which panegyrists tailored their compositions for mamdūḥs of different rank.
Chapter 4, “‘Sefarad Boasts over Shinar’: Mediterranean Regionalism in Jewish Panegyric,” reflects upon the present study as a “Mediterranean” project. The subject of this book offers an ideal case study for thinking through debates concerning Mediterranean cohesion in that it traces a demonstrable feature of continuity and connectivity—the praise writing of Jews who lived, traveled, and traded around “the sea”—even as it stresses variations and disjunctions among the several subregions. With a focus on the panegyrics of Yehudah Halevi and Yehudah al-Ḥarīzī, I argue that minor fluctuations in the idealization of leadership across the highly conventional and relatively stable corpus of Jewish panegyric provide a telling measure of differences in Jewish political cultures.
Although panegyric writing was clearly more normative and acceptable in the medieval period than it is in our own day, the practice was not without its detractors. The ethical misgivings surrounding the culture of praise were several, from the worldly aspirations of fame-seeking mamdūḥs, to the sincerity of the panegyrist (especially when he received remuneration), the potential falsehood of poetic statements themselves, and the problem of praising men when, theologically speaking, all praise was properly due to God. In Chapter 5, “‘A Word Aptly Spoken’: The Ethics of Praise,” I review comments concerning praise among major Jewish authors (e.g., Sa‘adia Gaon, Baḥya Ibn Paquda, Mosheh Ibn Ezra, Maimonides) who expressed qualms about the practice or tried to navigate the ethical concerns implicit. Because these authors did not treat these topics extensively or systematically, their views are gleaned from occasional statements in their biblical exegesis and ethical and poetic writings. I show that, with a few exceptions, praise writing was viewed as ethically sound as long as it was executed within certain parameters.
Chapter 6, “‘A Cedar Whose Stature in the Garden of Wisdom …’: Hyperbole, the Imaginary, and the Art of Magnification,” continues with one theme raised in Chapter 5 concerning the potential of panegyric for presenting falsehood. Beyond the suspicion that the conniving panegyrist could simply lie for personal gain was the concern that panegyric, like other poetic genres, relied upon “deception” as its very mode of discourse. This chapter considers the role of hyperbole and metaphor in panegyric composition as well as the prescribed boundaries for these devices, especially with regard to Mosheh Ibn Ezra’s Judeo-Arabic treatise on Hebrew poetics within the context of Arabic poetics. I demonstrate that the fundamental mode of panegyric discourse is what Aristotle called auxesis, “magnification” (Heb., giddul; Ar., ta‘aẓīm) and that magnifying the qualities of a mamdūḥ was not only permitted but was required according to “his due.” Although poetic discourse remained a kind of deception, it was a unique quality of poetic speech that it could make statements that were meaningful without any particular claim to truth.
Chapter 7, “In Praise of God, in Praise of Man: Issues in Political Theology,” is an exhaustive treatment of the poetic device of praising mamdūḥs with phrases that are predicated of God in the Hebrew Bible. The discussion is situated within classical Arabic literary criticism, in which the practice of interlacing panegyrics with God’s praises from the Qur’ān was sometimes labeled contemptible speech and even polytheism (Ar., shirk, “attributing partners to God”). Despite such condemnations, Muslim and Jewish poets adopted this poetic practice precisely because it pressed against a perceived boundary between the human and the divine. Not only was sacred hyperbole rhetorically effective, but it provided poets a means of conveying vital aspects of political ideology. Through engagement with the idea of political theology as formulated by Carl Schmitt and Ernst Kantorowicz, I argue that divine association in panegyric did not make mamdūḥs divine so much as it presented a theological structure within politics.
Chapter 8, “‘May His Book Be Burnt Even Though It Contains Your Praise!’: Jewish Panegyric in the Christian Mediterranean,” follows themes developed throughout the book in Christian Iberia, southern France, and Sicily during the later Middle Ages. I stress continuities and disjunctions in patronage relationships, poetic ideals, modes of representation, and political culture. The chapter recognizes new elements that left imprints on the panegyric corpus such as the kabbalah, Jewish-Christian polemics, religious conversion, and Romance vernacular literature.
