JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Methods of tax collection aggravated the generally arbitrary
and unpredictable forms of fiscal exploitation. They were
also designed to demonstrate the taxpayers’ inferiority. A description
preserved in an old papyrus gives an inkling of the
deliberately humiliating ceremony accompanying the delivery
by a representative Jew or Christian of a sum collected from
his community. “Then the emir,” we are told, “gives him a blow
on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir,
drives him roughly away… The public is admitted to enjoy this
show” (J. Karabacek, in Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der
Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer, 2–3, 1962, 178). Occasionally, following
an old Babylonian custom, the tax receipt was stamped on
the taxpayer’s neck in a more or less indelible form. Needless
to say, the Jews resented such excesses. However, they realized
that their special taxation was the main justification for their
being allowed to live in Muslim countries altogether. A Jewish
family chronicle mentions that the prominent Baghdad Jewish
banker, Netira, on being told by Caliph Al-Mutadid (c. 892)
that the administration wished to eliminate all special Jewish
taxes, allegedly dissuaded the ruler from such drastic action.
He agreed that a reduction of the tax to its original size would
be a blessing for his community, but he added, “Through the
tax the Jew insures his existence. By eliminating it, you would
give free rein to the populace to shed Jewish blood” (A. Harkavy,
in: Festschrift Berliner (1903), 36 (Ar.), 39 (Heb.)). In the
back of Netira’s mind may also have loomed the danger that
anyone of Al-Mutadid’s successors might not only reinstate
the taxes but also demand from the Jews the instantaneous
repayment of all arrears thus accrued.
One effect of this discriminatory fiscal pressure was
the constant diminution of the Jewish share in agriculture.
Even after the extension of the land tax to the growing Muslim
majority, many farmers were unable to meet their obligations
to the state. Jewish farmers had the additional burden of
the heavy poll tax paid in produce at a price arbitrarily set by
the tax collector. The requirements of Jewish law, too, particularly
the Sabbath rest commandment, which was much
more stringent than the rest precepts of the Muslim Friday
and Christian Sunday, generally made Jewish agricultural endeavor
less competitive. There is evidence that in the days of
Harun al-Rashid (766–809) the land flight of Palestinian farmers
was so severe that the government was forced to appeal
for their return under the promise of permanent tax abatement.
The chances are that fewer Jews returned after having
found shelter in one or another urban Jewish community. The
growing disorders in the great caliphate from the tenth century
on must also have induced many Jewish villagers, whose
defenselessness invited attacks by marauders, to leave their
landed properties – despite their great attachment to their
ancestral soil attested by some geonic sources – and settle in
a somewhat more secure urban Jewish quarter. Beginning
in the 12th century the increasingly powerful trends toward
semifeudalism throughout the Middle East further militated
against Jewish farming as they did, on a larger scale, in contemporary
Christian Europe.
economic history
On the other hand, new opportunities beckoned to Jews
in the commercial area. The general upsurge of the Middle
East economy during the first centuries of Muslim rule, the
rise of great metropolitan areas such as *Baghdad and *Cairo,
and, for a time, uniformity and stability of currency and relative
security in travel and transportation, all stimulated the
expansion of mercantile activities on the part of merchants
of various nationalities. Commerce was generally held in
higher esteem than agriculture among Middle Eastern Muslims,
Christians, and Jews. Al-*Farabi voiced the prevailing
notions that “villages are in the service of cities.” While in the
internal exchanges within the caliphate the Jews encountered
severe competition on the part of several equally gifted mercantile
groups, including Greeks, Armenians (increasingly
muslimized), Syrians, and even Arabs – a popular Middle
Eastern adage was to state later that one Greek could cheat
two Jews, and one Armenian could cheat two Greeks – Jewish
merchants had certain advantages in domestic and, even
more, in international trade.
In the first place their competitors often came from regions
of diverse legal systems. Most of the Christian merchants
followed deep-rooted customs and traditions of the
former provinces of the Byzantine Empire. The Muslims, too,
were divided in their mercantile and other civil laws through
the disparate teachings of their four major schools of Muslim
jurisprudence and the great variations of local and regional
customs. These factors were far less pronounced in the case of
Jews. Although the Babylonian and Palestinian laws often differed
in many significant details, a growing majority of Jews,
settled in the great caliphate and adjoining countries, increasingly
came under the sway of the Babylonian Talmud and its
official interpretation by the geonic academies of Babylonia. At
the same time the presence of Jewish communities throughout
the far-flung empire and in many neighboring countries,
both east and west, assured Jewish merchant travelers a brotherly
reception and help in emergencies wherever they went.
They could also readily establish branch offices, and engage a
number of dependable local agents. Examples like those recorded
in the documents preserved in the Cairo *Genizah
have shown the vast geographic extension of the mercantile
dealings of certain Cairo-Fostat firms. In 1115–17 one Abu
ʿImran gave a power of attorney to an agent surnamed “the
candle maker” to look after all his business undertakings in
Sicily, *Morocco, and other localities, as well as to manage his
houses in Spain and Sicily. Another businessman, Ḥalfon b.
Nethanel, after returning to *Aden in 1134 from a prolonged
stay in India, soon thereafter traveled to Cairo. In the following
year we find him in Morocco and *Spain before his return
home (H. Hirschfeld, in: JQR, 16 (1925/26), 280f.; S.D. Goitein,
Speculum, 29 (1954), 186f.)
An even greater advantage accrued to Jewish merchants
in the burgeoning international trade with Western Europe.
Although the Carolingian Empire and its successor states
were still economically quite backward, their growing landed
aristocracy furnished many customers for the luxury articles
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 105