Our Place in al-Andalus: Kabbalah,Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters(Cultural Memory in the Present) » (1)

Gil Anidjar is Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature at Columbia University.

This book offers a reading of Andalusi, Jewish, and Arabic texts that represent the 12th and 13th centuries as the end of el-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

Booknews

Although at first glance Maimonides' , the narratives of Ibn al-Astarkuwi, and the (the major text of the Jewish Kabbalah) seem to have little in common, they all emerged from the common cultural sphere of the Islamic Spain and were written as that sphere was coming to an end. Anidjar (Hebrew literature, Columbia U.) argues that they all placed themselves within the context of that loss, but that the way in which they were written was designed to deny the borders of the lost sphere. He offers three readings of the texts, examining their rhetoric and representations of "the end." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)