The long history of a medieval Jewish world that embraced East and West.
At the Museo Ebraico di Bologna
Lecturer: Alessandro Vanoli, Università di Bologna
10, 17 and 24 February 2016 from 17.00 to 18.30
Enrolments by 5 February 2016; cost € 55,00; students and pensioners € 45,00
To enrol, please consult the page on the website.
There was a time when the Mediterranean was crossed by a vibrant and flourishing Jewish culture. There was a time when Jewish merchants tied together trade routes running from India all the way to the Mediterranean, crossing the Muslim world and pushing as far as the furthest reaches of Europe.
Throughout the so-called Middle Ages, a flourishing civilisation, projected along the great maritime and land routes of West and East, contributed to the exchange of goods and knowledge. It is relatively new sources that tell us all this; above all, it is the thousands of sheets and fragments recovered a century ago from the genizah of a Cairo synagogue that today help us recount a history that would otherwise have been forgotten.
The story of a vast Jewish community which, in the centuries of Muslim expansion, built much more than a simple network of exchanges: it came alive with culture, religiousness and relations with distant worlds. In short, it was a true Mediterranean civilisation.