Jews and Muslims in the Mediterranean social fabric: Sources and contexts

The line focuses on the study of Jewish and Muslim societies in their Mediterranean context and on the impact of both religious cultures on the social and intellectual life of the environment. In their different varieties, Jews and Muslims have been engaged in a complex relationship of symbiosis or proximity from mediaeval times to present, with their fair share of agreements and disagreements. Rooted static visions (of which Orientalism is simply one of its better known manifestations) have determined the artificial separation of some of the disciplines within these subjects. This has, in many cases, distorted the object of research, by applying reductive epistemological categories, ultimately relegating them to the margins of the Spanish university curricula. Our perspective is broader, as from a chronological point of view –from mediaeval times to Modernity–, as from a geographical point of view –embracing the Mediterranean world–. In addition, the line is created with the desire to overcome restrictive identifications of “sacred” languages and the religious cultures in their different variants.