This Noble House. Arnold E. Franklin

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СКАЧАТЬ According to Mann, tensions between the two families for control of the exilarchate reached the breaking point with the nomination of Hezekiah ben David as exilarch sometime before the year 1021. Hezekiah’s appointment marked the restoration of the exilarchate to the line of David ben Zakkay, his great-grandfather, and the displacement of the descendants of Josiah ben Zakkay, who had had been in possession of the office for two generations. Mann proposed that Josiah’s descendants, deprived of their patrimony, decided to abandon Baghdad in order to establish rival exilarchal courts in towns in the newly autonomous outlying provinces. The impression that Josiah’s descendants were striving to create local political institutions was reinforced by the discovery in the Geniza of a variety of titles bestowed by these nesiʾim on their supporters, titles that were patterned after those dispensed by the yeshivot and the Babylonian exilarchate.⁴³

      Mann’s theory made shrewd use of the new manuscript sources that were then coming to light—in particular the genealogical information they contained for eleventh-, twelfth-, and thirteenth-century nesiʾim—and ingeniously integrated broad political developments in the Islamic world with the appearance of new institutions of local leadership in the Jewish community. It also solved what was becoming a growing problem with Poznanski’s explanatory model as more and more Geniza sources became available to scholars—namely, the fact that nesiʾim were evidently to be found in towns other than Baghdad before the year 1038.

      What Mann’s explanation failed to address, however, is the extent to which the emergence of local exilarchal offices also marked a significant break with earlier conceptions of the Davidic line, a diffusion of the esteem that was once reserved for the Babylonian exilarchate alone. Is it not reasonable to assume that, in addition to the institutional and geopolitical factors identified by Poznanski and Mann, a new understanding of the status of the House of David had also come into play? And would not such a conceptual reorientation have in fact been a critical precondition for the eleventh-century reconfiguration of Davidic authority documented by both historians? Such questions become all the more urgent when we realize that Mann’s emphasis on the emergence of new exilarchal offices actually addresses only part of the phenomenon that is reflected in the manuscript sources. For, as we will see, not all individuals identified in the Geniza by the title nasi can legitimately be described as aspiring local exilarchs. Finally, Mann’s heavy reliance on personal grievance to explain the fragmentation of the exilarchate in the eleventh century appears overly reductive, attributing, as it does, complex and enduring historical developments to ultimately trivial causes.⁴⁴ The inadequacy of similar kinds of arguments to account for the emergence of the Karaite movement—arguments that saw Karaism as the consequence of ʿAnan ben David’s rejection by the Jewish aristocracy in Iraq—should caution us against putting too much faith in explanatory models that would hang structural change on the petty jealousies of disgruntled individuals.⁴⁵

      In fact, Mann himself acknowledged that in many cases nesiʾim seemed to be most influential within Jewish society in realms other than the political. He noted, for instance, that nesiʾim in several areas, including Egypt, seemed to enjoy “only a spiritual hold on the people,” their authority possessing “more of a moral than a political character.”⁴⁶ Under careful examination, then, Mann’s position appears somewhat ambivalent. While he approached the nesiʾim principally as a manifestation of Jewish communal leadership and situated them within the history of Jewish political authority in the Near East, he also conceded that political success was not necessarily the most accurate measure of their popularity or importance.⁴⁷ Is it possible that in emphasizing the (largely unrealized) political ambitions of nesiʾim in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries Mann was confusing consequence and cause? Perhaps at the root of this phenomenon lay a new and more widespread veneration for Davidic ancestry within Jewish society—a respect that in turn allowed some members of that lineage to achieve influence in a variety of guises.⁴⁸

      In his systematic perusal of documents from the Geniza, S. D. Goitein discovered an abundance of fresh material on nesiʾim, significantly adding to the information first examined by Poznanski and Mann. Yet despite the new sources at his disposal, Goitein did not substantially challenge the regnant explanation for the appearance of nesiʾim outside of the Abbasid heartland, nor did he deem their popular claim of Davidic ancestry to be, in and of itself, a matter worthy of further scholarly attention. Thus, while he edited numerous documents by or about nesiʾim that allowed him to adjust aspects of Mann’s treatment, Goitein did not produce an original, synthetic assessment of their importance in the Geniza society.⁴⁹ Like Mann, he regarded the nesiʾim as aspiring rulers, a perspective evident in the decision to include the only sustained discussion of them in his magisterial Mediterranean Society, a mere two paragraphs in length, in a section on leadership in the Jewish community. “[I]t is not surprising,” he writes, “that some of [the exilarchal dynasty’s] more ambitious members should have tried to make capital of their dignity as ‘princes of the House of David.’ … We find them everywhere often trying to assume authority.” And like Mann, Goitein too determined that despite their aspirations, many nesiʾim seemed to possess little in the way of what he considered to be real political power. His conclusion was that nesiʾim were in fact “of no real significance, except when they were scholarly persons of renown.”⁵⁰ At times Goitein could be even more emphatically judgmental in his description of the nesiʾim, as when he characterizes them as freeloaders who shamelessly took advantage of the generosity of local Jewish communities.⁵¹

      Goitein’s dim view of the nesiʾim was undoubtedly informed by his low opinion of the Babylonian exilarchate, which, in his eyes, provided the inspiration for their own, more localized ambitions. In setting up an opposition between nesiʾim who, by virtue of their laudable scholarly pursuits, achieved social and historical significance, and those who were merely self-interested political opportunists and thus of little consequence, Goitein recycles a problematic dichotomy he used earlier to draw an unfavorable comparison between the gaonate and the exilarchate. “While the gaonate,” he writes, “was a force that penetrated the whole fabric of life … the secular head of the Jews, the so-called ‘head of the Diaspora,’ whose seat was in Baghdad, had only limited importance.”⁵²

      Goitein’s assessment of the nesiʾim may also be understood in terms of the broad critique of his work proposed by Miriam Frenkel.⁵³ Frenkel observes that in Goitein’s reconstruction the classical Geniza period was characterized, above all, by a harmonious blending of Mediterranean and Hellenic elements. It was, moreover, an essentially capitalist and meritocratic society whose leaders were, appropriately, pragmatic and hardworking businessmen. As she puts it, Goitein viewed the Geniza society as “democratic, liberal, open and rationalist … the perfect embodiment of the western ideal.” As such, she notes, it was also “by necessity the complete antithesis of everything the west considered ‘oriental.’” Frenkel concludes that Goitein’s commitment to such a view led him at times to downplay or dismiss altogether what might have appeared as eastern characteristics in the Geniza sources.⁵⁴

      Recently, Frenkel’s insights were productively extended in a new direction to help explain Goitein’s evident minimization of magic and magical texts in the Geniza.⁵⁵ Her work may also be of assistance in accounting for Goitein’s treatment of the nesiʾim, whose preponderance in the Geniza could have called into question some of the central values that Goitein associated with its Jewish community. Popular enthusiasm for their royal ancestry would appear to run counter to his vision of the Geniza society as embodying a democratic and egalitarian spirit. The principle of dynastic privilege, underscored by their celebrated genealogies, would seem to challenge his notion of the world of the Geniza as a place where men could make of themselves what they wished. And the strong affinities that existed between the popularity of the nesiʾim and the veneration of the family of Muḥammad among Muslims might suggest that Mediterranean Jewish society was very much a part of its eastern, “oriental” environment. By focusing on the nesiʾim as failed aspirants to political power Goitein would thus have been justified in downplaying СКАЧАТЬ