THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE JEWS AND MUSLIMS IN THE WEST

Today, when we react to the formal suits worn by politicians or the coloured hair of internet punks, we are actually participating in a social game as old as humanity itself, a game of the visualization of social status and group membership. From the very beginning of the emergence of human societies, external appearance has been an important element in a complex system of identification markers. Tattoos, neck rings, signs on knights’s cloaks and footmen’s liveries, and army patches—this is simply a short list of widely known examples. Using special clothes, or accessories, or hairstyles, or hats, our ancestors adapted to quickly transmit a huge amount of socially significant information. Wouldn’t you agree that it is always useful to understand as soon as possible that you’re dealing not just with an ordinary girl but with the daughter of a local leader, or not with an impoverished man asking for alms but with the follower of a powerful spiritual brotherhood?

But the language of clothing is a topic for another discussion. Here, it should be noted that sometimes, something happens within society and with its internal reference systems, and clothing acquires an additional function. Besides protecting the body from the cold, wind, or scorching sun, and helping a person integrate into relationships with their own kind, it suddenly begins to draw attention through distinctive markers for the purpose of segregation.

One particular type of segregation that stands out in human history is that based on religious affiliation. Here, we are talking about the desire of a religious majority or a politically strong section of society to separate a religious minority from itself. Moreover, a minority does not necessarily mean those who form a group with fewer people but instead those who have fewer rights, lower status, and less political protection.

One of the first examples of using clothing to separate the faithful population from those of other faiths were the regulations implemented by Caliph Omar II in the mid-ninth century, ordering Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians to observe a number of rules. It should be clarified that in the Muslim social doctrine, these specific communities had a special status from the very birth of Islam: they were called the ‘people of the Book’, thus distinguishing them from polytheists and marking them as Dhimmis, or the protected ones. Some of the more widely accepted hadiths contain stories of how the messenger Muhammad took their communities under his protection.

The huge state created by Muslims—the Arab Caliphate—was home to many Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, whose communities had autonomy and numbered in the hundreds of thousands of people.

In the ninth to tenth centuries, about 15,000 such protected people lived in Baghdad alone, and it was not even the city with the highest concentration of these individuals. For example, in the caliphate, there were the predominantly Christian cities of Edessa and Tekrit, while Sura and Nahr Malik were almost completely Jewish. There were even two cities called Yahudiyya, meaning the ‘city of the Jews’.

However, even Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786–809), who reigned during Islam's golden age and is celebrated in the immortal Arab tale One Thousand and One Nights, expressed the idea of ​​​​visibly distinguishing Muslims from non-Muslims. In his opinion, those under protection had to girdle themselves with ropes, cover their heads with quilted hats and even adopt a specific style of wearing shoes. This was to say nothing about the harnesses of their horses: wooden cones were to be used instead of tassels on the saddle bow. It is obvious from these instructions that there was a desire if not to humiliate those of other faiths then at least to elevate the faithful. This is especially noticeable in the regulations concerning women—they had to use donkey saddles and not horse saddles.

Caliph Harun al-Rashid’s ideas did not find a response among his subjects, and there is no reason to believe that anyone ever followed them. Historians know about them only through historical works, like those of Ibn Tabari (839–923). The next caliph who addressed this issue and took the trouble to record his orders was Omar II. It is from his era that enlightened humanity began to track discriminatory laws on religious grounds.

Among the rules prescribed by Caliph Omar was one requiring people of other faiths to wear different clothing from the faithful. One popular opinion states that the caliph even ordered distinct badges of different colors to be sewn onto the clothes of Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians. However, this rule either did not really exist or was implemented so poorly that no evidence of either itself or of cases of its implementation has survived.

In the eighth century, tall, pointed hats (qalansuwa) were in fashion among the men of the caliphate. If they wore them, the Dhimmis should have two buttons of a color, apart from the one Muslims used, sewn on them. Gradually, such hats fell out of use, but Jews and Christians were encouraged to continue wearing them as a special sign of their faith. According to Omar’s regulations, the Dhimmis were required to wear honey-colored cloaks, and their slaves had to wear at least a piece of this color on their backs and chests tied with a wide belt and not a narrow one.

From works of poetry and satirical sketches of the ninth century, we know that Dhimmis often looked special not because they followed the caliph’s rules but because of local customs that were not written down anywhere but were born from life itself. Thus, al-Jahiz (died circa 869) described this likely Babylonian custom:

The last detail was due to the custom of hanging a seal on the neck, indicating the payment of the poll tax. Initially, such a seal did not have any actual discriminatory meaning, but it could acquire it, for example, because of social tension between communities in the city.

In general, Caliph Omar’s rulings were just as unsuccessful as Caliph Harun al-Rashid’s: the Dhimmis ignored them, society showed indifference, and the authorities at the end of the century repeated them again, introducing various new details. The next time that distinctive features for the appearance of the Dhimmis were remembered in the lands of Islam was in the eleventh century.

Subsequently, all Muslims began to refer to the so-called Pact of Omar when touching on the subject of the appearance of Dhimmis. However, it must be said that in Islamic lands, norms of this kind were observed extremely inconsistently, often disappearing from practice for centuries, and then suddenly coming back to life on the whim of a ruler, only to fall into oblivion again with his departure or even just a change of mood. Take, for example, how at the end of the twelfth century the Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue clothes with long sleeves and saddle caps. Under his successor, the rule was simplified to yellow clothing and turbans. In the sixteenth century, the Jews of the Maghreb were required to wear black turbans or caps with a piece of red cloth on it and sandals made of reeds.

At times, the Ottoman sultans also took note of the appearance of their subjects of other religions, whom, interestingly, they welcomed in every possible way, encouraging immigration. In 1580, Murad III banned Dhimmis from wearing turbans and required the Jews to wear black shoes and red hats and the Christians to wear black hats. In 1730, Mahmud I, noticing that some of the faithful were wearing the same hats as the Jews, ordered the criminals to be hanged. In 1758, he walked incognito through Istanbul and ordered the beheading of a Jew and an Armenian dressed in prohibited clothing. The last decree regarding the special dress of the Dhimmis in the Ottoman Empire was issued in 1837 by Mahmud II. At the same time, it must be noted that all these regulations were not applied in those Ottoman provinces where Christians were in the majority, such as Greece, Anatolia, and the Balkans.

Western European civilization turned out to be not only much more inventive in developing distinctive signs for people of other faiths but also consistent in their application. Most likely, this is explained by the fact that historically there were far fewer Jews and Muslims in Western Europe, and their communities stood out more noticeably against the Christian majority. The only exceptions were perhaps the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, which could not seriously affect the general Latin legal tradition.

So, the idea of ​​​​segregating Jews and Christians by their appearance, as we described in the first lecture of this course, was expressed and recorded in writing for the first time at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The phrasing used at the time was very telling: the resolution stated that

This indicates that neither the Pope nor the bishops and cardinals wanted to humiliate the people of other faiths, to point them out as ‘marked’ or socially inferior. The text of the decree tells us about a completely different goal: they sought to protect their fellow believers, their flock, from sexual contact with Jews and Muslims. It was physical, carnal intimacy that they considered the real danger.

Numerous papal bulls and episcopal letters throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries promoted the same idea: officials should ensure that Muslims and Jews dress differently from Christians and wear different hairstyles primarily to prevent any harmful mixing with Christian prostitutes. Such xenophobia is indeed determined by deep-seated cultural fears, and we will talk about their nature later. For now, it is important to remember that the idea of ​​segregation along confessional lines was promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council.

In the thirteenth century, such norms began to penetrate into city law. The Fuero of Tortosa, who first touched upon this topic, ordered the Saracens to wear their hair cut in a circle and maintain a long beard. In terms of clothing, they were to wear an alhuba and almeishia, that is, traditional items of oriental attire.

It is worth noting, however, that the rules were constantly changing, and we will not be able to find a stable norm regarding the appearance of people of other faiths, not only for all of Christian Europe, but even, for example, for Catalonia separately, Thus, the Spanish Saracens were required to either have short hair, or a bowl cut, or, conversely, wear long hair, grow sidelocks, shave, or grow beards. Beards and sidelocks were periodically prescribed for Jews.

In response to the authorities’ attempts (either in the form of episcopal letters or papal bulls) to introduce standards regarding appearance, accompanied by fines or corporal punishment in the form of lashing, Muslim and Jewish communities wrote petitions demanding the repeal of these new standards. In their petitions, they threatened to leave the kingdom and gave only one argument: they did not consider it justified to wear a beard, or a certain haircut, or special clothing, simply because it ‘was not in their custom’ and they ‘never did it’.

Petitioning the king, the Muslims and Jews pointed out that the new norms violated their usual way of life, contradicted what they considered ‘theirs’, and imposed ‘someone else’s’ ideas. Moreover, such innovations went against the privileges that communities of other faiths had already received from the kings, which guaranteed them freedom of religion, worship, and autonomy in government. Often, Christian lords made similar requests, defending their Muslim vassals, and local officials took their time to ensure compliance with the new regulations.

A rather contradictory picture of social life emerges from all these events, the main pattern of which, until the end of the Middle Ages, was still religious tolerance. Kings easily canceled orders that were introduced previously. Thus, in 1387, the Aragonese monarch Joan I sent a letter to the Bishop of Huesca, who demanded that officials comply with the rules regarding the hairstyles of infidels. The sovereign’s letter emphasized that the king knew: ‘Saracens have never cut their hair and do not cut their hair in this way,’ which is quite remarkable, since it means that the king resorted to the same arguments as his Muslim subjects and referred, in fact, to the Muslim and not the Christian tradition.

Muslims and Jews living in Christian lands in Europe most likely could wear different types of clothes: in fact, the complaints of the bishops once again emphasize this. At the same time, the Spanish Saracens, for example, kept Muslim-style clothing in their chests. Muslim women also used veils. Historians are well aware of this thanks to the long, colorful lists of property compiled by officials if any Muslim traveled outside the kingdom and paid duties in accordance with the items taken abroad.

In other European lands, for obvious reasons, there was no anti-Muslim legislation, but segregation norms concerning the appearance of Jews did, of course, exist. In the Germanic areas of the Holy Roman Empire, the Jews were ordered to wear a high, pointed hat, which, as happened in other cases, as far as we can already see, they had worn before, guided by their own preferences and fashion. In 1434, an order was passed for Jewish women in Augsburg to wear yellow pointed headdresses, and for Jews to wear yellow marks. A century later, these norms were widespread in Germany and Austria, and in Prague, Jews had to wear yellow collars over their clothes.

In the Italian territories, the order for Jews to grow beards was associated with Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. In the mid-thirteenth century, within the areas he controlled, Pope Alexander IV ordered Jewish men to wear a yellow circle of fabric the size of a palm and Jewish women to attach two blue ribbons to their head covers. A century later, the city laws of Rome required all Jews, except doctors, to wear a special red cap, and Jewish women were asked to wear a red apron as well. Special officials were required to monitor compliance with this norm. In the sixteenth century, Jews, both men and women, were required to wear yellow caps or headdresses in Rome and in the papal dominions in southern France and red in the lands of the Venetian Republic.

But in most of Poland, no distinctive clothing or headdresses were introduced for people of other faiths. In the kingdom of Hungary and on the Iberian Peninsula, papal orders on special hats, special clothing, or haircuts for non-Christians were not supported by the monarchs at all or they were introduced formally and then canceled. The Hungarian king Andras II (1205–35) was even excommunicated twice by the Pope for refusing to introduce such laws in his kingdom.

It is noteworthy that the greatest attention to the issue of appearance and diligence in supervising compliance with rules in European history occurred in the early Modern era, at the turn of the sixteenth century. By the late sixteenth century, in newly established Jewish communities in Europe or America, there was no obligation for Jews to wear distinctive clothing, hats, or hairstyles. Similarly, the distinctive badges, special hats, ribbons and other specific details of clothing gradually fell out of use in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, as a rule, without formal abolition. There were, however, some exceptions, and distinctive marks and clothing were specifically abolished in some German lands, Vienna, and Venice. In 1781, Emperor Joseph II abolished the wearing of distinctive badges by Jews in all territories of the Austrian crown. These rules probably lasted the longest in papal lands, which is not surprising, and were abolished there only after the Great French Revolution. The Jews themselves, however, sometimes continued to adhere to the old rule: Venetian rabbis and elders wore red caps, and the Jews of the French south stopped wearing yellow caps only after it was officially prohibited.

If we set aside the legal side of the issue for a moment, it is interesting to turn to visual sources. As we already discussed in the previous lecture, in the Middle Ages and modern era, images of Jews and Muslims were not uncommon in art. In book miniatures and church paintings, there was often a need to depict Jews or Muslims, perhaps as part of a biblical story or a hagiographic or chronicle plot, et cetera. Moreover, the genre itself demanded that the viewer unmistakably and immediately ‘recognize’ the image as that of a Jew or a Muslim. For this purpose, in the visual tradition of the Western European Middle Ages, people of other faiths were endowed with special attributes that had the character of a generally accepted symbol. This meant that, on the one hand, something that Christians had never seen could not become such a symbol. But on the other hand, the symbols that once used were stable, not subject to changing fashion, and did not always reflect everyday reality. Most often, beards and headdresses became attributes of non-Christians. These took the form of tall, pointed, or rectangular hats for Jews and in the form of turbans for Muslims.

For example, in the famous Book of Games by King Alfonso the Wise (1221–84), you can see Muslims with their heads covered with turbans and Jews in peaked caps at the chessboard. In the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Cantigas of the Virgin Mary), Muslims of different social status—townspeople, knights and emirs—are depicted in turbans, and Jews wear high and flat or cone-shaped hats, and they all have beards. In fifteenth-century Catalan retablos, Muslims either wear simple white turbans with a long loose end or rich turbans, and the Jews wear tall hats. Next to the image of St Vincent by Jaume Huguet, you can see a whole group of people in the most bizarre headdresses, among whom both Jews and Muslims are easily discernible.

Muslims in the Christian tradition were often called pagans. Consequently, the images of actual pagans, such as the Romans, depicted them in regular turbans or turbans with loose ends. Tall Jewish headdresses were treated in a similar way, and these could feature a yellow ribbon and serve as the sign of a polytheistic ruler.

In the German pictorial tradition of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, Jews, as a rule, were depicted in special yellow or white cone-shaped pointed hats (pileus cornutus). Jews wore such hats in the Middle East back in pre-Islamic times. In the art of the early modern era, a character’s Jewish origin was most often conveyed by a small yellow circle on their outer clothing.

The material we have discussed so far clearly shows that the distinctive badge or mark, discussed in the first lecture of this course, was not an independent phenomenon in the history of religious segregation measures. Moreover, initially, it was not an unnatural practice for society. On the contrary, the mark was one of many options to visually distinguish people of other faiths. For such purposes, as we have seen, out-of-fashion hats, wearing a certain color in clothing (most often red and yellow), or simply wearing unusual clothing or hairstyles that started to be associated with a certain religious group were good enough. Both the East and the West have historically gone a long way in searching for the most suitable forms of segregation. On the one hand, these methods have been tested in practice, and on the other, they have been abandoned at some point in the development of these cultures.

And it should be noted here that although the idea of ​​segregation arose with a certain consistency both in the lands of Islam and in the Latin world, it turned into a discriminatory practice only with special efforts on the part of the authorities and at a time when the social majority was ready to share such an attitude to a religious ‘minority’. In other words, tensions needed to emerge between faiths within society before various entities—such as officials, city councils, and class institutions—became interested in and monitored the implementation of segregation measures. Otherwise, the decrees remained on paper or were completely abolished.

An idea always requires additional work, and quite often a lot of it, to be implemented into everyday social life. It was in the process of implementation that the idea of ​​segregation had every chance of turning into a discriminatory practice. In all likelihood, the social structure and culture of governance characteristic of the Islamic political experience demonstrate a much higher level of interaction between groups of different faiths. The Latin West showed great concern, and even phobias, in this matter, which ultimately led to drastic and unambiguous decisions such as the expulsion of Jews from England, then from France, then from Spain and Portugal, and finally even of the baptized descendants of Muslims, the Moriscos, from Spain.

At the same time, it should be understood that the segregation policy of medieval times was categorically different from modern segregation models in that it was an organic product of religious social consciousness, a collective mentality for which religiosity was decisive. At the time, a lot, if not everything, in the earthly life of a person, and everything in the other world, which was a very close and tangible part of reality, depended on which god they worshiped.

Modern civilization has a completely different type of religiosity; it understands social, economic, and political processes differently. Accordingly, other meanings arise with the introduction of segregation and discriminatory laws that now look like artificial and imposed political measures, which, of course, contradict freedoms and human rights.