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Chapter 1

“Sharīf of the Jewish Nation”: Reconceptualizing the House of David in the Islamic East

Sometime in the late twelfth century, an otherwise unknown individual by the name of Abraham ha-Levi bar Tamim al-Raḥbī copied down, in a careful and clear hand, the lineage of a contemporary member of the Davidic line, tracing his ancestry back, son to father, through King David all the way to Adam (Figure 1).¹ In medieval Hebrew, as in Arabic, individuals are typically identified according to the pattern “x son of y,” a model that can easily be expanded to include a third, fourth, or fifth generation when deemed important. Al-Raḥbī took this miniature genealogical form and extended it as far back as possible, traversing ninety-nine generations of ancestors as he recorded his honoree’s uninterrupted descent from the mythical progenitor of mankind. Beneath the genealogy, which sprawls across seventeen lines of text, he explains that he “wrote these words to acknowledge and give honor” to the Davidic dynast and his “royal family.” He declares himself “a friend of this noble, pure and unsullied family,” and writes that it was “a joyous hour when God gave [him] the merit to see the seed of our lord David, God’s anointed one.” Al-Raḥbī concludes this most intriguing document with a prayer that God should hasten “the coming of the messiah, the son of David,” a common enough wish in the Middle Ages, but one that was probably intended as more than a mere rhetorical flourish when appended to a Davidic genealogy such as this. Truly, it is difficult to imagine how a medieval reader of this text (and as we will see, such genealogical documents were indeed read) could have failed to connect its messianic conclusion with the celebration of the Davidic line that precedes it.

Ironically, though, while we can clearly make out all his ancestors’ names, the identity of the “exalted presence” himself remains a mystery since al-Raḥbī’s document is torn at the top and missing the line of text that once contained his honoree’s given name. One might expect that it should nevertheless be rather easy to figure out who he was. How many nesiʾim, after all, could there have been with fathers named Zakkay, grandfathers named Joseph, great-grandfathers named Zakkay, and so on, who were also important enough to be eulogized in so dramatic a fashion? As it turns out, the list of ancestors does help us to identify him to an extent. Four generations back we encounter the name Zakkay ben ʿAzarya, a familiar figure from the middle of the eleventh century. Mentioned in a handful of Geniza documents, Zakkay was a brother of the famous nasi Daniel ben ʿAzarya, who served as head of the Palestinian yeshiva from 1052 until his death in 1062.² But about this Zakkay’s descendants and about his great-grandson in particular, for whom the genealogy was actually compiled, we know absolutely nothing—to date no other sources, whether from the Geniza or otherwise, make any mention of them. Al-Raḥbī’s adulation and enthusiasm notwithstanding, the unnamed subject of this genealogical text seems to have been a rather obscure individual.

Figure 1. The genealogy of the nasi [?] ben Zakkay that enumerates one hundred generations of ancestors and extends back to Adam. In Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, probably mid-twelfth century. Halper 462. Reproduced courtesy of the Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

Unusual only in that it brings together in a single text so many of the recurring themes in medieval discussions of the Davidic line, al-Raḥbī’s genealogy gives us a sense of the new ways in which medieval Jews had begun to think about the royal family and its significance for them. To be sure, a passionate devotion to King David’s line was not an altogether new development in the Middle Ages. Medieval Jews were, after all, heirs to a rich and variegated set of long-held traditions and beliefs, some going back to the Hebrew Bible itself, which took a lively interest in the descendants of the ancient Israelite monarch. But if the general contours of this commitment to the House of David were relatively unchanging, its articulation had nonetheless taken on new forms and acquired new shades of meaning by the time Abraham al-Raḥbī sat down to record the complete genealogy of his “Davidic master.” In referring to David’s line as a “noble family,” using a term that Muslims applied to the descendants of Muḥammad, in admiring the purity of the family’s lineage, and in speaking of the privilege of beholding even one of its lesser known members—in these and in numerous other ways al-Raḥbī’s remarkable text reveals the extent to which new attitudes were coloring Jews’ perceptions of the royal family and its role in their society.

This chapter evaluates the status of King David’s family in the Middle Ages from a historicist perspective, drawing attention to the new ways in which Jewish society began to conceptualize and express its importance in the centuries following the Islamic expansion. Discerning what in fact constitutes a new layer of meaning in this period is not an easy task since we are ultimately searching for what amounts to subtle variations on a familiar theme, faint shifts in thinking that almost certainly eluded the attention of the medieval writers upon whose testimonies we are dependant. Further complicating our effort is the fact that the overwhelming majority of sources at our disposal uphold, in one way or another, a view of the Davidic dynasty as something stable and continuous over time. Identifying evolving attitudes toward the Davidic family thus requires not only looking for things that can be difficult to see, but also relying on medieval sources that were often written with a view to obscuring the very process of change that we are trying to illuminate. Abraham al-Raḥbī’s genealogical list is a case in point. On the surface the text projects a view of the family of David as an eternal and unchanging entity; it is a veritable celebration of continuity across the longue durée that links, by means of the Davidic line, the biblical past and the medieval present. And yet, as I am arguing, genealogies such as this are themselves the products of a novel way of perceiving the Davidic family, the result of a new pride in the completeness and the demonstrability of its pedigree, which developed only in the centuries after the Islamic conquests. The determination to chart with precision the biblical roots of the Davidic line thus turns out to be a tell-tale sign of the uniquely medieval conceptualization of the royal family lurking beneath the surface of this seemingly straightforward text. Accordingly, our analysis involves reading a good many of the available sources “against the grain,” probing beyond the narrative of linear continuity which they seek to project.

But if highlighting change in medieval perceptions of the royal family is therefore an endeavor beset with challenges, it is also one that can open up new ways of thinking about a conspicuous yet poorly understood aspect of medieval Jewish society. As I argue, the flood of such claims not only represents a significant departure from earlier forms of attachment to the line of David, it also speaks to broader changes affecting Jewish society in the Islamic period. Before we can contemplate the significance of change, however, we must first establish that it indeed occurred; and so the present chapter lays out the evidence for drawing such a conclusion. In so doing, it will also provide the historical framework that underlies my analysis of the meaning of the Davidic family for medieval Jews in the remainder of the book.

The Rabbinic Legacy

As noted, the vast compilations of rabbinic literature—the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds and the collections of exegetical commentary (midrash)—contain a great store of interpretive traditions and beliefs concerning King David and his family. My intention in what follows is not to provide an exhaustive survey of the various themes contained in that corpus, but rather to draw attention to the way rabbinic sources relate to the post-biblical House of David and how they regard claims to membership in it.³ Shaped as they were within a highly specific cultural milieu, rabbinic materials cannot provide a complete account of Jewish perceptions of the Davidic line in the pre-Islamic period.⁴ They can, however, help us recognize when medieval sources communicate ideas that are not rooted in the rabbinic literary canon, and, in so doing, can bring us closer to determining whether such divergences are historically meaningful. Once we have delineated the general shape of this earlier stratum of reflection on the Davidic line, we will be in a better position to see where medieval Jews elaborated upon, and departed from earlier traditions as they, in turn, encountered claimants to Davidic ancestry in their own day.

While it may seem self-evident, it is nonetheless worth noting at the outset that rabbinic sources accept in principle that authentic heirs to the Davidic line could be identified in post-biblical Jewish society. They are not, however, always in agreement about the details of their lineage. A telling example involves Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, the late second- and early third-century patriarch regarded as the redactor of the Mishnah. Though in a number of texts Judah is accepted as an unquestioned descendant of King David, in one rabbinic source he confesses that his claim to a royal pedigree goes through the maternal side and is therefore inferior to that of the Babylonian exilarch.⁵ The ambivalence toward the Davidic lineage of Judah ha-Nasi in this passage would seem to reflect tensions within rabbinic circles over the legitimacy of the patriarchate, a dynastic institution of leadership whose authority was buttressed by the claim of a royal pedigree.⁶ As Albert Baumgarten observes: “The conclusion seems clear…. The ‘confession’ of poor Davidic genealogy is the product of some opponent. It is a subtle response to the Patriarchal claims: to deny these claims outright might have been too dangerous; to reinterpret them so as to make them practically worthless would have been safer.”⁷ And yet while such sources may, in their opposition to the patriarchate, question the ancestry of particular individuals and families, they do not dispute the more fundamental notion that legitimate members of the Davidic family continued to exist in Jewish society. Indeed, as the tradition about Judah ha-Nasi amply demonstrates, challenging the genealogy of one Davidic claimant might go hand in hand with an endorsement of that of another.

The tradition about Judah ha-Nasi’s genealogy highlights a second point as well: when rabbinic sources evince an interest in Davidic ancestry, they almost always do so to the extent that it is a qualification for some particular function—either in a real and immediate form, as represented by the hereditary offices of exilarch and patriarch, or more remotely, as when embodied in the eschatological figure of the messiah. Rabbinic texts, in other words, seem to be either unaware of or largely uninterested in claims to Davidic lineage that are detached from communal functions.⁸ Judah ha-Nasi’s alleged descent from David was a matter of importance because his descendants in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries used it to justify their patriarchal prerogatives. But the patriarchs also claimed to be the descendants of Hillel, an important first-century sage. And so it comes as little surprise that Hillel’s ancestry, too, was taken up in rabbinic texts, again with a view to providing the patriarchate with firm genealogical credentials. Rabbi Levi, a third-century sage, reports that “they found a genealogical scroll in Jerusalem, and in it was written, ‘Hillel is from David.’”⁹ With such proof of Hillel’s own royal pedigree, the dual ancestral claims of the patriarchate—as descended from both Hillel and King David—could apparently be harmonized.

Much as the status of the patriarchate triggered discussions of Davidic ancestry, so too did questions about the status of the Babylonian exilarchs. Deliberating on the protocol during public readings of the Torah, the Talmud questions the appropriateness of a Babylonian custom to lower the scroll to the exilarch rather than obliging him to go up to it. This, we are told, was an honor previously reserved only for kings and high priests. Justifying the Babylonian practice of extending it to exilarchs as well, Yosi ben Bun argues that they should indeed be treated in the manner described “because the seed of David is infused there.”¹⁰ It is important to note, however, that the Davidic pedigree of the exilarchate is brought up in order to explain a puzzling ritual. It is in fact peripheral to the real concern of the passage (determining whether the Babylonian custom is justifiable) and is already assumed to be true when introduced into the discussion.

The most frequently cited allusion to the pedigree of the exilarchate comes in the form of a gloss on the first half of Genesis 49:10 (“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, and the ruler’s staff from between his feet”), a verse that in its most straightforward sense relates to the monarchy founded by Judah’s descendant, King David. “‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah’—this refers to the exilarchs in Babylonia who rule over Israel with scepters; ‘and the ruler’s staff’—this refers to the descendants of Hillel who teach the Torah in public.”¹¹ The rabbinic interpretation extends the allusions to royal authority in the verse to include later claimants to the Davidic pedigree as well, providing scriptural sanction to the exilarchal and patriarchal offices. Like the previous example, however, the tradition simply assumes the existence of a genealogical connection to David without making an effort to demonstrate it or establish its accuracy.

Besides acknowledging that descendants of David could be found in the ranks of contemporary Jewish leaders, rabbinic sources also identified a continuation of the royal line in the person of the anticipated redeemer, often referred to as the “messiah son of David” or simply “the son of David.” Present and future claimants might even be merged. Several statements imply that Judah ha-Nasi, for instance, was regarded as a messianic figure by some of his contemporaries.¹² But here again Davidic ancestry is construed largely as a precondition for power. Davidic pedigrees assume importance and merit discussion in rabbinic texts because they qualify their claimants for positions of leadership and authority; divorced from these they seem to possess little or no intrinsic significance.

As the examples cited above illustrate, in rabbinic sources claims of Davidic ancestry might be alluded to (as in the gloss on Genesis 49:10), asserted (as in the statement that “Hillel is from David”), or even challenged (as when Judah ha-Nasi concedes his genealogical inferiority to the exilarch), but they are never substantiated with genealogical evidence. Given their apparent investment in such traditions, rabbinic materials exhibit surprisingly little interest in detailing the exact line of ancestors through which patriarchs and exilarchs would have traced themselves to King David. Indeed, beyond the vague assertion that the patriarchs were descendants of David “on the maternal side,” the only specific information rabbinic sources seem to know about their pedigree is which of King David’s sons they could claim as an ancestor.¹³ We are on a similarly bad footing when it comes to reconstructing the precise lineage of the exilarchs. Given that rabbinic sources implicitly affirm the ongoing importance of the Davidic line in Jewish society, their disregard for the details of the Davidic pedigree is striking.¹⁴ And the absence of precise genealogical information for the Davidic family appears that much more surprising when compared with its documentation in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Commenting on this situation and noting an important distinction between vague ancestral claims and hard genealogical evidence, Marshall Johnson observes that while rabbis attempted “to exalt the memory of admired predecessors by providing them with honorable ancestry … such attempts were not always based on genealogical records.”¹⁵

Rabbinic sources thus appear to display only a limited interest in the postbiblical line of David. While they acknowledge and discuss contemporary claims to Davidic ancestry, rarely if ever is that pedigree, in and of itself, the true focus of their attention. Instead, they tend to be preoccupied with the narrower question of how ancestry and power intersect—with the way Davidic pedigrees might or might not support succession to positions of formal authority in the Jewish community. Considered by themselves, however, claims to membership in the Davidic line seem to have held little meaning for the editors of the rabbinic corpus. Furthermore, rabbinic literature devotes surprisingly little attention to genealogical documentation. Both in supporting and in rejecting claims of Davidic ancestry, rabbinic sources noticeably avoid discussing the actual lists of ancestors upon which such claims would have had to rely. Indeed, rabbinic sources seem profoundly uninterested in the genealogical intermediaries by means of which an individual could link himself to an ennobling ancestor in the mythic past. Ancestral claims may have mattered to the rabbis, but rabbinic literature reveals only the vaguest awareness of, or interest in, how such claims would have actually been substantiated.

Medieval Continuities

When we consider the situation that emerges from medieval sources, we encounter a number of important continuities with the rabbinic past. First, the Middle Ages witnessed the perpetuation of structures of Davidic authority that had their origins in the rabbinic period. While the patriarchate was abolished by the Romans in the year 425, the exilarchate continued to operate throughout the Middle Ages, even expanding its jurisdiction under Islamic rule. With respect to the institutional configuration of the Davidic family, then, the medieval period seems to manifest an affinity with the rabbinic past.

Second, those who claimed royal ancestry in the Middle Ages always traced their lineage through Davidic dynasts mentioned in the rabbinic corpus. While the overwhelming majority of nesiʾim regarded themselves as descendants of the line of the exilarchs, a few connected themselves to David through the patriarchs in Palestine. David ben Hodaya, a signatory to a letter of excommunication in 1376 who counted a mere eleven generations between himself and Judah ha-Nasi, was one such figure.¹⁶ Another was Nehorai, a physician in Tiberias, who, according to Petaḥya of Regensburg, “possesses a genealogy going back to Rabbi Judah.”¹⁷ But whether they linked themselves to David through the line of the exilarchs or through the line of the patriarchs, medieval nesiʾim made use of preexisting claims that had already been sanctioned by rabbinic tradition.

Continuities with the rabbinic past are also reflected in the titles borne by medieval claimants to Davidic ancestry. The rabbinic designation rosh ha-gola was used in the medieval period for exilarchs and on occasion for other members of the Davidic line, while the title nasi, as we shall see, became in the Middle Ages a generic term for many of the descendants of King David.

Finally, medieval members of the Davidic family saw themselves, and were viewed by their contemporaries, through the prism of rabbinic lore concerning patriarchs and exilarchs. Maimonides, for example, takes it as axiomatic that twelfth-century exilarchs were entitled to appoint judges with universal jurisdiction precisely as their rabbinic-era predecessors had been.¹⁸ And a similar impression is conveyed by Nathan ha-Bavli. In his flattering portrayal of the exilarchate, he describes a ceremony for the appointment of a new exilarch, which, we are told, included a public reading from the Torah. According to Nathan, when the Torah scroll is taken out “first a kohen reads, and after him a Levite. Then the cantor lowers the Torah scroll to the exilarch while the rest of the people stand. He takes the scroll in his hand, rises, and reads from it.”¹⁹ The ritual described in Nathan’s report is clearly based on the Babylonian practice of bringing the Torah scroll to the exilarch discussed above and defended by Yosi ben Bun.²⁰ Demonstrations of deference toward medieval exilarchs were thus informed by the prerogatives and ceremonial practices recorded in earlier rabbinic literature.

In a similar vein, the rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 49:10, which sanctioned the authority of exilarchs and patriarchs in late antiquity, was extended without hesitation to medieval exilarchs as well. As noted in the introduction, Benjamin of Tudela explains that the Abbasid caliph treated the exilarch with great respect during their weekly interview in accordance with the injunction in Genesis 49:10. And Daniel ben Ḥisday, the reigning exilarch during Benjamin of Tudela’s visit to Baghdad, alludes to this same verse in a letter preserved in the Geniza in which he argues for his jurisdictional authority over the Jewish community in Egypt.²¹

But medieval exilarchs were not the only members of the royal family whose status was filtered through the lens of the rabbinic textual tradition. When ʿEli ha-Kohen composed a poem in honor of the nasi Daniel ben ʿAzarya, head of the Palestinian yeshiva, in the spring of 1057, he too drew on the rabbinic understanding of Genesis 49:10 as a way of glorifying his subject’s noble ancestry.²² And when the Damascus nasi Jesse ben Hezekiah issued a letter of excommunication at the end of the thirteenth century against those attempting to ban the writings of Maimonides, he also found it expedient, in justifying his actions, to invoke the rabbinic gloss to that verse.²³ The tendency to define the status of medieval nesiʾim through rabbinic statements about patriarchs and exilarchs is evident as well in the controversy involving the early thirteenth-century nasi Hodaya ben Jesse in Alexandria. Hodaya claimed an unusually broad and ultimately controversial license to impose public bans, invoking as his justification the talmudic principle that “one who is banned by the patriarch [nasi] is considered banned by all of Israel.”²⁴ Abraham Maimonides penned an important responsum, examined in detail below, challenging Hodaya’s actions as well as his reasoning. For the moment, however, it is simply worth noting how easily medieval Davidic dynasts like Hodaya could identify themselves with rabbinic-period patriarchs and exilarchs and present themselves as their direct successors.

Beyond Patriarch and Exilarch

Despite the apparent continuities there are nonetheless some rather significant ways in which the medieval situation was at variance with that reflected in rabbinic sources. One crucial difference involves the expansion of the claim of Davidic ancestry beyond its historic, institutional base. The almost complete overlap of Davidic ancestry and Davidic authority found in rabbinic literature disintegrates in sources from the Middle Ages as claims to Davidic ancestry are no longer tied exclusively to particular authority structures in the Jewish community. If previously the social value of royal lineage was restricted to those individuals who succeeded in winning appointments as either exilarchs or patriarchs, during the Middle Ages the value of a Davidic pedigree could be actualized by a much wider pool of dynasts, most of whom would never hold a Davidic post.²⁵ To be sure, many nesiʾim in the Middle Ages did hold positions of authority, and it is the nature of our uneven source material that much of what we know about the Davidic family concerns such individuals. Only a small fraction of those, however, held offices that were restricted to members of the Davidic family—what I mean by a Davidic post. The nasi Hodaya ben Jesse, for example, whom we just encountered, served as a judge in Alexandria, occupying a position that was in effect open to any male member of the Jewish community. As head of the Palestinian yeshiva, the nasi Daniel ben ʿAzarya also held an official appointment, but this too was a communal post with no intrinsic connection to the Davidic line. More significantly, though, we also find nesiʾim who did not, as far we can tell, occupy any official post whatsoever, whose nasi status seems to have been a function of ancestry rather than authority. Thus, alongside the exilarchate, which continued to operate throughout the medieval period and which historically embodied the cachet of King David’s line, there emerged alternative configurations of the royal lineage, arrangements that were more emphatically oriented around the importance of noble ancestry.

The process I am describing can be seen in, among other things, a shift in the way the title nasi was used in medieval sources. In rabbinic literature, as we have noted, the designation was applied primarily to patriarchs, though it could be used for exilarchs as well. With the termination of the office of patriarch in the fifth century, the latter usage became more pronounced. The “Epistle of Sherira gaʾon,” for instance, illustrative of the convention used in the writings of the Babylonian geʾonim, consistently refers to the exilarch by the title nasi. But during the Islamic period the title also acquired a new and broader meaning as well, one that was determined by lineage rather than administrative function. And it was surely with this expanded sense of what it meant to be a nasi that Yefet ben David ben Shekhanya, cantor of the Palestinian-rite community of Fustat in the first half of eleventh century, wrote to Daniel ben ʿAzarya sending blessings of good fortune to “my master and lord, the great nasi Daniel, head of the yeshiva of the Pride of Jacob” as well as to “his three sons, the nesiʾim” who were then only children.²⁶ To be recognized as a nasi it was thus no longer of necessity to be a leader. In describing the layout of “the great synagogue of the exilarch” in Baghdad, Benjamin of Tudela reflects this expanded and more genealogically focused usage of the title as well. “In front of the ark,” he informs his readers, “there are about ten steps of marble, on the uppermost of which are the seats of the exilarch and the nesiʾim of the House of David.”²⁷ And in a similar vein, a poem that appears to have been written in celebration of the appointment of Sar Shalom ben Phineas to the office of exilarch refers to “our nasi Sar Shalom” along with “his sons, the nesi ʾim.”²⁸ Indeed, medieval sources are replete with references to nesi ʾim who are designated as such apparently on the basis of their Davidic ancestry alone. And the same phenomenon is also attested among Karaites, from whom we might have expected greater efforts at controlling the use of the title given the legal and administrative roles that nesiʾim filled in their communities in Palestine and Egypt.²⁹ What permitted and lay beneath the expanded use of the title in these instances, was, ultimately, a new way of thinking—a growing respect for Davidic ancestry per se and a sense that noble lineages had intrinsic and not merely expedient value.

The broadening of the title nasi in the Middle Ages was not a development that was altogether unique to the Near East. In Christian Europe, too, the title began to be used in ways that extended beyond its narrow signification in rabbinic sources, yet there the process followed a noticeably different course: the functional aspect of the title, signifying succession to a recognized office of authority, was brought to the foreground and transferred to new types of communal leadership, while the implied genealogical ties to David, which became so important in the East, tended to recede into the background. In towns like Narbonne, Barcelona, and Toledo the title was adopted by members of a powerful Jewish aristocracy who benefited from close ties to the ruling nobility. This sense of the title was also projected into the past. The depiction of Jacob Ibn Jau’s rise to power in late tenth-century al-Andalus in Sefer ha-qabbala (Book of Tradition) makes it clear that, as Abraham Ibn Daud and others in twelfth-century Christian Spain understood it, the title nasi signified above all else someone who was entrusted with communal authority. According to Ibn Daud, al-Manṣūr, the Umayyad regent, took a liking to Ibn Jau and

issued him a document placing him in charge of all the Jewish communities from Sijilmasa to the river Duero, which was the border of his realm. [The decree stated] that he was to adjudicate all their litigants, and that he was empowered to appoint over them whomsoever he wished and to exact from them any tax or payment to which they might be subject…. Then all the members of the community of Cordova assembled and signed an agreement [certifying] his position as nasi, which stated: “Rule over us, you, your son, and your son’s son also.”³⁰

If appointment by the temporal authorities and authorization by the Jewish community had been crucial for nasi status as it was understood by Ibn Daud, royal ancestry apparently was not since earlier in his chronicle Ibn Daud informs his readers that members of the Davidic line were of negligible significance in Jewish society in al-Andalus.³¹ Moses Naḥmanides’ objection to the excesses of the nesiʾim in Barcelona reveals a similar perception of the title as marking communal authority rather than royal ancestry. Complaining about the impiety and heavy-handed rule of the Barcelona nesiʾim, he suggests that their status derived from their appointment to “the office of bailiff and their moving in the courts of kings and their palaces.”³²

While some of these aristocratic European families did, eventually, develop foundation stories—but not, it must be noted, genealogical lists—linking their ancestors with the line of the exilarchs, such traditions emerged in response to and as an explanation for preexisting power and influence. Writing about this process in Spain, Yitzhak Baer observes that “because of their success at court, Davidic lineage was ascribed to them, the title Nasi bestowed upon them, and they were allowed whatever special privileges they arrogated to themselves.”³³ And even then Davidic lineage rarely amounted to more than an expendable accessory of the Jewish aristocracy in Europe. A comment by Judah al-Ḥarīzī illustrates the divergence in the way Jews in the Islamic East and Jews in Western Christendom understood the title. “Among their nesiʾim,” al-Ḥarīzī writes of the Jewish community of Toledo, “is the Levite Rabbi Meir ben Todros.”³⁴ In Christian Spain, where the title nasi was regularly applied to local elites, such a description would have been entirely comprehensible. But in the Islamic East, where lineal descent from King David was the primary qualification for nasi status, it would have made little sense. A comparison with the situation in Christian Europe thus clarifies the unique and contextually specific semantic shift that occurred in the East.

The growing importance of Davidic ancestry as such is also evident in the substitution of the word dāʾūdī for the title nasi in Arabic and Judeo-Arabic. Dāʾūdī means “descendant of David” and is a typical Arabic noun of relation, or nisba—a grammatical form used to identify an individual on the basis of a distinguishing characteristic such as physical appearance, place of origin, profession, or, as in this case, ancestry. Dāʾūdī is not, therefore, a literal rendering of nasi, but rather an interpretation that exposes the particular significance the title held for Jews living in Arabic-speaking lands. Used by both Muslims and Jews, the term points unequivocally to the way the ancestral claim eclipsed layers of meaning connected with particular functions and positions.³⁵ The ease with which the Hebrew and Arabic terms could be substituted for one another is demonstrated by a pair of Judeo-Arabic letters sent three weeks apart from Israel ben Nathan to Nahray ben Nissim. The first, dated December 20, 1051, refers twice to Daniel ben ʿAzarya, recently appointed head of the Palestine yeshiva, as “al-dāʾūdī,” while the second, written on January 11, 1052, just as naturally styles him “our master, the nasi.”³⁶

The same process also led to the interchanging of the Hebrew term kohen with the Arabic hārūni, “descendant of Aaron.” Thus, for example, a letter sent by Abraham ben Ḥalfon to ʿEli ben Ḥayyim in November 1090 refers to the addressee as ʿEli ha-Kohen in the second line of the text, but as ʿAllūn ibn Yaʿīsh al-Hārūnī in the Arabic-script address written in the margins.³⁷ It is understandable that the Arabic forms were preferred in communications with the Muslim authorities.³⁸ Such substitutions reveal deep processes of cultural reconfiguration; they are evidence not only of the Jews’ embrace of Arabic, but of Islamic culture’s ability to structure Jewish notions of social status as well. The significance of titles like nasi and kohen had evidently come to be identified with their genealogical connotations, and it is precisely these elements that prevail in their Arabic renderings. While an ancestral affiliation had been implicit in the titles nasi and kohen, it was ultimately their translation that provided the occasion for that meaning to become explicit.

Stress on the genealogical connotations of the titles nasi and kohen is further illustrated by their extension in certain instances to women as well. A marriage contract drawn up in Cairo in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century effects the marriage of a certain Hillel the elder to a woman who is referred to as almana ha-kohenet, “the priestly widow,” employing a rabbinic designation to emphasize that she was the daughter of a kohen.³⁹ In an undated Arabic letter from the Geniza, a Karaite woman informs her mother of various pieces of news including the fact that “the old woman from the line of David has died [mātat al-dāwūdiyya al-kabīra].”⁴⁰ And a dirge written on the death of a nasi reflects a similar tendency. Noting the deceased’s noble lineage, the poem mourns: “Gathered up is the son of the nasi of my people, yea the son of nesiʾot.”⁴¹ That women could enjoy the cachet of a distinguished biblical lineage also emerges from a list of members of several families of Levites in which it is specifically noted whether a man’s wife or mother was herself of levitical lineage.⁴²

Scholars have observed that medieval conceptions of ancestry were largely concerned with the male members of society: it was the ancestry of men that mattered most, and it was their descent from men that was normally taken into consideration. Only in such rare cases in which the maternal line was deemed to be more important than that of the father might it be cited instead.⁴³ The genealogical records produced for members of the Davidic line (which are considered in greater detail in the next chapter) bear out this observation—Davidic ancestry is in every instance recorded through a succession of forebears that is exclusively male, even in those cases in which one would expect to find female ancestors.⁴⁴ But if medieval women were not customarily regarded as the active transmitters of noble ancestry, the sources cited suggest that they might nonetheless occasionally be seen as its passive recipients. And the inclusion of women in the reckoning of at least some noble lineages provides yet another gauge of the importance of biblical lineage in the Geniza society.

The uncoupling of Davidic ancestry from structures of Davidic authority also lies at the heart of the famous exchange between Abraham Maimonides and Joseph ben Gershom, to which I have already alluded.⁴⁵ The former, in his capacity as the administrative head of Egyptian Jewry, had appointed the French-born Joseph as a judge in Alexandria. Along with other European Jews in that town, Joseph became embroiled in a conflict with the nasi Hodaya ben Jesse. Though apparently not the occupant of an official post at the time of the conflict, Hodaya, a member of a family of nesiʾim hailing from Mosul that had established a presence in Syria and Egypt in the thirteenth century, was nonetheless an influential figure in the Jewish community of Alexandria, and, as we have seen, claimed the right to issue public bans on the basis of his ancestry.⁴⁶ When Joseph sought to curb what he regarded as the nasi’s illegitimate exercise of authority, Hodaya retaliated by placing him under the ban, accusing the community of French Jews in the town of being “heretics, unbelievers, and corporealists,” and threatening with excommunication anyone who offered them financial support. As we have already noted, Hodaya justified his actions by invoking the talmudic principle that “one who is banned by the patriarch [nasi] is considered banned by all of Israel.” It was at this point that a frustrated Joseph turned to Abraham Maimonides in Fustat, putting to him five queries intended to clarify Hodaya’s status.

The nasi’s actions may have been motivated in part by feelings of jealousy toward Joseph for having been elevated to a judgeship from which he himself had been ousted. In a letter to his father, the physician Abū Zikrī ben Elijah describes how a certain unnamed nasi was recently relieved of his duties as a judge in Alexandria when the governor who appointed him had fallen into disfavor.⁴⁷ Abū Zikrī mentions the handsome government stipend that went along with the post and suggests that his father, the judge Elijah ben Zechariah, consider replacing the nasi. A combination of factors makes it likely that Abū Zikrī’s letter refers to the nasi Hodaya ben Jesse. The date, location, and unusual coincidence of a nasi serving as a judge in Alexandria all point to Hodaya ben Jesse’s turbulent period in that town. Moreover, Abū Zikrī’s insinuations about the immoral behavior of the nasi in question would seem to echo accusations leveled against Hodaya by Joseph. Abū Zikrī writes that the dismissed nasi had accepted bribes from both litigants to a case and had appropriated religious objects belonging to the synagogue. Such allegations resonate with the French rabbi’s description of Hodaya as driven by greed and in one instance demanding a fee of ten dinars to cancel a public ordinance.

Simmering beneath this personal conflict were also deeper tensions between the religious traditions of the indigenous Jewish populations of the East on the one hand and those of the recent Jewish arrivals from France on the other. As Elchanan Reiner has observed, a crucial element in the controversy appears to have been a difference in the way the two groups understood the coercive power of the ban. While Eastern Jews viewed it as the prerogative of charismatic leaders like the nasi, Europeans saw it as a sanction entrusted only to the officially constituted leaders of the community.⁴⁸ The conclusion of the episode bears out such an analysis, for in February 1234 eleven rabbis from Acre, more than half of European extraction, signed an edict prohibiting individuals from enacting bans on their own; from that point on they were only to be issued by courts made up of at least three religious authorities. The affair thus resulted in a campaign strongly endorsed by the European leadership to curtail use of the ban by representatives of charismatic authority and to safeguard it as an instrument of the community’s official leaders.

But if personal grievances and regional variations in the application of the ban played a role in the dispute, so too did a cultural divide over what it meant to be a nasi. Joseph introduces his five queries to Abraham Maimonides with a review of Hodaya’s recent actions as well as the justification that Hodaya offered for them. He insists that in arrogating for himself powers restricted to the patriarch—in regarding himself, in other words, as equivalent to the nasi mentioned in rabbinic sources—Hodaya “seeks to invent things that are contrary to the laws of our faith and that cannot be.”⁴⁹ Contemporary nesiʾim, he contends, are clearly not the same as the nasi that is discussed by the rabbis and therefore ought not to be given the same privileges.

Are all of those known as nesiʾim today of the same status as the nasi mentioned in scripture and the Talmud, or not? According to my humble opinion, they have no special status except for the one who is appointed exilarch, from whom, according to the Talmud, we derive our authority. And there cannot be two exilarchs at one time, since they have said, “There is only one leader in a generation, and not two” [BT Sanhedrin 8a].⁵⁰

Coming from Latin Europe, Joseph evidently had difficulty accepting the influence enjoyed in eastern lands by figures like Hodaya ben Jesse, figures whose status seemed to be based on popular respect for their lineage rather than official appointment or substantive qualifications. Joseph’s frustration on this point is particularly evident when he complains, “If one should argue … that [Hodaya] is the son and grandson of a nasi, [I would reply that] I am the son and grandson of scholars going back several generations.”⁵¹

Joseph not only challenged the identification of medieval nesiʾim with the nasi discussed in rabbinic texts, he also questioned the link between nasi status and Davidic ancestry. Citing the talmudic example of Eleazar ben ʿAzarya, a priest who was appointed to the office of nasi, Joseph concludes: “From this we learn that nasi status is not dependent on [membership in] the House of David, but rather on legal expertise.”⁵² Emanating as it does from a European unfamiliar with local practice in the East, Joseph’s question brings into clearer relief the distinctive contours of respect for Davidic ancestry among Jews in Muslim lands. His dismay at the situation in the Islamic world becomes all the more understandable when we bear in mind our earlier observations about the very different ways in which the title nasi was understood and employed in France and northern Spain.

In his long reply to Joseph’s queries, Abraham Maimonides attempts to navigate delicately between the opposing sides. Despite his sympathy for Joseph’s difficult predicament and his seeming disapproval of the nasi’s arrogant and unjust behavior, Abraham is reluctant to criticize Hodaya. He acknowledges that the nasi became enraged and in his anger cursed Joseph and the rabbis of France, saying things “that cannot be written down.” But Abraham also reminds Joseph that “the honorable nasi” is “an old man with a reputation in his own land”—perhaps referring to Mosul—and urges forbearance since the nasi “grew up among scholars and possesses both wisdom and understanding.”⁵³ “And there is no justification for disparaging him,” Abraham continues, “insofar as we are obligated to honor his family.”⁵⁴

In referring to the obligation to honor the nasi’s family, Abraham assumes the role of a cultural mediator, attempting to offer an explanation for the status of contemporary nesiʾim that so puzzled the French rabbi. He goes on to explain the significance of Hodaya’s title in the context of local custom, underscoring once more the profound regard for the genealogy it signified in the East.

These descendants of our master David are called nesiʾim because they are from the royal line and because the king himself is called nasi. But someone from David’s seed who is neither an exilarch nor the head of a yeshiva is designated a nasi only figuratively [kinuy be-ʿalma], insofar as he is from the royal line. Know that it is in this sense that we call their children nesiʾim too, in the sense that they are nesiʾim with respect to lineage [nesiʾim be-yiḥusam].⁵⁵

Abraham introduces the notion of a “nasi with respect to lineage,” a category that he contrasts with that of the “nasi with respect to rank” (nasi be-maʿalato). This distinction is Abraham’s own, and reveals the prominence of the purely genealogical sense of the title nasi in his place and time. By positing such a distinction Abraham is able to concede Joseph’s point that contemporary Davidic dynasts (other than the exilarch) were not equivalent to the talmudic nasi, while at the same time providing an explanation for the popularity that they nevertheless enjoyed in the Near East. Abraham acknowledges that Hodaya’s status cannot be defended according to the rabbinic legal tradition, but he also points out that it has a basis in the local community’s respect for lineage. When read together, Joseph’s queries and Abraham’s responsum underscore the distinctive patterns of respect for Davidic ancestry that had come to prevail among Jews living in the Arabic-speaking East.

Another textual witness to the situation reflected in Abraham Maimonides’ responsum is the draft of an early thirteenth-century letter of appointment for a raʾīs al-yahūd that is preserved in the monumental secretarial manual of the Islamic legal scholar and Egyptian chancery clerk, al-Qalqashandī.⁵⁶ The document, which entrusts to the appointee administrative jurisdiction over “the Rabbanites, Karaites and Samaritans in Egyptian lands,” includes the following clause regarding his obligations to members of the Davidic line: “And as for the one who possesses a relationship of genealogy [luḥmat nasab] to David, peace be upon him, and who enjoys through him [David] the sanctity of genealogy [wa-lahu bihi ḥurmat nasab], he [the appointee] shall look after his privilege and take him as a companion with the most generous kindliness.”⁵⁷ The inclusion of such a stipulation in an investiture letter for the most powerful Jewish official in the Ayyubid realm attests to the influence that the Davidic family enjoyed in Egyptian Jewish society. But what is of particular significance for our purposes is that the letter understands the importance of the Davidic line as essentially deriving from its ennobling genealogy. The classical overlap of claims of Davidic descent with the occupancy of specific offices of Davidic leadership seems to have all but vanished in this thirteenth-century formulary. nesiʾim are quite simply those who can trace themselves back to King David. Written in the same period as Abraham Maimonides’ responsum to Joseph ben Gershom, the letter of appointment provides us with yet another glimpse of the way Davidic dynasts had come to enjoy a status that was principally oriented around a venerable genealogical claim.

A Noble Family

The move toward a more genealogically based perception of the royal line in the East resulted in other shifts as well. Jews in the Middle Ages began, for instance, to think of the Davidic family as precisely that—a kinship group united by its descent from a common ancestor. Such a notion is implied, of course, in the various rabbinic traditions asserting that the exilarchs were descended from David. But in the Middle Ages this idea was expressed more directly, and its implications—in terms of how contemporary nesiʾim were related to one another, for example—taken far more seriously. The effects of such thinking are evident in the genealogical text with which we began this chapter: Abraham al-Raḥbī repeatedly emphasizes that his subject is worthy of honor because he is a member of “the noble House of David,” by which he refers not only to the anonymous nasi’s ancestors, but to his living relatives as well. And above we noted Abraham Maimonides’ insistence on the obligation to honor the family of the nasi Hodaya. While the vertical lines linking individual nesiʾim to their biblical progenitors always counted most, horizontal connections between nesiʾim, underscoring their membership in a collective defined by blood ties, were now acknowledged too. Indeed, as the ancestry of the nesiʾim assumed ever greater importance, it is only natural that they should have been increasingly seen as members of a wider Davidic clan or tribe. While the substitution of Dāʾūdī for nasi emphasized most explicitly an individual’s vertical relationship to David, indirectly it also served to connect him to the many living claimants to the same ancestry.

One can recognize this notion in a letter sent to the nasi Solomon ben Jesse in the winter of 1236 in which the recipient is styled the lord of the “the Davidic faction [al-ṭāʾifa al-dāwūdiyya],” a formula that implies his membership in a larger network of noble relatives.⁵⁸ The notion of a family of Davidic descendants also emerges from memorial lists for Karaite nesiʾim preserved in the Geniza. A typical list of this type begins with the formula: “A fitting memorial … for the memory of the noble family, the family of the House of David, the nesiʾim.”⁵⁹ And the Judeo-Arabic version of the story of Bustanay, which describes the illegitimate union of a seventh-century exilarch with a non-Jewish captive, takes aim at “the pedigree of the Davidic family [nasab al-dāwūdiyya]” as a whole.⁶⁰ And when the Andalusian-born exegete Abraham Ibn Ezra (d. 1167) observes that the House of David is “a great and powerful family [mishpaḥa rabba ve-gedola]” that continues to flourish in his own day, he, too, expresses the new perception of the Davidic line as a descent group encompassing much more than just its office holding members.⁶¹ Finally, we may note an undated Judeo-Arabic letter from the Geniza addressed to Yefet ben Sasson that evinces the same idea when it refers to al-Nafīs the elder as “a branch of the prophetic, Davidic clan [farʿ al-ʿashira al-nabawiyya al-dāwūdiyya].”⁶²

Nor were Jews the only ones to think along such lines. When the Arabic essayist al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868 or 869), discussing the love of homeland among various peoples, refers to the practice of “the children of Aaron and the family of David [al Dāwūd]” to transfer the bodies of their deceased to Palestine for burial, he too seems to reflect a tendency to think of Jewish society in terms of groups that are delimited by ancestry.⁶³ Strengthening an observation made above, al-Jāḥiẓ’s comment also suggests that this phenomenon was not restricted to the Davidic line alone and that descent from a biblical ancestor defined other collectives within Jewish society as well. The perception of the Davidic line as primarily a descent group is similarly reflected in an observation by the eleventh-century Muslim historian al-Ḥasan ibn al-Bannāʾ. Describing a conflict among Jewish notables in Baghdad over the appointment of a new exilarch in 1069, Ibn al-Bannāʾ explains to his readers that the two rival candidates are “from the descendants of David [min awlād Dāwūd].”⁶⁴

Geographic Distribution

We now find ourselves in a better position to understand yet another distinguishing feature of the medieval House of David: its geographic dispersion. By the tenth century, members of the Davidic family had begun to move westward, appearing in towns in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain.⁶⁵ And the painstaking work of three generations of Geniza historians makes it clear that by the thirteenth century a dramatic redistribution of the Davidic family had occurred as members of a lineage once localized in Baghdad were settled in every corner of the Islamic world. Their research demonstrates that in virtually every case in which we find a nasi during these centuries living outside Iraq it is possible to trace him back in just a few generations to an ancestor who once lived in Iraq.⁶⁶ As we see below, this is one of several ways in which the genealogical records of the Davidic line, when read with a critical eye, can provide clues to significant changes in the conception and organization of the royal family during the Islamic period.

In one respect, this diffusion of the Davidic line mirrored the political changes and economic pressures that were then reshaping Near Eastern society generally. A diminished capacity to administer effectively its outlying provinces had by the tenth century severely undermined the stability of the Abbasid caliphate. Formerly ruled by governors loyal to the Abbasid authorities, those far-flung territories now increasingly fell under the control of independent and sometimes hostile rulers. At the same time, economic disruptions impoverished the Abbasid heartland. One consequence of these developments was a migratory movement westward as merchants and intellectuals sought opportunities in the prosperous and newly autonomous lands along the Mediterranean.⁶⁷ Jewish society, we know, was deeply affected by these transformations, and the migration of nesiʾim to communities outside Baghdad should perhaps be seen as yet another result of the ensuing redistribution of populations and economic power.⁶⁸ Indeed, later Jewish legends would connect these developments explicitly as they described the way some local Muslim rulers, in asserting their independence from Baghdad, encouraged members of the Davidic family to visit or settle in their realms.⁶⁹

From another perspective, however, the mobility of the nesiʾim can be viewed as a further consequence of the reconfiguration of the Davidic line that we have been examining. No longer defined by an authority structure, the royal family was able to move beyond its historic base of power in Iraq when conditions there became unfavorable. The Davidic family’s success in freeing itself, so to speak, from the Babylonian exilarchate, the institution that historically had defined it and geographically had anchored it, becomes clear when we consider the difficulties faced by various geʾonim as they struggled to maintain the allegiance of the communities under their jurisdiction in the same period. As desperate appeals to local Jewish communities indicate, their status remained intimately bound up with the survival of the yeshivot they headed. A telling illustration of this emerges from the correspondence of Samuel ben ʿEli, who wrote a number of letters to communities in Iraq and Syria urging them to continue to support his institution. In one of these Samuel offers the following rationale for the enduring significance of the yeshiva, and by implication his own authority:

You are aware that the place of the yeshiva is the throne of the Torah, which represents Moses our teacher in every age. The word yeshiva derives from the verse, “And Moses sat (va-yeshev) to judge the people” [Exodus 18:13]. It is the place that is designated for instruction and for study of the Torah…. Thus the yeshiva is the place of Moses our teacher, and in it the Jewish faith is perfected. All who oppose it oppose the Torah, whose place it is, and oppose Moses our teacher, whose throne it is.⁷⁰

By appealing to the holiness of the yeshiva, here so emphatically construed as a sacred site, in order to legitimize his status, Samuel reveals the degree to which geonic authority was linked to the prestige of specific geographies. Indeed, a long-standing argument on behalf the superiority of the traditions of the Iraqi yeshivot drew connections between their spiritual preeminence and their geographic location.⁷¹ The Davidic family, by contrast, enjoyed a prestige that had come to be embodied in the individual claimant, and that possessed meaning even in the absence of an institutional framework. Not restricted to a specific institution or by a particular geography, it could translate itself that much more easily to new physical surroundings.

Jewish population centers across the Islamic world were thus exposed to living members of the royal line. In addition to Baghdad, important cities and towns such as Tabrīz, Mosul, Damascus, Aleppo, Ḥamā, Acre, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Fustat, Aden, and Qayrawān all played host either to individual nesiʾim or to dynasties, with the result that Jewish society as a whole during this period came into increasingly more intensive contact with members of the Davidic family. Letters from the Geniza reveal that nesiʾim also circulated through provincial towns in the Egyptian countryside: we hear of them, for instance, in Ashmūm, Damira, al-Maḥalla, and Bilbays.⁷² We find nesiʾim as well in Daqūqa in Iraq and in Jām in northwestern Afghanistan.⁷³ And this list comprises only those places where the presence of Davidic dynasts is explicitly reported. When we read, for instance, of a family of nesiʾim that traveled from Tabrīz to Cairo and back, or of another that moved from Mosul to Egypt, we know that they must have come in contact with a number of communities in the course of their travels, even though those places are not mentioned in our sources. Again, it must be emphasized that this stands in contrast to the situation in earlier periods during which the value of Davidic ancestry was restricted to the respective occupants of the patriarchate and the exilarchate, and the geographic distribution of members of the House of David was correspondingly limited to the locations of those offices. The momentousness of this new development is reflected in a series of medieval legends that focus on the circumstances under which a scion of the royal line arrived in a community outside of Iraq.⁷⁴ As the value of Davidic lineage increased, so too did Jewish society’s overall exposure to descendants of the royal line.

Emphasizing the Links to King David

Medieval sources also reveal a new and profound concern with documenting and publicizing the royal lineage of nesiʾim. As nobility of ancestry began to eclipse function as the source of the royal line’s significance, it is little wonder that medieval nesiʾim should have given new attention to identifying themselves explicitly with their biblical forebear. As we see in the next chapter, they accomplished this through a variety of strategies, the most dramatic of which was the creation of complete ancestor lists like the one copied down by Abraham al-Raḥbī. Another important mechanism involved naming children after figures from the biblical line of David. Such practices helped publicize the ancestral claim of the royal line and reinforced a public identity that was oriented around descent from King David. This concern is revealed in more modest ways, too, as, for example, when the nasi David ben Daniel acknowledges in a letter to a supporter “the kindness of the God of David our father.”⁷⁵ Similar expressions asserting a direct familial tie to the royal line are to be found in letters by the exilarchs Hezekiah ben David and Daniel ben Ḥisday.⁷⁶

Letters addressed to Davidic dynasts echo this motif as well. An illustrative example is a Judeo-Arabic missive sent to Daniel ben ʿAzarya by an unidentified supporter that is largely concerned with the consolidation of Daniel’s authority in the Fustat community.⁷⁷ In discussing two separate matters, one in which the writer himself was involved and another involving the addressee, the letter draws analogies to episodes in the life of King David. Significantly, in both instances the writer is careful to identify the biblical monarch as Daniel’s ancestor (jadduhu)⁷⁸

A draft of a flowery letter to the nasi Hodaya ben Jesse reveals how another writer modified a conventional expression of religious piety in order to emphasize the genealogical connection between his addressee and King David.⁷⁹ The missive, written by Joseph ben Obadiah in Syria, contains numerous corrections and revisions, some of a purely stylistic nature.⁸⁰ Thus, in one instance the writer originally described the nasi with the phrase “perfect in wisdom and full of beauty [kelil ḥokhma u-male yofi],” but then evidently decided to switch the wording so that it should read instead “full of wisdom and perfect in beauty [male ḥokhma u-khelil yofi].” Another correction demonstrates how Joseph carefully revised his text to better flatter its recipient. Initially he included in his florid introduction the standard messianic wish that God should raise “the fallen tabernacle of David” during Hodaya’s lifetime. When revising his letter, however, Joseph apparently felt that it was important to acknowledge the nasi’s connection to King David in a more direct manner and accordingly changed the expression to read “the fallen tabernacle of David his father” (emphasis added).

Karaite marriage contracts from Egypt, which typically include a special clause mentioning the nasi who served as the head of the Karaite community, exhibit a similar tendency. Once such document, written in Fustat in 1036 under the jurisdiction of Semaḥ ben Asa, characterizes that nasi as “the descendant of the man of rest,” an allusion, on the basis of 2 Chronicles 22:9, to King Solomon.⁸¹ In similar fashion, a marriage contract drawn up in 1117 recalls the royal lineage of the the nasi Ḥisday ben Hezekiah ben Solomon when it speaks of “his virtuous fathers, the kings.”⁸²

While clearly building on preexisting traditions about the Davidic ancestry of the family of exilarchs, such medieval strategies reflect a new investment in promoting and proving that lineage. Of particular significance for our purposes is recognizing the subtle shift this represents in the way claims to Davidic ancestry were now expressed, a transformation that has its roots in new attitudes about the importance of genealogy. As noted above, there is every reason to believe that exilarchs in late antiquity considered themselves to be the descendants of King David; indeed, the existence of such a family tradition is amply reflected in rabbinic writings. But there is no indication that they ever felt obliged to substantiate that claim by enumerating a sequence of ancestors that directly linked them to the royal line. The earliest recorded effort in that direction appeared around the beginning of the ninth century in Seder ʿolam zuṭa (The Lesser Order of the World).⁸³ That text’s delineation of a sequence of Davidic descendants stretching from the biblical period to the end of the rabbinic era reflects not only the concern to link medieval nesiʾim with the Israelite king but a new preoccupation with complete and accurate genealogical record-keeping as well.

That a continuous chain of Davidic descendants was not actually worked out until the Islamic period is further suggested by a surprising feature of the Davidic genealogies that were recorded between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, genealogies that build upon the sequence of ancestors first laid out in Seder ‘olam zuṭa. Unlike family trees that follow multiple descent lines and chart the relations between contemporary descendants of the same ancestor, Davidic genealogies generally trace ascent from son to father through only one individual in a given generation. The ancestor list copied by Abraham al-Raḥbī, which traces a continuous chain of ninety-nine ascendants, is in this respect typical. Discounting one rather late and problematic exception, all such ancestor lists for the Davidic line converge at a single medieval progenitor—the fabled exilarch Bustanay, who is alleged to have lived during the Islamic conquests of the seventh century.⁸⁴ In other words, an identical sequence of ancestors stretching all the way from King David to the early Islamic period is shared by virtually all of the extant Davidic pedigrees, Rabbanite and Karaite, with significant differentiation occurring only in the generations that come after Bustanay. Leaving aside the many still unresolved questions concerning Bustanay’s identity and precise floruit, this fact would seem to indicate that the meticulous recording of Davidic lineage did not precede Bustanay’s day. If it had, we would surely expect to find genealogies of other, non-Bustanay branches of the family (besides the fourteenth-century exception mentioned above).⁸⁵ The almost complete absence of Davidic lineages traceable to an ancestor other than Bustanay is all the more surprising given the well-known medieval allegation that Bustanay had improper sexual relations with a Persian slave-girl resulting in the irrevocable defilement of his entire progeny. The fact that the existing ancestor lists reflect a genealogical diversity for the Davidic family that goes back only as far as Bustanay would thus appear to support the conclusion that a significant reconceptualization of the Davidic line had indeed occurred sometime after the middle of the seventh century and was accompanied by a new emphasis on genealogical record keeping.

The suspicious appearance of Bustanay in virtually all Davidic pedigrees may have troubled some medievals as well. And it was perhaps in partial explanation of this curiosity that a legend emerged according to which Bustanay, while still in his mother’s womb, was miraculously saved from a plague that left all other members of the Davidic family dead.⁸⁶ As the story makes quite clear, all subsequent Davidic dynasts must therefore be directly descended from Bustanay. At one level, then, the story can perhaps be read as an acknowledgment of the genealogical anomaly noted above and an attempt to account for it.

Another important way Davidic dynasts publicized their ancestry was by naming their sons after biblical figures from the line of King David. In the next chapter we explore this phenomenon in greater detail, but for the purposes of our present discussion it is sufficient to note that here too we can point to a general shift that seems to have occurred during the early Islamic centuries, subsequent to the period of Bustanay. Indeed, comparing the various extant Davidic genealogies one cannot help but notice a marked difference between the names of Bustanay’s ascendants and those borne by his descendants. Names appearing in the generations before Bustanay are generally in Aramaic with no evident connection to the biblical line of David. Those that appear in the generations after Bustanay, by contrast, are not only more frequently biblical Hebrew names, they are also much more likely to be names of persons easily identified with the House of David. What this ultimately suggests is that the shift toward more complete genealogical recordkeeping seems to have accompanied other developments that were similarly intended to enhance the perceived connection between individual members of the royal line and their mythical forebear.

Numeric Growth

Another related consequence of the changes that we have been exploring is a perceptible rise in the number of individuals who claimed descent from King David in the Middle Ages. This is a natural corollary to our earlier observations. Inasmuch as the significance of a Davidic pedigree was tied less and less to particular offices of authority in the Jewish community and increasingly became a marker of prestige in and of itself, it stands to reason that there would have been greater incentive for individuals who could lay claim to a Davidic pedigree to actually do so. When the importance of Davidic ancestry was connected to specific authority structures, the benefits of being a son, grandson, or brother of an exilarch or patriarch were limited to the kinds of perks that relatives of powerful people generally can expect to enjoy through nepotism. But when Davidic ancestry acquired a meaningfulness in its own right, when cultural attitudes determined that being a “nasi with respect to lineage” was itself something of value, the son, grandson or brother of an exilarch became himself a legitimate member of the royal household in his own right. The new medieval conception of the Davidic family as a noble lineage can thus be seen to have encouraged and permitted its numeric growth.

A perception of the expanded size of the Davidic family in the Middle Ages emerges from the work of previous generations of historians, who, however, did not fully appreciate its significance or consider it indicative of broader processes of change affecting the House of David.⁸⁷ To give a sense of the numbers involved, I have compiled a list of dynasts who lived roughly between the years 950 and 1450 (see Appendix B). This is an admittedly broad swath of time, but the conservative approach I have used in tallying the nesiʾim more than makes up for any distortion resulting from such expansive temporal parameters. For the entire period in question I have counted a total of 107 male Davidic dynasts. By no means, however, does this figure approximate the actual number of nesiʾim who lived during those five centuries; rather, it merely represents a lower boundary, the actual number being certainly several times greater. Factoring in hints that daughters of nesiʾim were occasionally viewed as members of the biblical lineage as well, the Jewish community’s overall exposure to members of the royal line becomes all the more considerable.

While there is no reliable data from earlier periods to compare with our tally, indirect evidence that the Davidic line had indeed undergone an expansion can be deduced again from critically considering the extant genealogical records of medieval nesiʾim. As noted above, those genealogies converge at Bustanay. The ancestor lists themselves, then, convey the image of a Davidic lineage that begins to divide into collateral descent lines only in the early Islamic period; only at that point does the genealogical record as a whole appear to acknowledge the existence of multiple dynasts in a single generation. And the further we move from Bustanay, the more ramified and numerous the lineage becomes. We need not ascribe an undue measure of accuracy to these genealogical sources in order to discern in this spread the echo of a progressive increase over time in the number of individuals laying claim to what was regarded as a legitimate Davidic pedigree. The variability that enters into the lineage after the time of Bustanay would thus point not only to more vigorous efforts to record Davidic ancestry, but to a growth in the overall number of recognized dynasts as well.

Comparisons with the Family of Muḥammad

The changes noted above in the organization, localization, and self-presentation of the Davidic line resemble in certain respects transformations that occurred among the ʿAlids about a century earlier. By the late tenth century members of the ʿAlid dynasty had spread to towns across the Islamic East, where they succeeded in converting popular respect for their noble lineage into a variety of forms of status at the local level.⁸⁸

The affinities between the two lines were also evident to medievals. Jews and Muslims alike began to conceive of the exilarchal dynasty as a Jewish equivalent to the family of the Prophet. In the introduction we observed the way both Benjamin of Tudela and Petaḥya of Regensburg suggestively paired the families of King David and Muḥammad in their enthusiastic descriptions of Jewish power in Baghdad. An equation of the two families is also evident in the specific honorifics that Jews began to use when referring to members of the Davidic line. The letter mentioned above that was addressed to the thirteenth-century nasi Solomon ben Jesse is illustrative. In the opening lines of the missive, the writer, following epistolary custom, lavishes praise on his addressee in the midst of which he describes Solomon in rhyming prose as “the sharīf of the Jewish nation, and the sayyid of the Davidic faction [sharīf al-milla al-yahūdiyya wa-sayyid al-tāʾifa al-dāwūdiyya].”⁸⁹ The combination of the terms sharīf and sayyid—each a common designation for members of the family of Muḥammad—unmistakably casts the House of David as the Jewish counterpart to the ahl albayt.⁹⁰ A similar characterization of the Davidic family occurs in yet another letter addressed to the same Solomon ben Jesse, this one by a man named Peraḥya. The writer apologizes for not paying a visit to Solomon on the occasion of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, explaining that he was prevented from doing so because of the unexpected arrival in town of the nasi Josiah—quite possibly referring to a brother of Solomon with the same name. Peraḥya’s letter includes the wish that God might bring joy to the Jewish people “through the merit of his [Solomon’s] noble family [baytatihi al-sharīfa],” once again drawing on language most frequently used in connection with the family of Muḥammad.⁹¹ The tendency to think of the Davidic line as a family of Jewish ashrāf is also suggested by Abraham al-Raḥbī, who refers to the subject of his genealogical list as “his noble … presence [al-ḥaḍra al-sharīfa]” and to the nasi’s family as “this noble house [hadha al-bayt al-sharīf].”⁹² The complementary notion of the Davidic dynasty as a family of sāda appears in medieval sources as well. Several letters addressed to Solomon ben Jesse refer to his “exalted … sayyidi court,” and the members of his family are described as “the sāda [who are] the nesiʾim.”⁹³ While the terms sharīf and sayyid could also be used as generic titles of respect—sayyidunā (“my master”) is in fact a common form of address in Geniza letters—it is hard to avoid the conclusion that when used in conjunction with one another and in reference to a nasi such terms carried an added resonance implying a comparison with the family of Muḥammad.

The impact of Islamic categories—in particular those pertaining to the ahl al-bayt—on the way Jews perceived the Davidic line is no less evident in the characterization of the Davidic family as a pure and prophetic family. Abraham al-Raḥbī invokes both of these notions as well, when, in lauding his subject, he refers to the latter’s “prophetic, Davidic” ancestry and describes his own affection for the “pure and unsullied [al-ṭāhir al-zakkī] house.”⁹⁴ The purity of the Davidic line is also a central theme of the Bustanay story, where, however, the idea is roundly contested. The narrative’s insistence that Bustanay irreparably sullied the purity of the royal line should perhaps be read against the background of a growing tendency to view members of the Davidic family in precisely the terms suggested by al-Raḥbī.⁹⁵ The conception of the Davidic line as a prophetic family is invoked by the author of the Geniza letter discussed above, who writes of his happiness at learning that his addressee had met with Nafīs the elder, someone he refers to as “a branch of the prophetic, Davidic family.”⁹⁶

And the same idea can also be found in a fragmentary text missing both its beginning and end, which has been described by its editor as “verses of praise” in honor of the exilarch Ḥisday ben David (fl. early twelfth century).⁹⁷ Made up of a series of scriptural passages celebrating the Davidic family followed by a string of encomia to Ḥisday in particular, the text appears to be a panegyric introduction to a sermon given by the exilarch, for connecting the two parts is the formula “Hear what he explains, and heed what he says,” a declaration that a number of medieval sources depict as the formal opening to addresses by important communal officials.⁹⁸ Ḥisday is eulogized in some fairly predictable ways; the text refers to him as, for instance, “the crown of our heads,” “our king,” and “our nasi.” But it also employs a less-than-obvious formulation when at one point it describes him as “the diadem of the nesiʾim and the offspring of prophets.”

In the Islamic tradition David is, of course, a prophet. But when medieval Jews referred to the Davidic dynasty as a “prophetic family,” more was involved than simply the recasting of the Jewish David in an Islamic mold. That, to be sure, is part of the story; but the real point of reference was undoubtedly Muḥammad, whose descendants constitute the prophetic family par excellence in Muslim society. The Jews’ characterization of the Davidic line as prophetic thus entailed a double transposition: reassigning David a role that matched his status in the Islamic tradition, but thereby ultimately setting up an equivalence between his family and that of the Prophet Muḥammad.