Lecture
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Tuesday 30.09.2025
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Islam and Judaism, Part 3: Emergence of Islam and Jewish Context
Tuesday 30.09.2025
Summary
In the third of this four-part lecture, we examine in detail the emergence of Islam in late antiquity and its Jewish context, including: Muhammad’s Victory (624 CE) and the conquest of Mecca; the Jewish fortress of Khaybar or, how to think about what happened to the Jews of Medina; the Caliph Umar and the conquest of Jerusalem; the Temple Mount under Islam; and the Pact of Umar with the Jews and Christians: What is Dhimmitude and what does it mean to be a dhimmi?
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at New York University. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017); and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History (Hawaii University Press, 2023).