The covenant of the prophets: Muslim texts, jewish subtexts

For several years I have been trying to analyze Muslim historical thinking and the manner in which it affected perceptions of the Jewish past—a past which Muslims fully appropriated as part of their own historical experiences and world-view. Put somewhat differently, I have been trying to understand the process by which a heritage common to both monotheistic faiths could and did become a bone of contention as well as a basis of mutual understanding. This linkage between Muslim self-reflection and the creation of a larger monotheist historiography is crucial to the formation of Muslim attitudes toward “the other,” the polemical discourse against Jews and Judaism, and, more generally, Muslim-Jewish relations throughout the Middle Ages. The present study is culled from a project on Muslim uses of the Jewish past.