A great enemy arose in the person of the Emperor Justinian, who was provoked by savage conflicts between the Jews and the Samaritans to issue severe enactments against both, which led to the fall of the patriarchate. In the East, under the rule during the same period of the Persian king, Chosroes the Just, or Nushirvan, who began his reign in 531 A.D., the position was not more favourable for the Jews of Babylonia.
III.--The Golden Age of Judaism
During the conflict between Persian and Roman emperors a power was rapidly growing up in the secret deserts of Arabia which was to erect its throne on the ruins of both. The Jews were the first opponents and the first victims of Mohammed. At least a hundred and twenty years before Christ, Jewish settlers had built castles in Sabæa and established an independent kingdom, known as Homeritis, which was subdued by an Arab chieftain and came to an end. But the Jews were still powerful in the Arabian peninsula. Mohammed designed to range all the tribes under his banner; but his overtures were scorned, and he ordered a massacre of all who refused to accept the Koran.
On one day 700 Jews were slain in Medina while the Prophet looked on without emotion. But the persecution of the Jews by the Mohammedans was confined to Arabia, for under the empire of the caliphs they suffered no further oppression than the payment of tribute. Spain had maintained its odious distinction in the West, and it is not surprising that the suffering Jews by active intrigue materially assisted the triumphant invasion of the country by the Saracens. And in France the Jews became numerous and wealthy, and traded with great success.
We enter on a period which may be described as the Golden Age of the modern Jews. The religious persecutions of this race by the Mohammedans were confined within the borders of Arabia. The Prophet was content with enforcing uniformity of worship within the sacred peninsula which gave him birth. The holy cities of Medina and Mecca were not to be profaned by the unclean footstep of the unbeliever. His immediate successors rose from stern fanatics to ambitious conquerors. Whoever would submit to the dominion of the caliph might easily evade the recognition of the Prophet's title. The Jews had reason to rejoice in the change of masters. An Islamite sovereign would not be more oppressive than a Byzantine on the throne of Constantinople or a Persian on the throne of Ctesiphon. In every respect the Jew rose in the social scale under his Mohammedan rulers. Provided he demeaned himself peaceably, and paid his tribute, he might go to the synagogue rather than to the mosque.
In the time of Omar, the second caliph, the coinage, already a trust of great importance, had been committed to the care of a Jew. And the Jews acted as intermediate agents in the interworking of European civilisation, its knowledge, arts, and sciences, into the oriental mind, and in raising the barbarian conquerors from the chieftains of wild, marauding tribes into magnificent and enlightened sovereigns. The caliph readily acknowledged as his vassal the Prince of the Captivity, who maintained his state as representative of the Jewish community. And in the West, during the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne, the treatment of Jews became much more liberal than before. Their superior intelligence and education, in a period when nobles and kings, and even the clergy, could not always write their names, pointed them out for offices of trust. They were the physicians, the ministers of finance, to monarchs. They even became ambassadors. The Golden Age of the Jews endured in increasing prosperity during the reign of Louis the Débonnaire, or the Pious, at whose court they were so powerful that their interest was solicited by the presents of kings. In the reign of Charles the Bald, the Jews maintained their high estate, but dark signs of the approaching Age of Iron began to lower around.
IV.--The Iron Age of Judaism
Our Iron Age commences in the East, where it witnessed the extinction of the Princes of the Captivity by the ignominious death of the last sovereign, the downfall of the schools, and the dispersion of the community, which from that period remained an abject and degraded part of the population. During the ninth and tenth centuries the Caliphate fell into weakness and confusion, and split up into several kingdoms under conflicting sovereigns, and at the same time Judaism in the East was distracted by continual disputes between the Princes of the Captivity and the masters of the schools. The tribunals of the civil and temporal powers of the Eastern Jewish community were in perpetual collision, so that this singular state was weakened internally by its own dissensions.
When a violent and rapacious caliph, Ahmed Kader, ascended the throne, he cast a jealous look on the powers of his vassal sovereign, and, without pretext, he seized Scherira, the prince of the community, now a hundred years old, imprisoned him and his son Hai, and confiscated their wealth. Hai escaped to resume his office and to transmit its honours and its dangers to Hezekiah, who was elected chief of the community, but after a reign of two years was arrested with all his family by order of the caliph Abdallah Kaim ben Marillah (A.D. 1036). The schools were closed. Many of the learned fled to Spain, where the revulsion under the Almohades had not yet taken place; all were dispersed. Among the rest two of the sons of the unfortunate Prince of the Captivity effected their escape to Spain, while the last of the House of David who reigned over the Jews of the Dispersion in Babylonia perished on the scaffold.
The Jewish communities in Palestine suffered a slower but more complete dissolution. Benjamin of Tudela in the compilation of his travels in the twelfth century gives a humiliating account of the few brethren who still clung, in dire poverty and meanness, to their native land. In Tyre he found 400 Jews, mostly glass-blowers. There were in Jerusalem only 200, almost all dyers of wool. Ascalon contained 153 Jews; Tiberias, the seat of learning, and of the kingly patriarchate, but fifty. In the Byzantine Empire the number of Jews had greatly diminished.