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Historians on the persecution end of the spectrum did not gain prominence until after the
Six-Day War of 1967, when Jewish scholars began to espouse what Cohen has coined a “neo-
lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history.” 32 Adopting what Salo Baron first termed a
“lachrymose” approach to Jewish history, 33 these historians pushed back against what they saw
as rose-tinted idealism; instead, they argued that Muslim tolerance of Jews was nothing more
than a myth. These historians portray Jews as oppressed victims of Islamic states which were
fundamentally unjust towards non-Muslims. 34 An important variation on this neo-lachrymose
approach is that taken by a number of scholars who argue that Islam during the medieval period
was fairly tolerant of Jews, but that the early modern period initiated a decline in Jews’ status
and began a long era of Jews’ persecution under Islamic rule. 35 Significantly for our purposes,
32
Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 9-12.
33
Salo W. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” in The Menorah Treasury: Harvest of Half a Century, ed. Leo
Schwarz (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964), esp. 63.
34
For a general appraisal, see Bat Ye‘or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1985); idem, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Cranbury, N.J.:
Associated University Presses, 2002); Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia:
The Jewish Publication Society, 1991); Georges Bensoussan, Juifs en pays arabes : Le grand déracinement, 1850-
1975 (Paris: Tallandier, 2012). Norman Stillman’s overview of the subject is in fact somewhat balanced, but his
choice of primary sources underscores his neo-lachrymose approach; see Mark R. Cohen, “Review of Norman
Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands,” Association for Jewish Studies Newsletter 28 (1981). While Georges
Bensoussan claims to avoid arguing for either the lachrymose or rosy view of the history of Jews in Arab lands (see
the “Avant-propos”), his depiction of the nineteenth century is decidedly lachrymose; see esp. 45-6. On North
Africa in particular, see André Chouraqui, Between East and West: A History of the Jews of North Africa
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), esp. Introduction and Chapter 5; Paul B. Fenton
and David G. Littman, L’exil au Maghreb : La condition juive sous l’Islam, 1148-1912 (Paris: Presses de
l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010). Chouraqui’s view of the position of North African Jews under Islamic rule
through the nineteenth century is nuanced; at times he emphasizes Islam’s tolerance of Jews relative to that of
Christianity (see esp. 53-4). Yet he ultimately presents a view of history in which Jews suffered under Islamic rule
in North Africa; this perspective is crucial to his overall argument that the French liberated the Jews from both
cultural stagnation and political inferiority (see esp. xvii-xviii, 42-5, 114, 142, 173-4). On Chouraqui’s work
generally, see Colette Zytnicki, Les Juifs du Maghreb : Naissance d’une historiographie coloniale (Paris: Presses de
l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2011), 324-39.
35
For an excellent analysis of the “decline” theory in Jewish historiography, see Schroeter, “From Sephardi to
Oriental.” For proponents of the “decline” theory, see Shlomo Dov Goitein, Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of
their Social and Cultural Relations (Mineola: Dover Publicatoins, Inc., 2005); Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); see also Bensoussan, Juifs en pays arabes, 16-17. For the Ottoman
case, historians generally deferred the decline of Jews’ flourishing under Islamic rule until the seventeenth century,
paralleling the decline in the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire generally: see, e.g., Abraham Galanté, Turcs et Juifs :
étude historique, politique (Istambul: Haim, Rozio & Co., 1932); Moïse Franco, Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de
l’empire Ottoman : depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Alliance Israélite Universelle and Lettre Sépharade,
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