Since the Arab conquests of the seventh century
and the spread of Islam,
Christians, Muslims and Jews have been living side by side
from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.
More often than not, we find Christians and Jews
living under Muslim rule in the conquered areas
that were to become the core regions of Islam.
But in the Iberian Peninsula,
in Sicily, in southern Italy, or in the Crusader states
that is in regions conquered by Christian princes
after centuries of Muslim rule, we also find the opposite situation.
Muslims living under Christian rule.
There were Muslim communities in Sicily until the 13th century
and in Spain until the 16th.
In the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire,
on the other hand,
the emperors did not accept any Muslims as their subjects.
The Muslim communities of Anatolia, modern Turkey
emerged after the collapse of Byzantine power
in the region at the end of the 11th century.
In the Balkans, the first Muslim communities
appeared in the course of the Ottoman conquests
in the late 14th century,
the Middle Ages was, of course, not the first time in European
history that populations of different religions had lived together,
or that the subjects of the prince did not share his religion.
For many centuries, the Roman Empire ruled
over a multitude of peoples with different religions.
By the time Islam emerged, however, Christianity
was the official religion
in both Eastern and Western part of the Roman Empire.
The ancient polytheistic religions were banned
and Judaism was conditionally tolerated.
The formerly multi-religious Roman Empire
was rapidly transforming into a mono religious political entity.
Islam, following the footsteps of Christianity,
was from the start, intolerant towards the polytheistic
religions of Arabia and Northern Africa.
Pagans were not acceptable as subjects of the caliphs
and had to convert.
On the contrary, Christians and Jews, as well as Zoroastrians in Iran,
who formed population majorities in the newly conquered territories,
were granted religious freedom.
The Muslim jurists of the Middle Ages
elaborated a legal framework based on the concept of Dhimma
that allowed non-Muslims to live as protected
second class subjects
socially and politically subordinate to Muslims.
Similar frameworks were later adopted for the Muslim subjects
by Christian rulers in Italy and Spain.
Eventually, Christian princes opted for religious homogenization
and proceeded to enforce conversion.
The Muslim counterparts did not take such steps,
although we do know of Muslim rulers who adopted intolerant policies
towards the non-Muslim subjects with the aim of forcing them to convert.
Even if we take into
consideration the occasional bursts of persecution,
there is no denying that for many centuries, Muslims,
Christians and Jews lived peacefully side by side.
The state of affairs, however, and the protection of religious freedom,
were predicated on the subordinate position
of the populations who did not adhere to the dominant faith.
The coexistence of different religions
in the Middle Ages and early modern times was not grounded
on tolerance or respect for the beliefs of other peoples.
It is true that Islam,
the younger of the monotheistic religions of the Mediterranean,
formally acknowledges that Christianity and Judaism,
its predecessors, have partial access to the truth
of God and tolerates them because of that.
But it does not respect them.
On the contrary, Muslim societies
before the advent of modernity were exasperated
with the obstinacy of Christians and Jews, preferring
to stay loyal to their ancestral worship and not accept Islam.
In the case of Christianity,
the theological considerations
about the place of Jews and the Divine Plan for salvation
compelled the church to accept the presence, even though
it had no respect for the Jewish faith.
Christian societies may have been generally hostile
towards Jews, but Christian princes
more often than not tolerated them in their lands.
Islam, on the other hand, was a newcomer
that was first regarded as a heresy and later
as a pagan religion created by the Prophet.
On either account, it could not be accepted by the Church.
No wonder that we find Muslims living under Christian rule
only in reconquered regions, not in the core lands of Christian Europe,
with one exception, the Muslim Tatars of Polish
Lithuania, who retained religious freedom.
How can we conceptualize
the coexistence of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the medieval
and early modern era in such diverse times, places,
or cultural and political environments?
Each case is different, of course, and generalizations can be misleading.
The generally peaceful coexistence of Muslims,
Christians and Jews in Spain, both in Muslim Andalusia
and Christian Aragon, gave rise to the concept of convivencia
introduced by America Castro in 1948.
Convivencia has been very popular in public history
and has also been used by scholars to describe phenomena
of religious coexistence outside the Iberian Peninsula.
The notion, however, has not remained unchallenged.
It has been rightly criticized as projecting an idealized picture
that disregards the systemic discrimination
of populations with different faith.
In recent decades, scholars of medieval Spain
have shown that tension, violence, conflict and exclusion
were equally part of interreligious relations.
Coexistence was fraught with antagonism that bred resentment,
social tensions and religious animosity led now
and again to outbursts of violence against the religious others.
The expulsion of Jews in 1492
inaugurated an era of religious homogenization in Spain
that was completed in the first two decades of the 17th century
with the deportation of the Moriscos, the Muslim inhabitants
who had converted to Christianity.
At the other end of the Mediterranean,
the Muslim Ottoman Empire continued to establish
a policy of toleration and remained a multi-religious state
until its dissolution in the early 20th century.
In comparison with Spain or continental Europe,
during the wars of religion, the early modern Ottoman Empire
appeared to many as a haven of plurality,
a tolerant society in which different religious communities coexisted
peacefully until they fell prey to the sirens of nationalism.
Recent scholarship, however, has questioned this idealized picture,
Looking at the matter from a theoretical perspective.
Karen Barkey has argued
that given that empires are inherently diverse,
they use toleration as a means of rule, of extending,
consolidating and enforcing state power.
Toleration, she says, is one among many
policies of incorporation,
such as persecution, assimilation, conversion, or expulsion.
But if the toleration of religious diversity
was a way to ensure the imposition
and maintenance of imperial rule,
then there is no incongruence between a general policy of toleration
as practiced by the Ottomans and sporadic events
of persecution.
Taken together,
the sources of the Ottoman period do not give a uniform picture
of inter-religious relations. Alongside tolerance and cooperation
there is also hostility and distrust,
and in spite of peaceful coexistence
time and again we see formerly friendly neighbors
to turn on each other violently.
This is hardly surprising,
of course. In the past, as now, social relations of any kind
did not remain static, but were constantly negotiated
and reshaped in the field of everyday life.
For many Ottoman subjects, Muslims and non-Muslims alike
living together with religious others was a fact of life
they would gladly dispense with if they only could.
Even though Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side
by side in peace most of the time
and probably took care to uphold a modicum of good relations
by showing respect and discretion towards religious others,
the balance was, in many cases frail,
and social tranquility could easily be disturbed.
It is impossible to generalize on the ease
or suffering of non-Muslim life or on the symbiotic or
conflicting nature of their relations to Muslims,
either in the Ottoman Empire or in medieval Muslim polities.
The same is true about Muslims under Christian rule.
Social relations are dynamic and are constantly negotiated and reshaped.
Religious identity is only one of the factors influencing the formation.
Social class and status are also two crucial factors,
as well as a demographic makeup of mixed towns and localities.
For example, anecdotal evidence points to that
the ports and commercial cities which are that par excellence, hubs
of plurality and intense interreligious interaction, were also
the most frequent places of episodes
of intolerance and religious strife.
Aphorisms of one kind or the other in respect
to inter-religious relations ignore the dynamic nature
and present them as static and consolidated.
If we succumb to them, we lose from sight
what we are supposed to look for.
How Muslims, Christians and Jews experienced, interpreted
and reacted to the challenges of coexistence in early modern
and medieval, and early modern polities
with a particular blend
of religious toleration and institutional inequality
and how coexistence whether symbiotic or confrontational
was constantly in the making, and not merely a condition
that was reproduced from one generation to another.