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- 2019
Judah Halevi’s Defense of Judaism and Critique of Islam As Put Forth in His KuzariKeywords: Yehuda Halevi,el-Kitabü’l-Hazer?,Kuzari,Yahudilik,?slam,?srailo?ullar?,Yahudiler,se?ilmi?lik,reddiye Abstract: Moses Maimonides, a famous medieval Jewish thinker, is perhaps the most recognized Jewish scholar in the western world as well as in Turkish academia. This is due primarily to his famous philosophical work entitled Dalālat al-?ā’irīn (known as Guide for the Perplexed to English speaking people), which is a classic of religious rationalism. Judah Halevi, on the other hand, is another important medieval Jewish thinker and poet, who, known as the most fervent defender of traditional Judaism and a fierce critic of religious rationalism, belongs to the opposite camp. Despite the fact that a huge body of scholarly work exists on Halevi in the West, including those that deal with the Arabic-Islamic background of his thought, he has not gained much recognition in Turkish academia. This paper aims to draw attention to Halevi’s al-Kitāb al-Khazarī, widely known as Sefer ha-Kuzari, by analyzing its background and content. In this way, this paper presents an evaluation of the main points of Halevi’s defense of the Jewish religion and critique of Islam as he put forth in his Kuzari. Halevi, through his religious-nationalist poems as well as his polemical book, the Kuzari, had a significant impact on the Jews of his time and of later periods. In his Kuzari, which is written as a dialogue between a Khazar king (Khazari) and a Jewish scholar (haver), Halevi defends the Jewish religion and criticizes, directly or indirectly, the main beliefs and opinions of certain groups that he considers to be either external (philosophers, Muslims and Christians) or internal (Karaites) adversaries of Rabbinic Judaism. The Kuzari is also regarded as the first Jewish polemical book written against Islam. Even more important is the fact that since Halevi lived in a time and place that was dominated by Muslim Arab culture, he makes use of Islamic terminology to a great extent in the Kuzari. As demonstrated by a long chain of scholars including David Kaufmann, Ignaz Goldziher, Julius Guttman, David Baneth, Israel Efros, Harry Wolfson, Shlomo Pines, Diana Lobel and Ehud Krinis, Halevi borrows Arabic words and concepts not only from the Islamic (both Sunni and Shiite) literature of philosophy, kalām and ta?awwuf, but also directly from the Qur’an and the ?adīth, integrating them into his own system of thought, i.e., into a Jewish context. The most important of these Islamic words or concepts are amr/amr Allāh, itti?āl, ?afwa, qiyās, ijtihād, sanad, taqlīd, etc. It is also important to note that the main adversary groups that Halevi critiques in his Kuzari –namely, the philosophers
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