Jews and diaspora in the medieval Islamic Middle East

The formation of the Islamic Middle East between the seventh and tenth centuries connected Jews living across a vast geographic region and encouraged them to organize themselves as members of a single diaspora community, even when they shared no recent place of origin. This chapter examines that shift, focusing especially on the rise, fall, and aftermath of a diaspora system centered on the ge'onim and other Jewish religious leaders in Baghdad and Jerusalem, which flourished among elite medieval Jews in the late Abbasid period and immediately after (from the later ninth to the twelfth centuries), profoundly affecting the history of Judaism even after the system's demise.