At a time when hostilities and violence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf continually threaten the world with war, anyone seeking to understand the current situation must become familiar with the interrelationships of the Jewish and Arab cultures. This book focuses on the forces, events, and personalities that over the past 150 years have shaped the Jewish communities of the Arab world, changing the relations between Jews and Arabs more radically than anything since the rise of Islam nearly 1400 years ago. Norman A. Stillman is the Schusterman/Josey Professor of Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma and is an internationally recognized authority on the history and culture of the Islamic world and on Sephardic and Oriental Jewry.