Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub

He visited Mainz and marveled at finding Indian and Far Eastern spices there and a man who could translate from Arabic into Hebrew.

The merchant letters of the Genizah plainly separate the lands of Islam from Christian Europe, Byzantine and Western alike, yet the border was not watertight: Jewish traders from Northern Europe and Byzantium often show up in the papers. Traffic also flowed the other way: Ibrahim b. Ya'qub, a Jewish traveler from tenth-century Spain, was amazed at finding Indian and Far Eastern spices in Mainz without difficulty, brought by trade routes across the Muslim world, and at meeting a man able to translate a manuscript on biblical cantillation from Arabic into Hebrew.1 The authors conclude that the gap between Jews 'under the Crescent' and those 'under the Cross' should not be overstated. The book now turns, in the next chapter, to the second group, the growing Jewish communities of Christian Europe.2