Relating his understanding of the reasons for conversion to Islam, the thirteenth century Baghdadi Jewish physician writes: "He [the convert] is moved by fear or ambition; he is liable to a heavy tax, or wishes to escape from humiliation, or is taken prisoner, falls in love with a Muslim woman, or some other motive like these." [M. Perlmann, ed. Sa`d b. Mansur Ibn Kammuna's Examination of the Inquiries into the Three Faiths, Berkeley 1967, p. 102.] How does modern scholarship understand conversion to Islam in the Middle Ages? How does it reconstruct and explain the great success of the dissemination of Islam and Islamic culture? The historiography of the Islamization of the Middle East and North Africa, from the great Arab conquests until the late Mamluk period, is the subject of this paper. I will trace more than a hundred years of research on this multi-faceted process, and highlight main paradigms, methods of work, topics of interest, periodizations and changes in attitude and scholarly discourse. I will present the models and methods suggested by Richard Bulliet and Nehemia Levtzion [R. Bulliet 1979; Nehemia Levtzion 1979], and the methodologies of studies focusing on particular communities (such as the Egyptian Copts [Studied by I. Lapidus in IOS 2 (1972), S. O'Sullivan in MSR 10 (2006); T. El-Leithy, PhD dissertation 2005], the Samaritans [M. Rubin in JESHO 43 (2000)], the Berbers of Ifriqiya [M. Brett, 1996, 2006]), or regions (Anatolia [S. Vryonis, 1971], Palestine). I will suggest a shift towards interdisciplinary studies on the Islamization of space [Such as N. Luz in MSR 6 (2002); Y. Frenkel in JSAI 25 (2001)], and assess varying degrees of interest in economic and social factors, preaching (da`wa) [The topic of T.W. Arnolds, The Preaching of Islam, New York 1913, which I will survey in length], gender (conversion of women), agents of islamization (the amsar, Sufis, merchants, ghazzis, nomads, the state), forced conversion, the acceptance and practices of converts, Arabization, polemical texts written by converts. I will also examine comparative ventures such as the collective volumes of Levtzion (Conversion to Islam, New York 1979) and Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, Toronto 1990, and suggest further collaborative studies, such as the project I am currently engaged in.

One of the most emblematic Middle Eastern love narratives in medieval period – Shaykh San??n’s love story – appears in Far?d al-D?n ?Att?r Nish?p?r?’s (1145/6-1221) Mantiq al-Tayr. Shaykh San??n is an eminent ascetic P?r who has never transgressed any of the Islamic traditions. However, when he travels to Rome after a dream, he sees a beautiful Christian girl and falls in love. He forgets Islam and its traditions, converts to Christianity and begins drinking wine, going to taverns, wearing zunn?r (belt worn by non-Muslims) and herding pigs. His conversion to Christianity was blasphemous and an absolute rebellion at the time. However, through this transgressive love, he undergoes a spiritual transformation, turning from an ascetic to a mystic. Similarly, one of the most impassioned love stories in medieval European literature is that of Peter Abelard (1079-1142) and his student, Heloise (1101-1164). The couple find themselves so attached to each other that neither can withstand the spiritual and physical desires while both know that the laws of the time forbid their relationship. Nonetheless, as in Shaykh San??n’s case, love is a power impossible to resist. Their passionate love scandalizes the community of the time; and although separated, their love endures through their letters. After nine hundred years, we can still find rigid policies resulting in theological and sexual repression in various societies. Shaykh San??n’s, and Abelard and Heloise’s love stories and their religious transgressions speak about medieval Middle Eastern and European societies’ understanding of religious tolerance, sexual equality, and power of love. From across the centuries, these stories inspire and ask us to reason and to question. I argue that the power of love allows these couples to be extraordinary; to transgress social, moral, ethical and sexual boundaries; and to realize that the reason for human existence is love. Tolerance and embrace of human diversity, and not the shoring-up of social, religious and sexual boundaries, is their way of loving divinity; their religion. From a historical point of view, their love stories are precious in showing that regardless of all the laws and prohibitions; inclusiveness (of transgressors) was thinkable in those days.

Much of the poetic d?w?n of the Andalusi poet Ibr?h?m ibn Sahl al-Isr?’?l? (1212-1251) is made up of ‘udhr? love poetry that has indirect glimpses of erotic desire (al-ghazal al-?ar??). Ibn Sahl was a Jew who converted to Islam, perhaps under pressure from the ruling Almohads, and the sincerity of his conversion has long been debated. The objects of his poet-persona’s desire are usually young men named M?sà and Mu?ammad, the suggestively Scriptural nature of which has contributed to the speculative discussion about the historical ibn Sahl; however, previous scholarship on this ghazal has generally been characterized by limited readings that interpret it to be lighthearted play that either does or does not contain an answer to the question of whether ibn Sahl’s historical conversion was sincere. This paper offers a close reading of selected pieces from ibn Sahl’s Arabic poetry in light of the one surviving Hebrew poem that he likely authored (a baqqaša, or liturgical petition, that includes the poet’s name in acrostic form), in order to reexamine their usage of particular constellations of religious references and how they are mapped onto the conventions of ghazal poetry. Paying close attention to religious allegory and intertextuality in ibn Sahl’s poetry allows this paper to resituate the discussion about the sincerity of conversion in general as conveyed through literary texts. In his ghazal ‘udhr?, ibn Sahl often alludes to Israelite prophets, recasting them through Qur'?nic narrative as objects of aesthetic and romantic desire. In this way, Ibn Sahl’s poetry reverses the convention of using religious language to describe feelings toward the beloved in classical Arabic love poetry, the effect of which is a unique use of this genre that may covertly convey a socially problematic ambivalence toward the Jewish religion. In both the Hebrew and Arabic poetry, the tone is melancholic and lachrymose, expressing a conflicted desire that provokes guilt and yearning simultaneously. Rather than answering a ‘yes or no’ question about ibn Sahl’s biographical conversion, the tone and genres that ibn Sahl employs appears to offer qualitative insight into the often ambivalent and dialectical experience of religious conversion.