Historian Marc David Baer will give the second lecture in the Mosse Lectures series on the topic of »Zionismus. History, Projects, Objections«

Introduction: Lothar Müller
Response and discussion: Ulrike Freitag

Abstract
The talk presents the book, »The Children of Abraham: The Story of Muslim-Jewish Relations«, which explores the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims from the seventh century to the twenty first. It highlights key moments in their interaction, including the Biblical stories of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac, and the Qur'anic narrative of Ishmael and Hagar. The book identifies five relational dynamics that shape their relations: symbiosis, pact of protection, the Jew as ally of the Muslim, the Muslim as saviour of the Jew, and Christian hegemony. It argues against the myths of interfaith utopia and perpetual enmity, detailing how these dynamics have shaped Jewish-Muslim interactions over fourteen centuries, including periods of cooperation, conflict, and power struggles.

Marc David Baer (PhD, History, University of Chicago) is Head of Department and Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. An American and British historian, he is an expert on Muslim-Jewish relations and the Ottoman Empire. His latest book is The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs (Basic 2021), which was short-listed for the Wolfson Prize in History and has been translated into a dozen languages. His first book, Honoured by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, won the Albert Hourani Prize of the Middle East Studies Association of North America as the Best Book in Middle East Studies. His book, Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide, won the Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies. Professor Baer is also the author of The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks, as well as German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus.

Ulrike Freitag is an Islamic scholar and historian; Director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) and Professor of Islamic Studies at the FU Berlin. She is co-editor of the Journal of Arabian Studies, the Journal of Global History and the journal Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Her current research project is entitled ‘An Oasis in Globalisation: The History and Development of Hegra (Saudi Arabia) since the late 19th century’. Her research focuses on the history and society of the Middle East since 1500 and the history of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire since 1750.