Muslim historian al-Muqaddasi, a native of Jerusalem, writing around 985 CE observed that in Jerusalem "everywhere the Jews and Christians have the upper hand, and the mosques are void of either congregation or assembly of learned men."
Letters from the Cairo Geniza in the tenth or eleventh century tell about the Yeshiva of Eretz Israel which served as a center for Torah study. One of the letters states that "the people of the Land of Israel [Jews] say that we shall not experience another exile and they have been residing there for more than 1000 years [since the 1st century]."
The Islamic, Christian and Jewish sources reflect the continued existence of the Jewish population in the land of Israel through all the generations of Roman, Byzantine Christian and Arab occupations. The population were direct descendants of the Jewish population from time immemorial.
Photo: cover page of the Leningrad Codex, a Hebrew text copied in Cairo/Fustat in the early 11th century, from manuscripts written by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher (d.960), a Jewish scribe who had lived in Tiberias in northern Israel.
Himdad Mustafa
