Return to Al-Andalus

The Return to Sepharad and the Shadow of Al-Andalus examines the contested formation of Sephardi identity in modern Israel and Palestine through the intellectual and cultural history of Sephardi Jews during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods. Focusing on a network of Sephardi intellectuals, translators, educators, and writers, this book explores how these figures navigated the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism, and the growing divisions between Jews and Arabs as well as between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. Author Yuval Evri draws on a wide range of interdisciplinary sources to trace the Sephardi experience over the last 150 years and offer a new conceptual framework for understanding "Sephardi" not as a fixed identity but rather as a contested and evolving category shaped through debates over language, nationalism, colonialism, and Jewish-Arab relations. By repositioning their intellectual history from the margins to the center of modern Jewish and Middle Eastern studies, Evri explores attempts to revive the shared cultural legacy of Sepharad and al-Andalus as a framework for reimagining Jewish-Arab relations and challenging emerging national and ethnic boundaries.Challenging binary narratives that separate Jews and Arabs, East and West, or Sephardi and Ashkenazi identities, The Return to Sepharad and the Shadow of Al-Andalus presents a history of cultural entanglement, mediation, and shared intellectual traditions that remains politically and intellectually provocative today.