Michael Schraer, Ph.D. (2016), Cambridge, is an economist and economic historian researching Iberian Jews. He has published on the merchant, financier and rentier, Salamon Abnarrabi, and a chapter on Jewish mortgage lending in Briggs and Zuijderduijn (eds.), Land and Credit (2018).

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsAbbreviationsOrthographyCurrencies, Land Areas and Weights and MeasuresGlossary1 IntroductionPart 1: Jews as Property Investors: The Evidence2 Property Rights3 Jews in the Market for Land4 Lords of the Land?Jews as Rentiers and Cultivators5 Dowries, Wills and GiftsProperty and the Transfer of Wealth6 The Link between Credit and LandPart 2: Property and the Jewish Economy7 The Economic Case for PropertyAsset Choices, Risk and Return8 Credit and Property in the Wealth of the Jews9 PostscriptAppendix 1: Currencies and EquivalencesAppendix 2: Land Areas, Weights and Measures in the Archival SourcesBibliographyIndex

"In this excellent work, Schraer enjoins us to challenge more vigorously the erroneous notion that Jews were simply financiers who sat the margins of medieval society. As property owners and investors who knew how to utilize property for a range of investment goals, Jews were, in fact, deeply integrated into the "core fabric of medieval society"." Jennifer Speed, in The Medieval Review, 20.10.10 Click here."Apart from filling a void in the historiography on Iberian Jews and casting doubt on the major assumptions of prior scholarship regarding Jewish economic behavior, A Stake in the Ground has important implications for broader ongoing debates about the role of moneylending among European and Mediterranean Jews living within Christian domains. [...] Schraer’s compelling study should serve as a reminder to scholars at work on other geographical areas that they can no longer afford to ignore scholarship on Iberia on the grounds that it is an exceptional, peripheral case". Thomas W. Barton, in Speculum 96/1 (January 2021).