This class is a doctoral seminar and graduate-level (MA) course (assignments and readings are catered to each group) designed to introduce students to three broad fields: the study of Jewish history in the Islamic world; the comparative study of Jewish/Muslim rituals, legal practices, textual traditions and philosophies; and the study of Jewish-Muslim relations. Each week has a theme focused on developing specific skill methodological skill sets, drawing on approaches from Religious Studies, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Material Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies and Linguistics. Today, Jews and (Muslim) Arabs are portrayed as participants in a timeless conflict—a clash between two discrete ethnicities and religions. But for centuries, the vast majority of the world’s Jews were part and parcel of the Arab-Islamic world. We will begin the class in the pre-Islamic Near East before examining formative Jewish-Muslim interactions at the time of Muhammad that shaped the development of Islam and rabbinic Judaism. Students then explore how Jewish merchants, scholars, weavers and sailors—men, women and children— lived their daily lives under Islamic rule. Thereafter, we will take a comparative dive into Jewish-Muslim rituals, legal practices, philosophy, as well as the treatment of women and sexual minorities in both faith traditions. Subsequently, we will investigate the ways colonialism and nationalism reshaped Jewish-Muslim relations, leading to the expulsion of most of the Islamic world’s Jews in the second half of the twentieth century. Through readings from narrative, religious, legal and documentary sources, students in this course are exposed to how Near Eastern Jews, Muslims and Christians made Islamic civilization over the course of almost 1,400 years.