This collection takes the Hebrew book as a focal point for exploring the production, circulation, transmission, and consumption of Hebrew texts in the cultural context of the late medieval western Mediterranean. The authors elaborate in particular on questions concerning private vs. public book production and collection; the religious and cultural components of manuscript patronage; collaboration between Christian and Jewish scribes, artists, and printers; and the impact of printing on Iberian Jewish communities. Unlike other approaches that take context into consideration merely to explain certain variations in the history of the Hebrew book from antiquity to the present, the premise of these essays is that context constitutes the basis for understanding practices and processes in late medieval Jewish book culture.

The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia examines the corpus of polemical literature against the Christians and the Jews of the protected Muslims (Mudejars). Commonly portrayed as communities in cultural and religious decay, Mònica Colominas convincingly proves that the discourses against the Christians and the Jews in Mudejar treatises provided authoritative frameworks of Islamic normativity which helped to legitimize the residence of their communities in the Christian territories. Colominas argues that, while the primary aim of the polemics was to refute the views of their religious opponents, Mudejar treatises were also a tool used to advance Islamic knowledge and to strengthen the government and social cohesion of their communities.