The nasi’s actions may have been motivated in part by feelings of jealousy toward Joseph for having been elevated to a judgeship from which he himself had been ousted. In a letter to his father, the physician Abū Zikrī ben Elijah describes how a certain unnamed nasi was recently relieved of his duties as a judge in Alexandria when the governor who appointed him had fallen into disfavor.47 Abū Zikrī mentions the handsome government stipend that went along with the post and suggests that his father, the judge Elijah ben Zechariah, consider replacing the nasi. A combination of factors makes it likely that Abū Zikrī’s letter refers to the nasi Hodaya ben Jesse. The date, location, and unusual coincidence of a nasi serving as a judge in Alexandria all point to Hodaya ben Jesse’s turbulent period in that town. Moreover, Abū Zikrī’s insinuations about the immoral behavior of the nasi in question would seem to echo accusations leveled against Hodaya by Joseph. Abū Zikrī writes that the dismissed nasi had accepted bribes from both litigants to a case and had appropriated religious objects belonging to the synagogue. Such allegations resonate with the French rabbi’s description of Hodaya as driven by greed and in one instance demanding a fee of ten dinars to cancel a public ordinance.
Simmering beneath this personal conflict were also deeper tensions between the religious traditions of the indigenous Jewish populations of the East on the one hand and those of the recent Jewish arrivals from France on the other. As Elchanan Reiner has observed, a crucial element in the controversy appears to have been a difference in the way the two groups understood the coercive power of the ban. While Eastern Jews viewed it as the prerogative of charismatic leaders like the nasi, Europeans saw it as a sanction entrusted only to the officially constituted leaders of the community.48 The conclusion of the episode bears out such an analysis, for in February 1234 eleven rabbis from Acre, more than half of European extraction, signed an edict prohibiting individuals from enacting bans on their own; from that point on they were only to be issued by courts made up of at least three religious authorities. The affair thus resulted in a campaign strongly endorsed by the European leadership to curtail use of the ban by representatives of charismatic authority and to safeguard it as an instrument of the community’s official leaders.
But if personal grievances and regional variations in the application of the ban played a role in the dispute, so too did a cultural divide over what it meant to be a nasi. Joseph introduces his five queries to Abraham Maimonides with a review of Hodaya’s recent actions as well as the justification that Hodaya offered for them. He insists that in arrogating for himself powers restricted to the patriarch—in regarding himself, in other words, as equivalent to the nasi mentioned in rabbinic sources—Hodaya “seeks to invent things that are contrary to the laws of our faith and that cannot be.”49 Contemporary nesiʾim, he contends, are clearly not the same as the nasi that is discussed by the rabbis and therefore ought not to be given the same privileges.
Are all of those known as nesiʾim today of the same status as the nasi mentioned in scripture and the Talmud, or not? According to my humble opinion, they have no special status except for the one who is appointed exilarch, from whom, according to the Talmud, we derive our authority. And there cannot be two exilarchs at one time, since they have said, “There is only one leader in a generation, and not two” [BT Sanhedrin 8a].50
Coming from Latin Europe, Joseph evidently had difficulty accepting the influence enjoyed in eastern lands by figures like Hodaya ben Jesse, figures whose status seemed to be based on popular respect for their lineage rather than official appointment or substantive qualifications. Joseph’s frustration on this point is particularly evident when he complains, “If one should argue … that [Hodaya] is the son and grandson of a nasi, [I would reply that] I am the son and grandson of scholars going back several generations.”51
Joseph not only challenged the identification of medieval nesiʾim with the nasi discussed in rabbinic texts, he also questioned the link between nasi status and Davidic ancestry. Citing the talmudic example of Eleazar ben ʿAzarya, a priest who was appointed to the office of nasi, Joseph concludes: “From this we learn that nasi status is not dependent on [membership in] the House of David, but rather on legal expertise.”52 Emanating as it does from a European unfamiliar with local practice in the East, Joseph’s question brings into clearer relief the distinctive contours of respect for Davidic ancestry among Jews in Muslim lands. His dismay at the situation in the Islamic world becomes all the more understandable when we bear in mind our earlier observations about the very different ways in which the title nasi was understood and employed in France and northern Spain.
In his long reply to Joseph’s queries, Abraham Maimonides attempts to navigate delicately between the opposing sides. Despite his sympathy for Joseph’s difficult predicament and his seeming disapproval of the nasi’s arrogant and unjust behavior, Abraham is reluctant to criticize Hodaya. He acknowledges that the nasi became enraged and in his anger cursed Joseph and the rabbis of France, saying things “that cannot be written down.” But Abraham also reminds Joseph that “the honorable nasi” is “an old man with a reputation in his own land”—perhaps referring to Mosul—and urges forbearance since the nasi “grew up among scholars and possesses both wisdom and understanding.”53 “And there is no justification for disparaging him,” Abraham continues, “insofar as we are obligated to honor his family.”54
In referring to the obligation to honor the nasi’s family, Abraham assumes the role of a cultural mediator, attempting to offer an explanation for the status of contemporary nesiʾim that so puzzled the French rabbi. He goes on to explain the significance of Hodaya’s title in the context of local custom, underscoring once more the profound regard for the genealogy it signified in the East.
These descendants of our master David are called nesiʾim because they are from the royal line and because the king himself is called nasi. But someone from David’s seed who is neither an exilarch nor the head of a yeshiva is designated a nasi only figuratively [kinuy be-ʿalma], insofar as he is from the royal line. Know that it is in this sense that we call their children nesiʾim too, in the sense that they are nesiʾim with respect to lineage [nesiʾim be-yiḥusam].55
Abraham introduces the notion of a “nasi with respect to lineage,” a category that he contrasts with that of the “nasi with respect to rank” (nasi be-maʿalato). This distinction is Abraham’s own, and reveals the prominence of the purely genealogical sense of the title nasi in his place and time. By positing such a distinction Abraham is able to concede Joseph’s point that contemporary Davidic dynasts (other than the exilarch) were not equivalent to the talmudic nasi, while at the same time providing an explanation for the popularity that they nevertheless enjoyed in the Near East. Abraham acknowledges that Hodaya’s status cannot be defended according to the rabbinic legal tradition, but he also points out that it has a basis in the local community’s respect for lineage. When read together, Joseph’s queries and Abraham’s responsum underscore the distinctive patterns of respect for Davidic ancestry that had come to prevail among Jews living in the Arabic-speaking East.
Another textual witness to the situation reflected in Abraham Maimonides’ responsum is the draft of an early thirteenth-century letter of appointment for a raʾīs al-yahūd that is preserved in the monumental secretarial manual of the Islamic legal scholar and Egyptian chancery clerk, al-Qalqashandī.56 The document, which entrusts to the appointee administrative jurisdiction over “the Rabbanites, Karaites and Samaritans in Egyptian lands,” includes the following clause regarding his obligations to members of the Davidic line: “And as for the one who possesses a relationship of genealogy [luḥmat nasab] to David, peace be upon him, and who enjoys through him [David] the sanctity of genealogy [wa-lahu bihi ḥurmat nasab],