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Throughout the course of the middle ages, Jews regularly experienced the control of two separate entities - the Muslims and the Christians. Under both forms of leadership, the overall quality of Jewish life was directly affected as a result of the relations between rulers and inhabitants and the varying degrees of tolerance those relations entailed. Although Jewish life under Muslim and Christian rule was similar in certain aspects, it is evident that Jewish life under Muslim rule, overall, prevailed that of Christian rule due to a difference in political, economic, and social structures.

In the area of politics, the Fourth Lateran Council, an ecumenical conference of church leaders convened by Pope Innocent III, passed several canons, one of which happened to prohibit Jews from holding public office, since it was believed that providing Jews with the pretext to vent their wrath against Christianity and exert their influence was considered inappropriate(). Similarly, the Muslim caliph al-Mutawakkil enacted decrees that prevented the ahl al-dhimma, a group of protected people that included Jews, from being employed in government offices or other jobs on the grounds that Jews might have authority over Muslims. Nonetheless, over time, al-Mutawakkil’s decree was only sporadically enforced until there reached a point where certain Jews, such as a Hasdai ibn Shaprut, who was appointed as court physician to Abd-ar-Rahman, functioned as diplomats and were able to achieve goals for Jewry through political influence and connections. Under Muslim rule, some Jews, most notably Shmuel ibn Nagrela, even held the remarkable positions of viziers and army heads. However, this was contrary to late Christian rule in Castile, where reformatory laws...

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... Jews and Christians alike to wear clothing that was colored differently from the garments worn by Muslims. Although Muslims were warned by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya to remain on guard while around Jews, Muslim citizens were for the most part unrestrained by ideological implements and often frequented with Jews, forming business partnerships, participating in intellectual circles, and exchanging ideas (131). In Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas, however, Jews were prohibited from socializing with Christians to such an extent that they were prohibited from having Christian servants, inviting Christians to eat or drink, and bathing with them. As for intermarriage, both Judaism and Christianity forbade this form of sociability, while Islam held that with Qur’anic sanction, a Muslim man could marry a Jew, assuming he was not susceptible to the enticement of his wife’s religion.