A convert and his daughters: What did it mean to be “Jewish” or “Muslim” in 12th-century Baghdad?

Mul­ti­ple sto­ries are told about the con­ver­sion to Islam of a Jew­ish physi­cian, Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (physi­cian, ca. 1077-ca. 1165). The basics seem clear: the biog­ra­phers agree that he was at first Jew­ish and became Mus­lim after he was already estab­lished at the ruler’s court. But what was it that made him “Jew­ish” before­hand and “Mus­lim” after­wards? Sarah Stroum­sa has char­ac­ter­ized con­ver­sion as a “broad spec­trum of choic­es” and as a process rather than a moment. Which choic­es could Abū al-Barakāt make about his own reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, and which ones were avail­able to his three daugh­ters? In this pre­sen­ta­tion, I will inves­ti­gate the case of Abū al-Barakāt in order to probe the social, lin­guis­tic, legal, and eth­nic dimen­sions of con­ver­sion in medieval Bagh­dad.