A Stake in the Ground: Jews and Property Investment in the Medieval Crown of Aragon

Product Description
In
A Stake in the Ground, Michael Schraer challenges the traditional view of medieval Jews as money-lenders and merchants, finding property trading and investment to be an essential part of their economic activities in the crown of Aragon.
Review
"In this excellent work, Schraer enjoins us to challenge more vigorously the erroneous notion that Jews were simply financiers who sat the margins of medieval society. As property owners and investors who knew how to utilize property for a range of investment goals, Jews were, in fact, deeply integrated into the "core fabric of medieval society"."
Jennifer Speed, in
The Medieval Review, 20.10.10
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"Apart from filling a void in the historiography on Iberian Jews and casting doubt on the major assumptions of prior scholarship regarding Jewish economic behavior,
A Stake in the Ground has important implications for broader ongoing debates about the role of moneylending among European and Mediterranean Jews living within Christian domains. [...] Schraer's compelling study should serve as a reminder to scholars at work on other geographical areas that they can no longer afford to ignore scholarship on Iberia on the grounds that it is an exceptional, peripheral case". Thomas W. Barton, in
Speculum 96/1 (January 2021).
About the Author
Michael Schraer, Ph.D. (2016), Cambridge, is an economist and economic historian researching Iberian Jews. He has published on the merchant, financier and rentier, Salamon Abnarrabi, and a chapter on Jewish mortgage lending in Briggs and Zuijderduijn (eds.),
Land and Credit (2018).