A medieval German epic conflated Muslim and Jewish sacred vocabulary

Evidence

Maxime Rodinson suggests that it is a corruption of mubârak, Arabic for “blessed.” It might make more sense to read it as baruch, or Hebrew for the same thing. Indeed, the manuscript owned by the Munich library9 does have barruch rather than bâruc. The Hebrew term for “blessed” is very common in the Jewish liturgy, so that anyone with minimal familiarity with Hebrew might conceivably have used it. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 164

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader thesis equating Muslim and Jew as a shared religious Other in Christian imagination; also joins Wolfram scholarship on cross-cultural exchange.