lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms. Recently, historian Mohammed Ibraheem Ahmed has posited a political-contingent view of Muslim-Jewish relations. He extends Cohen's point of there being neither an incessant utopia, nor total conflict between Muslims and Jews. He argues that Muslim-Jewish relations are hooked on the political situation of the time, and that is why it often changes between periods of conflict and coexistence. In the 7th century, the new Muslim rulers institute the kharaj land tax, which led to mass migration of Babylonian Jews from the countryside to cities like Baghdad. This in turn led to greater wealth and international influence, as well as a more cosmopolitan outlook from Jewish thinkers such as Saadiah Gaon, who now deeply engaged with Western philosophy for the first time. When the Abbasid Caliphate and the city of Baghdad declined in the 10th century, many Babylonian Jews migrated to the Mediterranean region, contributing to the spread of Babylonian Jewish customs throughout the Jewish world. Seljuk Empire (1077-1307) and early Ottoman rule Early Modern Period Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire served as a refuge for Jewish refugees from Spanish empire, especially after the fall of Muslim Spain in 1492 and Edict of Expulsion. This continued through the Roman Catholic Inquisition, as secret Jews and forced converts continued to flee Spain. The Maghreb from North Africa similarly found refuge among the Ottomans, as large Arabian cities created their own restrictive Jewish quarters (Mellahs). In 1834, in Safed, Ottoman Syria, local Muslim Arabs carried out a massacre of the Jewish population known as the Safed Plunder. In 1840, the Jews of Damascus were falsely accused of having murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of having used their blood to bake Passover bread. A Jewish barber was tortured until he "confessed"; two other Jews who were arrested died under torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life. Throughout the 1860s, the Jews of Libya were subjected to what Gilbert calls punitive taxation. In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakech and Fez in Morocco. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis, and an Arab mob on Jerba Island looted and burned Jewish homes, stores, and synagogues. In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in Demnat, Morocco; elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight. In 1897,