Faded Ink and Torn Parchment: What the Cairo Genizah Can Tell us about Jewish Life Under Islam and Beyond During The Early Middle Ages

For much of the medieval period, the majority of the world’s Jewish population lived under Islamic rule, and these Jewish communities were responsible for many of the institutions, texts, and practices that would define Judaism well into the modern era.1 According to Norman A. Stillman, “The first two centuries of the Islamic era represented a time of far-reaching political, social, and economic change for all of the Middle East and its inhabitants, including the Jews.”2

Much of what we know about this part of the world during the medieval period comes from the Cairo Genizah, a remarkable hoard of fragmentary manuscripts, and some printed texts, from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo (Fust.āt. ), Egypt. The manuscripts, which are estimated at more than 300,000 in total, are now dispersed across several continents in more than 50 libraries, museums, and private collections. The two largest collections are in the Cambridge University Library (consisting of more than 190,000 fragments, known as the Taylor-Schechter Collection) and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.3

The Genizah encompasses a remarkably wide range of documents, from religious texts, personal letters, and business correspondence. According to Benjamin Outhwaite, the collection includes:

large sections of Torah scroll and the leaves of model Bible codices, through more personal, scrappy copies containing biblical readings for the festivals; tens of thousands of manuscripts of liturgical and secular poetry, much of it previously unknown; midrash and Bible commentaries; halakhic and philosophical works, including holograph drafts from Moses Maimonides and his son Abraham; and, quite unexpectedly, abundant texts of everyday existence, in the form of thousands of legal documents, marriage contracts, divorce bills, personal letters, commercial records, shopping-lists, doctor’s prescriptions, magical amulets, and much more of the ephemera of daily life in the medieval Near East.4

These documents help paint, as Goitein put it: “a true mirror of life, often cracked and blotchy, but very wide in scope and reflecting each and every aspect of the society that originated it.”5 The Cairo Genizah opens up details of a world previously largely hidden, and illustrates the complexities, beauty, and challenges of daily Jewish life in medieval Egypt and beyond.

This article explores how the Cairo Genizah provides a complex, yet reliable understanding of Jewish life under Islam, particularly within Egypt, and of society more broadly, during the medieval period through its sheer size and volume, and also in its breadth of subject matter. It will also demonstrate through various examples from the documents themselves, and through interpretation and commentary by scholars, precisely why the Genizah is so valuable for a broad range of disciplines for understanding daily life, and the demands and attentions of those reflected in the texts, painting a much more accurate picture than previously understood.

Jewish Communities Under Islam in the Middle Ages

Under Islamic rule, the three major Jewish communities of antiquity ­— in Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt ­— were granted new possibilities and opportunities. Political unity enabled the freedom of movement, with fewer boundaries to hinder migration and trade, and many Jews during this period migrated across the Islamic world. However, as Benjamin Outhwaite explains:

Prior to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah there were very few historical sources, reliable or not, for the study of the Jews of Islamic lands in the Middle Ages, despite the fact that they comprised the vast majority of the world’s Jewish population at that time. Muslim countries did not, on the whole, preserve archives, and medieval Judaism did not embrace the genre of historical writing. The story of the Jews of Arab lands had to be told, therefore, from scattered references in Muslim chronicles and from predominantly literary or juridical sources; Bible commentaries, works of halakha, and responsa literature could all contain useful snippets on contemporary affairs. The contents of the Genizah, however, preserve the evidence —­ albeit patchy and incomplete, as Goitein suggested — of centuries of Jewish culture in the Muslim world.6

The period of time covered by the fragments is huge, with much of the material predating the reconstruction of the Ben Ezra synagogue in the 11th century, likely arriving with earlier waves of Jewish immigration.7 According to Outhwaite:

The earliest manuscripts are, in origin, perhaps not Jewish at all. They are the under-texts of palimpsests, mainly copies of the Greek Bible, which date from the sixth and seventh centuries CE. The parchment was cannibalized by Jewish scribes probably in the ninth and tenth centuries, who wrote liturgical poetry and midrashic texts over the earlier writing. Eventually these manuscripts ended their days in the Genizah as Jewish artefacts. Other literary pieces may also be dated to the pre- or early Islamic period, including some copies of the Hebrew Bible and the Aramaic targum.8

Although documents within the Genizah stretch all the way into the modern age, the collection is particularly rich in historical documents from the late 10th through
approximately the middle of the 13th centuries, the periods of Fatimid (969 -1171) and Ayyubid (1171-1250) rule in Egypt.9 This reflects the vitality and prosperity of the Jewish community in its golden age, along with the importance of Egypt as an economic hub for international trade, and the position of Fust.āt. as a major administrative center. In addition to the immense time period represented, the Genizah also reflects a wide geographical area, with manuscripts originating from as far east as Yemen, Persia, and India, and as far west as southern France and Spain.

Minority Life Under Islam

The situation for Jews was “both safeguarded and precarious.”10 In Egypt, as elsewhere, Jews walked a tight rope, with competing fidelities and commitments, along with expectations of the local authorities, and the broader challenges of being a tolerated class of non-Muslims (dhimmi). Islamic law protected Jewish lives, property, and freedom, but with certain restrictions. It granted the right to exercise their religion, but also demanded segregation and subservience, which were subject to the whims of local authorities, often leading to “conditions that under a weak or wicked government could and did lead to situations bordering on lawlessness and even to outright persecutions.”11

Jews and Christians were a tolerated class of non-Muslims (dhimmi); however, their treatment varied widely.12 Jews were required to pay a tax, or jizya, to the Islamic state for its protection, but were able to largely live, work, organize their own communities, and govern themselves. As Shelomo Dov Goitein notes, “Owing to the religious character of medieval society, the religious minorities formed a state within the state, by law as well as in fact.”13

Islamic rule also granted new possibilities and opportunities. Political unity enabled the freedom of movement, with fewer boundaries to hinder migration and trade. With the Fatimid establishment of Cairo as its capital in 969, the Jewish community in Egypt flourished. And as Fatamid influence expanded, more and more Jews flocked to the city and its environs, with its booming economy and culture. Many Jews became influential in business and trade, and some even served in governmental and administrative positions as kātibs (clerks), ministers, or even as court physicians.14 Therefore, Jews also had representation within the Fatimid court, not only through individual Jews serving within the administration, but also through the officially appointed representative of the local Jewish community, the rayis al-yahud (also called the nagid).

Daily Jewish Life

One of the unique aspects of the Cairo Genizah is its window into the daily lives of common people. According to Mark R. Cohen, the Genizah “contains more than 10,000 letters and documents from everyday Jewish life, dating mostly from the eleventh to thirteenth century.”15 Through these personal letters, marriage agreements, requests for charity assistance, and other similar materials, we can gain greater insight into what life was like for the average person. Although medieval archives do not usually preserve the artefacts of those often on the fringes of society, such as children, women, and the disadvantaged, yet these are well represented in the Cairo Genizah. We have examples of women receiving and writing letters, as parties to legal deeds, and most commonly, in matters of marriage and divorce.16 There are also significant women who achieved levels of fame, notoriety, and success in business. Documentary evidence of one such Jewish businesswoman, al-Wuh.sha, “records both her wealth and the secrets of her private life.”17

Marriage Agreements

Among the hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, a large number are related to marriage and family life. It was common at the time to have formal agreements on certain conditions regarding marriage. These conditions were inserted and written into pre-nuptial agreements (not to be confused with Ketubot, which are formal religious/ritual marriage contracts). Most of the conditions stipulated in the pre-nuptial agreements favor the women and served mainly to protect them from misbehavior and abuse, and could be enforced by a court.18 Amir Asher explains:

Several Genizah documents throw harsh light on the physical and verbal abuse used by husbands against their wives. This was a widespread phenomenon in all of the Jewish communities, under Islam and Christianity likewise, with no difference as assumed by
Goitein. . . . One of the ways to deal with violent husbands was to write a special clause in the pre-nuptial agreements ­— ‘a behaviour clause’. This stipulation orders that in any case of abuse against the wife, either by the husband or by one of his family members, the husband will be forced to pay a heavy fine, or even divorce his wife, if she wants to. This ‘behaviour stipulation’ had many versions. For example: ‘and he will not harm her nor raise his hand and beat her’ . . . , or: ‘and he will not curse her nor raise his hand and beat her’ . . . . In addition to the pre-nuptial agreements we also find such stipulations in agreements that were drawn up after marital dispute where the husband promises he will not harm his wife. Such stipulations are not to be found in Karaite marriage contracts. . . . These stipulations were not taken for granted, and the courts did enforce it when necessary . . . . It appears that women were also forced into behaving in a satisfactory manner towards their husband and his family, as seen in an agreement reached after a marital dispute: ‘She will not scorn him with contemptuous and derisive words, but be submissive toward him and his relatives’. . . . These
and other manuscripts show that the Egyptian Jews did their best to minimize the cases of beaten wives and of other types of violence in marriage life.19

Unlike within Ashkenazi communities, since polygamy was not yet forbidden, it was also common to find monogamy stipulations forbidding the husband from marrying another wife in Jewish pre-nuptial, betrothal and engagement agreements in Egypt from the time of Matzliach Gaon (who served as Rayis al-Yahud from 1127–1139).20 There could also be stipulations for how frequently a husband could travel or where a couple would live. As Ashur explains, “Women were usually married when they were very young, and in order to protect them it was stipulated in the marriage contracts that they should remain in the neighborhood of their family, and should not move to another town.”21 A number of other conditions could also be included in these pre-nuptial agreements, including details of one’s relationship to in-laws, forbidding a wife to leave the house, and even conditional gets (Jewish documents of divorce), to avoid leaving a woman an agunah should her husband disappear, especially considering the dangers of travel in the ancient world:

Unfortunately, in some cases the husbands were gone for good, leaving their wives ‘‘chained’’ (Agunah) to their marriage. Such circumstances led to adding more stipulations in the pre-nuptial agreements, restricting the travels of the groom. These conditions would define the duration of the husband’s absence and in several cases even ordered the husband to ask his wife’s permission, before setting off for such a journey, or to hand her a conditional divorce certificate to be implemented if he should fail to come back in the agreed timeframe (‘conditional get’).22

Charity Distribution

Hunger and a lack of clothing are another common theme within personal letters appealing for communal assistance. Although biblical texts and other ancient sources discuss supporting those in need, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, rarely do they discuss how the poor themselves experienced hunger and inadequate clothing. This is what makes the Cairo Genizah so unique, because it presents a wealth of accounts and appeal-letters directly from those in need, often containing personal details and descriptions. According to Mark R. Cohen:

The refrain “naked and starving” crops up regularly in the Geniza letters of the poor, often associated with complaints about illness. “Your slave is [in] adversity on account of nakedness and illness and lack of food for the upcoming holiday,” wrote a desperate man. A pathetic widow with a degenerative skin disease grieved bitterly about her misfortune: “I am naked and thirsty and have nothing. I am incapacitated, and there is no one to take care of me, even should I die” (that is, no one to pay her burial expenses). These are but two from among numerous examples. Nakedness meant not true nudity but lack of adequate clothing, as it should also be understood in Arabic letters by Muslims outside the Geniza. As we shall see, the level of starvation was sometimes exaggerated. However, when food and clothing were absent or available in short supply, those experiencing dearth expressed their lack in extreme terms.23

We also find descriptions of the diets of those who were poor, which unsurprisingly consisted predominantly of bread:

Normally, the poor had to buy bread by the loaf, which, though considerably more expensive in the long run than storing supplies of wheat to grind into flour as needed, was the most that they could afford. Besides, bread became stale after one day. An impoverished teacher lamented that he did not have enough money to buy even one pound, that is, one loaf of bread. Buying flour, preparing the dough at home, and bringing it to a neighborhood oven to be baked cost less than purchasing prepared loaves in the market. The absolutely destitute received a small semi-weekly ration of two loaves per adult from public (communal) charity on Tuesdays and Fridays, as well as a little wheat and cash periodically.24

These very personal accounts of hunger and need of clothing are vital for understanding what daily life was like for common people of the time. “Material of this quality and in this quantity otherwise does not exist. . . . Only for early modern Europe have letters from everyday life concerning the poor been found.”25 As Cohen goes on to note, “In the light of the information [we have] about the diet of the poor, the cries of hunger in letters of appeal are not exaggerated.”26

Religious Life

According to Marina Rustow, “From the tenth century onward, Mediterranean towns of any importance housed not two but three Jewish groups: Babylonian Rabbinites, Palestinian Rabbinites, and [Karaites]. Each had its own houses of worship, and each its own scholastic academy.”27 Furthermore, each of these groups actively sought to influence the community as a whole, recruit others to their institutions and practices, and raise financial support.

Palestinian influence and authority was aligned with the geon in Jerusalem and its yeshiva. The Babylonian community was centered around two yeshivot, each with its own geon. The Karaites also had their own academy based in Jerusalem, which they intentionally avoided calling a “yeshiva.” Each group also ran their own judicial and administrative institutions.28 Although the origins of each community were rooted in the immigrant experiences of their founders, loyalties soon became social rather than regional, and individuals often drifted between communities for various reasons. Therefore, as Rustow emphasizes, “their competition and jockeying for power defined Jewish life in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Without some sense of that jockeying, neither the medieval Jewish community nor medieval Judaism makes much sense in historical terms.”29

The Cairo Genizah provides numerous examples of letters from prominent geonim appealing for fidelity and financial support, as well as issuing disparaging words against the alternative communities and their practices. We also have halakhic responsa from these various geonim providing guidance and answers to queries from individual communities scattered around the Jewish world. According to Robert Brody:

This competition between the Babylonian and Palestinian centers may be viewed as a continuation of the situation which had prevailed in the Talmudic period, with one significant difference: whereas in the earlier period the sources reflect an ongoing dialogue, with many elements of debate, between the centers themselves, in the Geonic period the emphasis shifted to a competition for influence over peripheral regions.”30

Although the tension and competition between each of these communities was very real, there was also cooperation on larger communal matters, with a localized distribution of charity, collection of taxes and fees, adjudicating disputes, and the election and appointment of leaders.31 We also have evidence from the Genizah of intermarriage between the various communities, including ketubot and pre-nuptial agreements demonstrating a certain amount of cooperation. As Outhwaite adds:

[T]here is a significantly ecumenical character to the Cairo Genizah Collection, which has preserved, for instance, not just the expected correspondence of the Palestinian Ga’on in Jerusalem — who possessed formal ties to the Synagogue of the Palestinians through his local representatives in Fust.āt. — but also dozens of letters (originals and copies) from his rivals, the Babylonian Ge’onim of Pumbeditha and Sura, such as Nehemiah ha-Kohen (tenth century), Sherira and his son Hai (tenth–eleventh century), and Samuel b. Hofni (tenth–eleventh century).32

Although there was tension at times within the community, there was also a certain level of cooperation, especially reflected in the various types of writings which found their way into the Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue. Furthermore, the documents also reveal a technological development, as explained by Outhwaite:

Between the period of the Second Temple and the early Middle Ages, reflected in the two great collections of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah, a change happens in Judaism’s transmission of its scripture. The texts from Qumran reflect a society necessarily wedded to the scroll as the medium for transmitting the Hebrew Bible. . . . In the ensuing centuries, even as surrounding cultures adopted the codex, this necessity was fixed, regulated and formalized into a set of halakhic prescriptions for the copying and reading of the Torah scroll, the only acceptable medium for the recitation of God’s law in rabbinic Judaism of late antiquity. . . . Yet, by the Middle Ages, the Cairo Genizah reveals a Jewish community that had embraced the codex with an impressive enthusiasm, evidenced by the tens of thousands of leaves from books big and small that were deposited into the genizah chamber of the Synagogue of the Jerusalemites in al-Fust.āt..33

Much more could be said of the religious ramifications and contributions illuminated by the Genizah, but these examples will have to suffice in demonstrating the complex tapestry painted of Fust.āt. ’s Jewish community during the medieval period.

Communal Life

Jews organized along religious lines, forming a “Jewish community” with its own social infrastructure. There were clear mechanisms supporting a robust communal life. As Rustow explains:

Jewish communities distributed charity, ransomed captives, collected taxes and fees, adjudicated disputes through a system of courts and legal specialists, and elected and appointed leaders. They also held property in trust and collected contributions from their members for expenditures, such as stipends for scholars.34

Social programs to feed and clothe those in need, along with the distribution of charity, was a major responsibility of the community, as reflected in the Genizah. Outhwaite describes further:

The poor — and particularly the “foreign poor,” immigrants to Egypt who lacked local connections or livelihoods — are frequently encountered. The synagogue was a center for the distribution of bread to the needy, and charitable collections were made from among the members of the congregation. Consequently, the Genizah preserves hundreds of documents relating to the disbursement of charity, the administration of charitable foundations, and the collection of funds. There are also a significant number of begging letters — petitions directed at the community’s charitable administrators, the parnasim — which relate woeful tales of privation and misfortune. Ironically, this imperfect archive preserves the papers of the poor and the working classes better than it does the elite of the community. . . . The very upper layer of society is largely absent from the Genizah’s legal deeds and correspondence, as they lived in Cairo alongside the Islamic elite, and their papers were presumably placed in repositories there.35

Jewish Community of Fust.āt.

During the Fatimid period, Fust.āt. was the major administrative center, even after the founding of Cairo as the new capital, and it remained such for centuries. This placed the Jewish community, and particularly the Ben Ezra synagogue, at the very heart of the Islamic empire.36 Prior to the decline of Abbasid rule, the center of Jewish civilization had previously been Bagdad, and Babylonian influence spread its textual traditions and liturgical practices across the diaspora.

Isolated sources describe Jews living in Egypt as early as the First Temple. However, the first major wave of immigration to Egypt followed the Temple’s destruction.37 In the 9th and 10th centuries, many Babylonian Jews emigrated along trade routes to North Africa and other parts of the world. As the Fatamid empire expanded and flourished, so did Jewish life in Fust.āt. , and many of the Jewish emigres settled in Egypt as the community prospered and grew.38 As previously discussed, during its classical period, Fust.āt. was divided into three Jewish groups: Babylonian Rabbinites, Palestinian Rabbinites, and Karaites, with each having its own respective houses of worship, and each its own scholastic allegiances.39

The core of the Jewish community in Fust.āt. was initially Palestinian and saw itself as being strongly linked to Eretz Yisrael both historically and traditionally, and subject to its authority.40 Its central synagogue (which we now know as the Ben Ezra Synagogue, and the source of the Genizah) was called HaKanisa HaGedolah, the Great Synagogue ­as opposed to HaKanisa HaKetanah, the smaller synagogue of the Babylonians. Both synagogues were located in the Qasr al-sham neighborhood, which was inhabited mainly by Jews.41 The Babylonian community followed different rites and customs, and maintained loyalty of one, or both, of the geonim in Baghdad.

In addition to the competing Babylonian and Palestinian communities, there was also a strong Karaite presence, with many of whom maintained close relations with the Islamic government, and some even rose to prominent positions within the Fatimid court. This gave the Karaites prestige and power in the wider Jewish community.42 Other distinctions were made on geographical grounds, such as the large number of Maghribi Jews, many from wealthy merchant dynasties.

Furthermore, despite sectarian tensions, there was clearly great cooperation as well. This is reflected in the Genizah assembly itself. As Outhwaite emphasizes, “The Cairo Genizah as a collection has managed to preserve significant deposits from the different Jewish groups of Fust.āt. . . . . There are documentary and literary manuscripts from the Babylonian and Karaite congregations, and even some Samaritan works.”43 So although Fust.āt. was typical in many ways to other communities in the wider Jewish world it was also unique due to its proximity to the Fatamid caliphate, and along with it, economic and social benefits. This not only drew Jews together from other parts of the world, but also attracted and provided a platform for significant leaders and thinkers, one of the most prominent being Maimonides. Furthermore, this rich and unique atmosphere together also allowed for greater technological innovation.

Wider Society

Although the Cairo Genizah clearly highlights and holds a magnifying class up to the Jewish community of Egypt and Fustat particularly, and the Jewish world more broadly, that is not to say it does not also help us better understand society more generally at the time.

One way the Genizah has shed light upon the broader world is in the complexity it presents of wider Mediterannean society. But rather than using “Mediterranean” to refer to any kind of historical, anthropological, or economic unit (implying one shared culture across the Mediterranean region), as Sarah Strousma notes, “the cultural boundaries of the ‘the Mediterranean world’ are surprisingly flexible, and at times reach impressive dimensions.”44
After all, “one should note that the Mediterranean basin did not provide group identity to its inhabitants.”45 Rather, as Strousma argues regarding Maimonides:

[I]n contradistinction to the historians who, in choosing this term, have sought to underline the Mediterranean’s distinctive unity, I employ it precisely in order to highlight the diversity within it. Maimonides is a Mediterranean thinker in the sense that he is more than a Jewish thinker, or more than an Islamic philosopher (that is to say, a philosopher pertaining to the world of Islam). In modern parlance, he could perhaps be called “cosmopolitan,” that is, a person who belongs to more than one of the subcultures that together form the world in which he lives. This last term grates, however, because of its crude anachronism as well as because of its (equally anachronistic) secular overtones.46

Stroumsa further elaborates:

In particular, his correspondence demonstrates a concern with a Jewish society that stretched across the cultural Mediterranean world, from southern France (known in medieval Jewish texts as “Provence”) to Baghdad, and as far south as the Yemen. It seems that in 1174 Maimonides was appointed head of the Jewish community of Cairo (rais al-yahud), an appointment that gave an official administrative frame to his authority among the Jews of Egypt as well as over the Jewish communities of Palestine and Yemen.47

Therefore, Stroumsa is arguing more broadly that the Genizah illuminates a Mediterranean world that emphasizes diversity rather than unity, a society that is more ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘multi-cultural.’ This is supported by what we know of the Arabic-speaking world, particularly the exposure to so many classic works through translation. This would especially account for the surprisingly large number of Islamic documents found in the Genizah: tax receipts, rescripts issued by the chanceries, and petitions to the Fatimid and Ayyubid rulers.48 However, there is one additional reason we find such a large number of Islamic documents. As Outhwaite explains:

The preservation of such documents, written in Arabic script and many having no relation to Jewish affairs at all, might call into question the entire manner in which the Genizah was assembled in the Middle Ages. However, in most cases it is possible to see why the material ended up in the Collection. Even with the adoption and large-scale production of paper in Egypt — from the tenth century onwards, paper tends to replace parchment for most purposes . . . [and] writing materials were valued to the extent that a single sheet would invariably be used more than once. The Islamic chancery’s long paper documents were attractive for later writers, who cut them up and wrote on the back, in the margins, and even between the widely spaced lines of Arabic. The head of the Palestinian community in Fustat in the first half of the eleventh century — Efraim ben Shemarya, a wealthy businessman — frequently takes Arabic documents for his own writings and drafts of letters, demonstrating that the medieval vogue for recycling was not just the preserve of the poor. Indeed, it is evident throughout the Cairo Genizah, and the reuse of manuscripts — from Bible leaves through to letters of the ge’onim — by children practising their alef-bet suggests that the storeroom may have served to provide writing materials for those who studied in the synagogue too.49

Although we often emphasize the Jewish orientation of the Cairo Genizah, its contents also help us better understand society more generally at the time. Through its documents we discover a diverse Mediterranean world that is much more cosmopolitan and multi-cultural than expected. Of course we must be careful not to make too many modern associations with those terms, but it can still be helpful in envisioning a Mediterranean world that is much more in-touch and aware.

Conclusion

We can confidently echo Goitein in saying that the contents of the Genizah provide, “a true mirror of life, often cracked and blotchy, but very wide in scope and reflecting each and every aspect of the society that originated it.”50 The Cairo Genizah provides a complex, yet reliable, understanding of Jewish life under Islam, particularly within Egypt, and helps us better understand society more broadly, during the medieval period. Although not without imperfections, the Genizah’s enormous and broad collection provides exhaustive evidence of daily life.51 Outhwaite sums it up well in stating:

It has preserved literary treasures on an incredible scale, but for the historian of the political, economic, or social history of the Jewish communities of the Islamic world it is the rigorous legal deeds, the discursive letters, and the detailed commercial records that provide the greatest and rarest insights. . . . [F]ew would question the astounding impact that the discovery has had on our knowledge of the medieval Jewish world.52

Through its sheer size and volume, and also in its breadth of subject matter, the Cairo Genizah reveals details of a world previously largely hidden, and illustrates the complexities, beauty, and challenges of daily Jewish life in medieval Egypt and beyond.

Joshua Brumbach (DHL, Spertus Institute) serves as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Simchat Yisrael in West Haven, CT, President of the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, and Adjunct Professor of Jewish Studies at The King’s University.

For Further Study

Ashur, Amir. “Protecting the Wife’s Rights in Marriage as Reflected in Pre-Nuptials and Marriage Contracts from the Cairo Genizah and Parallel Arabic Sources,” Religion Compass 6.8.

Bareket, Elinoar. Fustat on the Nile: The Jewish Elite in Medieval Egypt. Brill, 1999.

Brody, Robert. The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture. Yale University Press, 2013.

Cohen, Mark R. “Feeding the Poor and Clothing the Naked: the Cairo Genizah,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35:3 (2005).

________. Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton University Press, 1994.

Ehrlich, Uri and Ruth Langer. “The Earliest Texts of Birkat Haminim.” Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. LXXVI (2005): 63-112.

Goitein, Shelomo Dov. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Volume II: The Community. University of California Press, 1971.

________. “The documents of the Cairo Geniza as a Source for Mediterranean Social History,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 80:2 (1960).

Outhwaite, Benjamin. “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” in Dean Phillip Bell (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Jewish History and Historiography. Routledge, 2019.

________. “The Sefer Torah and Jewish Orthodoxy in the Islamic Middle Ages,” in Bradford A. Anderson (ed.), From Scrolls to Scrolling: Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures. De Gruyter, 2020.

Rustow, Marina. Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate. Cornell University Press, 2008.

________. “Jews and Muslims in the Eastern Islamic World,” in Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora (eds), A history of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day. Princeton University Press, 2013.

Stillman, Norman A. “The non-Muslim communities: the Jewish community,” in Carl F. Petry (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Stroumsa, Sarah. Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Princeton University Press, 2009.

---

• 1 Marina Rustow, “Jews and Muslims in the Eastern Islamic World,” in A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day, Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora, eds. (Princeton University Press, 2013), 75.

• 2 Norman A. Stillman, “The non-Muslim Communities: the Jewish community,” The Cambridge History of Egypt, Carl F. Petry, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 199.

• 3 Benjamin Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a Source for Jewish History,” in The Routledge Companion to Jewish History and Historiography, Dean Phillip Bell, ed. (Routledge, 2019), 380.

• 4 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a Source for Jewish History,” 381.

• 5 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 381.

• 6 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 386.

• 7 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 382.

• 8 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 382.

• 9 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 382.

• 10 Shelomo Dov Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Volume II: the Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 289.

• 11 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, Vol. II, 289.

• 12 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, Vol. II, 283.

• 13 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, Vol. II, 273.

• 14 Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 1994), 196.

• 15 Mark R. Cohen, “Feeding the Poor and Clothing the Naked: The Cairo Genizah,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35:3 (2005), 408.

• 16 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 385.

• 17 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 385.

• 18 Amir Ashur, “Protecting the Wife’s Rights in Marriage as Reflected in Pre-Nuptials and Marriage Contracts from the Cairo Genizah and Parallel Arabic Sources,” Religion Compass, Vol. 6.8 (212): 381.

• 19 Ashur, “Protecting the Wife’s Rights in Marriage,” 382-383.

• 20 Ashur, 383.

• 21 Ashur, 386.

• 22 Ashur, 386.

• 23 Cohen, “Feeding the Poor and Clothing the Naked,” 408-409.

• 24 Cohen, “Feeding the Poor and Clothing the Naked,” 411.

• 25 Cohen, “Feeding the Poor and Clothing the Naked,” 408.

• 26 Cohen, “Feeding the Poor and Clothing the Naked,” 414.

• 27 Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Cornell University Press, 2008), 3.

• 28 Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 3.

• 29 Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 3.

• 30 Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (Yale University Press, 2013), 100-101.

• 31 Rustow, “Jews and Muslims in the Eastern Islamic World”, op. cit., 90.

• 32 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a Source for Jewish History,” 384.

• 33 Outhwaite, “The Sefer Torah and Jewish Orthodoxy in the Islamic Middle Ages,” in From Scrolls to Scrolling: Sacred Texts, Materiality, and Dynamic Media Cultures, Bradford A. Anderson, ed. (De Gruyter, 2020), 63.

• 34 Rustow, “Jews and Muslims in the Eastern Islamic World,” 90.

• 35 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 385.

• 36 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 380, 383.

• 37 Elinoar Bareket, Fust.āt. on the Nile: The Jewish Elite in Medieval Egypt (Brill, 1999), 4-5.

• 38 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 383.

• 39 Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 3.

• 40 Bareket, 384.

• 41 Bareket, 384.

• 42 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 384.

• 43 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 384.

• 44 Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton University Press, 2009), 4.

• 45 Stroumsa, 6.

• 46 Stroumsa, 7.

• 47 Stroumsa, 10.

• 48 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 384.

• 49 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 384.

• 50 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 3.

• 51 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 10.

• 52 Outhwaite, “The Genizah as a source for Jewish history,” 385.