The Jews in Medieval Egypt

The Jews in Medieval Egypt PDF Author: Miriam Frenkel
Publisher: Lands and Ages of the Jewish P
ISBN: 9781618117465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Jewish life in medieval Egypt, hitherto an obscure and understudied theme, is revealed in this volume in all its complexity and richness. This book offers the most recent scholarship on the communal, judicial, economic, lingual, familial, and spiritual aspects of Jewish life medieval Islamic Egypt.

The Jews in Medieval Egypt

The Jews in Medieval Egypt PDF Author: Miriam Frenkel
Publisher: Lands and Ages of the Jewish P
ISBN: 9781618117465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jewish life in medieval Egypt, hitherto an obscure and understudied theme, is revealed in this volume in all its complexity and richness. This book offers the most recent scholarship on the communal, judicial, economic, lingual, familial, and spiritual aspects of Jewish life medieval Islamic Egypt.

Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt

Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt PDF Author: Eve Krakowski
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191638
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Much of what we know about life in the medieval Islamic Middle East comes from texts written to impart religious ideals or to chronicle the movements of great men. How did women participate in the societies these texts describe? What about non-Muslims, whose own religious traditions descended partly from pre-Islamic late antiquity? Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt approaches these questions through Jewish women’s adolescence in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt and Syria (c. 969–1250). Using hundreds of everyday papers preserved in the Cairo Geniza, Eve Krakowski follows the lives of girls from different social classes—rich and poor, secluded and physically mobile—as they prepared to marry and become social adults. She argues that the families on whom these girls depended were more varied, fragmented, and fluid than has been thought. Krakowski also suggests a new approach to religious identity in premodern Islamic societies—and to the history of rabbinic Judaism. Through the lens of women’s coming-of-age, she demonstrates that even Jews who faithfully observed rabbinic law did not always understand the world in rabbinic terms. By tracing the fault lines between rabbinic legal practice and its practitioners’ lives, Krakowski explains how rabbinic Judaism adapted to the Islamic Middle Ages. Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt offers a new way to understand how women took part in premodern Middle Eastern societies, and how families and religious law worked in the medieval Islamic world.

Israel in Egypt: The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period

Israel in Egypt: The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004435409
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 723

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Book Description
In Israel in Egypt scholars in different fields explore what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world. For generations of Jews from antiquity to the medieval period, the land of Egypt represented both a place of danger to their communal religious identity and also a haven with opportunities for prosperity and growth. A volume of collected essays from scholars in fields ranging from biblical studies and classics to papyrology and archaeology, Israel in Egypt explores what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world.

The Business of Identity

The Business of Identity PDF Author: Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804787166
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
The Cairo Geniza is the largest and richest store of documentary evidence for the medieval Islamic world. This book seeks to revolutionize the way scholars use that treasure trove. Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman draws on legal documents from the Geniza to reconceive of life in the medieval Islamic marketplace. In place of the shared practices broadly understood by scholars to have transcended confessional boundaries, he reveals how Jewish merchants in Egypt employed distinctive trading practices. Highly influenced by Jewish law, these commercial practices served to manifest their Jewish identity in the medieval Islamic context. In light of this distinctiveness, Ackerman-Lieberman proposes an alternative model for using the Geniza documents as a tool for understanding daily life in the medieval Islamic world as a whole.

Fustat on the Nile

Fustat on the Nile PDF Author: Bareket
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004476458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
'Fustat Egypt which sits on the River Nile' - this is how the Jews called their city. Coalition and opposition, power struggles between leaders who were aided by local Jewish pressure groups and abetted by the Muslim authorities - these were a few of the characteristics of the leadership in the Jewish community of Fustat, the largest and liveliest of the Jewish communities in the eleventh century. The author follows the activities of these leaders and analyzes their motives in the light of the complex relationships developing in the community between the different ethnic groups, while in the background the traditional centers of Jewish authority in Palestine and Babylon battle each other for control of the Jewish people. The survey of the dramatic events was made by analysis of documents and letters from the Geniza in Cairo.

Under Crescent and Cross

Under Crescent and Cross PDF Author: Mark R. Cohen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691010823
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
On the Jews in the Middle ages

Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders

Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders PDF Author: S. D. Goitein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400868726
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
Modern international business has its origins in the overseas trade of the Middle Ages. Of the various communities active in trade in the Islamic countries at that time, records of only the Jewish community survive. Thousands of documents were preserved in the Cairo Geniza, a lumber room attached to the synagogue where discarded writings containing the name of God were deposited to preserve them from desecration. From them Professor Goitein has selected eighty letters that provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of the medieval Jewish traders. As the letters vividly illustrate, international trade depended on a network of personal relationships and mutual confidence. Organization was largely through partnerships, based usually on ties of common religion but often reinforced by family connections. Sometimes the partners of Jews were Christians or Muslims, and the letters show these merchants working together in greater harmony than has been thought, even in partnerships that lasted through generations. The services rendered to a friend or partner and those expected from him were great, and the book opens with an angry letter from a merchant who believed he had been let down by his friend. The life of a trader was full of dangers, as the letter describing a shipwreck illustrates, and put great strain on personal relationships. One of the most moving letters is that written to his wife by a man absent in India for many years while endeavoring to make the family's fortunes. Although never ceasing to love her and longing to be with her, he offers to divorce her if she feels she can wait for him no longer. A decisive event in the life of the great Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, was the death of his brother David, who drowned in the Indian Ocean. Printed here is the last letter David wrote, describing his safe crossing of the desert and announcing his intention to go on to India, against his brother's instructions. Professor Goitein has provided an introduction and notes for each letter, and a general introduction describing the social and spiritual world of the writers, the organization of overseas trade in the Middle Ages, and the goods traded. The letters demonstrate that although it reached from Spain to India, the traders' world was a cohesive one through which these men could move freely and always feel at home. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Cultural Exchange

Cultural Exchange PDF Author: Joseph Shatzmiller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Demonstrating that similarities between Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages were more than coincidental, Cultural Exchange meticulously combines a wide range of sources to show how Jews and Christians exchanged artistic and material culture. Joseph Shatzmiller focuses on communities in northern Europe, Iberia, and other Mediterranean societies where Jews and Christians coexisted for centuries, and he synthesizes the most current research to describe the daily encounters that enabled both societies to appreciate common artistic values. Detailing the transmission of cultural sensibilities in the medieval money market and the world of Jewish money lenders, this book examines objects pawned by peasants and humble citizens, sacred relics exchanged by the clergy as security for loans, and aesthetic goods given up by the Christian well-to-do who required financial assistance. The work also explores frescoes and decorations likely painted by non-Jews in medieval and early modern Jewish homes located in Germanic lands, and the ways in which Jews hired Christian artists and craftsmen to decorate Hebrew prayer books and create liturgical objects. Conversely, Christians frequently hired Jewish craftsmen to produce liturgical objects used in Christian churches. With rich archival documentation, Cultural Exchange sheds light on the social and economic history of the creation of Jewish and Christian art, and expands the general understanding of cultural exchange in brand-new ways.

Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times

Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004267840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
This volume brings together articles on the cultural, religious, social and commercial interactions among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval and early modern periods. Written by leading scholars in Jewish studies, Islamic studies, medieval history and social and economic history, the contributions to this volume reflect the profound influence on these fields of the volume’s honoree, Professor Mark R. Cohen.

The Medieval Haggadah

The Medieval Haggadah PDF Author: Marc Michael Epstein
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156669
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Discusses four illuminated haggadot, manuscripts created for use at home services on Passover, all created in the early twelfth century.