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Living with the Law explores the marital disputes of Jews in medieval Islamic Egypt (1000–1250), relating medieval gossip, marital woes, and the voices of men and women of a world long gone. Probing the rich documents of the Cairo Geniza, a unique repository of discarded paper discovered in a Cairo synagogue, the book recovers the life stories of Jewish women and men working through their marital problems at home, with their families, in the streets of old Cairo, and in Jewish and Muslim courts. Despite a voluminous literature on Jewish law, the everyday practice of Jewish courts has only recently begun to be investigated systematically. The experiences of those at a legal, social, and cul...
This volume is dedicated to Professor Joshua Blau, of blessed memory. The articles included therein, written by his students and fellows, all deal with the Judeo-Arabic language and its associated culture. Among them are articles dealing with language, lexicography, cross-cultural relations, biblical translation, prayer, law, and poetics. The wide scope of material in this volume attests to the richness and breadth of Judeo-Arabic as well as to the expansive range of fields studied by Professor Blau himself.
This volume examines new developments in the fields of premodern Jewish studies over the last thirty years. The essays in this volume, written by leading experts, are grouped into four overarching temporal areas: the First Temple, Second Temple, Rabbinic, and Medieval periods. These time periods are analyzed through four thematic methodological lenses: the social scientific (history and society), the textual (texts and literature), the material (art, architecture, and archaeology), and the philosophical (religion and thought). Some essays offer a comprehensive look at the state of the field, while others look at specific examples illustrative of their temporal and thematic areas of inquiry. The volume presents a snapshot of the state of the field, encompassing new perspectives, directions, and methodologies, as well as the questions that will animate the field as it develops further. It will be of interest to scholars and students in the field, as well as to educated readers looking to understand the changing face of Jewish studies as a discipline advancing human knowledge
The Mediterranean and its hinterlands were the scene of intensive and transformative contact between cultures in the Middle Ages. From the seventh to the seventeenth century, the three civilizations into which the region came to be divided geographically – the Islamic Khalifate, the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin West – were busily redefining themselves vis-à-vis one another. Interspersed throughout the region were communities of minorities, such as Christians in Muslim lands, Muslims in Christian lands, heterodoxical sects, pagans, and, of course, Jews. One of the most potent vectors of interaction and influence between these communities in the medieval world was inter-religious conve...
When Venice conquered Crete in the early thirteenth century, a significant population of Jews lived in the capital and main port city of Candia. This community grew, diversified, and flourished both culturally and economically throughout the period of Venetian rule, and although it adhered to traditional Jewish ways of life, the community also readily engaged with the broader population and the island's Venetian colonial government. In Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete, Rena N. Lauer tells the story of this unusual and little-known community through the lens of its flexible use of the legal systems at its disposal. Grounding the book in richly detailed studies of individuals an...
The articles in this volume focus on the legal, linguistic, historical and literary roles of Jewish women in the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. Drawing heavily on manuscript evidence from the Cairo Genizah, the authors examine the challenges involved in the identification and interpretation of women’s letters from medieval Egypt, the registers of women’s written language, the relations between Jewish women and the Muslim legal system, the conversion of women, visions of women in Hell and gendered readings in the aggadic tradition of Judaism.
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.
In Between Christ and Caliph, Lev E. Weitz examines the multiconfessional society of early Islam through the lens of shifting marital practices of Syriac Christian communities, arguing that interreligious negotiations lie at the heart of the history of the medieval Islamic empire.
Patronage, power, and competition in the Sultan’s court The Sword of Ambition opens a new window onto interreligious rivalry among elites in medieval Egypt. Written by the unemployed bureaucrat 'Uthman ibn Ibrahim al-Nabulusi, it contains a wealth of little-known historical anecdotes, unusual religious opinions, obscure and witty poetry, and humorous cultural satire. Leaving no rhetorical stone unturned, al-Nabulusi pours his deep knowledge of history, law, and literature into the work—addressed to the Ayyubid sultan—as he argues against the employment of Coptic and Jewish officials. Written at a time when much of the inter-communal animosity of the era was conditioned by fierce competition for scarce resources that were increasingly controlled by an ideologically committed Sunni Muslim state, The Sword of Ambition reminds us that “religious” conflict must always be considered in its broader historical perspective. An English-only edition.
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.