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Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah
Jane Hathaway
2026
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This groundbreaking volume marks a rare and transformative contribution to studies of the Cairo Genizah, a vast trove of documents generated by Egypt’s Jewish community between the 10th and 19th centuries. While the Cairo Genizah has long yielded extraordinary insights into Jewish history in the greater Mediterranean region, attention has focused overwhelmingly on documents from the ‘classical’ period (11th–13th centuries). Documents from the later period, when Egypt was ruled by the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, remain woefully underexplored. This book helps to change that, presenting a meticulously curated collection of later Genizah documents that expand the boundaries of current scholarship. Moving beyond the more familiar Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic texts, the author ventures into neglected terrain, offering expert translations of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish texts in Arabic script. The collection is rich with remarkable ‘firsts’, including a Jewish funerary prayer on the reverse of a letter from a military commander, fragments of Sufi poetry, and a primer on Muslim practice. The author uses her training in Ottoman history to analyse and contextualise these documents fully. As a result, each document opens new avenues of inquiry, linking Egypt’s Jewish community to wider intra- and intercommunal networks in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. With a lucid introduction, well-structured chapters, and a thoughtful conclusion, the book illuminates networks of exchange in the early modern Mediterranean. It will appeal to scholars of Jewish history, the Cairo Genizah, the Ottoman Empire, and early modern Egypt; students of Middle Eastern languages and religions; historians of intercommunal relations and trade; and librarians, archivists, and general readers fascinated by Middle Eastern manuscript culture and the vibrant religious and commercial networks of the early modern Mediterranean.
This book is included in DOAB.
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Keywords
- Alexandria
- Cairo
- Damietta
- Genizah
- Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic
- Intercommunal networks
- Jewish communities in Egypt
- Mamluk Sultanate
- Ottoman Egypt
- Ottoman Empire
- thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics
- thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics::CFL Palaeography
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHB General and world history
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHG Middle Eastern history
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHH African history
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history
- thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRJ Judaism
Links
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0502Editions