"What was it like to be poor in the Middle Ages? In the past, the answer to this question came only from institutions and individuals who gave relief to the less fortunate. This book, by one of the top scholars in the field, is the first comprehensive book to study poverty in a premodern Jewish community--from the viewpoint of both the poor and those who provided for them. Mark Cohen mines the richest body of documents available on the matter: the papers of the Cairo Geniza. These documents, located in the Geniza, a hidden chamber for discarded papers situated in a medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, were preserved largely unharmed for more than nine centuries due to an ancient custom in Judaism that prohibited the destruction of pages of sacred writing. Based on these papers, the book provides abundant testimony about how one large and important medieval Jewish community dealt with the constant presence of poverty in its midst. Building on S. D. Goitein's Mediterranean Society and inspired also by research on poverty and charity in medieval and early modern Europe, it provides a clear window onto the daily lives of the poor.
It also illuminates private charity, a subject that has long been elusive to the medieval historian.
In addition, Cohen's work functions as a detailed case study of an important phenomenon in human history. Cohen concludes that the relatively narrow gap between the poor and rich, and the precariousness of wealth in general, combined to make charity ""one of the major agglutinates of Jewish associational life"" during the medieval period."
By:
Mark R. Cohen
Imprint: Princeton University Pres
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 20mm
Weight: 595g
ISBN: 9780691092720
ISBN 10: 0691092729
Series: Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 21 November 2005
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgments ix Note xiii Introduction 1 Chapter One: A Taxonomy of the Poor 33 Chapter Two: The Foreign Poor 72 Chapter Three: Captives, Refugees, and Proselytes 109 Chapter Four: Debt and the Poll Tax 130 Chapter Five: Women and Poverty 139 Chapter Six: ""Naked and Starving,"" the Sick and Disabled 156 Chapter Seven: Beggars or Petitioners? 174 Chapter Eight: Charity 189 Chapter Nine: Conclusion: Poverty and Charity, Continuity and Acculturation 243 Bibliography 253 Index of Geniza Texts 271 General Index 278"
Mark R. Cohen is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a well-known authority on the Cairo Geniza and the history of the Jews in the medieval Islamic world. His publications include more than 80 articles and reviews and several books, among them: Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt (Princeton), which won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish history in 1981; Jewish Life in Medieval Egypt 641-1382 , translated into Arabic, 1987; The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena's Life of Judah , (Princeton); and, most recently, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages , (Princeton), which has been translated into Hebrew, Turkish, and German.
Reviews for Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt
This book will undoubtedly be required reading for anyone interested in the study of poverty and charity, both in medieval Islam and in the Jewish tradition. Because its source material is so exceptionally rich, it can be argued that it is also an important contribution to the understanding of non-European premodern charitable institutions. The lucid presentation of the material, especially the translated documents in the companion volume, make this work very useful for undergraduate and graduate students. -- Yossef Rapoport International Journal of Middle East Studies
- Runner-up for National Jewish Book Award in the History category, Jewish Book Council 2005 (United States)
- Short-listed for National Jewish Book Award for Jewish History 2005
- Shortlisted for National Jewish Book Award for Jewish History 2005.
- Winner of Goldziher Prize from The Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College 2010 (United States)
