Thesiss

The merchants recorded in the Cairo Geniza appear to be perfectly situated to carry on cosmopolitan trade throughout the Mediterranean and Islamic Asia. From their center in the Egyptian capital, family ties connected them from Spain to Persia, while Jewish religious authority r…

This dissertation examines how Jews in medieval Egypt negotiated marital disputes while maneuvering between individual desires, legal prescriptions and societal expectations. The main sources for this investigation are the documents of the Cairo Geniza, a rich cache of manuscrip…