Poverty and charity in the Jewish community of medieval Egypt / Mark R. Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Mark R., 1943-

Series:

Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the ancient to the modern world.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the ancient to the modern world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Egypt--Charities--History.

Jews.

Poverty--Religious aspects--Judaism.

Poverty.

Judaism--Charities--History.

Judaism.

Jews--Egypt--Social conditions.

Poor--Egypt--History.

Poor.

Judaism--Relations--Islam.

Islam--Relations--Judaism.

Islam.

Cairo Genizah.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Taxonomy of the Poor

Chapter 2. The Foreign Poor

Chapter 3. Captives, Refugees, and Proselytes

Chapter 4. Debt and the Poll Tax

Chapter 5. Women and Poverty

Chapter 6. "Naked and Starving," the Sick and Disabled

Chapter 7. Beggars or Petitioners?

Chapter 8. Charity

Chapter 9. Conclusion: Poverty and Charity, Continuity and Acculturation

Bibliography

Index of Geniza Texts

General Index

Notes:

Complemented by the author's collection of primary sources in translation, The voice of the poor in the Middle Ages: an anthology of documents from the Cairo Geniza, on which the research is based.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-269) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612087837

9781282087835

1282087835

9781400826780

1400826780

OCLC:

496285699