Coming of age in medieval Egypt : female adolescence, Jewish law, and ordinary culture / Eve Krakowski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Krakowski, Eve, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jewish women--Egypt--Social conditions--History--To 1500.

Jewish women.

Jewish women--Religious life--Egypt--History--To 1500.

Cairo Genizah.

Jewish women--Religious life.

Jewish women--Social conditions.

History.

Social conditions.

Egypt.

Young women--Egypt--Social conditions.

Domestic relations (Jewish law).

Local Subjects:

Young women--Egypt--Social conditions.

Domestic relations (Jewish law).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 350 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2018]

Summary:

This book is based on documents preserved in the Cairo Geniza, which are written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew script)-as well as on late ancient and medieval literary texts in these languages. This book considers how ordinary Jewish women fit into the social order of the tenth to thirteenth century Islamic Eastern Mediterranean, both as women and as Jews, and how two institutions central to that social order-kinship and law-shaped their lives.

Contents:

Part 1. Women in a patronage culture

Chapter 1: The family

Chapter 2: The courts and the law

Part 2. Unmarried daughters

Chapter 3: A ripened fig: age at first marriage

Chapter 4: The economics of female adolescence

Chapter 5: A virgin in her father's house: modesty, mobility, and social control

Part 3. Becoming a wife

Chapter 6: Marriage choices

Chapter 7: Defining marriage: legal agreements and their uses

Chapter 8: In the marital household.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

National Jewish Book Awards - Women's Studies, Winner, 2017

ISBN:

9780691174983

0691174989

9780691191638

0691191638

OCLC:

983824851