ABSTRACT
The Egyptian communities of the period under review were no
less intellectually creative than many other Jewish centers of the
time; however, their overall literary output is not particularly im
pressive. This may be due to the constant migration of Jews to
larger towns, which prevented any type of continuity within each
community, while new arrivals made cultural continuity even more improbable. Furthermore, the many tongues spoken by Egyptian
Jewry did not encourage a large circulation for books or periodicals
in any one language. Under these conditions, local culture-both Arabic and Islamic-had little impact on Jewish culture. In the
nineteenth century it either fell under west-European influence or age-long orthodox traditions.
