ABSTRACT
From the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, the Jews of Egypt flourished under the rule of the Fatimids. This is especially true of the large and affluent community residing in old Fustat, near the newly built Fatimid capital, Cairo. The elites of this Jewish community were merchants, physicians, officials in the Fatimid administration, and scholars, while the lower classes were engaged in a wide range of occupations. The Jews of medieval Egypt interacted on a daily basis with their surrounding Muslim and Christian society. Contemporary scholars of this fascinating community have at their disposal an unparalleled amount of information regarding everyday life, thanks to the discovery of the Cairo Geniza. 1
Most of the material in the Cairo Geniza can be characterized as literary, that is, full or partial compositions written for posterity, in almost every area of contemporary interest, both in Jewish thought and in the general sciences. Only a small percentage of the material is “documentary” in nature – personal and communal correspondence, court documents, business papers, bills of marriage and divorce, and the like. 2 These texts, written mostly in Judaeo-Arabic but also in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, tremendously enrich our understanding of the inner workings of the Egyptian Jewish society that created these documents, which has been dubbed “the Geniza society.” 3 Thus, any study of medieval Egyptian Jewry in the tenth to the thirteenth centuries relies heavily on Geniza documents, without which our knowledge of this Jewry would be extremely partial.
