ABSTRACT
Throughout the medieval period (eleventh to sixteenth centuries ce) Jews are minorities in two culturally distinct (and antagonistic) cultures, Islamic and Christian. Under both Jewish and Christian rulers Jews were treated as a legally disadvantaged but physically protected (at least in theory) minority group. The precise form of Jewish legal disadvantage varied greatly by time and place, but in general Jews had fuller access to economic activity in Islamic lands. The Egyptian Jewish community, for example, participated fully in mercantile and trading activities while at the same time developing autonomous institutions (such as soup kitchens) to handle internal economic affairs. Jewish writings from the milieu tended to reflect the sentiments from earlier texts, molded somewhat according to prevailing Islamic norms to make them more applicable to their own economic context.
