"Let's learn Turkish": a Turkish-Arabic glossary from the Cairo Genizah

This article discusses a Judeo-Arabic accounting book composed by a Jew who, it appears, served as an agent of one of the European consuls in Egypt. The accounting book, which seems to have been written in the 1560s, contains primarily lists of products bought by the agent and various other accounting notes; however, some of its pages contain a unique text – an Arabic-Turkish glossary composed by the agent, written in Hebrew letters. This glossary reflects the interest displayed by the Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Turkish language, an interest driven by both cultural and economic motives. In the past the accepted assumption has been that the Jews of the Empire spoke only Ladino or Arabic and had no command of Turkish. Studies published in the past few decades have disproven this assumption and exposed the deep involvement of the Jews of the Empire in Ottoman culture, and the command many of them – primarily men – had over the Turkish language. The finding discussed in this article joins previous findings on this topic, and teaches us that the interest in the Turkish language was not limited to member of the Jewish elite (doctors, courtiers, etc.), but can also be clearly identified amongst members of the Jewish middle class.