Abstract
Mustaʿrib is a term that refers to the local Arabic-speaking Jews in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. The article discusses the Mustaʿrib community of Cairo in the late sixteenth century. Like other Medieval Jewish communities, the Mustaʿrib of Cairo had an advanced system for support of the needy. It included regular support for the poor, for widows and orphans, and occasional help for foreign travellers, captives, and more. Based on Genizah documents in Judaeo-Arabic, the article discusses the mechanism of welfare in that community and proves the influence of European Jewish immigrants on the construction of this system. The Mustaʿribs are romanticised in classic Zionist historiography as deeply rooted farmers. The article argues that the Mustaʿribs were first and foremost members of an urban population. It also suggests that contrary to the classic image of them as a fixed and unchanging population, which resided in the same area for successive generations, the Mustaʿrib society should be viewed as a society in motion. They adjusted to historical changes, were influenced by other Jewish cultures, and applied changes to improve their welfare system.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 258-272 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2 Sep 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean.
Funding
82On Jewish captives held by the St John Knights of Malta, see Meir Benayahu, “R. Samuel Aboab’s Letters to the Palestinian Sages Held Captives in Malta and Messina”, Journal of Maltese Studies 3 (1966): 68–74; Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 109–35; Abraham David, To Come to the Land: Immigration and Settlement in Sixteenth-Century Eretz-Israel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), pp. 11–12, 16–17. 83On the support of the foreign travelers in the Fātimid and Ayyūbid periods, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, II, 135-6; Moshe Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden: Brill, 1976), p. 112; Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 72-108. On the Mamlūk period, see Arad, “Documents in Arabic and Judeo-Arabic”, 451–4. 84For recommendation letters for travelers in the Mamlūk period, see Cohen, Voice of the Poor, 193–8; Dotan Arad, “Syria’s Links with the Jews of Cairo in the 15th and 16th Centuries”, Fragment of the Month, Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit’s website, August 2009. http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/fotm/august-2009/ (accessed 25 September 2017). 85T-S NS 225.74. 86’כ היינדע הרמל ךרדל הדצ .הצפ י הייואניכרפכ הרמל ךרדל הדצ (CUL Or. 1080 J 253). 87For further discussions on the geographic location of Kfar Kanna, see Arad, “The Community as an Economic Body”, 50, n. 141. 88Wolf D. Hüetteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine: Trans-Jordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlangen: Palm and Enke, 1977), p. 187. 89JTS MS 9160.9, 1v. 90ENA NS 1.57. 91 T-S AS 206.208. 92 CUL Or. 1080 J 253.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Cairo Geniza |
Keywords
- Cairo Genizah
- Charity
- Jews of Egypt
- Judaeo-Arabic
- Mustaʿrib jews
- Ottoman egypt