Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Note xiii PART ONE: LETTERS ABOUT THE POOR AND ABOUT CHARITY Introduction 3 Chapter One: Basic Themes 15 Chapter Two:Taxonomy: Structure and Conjuncture 32 Chapter Three: The Foreign Poor 47 Chapter Four: Indigent Captives and Refugees 68 Chapter Five: Debt and the Poll Tax 73 Chapter Six: Women and Poverty 83 Chapter Seven: Letters Regarding Public Charity 95 PART TWO: CHARITY LISTS Chapter Eight: Alms Lists 107 Chapter Nine: Donor Lists 164 PART THREE: EPILOGUE Chapter Ten: Poverty and Charity in the Fourteenth Century 191 List of Geniza Texts 199 Bibliography 203 Index 209

Promotional Information

This anthology will expand our understanding of what life was like at the time when Islamic civilization was at or near its peak. It makes an excellent companion to Cohen's other book, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Europe. -- Michael Bonner, University of Michigan Scholars and students of the Cairo Geniza, the medieval Muslim world, and the history of poverty and charity will find here a rich trove of newly-translated petitions, poor rolls, lists of benefactors, and letters of recommendation. They afford a rare view of the workings of charity and the world of the poor in the Middle Ages. -- Amy Singer, Tel Aviv University

About the Author

Mark R. Cohen is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a well-known authority on the Cairo Geniza and the history of the Jews in the medieval Islamic world. His books include "Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt" (Princeton), which won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish history in 1981; "Jewish Life in Medieval Egypt 641-1382", translated into Arabic, 1987; "The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena's Life of Judah"(Princeton); and, most recently, "Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages" (Princeton), which has been translated into Hebrew, Turkish, and German.

Reviews

Mark R. Cohen, Winner of the 2010 Goldziher Prize, The Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College