Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt » (New Edition)

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 publications include more than 80 articles and reviews and several books, among them: "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.

"Cohen has made the first comprehensive book-length attempt to study the subject of poverty in a premodern Jewish community. This book is an important contribution."--Miriam Hoexter, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"Cohen's book constitutes a significant contribution both to the study of the Jewish world of medieval Egypt and to the study of poverty and charity in medieval society generally."--Amy Singer, Tel Aviv University

Yossef Rapoport - International Journal of Middle East Studies

This book will undoubtedly be required reading for anyone interested in the study of poverty and charity, both in medieval Islam and in the Jewish tradition. Because its source material is so exceptionally rich, it can be argued that it is also an important contribution to the understanding of non-European premodern charitable institutions. The lucid presentation of the material, especially the translated documents in the companion volume, make this work very useful for undergraduate and graduate students.