Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'

The manuscript collections of the Bodleian Library contain a corpus of dozens of documents from the archive of Moses ben Judah. A leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria, he was also a prominent businessman and in contact with individuals from Cairo to Sicily. This collection of documents at th...

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Главный автор: Arad, Dotan
Формат: Online
Язык:английский
Опубликовано: Open Book Publishers 2025
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Online-ссылка:https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/104428
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author Arad, Dotan
author_browse Arad, Dotan
author_facet Arad, Dotan
author_sort Arad, Dotan
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description The manuscript collections of the Bodleian Library contain a corpus of dozens of documents from the archive of Moses ben Judah. A leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria, he was also a prominent businessman and in contact with individuals from Cairo to Sicily. This collection of documents at the Bodleian likely did not emerge from the Cairo Genizah, but from another depository, and appears to have been buried at some point. The documents, which include letters and deeds, shed light on the world of the Jewish elite of a Mediterranean city at the end of the Middle Ages, their communal and business life, connections between Jewish communities, and intellectual trends and tastes among educated Jews. They improve our understanding of the lives of Alexandrian Jews in the late Middle Ages and provide new data about the local leadership and its relations with the Nagidate (the central Jewish leadership) in Cairo, the cantors, the poll tax and its effects, and more. We hear about tensions within this society and the growing presence of European (Italian, Greek, Iberian, and conversos) Jews within the complex social mosaic of Egyptian Jewry in the late Mamluk period. The documents inform us about Alexandria’s Jewish community and the commercial networks of the Mediterranean world, in which Jews traded alongside Christians and Muslims. This volume makes an important contribution to the study of Judaeo-Arabic at a watershed moment. Sources from the late Mamluk period show Judaeo-Arabic at a linguistic border between Classical and Late Judaeo-Arabic. The volume will therefore further readers’ knowledge of historical linguistics of Arabic in general, and Judaeo-Arabic in particular. The phrase ‘Wisdom and Greatness in One Place’ in the title of the book is a quotation from the Babylonian Talmud (Giṭṭin 59a), the meaning of which is that it is rare to find combined in one man political leadership and intellectual pre-eminence.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1632072025-07-29T20:12:24Z Wisdom and Greatness in one Place' Arad, Dotan Archival material;Moses ben Judah;Egyptian Jewry in the late Mamluk period;Judaeo-Arabic;Late Middle Ages;Mediterranean trade thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DND Diaries, letters and journals thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CJ Language teaching and learning thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDJ European history: medieval period, middle ages The manuscript collections of the Bodleian Library contain a corpus of dozens of documents from the archive of Moses ben Judah. A leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria, he was also a prominent businessman and in contact with individuals from Cairo to Sicily. This collection of documents at the Bodleian likely did not emerge from the Cairo Genizah, but from another depository, and appears to have been buried at some point. The documents, which include letters and deeds, shed light on the world of the Jewish elite of a Mediterranean city at the end of the Middle Ages, their communal and business life, connections between Jewish communities, and intellectual trends and tastes among educated Jews. They improve our understanding of the lives of Alexandrian Jews in the late Middle Ages and provide new data about the local leadership and its relations with the Nagidate (the central Jewish leadership) in Cairo, the cantors, the poll tax and its effects, and more. We hear about tensions within this society and the growing presence of European (Italian, Greek, Iberian, and conversos) Jews within the complex social mosaic of Egyptian Jewry in the late Mamluk period. The documents inform us about Alexandria’s Jewish community and the commercial networks of the Mediterranean world, in which Jews traded alongside Christians and Muslims. This volume makes an important contribution to the study of Judaeo-Arabic at a watershed moment. Sources from the late Mamluk period show Judaeo-Arabic at a linguistic border between Classical and Late Judaeo-Arabic. The volume will therefore further readers’ knowledge of historical linguistics of Arabic in general, and Judaeo-Arabic in particular. The phrase ‘Wisdom and Greatness in One Place’ in the title of the book is a quotation from the Babylonian Talmud (Giṭṭin 59a), the meaning of which is that it is rare to find combined in one man political leadership and intellectual pre-eminence. 2025-07-29T20:12:23Z 2025-07-29T20:12:23Z 2025-07-28T13:21:21Z 2025 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/104428 9781805110705 9781805110712 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/163207 eng Semitic Languages and Cultures open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/104428/1/obp.0352.pdf Open Book Publishers 10.11647/OBP.0352 10.11647/OBP.0352 b014b543-78bd-4c3b-bc71-b68e2ac855b9 9781805110705 9781805110712 552 Cambridge open access
spellingShingle Archival material;Moses ben Judah;Egyptian Jewry in the late Mamluk period;Judaeo-Arabic;Late Middle Ages;Mediterranean trade
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DND Diaries, letters and journals
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CJ Language teaching and learning
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDJ European history: medieval period, middle ages
Arad, Dotan
Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'
title Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'
title_full Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'
title_fullStr Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'
title_full_unstemmed Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'
title_short Wisdom and Greatness in one Place'
title_sort wisdom and greatness in one place
topic Archival material;Moses ben Judah;Egyptian Jewry in the late Mamluk period;Judaeo-Arabic;Late Middle Ages;Mediterranean trade
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DND Diaries, letters and journals
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CJ Language teaching and learning
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDJ European history: medieval period, middle ages
topic_facet Archival material;Moses ben Judah;Egyptian Jewry in the late Mamluk period;Judaeo-Arabic;Late Middle Ages;Mediterranean trade
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DND Diaries, letters and journals
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CJ Language teaching and learning
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDJ European history: medieval period, middle ages
url https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/104428
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