Copyright

Jane Hathaway

Published On

2026-03-12

Page Range

pp. 1–32

Language

  • English

Print Length

32 pages

Introduction

  • Jane Hathaway (author)
Chapter of: Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah (pp. 1–32)

The Introduction provides basic information on the Cairo Genizah and explains the differences between Genizah documents from the ‘classical’ era (11th–13th centuries CE) and those from the late Mamluk and Ottoman periods (late 15th century through the 19th century). It describes the lengthy tradition of scholarship on the ‘classical’ corpus while noting the growing body of innovative scholarship on the later documents, as well as revisionist views of the fundamental nature of ‘the Cairo Genizah’: this collection comprises not simply the contents of the unique second-floor storeroom of the Ben Ezra synagogue but also documents from numerous genizahs and from several cemeteries. After briefly addressing the history of Ottoman Egypt and its Jewish community, the Introduction ends with an overview of the subjects of the documents included in the book, as well as the manner in which they will be presented.

Contributors

Jane Hathaway

(author)
Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at Ohio State University

Jane Hathaway is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1992; while at Princeton, she worked on the medieval Genizah under the direction of Mark R. Cohen. She is a specialist in the early modern history of the Ottoman Empire and, in that context, on the Ottoman Arab provinces, the Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch, and Jewish communities under Muslim rule. Her publications include The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge, 1997), A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen (SUNY, 2003), The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker (Cambridge, 2018), and The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800. (2nd ed. Routledge, 2020), as well as scores of articles and book chapters on related topics and on reactions in Egypt and Yemen to the movement of the Jewish messianic figure Sabbatai Zevi.