Ebook: Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt

Contents; Acknowledgments; Note; Introduction; Chapter One: A Taxonomy of the Poor; Chapter Two: The Foreign Poor; Chapter Three: Captives, Refugees, and Proselytes; Chapter Four: Debt and the Poll Tax; Chapter Five: Women and Poverty; Chapter Six: "Naked and Starving," the Sick and Disabled; Chapter Seven: Beggars or Petitioners?; Chapter Eight: Charity; Chapter Nine: Conclusion: Poverty and Charity, Continuity and Acculturation; Bibliography; Index of Geniza Texts; General Index.;What was it like to be poor in the Middle Ages? In the past, the answer to this question came only from institutions and individuals who gave relief to the less fortunate. This book, by one of the top scholars in the field, is the first comprehensive book to study poverty in a premodern Jewish community--from the viewpoint of both the poor and those who provided for them. Mark Cohen mines the richest body of documents available on the matter: the papers of the Cairo Geniza. These documents, located in the Geniza, a hidden chamber for discarded papers situated in a medieval synagogue in Old Cai.