The Ottoman Genizah
About this episode
This episode discusses the insights gained from Ottoman-era documents found in the Cairo Genizah, highlighting their significance in understanding Jewish and Ottoman history.
with Jane Hathaway hosted by Maryam Patton | What can a single, discarded scrap of paper reveal about life in Ottoman-era Cairo? In this episode, Jane Hathaway discusses her open-access book Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah . A genizah is a storeroom or repository where Jewish communities preserved worn-out texts and papers, especially those containing the name of God. Long famous for its medieval Jewish materials, the Cairo Genizah also preserves a rich and still understudied corpus of later Arabic- and Ottoman Turkish-script documents. The conversation explores some of this archive’s unexpected Ottoman afterlife, from Sharia court summaries and commercial records to petition letters, Sufi poetry, and an ilm-i hal primer on Islamic practice. The book, which presents the documents fully transcribed and translated with a scholarly commentary, sheds light on Jewish merchants and bankers, Ottoman officials, port customs in Damietta and Alexandria, sugar supplies bound for Istanbul, and the dense networks linking Cairo to the wider empire, and much more. The conversation also invites us to reflect on archives themselves: how documents survive, how scholars decipher them…
People in this episode
Host: Maryam Patton
Guest: Jane Hathaway
Topics covered
- Ottoman history
- Cairo Genizah
- Jewish history
- archival studies
- Islamic practice
- Sufi poetry
Keywords
- Cairo Genizah
- Ottoman documents
- Jewish merchants
- Islamic practice
- Sufi poetry
- archival research
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Cairo Genizah
Books & works: Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah
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- Architecture and Environment in the Medieval Maghreb
- Osmanlı ve Türkiye Sanayileşme Tarihi
- The Turkishness Contract
- A Confederate General in the Ottoman Capital
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