Date/Time
Date(s) - 2 Apr 2015
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Van Pelt Library
Category(ies) No Categories
University of Pennsylvania Medieval Studies Lecture Series:
Professor Marina Rustow, Johns Hopkins University
http://history.jhu.edu/directory/marina-rustow/
“Fatimid Decrees from the Cairo Geniza and the Middle East’s Archive
Problem”
Thursday, April 2th, 5:00 PM
Class of 1978 Pavilion, 6th Floor, Van Pelt Library
Historians have long lamented the dearth of archives and documents that
survive from the medieval Middle East. In fact there is abundant evidence
of a robust culture of written documentation, only much of it has survived
in an unexpected place: the discarded manuscript chamber of a medieval
Egyptian synagogue. This talk will focus on fragmentary decrees from the
chancery of the Fatimid caliphs (909-1171) and other government documents
that medieval Jews recycled for texts in Hebrew script. The premise is that
taking documentary texts seriously as objects, and thinking about their
afterlives, allows for a more granular portrait of the medieval Middle East
than has hitherto been possible. Doing so also bears implications for the
relationship between Middle East studies and the historical discipline.
Kislak Center, on the 6th Floor of Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.