Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt

Introduction
POVERTY AND CHARITY IN CHRISTENDOM
"POVERTY, UNDERSTOOD in the usual sense of 'destitution,' was a permanent feature of the Middle Ages." With these words, Michel Mollat opens his classic study The Poor in the Middle Ages.1 Thanks in good measure to the scholarly leadership of Mollat beginning in the 1960s, the history of the poor has come to occupy an important place in the study of non-elites in premodern Europe, as part of the new social history--"history from below"--to which the French Annalistes and their heirs have contributed so much. The present book owes much to the work of these scholars as well as to the pioneering work of S. D. Goitein on the social and economic history of the Jews in the medieval Arab world. It constitutes a first book-length attempt to probe comprehensively the actual, lived experience of the poor and the mechanics of charity in one particularly well-documented place and period of the premodern Jewish past--medieval Egypt. With its nearly unique access to the actual voice of the poor through the Cairo Geniza, it strives to write "history from below" and "history from above" together.2
Normally a study like this would seek its historiographical context within the Islamic world. But, while charity forms one of the five cardinal religious obligations of every Muslim, a well-developed research literature on poverty and charity in Islam does not yet exist. The recent growth of research on the idea of poverty and poor relief in the Islamic world has been long overdue, and the present work sees itself as part of that new field.3 To the extent possible, given the current state of scholarship, this book draws comparisons with the majority society and, in turn, sheds light on the Islamic case, even on some hitherto not sufficiently appreciated aspects of the latter.
Normally, too, a study like the present one would lean on research about poverty and charity in Judaism, both in antiquity and in medieval Europe. Unfortunately, and surprisingly given the centrality of the religious duty (misva) of charity, sedaqa, in Judaism, that field of Jewish history is similarly underdeveloped.4 Thus the theoretical models and many of the questions this study asks come not from the world of Islam or from the world of Judaism but from the orbit of Christendom, where research has been in progress for decades.
For many reasons, a community such as the one that lies at the center of this study is precisely where the research on poverty and charity in medieval Judaism ought to begin. First of all, as stated, it is particularly well documented compared with other parts of the Jewish world in the Middle Ages. Moreover, the Jews of Egypt belonged to the Near East, where rabbinic (preceded by biblical) Judaism was born, and where, under the leadership of the great yeshivot of Babylonia (Iraq) in the early Islamic period, the foundations of medieval Jewish culture both in the Near East and in Europe were laid.5 In addition, during the period covered by this study the vast majority of world Jewry still lived in the orbit of Islam. When communities like Fustat (Old Cairo) in Egypt could boast having a Jewish population of seven thousand and Alexandria three thousand in the mid-twelfth century, according to the famous Spanish Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, the largest communities in the Ashkenazic lands of Latin Europe held perhaps no more than five hundred souls.
This book, therefore, stands as a point de d�part for those seeking to investigate the subject of poverty and charity in the premodern Jewish world in general. Assuming, as is proper, that the Judaeo-Arabic community studied here represents some modicum of continuity with earlier Judaism in the Near East, where differences with the European world seem to exist European specialists will have to ask whether these differences reflect the particular environment of Christian Europe, and why.6 Conversely, since Jewry in medieval Europe is known to have perpetuated Jewish traditions transferred via the trade routes from the Near East to the northern shores of the Mediterranean and from there to inner Europe, the present study attempts to determine to what extent distinguishing characteristics of poverty and Jewish charity in the Islamic world reflect the Islamic milieu.
It is in the vast and sophisticated body of literature about poverty and charity in Christianity, however, that I found ideas and approaches that I could apply fruitfully to the Jewish community of Egypt. Principles and structural phenomena discussed by the Annales school of social history, as well as by others, turned out to have relevance to the Jewish case, even though my research lies in the orbit of Islam and not the world of Christianity.