This project examines the relationship between Jewish legal practice and social ties in medieval Egypt by reconstructing the world of a twelfth century Jewish court scribe. Abū Saʿīd Ḥalfon b. Menasse Ibn al-Qaṭāʾif served as a scribe of the central Jewish court in Egypt during the years 1100-1138. An extensive dossier of documents related to Ḥalfon has survived in the Cairo Geniza, including hundreds of legal documents, letters from his close family circle, petitions he composed for needy Jews, and fragments of literary works copied in his hand. As a court scribe, Ḥalfon occupied a pivotal position connecting the Jewish elite, communal institutions, and the Jewish legal tradition to ordinary Jews. As such a middleman, he can serve as an Archimedean point for a study that combines the view from below and the view from above and offers an integrative analysis of law and community of the period. Using Social Network Analysis (SNA )on the extensive correspondence of Ḥalfon’s circle and legal documents in his hands to both visualize and analyze the networks in which he partook. Combining Social Network Analysis with a traditional close reading of letters, quantitative study of court records, and a comparison with other microhistories of Egyptian scribes will offer an unparalleled view of how Jewish law worked in practice and reveal its embeddedness in the social networks of the Jewish community.
The project is headed by Dr. Oded Zinger .
Also working on the project are:
Mr. Yiftach Eitans, who is an MA student in the Jewish History Department. He is interested in the social and cultural history of Jews in Islamic lands in the Middle Ages, with a focus on Geniza documents.