A compelling look at the Fatimid caliphate's robust culture of
documentation The lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909–1171)
survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a
synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by
medieval Jews. Marina Rustow tells the story of this extraordinary
find, inviting us to reconsider the longstanding but mistaken
consensus that before 1500 the dynasties of the Islamic Middle East
produced few documents, and preserved even fewer. Beginning with
government documents before the Fatimids and paper’s westward spread
across Asia, Rustow reveals a millennial tradition of state record
keeping whose very continuities suggest the strength of Middle Eastern
institutions, not their weakness. Tracing the complex routes by which
Arabic documents made their way from Fatimid palace officials to
Jewish scribes, the book provides a rare window onto a robust culture
of documentation and archiving not only comparable to that of medieval
Europe, but, in many cases, surpassing it. Above all, Rustow argues
that the problem of archives in the medieval Middle East lies not with
the region’s administrative culture, but with our failure to
understand preindustrial documentary ecology. Illustrated with
stunning examples from the Cairo Geniza, this compelling book advances
our understanding of documents as physical artifacts, showing how the
records of the Fatimid caliphate, once recovered, deciphered, and
studied, can help change our thinking about the medieval Islamicate
world and about premodern polities more broadly.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780691189529
Publisert
2019
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter