Mark R. Cohen | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 11, 1943 |
| Occupation(s) | Scholar, professor, author |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Brandeis University Jewish Theological Seminary Columbia University |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Princeton University |
| Website | https://nes.princeton.edu/people/mark-cohen |
Mark R. Cohen (born March 11,1943) is an American scholar of Jewish history in the Muslim world.
Cohen is Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor Emeritus of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. [1] He is a scholar of the history of Jews in the Middle Ages under Islam. [2] [3] His research relies greatly on documents from the Cairo Geniza. [2] From 1985 until his retirement in 2013,Cohen led the Princeton Geniza Lab,which aims to make the Cairo Geniza's corpus available and searchable online. As of 2023,the database contains 400,000 documents. [4] The project was headquartered at the Shelomo Dov Goitein Geniza Research Lab,where many of Goitein's books and notes are stored,but is now separate.
Cohen earned his undergraduate degree at Brandeis University,his master's degree at Columbia University,and his doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Cohen won the 1981 National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish History category [5] for his book Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt:The Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews,ca. 1065-1126. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. [6]
In 2014,Cohen was a visiting professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. [7]
Dhimmī or muʿāhid (معاهد) is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligation under sharia to protect the individual's life, property, as well as freedom of religion, in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax, in contrast to the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects. Dhimmi were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.
Solomon Schechter was a Moldavian-born British-American rabbi, academic scholar and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of American Conservative Judaism.
The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole based on religious doctrines of supersession, which expect or demand the disappearance of Judaism and the conversion of Jews to other faiths. This form of antisemitism has frequently served as the basis for false claims and religious antisemitic tropes against Judaism. Sometimes, it is called theological antisemitism.
The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th and 19th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
Dhimmitude is a polemical neologism characterizing the status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, popularized by the Egyptian-born British writer Bat Ye'or in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a portmanteau word constructed from the Arabic dhimmi 'non-Muslim living in an Islamic state' and the French (serv)itude 'subjection'.
Stefan Clive Reif is professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He was born in Edinburgh. He has a PhD from University College London and a Doctor of Literature from Cambridge.
Egyptian Jews constitute both one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. The historic core of the Jewish community in Egypt mainly consisted of Egyptian Arabic speaking Rabbanites and Karaites. Though Egypt had its own community of Egyptian Jews, after the Jewish expulsion from Spain more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to migrate to Egypt, and then their numbers increased significantly with the growth of trading prospects after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. As a result, Jews from many territories of the Ottoman Empire as well as Italy and Greece started to settle in the main cities of Egypt, where they thrived. The Ashkenazi community, mainly confined to Cairo's Darb al-Barabira quarter, began to arrive in the aftermath of the waves of pogroms that hit Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
Shelomo Dov Goitein was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza.
Rabbi Solomon Aaron Wertheimer, was a Hungarian rabbi, scholar, and seller of rare books.
Moshe Gil was an Israeli historian.
Norman Arthur Stillman, also Noam, is an American academic, historian, and Orientalist, serving as the emeritus Schusterman-Josey Professor and emeritus Chair of Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma. He specializes in the intersection of Jewish and Islamic culture and history, and in Oriental and Sephardi Jewry, with special interest in the Jewish communities in North Africa. His major publications are The Jews of Arab Lands: a History And Source Book and Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity. In the last few years, Stillman has been the executive editor of the "Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World", a project that includes over 2000 entries in 5 volumes.
The Pact of Umar is a treaty between the Muslims and the non-Muslim that were conquered by Umar during his conquest of the Levant in the year 637 CE that later gained a canonical status in Islamic jurisprudence. It specifies rights and restrictions for dhimmis, or "people of the book," a type of protected class of non-Muslim peoples recognized by Islam which includes Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and several other recognized faiths living under Islamic rule. There are several versions of the pact, differing both in structure and stipulations. While the pact is traditionally attributed to the second Rashidun Caliph Umar ibn Khattab, other jurists and orientalists have questioned this attribution with the treaty being instead attributed to 9th century Mujtahids or the Umayyad Caliph Umar II. This treaty should not be confused with Umar's Assurance of safety to the people of Aelia.
The Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon was a communication written by six elders of the Karaite Jewish community of Ascalon and sent to their coreligionists in Alexandria nine months after the fall of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The contents describe how the Ascalon elders pooled money to pay the initial ransom for pockets of Jews and holy relics being held captive in Jerusalem by the Crusaders, the fate of some of these refugees after their release, and the need for additional funds for the rescuing of further captives. It was written in Judeo-Arabic, Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet.
Jacob Lassner is an American writer and Jewish studies academic. He is the Philip M. & Ethel Klutznick Professor of Jewish civilization Emeritus at Northwestern University and former Director of the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies. Lassner specializes in Medieval Near Eastern history with an emphasis on urban structures, political culture and the background to Jewish-Muslim relations.
Sasson Somekh was an Israeli academic, writer and translator. He was professor emeritus of Modern Arab Literature at Tel Aviv University.
The production and consumption of wine has been widespread in the Middle East and has been tolerated to varying extents by different religious groups. Islam forbade all intoxicants (khamr) and even pressed grape juice for Muslims. Wine was traded and used among the Jews, at least in Egypt, including for sacramental purposes, and had to be prepared by Jews according to stated practices. Many Christian monasteries in the region made and sold wine to raise revenue. Finally, the Zoroastrian communities of Persia continued to make and drink wine after the Islamic conquest.
Marina Rustow is an American historian and the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East at Princeton University. She is a 2015 MacArthur Fellow. Her work focuses on the study of Judeo-Arabic documents found in the Cairo geniza and the history of Jews in the Fatimid Caliphate.
Sar Shalom ben Moses HaLevi, also called Zutta, was the last of the Egyptian geonim. He controversially held office in Fustat as the nagid of the Egyptian community from 1170 to 1171 and again from around 1173 to 1195, during which he was excommunicated several times by Maimonides for tax farming.
Maṣliaḥ ben Solomon ha-Cohen, alternatively Matzliach, was a Gaon and the leader of the Palestinian Gaonate in Fustat, the principal Talmudic academy and central legalistic body of the Jewish community in Palestine. He also held the title of Ra'is al-Yahud, from at least 1127 until his possible murder in 1139. After his death, the Gaonate split between Damascus in Syria and Fustat in Egypt.
Cohen is one of the most important scholars of his generation in the study of the history of Jews in the Islamic world.
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