The next meeting of the Columbia University Seminar on Religion and Writing will be held via Zoom on Monday, March 28th, beginning at 2pm (EST). We are honored to have Professor Eve Krakowski (Princeton University) discuss her research on “Jewish Legal Documents Between Antiquity and the Abbasids: From Regional to Religious Scribal Traditions.”
An abstract follows below; all information is also available on our website: https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/islamicbooks/religionwriting/
If you would like to attend Dr. Krakowski’s talk, please RSVP to [email protected] by March 25th.
Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. University Seminar participants with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212.854.2388 or [email protected]. Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request. Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance.
“Jewish Legal Documents Between Antiquity and the Abbasids: From Regional to Religious Scribal Traditions.”
The earliest medieval Jewish legal documents at historians’ disposal survive in the Cairo Geniza – a small group of marriage contracts, private agreements, and property transfers from tenth-century Egypt, Syria, and Ifrīqiya. These documents reflect a remarkably coherent and well-developed writing culture that Jewish scribes employed throughout the Abbasid and post-Abbasid Middle East. Where had this scribal tradition come from, and how had Jews across such a wide stretch of territory come to adopt it? This talk will use the early Geniza legal documents as evidence for the evolution of Jewish documentary practices over the course of the first millennium.
