Books by Eve Krakowski
Introduction available here:
https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11205.html
Papers by Eve Krakowski
Worlds of Byzantium: Religious, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East, 2024
uncorrected proofs
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2021
Halper is the fragment of a codex that has been styled the 'oldest dated document of the Cair... more Halper is the fragment of a codex that has been styled the 'oldest dated document of the Cairo Genizah'. It preserves the opening of a Jewish legal document dated to the year (Seleucid era), which appears to have been copied into this codex, probably as a formulary, not long after this date, in the late th century. In this article, the text of this fragment, in Aramaic and Hebrew, is edited, and its identification as the beginning of a marriage contract (ketubbah) is evaluated. Its Egyptian provenance is questioned, partly because the earliest evidence for the introduction of the Seleucid era by Jews in Egypt dates from the mid-th century. The article surveys the history of Jewish dating methods in early medieval Egypt and the Near East, in an attempt to clarify this question. The specific date of the document deviates from the rabbinic calendar, but agrees with that of the contemporary Jewish Near Eastern sectarian groups of AbūʿImran al-Tiflı̄sıānd Ismaʿı̄l al-ʿUkbarı̄; this document could thus uniquely attest one of these sectarian Jewish calendars.
Jewish Quarterly Review, 2020
A short contribution to a forum celebrating 130 years of the Jewish Quarterly Review.
Jewish Quarterly Review, 2020
The full article is available here for free through June 30, 2020: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/7... more The full article is available here for free through June 30, 2020: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/755196. After that, if you'd like to read it and don't have access, please email me for a copy!
Jewish History , 2019
The Geniza preserves some of the densest and most detailed evidence for family life that we posse... more The Geniza preserves some of the densest and most detailed evidence for family life that we possess from the medieval Middle East. This essay examines how scholars have used this evidence to date and how they have not yet done so, in three parts. It first assesses Goitein's foundational work on women and the family-its strengths, its limitations, and its relationship to the study of the family in other historical fields. It then surveys the work that has been done since Goitein, which for many years focused primarily on the legal construction of marriage but has recently returned to asking more broadly based questions about kinship, households, and men's and women's lived experiences within marriage. The essay concludes by discussing some of the inherent constraints that the field faces moving forward and identifying some especially promising areas of future inquiry.
Jewish History, 2019
Table of contents and introduction to "Documentary Geniza Research in the 21st Century Century," ... more Table of contents and introduction to "Documentary Geniza Research in the 21st Century Century," a handbook published Dec 2019 as a triple issue of the journal Jewish History.
The Princeton Geniza Lab is expanding. Details in our first newsletter.
In the last 50 years, the study of the Jewish communities of the medieval Islamic world has chang... more In the last 50 years, the study of the Jewish communities of the medieval Islamic world has changed as research on Cairo Geniza documents has assumed a more central place in the field. Where historians used to characterize those communities as autonomous, self-enclosed, and hierarchical, Geniza-based work has emphasized their multiple points of contact with the state, their fluidity, and their networks of individual ties.
Yet we still know very little about how communal institutions actually worked, especially rabbinical courts. Whereas scholarship on Geniza legal documents has focused mainly on litigants and the cases they brought, we propose instead to pay closer attention to scribes and to the’ formal and formulaic features of the documents they produced.
Here, we use a single document to illustrate how formulae can provide evidence for the relationship between litigants and the institutions they approached for legal mediation—and especially for a bottom-up approach to legal change, in which the demands of litigants rather than of communal leaders led to legal change.
European Journal of Jewish Studies, Jan 1, 2007
According to a currently dominant interpretation, Ibn Dahud's Sefer ha-qabbalah presents a chrono... more According to a currently dominant interpretation, Ibn Dahud's Sefer ha-qabbalah presents a chronologically symmetrical schema of Jewish history that is intended to convey an esoteric messianic speculation. This paper argues that Sefer ha-qabbalah is neither esoteric nor deliberately schematic. Rather, it is a compilation of material drawn from a large number of varied sources, which is consistently organized in order to forward Ibn Dahud's primary polemical purpose of defending a particular historical narrative from competing claims put forth by Karaites, Christians, and others. The first part of this paper argues that the textual features underlying the esoteric interpretation can be better explained as reflections of Ibn Dahud's polemical aims and eclectic use of source material. The second part traces these characteristics through a detailed analysis of a key passage in Sefer ha-qabbalah, which deals with the chronology of the First and Second Temples; this analysis also addresses the question of chronological schematism in the work, which is examined more systematically in an Appendix. Finally, the last section applies this analysis towards a redefinition of the literary character of Sefer ha-qabbalah, and discusses Ibn Dahud's polemical use of history in relation to twelfth-century political circumstances and developments in historiography. eve krakowski 15 SHQ , ed. Cohen, 103; DMY fols. 24, 61-62 (Vehlow's ed. makes clear, how-
Conferences by Eve Krakowski
Book Reviews by Eve Krakowski
Jewish Review of Books, 2022
An amazing letter survives from An amazing letter survives from fourteenth-century Egypt. In it, ... more An amazing letter survives from An amazing letter survives from fourteenth-century Egypt. In it, an fourteenth-century Egypt. In it, an impoverished Jewish woman impoverished Jewish woman complained that her husband, a complained that her husband, a bellmaker named Bashir, had been bellmaker named Bashir, had been spending all his time at a Su spending all his time at a Su collective on the Muqattam collective on the Muqattam mountain near Cairo. Bashir's wife mountain near Cairo. Bashir's wife worried that he would end up worried that he would end up converting to Islam. Yet even if he converting to Islam. Yet even if he remained Jewish, she had no remained Jewish, she had no patience for his mystical devotions: patience for his mystical devotions:
The Journal of Religion, Jan 1, 2007
The Journal of Religion, Jan 1, 2007
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
Islamic Law and Society, 2020
Drafts by Eve Krakowski
A brief remembrance (written for the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies) of my teacher Norman Golb... more A brief remembrance (written for the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies) of my teacher Norman Golb, who died Dec. 29, 2020.
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Books by Eve Krakowski
Papers by Eve Krakowski
Yet we still know very little about how communal institutions actually worked, especially rabbinical courts. Whereas scholarship on Geniza legal documents has focused mainly on litigants and the cases they brought, we propose instead to pay closer attention to scribes and to the’ formal and formulaic features of the documents they produced.
Here, we use a single document to illustrate how formulae can provide evidence for the relationship between litigants and the institutions they approached for legal mediation—and especially for a bottom-up approach to legal change, in which the demands of litigants rather than of communal leaders led to legal change.
Conferences by Eve Krakowski
Book Reviews by Eve Krakowski
Drafts by Eve Krakowski
Yet we still know very little about how communal institutions actually worked, especially rabbinical courts. Whereas scholarship on Geniza legal documents has focused mainly on litigants and the cases they brought, we propose instead to pay closer attention to scribes and to the’ formal and formulaic features of the documents they produced.
Here, we use a single document to illustrate how formulae can provide evidence for the relationship between litigants and the institutions they approached for legal mediation—and especially for a bottom-up approach to legal change, in which the demands of litigants rather than of communal leaders led to legal change.