Books by Phillip I Lieberman
The Guide to the Perplexed: A New Translation, 2024
The Fate of the Jews of the Early Islamic Near East, 2022
In this book, I revisit one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the r... more In this book, I revisit one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood based on agriculture and move into urban crafts and long-distance trade.
Cambridge History of Judaism, 2021
Volume 5 examines the history of Judaism in the Islamic world from the rise of Islam in the early... more Volume 5 examines the history of Judaism in the Islamic world from the rise of Islam in the early sixth century to the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth. This period witnessed radical transformations both within the Jewish community itself and in the broader contexts in which the Jews found themselves. The rise of Islam had a decisive influence on Jews and Judaism as the conditions of daily life and elite culture shifted throughout the Islamicate world. Islamic conquest and expansion affected the shape of the Jewish community as the center of gravity shifted west to the North African communities, and long-distance trading opportunities led to the establishment of trading diasporas and flourishing communities as far east as India. By the end of our period, many of the communities on the "other" side of the Mediterranean had come into their ownwhile many of the Jewish communities in the Islamicate world had retreated from their highwater mark.
Articles by Phillip I Lieberman
Quaderni di Studi Arabi, 2021
The Jews of the medieval Islamicate world were avid consumers and producers of history. In this a... more The Jews of the medieval Islamicate world were avid consumers and producers of history. In this article, I discuss the major modes of historical writing among the Jews of the period and introduce the question of how that historical writing was used by those Jews. In considering the Sitz im Leben of historical writing, I explore the role of internal communal apologetic, anti-sectarian polemic, inter-religious attack, political support and challenge, entertainment, the contextualizing of philosophy, consolation after adversity, and preparation for eschatological redemption. I pay particular attention to the rewriting of Others' histories-Christian, Islamic, and Jewish sectarian-and the role these often-popular rewritten histories played in medieval Jewish society. This panoply of historical writing challenges an important scholarly view that Jewish consumption of history was minimal and served a limited range of "religious" needs within the medieval Jewish community.
Jewish Quarterly Review, 2021
Jewish Law Association Studies, 2019
Using evidence from the Cairo Geniza, I revisit the oft-cited view of Jewish marriage as the "pur... more Using evidence from the Cairo Geniza, I revisit the oft-cited view of Jewish marriage as the "purchase" of a bride. Relying on the work of those who connect "partnership" and "marriage", I argue that the term "qinyan"--often translated as "acquisition"--should be understood as effecting a change in legal status between individuals that denotes them as marital partners rather than as acquirer and acquired.
Daimon, Quaderni di diritto e politica ecclesiastica, 2019
Jewish History, 2018
Goitein's Mediterranean Society is remarkable and paved the way for a generation-indeed, generati... more Goitein's Mediterranean Society is remarkable and paved the way for a generation-indeed, generations-of scholars. In this brief note, I discuss some of the fundamental questions Goitein left unanswered.
Jewish History , 2018
As the densest single corpus of documents pertaining to everyday life in the medieval Middle East... more As the densest single corpus of documents pertaining to everyday life in the medieval Middle East and Islamic world before the 1250s, the Cairo Geniza material has been mined to investigate not only the economic roles of Jews in the Islamicate world they inhabited but also the relationship between merchants and the state, the structure of business ties, the nature, market share, and circulation of specific commodities, monetization, and geographies of trade connecting the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Building on more than half a century of Geniza scholarship on the medieval economy, recent work has highlighted the role of legal institutions in economic transactions, has elaborated on the question of the typicality of Jewish economic actors in the Islamicate marketplace, and has deepened the inquiry into regional and transregional economies.
In this essay, some of the central issues concerning the legal phraseology of commercial contract... more In this essay, some of the central issues concerning the legal phraseology of commercial contracts in the Geniza are discussed. These issues include not only questions about the text of these contracts themselves and the relationship of commercial contracts to Jewish and Islamic law but also what insights commercial contracts in the Geniza might offer social and economic historians into how both court practice and business were actually conducted in the medieval Islamic Mediterranean. Following this brief discussion are a transcription and a translation of an actual thirteenth-century business agreement.
Jewish law has long faced the problem of individual litigants seeking multiple answers to a singl... more Jewish law has long faced the problem of individual litigants seeking multiple answers to a single halakhic question in order to select what they found to be the most favorable ruling. In this article, I examine the role that forum shopping for legal opinions played in the Jewish community of the medieval Islamic world. Individuals often made recourse to multiple juristic authorities, whether those authorities were leaders serving the geonic academies of Babylonia and the land of Israel or local jurists. I discuss some of the strategies the geonim and local jurists used to reduce competition between judicial rulings and how local judges utilized the various responsa composed on their behalf by these authorities or presented to them by litigants to bolster their case before the Jewish court. In so doing, I aim to refine our understanding of the social and legal role of rabbinic responsa in the medieval Islamic world by suggesting that this literature served as expert testimony to support one side or the other in a particular case rather than as the definitive record of the court's ruling in that case.
Do formal Arabic legal terms which have been appropriated into Judeo-Arabic maintain their Arabic... more Do formal Arabic legal terms which have been appropriated into Judeo-Arabic maintain their Arabic meanings and serve as loanwords, or do they take on a specific Jewish valence and serve as loan shifts? In this paper, I examine a number of such terms and their usage in the documentary sources of the Cairo Geniza and conclude the latter.
Conventional wisdom holds that judges ought to be emotionless. Occasional counterclaims, however,... more Conventional wisdom holds that judges ought to be emotionless. Occasional counterclaims, however, have posited compassion as an essential element of judicial wisdom.
When compassion is thus privileged, it is understood as uniquely parental. We use as our lens two examples, one ancient and one modern: the disqualification, in the Babylonian Talmud, of childless men from judging capital cases on the ground that they are “devoid of paternal tenderness,” and Judge Julian Mack’s vision of the early 20th century juvenile court judge as a “wise and merciful father.” In both narratives
judges are asked to have the capacity for empathy, which is believed to spark compassion, which in turn is predicted to manifest in mercy. In neither narrative, however, is this empathic arc seen as critical for judging in the ordinary case. A contemporary study showing the jurisprudential impact of fathering daughters represents a modern iteration of the judge-as-caring-parent meme.
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Books by Phillip I Lieberman
Articles by Phillip I Lieberman
When compassion is thus privileged, it is understood as uniquely parental. We use as our lens two examples, one ancient and one modern: the disqualification, in the Babylonian Talmud, of childless men from judging capital cases on the ground that they are “devoid of paternal tenderness,” and Judge Julian Mack’s vision of the early 20th century juvenile court judge as a “wise and merciful father.” In both narratives
judges are asked to have the capacity for empathy, which is believed to spark compassion, which in turn is predicted to manifest in mercy. In neither narrative, however, is this empathic arc seen as critical for judging in the ordinary case. A contemporary study showing the jurisprudential impact of fathering daughters represents a modern iteration of the judge-as-caring-parent meme.
When compassion is thus privileged, it is understood as uniquely parental. We use as our lens two examples, one ancient and one modern: the disqualification, in the Babylonian Talmud, of childless men from judging capital cases on the ground that they are “devoid of paternal tenderness,” and Judge Julian Mack’s vision of the early 20th century juvenile court judge as a “wise and merciful father.” In both narratives
judges are asked to have the capacity for empathy, which is believed to spark compassion, which in turn is predicted to manifest in mercy. In neither narrative, however, is this empathic arc seen as critical for judging in the ordinary case. A contemporary study showing the jurisprudential impact of fathering daughters represents a modern iteration of the judge-as-caring-parent meme.