Princeton Geniza Lab Newsletters

The Princeton Geniza Lab is a collaborative space devoted to making the documentary texts of the Cairo Geniza accessible to scholars and the wider public.

The Lab hosts the Princeton Geniza Project, a searchable database of Geniza texts transcribed from the originals. It also hosts research and other projects that aim to extend the available corpus of Geniza documents.

Publications List

725 Publications
Book

Nurit Tsafrir, Ph.D. 1993

Offering the first close study of the ʿAqila, a group collectively liable for blood money payments on behalf of a member who committed an accidental homicide, Nurit Tsafrir analyses the group's transformation from a pre-Islamic custom to an institution of the Shari'a, and its further evolution through…

ISBN
9781108498647
Book

Abdelmajid Hannoum, Ph.D. 1996

Since the early 1990s, new migratory patterns have been emerging in the southern Mediterranean. Here, a large number of West Africans and young Moroccans, including minors, make daily attempts to cross to Europe. The Moroccan city of Tangier, because of its proximity to Spain, is one of the main gateways…

ISBN
9780812251722
Book

Boaz Shoshan, Ph.D. 1978

In Damascus Life 1480-1500: A Report of a Local Notary Boaz Shoshan offers a microhistory of the largest Syrian city at the end of the Mamluk period and on the eve of the Ottoman conquest. Mainly based on a partly preserved diary, the earliest available of its kind and written by Ibn Ṭawq, a local…

ISBN
Cloth: 9789004413252; ebook: 9789004413269
Book

Eric Lob, Ph.D. 2013

Based on over one hundred and thirty interviews with government officials, revolutionary activists, war veterans, and development experts, this is the first full length study in English to examine the significant yet understudied organization and ministry, Reconstruction Jihad, as a basis for understanding the…

ISBN
9781108487443
Book
Larry Benjamin Miller, Ph.D. 1984.

This book charts the evolution of Islamic dialectical theory (jadal) over a four-hundred year period. It includes an extensive study of the development of methods of disputation in Islamic theology (kalām) and jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh) from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries. The author uses the…

ISBN
9783030450113
Book

In From Schlemiel to Sabra Philip Hollander examines how masculine ideals and images of the New Hebrew man shaped the Israeli state. In this innovative book, Hollander uncovers the complex relationship that Jews had with masculinity, interrogating narratives depicting masculinity in the new state as a transition from weak,…

ISBN
Cloth: 9780253042057; paper: 9780253042064; ebooks: 9780253042071 and 9780253042095
Book

David Selim Sayers, Ph.D. 2014.

The “wiles of women” are a timeless literary theme, treated from ancient Egyptian narratives to 21st-century TV series. The theme reaches its greatest flowering in the Islamic world, beginning with the Qur’an and inspiring entire literary traditions in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The Wiles of Women as…

ISBN
Cloth: 9783447112871; ebook: 9783447199117
Book

Edited by Cornell H. Fleischer, Ph.D. 1982

The subject of this two-volume publication is an inventory of manuscripts in the book treasury of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II from his royal librarian ʿAtufi in the year 908 (1502–3) and transcribed in a clean copy in 909 (1503–4). This unicum…

ISBN
Set: 9789004402485; vol. 1: 9789004386983; vol. 2: 9789004402454; ebook: 9789004402508
Book

Special issue of Jewish History 32, nos. 2–4 (2019).

Contents

Introduction: A Handbook for Documentary Geniza Research in the Twenty-First Century.

ISBN
0334-701X
Book

Jane Hathaway, Ph.D. 1992

The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule assesses the effects of Ottoman rule on the Arab Lands of Egypt, Greater Syria, Iraq, and Yemen between 1516 and 1800.

Drawing attention to the important history of these regions, the book challenges outmoded perceptions of this period as a demoralizing…

ISBN
Cloth: 9781138643444; paper: 9781138643451; ebook: 9781003015079
Book

Translated from the German and annotated by Eric Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic…

ISBN
Cloth: 9781909942240; ebook: 9781909942417
Book

Uriel I. Simonsohn, Ph.D. 2008

The family stands at the centre of the present volume. Its networks of kinship and influence are a central tenet of Late Antique communities. The relations within the family and between the family and the community occupy an important place in Late…

ISBN
9789655362909
Book

Leor Halevi, B.A. 1994

In cities awakening to global exchange under European imperial rule, Muslims encountered all sorts of strange and wonderful new things—synthetic toothbrushes, toilet paper, telegraphs, railways, gramophones, brimmed hats, tailored pants, and lottery tickets. The passage of these goods across cultural frontiers…

ISBN
Cloth: 9780231188661; ebook: 9780231547970
Book

Translated by Tom Papademetriou, Ph.D. 2001.

A journey in time … a previous refugee crisis in the Mediterranean … the momentous historical events of 1922 seen through the eyes of third and fourth-generation descendants of those who lived and died through them.

This graphic novel dramatically tells the story of Greeks and…

ISBN
9781935244226
Book

Jocelyn Sharlet, Ph.D. 2002

Arabic literature is always an expression of its continued literary heritage. This volume, edited by Margaret Larkin and Jocelyn Sharlet, investigates innovative ways in which poets and writers challenge our understanding of the Arabic tradition in the global humanities.

ISBN
Cloth: 9783447111164; Paper: 9783447197878
Book

Edited and translated by Robert McChesney, B.A. 1967 and Ph.D. 1973, and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami.

This book comprises English translations of Nizhādnāmah-i Afghān (Afghan Genealogy) and Taẕakkur al-Inqilāb (Memoir of the Revolution), the culminating works of Fayż Muḥammad Kātib Hazārah’s monumental history of Afghanistan, Sirāj al…

Book

Edited by George Hatke, Ph.D. 2011.

South Arabia, an area encompassing all of today’s Yemen and neighboring regions in Saudi Arabia and Oman, is one of the least-known parts of the Near East. However, it is primarily due to its remoteness, coupled with the difficulty of…

ISBN
9781527530553
Book

Keiko Kiyotaki is an Associate Research Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

In Ottoman Land Reform in the Province of Baghdad, Keiko Kiyotaki traces the Ottoman reforms of tax farming and land tenure and establishes that their effects were the key ingredients of agricultural progress. These modernizing reforms…

ISBN
Cloth: 9789004366596; ebook: 9789004384347
Book

Simon Fuchs, Ph.D. 2015.

Centering Pakistan in a story of transnational Islam stretching from South Asia to the Middle East, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs offers the first in-depth ethnographic history of the intellectual production of Shi'is and their religious competitors in this …

ISBN
ISBN 978-1-4696-4978-8 cloth; ISBN 978-1-4696-4979-5 paper
Book

Hassan Khalilieh, Ph.D. 1995.

The doctrine of modern law of the sea is commonly believed to have developed from Renaissance Europe. Often ignored though is the role of Islamic law of the sea and customary practices at that time. In this book, Hassan S. Khalilieh highlights Islamic legal doctrine regarding freedom of the seas and its…

ISBN
9781108481458
Book

Aaron Rock-Singer, Ph.D. 2015

Following the ideological disappointment of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, an Islamic revival arose in Egypt. Yet, far from a mechanical reaction to the decline of secular nationalism, this religious shift was the product of impassioned competition among Muslim Brothers, Salafis and state institutions and…

Book

Najam Haider, Ph.D. 2007.

Engaging with contemporary debates about the sources that shape our understanding of the early Muslim world, Najam Haider proposes a new model for Muslim historical writing that draws on Late Antique historiography to challenge the imposition of modern notions of history on a pre-modern society. Haider…

ISBN
9781107026056
Book

Translated by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985.

Scent of the Trace is an expose of an Architect's inner dialogues during the design process. The book contains a detailed and extensive documentation of the internal struggle to conceptually ground and position three different works of architecture; Sancaklar…

ISBN
9781941806388
Book

Edited by Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ph.D. 1999.

This handbook is a detailed reference source comprising original articles covering the origins, history, theory and practice of Islamic law. The handbook starts out by dealing with the question of what type of law is Islamic law and includes a critical analysis of the pedagogical approaches…

ISBN
Cloth: 9781138803176; ebook: 9781315753881
Book

Luke Yarbrough, Ph.D. 2012.

runner-up for the 2020 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize

The caliphs and sultans who once ruled the Muslim world were often assisted by…

ISBN
9781108496605
Book

Yossef Rapoprt, Ph.D. 2002.

Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of Islamic cartography and the key Muslim map-makers who shaped the art over the centuries. Muslim geographers like al-Khwārazmī and al-Idrīsī developed distinctive styles, often based on geometrical…

ISBN
9781851244928
Book

Edited by Luke Yarbrough, Ph.D. 2012.

Tajrid sayf al-himmah li-stikhraj ma fi dhimmat al-dhimmah is a scholarly, Arabic-only edition of a text by 'Uthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī, which is also available in English translation from the Library of Arabic Literature as The Sword of Ambition. In this work addressed to…

Book

Edited by Mustafa Aksakal, Ph.D. 2003.

In a world grappling with refugee crisis, political unrest and economies on the verge of collapse, temporary migration has become an increasingly common phenomenon.

This volume presents a comprehensive picture of the transformative and development potential of temporary transnational…

ISBN
Coth: 9781138561281; eBook 9780429244346
Book

Translated by Alan Verskin, Ph.D. 2010.

In 1869, Hayyim Habshush, a Yemeni Jew, accompanied the European orientalist Joseph Halévy on his archaeological tour of Yemen. Twenty years later, Habshush wrote A Vision of Yemen, a memoir of their travels, that provides a vivid account of daily life, religion, and politics. More than…

ISBN
Cloth ISBN: 9781503607033; Paper ISBN: 9781503607736; Digital ISBN: 9781503607743
Book

Edited by Celene Ibrahim, B.A. 2008.

Comprised of the wisdom of over fifty scholars, preachers, poets, and artists, this anthology is born of the conviction that open-hearted engagement across our differences is a prerequisite for healthy civic life today. The collection offers…

ISBN
9781532645709
Book

Co-editor Edmund Burke, III, Ph.D. 1970.

This long-awaited book is a vivid history of Frelimo, the liberation movement that gained power in Mozambique following the sudden collapse of Portuguese rule in 1974. The leading scholar of the liberation struggle in Portuguese Africa, John Marcum completed this work shortly before his death,…

ISBN
• 9783319659862
Book

Co-editor Edmund Burke, III, Ph.D. 1970.

Published in 1974, Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam was a watershed moment in the study of Islam. By locating the history of Islamic societies in a global perspective, Hodgson challenged the orientalist paradigms that had stunted the development of Islamic studies and…

ISBN
Cloth: 9780226584645; paper: 9780226584782; ebook: 9780226584812
Book

The first book to explore the modern history of Islam in South Asia

The first modern state to be founded in the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the…

Book

Jane Hathaway, Ph.D. 1992.

Eunuchs were a common feature of pre- and early modern societies that are now poorly understood. Here, Jane Hathaway offers an in-depth study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the harem of the Ottoman Empire. A wide range of primary sources are used to analyze the Chief Eunuch's origins in East…

ISBN
9781107108295
Book

Samuel Helfont, Ph.D. 2015.

One of the first books to examine Iraqi state and Ba'th Party Archives, and the first book on this subject to use Ba'th Party records Provides a new explanation for Saddam Hussein's instrumentalizing of Islam in the 1990s and 2000s Offers a new explanation for the rise of religious insurgencies in post…
ISBN
9780190843311
Book

Translated by Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

For the public at large Shi’ism often implies a host of confused representations, suggesting more often than not obscurantism, intolerance, political violence and other ignominies running hot or cold in response to world events. In fact for many people, Shi’ism stands for "radical Islam", or –…

ISBN
Cloth: 9781138093706; paper: 9781138093737; ebook: 9781315106441
Book

Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu, Ph.D. 2012.

Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu, İslâm, İktisat, Ordu ve Reform isimli bu çalışmasında, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda kaleme alınmış ilk modern iktisat eseri olan Risâle-i Tedbîr-i…

Book

Daniel Stolz, Ph.D. 2013.

An observatory and a lighthouse form the nexus of this major new investigation of science, religion, and the state in late Ottoman Egypt. Astronomy, imperial bureaucrats, traditionally educated Muslim scholars, and reformist Islamic publications, such as The Lighthouse, are linked to examine the making of…

ISBN
9781107196339
Book

Edited by Ralph M. Coury, Ph.D. 1984

Arab debates about the critical relationship between religion and modernity began in the early nineteenth century. Such debates are now integral to the struggle for power between a variety of political groups and their opponents, and are vital to understanding the modern Middle East. This unique…

ISBN
Cloth: 9781784533373; paper: 9781838602055
Book

Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries brings together ten original studies on historical aspects of Sufism in this region. A central question, of ongoing significance, underlies each contribution: what is the relationship between Sufism as it was manifested in this region prior to the Russian…

Book

Yossef Rapoport, Ph.D. 2002.

About a millennium ago, in Cairo, an unknown author completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of thirty-five chapters, this book guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands, features, and inhabitants. This treatise, known as

ISBN
Cloth: 9780226540887; ebook: 9780226553405
Book

Yoav Di-Capua, Ph.D. 2004.

It is a curious and relatively little-known fact that for two decades—from the end of World War II until the late 1960s—existentialism’s most fertile ground outside of Europe was in the Middle East, and Jean-Paul Sartre was the Arab intelligentsia’s uncontested champion. In the Arab world, neither before nor…

ISBN
Cloth: 9780226499741; Paper: 9780226503509; ebook: 9780226499888