11th century

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Medieval Lives 7: Long Distance Relationships

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Detail from Piri Ries’ 16th-century map of Cairo - (Wikimedia)

With all the medieval travel featured on the podcast—the trips across the Mediterranean, the Asian Steppe, and the Indian Ocean—of course we focus on the travellers themselves, the people actually making those trips, but whether they were merchants, envoys, or otherwise, they often left people behind, family that they were separated from for years at a time.

This episode is about those separations, the difficulties they caused, and what people did (or did not do) about them. We start with a letter from a merchant in Palermo, Sicily, move to one from an India trader in Aden, and finish with a pair of Rabbinic responses regarding a married couple in Egypt.

If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.

3 Things:

  1. Article by Heather Dalton on the travels of a cockatoo to 13th-century Sicily.

  2. Article by Minjie Su about four medieval love stories.

  3. Blog post about the correspondence of a "happy family" in 2nd-century Egypt.

Sources:

  • Goitein, S.D. Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders. Princeton University Press, 1973.

  • Hofmeester, Karin. “Jewish Ethics and Women’s Work in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Arab-Islamic World.” International Review of Social History 56 (2011): 141–64.

  • Melammed, Reneé Levine. “He Said, She Said: A Woman Teacher in Twelfth-Century Cairo.” AJS Review 22, no. 1 (1997): 19–35.

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Medieval Lives 6: Wuhsha the Broker

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Fragment of testimony on Wuhsha’s child - (Princeton Geniza Project)

Today's episode takes us to medieval Egypt, to old Cairo in the 11th and 12th century, to Fustat, to the Fatimid Caliphate during the period of the First Crusade, and to the life of a medieval woman named Wuhsha al-dallala who stands out in her time for strength, independence, and wild financial success (through lending and investment in trading ventures, including one to Gujarat, India). Her history comes to us through the fragments of the Cairo Geniza, in legal documents, and in a will.

If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.

Sources:

  • Abramson, Henry. "Wuhsha the Broker Jewish Women in the Medieval Economy." December 6th, 2012, lecture.

  • Frenkel, Miriam. "Charity in Jewish Society of the Medieval Mediterranean World." In Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions, edited by Miriam Frenkel & Yaacov Lev. Walter de Gruyter, 2009.

  • Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society, Volume III: The Family. University of California Press, 1978. 

  • Goitein, S. D. “A Jewish Business Woman of the Eleventh Century.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 57 (1967): 225–42.

  • Goitein, S. D. & Friedman, Mordechai Akiva. India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Brill, 2008.

  • Hoffman, Adina & Cole, Peter. Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. Knopf, 2011.

  • Zinger, Oded. Women, gender and law: Marital disputes according to documents of the Cairo Geniza. Princeton University, 2014.

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Holinshed: The Scottish Source

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Scene from the 1577 Holinshed’s Chronicles - (British Library)

Today we step outside the usual medieval travel subject matter on the podcast for a look into William Shakespeare's historical source for the story of Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and of course, King of Scotland, or at least of Alba.

That story takes us to a 16th-century man named Reginald Wolfe, to Holinshed's Chronicles, and to the 11th-century doings of some familiar figures, of Duncan, Banquo, Macduff, Malcolm, and the rest. There are some familiar scenes, such as at Dunsinane Castle, but there are also unfamiliar elements like the murder of King Duffe, from which Shakespeare did a little borrowing.

If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.

Sources:

  • Holinshed, Raphael. Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. J. Johnson, et al., 1808.

  • The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles, edited by Felicity Heal, Ian W. Archer, & Paulina Kewes. Oxford University Press, 2013.

  • McLuskie, Kathleen. Macbeth. Northcote House, 2009.

  • Patterson, Annabel. Reading Holinshed's Chronicles. University of Chicago Press, 1994.

  • Plomer, Henry Robert. A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1900.

  • Shakespeare, William. Macbeth, edited by Sandra Clark & Pamela Mason. Bloomsbury, 2015.