Medieval Egypt

,

Medieval Lives 7: Long Distance Relationships

,

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.

,

Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 5: The Year 598

,

Earthquake, and hiding kings, in Revelation, 14th century - (British Library)

Another year of drought, another of famine, and even more disasters pile on for the early-13th-century Egyptians. We also see Abd al-Latif make a surprising 20th-century appearance.

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

Sources:

  • Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.

  • Barber, Malcolm. The Crusader States. Yale University Press, 2012.

  • Dols, Michael Walters. The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton University Press, 2019.

  • Ellis, Richard. Imagining Atlantis. Knopf, 2012.

  • Modern, John. Neuromatic: Or, A Particular History of Religion and the Brain. University of Chicago Press, 2021.

,

Abd al-Latif Baghdadi 4: Consuming the Present

,

Image from the Luzerner Schilling, a 16th-century manuscript (Wikimedia)

What happens when the river fails to rise? In 597 (1200), Abd al-Latif found famine, crime, and cannibalism.

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

Sources:

  • Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.

  • Lev, Yaacov. Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt: From the 7th to the 12th Century. Edinburgh University Press, 2020.

  • Lewicka, Paulina B. Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean. Brill, 2011.

  • Traveling Through Egypt: From 450 B.C. to the Twentieth Century, edited by Deborah Manley & Sahar Abdel-Hakim. American University in Cairo Press, 2008.

,

Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 3: Harvesting the Past

,

The Sphinx, as it appears in Frederic Louis Norden's 1755 Voyage d'Égypte et de Nubie (Wikimedia)

Like many people ever since, and even now, Abd al-Latif was fascinated by Egypt's ancient sites and structures, the pyramids and the Sphinx. He was fascinated, but also disgusted with how their stones and contents had been treated as his contemporaries looked to them less with wonder, more with greed.

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

Sources:

  • Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.

  • Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.

  • Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.

  • Joosse, Peter. The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. Peter Lang, 2014.

,

Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 2: On Egyptian Flora and Fauna

,

Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. (The David Collection)

We continue the Abd al-Latif series and dig into his observations on Egypt, its plants and animals, the hybrid banana and the terrifying sea horse.

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

Sources:

  • Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.

  • Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.

  • Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.

  • Joosse, Peter. The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. Peter Lang, 2014.

Salah ad-Din 1: The City Victorious

Salah ad-Din

Salah ad-Din/Saladin part one, from birth into banishment to ruler of 12th-century Egypt. This is the story of the rise of the Ayyubid founder.

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

Sources:

  • Hiestand, Rudolf. "The Papacy and the Second Crusade," in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, edited by Jonathan Phillips & Martin Hoch. Manchester University Press, 2001. 

  • Lēv, Yaacov. Saladin in Egypt. Brill, 1999.

  • Lyons, Malcolm Cameron & Jackson, D.E.P. Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War. Cambridge University Press, 1982.

  • Maalouf, Amin. The Crusades through Arab Eyes. Saqi, 2012.

  • Man, John. Saladin: The Sultan who Vanquished the Crusaders and Built an Islamic Empire. Hachette Books, 2016.

  • Phillips, Jonathan. The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom. Yale University Press, 2008.

The Sons of Maimon 2: What's Done is Gone

The Medieval Nile

Moses and David ben Maimon make their home in Fatimid - soon to be Ayyubid - Egypt, where the Nile and caravan routes linked the Mediterranean ports to the Red Sea and the crossing to the coast of India, a crossing David would attempt to make. (MP3)

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


Sources:

  • The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, translated by Marcus Nathan Adler.  Philipp Feldheim, inc.

  • Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages Through the Early Modern Period, edited by Lawrence Fine. Princeton University Press, 2001.

  • Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. Oxford University Press, 1989.

  • Bareket, Elinoar. Fustat on the Nile: The Jewish Elite in Medieval Egypt. Brill, 1999.

  • Cooper, John. The Medieval Nile: Route, Navigation, and Landscape in Islamic Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press, 2014.

  • Bramoullé, David. "The Fatimids and the Red Sea (969-1171)," in Navigated Spaces, Connected Places. Archaeopress, 2012.

  • Davidson, Herbert, A. Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works. Oxford University Press, 2004.

  • Goitein, S.D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. IV: Daily Life. University of California Press, 2000.

  • Goitein, S.D. & Friedman, Mordechai A. India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Brill, 2007.

  • Halbertal, Moshe. Maimonidies: Life and Thought, translated by Joel Linsider. Princeton University Press, 2014.

  • Jacoby, David.  "The Economic Function of the Crusader States of the Levant: a New Approach," in Medieval Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond. Routledge, 2018. 

  • Kraemer, Joel L. Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds. Doubleday, 2010.

  • Margariti, Roxani Eleni. Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port. University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

  • Peacock, Andrew & Peacock, David. "The Enigma of 'Aydhab: a Medieval Islamic Port on the Red Sea Coast," in The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 2008.  

  • Udovitch, Abraham L. "Medieval Alexandria: Some Evidence from the Cairo Genizah Documents," in Alexandria and Alexandrianism: Papers Delivered at a Symposium Organized by The J. Paul Getty Museum and The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities and Held at the Museum, April 22–25, 1993. Getty Publications, 1996.