Public Lecture and Masterclass with Maya Shatzmiller: "The Use and Abuse of the Genizah Documents"

Public Lecture: “The Use and Abuse of the Genizah Documents: The Genizah and Medieval Economic History: Judeo-Islamic Symbiosis or Misconceptions? Four Cases”

Sixty years have passed since S. D. Goitein first drew attention to the Genizah documents as a unique source for writing the economic history of the Middle East, among other.  Since then, the work of researchers further documented how important are these medieval quantitative data. Recently, however, the content and the interpretation of the Jewish traders’ letters from the Geniza, became a subject of debate and controversy, suggesting that a review of the use of the Geniza documents may be in order.

In the first lecture I examine four cases where I used quantitative data from the Genizah in the reconstruction ofthe economic structures of the medieval Middle East and raise questions about their indiscriminate use.

In the second lecture (masterclass) I will examine the empirical evidence of the model, based on the Genizah documents, that economic interaction in the Islamic Middle East was grounded in informal institutions. I suggest that the assimilation of this model with inefficient cultural beliefs and collectivist behaviour attributed to Islamic societies raises concerns of empirical and methodological nature.

The lecture takes place on Wednesday, 6 November, 6:00-8:00 pm at Amalienstraße 73A, room 112.

Masterclass: “The Use and Abuse of the Genizah Documents: The Genizah, the Maghribi Traders’ Debate, and Collectivist Muslims: How the Genizah Documents Enabled Global Underdevelopment Theory”

The masterclass takes place on Thursday, 7 November, 2:00-4:00 pm at Edmund-Rumpler Straße 13, room B 112.