Correspondence and social control in the Jewish communities of the islamic world: A letter of the nagid Joshua maimonides

Abstract

The letters of the Cairo Geniza, extant in great numbers, have long been profitably exploited by historians to yield information about nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the medieval Mediterranean Islamic world. However, a study of the social functions of these letters can be equally enlightening. As the following discussion ? based on a hitherto unknown Geniza letter ? illustrates, in the Jewish communities of the Muslim world, letters and correspondence could serve as instruments of social control. Beyond that, parallels between this new Geniza letter and Arabic epistolary practice suggest an acculturative dimension that has yet to receive sufficient attention.