The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue

by Marina Rustow

A compelling look at the Fatimid caliphate's robust culture of documentationThe lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909–1171) survived in an unexpected the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by medieval Jews. Marina Rustow tells the story of this extraordinary find, inviting us to reconsider the longstanding but mistaken consensus that before 1500 the dynasties of the Islamic Middle East produced few documents, and preserved even fewer.Beginning with government documents before the Fatimids and paper’s westward spread across Asia, Rustow reveals a millennial tradition of state record keeping whose very continuities suggest the strength of Middle Eastern institutions, not their weakness. Tracing the complex routes by which Arabic documents made their way from Fatimid palace officials to Jewish scribes, the book provides a rare window onto a robust culture of documentation and archiving not only comparable to that of medieval Europe, but, in many cases, surpassing it. Above all, Rustow argues that the problem of archives in the medieval Middle East lies not with the region’s administrative culture, but with our failure to understand preindustrial documentary ecology.Illustrated with stunning examples from the Cairo Geniza, this compelling book advances our understanding of documents as physical artifacts, showing how the records of the Fatimid caliphate, once recovered, deciphered, and studied, can help change our thinking about the medieval Islamicate world and about premodern polities more broadly.

Genres: History

621 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 14, 2020

Reviews

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent monograph on the state of documentary studies in medieval Middle Eastern history and how it has been underutilized in the past by scholars who favored the narrative sources. Inspires one to take another look at studying the quotidian and mundane instead of the grand moments of ruption.

[Revanth Ukkalam]

This book is definitely a masterclass for how archives and sources may be used. How elegantly she teases out the bureaucracy and in a strange way, the ethics, of state through parchments and paper. But it is not without problems - there is excessive to and fro in the narrative. Often details precede context, and likewise anecdotes occur before introductory notes. The author often could not decide the kind of book this would be; there is in the midst of supremely serious engagement with the archive, and heavy theory, some banal "reader-friendly" rambling in difficultly informal tones.

[Monica Mitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Positively brilliant. A landmark in Geniza studies, Fatimid studies, Judeo-Arabic studies, Arabic paleography, diplomatics, medieval Middle Eastern studies, and social history, to name the most obvious.