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A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo February 17–September 13, 2015

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A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo February 17–September 13, 2015 oi.uchicago.edu a cosmopolitan city 1 oi.uchicago.edu Exterior of a house in cairo (photo by J. Brinkmann) oi.uchicago.edu a cosmopolitan city MusliMs, Christians, and Jews in old Cairo edited by t asha vordErstrassE and tanya trEptow with new object photography by anna r. ressman and Kevin Bryce lowry oriEntal institutE musEum puBlications 38 thE oriEntal institutE of thE univErsity of chicago oi.uchicago.edu Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958594 ISBN: 978-1-61491-026-8 © 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America. The Oriental Institute, Chicago This volume has been published in conjunction with the exhibition A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo February 17–September 13, 2015 Oriental Institute Museum Publications 38 Published by The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 1155 East 58th Street Chicago, Illinois, 60637 USA oi.uchicago.edu Cover Illustration Fragment of a fritware bowl depicting a horse. Fustat. Early 14th century. 4.8 × 16.4 cm. OIM E25571. Catalog No. 19. Cover design by Josh Tulisiak Photography by Anna R. Ressman: Catalog Nos. 2–15, 17–23, 25–26, 30–33, 35–55, 57–63, 65–72; Figures 1.5–6, 7.1, 9.3–4 Photography by K. Bryce Lowry: Catalog Nos. 27–29, 34, and 56 Printed through Four Colour Print Group by Lifetouch, Loves Park, Illinois, USA The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Service — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ oi.uchicago.edu table of contents Foreword. Gil J. Stein ............................................................................................................................. 7 Preface. Jack Green ................................................................................................................................. 9 Introduction: Reconstructing Everyday Life at Fustat. Tasha Vorderstrasse and Tanya Treptow ......... 11 List of Contributors ............................................................................................................................. 14 Key Dates in the History of Fustat ....................................................................................................... 16 Maps . .................................................................................................................................................... 17 i. Religion and community 1. The Muslim Community of Fustat. Jonathan M. Bloom .................................................................... 21 2. The Oriental Institute Genizah Documents: A Glimpse of Jewish Life in Medieval Cairo. Michael G. Wechsler and Tasha Vorderstrasse ..................................................................................... 27 3. Christians of Fustat in the First Three Centuries of Islam: The Making of a New Society. Audrey Dridi ................................................................................................................................... 33 ii. community and thE puBlic sphErE 4. Fustat and Its Governor: Administering the Province. Arietta Papaconstantinou .............................. 43 5. Industries, Manufacturing, and Labor. Maya Schatzmiller ................................................................ 49 6. Linguistic Diversity at Fustat. Tasha Vorderstrasse ........................................................................... 53 iii. pErsonal connEctions 7. Childhood at Fustat: Archaeological and Textual Sources. Tasha Vorderstrasse ................................ 63 8. From Fustat to Palestine: Identifying Fatimid Jewelry Using the Genizah Documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue. Ayala Lester ..................................................................................... 69 9. Fustat: The Town, Its Inhabitants, Their Food. Paulina Lewicka ....................................................... 77 IV . community through timE 10. Observations on Antiquities in Later Contexts. Vanessa Davies ....................................................... 85 11. Fustat to Cairo: An Essay on “Old Cairo.” Donald Whitcomb ............................................................. 93 12. A History of Excavations at Fustat. Tanya Treptow .......................................................................... 99 v . catalog Religion ........................................................................................................................................ 111 Administration ............................................................................................................................ 142 Shabtis ......................................................................................................................................... 154 Education and Leisure ................................................................................................................. 158 Business and Industry ................................................................................................................. 170 Household Decoration ................................................................................................................. 182 Personal Adornment .................................................................................................................... 191 Dining ........................................................................................................................................... 200 Concordance of Museum Registration Numbers ................................................................................ 211 Checklist of the Exhibit ....................................................................................................................... 212 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 213 5 oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu f oreword gil J. stein direCtor, oriental institute t its best, a museum exhibit shows us beautiful things we’ve never seen before, and challenges us to understand those objects — and the cultures they represent — in new and different ways. The Oriental Institute’s new special exhibit A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo fulfills that goal in a very timely way. AFor most of us, the term “Egyptian Civilization” conjures up images of the ancient civilization of the pharaohs with its pyramids, magnificent temples, and opulent tombs. As true as those images may be, they are only part of the overall panorama of Egyptian history, which did not end with the Islamic conquest, but instead entered a new, different, and spectacular era with the art, architecture, and cultural achievements of medieval Islamic civilization. At the epicenter of Islamic Egypt was Fustat — Old Cairo — the early Islamic city that grew to be the metropolis of Cairo that we know today. The Oriental Institute has an extremely important collection of artifactual and textual material from Fustat in the seventh–twelfth centuries ad, and it tells a fascinating story. A Cosmopolitan City presents this rarely seen material as a way to explore the complex interaction of the Muslim, Coptic Christian, and Jewish communities that together made Fustat a vibrant city that in many ways foreshadowed the rich diversity of modern global urbanism. In Old Cairo, in ac- cordance with Islamic law, Christians and Jews were defined as monotheistic “People of the Book” who were allowed to practice their own religions and exercise a degree of communal self government. These three communities lived in their own neighborhoods, spoke different languages, and worshipped separately — in the famous Coptic “Hanging Church,” in the brilliant al-Azhar Mosque, and in the Ben Ezra Synagogue — but they interacted on a daily basis in their economic life and were closely connected in a shared way of life as citizens in the successive Abbasid, Fatimid, and Mamluk states centered around Fustat/Cairo. The written records — especially the treasure trove of documents from the Cairo Genizah (document repository) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue — show both the strong cultural identities and the complex inter-relationships of the communi- ties that constituted Old Cairo. Most notable among these are the documents in Judaeo-Arabic, a linguistic amalgam that clearly shows the influence of Muslim Arab culture on Jewish life in Cairo and elsewhere in North Africa. The exhibit high- lights the extent of these cultural interconnections by showing the objects of everyday life recovered by George Scanlon’s excavations in Fustat (1964–1980). Occasionally these artifacts show religious motifs, but mostly, were it not for textual records, we would be unable to determine whether the objects belonged to Muslim, Christian, or Jewish households. As seen in the exhibit, even the decorations on the Torah ark door of the Ben Ezra Synagogue would have been almost identi- cal to the decorations in many Muslim and Christian houses and public buildings. This suggests that these communities shopped in the same places and purchased goods made by the same artisans, and we can be confident that most people in Old Cairo were multi-lingual, whether to deal with the tax collectors, the shopkeepers, or their close neighbors. I want to thank guest curators Tasha Vorderstrasse and Tanya Treptow, along with Chief Curator Jack Green and Spe- cial Exhibits Coordinator Emily Teeter, for the wonderful
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