The Truth of the Matter: A Study of Jewish Women’s Healthcare in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza

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My term paper for my Judaism Under Crescent & Cross Theology class:

Spanning from roughly 950-1250 CE, the Geniza period was the time in which the Cairo Geniza obtained the majority of its four hundred thousand letters, leaflets, and other literary texts of the Jewish community throughout Fatimid Egypt and beyond.1 Even with such an abundant trove of sources however, much of women’s lives, specifically in regard to women’s ability to receive healthcare, must be read between the lines of the Geniza documents. Not only are the vast majority of women nameless and thus trackless in the Geniza’s collection, but many of the letters concerning women’s health are penned by men. This leaves modern historians largely viewing women’s health through the male gaze. Yet even with such a limited vantage, the accessibility Jewish women had to medical treatment during this time is not lost but rather intricately woven into the fabric of Jewish society under the medieval Muslim caliphates. Thus, I will argue that Jewish women during the Geniza period in Egypt received greater access to healthcare due to the unification of the Muslim world, but were hindered by the economic and religious duties of the men in their lives. 

Jewish women living under Muslim rule in Egypt during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries likely received substantial access to healthcare. For example, in a Geniza letter dated February 1141 CE, a man by the name of ‘Amram ben Yiṣḥaq describes the ongoing illness of his wife and her various treatments to a man scholars believe is her relative.2 ‘Amram writes how his wife has been suffering from  “lethargy, palpitations, and fainting spells for over a year and a half.”3 While it’s possible that ‘Amram wrote his wife’s family a previous letter detailing her symptoms that the Cairo Geniza no longer has, the fact that he goes into such detailed descriptions indicates that this may be the first time his wife’s family was hearing of her illness. This is cause for suspicion as to why the couple would have waited so long to tell her family of her illness, since her symptoms are not minor inconveniences but rather major obstructions to her daily life. Although it’s unclear why ‘Amram and his wife waited so long to tell her family, it does not seem that they waited nearly as long for her to receive treatment. According to her husband, she already has undergone multiple rounds of treatment from different medical professionals, which indicates that women had access to more doctors than strictly female physicians or midwives, who primarily worked in women related health issues and remedies. ‘Amram first wrote how his wife “was treated for ‘the obstruction of the heart (inqifāl al-qalb) mentioned by al-Raībī in the Manṣūrī, but the medicine only made matters worse.”4 Written by one of the most famous Muslim physicians of the ninth and tenth centuries, the Manṣūrī was largely based on the Greek medical texts translated from Greek to Arabic due to Muslim scholars’ translation work from the Library of Alexandria.5 Since the sender and his wife lived in Alexandria, it seems that although they weren’t Muslims, they were still in the city that had access to these classical medical texts, and their physicians seem to have had access to such works, as well, even as dhimmis living under Muslim rule. Yet it’s also essential to note that due to the fact ‘Amram’s wife was treated with this Muslim scholar’s work, her physicians here were likely men, for Jewish female physicians, typically, were not permitted into medical schools and learned their trade primarily from oral tradition.6 

But as ‘Amram notes, the medicine did nothing to cure his wife but instead amplified her symptoms. The only details ‘Amram mentions about her previous treatment is that she received some form of medication, which likely would’ve been a prescription. Unlike modern society where physicians simply write a prescription and pharmacists prepare them, in the Geniza period, druggists and doctors operated in separate spheres and the doctor was the one in charge of preparing the prescription.7 This, in and of itself, may have had the possibility of reducing Jewish women’s access to healthcare in the Geniza period, depending on the sex of the physician. If, as previously inferred, ‘Amran’s wife’s physicians were men, her symptoms may have been exasperated by the medicine as opposed to being relieved because of the fact that rabbinic texts during this time and era, including the Babylonian Talmud, more often than not prohibited women from receiving examinations by male doctors in the name of “modesty” and “shame.”8 While this law most likely had been designed as a means of protecting Jewish women from the possibility of being taken advantage of by male physicians, it also could have simultaneously and unintentionally hindered the healthcare that Jewish women received from Jewish men, since male Jewish doctors could have, at best, simply listened to the symptoms of their female patients and then prescribed what they thought was best, even without fully examining the women of the Jewish community. 

On the contrary, Jewish women living under the Muslim caliphates may have gotten around this impediment through letters. Due to the fact that Jews during the twelfth century in Egypt were all living under Fatimid rule, they all spoke the same language of Judaeo-Arabic and could communicate with other Jews in different parts of the Arabic speaking world through letters and other written requests. Consequently, Jewish physicians could receive detailed descriptions of a patients’ illness and could then diagnose them and prescribe medication for them without having to examine the patient at all.9 Although to modern ears this may sound like an ineffective and frequently inaccurate healthcare system, since misdiagnosis is more likely to occur if the doctor has not physically seen and felt a patient’s body, in the twelfth century this would have been a huge bonus to healthcare, particularly for Jewish women. For Jewish women could still have received the treatment and indirect care of male physicians and their classical education without disobeying the Talmud, granting them greater access to treatment while following their religious laws and practices. Thus, the communication networks in the Muslim world, specifically Egypt, may have allowed Jewish women greater access to and a higher form of medical care. 

It is also essential to note, as previously mentioned, that this system of remote diagnosis was not always beneficial for women, or for patients in general, since misdiagnosis was more likely to occur with remote treatment. ‘Amram details to the recipient how following his wife’s medication failure, “Midwives were summoned to treat her for ‘the illness of women’ – hysteria – by the application of oils and fats.”10 While it would have made logical sense for the midwives to have first attended ‘Amram’s wife before the male doctors, since midwives were allowed to touch and examine female patients in ways male physicians were not, the reason why midwives were asked to attend ‘Amram’s wife is given as “hysteria.” This diagnosis came from the ancient Greek physician Galen’s theory of the “wandering womb,” which claimed that women’s wombs would “wander” around their bodies and, in extreme cases, would press against their lungs, causing the patient to have difficulty breathing.11 As stated earlier, because of the revival of Greek medicine due to the translation work of Muslim scholars under the Muslim caliphates, it’s likely that this diagnosis came from prominent Arabic medical texts during this time. This indicates that although Jewish women may have been diagnosed with what physicians today would refer to as a misdiagnosis due to the revival of classical medical tests in medieval Egypt, Jewish women were not denied medical treatment but rather sent to see female physicians to address women specific health concerns. Therefore, it seems that Jewish women of the Geniza period first received healthcare from the general physicians of the day, which were usually men, and would then see a female physician if their symptoms were not improved by the first round of treatment. 

In this vein, it seems that although the male physicians were the primary care doctors during the Geniza period for both male and female Jews, Jewish women such as ‘Amram’s wife still had access to female healthcare by fellow women. This would have also certainly been a more comfortable environment for her to personally relate her symptoms in their entirety to these midwives and to receive in person treatment. Jewish midwives of the Geniza period were more likely, as previously mentioned, to have received their education through oral tradition as opposed to “medical school,”or apprenticeship to a physician, because of both dhimmi and patriarchal restrictions; consequently, only the men of the Jewish community would have had access to the cutting-edge medicine of the day,12 and were thus likely the first line of defense for all peoples during this time. This switch to the midwives’ care also suggests that the midwives were a respected sect of the medical profession, even if they were reserved strictly for women’s healthcare and specified issues. A part of this distinction may be in part to ensure the specific details and insights into women’s health remained, as Monica Green states, “within a community of women.”13 The separation of male and female health may have negatively impacted Jewish women, since the first line of defense appears to have been doctors that most likely were males, which means that Jewish women may have had to wait longer to hear a physician’s response via letter, as opposed to seeing a physician in person and receiving a prescription right then and there. Thus, Jewish women may have had to undergo more than one treatment to cure their illness, and their symptoms could have even been exasperated by the physician’s medicine. Nevertheless, the fact that women were given both the ability to see female practitioners and to be treated in tandem with the male physicians of Fatimid Egypt allowed Jewish women to receive both the Greek training that Jewish males received from their Muslim counterparts and the oral practices and traditions from their female predecessors. 

At the same time, it also seems that Jewish women may have received another benefit regarding their health from living under Fatimid Egypt – access to the top physicians in the caliphate, even for those who did not live in the capital. ‘Amram ends his letter by asking his wife’s relative “to convey his wife’s medical history to the physicians of the capital, so that ‘perhaps she will attain some relief.’”14 Here, we find the purpose of the letter. The husband seems to write this letter from Alexandria to the capital of the Fatimid caliphate, Fustat, both out of love and worry, the latter trait I note from the haphazardly written script in the upper and right margins of the parchment.15 These crammed lines not only indicate the author’s rush but that he is detailing every minute fact he can about his wife’s sickness in order to give the Fustat physicians the best possible chance to successfully diagnose his wife’s illness. Normally, the hundred forty one miles between Alexandria and Fustat would have been a challenge for most of the populace of twelfth century Egypt, even more so for religious minorities and for women for both safety and proprietary purposes. Yet because ‘Amram’s wife already had a relative in the capital city and that both the writer and the recipient lived under Fatimid rule, it seems likely that ‘Amram was able to not only reach out to his wife’s family in a relatively timely fashion but was able to utilize the recipient’s connections to the top physicians in the caliphate, which may have not been solely restricted to Jewish doctors but Muslim and Christians, as well. Thus, it seems quite possible that through their own family connections and efficient mailing system, Jewish women living in Fatimid Egypt were able to receive extensive healthcare due to the communication networks in the greater Muslim world. 

Although the shared culture and language of the Muslim caliphates allowed communication between Jews to expand and therefore granted Jewish women several options in regard to medical care, it also may have limited their autonomy in choosing which healthcare options they received. To argue this point, on July 21, 1137 CE, an unnamed physician in Silifke, Anatolia penned a letter to “his sister’s husband, presumably in Fustat.”16 Similarly to the previous letter, the author is writing to family in the Fatimid caliphate, albeit he himself is under Abbasid rule, one of the competing Muslim caliphates. Despite the fact that the recipient and the sender live under different governments, they are not only able to speak and read the same language of Judaeo-Arabic, but they are also able to still send and receive letters from one another despite a lack of political unification. This back and forth letter writing between caliphates means that Jews were still able to connect and were living under similar cultures in spite of the fact that this fracture in the Muslim world made communication between Jews more difficult than in previous centuries. Consequently, Jewish physicians were still able to communicate with their patients, even across the Mediterranean Sea. 

The author opens his letter “with a discussion of the fertility of his sister,” though recently, she has not been able to conceive at all “due to her emaciated state.”17 While the previous letter indicated that women’s health and specific issues was a subject reserved only for midwives and other female medical professionals, this letter here suggests that the previous line dividing general and specifically female health has been either dissolved or does not exist for this case, allowing men into what was often thought to be a female only space. This entering of men into this woman’s health issue may be partially due to the issue the physician was specifically referencing – infertility. Unlike the previous letter, which sought to address the pain of the writer’s wife with no mention of her fertility whatsoever, the writer of this letter is specifically addressing the inability of his sister to conceive children with no mention if the wife is suffering any physical discomfort or not.

Along these same lines, famous Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides wrote in his Mishneh Torah that “It is forbidden to expend semen to no purpose,”18 since Jewish men were commanded to “be fruitful and multiply.” Thus, anything other than procreative sex seems to have violated the religious stipulations Jewish men were bound to, although it’s essential to note that Jewish women were not required to follow this commandment. Still, men cannot “be fruitful” without women, so the fact that the doctor directly addressed his sister’s infertility to her husband as opposed to her may indicate that because his wife’s medical problem was impacting him and his religious obligation, her health concern may have constituted more than simply an error of her body. This current struggle for his sister to become pregnant may suggest both to the community and to the husband that he was not fulfilling his religious duty to produce offspring. Thus, it seems possible that since the wife’s medical condition was causing the husband to possibly be seen or to feel as though he was not fulfilling his commandment by God, the physician and the husband may have felt like it was permissible and even righteous for them to step into the sphere of women’s health. 

Comparably, Maimonides’ “Decree on Menstrual Purity,” written in 1176 CE stipulated that Egyptian Jewish men had the right to divorce their wives while gaining ownership of her dowry if their wives did not follow rabbinic law for menstrual purification “because the sin of sexual transgression cannot be borne nor pardoned nor neglected, … we (men) would be blamed for their (women’s) sin.”19 It seems hence that Jewish men held themselves accountable for women’s sins regarding religious purity, especially concerning religious commandments, for they believed that any sin on the part of the woman could consequently cause them to sin, as well. While this rationale very likely stemmed from Jewish men’s devotion to their faith and willingness to keep God’s commandment, it seems possible that this devotion may have led them to be particularly vigilant regarding the religious and sexual purity of their wives, even in regard to their wives’ healthcare. In consequence, this entanglement of male religious obligations with women may have caused this physician to write to his sister’s husband as opposed to his sister directly in order to help his brother-in-law ensure he could produce male heirs and consequently keep his obligation to God. 

Although historians do not have any previous letters between the recipient and the writer, meaning we do not know explicitly how the sister’s husband felt about her infertility, it’s possible that he needed reassurance that his wife could conceive again, for the physician writes how “(his) own wife never conceived except with medication.”20 The physician’s normalized mention of his own wife’s infertility indicates that such a matter in women’s health was not only not uncommon but also constituted as more than simply a women’s health issue, which therefore allowed him to breach this dividing line of male and female healthcare. In this vein, the writer reassures the recipient that even though “My sister did not become pregnant despite the many medicines, (i)f you were here, I would fix her pregnancy, by my life, even after she had ceased bearing children.”21 Consequently, it appears that although the physician, or possibly one more local to his sister, prescribed her some form of medicine that did not do the trick, he is adamantly reinforcing to the husband that he can get his sister pregnant, possibly even after her menopause. 

Despite the fact that we don’t have any indication of the wife’s feelings of everything transcribed in this letter, it’s quite possible that she may have very well wanted children and was asking her husband to write this letter. However, since the physician is writing this letter to his brother-in-law as opposed to his sister, with no mention of advice or words to be passed along to his sister, it seems that this may not be a conversation she is intended to be a part of. This terse manner in which he described his sister’s reproductive ability suggests that the male author is more concerned with helping the husband maintain his religious duty as a husband as opposed to the potential well being and wishes of his sister, since mortality during childbirth was a serious threat to and possibility for medieval women, including the Jews living in the Geniza period.22 Through this lens, it appears that while the standardization of Juadisum under the Muslim world allowed Jewish women greater access to healthcare and multiple referrals, the overarching dominance of male physicians and male oversight as a whole in medieval Egyptian society may have caused men to enter this sphere of women’s health whenever they felt that women’s health issues were impairing their abilities to fulfill their religious obligations. Nevertheless, it’s simultaneously possible that Jewish women during this time were not completely silenced but rather had, to a certain extent, the ability to exercise autonomy over their own healthcare. 

During the Geniza period, it seems that Jewish women could push back against male interference in their healthcare and still had a decent amount of access to such healthcare under Muslim rule. To showcase this, a letter dated c.1216 CE to a man possibly by the name of Abū l-Majd Meir ben Yakhin in Fustat was sent from an unknown location. The sender is also unknown, yet they “urge the addressee to come see his sister, who is very sick,” for “she has a throbbing pain in her hip, a burning pain in her heart, a nonhealing wound in her right thigh; and her tongue is dry.”23 Instead of using another piece parchment to detail all of this woman’s symptoms, the writer crams these descriptions into the side margins of the leaflet,24 indicating that they are possibly trying to write and send this letter as quickly as possible and thus shares the urgency of the first letter. It appears that the author is desperately concerned for the woman’s brother to come see her due to the woman’s great suffering. The author also writes how the recipient’s sister “prays to God that she will see the addressee’s face before she dies.”25 In a rare glimpse into the woman’s thoughts on her health, it’s clear that she does not have hopeful views on the situation, and thus it’s quite possible that she may have requested the author to write this letter on her behalf. This means that Jewish women seem to have had respect from the men in their lives and the ability to speak in regard to their feelings on their health, and that their thoughts could carry weight and cause some action on the subject of their healthcare. And like the previous letters, this was written in Judaeo-Arabic, meaning it was likely sent from another part of the Arabic speaking world. While it’s possible that this sender may be that one family member who prefers to embellish certain crises in order to unite the family, the fact that the writer quotes the woman directly gives her the strongest voice out of any of the women in the three letters and affirms the stress of the situation: 

When (the recipient’s) brother said to her, “Let her take the rhubarb-barberry pastille and make it… and hopefully [the pain] will be abate,”… she said, “I do not want any of this unless he obtains a prescription, and the prescribing physician prepares it for me and sends it.”26

While previous documents showed a one-sided monologue about the health of the woman’s body, here, the author gives insight into both the inner workings of the family dynamics in the Jewish community during the Geniza period and that women could and did have the ability to reject treatments they did not see as beneficial to their health, even if their male relatives felt otherwise. The recipient’s brother mentioned above seems certain that this specific concoction will cure his sister, but it seems odd that he, according to the author, said that the family should make this medication for her instead of requesting a prescription from a physician. Although the author of the letter does give a reason why her brother wishes to make her medicine instead of purchasing it, it’s possible that cost may have been his rationale. For even though the Jews had vast trading networks throughout the Mediterranean basin, meaning Jews in medieval Egypt had access to medications made from ingredients all over the Mediterranean region, these foreign ingredients likely would have made medicine a somewhat expensive item for purchase.27 Additionally, since the physicians were the ones making this medication, a physician’s fee would have been included, making high cost a factor that possibly played into the family’s decisions on the healthcare of the recipient’s sister.

This still seems harsh though, for if this woman is on her deathbed, it would have seemed reasonable that the letter’s sender may have asked the recipient in Fustat to send money; but that request is also not noted. Regardless of the reason why this brother wants to make his sister’s medication, the sister adequately refuses to take the homemade version of the medication, requesting that the doctor himself or herself make and send it to her, as well as the brief detail that she wants the said brother to request the prescription for her. In this vein, in contrast to the previous section of the letter where she is begging God to let her see the recipient’s face before she dies, she does not seem like she’s given up hope on the condition of her health. Instead, it looks as if she wants the medication that may possibly save her, but her male relative won’t allow her to receive the prescription her body needs. Although it’s unclear why she wants or possibly needs her brother to write the request for her prescription, it’s evident that she is in a precarious place. Her brother acknowledges that she is sick, acknowledges that she needs this medication, but refuses to request the medicine made by the experts. And while the description in the letter only notes two ingredients in the medication, Jewish scholar and Geniza expert S.D. Goitein writes: 

Twenty and more ingredients in one medicament seem to have been commonplace. The knowledge of medical plants, inherited by the Greeks and then expanded widely through the influx of Indian, Persian, and local elements, comprised about three thousand items according to an Arabic hand-bo28ok of commerce written in about 1150. 

In essence, it would have been nearly impossible to recreate a medication made by a trained medical professional, making the sister’s insistence on a prescription medicine all the more logical. Thus, it seems even more strange that the brother will not order his sister’s prescription, yet it is telling that the sister specifically requests the physician and their prescription. As the first letter indicated, physicians seemed to have treated both male and female patients somewhat regularly in order for her to make such a request, and the woman must have seen or at least spoken with a physician at some point in order for the family to know exactly what medication she needed. This means that although Jewish women during the Geniza period did have extensive access to healthcare, they did not have the final say if their male guardians or relatives refused to financially support their health decisions. Consequently, it seems probable that while Jewish women could exercise agency over their health to an extent, when it came to certain matters involving prescriptions that were almost always prescribed and made by men, they were dependent upon the men in their family to support them. In summary, Jewish women during the Geniza period may have had extensive access to healthcare due to common language and culture in medieval Egypt, yet they were also inhibited when their health concerns bled into the religious and economic factors impacting the men in their lives.

Jewish women during the Geniza period in Egypt obtained extensive access to healthcare due to the unification of the Muslim world until their health concerns reached into the religious and economic spheres of their male relatives. While Jewish women benefited from various treatments from physicians and midwives, the ability to seek advice from other doctors through distant family, and prescriptions sent from different parts of the caliphate, they also had their women-only health sphere invaded whenever men felt it was their religious or economic responsibility to do so. When studying Jewish women, or quite frankly the Jewish community as a whole, under Muslim rule,  it may be easy to assume that the religious power of the government would dictate every detail of the dhimmi’s lives, and that the Jews would have to live by the Muslim laws as opposed to their own. However, the truth of the matter seems that Jewish women’s access to healthcare centered more around the standardization of Judaism as opposed to the establishment of the Muslim caliphates, the latter which allowed Jews to solidify their religion after centuries of living under a vast array of leaders. Thus, the Jewish women’s access to healthcare during the Geniza period depended primarily on the codification and standardization of Judaism and in some ways was expanded due to not so much the specific laws and stipulations of Islam, but rather, the fact that Jews were living under the same government, spoke the same language, and experienced the same culture for the first time in hundreds of years.

  1.  Princeton Geniza Project, “Frequently Asked Questions,” Princeton Geniza Project, accessed April 15, 2023, FAQ (princeton.edu).
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  2. “Letter from ‘Amram b. Yiṣḥaq, in Alexandria, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi, in Fustat,” 1141, CUL Or.1080 J24, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents‎ (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2013), vol. 4.
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  3. “Letter from ʿAmram b. Yiṣḥaq, in Alexandria, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi, in Fustat,” 1141, CUL Or.1080 J24, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents‎ (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2013), vol. 4.
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  4. “Letter from ʿAmram b. Yiṣḥaq, in Alexandria, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi, in Fustat,” 1141, CUL Or.1080 J24, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents‎ (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2013), vol. 4.
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  5.  Library of Congress, “The Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur and Other Medical Tracts,” Library of Congress, accessed April 17, 2023,  The Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur and Other Medical Tracts. | Library of Congress (loc.gov). ↩︎
  6.  S.D. Goitein, “The Working People,” in A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume I: Economic Foundations, 128. ↩︎
  7.  S.D. Goitein, “Professional Class,” in A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume II: The Community, (London: University of California Press, 1971), 269-270.
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  8.  Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “Women’s Medicine in Rabbinic Literature: Between Female Autonomy and Male Control,” in Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000), 150. ↩︎
  9.  S.D. Goitein, “Professional Class,” in A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume II: The Community, 254. ↩︎
  10.  “Letter from ‘Amram b. Yiṣḥaq, in Alexandria, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi, in Fustat,” 1141, CUL Or.1080 J24, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents‎ (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2013), vol. 4. ↩︎
  11.  Iris Idelson-Shein, “Of Wombs and Words: Migrating Misogynies in Early Modern Medieval Literature in Latin and Hebrew,” The Journal of the Association of Jewish Studies, Volume 45, Number 2, (November 2022): pp. 243-269, Project MUSE – Of Wombs and Words: Migrating Misogynies in Early Modern Medical Literature in Latin and Hebrew (jhu.edu). ↩︎
  12. Sarah Ifft Decker, “Jewish Women’s Work,” in Jewish Women in the Medieval World: 500-1500 CE, (London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2022), 82.
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  13.  Monica Helen Green, “’Diseases of Women’ to ‘Secrets of Women’: The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Volume 30, Number 1, (Winter 2000): pp. 5-39, Project MUSE – From “Diseases of Women” to “Secrets of Women”: The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages (jhu.edu).
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  14.  “Letter from ʿAmram b. Yiṣḥaq, in Alexandria, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi, in Fustat,” 1141, CUL Or.1080 J24, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents‎ (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2013), vol. 4.
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  15. Ibid ↩︎
  16.  “Letter from physician in Silifke,” 1137, T-S 13J21.17, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein, “A Letter of Historical Importance From Seleucia (Selefke), Cilicia, Dated 21 July 1137‎” (Jerusalem: Tarbiz, 1958), no. 4.
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  17.  “Letter from physician in Silifke,” 1137, T-S 13J21.17, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein, “A Letter of Historical Importance From Seleucia (Selefke), Cilicia, Dated 21 July 1137‎” (Jerusalem: Tarbiz, 1958), no. 4.
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  18.  Moses ben Maimon, Mishneh Torah, (1180), cited in Eve Krakowski, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 130.
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  19.  Moses ben Maimon, “Decree on Menstrual Purity,” (1176), cited in Eve Krakowski,“Maimonides’ Menstrual Reform in Egypt,” The Jewish  Quarterly Review, Vol. 110, No. 2 (Spring 2020): 245–289, Project MUSE – Maimonides’ Menstrual Reform in Egypt (jhu.edu).
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  20.  “Letter from physician in Silifke,” 1137, T-S 13J21.17, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein, “A Letter of Historical Importance From Seleucia (Selefke), Cilicia, Dated 21 July 1137‎” (Jerusalem: Tarbiz, 1958), no. 4.
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  21.  “Letter from physician in Silifke,” 1137, T-S 13J21.17, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein, “A Letter of Historical Importance From Seleucia (Selefke), Cilicia, Dated 21 July 1137‎”  (Jerusalem: Tarbiz, 1958), no. 4.
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  22.  Sarah Ifft Decker, “Family, Childbirth, and Child-Rearing” in Jewish Women in the Medieval World: 500-1500 CE,  (London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2022), 65-66.
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  23.  Letter to Abū l-Majd Meir b. Yakhin in Fustat,” c.1216, T-S 8J22.31, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project, edited by S.D. Goitein, additions by Alan Elbaum, October 2020.
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  24.  Ibid.
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  25.  Letter to Abū l-Majd Meir b. Yakhin in Fustat,” c.1216, T-S 8J22.31, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project, edited by S.D. Goitein, additions by Alan Elbaum, October 2020.
    ↩︎
  26. Ibid ↩︎
  27.  S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume II: The Community, 253.
    ↩︎
  28.  S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume II: The Community, 253.

    Works Cited
    ben Maimon, Moses. “Decree on Menstrual Purity.” 1176.  Cited in Krakowski, Eve.“Maimonides’ Menstrual Reform in Egypt.” The Jewish  Quarterly Review. Vol. 110. No. 2 (Spring 2020): 245-289, Project MUSE – Maimonides’ Menstrual Reform in Egypt (jhu.edu).

    ben Maimon, Moses. Mishneh Torah. 1180. Cited in Krakowski, Eve. Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2018. 130.

    Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva. Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 2000.

    Green, Monica Helen. “’Diseases of Women’ to ‘Secrets of Women’: The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Volume 30. Number 1. (Winter 2000): pp 5-39. Project MUSE – From “Diseases of Women” to “Secrets of Women”: The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages (jhu.edu).

    Goitein, S.D. “Professional Class.” In A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume II: The Community. London: University of California Press. 1971.

    Goitein, S.D. “The Working People.” In A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza: Volume I: Economic Foundations. London: University of California Press. 1967.
     
    Idelson-Shein, Iris. “Of Wombs and Words: Migrating Misogynies in Early Modern Medieval Literature in Latin and Hebrew.” The Journal of the Association of Jewish Studies. Volume 45. Number 2. (November 2022): pp. 243-269. Project MUSE – Of Wombs and Words: Migrating Misogynies in Early Modern Medical Literature in Latin and Hebrew (jhu.edu).

    Ifft Decker, Sarah. Jewish Women in the Medieval World: 500-1500 CE. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. 2022.

    Kraemer, Joel L. “Women Speak for Themselves.” In The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance. Edited by Stefan C. Reif and Shulamit Reif. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. 187.

    “Letter to Abū l-Majd Meir b. Yakhin in Fustat,” c.1216, T-S 8J22.31, available online through the Princeton Geniza Project, edited by S.D. Goitein, additions by Alan Elbaum, October 2020.

    “Letter from ‘Amram b. Yiṣḥaq, in Alexandria, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi, in Fustat.” 1141. CUL Or.1080 J24. Available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman. Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents‎. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute. 2013. Vol. 4.

    “Letter from physician in Silifke.” 1137. T-S 13J21.17. Available online through the Princeton Geniza Project. See also: S. D. Goitein. “A Letter of Historical Importance From Seleucia (Selefke). Cilicia. Dated 21 July 1137‎. Jerusalem: Tarbiz. 1958. No. 4.

    Library of Congress. “The Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur and Other Medical Tracts.” Library of Congress. Accessed April 17, 2023.  The Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur and Other Medical Tracts.

    Princeton Geniza Project. “Frequently Asked Questions.” Princeton Geniza Project. Accessed April 15, 2023. FAQ (princeton.edu).
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