Genealogy necessitates historical records, the majority of which derive from government sources, despite families’ “private” lives. State records weren’t intended to service future family historians, but were a means to state-formation and power. Consequently, records used by family historians reflect statist concerns, not state subject…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]