Marina Rustow is an American historian and the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. She is a 2015 MacArthur Fellow. Her work focuses on the study of

Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic dialects (, ; ; ) are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, enco ...

documents found in the

Cairo geniza The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the ''genizah'' or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, ...

and the history of Jews in the

Fatimid Caliphate The Fatimid Caliphate was an Ismaili Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids, a ...

Education and career

A New York native, Rustow received a B.A. from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

in 1990, and two master's degrees from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1998 and 1999. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia in 2004, where she studied under

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (May 20, 1932 – December 8, 2009) was the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society at Columbia University, a position he held from 1980 to 2008. Early life and education Yerushalmi was born in ...

. She taught at

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

from 2003 to 2010. In 2007, she was a fellow at the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

, where she developed an appreciation for Italian cuisine. She taught at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

from 2010 to 2015, when she became a full professor at Princeton. In 2014, she won a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

. She is a resident of New York City. Rustow is currently the director of the Geniza Lab, an institute within Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies devoted to the study of documentary sources from the Cairo Geniza. The Geniza Lab's work is largely within the

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

space, and includes under its auspices initiatives such as the Handwritten Text Recognition project and the Princeton Geniza Project database.

MacArthur Fellowship

In its 2015 announcement, the MacArthur Foundation said that she had been given the 625,000 prize for "deploying her considerable prowess in languages, social history, and papyrology", and that Rustow is "rewriting our understanding of medieval Jewish life and transforming the historical study of the Fatimid empire". Rustow said that "The award is going to permit me to work in a way that I haven't really been able to work before," and "to dig a little bit deeper".

Academic research

Cairo - Coptic area - Ben Ezra Synagogue

In her 2008 book ''Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate'', Rustow challenged conventional wisdom about the relationships between two rival Jewish communities living under the Fatimid Caliphate from 909 to 1171 C.E. They were the mainstream

Rabbanites Rabbinic Judaism ( he, יהדות רבנית, Yahadut Rabanit), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Judaism espoused by the Rabbanites, has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian ...

and the Karaites, who reject the authority of the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

and rely only on the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Rustow studied everyday documents that were part of a massive archive at the Ben Ezra Synagogue in

Old Cairo Old Cairo (Arabic: مصر القديمة , Miṣr al-Qadīma, Egyptian pronunciation: Maṣr El-ʾAdīma) is a historic area in Cairo, Egypt, which includes the site of a Roman-era fortress and of Islamic-era settlements pre-dating the founding of ...

. These documents, such as contracts, letters and government decrees and petitions, showed "a wealth of social, economic, and political transactions between the two groups". Her book calls into question "the depth of the religious schism, suggesting a higher level of tolerance and cooperation than had been assumed". Previous scholars of documents found in the Cairo geniza had concentrated on texts written in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

and

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...

. Rustow chose to study those written in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

, which often appear "in the margins and on the backs of such documents." Her studies with colleagues have led to insights about the everyday lives of the Jews of Cairo, such as that they "imported sheep cheese from Sicily—it was deemed kosher—and filled containers at the bazaar with warm food in an early version of takeout." There was a triangular Mediterranean trade route between Egypt, Tunisia and Sicily in the 11th century, and

flax Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, is a flowering plant, ''Linum usitatissimum'', in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. Textiles made from flax are known in ...

used to make

linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...

fabric Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not ...

, and soap, were the main commodities. "Everyone wore linen all the time," according to Rustow. She is studying the usage of the Arabic language by the Jews of Sicily in years following the expulsion of Muslims·from Sicily in the 13th century C.E. The Muslims had previously ruled Sicily from the 9th century to the 11th century. In collaboration with Sacha Stern, she has also done research on the

Jewish calendar The Hebrew calendar ( he, הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, translit=HaLuah HaIvri), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance, and as an official calendar of the state of Israel ...

, focusing on the 10th century C.E. dispute between Jewish authorities Aaron ben Meïr and

Saadia Gaon Saʻadiah ben Yosef Gaon ( ar, سعيد بن يوسف الفيومي ''Saʻīd bin Yūsuf al-Fayyūmi''; he, סַעֲדְיָה בֶּן יוֹסֵף אַלְפַיּוּמִי גָּאוֹן ''Saʿăḏyāh ben Yōsēf al-Fayyūmī Gāʾōn''; ...

about the calendar.

Education and career

MacArthur Fellowship

Academic research

References

Further reading