__NOTOC__ Mark R. Cohen (born March 11, 1943) is an American scholar of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

history in the

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

world. Cohen is Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor Emeritus of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies 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 ...

. He is a scholar of the history of Jews in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

under

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

."Cohen is one of the most important scholars of his generation in the study of the history of Jews in the Islamic world." His research relies greatly on documents from 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, ...

. From 1985 until his retirement in 2013 Cohen also led the Geniza Lab at Princeton University, which aims to make the Geniza corpus available and searchable online (as of 2013, the database contained 4,320 documents). The project is headquartered at the

S.D. Goitein Shelomo Dov Goitein (April 3, 1900 – February 6, 1985) was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza. Biography Shelomo Dov (Fritz ...

Geniza Research Lab, where many of Goitein's personal books and notes are stored. In 2014 Cohen was a visiting professor at

New York University Abu Dhabi New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD, ar, جامعة نيويورك أبوظبي) is a degree granting, portal campus of New York University serving as a private, liberal arts college, located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Together with ...

. Cohen won the 1981

National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.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 ...

in 1996.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
/ref> Cohen earned his undergraduate degree at

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...

, his master's degree at

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 ...

, and his doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Selected publications

*''Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews, ca. 1065-1126'' (1981) *''The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi'' (1987) *''Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages'' (1994) *''Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt'' (2005) *''The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo Geniza (2005)

References

External links

Princeton University faculty pagePrinceton Geniza Project

Mark R. Cohen
at

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

Authorities — with 10 catalog records 1943 births Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Brandeis University alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Princeton University faculty Columbia University alumni Jewish American academics Jewish Theological Seminary of America alumni Jewish American writers Historians of Jews and Judaism American historians of religion American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub

Selected publications

See also

References

External links