Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt

Craig Perry's book draws on the Cairo Geniza archive to reveal how slavery operated among Jewish communities in medieval Egypt between the 11th and 13th centuries.

It traces global and local slave-trading networks and analyzes domestic slavery's role in households, gender, law, and social status.

Perry centers the experiences of enslaved people — their labor, strategies, and paths to freedom — alongside how Jewish men and women used slavery to secure social and economic capital.

The study reframes rituals like Passover by showing enslaved people often served at communal tables and examines tensions between Jewish and Islamic legal frameworks.

Overall, the work situates Jewish slave owning within broader Mediterranean and Indian Ocean world histories, challenging simplified narratives about medieval Jewish life.