Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction -- Bibliography of Works by Mark R. Cohen -- Part One Community -- How Mediterranean Was Goitein's Mediterranean Society? -- Ashābunā l-tujjār-Our Associates, the Merchants: Non-Jewish Business Partners of the Cairo Geniza's India Traders -- Pilgrimage and Charity in the Geniza Society -- Poor Relief in Ottoman Jewish Communities -- "What Sort of Sermon is This?" Leadership, Resistance, and Gender in a Communal Conflict -- Why Did Medieval Northern French Jewry (Sarfat) Disappear? -- Part Two Conversion -- Are Gaonic Responsa a Reliable Source for the Study of Jewish Conversion to Islam? A Comparative Analysis of Legal Sources -- What's in a Name? 'Abdallāh b. Ishāq b. al-Shanā'a al-Muslimānī l-Isrā'īlī and Conversion to Islam in Medieval Cordoba -- Jews among the Grandees of Ottoman Egypt -- Remembrance and Oblivion of Religious Persecutions: On Sanctifying the Name of God (Qiddush ha-Shem) in Christian and Islamic Countries during the Middle Ages -- Part Three Law and Society -- The Muhammadan Stipulations: Dhimmī Versions of the Pact of 'Umar -- Jews in Sharī'a Courts: A Family Dispute from the Cairo Geniza -- Perception of Piracy in Islamic Sharī'a -- Jew and Serf in Medieval France Revisited -- Cleanliness and Convivencia: Jewish Bathing Culture in Medieval Spain -- Part Four Letter Writing and Diplomatics -- Friendship and Hierarchy: Rhetorical Stances in Geniza Mercantile Letters -- More than Words on a Page: Letters as Substitutes for an Absent Writer -- The Diplomatics of Leadership: Administrative Documents in Hebrew Script from the Geniza -- Financial Troubles: A Mamluk Petition -- Part Five Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic Literature -- "Az mi-lifnei vereishit": The Suffering Messiah in the Seventh Century.

A Panegyric Qasīda by Yehuda ha-Levi, Its Antecedent by Shelomo Ibn Gabirol, and Its Afterlife -- Hebrew Vestiges in Sa'adya's Tafsīr -- Epilogue -- Index.