This book deals with various manifestations of charity or giving in the contexts of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim societies in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. Monotheistic charity and giving display many common features. These underlying similarities reflect a commonly shared view about God and his relations to mankind and what humans owe to God and expect from him. Nevertheless, the fact that the emphasis is placed on similarities does not mean that the uniqueness of the concepts of charity and giving in the three monotheistic religions is denied. The contributors of the book deal with such heterogeneous topics like the language of social justice in early Christian homilies as well as charity and pious endowments in medieval Syria, Egypt and al-Andalus during the 11th-15th centuries. This wide range of approaches distinguish the book from other works on charity and giving in monotheistic religions.

This book shows how political and administrative forces shaped the way justice was applied in medieval Egypt. It introduces the model that evolved during the 7th to the 12th centuries, which involved four judicial institutions: the cadi; the mazalim (court of complaint); the police/shurta (responsible for criminal justice); and the hisba (Islamised market law) administrated by the muhtasib (market supervisor). Literary and non-literary sources are used to highlight how these institutions worked in real-time situations such as the famine of 1024 5, which posed tremendous challenges to the market supervisors in Cairo. The inner workings of the court of complaint during the 11th 12th-century Fatimid state are revealed through an array of documentary sources. And non-Muslim communities, their courts and their sphere of responsibilities are treated as integral to how justice was dispensed in medieval Islam. Documentary sources offer significant insights into these issues and illuminate the scope and limits of non-Muslim self-rule/judicial autonomy.

This book shows how political and administrative forces shaped the way justice was applied in medieval Egypt. It introduces the model that evolved during the 7th to the 9th centuries, which involved four judicial institutions: the cadi, the court of complaint (mazalim), the police/shurta (responsible for criminal justice) and the Islamized market law (hisba) administrated by the market supervisor/muhtasib. Literary and non-literary sources are used to highlight how these institutions worked in real-time situations such as the famine of 1024-1025, which posed tremendous challenges to the market supervisors in Cairo. The inner workings of the court of complaint during the 11th-12th century Fatimid state are revealed through array of documentary sources. Further, non-Muslim communities, their courts and their sphere of responsibilities are treated as integral to how justice was dispensed in medieval Islam. Documentary sources offers significant insights into these issues and illuminate the scope and limits of non-Muslims self-rule/judicial autonomy. In sum, the book shows that the administrative and political history of the judiciary in medieval Egypt implicitly and explicitly illuminates broader questions about religious and social forces that shaped the lives of medieval people in the Middle East, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Fatimid history is a chapter of both Mediterranean and Islamic history. In the period covered by the book (10th-12th centuries) profound changes took place in the Eastern Mediterranean affecting the history of the region.
Divided into three parts this study deals with the political history of the Fatimid period, the structure of the Fatimid state and the interplay between state and society.
The book is a contribution to the study of Islamic military history addressing such topics as: the formation and upkeep of black slave armies, the role of Christian-Armenian troops in twelfth-century Egypt and military and naval aspects of the Fatimid wars with the Crusaders. Other topics examined are the internal policies of the Fatimid state: notably, among them, the religious policies of the Fatimid regime, the involvement of the state in the urban life of the Fatimid capital city, Fustat-Cairo, and Fatimid attitudes toward non-Muslim communities.