Rustow's book provides us fascinating new insights into the history of Jewish Eastern communities of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine during the crucial and politically unstable period of the rule of the Fatimid caliphs.... Her focus on documentary and epistolary sources and on the caliphal administration allows Rustow to present a picture of Rabbanite-Karaite relations which differs from the more standard views of modern scholarship... that present Karaism as a separatist 'sect' and a threat to Judaism.... On the contrary, Rustow shows, the Karaites constituted one among other Jewish groups of the period and were fully engaged in Jewish community life as a whole.(Journal of Jewish Studies) The Cairo Geniza documents have been at the center of Jewish scholarship for over a century. Rustow has reviewed the medieval and modern models that emerged on the basis of the rich polemical literature and challenges them against the extant contemporary correspondence that describe the actual interactions.... This well-written and reader-friendly major contribution is accessible to neophyte and scholar alike, and will engender a new, nuanced view of the social relations among Jews and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean. Highly recommended.(Choice)
