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10* Amir Ashur and Efraim Lev

scholarly article on the medical profession in light of the Cairo Genizah.3
These early works were followed by a vast amount of data regarding the
medical profession that would be included in Goitien’s monumental tome, A
MediterraneanSociety,in which various issues regarding medicine are discussed
in detail.4

In addition, general works on the Genizah and on the life of Mediterranean
Jewish communities and societies have touched on the medical profession in
medieval times. Fenton, in one such publication from the early 1980s, again
underlined the need for focused research on Genizah medical documents, which,
‘although of considerable interest for the history of medicine, have received
relatively little attention’.5 A few works were indeed published during the 1990s,
usually focusing on one subject, or even important single manuscripts which were
studied in detail, such as the articles written by Baker,6 Cohen,7 Dvorjetsky,8 and
Isaacs.9

Medicine as a prominent subject in the Genizah has been given its due
attention only with the publication of a catalogue of medical and paramedical

3 S. D. Goitein, ‘The Medical Profession in the Light of the Cairo Genizah Documents.’
Hebrew Union College Annual 34 (1963), pp. 177y194.

4 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as
Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genizah (University of California Press, Berkeley,
1967y1988), see II, pp. 240y272.

5 P. Fenton, ‘The Importance of the Cairo Genizah for the History of Medicine,’ Medical
History 24 (1980), pp. 347y48.

6 C. F. Baker, ‘A Note on a Arabic Fragment of Ibn Butla¯n’s The Physicians’ Dinner Party

from the Cairo Genizah,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic S˙ociety 3, no. 2 (1993), pp. 207y213;

C. F. Baker, ‘Islamic and Jewish Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean World: The
Genizah Evidence,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 89 (1996), pp. 577y580.
7 M. R. Cohen, ‘The BurdensomeLife of a Jewish Physician and Communal Leader: A Geniza
Fragment from the Alliance Israelite Universelle Collection’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic
and Islam, 16 (1993), pp. 125y136.
8 E. Dvorjetski, ‘The Contribution of the Geniza to the Study of the Medicinal Hot Springs in
Eretz- Israel’, in: Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, II, (World
Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 85y93.
9 H. D. Isaacs, ‘A Medieval Arab Medical Certificate,’ Medical History 35 (1991), pp.
250y257.