What Qualifies as a Woman’s Letter in the Cairo Genizah?

In attempting to catalogue, transcribe and translate “women’s letters” that are found in the Cairo Geniza, one has to make judgment calls. What qualifies as a woman’s letter? What disqualifies a letter from this category? Must the woman actually have written the letter herself, or is it acceptable for her to have dictated it, either to a professional scribe or to a family member? How can it be determined if the sender wrote the letter herself, and how important is this fact? If a woman receives a letter, should this correspondence be included in the corpus as well? Letters often refer to previous communications and serve as responses; would a letter of this nature qualify? In addition, one must decide how to deal with men’s correspondences that refer to a specific woman within a letter, often providing her with information, instructions or regards.

I propose to bring examples of letters in Judeo-Arabic from the 10^th through the 13^th centuries from each of these different categories and to analyze the information contained in them that informs us about women’s lives. The three articles published by Joel Kraemer about women’s letters will serve as a springboard for determining what material is appropriate for creating a corpus of “women’s letters.” One would hope that the discussion following this presentation will also contribute to determining what should qualify as women’s letters.