Fans pick 100 books like Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt

By Eve Krakowski,

Here are 100 books that Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt fans have personally recommended if you like Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East

Uriel Simonsohn Author Of Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East

From my list on women in medieval Near Eastern history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of Muslim – non-Muslim relations in medieval Islam. In all of my publications I've been concerned with the social intersections of different religious communities in the medieval Islamic world, whether through human agency or via institutional arrangements. My goal has been to de-center Islamic history by approaching it from its margins. Hence the choice to study the role of women as agents of religious change in my last monograph Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East. In this book I address two historical questions which I've always been passionate about, namely the Islamization of the Near East and the place of women in pre-modern Near Eastern societies. 

Uriel's book list on women in medieval Near Eastern history

Uriel Simonsohn Why did Uriel love this book?

Giladi's Muslim Midwives takes the reader into the hidden layers of the domicile; an intimate space, where only few could participate in one of the most dramatic moments, if not the most of them, in a human's life – birth.

Midwives, although biologically apart, were assigned with a crucial place within the household, thus assuming capacities that by far exceeded their formal tasks within their respective communities.

By Avner Giladi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Muslim Midwives as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book reconstructs the role of midwives in medieval to early modern Islamic history through a careful reading of a wide range of classical and medieval Arabic sources. The author casts the midwife's social status in premodern Islam as a privileged position from which she could mediate between male authority in patriarchal society and female reproductive power within the family. This study also takes a broader historical view of midwifery in the Middle East by examining the tensions between learned medicine (male) and popular, medico-religious practices (female) from early Islam into the Ottoman period and addressing the confrontation between traditional…


Book cover of The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature

Uriel Simonsohn Author Of Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East

From my list on women in medieval Near Eastern history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of Muslim – non-Muslim relations in medieval Islam. In all of my publications I've been concerned with the social intersections of different religious communities in the medieval Islamic world, whether through human agency or via institutional arrangements. My goal has been to de-center Islamic history by approaching it from its margins. Hence the choice to study the role of women as agents of religious change in my last monograph Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East. In this book I address two historical questions which I've always been passionate about, namely the Islamization of the Near East and the place of women in pre-modern Near Eastern societies. 

Uriel's book list on women in medieval Near Eastern history

Uriel Simonsohn Why did Uriel love this book?

Warrior Women of Islam opens a window into the world of medieval Muslim authors as they drew upon a mixture of fiction and reality in order to captivate the imagination of their readers/auditors.

Yet although fictitious, not to mention fantastic, Kruk demonstrates how the female protagonists of medieval Islamic epics served to promote ideals of female piety, devotion, and courage in moments of religious conflict.

By Remke Kruk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Warrior Women of Islam as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Colloquial Arabic storytelling is most commonly associated with The Thousandvand One Nights. But few people are aware of a much larger corpus of narrative texts known as popular epic. These heroic romantic tales, originating in the Middle Ages, form vast cycles of adventure stories whose most remarkable feature is their portrayal of powerful and memorable women. Wildly appreciated by medieval audiences, and spread by professional storytellers throughout the cities of the Muslim world, these fictions were printed and reprinted over the centuries and comprise a vital part of Arab culture. Yet virtually none are available in translation, and so remain…


Book cover of Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice

Uriel Simonsohn Author Of Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East

From my list on women in medieval Near Eastern history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of Muslim – non-Muslim relations in medieval Islam. In all of my publications I've been concerned with the social intersections of different religious communities in the medieval Islamic world, whether through human agency or via institutional arrangements. My goal has been to de-center Islamic history by approaching it from its margins. Hence the choice to study the role of women as agents of religious change in my last monograph Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East. In this book I address two historical questions which I've always been passionate about, namely the Islamization of the Near East and the place of women in pre-modern Near Eastern societies. 

Uriel's book list on women in medieval Near Eastern history

Uriel Simonsohn Why did Uriel love this book?

Motherhood features in diverse literary traditions, from antiquity to the present, as perhaps the most prominent aspect of female power.

Already in the womb and shortly after, during the formative stage of the child's upbringing, the mother occupied a unique, almost exclusive, position vis-à-vis its offspring, imbuing it with character and ideals. It is for this reason that maternal power and roles have been treated so extensively in diverse literary traditions and genres, constituting an object of religiously-charged imageries.

In Conceiving Identity, Keuny masters a rich Islamic literary corpus in order to show how literary images constituted a means for women to negotiate their patriarchal-designated office and imbue their office with their own set of ideals.

By Kathryn M. Kueny,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Conceiving Identities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Explores how medieval Muslim theologians constructed a female gender identity based on an ideal of maternity and how women contested it.


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? By Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…

Book cover of Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves and the Sons of Slave Mothers

Uriel Simonsohn Author Of Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East

From my list on women in medieval Near Eastern history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of Muslim – non-Muslim relations in medieval Islam. In all of my publications I've been concerned with the social intersections of different religious communities in the medieval Islamic world, whether through human agency or via institutional arrangements. My goal has been to de-center Islamic history by approaching it from its margins. Hence the choice to study the role of women as agents of religious change in my last monograph Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East. In this book I address two historical questions which I've always been passionate about, namely the Islamization of the Near East and the place of women in pre-modern Near Eastern societies. 

Uriel's book list on women in medieval Near Eastern history

Uriel Simonsohn Why did Uriel love this book?

Urban’s Conquered Populations in Early Islam is concerned with the absorption of non-Muslims within the Muslim community during the first few centuries of its formation through an Arabian tribal mechanism of patron-client relations. 

As such, it offers a first of its kinds treatment of non-Muslim slave girls and concubines, whose entry into the Muslim fold was made possible thanks to the ties of dependence they forged with their male masters and partners.

Although seemingly powerless, owing to their gender and social rank, these women were in fact in a unique position to negotiate the terms of their enslavement, livelihood, and communal affiliation thanks to their unique services vis-à-vis their patrons.  

By Elizabeth Urban,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Conquered Populations in Early Islam as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book traces the journey of new Muslims as they joined the early Islamic community and articulated their identities within it. It focuses on Muslims of slave origins, who belonged to the society in which they lived but whose slave background rendered them somehow alien. How did these Muslims at the crossroads of insider and outsider find their place in early Islamic society? How did Islamic society itself change to accommodate these new members?



By analysing how these liminal Muslims resolved the tension between belonging and otherness, Conquered Populations in Early Islam reveals the shifting boundaries of the early Islamic…


Book cover of Out of Egypt: A Memoir

Jonny Steinberg Author Of A Man of Good Hope

From my list on exile, refugees and people on the move.

Why am I passionate about this?

In 2010, I met a Somali refugee in Cape Town. His name was Asad Abdullahi. He told the tale of his life with a richness bordering on genius and I was hooked. I spent the next two years tracing his childhood footsteps through the Horn of Africa, looking for anyone and everyone he had encountered. In the course of writing a book about him, I read countless other books about exile, migration, and human beings on the move. My five recommendations are among the books that helped me imagine the experience of exile best. 

Jonny's book list on exile, refugees and people on the move

Jonny Steinberg Why did Jonny love this book?

This is among the most exquisitely rendered memoirs I have ever read. It recounts Aciman’s boyhood in the cosmopolitan world of Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1950s, just before the ethnic nationalism of Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdal Nassar, swept this world away. Every sentence exudes tender nostalgia for a vanished milieu. It is, profoundly, an exile’s book, mourning and celebrating a life that has been lost.

By André Aciman, André Aciman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Out of Egypt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This richly coloured memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, Andre Aciman introduces us to the marvellous eccentrics who shaped his life: the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; and Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything "at least twice in their lives." And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world,…


Book cover of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World

Andrea B. Rugh Author Of Egyptian Advice Columnists: Envisioning the Good Life in an Era of Extremism

From my list on how culture influences Middle Eastern history.

Why am I passionate about this?

From over three decades of work on development projects in countries of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Africa, I am convinced that when efforts fail, it is invariably because we lack the cultural understanding of what people want or how we provide it. These books all reinforce my point by either underlining the way culture shapes the way people see the world or by showing how when we neglect culture, we do so at our own peril. Culture can be discovered through multiple entry points with these books offering a good start. Even something as mundane as advice columns in newspapers offer political insights when plumbed for the meanings below the surface.

Andrea's book list on how culture influences Middle Eastern history

Andrea B. Rugh Why did Andrea love this book?

This book describes the rich multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual communities that co-existed peacefully in Alexandria and Cairo in the 1940s and early 1950s. They forged close ties in such public domains as commerce and schooling, while keeping their family and religious lives mainly private and marrying within the community. By the mid-50s as Arab-Israeli problems spread to Egypt, the Nasser government stoked animosity against the Jews and other non-Muslim communities, forcing many to migrate. The book shows graphically how even during normal times cultural communities distinguish between areas where it is safe to mingle with outsiders and those where it is better to draw tight boundaries against penetration if they are to sustain their uniqueness. The latter are mostly areas that define them, including religion, values, and bloodlines.

By Lucette Lagnado,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years between World War II and Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power. Her father, Leon, was a boulevardier who conducted business on the elegant terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, and later, in the cozy, dark bar of the Nile Hilton, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit. But with the fall of King Farouk and Nasser's nationalization of Egyptian industry, Leon and his family lose everything. As streets are renamed, neighborhoods of their fellow Jews disbanded, and the city purged of all foreign influence,…


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Book cover of Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink

Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink By Ethan Chorin,

Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…

Book cover of Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works

Joshua A. Fogel Author Of Maiden Voyage: The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations

From my list on Jewish history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of China and Japan whose work has hewed close to the cultural interactions between Chinese and Japanese over recent centuries. I’m now working on the history of the Esperanto movement in China and Japan from the first years of the twentieth century through the early 1930s. The topic brings together my interests in Sino-Japanese historical relations, linguistic scholarship, and Jewish history (the creator of Esperanto was a Polish-Jewish eye doctor). Over the last couple of decades, I have become increasingly interested in Jewish history. I think by now I know what counts as good history, but I’m still an amateur in Jewish history. Nonetheless, these books all struck me as extraordinary.

Joshua's book list on Jewish history

Joshua A. Fogel Why did Joshua love this book?

The late Herbert Davidson wrote on medieval Jewish and Muslim philosophy, and Maimonides was a natural topic for him.  Of the roughly eight or ten biographical studies of Maimonides that I have read, Davidson’s stands out for the strength of its logical analysis and its great breadth.  It offers numerous insights into the polymath that is its subject.

By Herbert A. Davidson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Moses Maimonides as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Moses Maimonides (1137/38-1204), scholar, physician, and philosopher, was the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages. In this magisterial biography, Herbert Davidson provides an exhaustive guide to Maimonides' life and works. After considering Maimonides' upbringing and education, Davidson expounds all of his many writings in exhaustive detail, with separate chapters on rabbinic, philosophical, and medical texts. Moses Maimonides has been
recognized as the standard work on a towering figure of Western intellectual history.


Book cover of The Matzah Ball Fairy

Gloria Koster Author Of Dance the Hora, Isadora

From my list on lighthearted picture books with Jewish characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a school and public librarian as well as a writer. I also serve as a member of the Children’s Book Committee of the Bank Street College of Education. We review hundreds of books each year for consideration of a place on our list –The Best Children’s Books of the YearI've chosen to recommend some lighthearted picture books with Jewish characters or themes because a number of my own books fit into this category. Mitzi’s Mitzvah, Little Red Ruthie, and Dance the Hora, Isadora! are three of my Jewish themed books. Each of these titles has been selected by PJ Library, an organization that sends a book each month to children.

Gloria's book list on lighthearted picture books with Jewish characters

Gloria Koster Why did Gloria love this book?

When lighter-than-air matzah balls send Passover guests floating on the ceiling, a remedy is needed to bring them down. The author’s solution is brilliant and hilarious for anyone who has experienced cooking mishaps. There are so many Passover books that dwell on the story of the Jewish people’s escape from tyranny in Egypt and this is undoubtedly an important story to tell. But there’s also a need for holiday books that are just plain fun. This is definitely one of those. 

By Carla Heymsfeld,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Matzah Ball Fairy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

When Frieda Pinsky uses some magic powder to help make the matzah balls for her Passover seder light and fluffy, it works too well


Book cover of Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg Author Of Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century

From my list on Black-Jewish relations.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor who teaches and works in the field of African American History. Because I am both white and Jewish, I’ve been repeatedly asked to give talks about relationships between African Americans and white Jewish Americans, and about what “went wrong” to shatter the “grand alliance” of the civil rights movement embodied by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I had no answer, but I suspected that none of the stories that we had been told, whether good or bad, were fully true. So I went back to the sources and uncovered a complex and multilayered history. Black and Jewish collaboration was never a given, and underlying tensions and conflicts reflected the broader realities of race and class in the U.S. In the book I explored how these historical and political forces operated, and continue to resonate today.

Cheryl's book list on Black-Jewish relations

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg Why did Cheryl love this book?

Too often “Black-Jewish relations” focuses on Jewish engagement in the Black civil rights struggle, a largely one-sided political narrative. This book broadens that horizon in two ways. First, it focuses on the Black experience and encounter with the other, rather than the Jewish one. Second, it explores the religious dimension that political discussions often ignore – that the Black experience with Jews and Judaism is as much rooted in religion as in politics.

By Yvonne Patricia Chireau (editor), Nathaniel Deutsch (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Black Zion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Black Zion explores the myriad ways in which African American religions have encountered Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's unifying argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw puzzle, that much of the recent turmoil in black-Jewish relations would be better understood, if not alleviated, if the religious roots of those relations were illuminated. Toward that end, the contributors look a number of provocative
topics, including the concept of the Chosen People, the typological identification of blacks with Jews, the actual identification of blacks as Jews, the sacredness of space and symbols, the importance of…


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Book cover of Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS By Amy Carney,

When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…

Book cover of The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, 11: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora

Lior B. Sternfeld Author Of Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran

From my list on Jewish histories of the Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I always felt that Middle Eastern studies is different from other fields of history. Its ever-presence in our life, the news cycle, religious life, political life, yet, because of language barriers and other filters, there’s a gap in knowledge that is highly conspicuous when forming one’s opinion. When I started my academic training, I felt like I was swimming in this ocean of histories that were completely unknown to me. I studied the Jewish histories of the region only later in my training and found that this gap is even more visible when talking about the history of Jews in the Middle East, because of misconceptions of antisemitism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, political tilt of media outlet, and more. For me, entering this field was a way to understand long-term processes in my own society, and expand the body of scholarship to enrich the public conversation on top of the academic one.

Lior's book list on Jewish histories of the Middle East

Lior B. Sternfeld Why did Lior love this book?

Until two decades ago, the historiographical school of Jewish pasts in the Middle East was broadly aligned with what we call the neo-lachrymose approach. This approach usually examines the Jewish communities in the MENA region as if they lived in isolation from the non-Jewish majority society. Beinin’s book paved the way to profoundly different directions in studying the Jewish communities of Egypt and the region. Beinin analyzed the various Jewish communities that existed in Egypt (primarily prior to 1956), placed them in the context of global, regional, and Egyptian national history. Moreover, he forever dismantled the notion that we can essentialize the life, experience, and narratives of almost 1 million MENA Jews and have one simple account in the output.

By Joel Beinin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, 11 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this provocative and wide-ranging history, Joel Beinin examines fundamental questions of ethnic identity by focusing on the Egyptian Jewish community since 1948. A complex and heterogeneous people, Egyptian Jews have become even more diverse as their diaspora continues to the present day. Central to Beinin's study is the question of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties that are dislocated and reformed by turbulent political and cultural processes. It is a question he grapples with himself, and his reflections on his experiences as an American Jew in Israel and Egypt offer a candid, personal perspective on the hazards of…


Book cover of Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East
Book cover of The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature
Book cover of Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice

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