Abraham’s Luggage

In this pioneering exploration of the material culture of the Indian Ocean world, Elizabeth Lambourn presents us with a unique view through the lens of a rare surviving document: a list of luggage covering both sides of a narrow slip of paper written in Judeo-Arabic that was preserved among the scraps of text from the Cairo Genizah. It is, in fact, the only surviving source documenting the luggage and travel provisions of a medieval merchant involved in the Indian Ocean trade. It also just so happens to have been written by one of the most vividly portrayed characters to emerge out of previous encounters with this unique source base: Abraham Ben Yiju, made famous through Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993 [1992]). From this single slip of paper, Lambourn weaves richly textured discussions of the various items on this list in ways that shed new light

Ancient history · Antique · Arabic · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Ethnology · Genizah · Indian ocean · Linguistics · Literature · Social life · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Maritime Security and History · Classics · Geology · History · Oceanography · Philosophy