Abstract
One recognized yet under-appreciated resource for studying Jewish culture in the medieval Mediterranean is the Hebrew panegyric corpus. Anathema to the tastes of scholars of Jewish literature and a frustratingly ungenerous source for scholars of Jewish history, Hebrew panegyrics have largely been discounted as mere sycophantic dedications, often composed for pay, that occasionally yield titbits of factual data. It is true that, for the most part, panegyrics offer typology, not biography. However, properly read, the several hundred surviving Hebrew panegyrics illuminate medieval Mediterranean Jews’ most essential notions of group cohesion, human virtue, leadership, and politics.
In the Islamic Mediterranean, Hebrew