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In the early tenth century, a small coterie of Jewish financiers rose to prominence at the Abbasic court in Baghdad and came to play a central role in the administration of the traditional rabbinic institutions of leadership (the Babylonian yeshivot) in Iraq. In this talk, I reconsider the evidence for these figures, long described as presiding over a central state bank, in light of new insights about court cultures and institutions in the medieval Islamicate world.
