Editors’ Summary: This two-part selection seeks to better understand and categorize the expressions found in the Fatimid Geniza petitions, a rich primary source for historians of the Mediterranean in the 10th century. The study asks: how are emotional registers distributed across the formal parts of Fatimid petitions? Part one provides context and outlines the methodology used, and part two presents the outcomes of this approach. The author manually identified and tagged 62 distinct rhetorical phrases within the corpus, mapping them to a controlled vocabulary of five emotional registers: Devotion, Humility, Neutrality, Hope, and Desperation. The study finds that emotional language was an important component of the petitionary process, and this emotional architecture was a shared administrative utility that transcended religious boundaries.
Editors’ Choice: The Affective Algorithm: Mapping the Emotional Architecture of Fatimid Geniza Petitions
