Originally published in Hebrew under the title Shafrir Mitzrayim (Tel Aviv, 1995), this thoroughly researched monograph, based on some 800 documents from the Cairo Genizah, illuminates an obscure and overlooked chapter in the history of the Jewish communities that flourished in the medieval Islamic world. As the author notes in her foreword, previous studies of Jewish leadership in Muslim lands have discounted the importance of local political activity, emphasizing instead the dominant role of the central authorities, that is, the Exilarchate and the yeshivot of Babylonia and Palestine. Bareket takes up the question of local leadership by focusing on the careers of nine individuals who headed the Palestinian and Babylonian congregations in Fustat's Jewish community during the first half of the eleventh century. While these leaders formally recognized the sovereignty of the central authorities, they nevertheless exercised considerable autonomy, establishing in Fustat a local school (midrash) for Torah study, issuing their own responsa, imposing bans, and corresponding with Jewish leaders outside of Egypt.