Rabbinical perspectives on money in seventeenth-century Ottoman Egypt

Episodes of monetary instability in Ottoman Egypt stimulated a discussion of monetary doctrine among Egyptian rabbis. A central issue was the valuation of debts following changes in the value of silver coins. While the leading rabbi of the sixteenth century advocated linkage to gold coins, the rabbis of the seventeenth century adopted valuation by purchasing power and rejected valuation by weight and linkage to gold coins. The rabbis of the seventeenth century differed from their predecessors in two essential respects: they were more critical of traditional Jewish monetary doctrine, and they utilized a much more sophisticated form of economic analysis.