Hidden History Picks

EPOCH Editorial Board

One of the greatest achievements of historians and historically-minded researchers, particularly over the last quarter century or so, has been their ability to refocus public attention away from the ‘big men of history’ and ‘big stories of history’ towards people, places, groups, and events which were traditionally on the margins. Now more than ever before, the ‘History’ section of high street book shops across the world are packed with the latest works dedicated to locating and platforming these previously untold stories.

To coincide with the release of Issue 25, themed ‘Hidden Histories’, members of the EPOCH Editorial Board have compiled works from some of their favourite authors and researchers who have shed light on previously underappreciated or understudied areas of history. The selection of research some of our Editors have decided to spotlight is as much a fascinating window into the variety of interest within the EPOCH team as it is a snapshot of the breadth of global historical research over the last decade. So, please, read on to discover more about adolescence in Medieval Egypt, Malaysian deities, booking binding with human skin, and the release of independent Ireland’s 1926 census.

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Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt

Josh Coulthard

The Cairo Geniza is one of the greatest collections of medieval documents. The Geniza was a storeroom within the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (now Old Cairo), Egypt, built to house texts that contained any invocation of the name of God, as Jewish law forbids destroying sacred documents. Because letters and legal documents often opened with a blessing, the Geniza also preserves a vast array of everyday material.

Eve Krakowski’s book, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt, Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture (Princeton University Press, 2018), draws from this material to uncover the lives of young Jewish women living in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt (969-1250). Focusing on the period between puberty and first marriage, Krakowski combines quantitative analysis with close readings to examine how families, courts, and the economy shaped female adolescence, revealing how these documents can ‘confound and complicate our assumptions about the Middle Eastern past’.

Eve Krakowski, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt, Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture (Princeton University Press, 2018).

Through these records, Krakowski shows how Jews and Muslims coexisted in high medieval Egypt. This is particularly evident in shared ideas regarding adolescent female autonomy, which reflected broader Islamicate cultural norms far more than Jewish law. Additionally, Krakowski makes clear that the most important thing young women could have was supportive kin, detailing the precarious lives of women caught in difficult situations without help from their families.

For medievalists interested in law, documents, and ordinary life, this book models how we can uncover hidden histories in ephemeral material. Highlights include an extended breakdown of a single 1124 draft dowry contract, exploring its genre, formulae, and hybrid combination of substantive Rabbinic elements with procedural Islamicate ones; an extended examination of the economics of adolescence, revealing how class shaped a young woman’s life and explaining why ordinary people made the pragmatic choices that are apparent in the Geniza records; and a prosopography of an unhappy marriage through the personal letters of Sitt Ghazāl bt. Abū al-Faraj’s husband and her relatives.

Truly hearing these young women’s voices, however, remains difficult, as most of these texts were mediated through the choices of court officials and family members, and by the formulaic nature of the documents. Krakowski’s decision to feature a beardless Muslim boy on the cover underscores the extent to which these histories remain hidden, mirroring the rarity of visual depictions of Jewish women in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt.

Further Reading:

• Eve Krakowski, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt, Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture (Princeton University Press, 2018).

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Datok Ong

Desmond Ng

Malaysia has always been multicultural: it sits on the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest maritime trade routes in the world. Centuries of religious, cultural, and knowledge exchange have all contributed to diverse cultures within the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and Borneo.

Trade and cultural exchange across South Asia introduced Hindu-Buddhist precepts into the language and culture of pelagic communities in Southeast Asia, while the introduction of Islam from the thirteenth century onwards by Sufi holy men and merchants saw the incorporation of Islam into local cultural and religious practices. Meanwhile, trade and alliances with East Asian empires allowed for the permeation of East Asian cultures into local customs.

A shrine dedicated to Datok Wong from Mesilau, Sabah, Malaysia. (Credit: MySabah.com).

I have a very personal connection to this religious syncretism. For the most part, much of my family still adheres to a very syncretic conception of Malaysian-Chinese polytheism (think the traditional Southern Chinese pantheon) with numerous other gods and saints from religions like Hinduism and Islam. Of note would be the traditional Malaysian-Chinese guardian deity, Datok Ong, with his signature songkok or tengkolok (traditional Malaysian-Malay caps), Malaysian-Malay attire, and keris (a blade/sword that is associated with Nusantara communities). Borne from a combination of pre-independence Malaysian-Malay Datuk Keramat practices (shrines of Muslim holy men, many of which no longer exist today), and traditional South Chinese ancestral and polytheistic worship, the venerable Datok Ong has stayed vigilant, guarding against the unseen, providing blessings to believers, and serving as a reminder of Malaysia’s historical, religious, and cultural syncretism.

Unfortunately, religious and cultural syncretism of Southeast Asia is an extremely under-studied topic within academic and lay circles. People tend to focus more on the human tragedies and travesties of the region, and less on the area as a cultural melting pot. More tragic still are state policies to centralise and introduce a much more conservative interpretation of Islam and other faiths, all of which serve to erode Datok Ong worship and other syncretic, grassroots-directed faith practices.

Further reading:

• Wang Zhaoyuan, Danny Wong Tze Ken, and Welyne Jeffrey Jehom, ‘The Alien Communal Patron Deity: A comparative study of the Datuk Gong worship among Chinese communities in Malaysia’, Indonesia and the Malay World, 48.141 (2020), 206–224. Available at :https://doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2020.1732094 [Accessed 28 July 2026].

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Anthropodermic Bibliopegy

Ila Manish

I do not remember what I was researching when I came across the term ‘anthropodermic bibliopegy’ - human skin book-binding - but it soon led me to Megan Rosenbloom’s Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books bound in Human Skin (2020). The book studies the various different contexts in which such books were made, focussing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when medical practice and surgery were being formalised and doctors bound their writings with the skin of their patients. Rosenbloom traces how the ‘neutrality’ of the clinical gaze and the detachment that modern Western medicine imposed between doctor and patient created a world wherein doctors felt entitled to make use of their patients’ bodies in this manner. Slavery and empire further normalised such practices: Rosenbloom links the oral histories from Black communities that tell us how Black body parts were often seen as ‘souvenirs’ by White mobs during lynchings, with archival evidence that documents the use of Black bodies in scientific and medical experimentation by prominent doctors of the time. Anthropodermic bibliopegy, she argues, was thus only one of the many ways in which bodies were objectified.

Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020).

The book is extremely well-researched — Rosenbloom has consulted written texts, oral histories, and even visited a tannery in New York that uses old-fashioned vegetable tanning methods to make parchment and leather. She writes of her ‘methods’ of study, of how she encounters these various sources and engages with them, in visceral, often emotional detail. The book lends itself to a sort of full-bodied reading that is unfortunately rare in ‘academic’ writing. Not only does the book engage with very important medical and social histories, it also does so with great respect for the interlocutors who help her uncover this story, whether these are fellow librarians, archivists, historians, or tanning experts. A fascinating read overall!

Further Reading:

• Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020).

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Independent Ireland’s First Census

Alex Pomeroy

The last fifteen years have been particularly rich for those interested in modern Irish history. Between 2012 and 2023 the Irish state ran an extensive series of events under the headline of the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ to mark the anniversaries of events between 1912 and 1923 which transformed Ireland from British rule to partition and the creation of the two Irish states which exist today.

The ‘Decade of Conflict’ included events such as the 1913 Lockout, the First World War, the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence (1919 – 1921), and the Irish Civil War (1922 – 1923). Alongside documentaries, dramas, public displays, and other commemorative events was the publication of thousands of documents held within the National Archives of Ireland (NAI) in Dublin which relate to the period, allowing many families to trace their ancestors throughout the turbulent birth of independent Ireland.

But what came next? The popular story often charts the violence, tragedy, and trauma of the Irish revolutionary period which culminated in the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 without analysing how the new state and it’s people worked to create the Ireland they had long since dreamed of. To do this, however, the nascent state needed to compile a vast sum of information on the population, which was no mean feat after the chaos of the revolution.

The Story of Us: Independent Ireland and the 1926 Census, ed. by Orlaith McBride and John Gibney (Irish Academic Press, 2026).

This was achieved through the first census undertaken by an independent Irish state in April 1926, and over the last few years the NAI have undertaken a mammoth digitisation project to grant the public access to the information contained within the records. Part of the project included the compilation of a new collection of essays analysing the information contained within the census returns and the value they held to politicians seeking to craft the new state in their image. Edited by Orlaith McBride and John Gibney, The Story of Us: Independent Ireland and the 1926 Census is a fascinating window into life in the embryonic Irish Free State, and casts a light on an understudied period of Irish history as well as the value of census records for historical research.

Further Reading:

• The Story of Us: Independent Ireland and the 1926 Census, ed. by Orlaith McBride and John Gibney (Irish Academic Press, 2026).