The Cairo Geniza is an accumulation of almost 280,000 Jewish manuscript fragments that were found in the genizah or store room of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, presently Old Cairo, Egypt, the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century.

Discovery and present locations

The significance of the Cairo genizah was first recognized by the Jewish traveler and researcher Jacob Saphir in the mid 1800s, but it was chiefly through the work of Solomon Schechter at the end of the 19th century that the contents of the genizah were brought to scholarly and popular attention.

These documents have now been archived in various American and European libraries. The Taylor-Schechter collection in the University of Cambridge runs to nearly 193,000 fragments (137,000 shelf-marks); there are a further 31,000 fragments at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Also, the John Rylands University Library in Manchester holds a collection of over 11,000 fragments, which are currently being digitised and uploaded to an online archive.

Contents and significance

These documents were written from about 870 AD to as late as 1880. The normal practice for genizas was to remove the contents periodically and bury them in a cemetery. Many of these documents were written in the Arabic language using the Hebrew alphabet. As Hebrew was considered the language of God by the Jews, and the Hebrew script to be the literal writing of God, the texts could not be destroyed even long after they had served their purpose. The Jews who wrote the materials in the geniza were familiar with the culture and language of their contemporary society. The documents are invaluable as evidence for how colloquial Arabic of this period was spoken and understood. They also demonstrate that the Jewish creators of the documents were part of their contemporary society: they practiced the same trades as their Muslim and Christian neighbors, including farming; they bought, sold, and rented properties to and from their contemporaries.

The importance of these materials for reconstructing the social and economic history for the period between 950 and 1250 cannot be overemphasized. Judaic scholar Shelomo Dov Goitein spent his life's work creating an index for this time period which covers about 35,000 individuals. This included about 350 "prominent people," among them Maimonides and his son Abraham, 200 "better known families", and mentions of 450 professions and 450 goods. He identified material from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria (but not Damascus or Aleppo), Tunisia, Sicily, and even covering trade with India. Cities mentioned range from Samarkand in Central Asia to Seville and Sijilmasa, Morocco to the west; from Aden north to Constantinople; Europe not only is represented by the Mediterranean port cities of Narbonne, Marseilles, Genoa and Venice, but even Kiev and Rouen are occasionally mentioned.

The materials include a vast number of books, most of them fragments, which are estimated to number nearly 280,000 leaves, including parts of Jewish religious writings and fragments from the Qur'an. Of particular interest to biblical scholars are several incomplete manuscripts of Sirach.

The non-literary materials, which include court documents, legal writings and the correspondence of the local Jewish community (e.g., Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon), are somewhat smaller, but still impressive: Goitein estimated their size at "about 10,000 items of some length, of which 7,000 are self-contained units large enough to be regarded as documents of historical value. Only half of these are preserved more or less completely."

The number of documents added to the geniza changed throughout the years. For example, the number of documents added were fewer between 1266 and ca. 1500, when most of the Jewish community had moved north to the city of Cairo proper, and saw a rise around 1500 when the local community was increased by refugees from Spain. It was they who brought to Cairo several documents that shed a new light on the history of Khazaria and Kievan Rus, namely, the Khazar Correspondence, Schechter Letter, and Kievian Letter. The geniza remained in use until it was emptied by Western scholars eager for its material.

See also

• Dead Sea Scrolls
• Elephantine papyri

References

1. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, by Shelomo Dov Goitein (6 volumes)

External links

• AHRC Rylands Cairo Genizah Project
• The Friedberg Genizah Project
• Princeton Geniza Project Website
• A Window into Jewish Medieval Life
• University of Cambridge Taylor-Schechter Geniza Research Unit
• Penn/Cambridge Genizah Fragment Project