The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000
Jewish manuscript fragments and
Fatimid
The Fatimid Caliphate was an Ismaili Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids, a dyn ...
administrative documents that were kept in the ''
genizah'' or storeroom of the
Ben Ezra Synagogue
The Ben Ezra Synagogue ( he, בית כנסת בן עזרא; ar, معبد بن عزرا), sometimes referred to as the El-Geniza Synagogue () or the Synagogue of the Levantines (al-Shamiyin), is situated in the Fustat part of Old Cairo, Egypt. Ac ...
in
Fustat or
Old Cairo
Old Cairo (Arabic: مصر القديمة , Miṣr al-Qadīma, Egyptian pronunciation: Maṣr El-ʾAdīma) is a historic area in Cairo, Egypt, which includes the site of a Roman-era fortress and of Islamic-era settlements pre-dating the founding of ...
,
Egypt.
These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and
Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th
and 19th
centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
The Genizah texts are written in various languages, especially
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
and
Aramaic, mainly on
vellum and paper, but also on
papyrus and cloth. In addition to containing Jewish religious texts such as
Biblical
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
,
Talmudic
The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the center ...
and later
Rabbinic
Rabbinic Judaism ( he, יהדות רבנית, Yahadut Rabanit), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Judaism espoused by the Rabbanites, has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian ...
works (some in the original hands of the authors), the Genizah gives a detailed picture of the economic and cultural life of the Mediterranean region, especially during the 10th to 13th centuries.
Manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza are now dispersed among a number of libraries, including the
Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of the over 100 libraries within the university. The Library is a major scholarly resource for the members of the University of Cambri ...
,
the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the
John Rylands Library,
the
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second ...
, the
University of Pennsylvania's
Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania—commonly called the Katz Center—is a postdoctoral research center devoted to the study of Jewish history and civilization.
History
The Katz Center is t ...
, the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
, the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the
National Library of Russia
The National Library of Russia (NLR, russian: Российская национальная библиотека}), located in Saint Petersburg, is the first, and one of three national public libraries in Russia. The NLR is currently ranked amo ...
,
Alliance Israélite Universelle
The Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU; he, כל ישראל חברים; ) is a Paris-based international Jewish organization founded in 1860 with the purpose of safeguarding human rights for Jews around the world. It promotes the ideals of Jew ...
, and multiple private collections around the world. Most fragments come from the ''geniza'' chamber of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, but additional fragments were found at excavation sites near the synagogue and in the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo. Modern Cairo Geniza manuscript collections include some old documents that collectors bought in Egypt in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Discovery and present locations
The first European to note the collection was apparently Simon van Gelderen (a great-uncle of
Heinrich Heine), who visited the Ben Ezra synagogue and reported about the Cairo Genizah in 1752 or 1753.
In 1864 the traveler and scholar
Jacob Saphir visited the synagogue and explored the Genizah for two days; while he did not identify any specific item of significance he suggested that possibly valuable items might be in store. In 1896, the
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
scholars and twin sisters
Agnes S. Lewis and Margaret D. Gibson returned from Egypt with fragments from the Genizah they considered to be of interest, and showed them to
Solomon Schechter "their irrepressibly curious rabbinical friend" at Cambridge.
Schechter, already aware of the Genizah but not of its significance, immediately recognized the importance of the material. With the financial assistance of his Cambridge colleague and friend
Charles Taylor, Schechter made an expedition to Egypt, where, with the assistance of the Chief Rabbi, he sorted and removed the greater part of the contents of the Genizah chamber. Agnes and Margaret joined him there en route to Sinai (their fourth visit in five years) and he showed them the chamber which Agnes reported was "simply indescribable".
The Genizah fragments have now been archived in various libraries around the world. The
Taylor-Schechter collection at Cambridge is the largest, by far, single collection, with nearly 193,000 fragments (137,000 shelf-marks). There are a further 43,000 fragments at the
Jewish Theological Seminary Library
The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the largest Jewish libraries in the world. Founded in 1893, it is located at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City, New York, and holds over 400,000 volumes, as well as extensi ...
. The
John Rylands University Library
The University of Manchester Library is the library system and information service of the University of Manchester. The main library is on the Oxford Road campus of the university, with its entrance on Burlington Street. There are also ten other ...
in Manchester holds a collection of over 11,000 fragments, which are currently being digitised and uploaded to an online archive.
The
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second ...
at the
University of Oxford has a collection of 25,000 Genizah folios.
Westminster College in Cambridge held 1,700 fragments, which were deposited by Lewis and Gibson in 1896.
In 2013 the two
Oxbridge libraries, the Bodleian Library at Oxford and
Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of the over 100 libraries within the university. The Library is a major scholarly resource for the members of the University of Cambri ...
, joined together to raise funds to buy the Westminster collection (now renamed the Lewis-Gibson collection) after it was put up for sale for
£1.2 million. This is the first time the two libraries have collaborated for such a fundraising effort.
Contents and significance
Many of the fragments found in the Cairo Genizah may be dated to the early centuries of the second millennium CE, and there are a fair number of earlier items as well as a number of nineteenth-century pieces. The manuscripts in the Genizah include sacred and religious materials as well as great deal of secular writings. The Genizah materials include a wide range of content. Among the literary fragments, the most popular categories are liturgical texts, Biblical and related texts, and Rabbinic literature. There are also materials with philosophical, scientific, mystical, and linguistic writings. Among the non-literary items there are legal documents and private letters. Also found was school exercises and merchants' account books, as well as communal records of various sorts.
The normal practice for genizot (pl. of genizah) was to remove the contents periodically and bury them in a cemetery. Many of these documents were written in the Aramaic language
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
using the Hebrew alphabet. As the Jews considered Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
to be the language of God, 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 Genizah were familiar with the culture and language of their contemporary society. The documents are invaluable as evidence for how colloquial Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
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.
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 created 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
Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews ...
, 200 "better known families", and mentions of 450 professions and 450 goods. He identified material from Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria (but not Damascus or Aleppo
)), is an adjective which means "white-colored mixed with black".
, motto =
, image_map =
, mapsize =
, map_caption =
, image_map1 =
...
), Tunisia, Sicily, and even covering trade with India. Cities mentioned range from Samarkand in Central Asia to Seville and Sijilmasa
Sijilmasa ( ar, سجلماسة; ; also transliterated Sijilmassa, Sidjilmasa, Sidjilmassa and Sigilmassa) was a medieval Moroccan city and trade entrepôt at the northern edge of the Sahara in Morocco. The ruins of the town extend for five miles a ...
, Morocco to the west; from Aden
Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 people. ...
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.[Goitein. ''A Mediterranean Society'', vol. 1, p. 23.]
In particular the various records of payments to labourers for building maintenance and the like form by far the largest collection of records of day wages in the Islamic world for the early medieval period, despite difficulties in interpreting the currency units cited and other aspects of the data. They have invariably been cited in discussions of the medieval Islamic economy since the 1930s, when this aspect of the collection was researched, mostly by French scholars.
Many of the items in Cairo Genizah are not a complete manuscript, but are instead a fragment of one or two leaves, many of which are damaged themselves. Similarly, the pages of a single manuscript often became separated. It is not uncommon to find the pages of one manuscript housed in three or four different modern libraries. On the other hand, non-literary writings often lost their value with the passage of time, and were left in the Genizah while still more or less intact.
The materials comprise a vast number of texts, including many parts of Jewish religious writings and even fragments from the Quran. Of particular interest to biblical scholars are several incomplete manuscripts of the original Hebrew version of Sirach
The Book of Sirach () or Ecclesiasticus (; abbreviated Ecclus.) is a Jewish work, originally in Hebrew, of ethical teachings, from approximately 200 to 175 BC, written by the Judahite scribe Ben Sira of Jerusalem, on the inspiration of his fa ...
. Solomon Schechter also found two fragments of the Damascus Document
The Damascus Document is an ancient Hebrew text known from both the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls.Philip R. Davies, "Damascus Document", in Eric M. Meyers (ed.), ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East'' (Oxford Universit ...
, other fragments of which were later found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran
Qumran ( he, קומראן; ar, خربة قمران ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli ...
.
The non-literary materials, which include court documents, legal writings, and the correspondence of the local Jewish community (such as the Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon
The Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon (c. 1100) was a communication written by six elders of the Karaite Jewish community of Ascalon and sent to their coreligionists in Alexandria nine months after the fall of Jerusalem during the First Cr ...
), 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 Genizah changed throughout the years. For example, the number of documents added were fewer between 1266 and circa 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, the Schechter Letter
The "Schechter Letter" (also called the "Cambridge Document") was discovered in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter.
The Letter
The Schechter Letter has been interpreted as a communique from an unnamed Khazar author to an unidentified Jewish d ...
, and the Kievian Letter
]
The Kievan Letter, or Kyivan letter is an early 10th-century (ca. 930) letter thought to be written by representatives of the Judaism, Jewish community in Kiev. The letter, a Hebrew-language recommendation written on behalf of one member of ...
. The Genizah remained in use until it was emptied by Western scholars eager for its material.
A number of other genizot have provided smaller discoveries across the Old World, notably Italian ones such as that of Perugia. An 11th-century Afghan Geniza
The Afghan Genizah (alternatively spelled Afghan Geniza) is a collection of hundreds of Jewish manuscript fragments found in the caves of Afghanistan. The manuscripts include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, some of whic ...
was found in 2011.
The Cairo Genizah fragments were extensively studied, cataloged and translated by Paul E. Kahle. His book, ''The Cairo Geniza'' was published by Blackwell in 1958, with a second edition in 1959.
Accounting
Jewish bankers in Old Cairo used a double-entry bookkeeping system
Double-entry bookkeeping, also known as double-entry accounting, is a method of bookkeeping that relies on a two-sided accounting entry to maintain financial information. Every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to ...
which predated any known usage of such a form in Italy, and whose records remain from the 11th century AD, found amongst the Cairo Geniza.["Medieval Traders as International Change Agents: A Comment". Michael Scorgie, ''The Accounting Historians Journal'', Vol. 21, No. 1 (June 1994), pp. 137–143]
Research
The Cairo Genizah Collections at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary is the subject of a citizen-science project on the website Zooniverse
Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The organization grew from the original Ga ...
. Project volunteers are enlisted to sort digitized fragments of the Cairo Genizah, in order to facilitate research on the fragments.
The Friedberg Geniza Project
The Friedberg Geniza Project (FGP) is a digital preservation project, one of the primary goals of which is to computerize the entire world of Cairo Genizah manuscripts - images, identifications, catalogs, copies, joins, and bibliographic references ...
is of great importance to research inasmuch as it includes all Genizah fragments and bibliographical data relating to them.
Cultural impact
Indian anthropologist and writer Amitav Ghosh recounts his study of the Genizah fragments related to Jewish merchant Abraham Ben Yiju Abraham Ben Yijū was a Jewish merchant and poet born in Ifriqiya, in what is now Tunisia, around 1100. He is known from surviving correspondence between him and others in the Cairo Geniza fragments.Amitav Ghosh, 'The Slave of MS. H.6', ''Subaltern ...
in the book '' In an Antique Land''.
See also
*Afghan Geniza
The Afghan Genizah (alternatively spelled Afghan Geniza) is a collection of hundreds of Jewish manuscript fragments found in the caves of Afghanistan. The manuscripts include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, some of whic ...
*Damascus Document
The Damascus Document is an ancient Hebrew text known from both the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls.Philip R. Davies, "Damascus Document", in Eric M. Meyers (ed.), ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East'' (Oxford Universit ...
* Dead Sea Scrolls
*Dunhuang manuscripts
Dunhuang manuscripts refer to a wide variety of religious and secular documents (mostly manuscripts, but also including some woodblock-printed texts) in Chinese and other languages that were discovered at the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China, duri ...
* Elephantine papyri
*Herculaneum papyri
The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyri found in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri, in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come fr ...
* Timbuktu manuscripts
* Solomon ben Semah
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*Anthony Julius
Anthony Robert Julius (born 16 July 1956) is a British solicitor advocate known for being Diana, Princess of Wales' divorce lawyer and for representing Deborah Lipstadt. He is a partner at the law firm Mishcon de Reya.
He holds the chair in Law ...
, "The Secret Life of Cairo’s Jews"
Book Review
May 27, 2011.
* Leo Deuel, ''The Testaments of Time'', Knopf, 1965. Chapter XVIII
External links
The Friedberg Genizah Project
Princeton Geniza Project Website
Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit
at the University of Cambridge
''Genizah Fragments'' Blog
of the Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of the over 100 libraries within the university. The Library is a major scholarly resource for the members of the University of Cambri ...
Taylor-Schechter Collection
on Cambridge Digital Library
The Cambridge Digital Library is a project operated by the Cambridge University Library designed to make items from the unique and distinctive collections of Cambridge University Library available online. The project was initially funded by a dona ...
Penn/Cambridge Genizah Fragment Project
Scribes of the Cairo Geniza
Project of transcribing the documents using Zooniverse
Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The organization grew from the original Ga ...
platform
A Window into Jewish Medieval Life
Cairo Geniza: General Survey and History of Discovery
Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, by Stefan Reif, 2010, pp 7 – 12
{{Authority control
9th-century establishments in Egypt
Culture in Cairo
Hebrew manuscripts
History of Cairo
Jews and Judaism in Cairo
Islam-related literature
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*
9th-century Judaism
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ar:الجنيزا