Cairo Geniza

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The Cairo Geniza is an accumulation of almost 200,000 Jewish manuscripts that were found in the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue (built 882) of Fostat, Egypt (now Old Cairo), the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century. These documents were written from about 870 to as late as 1880 CE and have now been archived in various American and European libraries. The Taylor-Schechter collection in the University of Cambridge runs to 140,000 manuscripts; there are a further 40,000 manuscripts at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

The significance of the Cairo genizah was first recognized by the Jewish traveler and researcher Jacob Saphir in the mid 1800's, but it was chielfly 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.

[edit] Contents and significance

The Cairo Geniza is an accumulation of almost 200,000 Jewish manuscripts that were found in the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue (built 882) of Fostat, Egypt (now Old Cairo), the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century. These documents were written from about 870 to as late as 1880 CE. The normal practice for genizas was to periodically remove the contents and bury them in a cemetery. Many of these documents were written in the Arabic language using the Hebrew alphabet. As Hebrew was consider the language of God by the Jews, and the Hebrew script to be the literal writing of God, the texts could not be destroyed 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. Goitein demonstrates 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; the index the scholar Goitein created covers about 35,000 individuals, which included about 350 "prominent people" (which include 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 Goitein estimated number 250,000 leaves, including parts of Jewish religious writings and fragments from the Qur'an. The non-literary materials, which include court documents, legal writings and the correspondence of the local Jewish community, 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." Goitein remarks that the number of documents dropped in number about 1266, and saw a rise around 1500 when the local community was increased by refugees from Spain, and remained in use until the contents were finally emptied by Western scholars eager for the material.

[edit] References

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)