Cairo Geniza

Cairo Geniza
Map
30°00′21″N 31°13′52″E / 30.0058°N 31.2310°E / 30.0058; 31.2310
LocationCairo, Egypt
TypeGenizah
Collection sizeApproximately 400,000 fragments
Period covered6th to 19th centuries CE
Building information
BuildingBen Ezra Synagogue

The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000[1] Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt.[2] These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th[3] and 19th[4] 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, Arabic, and Aramaic, mainly on vellum and paper, but also on papyrus and cloth. In addition to containing Jewish religious texts such as Biblical, Talmudic, and later Rabbinic 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.[5][6]

Manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza are now dispersed among a number of libraries, including the Cambridge University Library,[2] the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the John Rylands Library,[7] the Bodleian Library, the University of Pennsylvania's Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, the British Library, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the National Library of Russia, Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library at the University of Haifa and multiple private collections around the world.[8] 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.[9][10][11] Modern Cairo Geniza manuscript collections include some old documents that collectors bought in Egypt in the latter half of the nineteenth century.[12]

  1. ^ Rustow 2020, p. 451. "There is no universally agreed-on methodology for counting Cairo Geniza fragments....Nonetheless, four hundred thousand is the best count we currently have."
  2. ^ a b Dospel, Marek (June 1, 2022). "Text Treasures: Cairo Geniza". Biblical Archaeology Society. Archived from the original on June 1, 2022. Retrieved October 23, 2022.
  3. ^ Burkitt, Francis Crawford (1897). Fragments of the Books of Kings, According to the Translation of Aquila from a MS formerly in the Geniza at Cairo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 10. From the style of the writing the MS must be dated in the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century AD.
  4. ^ Posegay, Nick (2022). "Searching for the Last Genizah Fragment in Late Ottoman Cairo: A Material Survey of Egyptian Jewish Literary Culture". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 54 (FirstView): 6. doi:10.1017/S0020743822000356. The following is a survey of fifty-seven manuscripts and printed texts dated after 1864, comprising more than one hundred discrete classmarks (i.e., individual fragments or small groups of fragments with a single cataloguing number) from Genizah collections.
  5. ^ Goitein, Shelomo Dov (1967–1993). A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-5202-2158-3.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference virtual was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference diverse was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Jefferson, Rebecca J. W. (2022). The Cairo Genizah and the Age of Discovery in Egypt. London: I.B. tauris. pp. 191–207.
  9. ^ Schechter, Solomon (1908). Studies in Judaism: Second Series. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. pp. 1–12.
  10. ^ Hoffman, Adina; Cole, Peter (2011). Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. New York: Nextbook, Schocken. p. 39.
  11. ^ Jefferson, Rebecca J. W. (2018). "Deconstructing "the Cairo Genizah": A Fresh Look at Genizah Manuscript Discoveries in Cairo before 1897". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 108 (4): 422–448. doi:10.1353/jqr.2018.0028.
  12. ^ Goitein, Shelomo Dov. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993. ISBN 0-5202-2158-3.