Cairo Geniza

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The Cairo Geniza was a storeroom in a synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, in which almost 200,000 Jewish manuscripts were discovered. Although the geniza's existence was known from the mid nineteenth century, the Jewish scholar Solomon Schechter is credited with uncovering the treasure trove of medieval documents that lay there, many untouched for centuries. The term "Cairo Geniza" may also refer to a wider collection of documents, inlcuding those found at the geniza of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later nineteenth century.

Discovery

Jacob Shaphir

A geniza is a storeroom or depository in a synagogue, a literary cemetery in which worn-out scriptures are placed and heretical or disgraced Hebrew writings are stored so as to prevent their circulation.

The potential of the geniza of the Ben Ezra Synagogue as a significant subject of research was first recognized by the Jewish writer and traveler Jacob Saphir in the mid 1800s. After growing up in Safed, in 1848 he was commissioned by the Jewish community of Jerusalem to collect alms for the city's poor from the Jewish residents of the countries to the south and made several subsequent journeys to Cairo. In his Eben Sappir Shaphir describes how he spent two days ferreting among the ancient books and leaves till the dust and ashes caused him to become ill. "Who knows what may yet be beneath?" he asked.

The Cairo geniza was apparently of ancient origin, as the synagogue dates back to the early seventh century, when it was transformed from its former use as a church after the Muslim conquest of Egypt. The geniza seems to have become vitually lost in the following decades. In 1888, the collector and author Elkan Nathan Adler visited the synagogue but did not succeed in seeing more than a recess in the upper part of the right wall containing a scroll of Book of Ezra and a few other ancient manuscripts. He was informed that all old manuscripts were buried with due ceremony in the Jewish cemetery at Basatin. Shortly afterward, the synagogue was repaired by the Jews of Cairo, and during its renovation the old storeroom seems to have been rediscovered, being a secret chamber approached from the farthest extremity of the gallery by climbing a ladder and entering through a hole in the wall.

When the English archaeologist Henry Archibald Sayce, who wintered in Cairo for reasons of his health, visited the synagogue, he discovered that many of the contents of the genizah had been thrown out and buried in the ground. However, Sayce was able to acquire many fragments from the synagogue's caretakers, which were later stored in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. Other libraries made similar acquisitions. The American Cyrus Adler secured about 40 pieces from a dealer in 1891, and additional pieces were purchased on the antiquities market by various other researches. H. A. Adler revisited the synagogue early in 1896 under the escort of the chief rabbi, Rafaïl ben Shimon ha-Kohen, and was allowed to take away with him a sack containing all the parchment and paper fragments they had been able to gather in about four hours. Some of these turned out to be of exceptional interest, and were published shortly afterward.

It was the identification of a text of Ben Sira among the Bodleian fragments which induced Solomon Schechter to proceed to Cairo in the autumn on 1896 and bring back with him practically the entire written contents of the genizah. These now constitute the bulk of the collection at the Cambridge University Library.

These documents 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. Also, the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, Egnland holds a collection of over 11,000 fragments, which are currently being digitized and uploaded to an online archive.

Contents and significance

These documents were written from about 870 C.E. to as late as 1880. 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 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. 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. 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."

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. 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.

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The 1896 discovery of the Cairo Genizah was one of the greatest Jewish treasures ever found. It has provided the world with the some of the most important documents of the medieval Middle East.

A genizah, Hebrew for "hiding place," is a depository for sacred Hebrew books that are no longer usable. Since they cannot be thrown out because they contain God's name, these documents, often called shemot or "names," are put in a genizah. Genizot are usually found in the attic or basement of a synagogue, but can also be in walls or buried underground. Non-religious documents can be put there as well.

The best-known genizah, the Cairo Genizah, is located in the Ezra Synagogue in Fostat (Old Cairo, Egypt), built in 882. German poet, traveler and book dealer Simon von Geldern appears to be the first modern visitor to the Cairo Genizah in 1753. Although he mentioned it in his 1773 book, The Israelites on Mount Horeb, von Geldern never actually examined its contents because of the local superstition that claimed disaster would befall anyone who touched the sacred pages. A little over a century later, in 1864, Jacob Saphir, the scribe of the Ashkenazi community of Jerusalem visited the genizah, but again was turned away. Nevertheless, various pages were occasionally stolen or sold. In the late 19th century, Abraham Firkovich and scholar Albert Harkavy bought some leaves and brought them back to Russia. Firkovich, a Russian Karaite interested in piecing together the history of Karaite Jews, was more successful in obtaining documents at the nearby Karaite Genizah, also in Cairo, at the Karaite synagogue.

The importance of the Cairo Genizah became apparant in 1896, when two Christians brought some leaves to Solomon Schechter, who at the time was a professor of Talmudic and rabbinical literature at England's Cambridge University. Schechter recognized them as the Hebrew original "Book of Wisdom," ascribed to Ben Sira. The Book of Wisdom became part of the Christian biblical cannon (Ecclesiastics) when translated into Greek. Before its discovery in the Cairo Genizah, no known Hebrew version existed, some scholars even doubted its existence. Schechter led an expedition to Cairo where, over several painstaking months, he extracted thousands of pages from the genizah and took them to back to Cambridge. The sealed, dark room in the dry Egyptian climate allowed for the preservation the documents.

For many centuries, Cairo played an important role as one of the most prominent Middle Eastern economic, political and cultural centers. Consequently, the Jews of Cairo held a leading position among Jewish communities in the region. Soon after the Arab conquest of Egypt in the late seventh century, the newly built city of Fostat became the administrative center of the country until Cairo was built adjacent to it in the 10th century. In 882, the Jews of Fostat bought and renovated the destroyed Coptic church of Saint Michael, turning it into the Ezra Synagogue.

The discovery of the documents in the Cairo Genizah has been likened to the 20th century discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition to valuable Biblical and Talmudic documents, it gave a detailed picture of the economic and cultural life of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean region over many centuries. No other library in the world possessed such an array of religious and private documents from the 10th to 13th centuries, when the Fatimid caliphs (10-12th centuries) and Ayyubid sultans (12th-13th centuries) ruled. The genizah revealed a wealth of information from this period, an era previously not well-known in Jewish history. Its leaves described the vital role the Jews played in the economic and cultural life of the medieval Middle East as well as the warm relations between Jews and Arabs, through community minutes, rabbinical court records, leases, title-deeds, endowment contracts, debt acknowledgments, marriage contracts and private letters. Pages from the genizah identify hundreds of previously unknown people as well as provide new information about well-known men such as theologian and philiogist Yosef al-Fayumi (842-942). More than 200 previously unknown poems by Yehuda Halevy (c. 1080-1145) were found in the genizah. Perhaps the most important papers found belong to Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides or the "Rambam," 1135-1204),the greatest medieval Jewish philosopher and physician. The genizah contained over thirty works authored by the Rambam, including commentary on some Mishna tractates and a number of letters. Before this discovery, only a few lines of original Rambam writings had ever been found.

Many genizah documents have become a unique historical source for the Middle East, providing important information for Muslim and Christian scholars in addition to Jewish ones. The rich store of linguistic works shed light on Hebrew grammar and lexicology as well as a history of Arabic dialects. Unique Arab manuscripts were found, such as the pharmacological work of 11th century doctor Ahmed Ibn Al-Djazzar and a love story of Umayyid caliph Al-Walid II dating from the mid-eighth century. There were fragments of Greek translations of the Bible by Aquila, the Covenant of Damascus and ancient Babylonian and Spanish piyyutim (medieval Jewish synagogue hymns and poems added to standard prayers of the talmudic liturgy). The Cairo Genizah also included abundant material on the history of the Karaites and numerous responsa from the Gaonic Period, including works by Saadiah ben Joseph, the gaon of Sura, in the early tenth century, and other Babylonian geonim. There was correspondence between Jews of the region to as far away as India. Fragments of the eighth century Aramaic law book by Anan ben David and other documents uncovered the laws and history of previously unknown Jewish sects such as the "Zadokites." A tenth century letter from Kiev found in the genizah provided the earliest evidence of a Jewish community existing in the Ukraine. The genizah's leaves also tell the history of the Caspian kingdom of the Khazar's and its widescale conversion to Judaism in the beginning of the ninth century. Among the most recent works are Yiddish letters and poems from the 13th to 15th centuries.

Today, a large portion of the Cairo Genizah's documents are available at the University Library in Cambridge, where documents are under glass, bound in albums or placed loosely in boxes. Smaller collections are spread out across the world, in libraries in London, Oxford, Paris Frankfurt, Vienna, Budapest, Leningrad and Philadelphia. The Cairo Genizah has provided scholars with such an abundance of information that scores of books have been written on topics ranging from Jewish religious practices to the standard of living in medieval Egypt.

See also

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Goitein, Shelomo DovA Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza,

External links

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