The Cairo Geniza is an accumulation of Jewish manuscripts written from about 870 to as late as 1880 CE, that were found in the geniza of the synagogue of Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt (built 882), the Busatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century that are now 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 fragments at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The word Jew (Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... A Genizah or Geniza (Hebrew burial; according to S. D. Goitein, from the Persian word gonj storehouse, treasure) is the storeroom or depository in a synagogue, usually specifically a cemetery for worn-out Hebrew language books and papers on religious topics. ... A synagogue (from Greek συναγωγη, transliterated sunagoge, place of assembly literally meeting, assembly) is a Jewish house of prayer and study. ... For other uses, see Cairo (disambiguation). ... The Jewish Theological Seminary of America The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, known in the Jewish community simply as JTS, is the academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism, and is the movements main rabbinical seminary. ...

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 G.D. 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. Social history is an area of historical study considered by some to be a social science that attempts to view historical evidence from the point of view of developing social trends. ... Economic history is the application of economic theories to historical study. ... Rambam Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Hebrew: רבי משה בן מיימון; Arabic: Mussa bin Maimun ibn Abdallah al-Kurtubi al-Israili; March 30, 1135—December 13, 1204), commonly known by his Greek name Maimonides, was a Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher. ... Palestine (Latin: Syria Palæstina; Hebrew: פלשתינה Palestina, ארץ־ישראל Eretz Yisrael; Arabic: فلسطين Filasṭīn) is the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the banks of the Jordan River, plus various adjoining lands to the east. ... Sicily (Sicilia in Italian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,700 sq. ... Samarkand (Samarqand or Самарқанд in Uzbek, in Persian سمرقند) (population 400,000) is the second-largest city in Uzbekistan, capital of the Samarkand region (Samarqand Wiloyati). ... The Giralda Tower Seville (Spanish: Sevilla) is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain, crossed by the river Guadalquivir. ... Aden is a city in Yemen, 105 miles East of Bab-el-Mandeb. ... Map of Constantinople. ... Cathedral in Narbonne. ... Marseilles redirects here. ... Location within Italy Flag of Genoa Christopher Columbus monument in Piazza Aquaverde Genoa (Italian Genova (jeno-vah), Genoese Zena (zaynah), French Gênes) is a city and a seaport in northern Italy, the capital of Liguria. ... Location within Italy Venice (Italian Venezia), the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto, population 271,663 (census estimate 2004-01-01). ... Kiev (Ukrainian: ; Russian: ), also Kyiv, is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper river. ... Location within France Rouen (pronounced in French, sometimes also ) is the historical capital city of Normandy, in northern France, and presently the capital of the Upper Normandy région. ...

As proof that their creators were integrated in their contemporary society (and not isolated in a ghetto like later European Jews), many of these documents were written in Arabic in Hebrew characters. As evidence for how colloquial Arabic of this period was spoken and understood alone, these documents are invaluable. Goitein demonstrates that they were part of their contemporary society time and again: they practiced the same trades as their Muslim and Christian neighbors, including farming; they bought from and sold to, and rented from and rented to their contemporaries. The light this material casts on the period of the Fatimid and Ayyubid rulers extends beyond the world of their authors. A ghetto is an area where people from a specific ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. ... Arabic can mean: From or related to Arabia From or related to the Arabs The Arabic language; see also Arabic grammar The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Persian, Malay ( Jawi), Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu, among others. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. ... The term Christian means belonging to Christ and is derived from the Greek noun Χριστός Khristós which means anointed one, which is itself a translation of the Hebrew word Moshiach (Hebrew: משיח, also written Messiah), (and in Arabic it is pronounced Maseeh مسيح). ... The Fatimid or Fatimid Caliphate is the Ismaili Shiite dynasty that ruled North Africa from A.D. 909 to 1171. ... The Ayyubid Dynasty was a Muslim dynasty of Egypt, Iraq in the 12th and 13th centuries. ...

These materials include a vast number of books, most of them fragments, which Goitein estimated to number 250,000 leaves; these include parts of Jewish religious writings, as well as 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." To put this in prespective, Jacob Lassner furnished the estimate that all of the Arabic papyri and other writing found in Egypt number less than 100,000. The Quran (Arabic al-qurʾān أَلْقُرآن; its literal meaning is the recitation and is often called Al Quran Al Karim: The Noble Quran, also transliterated as Quran, Koran, and less commonly Alcoran) is the holy book of Islam. ... Blank papyrus. ...

Creation of the contents

The normal practice for genizas in the Middle East was to periodically remove the contents and bury them in a cemetery; as a result, few genizas explored in the years following the discovery of the Cairo Geniza produced anything of interest. However, this was practiced by this synagogue, and beginning with the remodelling of the Fustat synagogue (about 1025 CE), the materials deposited here were preserved by the hot, dry climate. The location of this geniza in the attic of the building, and accessible only through a hole in the wall, discouraged easy access; possibly because of fear that Jewsih funeral processions would be attacked, the contents were left untouched until the 19th century when Western scholars became interested in the contents.

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.

Modern discovery

The earliest description of this geniza was in 1864 by Jacob Saphir, a scholar from Jerusalem, in his book Iben Safir, who was unable to examine the contents. A number of documents from this source were sold by antique dealers in Cairo over the next decades, but the materials only began to be removed in volume in the 1890s, when the building was being rennovated. Different western scholars visited the genizah to mine its contents, and present their discoveries to the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Petersburg, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Dropsie College in Philadelphia, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and other major repositories. However, the collection stored at the Municipal Library in Frankfurt am Main was destroyed during the Second World War, without any description of what it held. Several places in the United States of America have the name Petersburg: Petersburg, Illinois Petersburg, Indiana Petersburg, Iowa Petersburg, Michigan Petersburg, Nebraska Petersburg, Ohio Petersburg, Virginia Petersburg, West Virginia Slight variations appear in the names of: Petersburgh, Alaska Petersburgh, New York Saint Petersburg, Russia Saint Petersburg, Florida Petersburg is also... The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in short: HAS, in Hungarian: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia) was founded in 1825, when Count István Széchenyi offered one years income of his estate for the purposes of a Learned Society at a district session of the Diet in Bratislava (seat... Now the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania (420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19131). ... Philadelphia is a village located in Jefferson County, New York. ... The Jewish Theological Seminary of America The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, known in the Jewish community simply as JTS, is the academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism, and is the movements main rabbinical seminary. ... State nickname: Empire State Other U.S. States Capital Albany Largest city New York Governor George Pataki Official languages None Area 141,205 km² (27th)  - Land 122,409 km²  - Water 18,795 km² (13. ... Frankfurt am Main [ˈfraŋkfʊrt] is the largest city in the German state of Hessen and the fifth largest city of Germany. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

Some of the Geniza's contents had already made their way to private collections or libraries -- mostly via scholarly visitors or Middle Eastern antique markets. Although a sizeable collection of papers purchased by Solomon A. Wertheimer from the Cairo Geniza had arrived at the University Library at Cambridge University, Solomon Schechter, reader in rabbinics at the university, had such little regard for these materials that he forwarded the collection unopened to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. However, Schechter was forced to change his opinion when in 1896 two Scottish sisters, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson, showed him some leaves from the geniza that contained the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus, which had for centuries only been known in Greek and Latin translation. He quickly found support for an expedition to the Cairo Geniza, and carefully selected for the University Library a trove three times the size of any other colection. Another such item is the first copies of the The Damascus Document known in modern times, one of the more important texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is a list of libraries at universities. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world (after Oxford). ... Rabbi Solomon Schechter (1850-1915) was born to a Lubavitch Hasidic family and later became the second President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1902 to 1915) and founder and President of the United Synagogue of America (later to become the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. ... Entrance to the Library, with the coats-of-arms of several Oxford colleges Oxford University Libraries Service (OULS) comprises over 30 of the University of Oxfords central and faculty libraries: from the world famous Bodleian Library, established 400 years ago, to the modern digital library ventures. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... 1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... The Wisdom of Ben Sirach, (or The Wisdom of Joshua Ben Sirach or merely Sirach), called Ecclesiasticus by Christians, is a book written circa 180 BCE in Hebrew. ... Fragments of the scrolls on display at the Archeological Museum, Amman The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 850 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, which were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran, near the ruins of the ancient...

Another cache of related material was literally unearthed about a decade later in the Basatin Cemetery, and openly sold. Some of this material is believed to form the collection housed at the Freer Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.. A systematic search of this cemetery by French scholars in 1912 and 1913 resulted in the creation of the Mosseri Collection The Smithsonian castle The Smithsonian Institution is a museum complex with most of its facilities in Washington D.C.. It consists of 19 museums, 7 research centers and has 142 million items in its collections. ... Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the...

Modern scholarship

Adalbert Merx made the first scientific (and Goitein sadly notes "one of the best") publication of the geniza documents in his 1894 Documents de paleographie hebraique. Schechter intended to systematicly publish the corpus, but his duties as President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America prevented what little work that he accomplished -- three volumes of selected literary texts -- from being published until after his death. Jacob Mann published in 1920 the fruits of his study of the Cambridge and other British collections, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs, a work Goitein states "will remain a classic as long as the Geniza is studied."

As scattered as the contents of the Cairo Geniza, so are the publications of its materials. Goitein notes that a selection of texts was published in the Boston magazine The Green Bag: An Entertaining Magazine of Lawyers, and only discovered by him decades later by accident. Goitein laments the lack of organization in the collections, of handlists or other catalogs to aid him as he sifted through the materials. Even when such helps were available, he complained that they were not as informative or complete to make a difference.

Goitein's name appears frequently in this article because he devoted decades of study to these materials to assemble his authoritative account of the social and economic history of the Jews in this period. It is a work that compares in scope and detail to Ferdinand Braudel's The Mediterranean in the Time of Philip II. Fernand Braudel (August 24, 1902 - November 27, 1985) was a historian who revolutionized the 20th century study of the discipline by considering the effects of economics and geography on global history, a prominent member of the Annales School of historiography, who concentrated on meticulous historical analysis in the social sciences. ...

Goitein's work is not the final word on the subject; study continues. One recent scholar is Gideon Lisbon, who has used this material in his research on the status of women in the Islamic society of this period. Another is Geoffrey Khan, who has studied the legal documents from this Geniza written in Arabic, and published some of his findings in his Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collection (Cambridge, 1993 ISBN 0521451698).

The cataloging and description of these materials continue. Cambridge University's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit has made some of these available online.

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)

External links

• Princeton Geniza Project Website (http://www.princeton.edu/~geniza/)
• A Window into Jewish Medieval Life (http://www.tau.ac.il/taunews/97spring/medieval.html)
• University of Cambridge Taylor-Shechter Geniza Research Unit (http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/)