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.