Code Number: 058-145-E
Division Number: VII
Professional Group: Library History
Joint Meeting with: -
Meeting Number: 145
Simultaneous Interpretation:   No  

The Cairo Genizah: a Medieval Mediterranean deposit and a modern Cambridge Archive

Abstract

Paper

Amassing the Genizah

In Antiquity and in the early medieval period, it is likely that genizot, or what would in todays world constitute precious archival collections, were amassed in many areas of Jewish settlement. It appears that some communities made matters secure by burying the unwanted texts in the ground, while others removed them to caves or tombs, sometimes storing them first in suitable vessels. It is even possible that the Qumran (or, Dead Sea) Scrolls represent just such a genizah. Sadly, however, the survival rate of such genizot has not proved impressive, the ravages of time and climate on the one hand and the vicissitudes of Jewish history on the other either ensuring a return to dust, or denying later generations adequate knowledge of where a search might even commence. Fortunately, however, in the case of medieval Cairo (=Fustat), the first stage of consignment into the synagogue genizah appears not to have been followed by removal to a cave or burial place, with the result that the study of Jewish history and literature has been greatly enriched.

The long survival of the Jewish community on the same site in Fustat; the dry climate of Egypt; the central importance of the city to Muslim and Jewish history for a number of centuries; and the reluctance of the Jewish communal leaders to take any action in the matter of its genizah, other than to expand its contents with all forms of the written word all these factors contributed to the survival there of a collection of some 210,000 fragmentary Jewish texts that is at least as significant as the Qumran Scrolls. Generation after generation appear to have arranged the collection from homes and institutions in and around Cairo of texts that were no longer to be circulated, and thousands of them were consigned to the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue.

In a move that was to make its collection unique in terms of world culture and history, the community of Fustat chose to preserve much of the written word that passed through its hands, regardless of its religious status. There thus came to be amassed all manner of ephemera that had more to do with the daily activities of ordinary folk than with the ideology of rabbis and scholars. In an age that certainly predated the concern for the preservation of archives, the explanation for their behaviour may be that they saw Hebrew letters, or even any texts written by or about Jews, as either intrinsically sacred, or bearing a degree of holiness because of the frequent occurrence there of references to God, the Hebrew Bible or other religious subjects. The peak of this archival activity, if it may anachronistically be described as such, was reached between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, precisely when the community reached the zenith of its social, economic and cultural achievements.

Some texts from what became known as the Cairo Genizah were sold by synagogue officials to dealers and visitors in the second half of the nineteenth century. Famous libraries in St Petersburg, Paris, London, Oxford, New York and Philadelphia acquired major collections but it was Solomon Schechter who obtained communal permission to remove 140,000 items to Cambridge University Library in 1897. The Genizah texts are written in various languages especially Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic mainly on vellum and paper, but also on papyrus and cloth. They represent the most important discovery of new material for every aspect of scientific Hebrew and Jewish studies in the Middle Ages. As a result of the conservation, decipherment and description done for over a century, but particularly in recent years and at Cambridge, previous ignorance has been dispelled and theories drastically modified. Among the subjects that have benefited substantially are the emergence of Hebrew grammatical systems; the development of synagogal lectionaries and of translations and interpretations of the Hebrew Bible; and the literary history of such sectarian works as the Damascus Document and Ben Sira. Major impacts have also been made on the textual and exegetical study of Talmudic, Midrashic, liturgical and poetic literature, and on the evolution of Jewish religious law. Knowledge and understanding of Karaism, of Fatimid Egypt and Crusader Palestine, of special Jewish languages such as Judaeo-Arabic, and of daily activities in the Mediterranean area have also expanded greatly.

The early Hebrew codex

Where there are sets of volumes, there is inevitably a need to store and exchange them. It has indeed recently been demonstrated that in the Jewish communities of North Africa in the ninth and tenth centuries texts were being widely copied and circulated and that extensive libraries, covering various languages, were being amassed and sold. Such libraries included not only the classical Jewish sources but also the newest commentaries on the one hand and more general learning on the other. They were actively built up by individuals, sometimes businessmen rather than specialized scholars, and by communities, through gifts, appeals and purchases, and they were made available for academic use by students and for ritual use by congregants. By creating, copying and disseminating the contents of these libraries, the Maghrebi Jews of means introduced a wide variety of literary works to other communities and thereby exercised a powerful influence on the levels of Jewish cultural achievement.

The impressive contents of the Cairo Genizah are in no small degree due to the arrival there of many Jewish refugees from Tunisia and to the transfer of the bibliographical riches of the North African communities to the Egyptian centre. Book-lists are also a common feature of the Genizah discoveries and demonstrate the existence of reference literature for educational activities by the community. Bibles, prayer books, talmudic texts and commentaries, Jewish legal and theological tracts, as well as scientific, medical and philosophical works, are among the items that are regularly listed, sometimes in the context of a public sale. It is remarkable that a bibliophile, who was having a book-case made, prepared a delightful text in praise of such an item of furniture and its educational importance, with the apparent intention of having it engraved on the front. Equally remarkable is the fact that when the Egyptian Jewish community raised funds in the twelfth century for the ransom of Jews who had been captured by Crusaders in the Holy Land, they also made arrangements to pay the conquerors for the safe return of Jewish books.

Muslims, Christians and Jews

As far as their status in Islamic society was concerned, Jews and Christians were dhimmi peoples, that is, tolerated monotheistic minorities living under the protection of Islam, and as long as they agreed not to give offence to Muslims by any pretence at equality, they could, when the Muslim rulers tended towards tolerance, enjoy a reasonably good lifestyle. The Jews simply paid their special poll-tax, wore their distinctive Jewish clothes, built no synagogues higher than mosques, and went about their ordinary business. There were occasionally times when rulers decided to take a maximalist position. A national leader might object to the existence of all non-Muslim houses of worship; local leaders might ban Jewish ritual slaughter, demand more taxes, or refuse access to water wells. In the reign of the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim (9961021), the Jews of Cairo compiled a chronicle (megillat misrayim) in which they praised him for saving them from the mob and from judicial execution on tax charges but it was that same ruler who ordered the destruction of all the synagogues and churches, and whose troops engaged in an orgy of murder, rape and plunder in Cairo and Damascus. Generally, however, a productive blending of various cultures was the dominant theme, particularly during the Fatimid period, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries.

It is now clear that Muslims, Christians and Jews in the East did not live intellectually ghettoized lives. They were aware of each others texts and traditions, sometimes recording these in their own languages and literatures, and at other times subjecting them to criticism and even derision. In a religious debate with Rabbanites and Karaites conducted at the end of the tenth century, the Fatimid vizier, Ya`qub ibn Killis, a convert from Judaism to Islam, cited the content of the prayer-book of Sa`adya ben Joseph in order to heap ridicule on the Jewish liturgy. Although there was the occasional romantic tryst between a man and woman of different religious allegiance, intermarriage was not a phenomenon of the time. Conversion, however, certainly was. Just as in Christian Europe, there were Jews who were so anxious to climb the social and political ladder that they felt constrained to convert to the dominant faith. Some of them made life difficult for their former co-religionists while others retained a certain sympathy for them, even engaging them in religious dialogues. But the movement was not always in one direction and there are accounts of Muslim and Christian anger at conversions to Judaism. The records of rabbinical courts make reference to approaches made by non-Jews wishing to throw in their religious lot with the Jews. As was the talmudic custom, they were initially rebuffed but there were a number, some of them women, who were determined enough to repeat their applications until they were finally accepted and even married into the Jewish community. One convert missed only one thing from his former life the Jews could not make bread like the non-Jews!

Jews in Palestine

Later, Jews fought alongside Muslims in a desperate effort to defend the Holy Land against the Christian attacks and, when they failed, those unable to flee suffered massacres or capture. As some eye-witness accounts relate, major fund-raising efforts had to be made in other Jewish centres to pay the ransoms demanded by some Christians for the release of Jewish prisoners. Those who did escape made their way northwards to the cities of the Lebanese coast or southwards to Egypt and many documents testify to their resilience in maintaining their traditions and their identity for two or three centuries. Contrary to what was previously thought, there was a significant Jewish presence in Palestine during the Crusader kingdom. Although only a few Jews lived in and around Jerusalem, there were active and sometimes even prosperous communities in the other cities. Following the recapture of the Holy City by Saladin in 1187, Jews rebuilt their community there and, although their situation remained precarious, they were strengthened by the arrival of immigrants from western Europe. The deteriorating situation in England and France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, coupled with the spiritual attractions of settlement in the land of Israel, encouraged a number of eminent rabbis and their flocks to make this ideological emigration, or `aliyah.

The twentieth century

The final period, that of the past twenty-seven years, has seen its own special developments. Since 1973, a fully comprehensive programme of work on the Collection has been conducted in the context of a newly created Genizah Research Unit. The remaining thirty-two crates of unclassified material were sorted in 1974 and 1975 into the Additional Series under a variety of subject headings. With the assistance of external funding, the microfilming and conservation of all 140,000 fragments was completed in 1981. A busy team of researchers catalogued about 65,000 fragments, and some 50,000 published references to Cambridge Genizah items were located and published, with the help of a special computer program. Cambridge University Press joined forces with Cambridge University Library to publish twelve volumes in the newly established Genizah Series. Young researchers, visiting scholars, international co-operative projects and major exhibitions became features of the Units work. Over #1.3m was raised from outside sources in support of the Units projects and information about Genizah research was conveyed to the wider public through a regular newsletter Genizah Fragments, the media, and the Internet.