Yale University Library Research Guides: Cairo Geniza: Home

Primary Source Material

Documents of the Jewish pious foundations from the Cairo Geniza / edited with translations, annotations and general introduction by Moshe Gil.
Genizah manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch / [edited and translated by] Michael
The Targum is the Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch.
"From a sacred source" : Genizah studies in honour of Stefan C. Reif / edited by Ben Outhwaite and Siam Bhayro.
Cambridge University Library. Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit.
Judaism--History--Medieval and early modern period, 425-1789--Sources.
Jews--History--70-1789--Sources.
Genizah studies in memory of doctor Solomon Shechter / Louis Ginzberg ; introduction by Burton L. Visotzky
The book contains the texts of fragments of
Midrash.
Geonic literature.
Hebrew poetry.
Piyutim.
Responsa--To 1500.

Books on the Geniza

Sacred trash : the lost and found world of the Cairo Geniza / Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole.
This is the amazing story of the discovery of the Cairo Geniza, and the men and women who collected, deciphered, and write about it, as well as some of the major discoveries that it has
Sacred treasure--the Cairo genizah : the amazing discoveries of forgotten Jewish history in an Egyptian synagogue attic / Mark Glickman.
A Mediterranean society [electronic resource] : the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Geniza / S. D. Goitein.
This work is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza

Introduction

The Cairo Geniza is a collection of some 300,000 Jewish manuscript fragments that were found in the geniza or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. These manuscripts outline a 1,000-year continuum (870 CE to 19th century) of Jewish Middle-Eastern and North African history 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 North African and Eastern Mediterranean regions, especially during the 10th to 13th centuries. It is now dispersed among a number of libraries, including the libraries of Cambridge University and the University of Manchester. Some additional fragments were found in the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and the collection includes a number of old documents bought in Cairo in the later 19th century. (From Wikipedia)

Solomon Schechter (above) a Cambrdige scholar after seeing samples of manuscripts in 1896 went to the Ben Ezra synagogue and brought back to England as many documents as he could. Geniza fragments can be found today at Cambridge University, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Oxford University, The Johh Rylands Library, the University of Pennsylvania and several other libraries.