Searching for the Last Genizah Fragment in Late Ottoman Cairo: A Material Survey of Egyptian Jewish Literary Culture
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Authors
Posegay, Nicholas
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
International Journal of Middle East Studies
ISSN
0020-7438
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Posegay, N. (2022). Searching for the Last Genizah Fragment in Late Ottoman Cairo: A Material Survey of Egyptian Jewish Literary Culture. International Journal of Middle East Studies https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743822000356
Abstract
The Cairo Genizah is well known as a repository for hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that the Jewish residents of Fustat (Old Cairo) produced and consumed in the premodern period. Foreign “collectors” acquired most of these manuscripts for European libraries in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the majority arriving at the Cambridge University Library in 1897 under the auspices of Solomon Schechter. Less well known is the fact that hundreds of Genizah fragments were produced in the late nineteenth century, even as European collectors were scouring Cairo for ancient texts. This later corpus includes witnesses to the social and economic history of late Ottoman Cairo and provides copious evidence for the material history of Egyptian Jewish literary activity at that time. Despite this, it remains understudied for both Ottoman and Jewish history. Late Genizah material also raises questions about the integrity of “Cairo Genizah” manuscript collections around the world, as some fragments postdate Schechter’s Genizah “discovery,” and others were never in Egypt at all.
Sponsorship
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Funder references
Isaac Newton Trust (21.08(c))
Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2021-080)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743822000356
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336742
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