CMJR OPEN SEMINAR: The Cairo Genizah: A 120 years of progress
Tuesday 23rd October, 5pm
Dr Ben Outhwaite (Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit)
Venue: Wesley House
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The Cairo Geniza is a collection of some 210,000 Jewish manuscript fragments found in the Genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, or Old Cairo, Egypt. 190,000 of its manuscript fragments are now held by Cambridge University Library, including the original version of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, the 'Zadokite' fragments, and handwritten texts signed by Maimonides.
In the 1970s Cambridge University Library established the Genizah Research Unit to carry out a comprehensive program of conservation, cataloguing and research on the manuscripts, which is leading to all manner of important discoveries about Jewish religious, communal and personal life, Hebrew and Arabic literary traditions, and relations between Muslims, Jews and Christians from as early as the ninth and tenth centuries CE. In this lecture Dr Ben Outhwaite, Head of the Genizah Research Unit, will reflect on 120 years of research and discovery.
This seminar is part of The World of the Cairo Genizah Series. Held in co-operation with the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit this lecture series aims to present the latest innovative research on a number of key themes of importance to the study of Muslim-Jewish relations within the context of the Cairo Genizah, an important cache of medieval manuscripts in Hebrew script discovered in the late nineteenth century in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo).
