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The Documents of the Cairo Geniza As a Source for Mediterranean Social History The Documents of the Cairo Geniza as a Source for Mediterranean Social History S. D. Goitein Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 80, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1960), pp. 91-100. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0279%28196004%2F06%2980%3A2%3C91%3ATDOTCG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O Journal of the American Oriental Society is currently published by American Oriental Society. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Fri Nov 9 17:30:59 2007 THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CAIRO GENIZA AS A SOURCE FOR MEDITERRANEAN SOCIAL HISTORY * THESTUDENTS of the history of the Mediterra- should be buried, i. e. preserved to await resurrec- nean countries during the High Middle Ages have tion, thus writings bearing the name of God, hav- often complained about the almost complete ab- ing served their purpose, should not be destroyed by sence of archives in Muslim countries. In Europe, fire or otherwise, but should be put aside in a the church, the feudal lords, the cities, and the special room designated for the purpose or in a guilds kept their documents both as titles of right cemetery. Such a room was attached to a syna- and for other purposes. Nothing of the kind is to gogue in Fustat or, as it is known today, Old be found in Muslim countries in that period.= Now, Cairo, and from there, and to a small extent also it is possible to reconstruct the main lines of politi- from the cemetery al-Basatin near the town, the cal history and to a certain extent also the life of treasures of the Cairo Geniza, under circumstances the ruling class with the help of literary sources, which have often been described,%ere dispersed supplemented by archaeology, epigraphy, and nu- to many libraries all over the world. mismatics, i. e. the study of extant buildings and This occurred mainly during the last decade of utensils, inscriptions, and coins. However, social the nineteenth century, beginning with 1890, when and economic history, especially of the middle and a considerable amount of valuable Geniza papers lower classes, can hardly be studied without the was acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford,' aid of documents, such as letters, deeds, or ac- and culminating in 1897, when Solomon Schechter counts actually emanating from people belonging transferred the whole of the then still extant to these classes. treasures of the Geniza chamber to the University Under these circumstances it is most fortunate Library Cambridge, England. In this country, a that a great treasure of documents, hailing from very important collection is found at the Jewish all over the Mediterranean countries, mainly from Theological Seminary in New York, brought from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, has Egypt in 1896 by E. N. Adler of London. A been preserved in the so-called Cairo Geniza.' The smaller, but still extensive collection, whose be- Hebrew word geniza, like Arabic jandza (which ginnings go back to 1891, is preserved in the means "burial "), is derived from the Persian. library of the Dropsie College, Philadel~hia,~ In Persian, ganj denotes a treasure, and its Bibli- while the Freer Gallery of Washington possesses cal derivative, especially in Ezra 6: 1, stands almost about fifty, mostly very well preserved documents, for archive. In mediaeval Hebrew, Geniza, or which were acquired by Mr. Charles L. Freer in Beth Geniza, designates a repository of discarded Egypt in 1908. Nothing is known about the writings. For just as the human body, having ful- prorenance of these papers,@but it stands to reason filled its task as container of the [hearenly] soul, that the? came from the cemetery al-BasMin, * Based on a lecture read at the University of Cali- See Paul E. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (Oxford 1959), fornia, Los Angeles, on December 9, 1958. chapter 1. N. Golb, " Sixty Years of Genizah Research," Cf. J. Sauvaget, Introduction ic l'histoire de Z'Orient Judaism, VI ( 1957) , 3-5. musulman (Paris 1946), p. 21, where an explanation of Cf. A. Neubauer and A. E. Cowley, Catalogue of the this defect is attempted. Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, I1 (Ox- 'Aspects of the Cairo Geniza documents different from ford 1906), xii-xvi. those discussed here have been treated by the present Wf. B. Halper, Descriptive Catalogzce of Genizah writer in "The Cairo Geniza as a Source for the History Fragments in Philadelphia (Philadelphia 1924). of Muslim Civilization," Studia Islamica, 111 (Paris See Richard Gottheil and William H. Worrell, Frag- 1955), 75-91, where further literature on the subject is ments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection given. (New York 1927), p. v. 9 2 G~ITEIN:The Cairo Geniza as Source for Jlediterranean Social History where Nr. B. Chapira of Paris excavated Genizah December 21, 1085, i. e. almost a hundred years papers in considerable quantities.' d small col- later. lection belonging to the University Museum of the Naturally, during the many years which elapsed University of Pennsylvania was described by the from the execution of a document to its disposal, present writer re~ently,~and there may still be it deteriorated. The writing became faint, the some papers in private hands. paper was covered with dark brown stains, it was In order to be in a position to evaluate the damaged by holes, and often parts of it were torn Geniza papers as a source of social history, we have away for various uses. to form an idea about their nature and contents, To be sure, many types of paper found in the and the localities, the times, and the social layers Geniza, as well as the ink used on them, were of from which they come. excellent quality, and the scribes of the courts, the From the very definition given to the term clerks of business houses, as well as scholarly per- Geniza above it is evident that it is the opposite sons in general, mostly had a clear and often even of an archive. In an archive one keeps documents a beautiful handwriting. Thus the MS. T. S. in order to use them, if and when necessary. 18 J 4, f. 18, represents a business letter sent from Therefore, much care is taken to preserve them Aden to India, to a Jewish merchant from Tunisia, well, and in many cases, they are deposited in the who ran a bronze factory and did other bu siness' archive immediately after being made out. The out in that distant c~untry.~The recipient, opposite was the case with the Geniza. Papers having stayed a long time in India, returned to were thrown away there only after they had lost Aden in the autumn of 1149, but remained there all value to their possessors and consequently, in and in the interior of Yemen for another three most cases, only a long time after they had been years; then, he had to make the long journey written. Even family letters, let alone business through the Red Sea, the terrible desert between correspondence, would not have been deposited in it and the Nile river, and, finally, on the Nile from a place accessible to everybody except after being Upper Egypt to Cairo. Despite the humidity of deprived of all actuality. However, legal deeds, the climate of India and Aden and the hazards of which conferred rights on their holders, had to be the journey on sea and through the desert-and kept by them and their heirs often through genera- the more than eight hundred years which have tions, before they could be disposed of in the elapsed since it was written, the letter is in perfect Geniza chamber. condition, with even the smallest dot or stroke There was another good reason for keeping a clearly discernible. document a long time before throwing it into the Unfortunately, such examples are the exception Geniza. Paper was expensive and therefore nor- rather than the rule. Most of the Geniza papers mally free space on a document was used for all make difficult reading and the great majority of kinds of purposes, such as drafts, short notes, them are fragments, representing the beginning, accounts, or even merely for trying out a pen or the end, or the middle or either side of a document, for exercises. Thus the MS. T.-S. 16.49 of the and many thousands are mere tiny fragments. University Library Cambridge was drawn up in There is another difference between an archive FustSt on April 26, 987; although long and elab- and the Geniza, which constitutes a great obstacle orate, it is a mere acquittance, in which a widow to research.
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