Cairo geniza

Cairo geniza , archive of ancient Jewish manuscripts found in the synagogue of Fostat-Cairo, Egypt (built 882). In the 1890s western scholars visited the synagogue and removed the materials to the Bodleian Library at the Univ. of Oxford, the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, and other major repositories. The materials are an extremely important resource for the study of biblical writings and translations, ancient Jewish liturgies, communal records, and the relations between Jews and Arabs in medieval Islamic society.

geniza A place in a synagogue for storing damaged, outdated, or heretical documents. Valuable MSS were discovered in a geniza at Cairo in 1896 which included part of the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus and fragments of a Zadokite work, later associated with the Qumran community, and called the Damascus Document, or Fragments.