texts as objects, objects as texts - Intellectual History of the ...

TEXTS AS OBJECTS,
OBJECTS AS TEXTS
Miriam Frenkel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Presented on Monday, 10 September 2012
at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Einstein Lectures in Islamic Studies, 2

TEXTS AS OBJECTS, OBJECTS AS TEXTS

Einstein Lectures in Islamic Studies
The discipline of Islamic Studies has developed dramatically over the last generation,
and both the role of German and Israel scholars in this process has been
important and in some cases critical, building on a long academic tradition while
adopting and developing interesting and innovative methodologies in many areas
of research and teaching. In order to strengthen this development, and to help cultivate
the new generation of scholars, a new yearly School for graduate students
from both countries has been established, “New Frontiers in Islamic Studies,” supported
by the Einstein Foundation in Berlin. Each School focuses on an important
theme in Islamic studies in which there has been and continues to be important
new developments. This peer-reviewed series of papers includes keynotes addresses
of the annual Schools, as well as selected papers of particular interests, aiming
to address innovative fields in Islamic Studies produced by scholars working at or
invited by Freie Universität Berlin and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a
contribution to open up new frontiers in Islamic Studies in the widest sense, and
it reflects the various collaborative efforts of the two academic institutions in this
field.
Editors
Reuven Amitai
Sabine Schmidtke

TEXTS AS OBJECTS,
OBJECTS AS TEXTS
Miriam Frenkel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Presented on Monday, 10 September 2012
at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Einstein Lectures in Islamic Studies, 2

The publication of this volume is made possible by a grant from
Einstein Foundation Berlin.
Cover design and layout: Jonas Müller-Laackman
ISBN 978-3-9815617-0-8
© Research Unit Intellectual History of the Islamicate World,
Freie Universität Berlin
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this volume may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the copyright
owner and the author of the book.

CONTENTS
PREFACE 7
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 11
TEXTS AS OBJECTS, OBJECTS AS TEXTS 13
ENDNOTES 38
APPENDIX 47

PREFACE
The discipline of Islamic studies has developed dramatically over the last generation
in a number of realms. In these fields the role of German and Israel scholars has
been important and in some cases critical, building on a long academic tradition
while adopting and developing interesting and innovative methodologies in many
areas of research and teaching. Still, there are many areas that need to be developed,
and likewise others that need to be renewed with the recent and approaching
retirement of senior colleagues. In order to better prepare the new generation of
scholars in our two countries, the Einstein Foundation has agreed to fund the execution
of a series of Summer Schools for advanced students from Israel and Germany,
alternating between Jerusalem and Berlin. These are jointly organized by
Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Islamic Studies”
is meant here in the widest sense―the discipline touches upon and flows into
Arabic Studies and includes the contact with other religious and cultural traditions
in the region and beyond; history, religious studies, philosophy, linguistics, art history,
archeology and literature can fall within the framework of Islamic studies.
Islamic Studies can also be integrated with the Social Sciences, particularly when
scholars and students from the latter discipline learn the necessary languages.
Interdisciplinarity and diversity as regards methodology, topics and viewpoints as
well as disparity of the types of sources is thus an integral element of each of the
Schools.
7
While there is a certain amount of cooperation and contact between German
and Israeli scholars in the subjects of Islamic studies in the wider sense, the series
of Einstein Summer Schools aims at promoting further institutional cooperation

in these fields and across the boundaries of the various disciplines. In addition, it
aims at revealing to the students of both countries the tremendous amount and
quality of the research and teaching of these topics in the other. In particular, there
appears to be a need to develop the concept of German-Israeli co-operation in
areas where it has hitherto remained rather limited. Without a doubt, the series
has already begun to lay the groundwork for further cooperation―individual and
institutional―among the next generation of scholars from the two countries.
8
The summer school of 2012 was devoted to the theme “The Geniza: An unexploited
source for the intellectual history of the medieval world of Islam”. The rich
holdings of the various Geniza materials, that have been discovered and retrieved
towards the end of the second half of the 19th century in Old Cairo (Fusṭāṭ) by a
number of scholars and manuscript collectors, have revolutionized Jewish Studies
throughout the 20th century in that it has deepened our understanding of the
economic, social, political, and intellectual life of the Jews in the medieval world
of Islam. For the fields of social and economic history, mention should be made
in particular of S.D. Goitein’s classic, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities
of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967–88), a
monumental study of the “documentary” Geniza (consisting of business-, communal
and personal letters, court records, lists of recipients of charity and of gifts for
charitable purposes, marriage contracts, deeds of divorce, wills, as well as business
accounts). His work has been continued by a number of his students as well as
their students. The Geniza materials have also significantly advanced the study of
Jewish intellectual history. Special attention has been paid over the decades to the
biblical materials (particularly Jewish translations of the Pentateuch into Arabic),
exegetical literature, liturgical poetry, as well as (more recently) philosophy and

ational theology. However, in addition to the specifically Jewish materials, the Geniza
also comprises countless documents and literary texts that are of immediate
relevance to students of Islamic Studies. The documentary Geniza that had been
the primary source for Goitein’s studies on Jewish social history is likewise a rich
source for Muslim social and economic history. Perhaps even more importantly,
the Geniza holds a vast amount of copies of Muslim texts in the rational sciences
(philosophy, rational theology, legal methodology, astronomy, medicine) as well
as in mysticism and the occult (magical texts, astrology and alchemy) that had
been transcribed by Jewish scribes and scholars, many of which are nowadays not
extant in the Islamic world. Of particular significance is the Abraham Firkovich
Collection in St. Petersburg, which, in particular in the realm of theology and philosophy,
complements the Geniza.
However, despite the evident significance of the Geniza materials for Islamic
Studies, Islamicists until today only reluctantly admit its importance and often
ignore its materials. Its incorporation into the regular curriculum of Islamicists’
sources is thus a slow process. The purpose of the 2012 School was to introduce
students of Islamic Studies to the immense riches of the Geniza, to demonstrate
its relevance and potential through a number of case studies and to enable them
to work with the Geniza materials on their own. Special emphasis has been laid on
technical and methodological issues related to the material.
9
Sabine Schmidtke
Freie Universität Berlin
Reuven Amitai
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Miriam Frenkel is Senior lecturer at the Department of Jewish History and
at the School of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main concern
in the field of research is the study of the rich documentation offered by the Cairo
Geniza. The Geniza documents constitute a unique source of information concerning
the history of oriental Jewry in the Middle-Ages. This history has occupied
only a minor place in Jewish historiography, which has generally been eurocentric.
During her years as researcher at the Ben Zvi Institute, Dr. Frenkel has had the
opportunity to decipher, translate and explore thousands of Geniza documents
including complete literary works as well as tiny scraps of documents. The products
of these years of research are mainly manifested in the rich volumes of the
“Oriens Judaicus” series, published by the Ben Zvi Institute. She has also published,
together with Prof. Tirza Meacham (University of Toronto), two Halakhic
monographs on adolescence also found in the Geniza (Sefer ha-bagrut le-Shemuʾel
ben Ḥofni Gaʾon, ṿe-Sefer ha-shanim le-Yehudah ha-Kohen Rosh ha-seder, Jerusalem
1999). The work on this topic has also resulted in a number of articles about youth,
puberty and adolescence in Medieval Jewish societies.
The late Prof. Nehemia Allony’s (1906–1983) research project on booklists from
the Cairo Geniza was handed over to Miriam Frenkel some years after his death.
The book was published in 2006 (Nehemiya Allony, Jewish library in the Middle
Ages: Book lists from the Cairo Genizah, eds. M. Frenkel, H. Ben-Shammai, with M.
Sokolov, Jerusalem 2006) and won the Association of Jewish Libraries Award for
that year. The intensive work on book lists moreover resulted in a number of articles
on the world of books, on literacy and on the literary canon of the Medieval
Jewish society in the lands of Islam.
11

12
Miriam Frenkel’s M.A thesis on the medieval Jewish community of Aleppo (Ḳehilat
Yehude Ḥalab ʻal pi ḳitve ha-Genizah, Jerusalem 1999) resulted in several articles
concerning the medieval history of this community, while her doctoral dissertation
on the Jewish community of Alexandria resulted in a book on the leading elite
of this community, published in 2006 (The“compassionate and benevolent”: The leading
elite in the Jewish community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages, Jerusalem 2006).
The book has won the Shazar prize for this year.
The research group initiated by Dr. Frenkel and by Prof. Yaacov Lev of Bar-Ilan
University on Charity and Piety, which took place in 2006/7 at the School for Advanced
Studies in Jerusalem, resulted in a collective volume on this issue, entitled
Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009).
She has also published articles on slavery in Jewish societies, Jewish historiography
and on Medieval cultural encounters between Judaism and Islam.
Over the last years Dr. Frenkel has been engaged in two main projects, namely
the process of Islamization in Medieval Palestine and the formation of Islamic
life and space (she is member in a research group on this topic funded by the Israel
Science Foundation in the framework of the “Centers of Excellence” funding
scheme); and, secondly, the material culture of the medieval Orient, an attempt to
combine archeological findings with textual evidences from the Geniza.

TEXTS AS OBJECTS,
OBJECTS AS TEXTS
by Miriam Frenkel
“I was in the Elija synagogue and searched in the Geniza. I gave 5-” 1
This brief, enigmatic note was written by Simon von Geldern (1720–1788) in his
diary, on the occasion of a visit to Cairo in 1752. The Elija synagogue, in Fustat
(Old Cairo), is the synagogue better-known as Ben Ezra, the place where over a
century later the Cairo Geniza will be “discovered,” taken out and scattered all over
the world.
Von Geldern, a great uncle of Heinrich Heine, was probably the first foreigner
in modern times to enter the Geniza room. He was a passionate traveler to the
East and according to his famed nephew, what attracted him there were his mystical
Kabbalistic inclinations. He even claimed to have had a mystical vision while
visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. We may assume that it was Kabbalistic
13
knowledge that Simon von Geldern was looking for in the Geniza chamber. 2
About a hundred years later (1859), Yaacov Safir, a delegate (shadar) of the Jewish
community in Jerusalem, a very erudite scholar and a great connoisseur in
Jewish manuscripts, made several attempts at entering the Geniza chamber. “They
told me,” he writes in his diary, “that it is very ancient ... a chamber filled with
discarded books from days of old.” After some failures, Safir succeeded to receive

the permission of the local synagogue attendants to enter the Geniza room: “After
I had toiled for two days and was covered with dust and grime,” he writes in his
diary, “I picked out some pages of various old books, though I found nothing of
14
value in them.” 3
Safir, an ardent student of Jewish thought, was expecting to find old Jewish
writings in order to get at the primary sources of original Judaic thought. He was
disappointed, probably because on the top of the Geniza room, near the roof, he
could only find very late writings.
At about the same time (1862), the Karaite of Russian origin, Abraham Firkovitch
(1786–1874), arrived at Fustat and succeeded to put his hand on numerous
manuscripts, some of them from the Geniza at the Ben Ezra synagogue. Firkovitch
was a committed Karaite, determined to revivify and unite the various Karaite
communities throughout Russia and eager to prove that the Karaites had been
present in the Crimea for many millenia and so could not be responsible for the
death of Christ. 4 Firkovitch was no doubt looking for the origins of Karaism in the
Cairo Geniza.
The sisters Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson are perhaps the persons most
identified with the massive transfer of the Geniza documents from Cairo to Cambridge.
They were self-taught scholars, versed in several ancient languages and
extremely lucky. They encountered what I have always wished for myself and will
probably never occur to me any more: at a very young age, they inherited a fortune.
Being passionate scholars, they decided to dedicate their money and lives
to the acquisition and publishing of old manuscripts.5 It was one of these manuscripts
which electrified their good friend Solomon Schechter, then a Hebrew
lecturer at Cambridge, and which put into motion the whole project of the big
transfer. The Gibson-Lewis sisters were not only rich learned ladies, they were also

devout Presbyterians, whose main concern was the origins of Christianity, and it
was old versions of the Christian Bible in which they were mainly interested. Solomon
Schechter could easily convince them to enter the adventure of buying and
transferring the whole content of the Geniza chamber, because the manuscript
he was asked to examine happened to be a leaf from the original Hebrew version
of Ecclesiasticus. Ecclesiasticus is an apocryphal book known as The Wisdom of
Ben Sira, which was accepted in Christianity as an apocryphal book “inspired by
God.” Some of the Greek and Latin Church Fathers had considered it authoritative
and it was regularly printed as a supplement to many Protestant Bibles, but not
by Presbyterians.6 In short, the almost canonical Ecclesiasticus drew considerable
devotional and theological interest in the Christian world and aroused disputes
between its various denominations. No wonder then that it also stirred the curiosity
of the Scottish Presbyterian ladies, who were no doubt looking for the origins
of Christianity in the Geniza.
Solomon Schechter, the actual man behind the transfer, the veteran of Geniza
studies, was a Jewish scholar of a Hassidic Romanian origin. Schechter had been
ordained a rabbi in Vienna and later on taught Talmud, here in Berlin, at the Hochschule
für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums. In Cambridge he served as tutor in Hebrew
and in Talmud and became renowned as an expert in ancient manuscripts. 7 It
was no doubt the one leaf from the Hebrew Ben Sira presented to him by Agnes
Lewis that inflamed him and generated his decision to attain the rest of the Geniza
manuscripts. Here is how Margaret Gibson has depicted his reaction to the find:
15
Schechter was already huddled over the large dining room table, intently
examining the fragments. Without much ado, he identified one
vellum leaf as a rare and valuable page from the Palestinian Talmud.
Then he held up a dirty scrap of paper. “This too is very interesting; may

I take it away and identify it?” “Certainly!” said Agnes. I noticed his eyes
were glittering although the scrap looked as if a grocer had used it for
something greasy. Schechter, it seems, realized its importance almost
instantly and within an hour of his racing from our home at Castlebrae
with the two items, we have received a telegram from the Cherry Hinton
Road post office, just around the corner from the Schechters’ house
on Rock Road: “Fragment very important; come to me this afternoon 8
16
What drew Schecter into the spell of this fragment that May afternoon
in the Giblews’ dining room? What notions were kindling the glitter in
his eyes that Margaret had seen when Schechter asked if he might take
the leaf of Ben Sira home for inspection? What it was about the seventeen
badly mutilated lines of verse from the second century B.C.E. that
roused the Romanian scholar and caused him to orchestrate his expedition
to Egypt? 9
These questions were lately asked by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole in their fascinating
book Sacred Trash, which tells the story of the discovery of the Geniza. The
answer they provide in their book is very convincing too: Many of the prominent
biblical scholars of the day were exponents of the interpretive approach known as
“Source Criticism,” or “Higher Criticism.” These largely Protestant scholars used
historical tools to reconstruct how and when various biblical books came to be. By
Schechter’s time, the Higher Critics had concluded that a number of books in the
Hebrew Bible, such as Song of Songs, Job, Ruth and certain Psalms were composed
much later than previously supposed―in the latter half of the Second Temple
period, towards the second century B.C.E. To Schechter’s mind, something was

wrong with this picture suggested by the proponents of Higher Criticism and Ben
Sira might help clear things up, since for this book we have a clear reliable date:
between 220–180 B.C.E. If one had in hand a substantial sample of the original
Hebrew of Ben Sira, it could be compared with the Hebrew of these biblical books
whose dates are a matter of speculation. Schechter was no doubt in favor of serious
scholarly analysis of scripture, but he felt uneasy about the Protestant critics
line of inquiry, which perceived much of Jewish history as a continual deterioration
from the heights of early prophetic vision to a preoccupation with stiff ceremony
and dry legal sophistry. Second Temple Judaism was in his worldview reduced
by the Higher Criticism to a mechanical priestly cult, and post Temple, or rabbinic
Judaism, which he held in the highest esteem, was dismissed as outright as a spiritually
sterile legalism. Schechter believed that with the help of the Hebrew Ben
Sira, he would be able to combat the Higher Criticism. An authentic Hebrew Ben
Sira would confirm the existence of a moral and spiritually vital Second Temple
Judaism very different from the dry legalism and priestly rituals as it was depicted
by the Higher Criticism scholars. The single leaf from the Geniza roused him to
such a degree because from the beginning he has seen Ben Sira as a critical link in
the chain of Jewish legacy through the ages. The discovery of the original Hebrew
text of Ben Sira, composed during a critically transitional phase of the Second
Temple period would buttress his claim for the validity of this continuous culture.
As Schechter himself wrote in one of his letters: “It is for me a simple question of
history ... we ought to recover our Bible from the Christians.” The way to do it went
through Cairo.10 Solomon Schechter, no doubt, looked for the origins of rabbinic
Judaism in the Geniza.
Simon von Geldern, Yaacov Sapir, Avraham Firkovitch, the Gibson-Lewis sisters
and Solomon Schechter―all these veteran Geniza hunters were hence basically
17

18
motivated by theological polemical drives. They were all hoping to find in the dark
depths of the age old dusty Geniza chamber in Fustat some ancient writings that
will provide them with the ultimate proof to their religious conviction. The Geniza
project in its initial steps looked like a Judeo-Christian playground, or perhaps like
a Judeo-Christian wrestling arena.
In their eagerness to get at the sources of Christianity or Judaism these scholars
overlooked the sheer fact that the many manuscripts deposited in the Geniza were
produced and used in the context of a medieval Islamic civilization and although
some of them were indeed continuing age old traditions it was always medieval
Islamic variants of these ancient traditions.
Moreover, these learned scholars were instinctively looking for books. Yaacov
Safir expected “a chamber filled with discarded books from days of old” and then
“picked out some pages of various old books.” Schechter described the Geniza
room as “a battlefield of books,” and upon returning to Cambridge he started to
sort the manuscripts he brought with him (in big grocery boxes, as attested by his
wife Mathilde) according to the classification of a classical European library: Philosophy,
Theology, Literature, Bible, etc. Not only did he and the other researchers
disregard the many documentary manuscripts that reflected the real historical
moment of the Geniza finds, being nineteenth century people, they took the very
existence of books for granted and did not fully realize that they were witnessing
one of the most significant revolutions that took place in the medieval world of
Islam, namely the revolution of the book.
The 300 years, between the tenth to twelfth centuries, usually termed as “the
classical Genizah period,” were actually the era of the book itself. Books spread
in the world of Islam among Muslims, Christians and Jews alike, bringing about
a profound revolution. The first stages of this revolution started already in the

ninth century. The prominent author al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869), writing in the ninth century,
could expend page upon page praising the excellence of some books, and in tenth
century Baghdad, the bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm could already cite thousands of
titles. The fascination with manuscript books as well as their massive production
and constant circulation even led some contemporaries to fear the “overproduction
of books.” This fear which was no doubt real and existential is best reflected in the
well known anecdote about al-Jāḥiẓ (776–868), the ultimate bibliophile, who used
to sleep inside a bookshop in order to be able to read as many books as possible
without being disturbed, and who found his sudden sweet death, buried under
a huge pile of books, which collapsed upon him while he was asleep. 11 The fear
of the revenge of books on man, embedded in this anecdote, is a typical reaction
to revolutions, a kind of medieval version of the modern phobia of the revenge
of machines or the revolt of the robots and it reflects the deep shock caused by
the revolution of the book at this time. Although it probably started already in
the ninth century, it was from the eleventh century onwards that the diffusion of
the written word in the form of books has caused a distinctive transformation of
cultural practices in the Islamicate world. 12 The role of the written word increased
significantly and the society went through a process of textualization which made
it the world’s most bookish society at the time. It was a profound, wide-spread
revolution. From the point of view of the volume of production and dissemination
of books, as well as of their quality and variegation, it can be safely compared
to the print revolution of the fifteenth century. This incredible process, with its
far reaching social and even mental implications, is partly reflected in normative
Muslim literature: in the standard chronicles, in biographical dictionaries, travel
accounts and geographical works and in institutional documents such as endowments
deeds (waqfiyyat) and reading certificates (samāʿāt). But it seems that the
19

20
full social and cultural meaning of this revolution is best attested to by the Geniza;
by the 250,000 leaves with literary contents, that originally formed parts of books
composed, produced and consumed in the lands of Islam during this period, and
also by letters and other documents from the Geniza that expose the cultural and
social implications of this revolution. 13 More than any normative literature, more
than the official samāʿāt and waqfiyyat, these artless letters tell the full meaning
and consequences of this revolution. True, most of them were issued in Jewish circles
and are written in Judeo-Arabic, 14 but we should understand that the “reading
scene” went well beyond the Muslim circles. It also included the religious minorities:
the Christians and the Jews, who were an indispensable part of this world. It
was the Jewish leading elite that adopted the new world of the book and turned it
into its cultural epithet.
In my book on the medieval Jewish Community of Alexandria, I have tried to
show how the ruling elite of the Jewish world functioned at this time as a widespread
cosmopolitan network of both commercial and intellectual connections. 15
The network was based on very small circles, sometimes composed of no more
than two partners, but in which every member belonged to more than one circle,
thus being able to serve as a link between several circles. In effect, each member
stood at the center of a conglomerate of entangled circles that created a worldwide
network of commercial as well as intellectual connections. The base of power was
dependent upon one’s position in the network. The more connected one was the
more powerful. The network constituted social, economic, familial and intellectual
ties. It crossed political borders and covered a vast geographical area. It was comprised
of a stable pool of members who occupied the central key roles in the Jewish
world centers and in the Jewish local communities. In spite of its universality it
formed a corporative, well defined and particularistic group. In some ways this is

the “bourgeoisie” about which Goitein has spoken. 16 Its members were very much
involved in international trade and kept tight commercial ties. This network was
at the base of an immense economic machine and its members formed a leading
cosmopolitan elite.
Admittance to the group went through several channels, one of which was education
and learning. Learning and knowledge were highly esteemed and served as
a major criterion for admittance and promotion within the group. Learning assumed
supreme importance. Parents and grandparents saw to it that the younger
generation acquired what was considered to be proper education and followed
their success in learning with much interest and concern. Speculative learning
was not confined to childhood, but rather formed an inseparable part of adult life.
People kept learning Torah and general studies in small groups or with peers who
were called reʿa or rafīq. 17
Books came to be a crucial factor in this network, serving several functions, all
aimed at preserving and consolidating this cosmopolitan elite. The production of
books, their distribution through copying, selling, buying, lending, and pawning,
as well as their consumption through learning and reading, became central activities
for the elite members of the Jewish community.
I would like to illustrate this salient phenomenon by sketching in broad lines
the profile of one person who may serve as a representative model. The person I
chose, quite arbitrarily, for this purpose is Solmon ben Elijah, the youngest son of
judge Elijah ben Zechariah of thirteenth century Fustat. Solomon earned his living
by teaching young children, hence his nickname (kunya): ha-Melammed, the instructor.
He served as secondary judge in Cairo and was involved in a wide range
of communal activities: he was a professional witness at the communal court, ran
the communal slaughter-house (quite a powerful position), fulfilled the function
21

22
of trustee of the court, and for some time he occupied the post of the cantor of
Bilbais (in the Nile delta). In addition, he was a merchant of wine and cheese, two
very sensitive products, which required high credibility and integrity because of
the strict laws of kashrut that applied to them. On top of all this, Solomon was very
much involved in books. He sold and bought books independently and also served
as a broker (simsār) in book transactions. 18 The receipts on some of these transactions
have survived through the Geniza. One of them shows that a medical text,
al- Ṣināʿa al-ṣaghīra, probably by Galen, 19 was purchased from ʿAbdallāh, son of
the teacher (muʿallim) Abū al-Faraj, for eleven dirhams, ten of which were paid to
the owner of the book (Abū al-Bayān) and one dirham was paid to Solomon as the
mediator in this deal. In other deals, he earned a smaller percentage: Dalālat alkhāʾirīn
by Maimonides, for example, was sold for 32 dirhams, of which Solomon
received only 2 dirhams. It should be noted that most of these receipts are written
in Solomon’s beautiful pedantic handwriting, which suggests that he also acted as
some kind of notary. Being known in the business, people used to deposit books in
his hands, hoping that he would succeed in selling them. In a letter addressed to
Solomon, Dāʾūd ben ha-Ḥaver, a teacher of Qalyūb, complains that his salary has
not been paid for almost a year, and that is why he is compelled to send Solomon
some small booklets; he asks him to try and sell them for him or pass them on to
someone else who will be able to do so. “Please, my lord,” he implores, “make every
possible effort and see to it that they will be sold at any price.” 20 Solomon also initiated
the copying and producing of books in order to sell them. Thus, he actually
acted as some kind of entrepreneur. This is what he writes to a copyist employed
by him:
Will R. Solomon (the copyist) be so kind as to finish copying the translation
of the Book of Kings as soon as possible, as he originally promised.

If the Book of Kings is not available, let it be the translation of Haftarot,
and will he please pay special attention to punctuation marks. They are
extremely important. 21
Solomon also acted as a pawnbroker. He lent cash against books, which were pawned
to him. In a court deed, written by Solomon himself, a loan of 20 dirhams is
given to a man, who needs it urgently to buy wheat, in exchange for three codexes
(maṣāḥif), two tractates of the Mishnah and an exegesis (sharḥ) of the Mishnah.22
Since Solomon was also a teacher, he had, in certain cases, to give his assurance
under oath that he would not use the pawned books for teaching purposes.23 The
very existence of such promissory notes in his archive may very well prove that
whenever he was not restricted by such stipulations, he might have found it very
convenient to use the books that were deposited with him for teaching or copying
purposes.
In addition, Solomon dealt with writing materials and appliances: he bought
and sold paper. In one very worried letter, Abū al-Majd of Alexandria asks him why
the mistara (a professional tool for marking lines on writing paper) that he had
ordered, and for which he had already paid for, had not yet been delivered.
This rudimentary portrait of Solomon ben Elijah is just one haphazard sketch.
Profile of more persons mentioned in the Geniza documents from different periods
of time would have betrayed quite similar characteristics. Persons such as Israel
ben Nathan, Labrāţ ben Sighmār, Ḥayyīm ben Immanuel ben Qayūma, Joseph
Rosh ha-Seder and many others are mentioned in the Geniza papers. They all verify
the unique phenomenon I have already pointed at, namely, that the occupation
with books including all their aspects and stages, from writing through copying,
editing, producing, trading, reading and consuming, was the exclusive domain of
a distinct elite group.
23

News about books―written, copied, borrowed, sold, lost, or captured―occupy a
central place in the correspondence of the elite. Books are a central issue about
which one normally writes to friends and partners, since they occupy a major role
in life.
The passion for books is reflected in the correspondence by ʿAmram ben Isaac.
This man left in the Geniza numerous letters he wrote to Ḥalfōn ben Nethanel
written in his last years while he was terminally ill, lonely, and preoccupied with a
very sick wife: he still keeps begging his addressee, Ḥalfōn ben Nethanel, in letter
after letter, to send him some books to read:
24
I have already asked you several times to send your poor, sick brother
the exegesis on Isaiah so that he will be able to read it as long as he is
still alive. I hereby beg you once again; please send it to me as soon as
possible with whomever you find. 24
On the other end of the biological spectrum are the secret letters written by young
Nethanel ben Moshe, who has been grounded by his father so that he may concentrate
on his learning. Young Nethanel secretly and against his father’s explicit
orders corresponded with some of his close friends. But, strikingly enough, what
occupies these young restless adolescents is not what you probably think. The major
issue in their letters is, believe it or not, books, which they exchange and read
with great enthusiasm. Nethanel himself asks his young friends to clandestinely
smuggle some books to his home prison.25
The high cost of books and the intensive labor which their production required,
made them a very sensitive product. Even their exchange required much credence
and turned into a major way to express trust and intimacy. The most famous illus-

tration of this are the words of Moses Ibn Tibbon in his introduction to the Hebrew
translation of Maimonides’ Book of Commandments:
I asked one of the learned people (maskilīm) of our country who frequents
Alexandria to look for it (for the original version of the Judeo
Arabic book) over there and that if he could not find it, to write a letter
on my behalf to the great Nagid, the son of the Rav, the composer (i.e,
Abraham , Maimoindes’ son) and ask him to order one of the copyists of
his country to copy it and send it to him. The Great Nagid, being so kind
and benevolent and in honour of our long lasting love and friendship,
sent him his own personal book to copy. 26
The lending of the private copy is, thus, perceived as a symbolic act of grace and
love, which brings to mind the custom of khilʿa, which originated in the granting
of the king’s used robes as an homage of favour and friendship.27
But books were not only passionately read, they were also produced by the elite
members, who used to copy books for themselves and for their friends, edit them,
punctuate them, cut and straighten their paper, and finally also bind them with
their own hands. The production and the exchange of books became the cohesive
glue of the members of the elite. The shared occupation with books served as a
central axis around which the links and affinities of the members were consolidated
and served to strengthen the ties of friendship. The mutual exchange of books
was interpreted as a symbolic gesture of love, intimacy and belonging to the same
25
social milieu. 28
Let us listen, for example, to what Yeshūʿa ben Ismaʿīl al-Makhmūrī wrote to
Nahray ben Nissīm:

Concerning your words about the maṣāḥif (codexes), I have read your
letter to ʿAwāḍ ben Hannanel. He said: these maṣāḥif are ready, but I am
too busy to bind them and R. Abraham, whom I asked to do the binding
is sick. These are ʿAwāḍ’s words. Now, if you want the books unbound,
they can be at your place, if God wills, before Purim. 29
26
Apparently, this ought to be a very simple transaction: Nahray ordered some books
from ʿAwāḍ, but from that moment on, the parties involved saw to it that it would
turn into a complicated collective project: Nahray did not appeal directly to ʿAwāḍ
to order the books that he wanted him to produce (although we know very well
that they enjoyed good long term commercial relations; they were even cousins).
He preferred to turn to a third person, Yeshūʿa ben Ismāʿīl, and requested that he
ask ʿAwāḍ what had happened to his book order. Yeshūʿa read Nahray’s letter to
ʿAwāḍ, who then involved a fourth person (R. Abraham) to explain why the books
were not ready yet. Now the answer went all the way back: R. Abraham told ʿAwāḍ
who told Yeshūʿa, who wrote back to Nahray. It seems as if the members of the elite
group did their best to involve in the business of books as many friends as possible
in order to offer them more and more opportunities to rub shoulders with each
other and, thus, to constantly consolidate the bonds which bound them together.
A clear illustration of the way in which dealing with books strengthened the ties
of friendship is found in the correspondence between the same Nahray ben Nissīm,
who was a well known public figure in Fustat, and Yeshūʿa ben Joseph, the leader
of the community of Alexandria. Their correspondence touches on many communal
issues, such as a ransom to be paid for Jewish captives and reciprocal help for
the poor. They also both ran textile businesses, another factor strengthening their
commercial relationship. But what makes their ties personal and binding is undoubtedly
their shared intellectual and practical interest in books. Yeshūʿa invests

Nahray with the task of supervising the manufacture of ten books in different
formats, which he had ordered in Alexandria. Their correspondence also includes
practical advice concerning their mutual interest. In one letter Nahray asks
Yeshūʿa to send him reed pens made of reeds of lake Maryūt (near Alexandria), and
Yeshūʿa answers
As for the Maryūt reeds you have asked for, I have to warn you that at
this time of the year they are still wet. They won’t be cut before August
at the time of vintage. I shall order them then and bring them and cut
them for you into fine pens that will suit you best, and then I shall send
them to you. 30
The reed pens, then, both served these two intellectuals as their working tools
but were also another―clearly related―subject for general discussion. In today’s
terms these two men could be university teachers discussing the pros and cons of
some new software.
Hence, to use Bourdieu’s terminology: The field of cultural production was situated
within the field of the sovereign and hegemonic social class. 31 Since the hegemonic
class among the Jews was the trading elite, this cultural production was
part and parcel of the international medieval commerce and assumed the same
patterns. A young man could enter the network through a period of apprenticeship
in trade or in learning or in both. The young apprentice was accompanied by
an experienced older merchant or teacher who was responsible for teaching him
the ways of commerce or the ways of Torah. Between student and master, strong
life-lasting ties called tarbiyya (in the case of commerce) or ḥaqq al-Torah (in the
case of learning) developed. A merchant would always go on a commercial journey
accompanied by a close friend (reʿa, rafīq) just as a student would always choose a
27

28
mate for learning. For the youngster, these ties created the wide-reaching connections
that paved his way into the leading elite, usually as a merchant and scholar.
Goods and merchandises were traded on the basis of personal acquaintance, mutual
trust and intensive exchange of information between two or more parties
in an unofficial partnership called ṣuḥba. 32 In the same way, professional cantors,
poets and other intellectuals exchanged liturgical poems (piyyutim), Halakhic responses,
and books on the basis of friendship, trust, and mutuality. Yehudah ibn
al-ʿAmmānī used to detect and obtain liturgical poems for his colleague, Meir the
cantor, who in turn used to send him Halakhic responsa. Both used to sign the letters
they wrote to each other with the formula: mahma kāna li’l-mawlā min ḥāja aw
khidma yuʿarrif al-mamlūk bihā, meaning: “Any service or need my lord will have,
let him bring it to the knowledge of his servant [or: slave].” The “need” (ḥāja) could
just as equally be a purse of dinars, wheat, silk, a new liturgical poem, a halakhic
response, or a new book. 33
The “ancient books” found by Schechter and his peers are, then, testimonies to
the tremendous revolution brought about by Islamic civilization. It is not only the
contents of the books, but also their physical being and the ways they were produced,
transmitted and consumed that testify to this fantastic change. As Malachi
Beit-Arié has already shown, the incredible amount of books found in the Geniza
do not only reflect the large production of books, but being a trash bin, a depository
of used books that have lost all value to their possessors, the Geniza also
proves the intensive use made by books, i.e., their intensive consumption. 34 Books
are then not only texts, but also very indicative objects. As such, the physical traits
of books: the state of their preserve (were they kept intact or are they worn and
shabby), their size, the quality of their paper, the way it was cut, the ink they use,
their mise en page, all these physical attributes should be carefully studied along

the study of their content. Books as objects filled a very significant role in the lives
of medieval people in the Muslim world in terms of economic value, exchange,
communication, prestige and symbolic capital. They formed part not only of their
intellectual and mental world, but also of their material culture. Books were part
of the large repertoire of inanimate things that surrounded their lives and loaded it
with meaning. As such, they had the ability to signify things for them, to establish
social meanings on behalf of them, to carry personal and emotional meanings and
to facilitate for them interpersonal interactions and group attachments.
In this respect the Geniza resembles very much an archaeological site. It offers
a glimpse into the material aspects of a past society. If we view the many texts
accumulated in the Geniza as artifacts we may gain significant insights about
the beliefs, values, ideas, attitudes and assumptions of this society, not only from
their content, but also from their physical attributes. There is also place for an inverse
strategy of looking at artifacts as texts. Among the various types of Geniza
documents, we have a lot of information about objects. All those inventories, lists,
dowries, bills and accounts that had no place among Schechter’s grocery boxes,
but were put aside together and classified as “rubbish” are actually a mine of information
about material culture, as was already demonstrated by Goitein in his
monumental volumes. A thorough study of this rich information about objects
may also yield significant insights about the mind and beliefs of people in this civilization.
Beliefs are not only those that surface in well arranged theological essays
of which people are aware, and which they explicitly express in what they say, do,
and make. Beliefs are also submerged and hidden. A culture’s most fundamental
beliefs are often so widely understood, so generally shared, that they never need
to be stated aloud, but are sometimes implicitly embedded in the most daily and
trivial objects that surround the people’s lives. For example: the many types of
29

fumigators mentioned in the Geniza documents: mijmara, mibḥara, midkhana and
some more, all used to deodorize a room after a meal, tell for sure something about
the conception of commensality, of sharing food together, perhaps a reminiscence
of sacrificial offerings to God after consuming food. Objects can also tell a lot
about economic and social structures in a society.
I would like to dedicate the last part of my lecture to an example of how a sheer
list of objects can reveal hidden beliefs and social structures in a given society. Let
us look at the translation of one document:
30
ENA182246a
1. Inventory [of the possessions] on the middle floor: two big cauldrons with
earthen pots
2. for boiling paint and two small pots for cooking and
3. three small copper pots and four other earthen cauldrons
4. for cooking and four iron pans for frying and two copper mortars and six
5. iron shovels and a ewer (with a long, narrow neck) and a bisṭam (?) for sweets
6. and two hammers for carpentry (or for cutting stone) and a stool and two
scales for raṭls
7. and five raṭls of lead and seven raṭls of lead
8. in one piece and a copper latticework and two copper buckets for the oven
9. and a copper cup and three small earthen pots and four troughs for dough
10. and a hand mill and an iron rod and three old carpets
11. and a mulḥam cloth [whose warp is of silk and weft of cotton] and a labourer’s
garment made of brown wool (busht) and a threadbare blue cloth (khalaq) and
a pair of underwear (sirwāl) and another
12. mulḥam cloth and another labourer’s garment and another pair of underwear

13. and a worn linen robe and an Iraqi burd gown and a Nūlī and big turban
(biqyār)
14. and a scarf and a new Andalusī robe and raw Andalusī cloth
15. and a Sūsī scarf and a small biqyār from Nūl with its storage box and another
16. pair of underwear and a khalaq cloth; [....];
17. and a small chest containing the prayer book by R. Saʿadya [Gaon], of blessed
memory and a volume
18. of the Book of Psalms and a Maghribi prayer book and an Arabic poetry book;
19. and a copper basket for cups and a big copper cauldron for frankincense (olibanum,
lubān);
20. and a copper cover for a water jug and three copper cooking pots and two
lamps,
21. one big and one small and two pairs of covers for coolers
22. and a piece of sandalwood weighing three raṭl and another copper cover
23. for the water jug and a pair of copper cooking pots and two big copper mortars
24. and a pair of divided meal-carriers of “swollen” copper and another big cauldron
for earthen pots
25. and a small copper cup and a big copper perfume box (zanjala)
26. and three bowls and a lined chest with
27. ten raw Andalusī cloths and a Sicilian patched robe
28. and two garments with large dishes in it and hooks and [...]
29. for the lead workshop (or sugar factory or kitchen) and rods for operating the
oven and another copper cooking pot;
30. [....] and three containers for earthen pots
31. for frankincense (olibanum, lubān) and another small one and ten raṭls of lead
and a single ʿAbbadānī mat and a small copper dipper
31

32
32. and a small copper perfume box and a woollen curtain
33. and another copper perfume box of the bath-houses and a small copper bucket;
34. a vessel for personal bathing (mirjal) and two stone zīrs (large clay containers)
and two big copper cups for zīrs
35. and a water table jug on a tray (marfaʿ) and another small hand mill
36. and a cupboard with seventeen water skins and a bowl in its container
37. and seven empty water skins for oil and a small stone zīr; [....]
38. and a sword without its scabbard; [...] and a basket with fine earthenware
dishes
39. and four small earthen pots and a water cooler and a bowl, both coloured,
containing in them
40. a “foot” for the public house and four broken bowls and two water skins [...]
41. of glass in its case.
42. Margin: a copper water table jug on a tray (marfaʿ) and a small copper cover
and a hammer.
This Geniza document, albeit just a detailed inventory of objects, is, in many ways
and like many other Geniza documents, quite enigmatic. It enumerates over 150
items that have in common only the fact that they are physically amassed in the
same space, namely the middle floor of a building. We do not know whether this is
just one part of a larger inventory that also included the objects kept on the lower
and upper floors, or whether it was only the middle floor in which objects were
stored. Nor do we know whether the two pages we possess constitute the entire
list of objects from the middle floor, or whether there were additional objects indicated
on subsequent missing pages.

But the main question is the purpose of this list: what was it written for? Goitein
called it: “a coppersmith’s personal belongings,” 35 since it includes many vessels
made of brass, bronze and copper, but one cannot ignore the fact that it also
includes vessels made of stone, clay and china, besides many textiles (not necessarily
clothing), tools which have nothing to do with the coppersmith’s craft, and
even some books. It is almost impossible to find any systematic logic or order in
which the objects were noted down. The various objects are enumerated in an
unbreakable continuum with no division between them either through words or
punctuation. It seems that whoever wrote the list did it in a mimetic way, just
walking around the place, writing down each item he encountered. The effect received
is that of a series of pictures taken by a camera or that of a video. We thus
receive a clear picture of what the second floor looked like. It seemingly had the
appearance of a storeroom.
It is not likely that it was a merchant’s store, since there are no prices indicated
in the list. It could not be an inventory of the estate of a deceased person, either,
since, as will be shown later on, the items listed could in no way belong to a single
person. Hence, our suggestion is that this is a pawnbroker’s inventory of the collateral
holdings in his possession, which were kept in storage. Moreover, in some
cases we can follow quite clearly the “biography” of some of the objects through
the incidental way in which they were assembled. Thus, for example, the first four
lines probably display the former assets of a professional cook, including cooking
pots, pans and utensils for his oven. All of them were seemingly his dedicated
working tools before he was forced to pawn them. It should be noted that during
the Fāṭimid period, as well as in later Mamlūk times, food was routinely prepared
by professional cooks in the bazaar, from whence it was brought home and served
fresh. The preparers of meals themselves were of the lowest social stratum.
33

34
In the same way, lines 8 to10 display the former assets of a baker (khabbāz), including
his bowls for kneading dough and his hand mills. We can imagine that these
objects were deposited in the storehouse as soon as the people who pawned them
brought them there.
If this is the case, this inventory offers us not only a glimpse of the rich material
culture of the Fāṭimid era, but also a rare reflection of the social life of the lower
classes, those needy people who were obliged to pawn their professional paraphernalia,
as well as their personal belongings, to raise funds. In some ways it can
be viewed as the counterpart of Ibn Zubayr’s Kitāb al-Dhakhāʾir wa’l-Tuḥaf (Book
of Treasures and Gifts), which enumerates the treasures of the Fāṭimid palaces.
Indeed, the list does not display any extravagant lavishness, but rather includes
elementary house wares (baskets, cauldrons, drinking cups, broken bowls, water
jugs, covers, a woolen curtain) side by side with simple clothing items (raw cloth, a
patched robe, a laborer’s garment of brown undyed wool and underwear) and very
basic working tools (hammers, scales, hooks and rods). It seems that these were
what the common people could offer in times of need. One of the many advantages
of being well off is that when a drop in income necessitates economy, there is
a whole series of goods which one can do without. According to the Engel curve,
which separates necessities from luxuries based upon income elasticity, luxuries
are defined as those goods which the individual will easily do without, as a result
of a drop in income. In our case, it seems that people were forced to give up bare
necessities. The most striking example is one of a pair of sleeping mats (line 30).
The couple was probably obliged to sleep cramped together on the single mat still
left.
Of special interest in this list is a chest containing four books. Books were treated
as any other commodity and were considered to be typical items of trade.

Three of the four books are prayer books, basic for any believing Jew. Since they
were of monetary value, their owner deposited them as collateral. They do not
indicate any particular literary interests of their former owner. The fourth book
is, surprisingly enough, a book of Arabic poetry. It is treated as an article of trade
since, in contrast to the Jewish prayer books which are identified by author and
content, this one remained anonymous without any indication of its specific contents.
Since all four books were kept in the same small chest, Hebrew prayer books
side-by-side with Arabic poetry, we may safely assume that their original owner
was Jewish, and this may be an indication, from an unexpected source, of Jews’
familiarity with Arabic poetry.
Another surprising item is a sword (without its scabbard), mentioned in line 37.
As a rule, Jews were not allowed to bear weapons, nor were they involved in the
manufacture of, or trade in, arms, which were generally very specialized in those
days. This particular sword could have been pawned by a Muslim.
Since the names of the pawners are not indicated in this document, we can only
speculate that some of them were women. Most household items were usually
brought into the home of the newly-weds by the bride, as part of her dowry. They
were considered to be her personal property which had to be returned to her at
the termination of the marriage. Hence, objects such as two lamps (line 20–21), a
cauldron for frankincense (lines 19, 30), perfume boxes (lines 25, 31) or water jugs,
were probably pawned by women in times of need.
The list displays a global economy with articles imported from various parts of
the world. While the household goods and the tools seem to be have been made
by local manufacturers, many of the textiles and clothes seem to have come from
abroad: a biqyār turban from Nūl in South Morocco; a scarf from Sūsa in Tunisia;
Andalusian cloths; a Sicilian robe; a mat from ʿAbbadān in Southern Iran and an
35

36
Iraqi burd gown. Still, it should be pointed out that since most of the objects listed
in this inventory are basic commodities, some of these supposedly imported items
may have merely been standard items, actually manufactured in Egypt and only
named after the place in which their style originated. ʿAbbadānī mats, for example,
an essential furnishing needed in every home, were copied everywhere and manufactured
in many places in Egypt.
This list reflects not only the social life of the lower classes, as stated above,
but also offers a more detailed view of the economic foundations of the Geniza
society, and as such, of the general Muslim economy during the Fāṭimid period.
What comes out of it is that objects still mattered and still fulfilled an important
role in this highly monetized society. It seems that almost everything was tradable
and everything could serve as collateral, even broken bowls (line 39) and laborer’s
garments (line 12).
In his monumental work on the Mediterranean society of the High Middle Ages,
S.D. Goitein portrayed it as a “paper economy” conducted on highly sophisticated
exchange methods. Since he considered this monetary system to be advanced and
positive, he neglected other aspects of the economy, including the crucial function
of objects as manifested in the system of pawning. 36 Goitein depicted this economy
as one of free trade between equals based on mutual trust and help, and on
calculated interests and measurable values. But, in the pawn-broking system, the
objects are not necessarily measurable by any standard. In most cases their value
exceeds by far the amount of credit granted. The supposed equilibrium between
things exchanged is totally accidental and depends not on measurable values, but
rather on the pawner’s degree of despair and on the pawnbroker’s bargaining
skills. This kind of exchange is actually the sum of economic, political, social and
psychological pressures brought to bear on both sides in a particular instance. This

particular system involves compulsion and asymmetry rather than free will and
equality. At its base, there is a desperate need rather than mutual relationships. It
seems that this list of objects calls for a broadened consideration of the economic
system.
To sum up: the Geniza offers us a unique assemblage of texts that directly concern
the medieval Islamicate civilization. Some of them contain much information
about objects. If we try to treat the Geniza texts as objects and on the other hand
to read the objects described in them as if they were texts, we may gain remarkable
insights about this grand civilization.
37

ENDNOTES
1 A. M. Haberman, The Cairo Genizah and Other Genizoth: Their Character, Contents,
and Development (Jerusalem, 1971), pl. 3 (Hebrew); Simon Hopkins, “The
Discovery of the Cairo Geniza”, Bibliophilia Africana 4, 1981, pp. 137-178; Adina
Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo
Geniza (New York, 2011), pp. 20-21.
2 Thomas W. Evans (ed.), Memoirs of Heinrich Heine (London, 1884); Jeffrey L.
Sammons, Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton, 1979).
3 Yaacov Safir, Even Safir (Lyck, 1866).
4 Zeev Elkin and Menahem Ben Sasson, “Avraham Firkovich and the Cairo Genizas
in the Light of His Personal Archives” (Hebrew), Peʿamim 90, winter 2002,
pp. 51-95. On Firkovich’s ideology and Karaite politics in Czarist Russia, see
Philip E. Miller, Karaite Separatism in Nineteenth Century Russia; Joseph Solomon
Lutzki’s Epistle on Israel’s Deliverance (Cincinnati, 1993). Tapani Harviainen, “Abraham
Firkovich”, in: Meira Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: A Guide to Its History
and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003).

5 A. Whigham Price, The Ladies of Castlebrae: The Life of Dr. Agnes Smith Lewis and
Dr. Margaret Dunlop Gibson, Annual Lecture to the Presbyterian Society, Oct. 1964
(College of the Venerable Bede, University of Durham); Janet Soskice, Sisters
of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels (London, 2009);
Stefan C. Reif, “Giblews, Jews and Geniza Views”, Journal of Jewish Studies 55/2,
2004; Rebecca J. Jefferson, “Sisters in Semitics: A Fresh Appreciation of the Scholarship
of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson”, Medieval Feminist
Forum 45/1, 2009; Hoffman and Cole, pp. 3-8.
6 Stefan C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo (Richmond, Surrey, 2000), pp.
112-113, 118-119; S. C. Reif, “The Discovery of the Cambridge Genizah fragments
of Ben Sira: Scholars and Texts”, in: P. C. Beentjes (ed.), The Book of Ben Sira in
Modern Research. Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference,
28-31 July 1996, Soesterberg, Netherlands (Berlin and New York, 1997), pp. 1-22.
39
7 Norman Bentwich, Solomon Schechter, A Biography (Philadelphia, 1938); Adolph
S. Oko, Solomon Schechter: A Bibliography (Cambridge, 1938); Reif, A Jewish Archive,
pp. 47-54. For more references, see Hoffman and Cole, pp. 247-248.
8 Magaret Dunlop Gibson, How the Codex Was Found: A Narrative of Two Visits to
Sinai (Cambridge, 1893), as cited in Hoffman and Cole, p. 10.
9 See note 5 above.

10 Hoffman and Cole, pp. 43-61. Reif, A Jewish Archive, pp. 72-75. Reif, “Discovery”.
Schechter pronounced his thesis already in the first publication of this leaf. S.
Schechter, “A Fragment of the Original Text of Ecclesiasticus”, The Expositor, July
(1896), pp. 1-15. It was later reinforced by G. Margoliouth, “The Original Hebrew
Ecclesiasticus XXX1 12-31 and XXXVI 22-XXXVII 26”, Jewish Quarterly Review,
12/1, Oct. 1899, pp. 1-33, especially on p. 2 where he writes explicitly: “The textual
evidence in favor of the Hebrew being the original must be regarded as very
strong ... it is equally true that many lines have come to us in a terribly corrupt
state ... The opponents of the authenticity of the Hebrew text will, in the opinion
of the present author, not be able to defend their position effectively for long and
the controversy will no doubt for a much longer time center in the great textual
thesis contained in Prof. Schechter’s Introduction to the Cambridge Ben Sira ...”
40
11 Johannes Pedersen, The Arabic Book, Translated by Geoffrey French (Princeton,
1984), p. 50, note 31.
12 Konrad Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands (Edinburgh,
2012).
13 About the content of the Geniza, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The
Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo
Geniza, vols. I-V (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967-1988), vol. 1, pp. 1-23.

14 Judeo-Arabic is the language that was used by the Jews in Arabic-speaking Muslim
lands during the Middle Ages and later on. It reflects Middle Arabic with
many Hebrew and Aramaic elements integrated in it. It was a spoken as well as
a written language. Like many other Jewish languages it was written in Hebrew
characters. See Joshua Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-
Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Neo-Arabic and Middle-Arabic (Jerusalem, 1999).
15 Miriam Frenkel, “The Compassionate and Benevolent”: The Leading Elite in the
Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 2006) (Hebrew).
16 S. D. Goitein, “The Rise of the Near Eastern Bourgeoisie in Early Islamic Times,”
Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale 3, 1956-1957, pp. 583-604.
41
17 Frenkel, The Compassionate, pp. 210-215.
18 Aryeh L. Motzkin, The Arabic Correspondence of Judge Elijah and His Family (Papers
from the Cairo Geniza): A Chapter in the Social History of 13 th Century Egypt,
1-2, Ph.D dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 1965).
19 Nehemia Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo
Genizah, eds. Miriam Frenkel and Haggai Ben Shammai (Jerusalem, 2006), p. 220
and in the index. (Hebrew)

20 TS 13 J 22.9, Motzkin, vol. 2, p. 145.
21 ULC Or. 1080 J 235, Motzkin, vol. 1, p. 202.
22 TS Ar. 7.22, Motzkin, pp. 177-178.
23 TS NS J 42.5, Motzkin, p. 174.
24 TS 13 J 19.23, Frenkel, The Compassionate, no. 70, pp. 216-217.
42
25 Goitein, Mediterranean, vol. 5, pp. 426-432.
26 Moses Maimonides, Book of Commandments, ed. Heller (Jerusalem, 1946), introduction,
p. 19.
27 Paula Sanders, Ritual Politics and the City in Fatimid Cairo (New York, 1994), p.
30; Norman A. Stillman, “khilʿah”, Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition, vol. 5, pp.
6-7; Goitein, Mediterranean, vol. 4, pp. 11, 184.
28 Miriam Frenkel, “Book Lists from the Cairo Geniza as a Source for Studying the
Jewish Social and Cultural History in the Mediterranean Basin”, Teʿūdah 15,
1999, pp. 333-349. (Hebrew)

29 ENA 2805.12, Moshe Gil, In The Kingdom of Ishmael; Studies in Jewish History in
Islamic Lands in the Early Middle Ages (Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 1997) (Hebrew),
vol. 3, no. 308, p. 16; Frenkel, The Compassionate, p. 218.
30 Bodl. MS Heb. C13.20; Gil, Kingdom, vol. 4, no. 673; Frenkel, The Compassionate,
p. 217.
31 Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de Sociologie (Paris, 1980).
32 Goitein, Mediterranean, vol. 1, pp. 164-169.
33 Miriam Frenkel, “Literary Canon and Social Elite in the Geniza Society,” in Robert
Brody et al. (eds.), Uncovering the Canon: Studies in Canonicity and Genizah
(Jerusalem, 2010), pp. 88-110 (Hebrew).
43
34 Malachi Beit-Arié, “‘Genizot’: Depositories of Consumed Books as Disposing
Procedure in Jewish Society,” Scriptorium 50/2, 1996, pp. 407-414.
35 Goitein, Mediterranean.
36 Goitein of course never denied the existence of poverty in the Geniza society.
He actually devoted whole sections in the second volume of his Mediterranean

Society to the social services offered by the Jewish communities. Nevertheless,
the very existence of organized social services in this society was comprehended
by him as an indispensable feature of an affluent free trade society. To put it
in his words: “Even an affluent society dedicated to the ideal of free enterprise
cannot do without social services.” Goitein, Mediterranean, vol. 2, p. 91. Mark
Cohen carried Goitein’s research further and his comprehensive books on poverty
and charity provide an in-depth glimpse into the world of the poor in the
Jewish community of Medieval Egypt. See M. R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in
the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton and Oxford, 2005); idem, The
Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo
Geniza (Princeton and Oxford, 2005). Still, his analysis is rather sociological and
he does not consider the implications of poverty on the whole economic system.
44

APPENDIX
ENA 182246A
A List of Objects from the Cairo Genizah
(Courtesy of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary)

48
ENA 1922A 046 r

ENA 1922A 046 v
49