From Cairo to Manchester

de Renate Smithuis, Philip Alexander

University of Manchester Library holds a collection of around 15,000 fragments, mostly written in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, from the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, purchased from the estate of Dr Moses Gaster in 1954. About 90% of the items are on paper, the remainder on parchment. The vast majority are very small fragments. They date from the 10th to the 19th century AD and include religious texts, literary material relating to grammar, philosophy, medicine, astrology and astronomy together with documents such as letters, bills and notebooks etc.