Princeton joins global Geniza catalog project
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Letter in Judeo-Arabic from Cairo, mid-14th century (ENA 2559, fol. 11, Jewish Theological Seminary) |
Funded by a gift from the Buckingham Foundation and Albert Dov Friedberg of Toronto, the Friedberg Geniza Project will support work by scholars in the United States, England and Israel. Princeton is one of several institutions that have already been awarded grants in this long-term initiative; others are the Hebrew University and the Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem and Cambridge University Library in England.
Storage for holy books
A Geniza is a storage chamber where Jewish holy books and other documents are deposited after they have outlived their usefulness. The Geniza of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo (Fustat) was in use for most of the Middle Ages, even after the majority of the Jewish population of Fustat moved to New Cairo in the 13th century. The synagogue was neglected until 100 years ago, though its Geniza was used through the end of the 19th century.
Most of the material from this Geniza dates to the 11th through 13th centuries, though a few much older manuscripts have been indentified. The genres include not only religious texts and commentaries, but poetry, works on magic and mysticism, correspondence and legal records. The majority are written in Hebrew or Judeo-Arabic, an archaic form of Arabic written in Hebrew characters.
All words keywords
The Princeton Geniza Project, which has been ongoing at the University since 1985, has as its goal "to create a machine-readable, online, free-text database of all the historical documents in the Cairo Geniza, where all words are keywords," says director Mark Cohen, professor of Near Eastern studies.
"By historical documents," he explains, "we mean letters, court records, marriage contracts, divorce agreements, accounts, and lists of all kinds. These are documents from everyday life, usually unique documents, in that they do not have counterparts in any Jewish literary sources from the Middle Ages.
"They tell us about Jewish economic life, communal organization, family life and daily life, as well as the mentality of the individual Jew living in the Islamic Mediterrranean, chiefly between the years 1000 and 1250. And, since Jews were deeply involved in Arab Muslim society, these documents tell us much about the life of Muslims as well, especially commerce and material culture."
To date, some 1850 documents have been entered in the database, which was designed with help of Peter Batke, academic technology services specialist.
Unique aspect of Princeton
The focus on historical documents, Cohen notes, is a unique aspect of the Princeton project, as the other projects funded by the Friedberg iniatiative are working mainly on literary sources, such as rabbinic literature.
"The Princeton Geniza Project has been a longstanding special feature of the Near Eastern Studies Department," he points out. "We've had to move slowly because of limited resources. The Friedberg grant will allow us to revive the project in an accelerated fashion, with adequate funding for at least three years of sustained work.
"The participation of the University in the form of matching funds was a contingency of the Friedberg funding," he adds, "and I'm pleased by the enthusiastic support we've received in this regard."
He notes that he is teaching a freshman seminar this semester on Poverty and Charity in the Middle Ages, which uses the letters of appeal and alms-lists from the Geniza, among other sources.
The Friedberg Geniza Project is being administered through the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and directed by a trio of scholars, Lawrence Schiffman of NYU, Neil Danzig of the Jewish Theological Seminary and and Yaakov Elman of Yeishiva University. Cohen is a member of the advisory board, along with other scholars in Europe and Israel.
The Princeton Geniza Project is at http://www.princeton.edu/~geniza.
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