Geniza

Definition of "Geniza"

Manuscripts, mostly in Hebrew characters but in Arabic language, originally preserved in a synagogue, partly also in a cemetery of Fustat (old Cairo), the ancient capital of Islamic Egypt. The material originated all over the Mediterranean area and comprised every conceivable type of writing, such as official, business and private correspondence, detailed court records and other judicial documents, contracts, accounts, checks, prescriptions, receipts and inventories, writs of marriage, divorce and manumission, charms, children’s exercises and the like. The bulk of the material is of Jewish origin. Manuscripts are preserved in the University Library, Cambridge, the Bodleian Library Oxford, the British Museum, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, the Dropsie College Philadelphia and many other libraries. Geniza documents have thrown new light on the commercial history of the Muslims and the orientalist writers have used them to draw inferences about Muslim practices.