Princeton professor lectures on buried treasure in the Cairo Geniza
Beth Sweeney ‘01

Professor Mark Cohen, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, took University faculty and students into the depths of dry Egyptian soil on Sept. 26, in his lecture on the discovery of personal and sacred Jewish documents in Cairo. Titled "Family and Community in the Medieval Mediterranean World: Jews and Muslims in the Cairo Geniza," Cohen’s speech dispelled many myths about the daily and religious life of the 11^th century.

The word Geniza, in Hebrew, means to bury or hide, and now designates an area where people once deposited papers with sacred writings, possibly pages of books, as well as personal documents. The Cairo Geniza was uncovered in a synagogue at the end of the 19^th century. To the surprise of historians, the discovered documents were remarkably well-preserved due to the lack of moisture in the burying soil.

The 250,000 fragments have since been scattered around the globe, from national libraries to private collections. Although the Geniza was not intended as any type of time capsule, the discovery of its informative treasures serve as a window to medieval life.

"The Geniza is not an archive," said Cohen. "Items were discarded there because they weren’t intended to be retrieved."

For this reason, there is no ethical concern with removing items from the Geniza and preserving them in various locations throughout the world.

"There’s no religious objection to exhuming them and reading them as long as they’re not being destroyed," he added.

Approximately 95 percent of the papers are literary fragments from texts, with only five percent making up personal documents such as marriage and divorce papers, letters and even prenuptial agreements. According to Cohen, these personal documents are the Geniza’s true buried treasure.

"The documents are an important source to understanding everyday life," he said. "Thanks to the Geniza we know more about the 11^th century Jewish family than any other area in pre-modern time."
The majority of the fragments are written in the Arabic language with Hebrew characters, known as Judeo Arabic.

"Jews always spoke the language of their environment but when writing have preferred to use their own script," said Cohen.

Cohen and others have been able to determine the impact of Muslim culture on the Jews, the infrastructure of the family, which was based around the extended as opposed to the nuclear family, as well as programs for members of the Jewish community who were poverty stricken.

Discoveries of "bread lists" in the Geniza, which itemize food donations to be given to the poor and recommendations for these donations led Cohen to initiate further research on poverty in the 11^th century Mediterranean world. The Jews, at the mercy of the Muslim government, strove to take care of their poor, which made up 25 percent of the population.

In his most recent book, Under Crescent and Cross, Cohen looks at the relatively unexplored lives of Jews in middle ages. In addition, Cohen has always had an interest in poverty and charity. He attributes this to his father, who was a director of a poverty agency in President Johnson’s administration.

"I think I was influenced by his own ethics and interests," said Cohen. "I’ve been very interested in comparing the life of Jews under Islam in the middle ages with Jewish life in the Christian medieval world."

Documents from the Geniza have led Cohen to do further research on the "history from below" which explores the role of the non-elite class in medieval society. He is currently working on a two-part study on poverty and charity in the Jewish community of medieval Egypt, which contains a sample of primary sources in English translation.

"There’s a lot of secondary literature on the history of poverty in the Christian world in the middle ages," said Cohen. "I have read quite a bit of this literature for guidance and ideas; it’s been very useful. I think my book will be interesting to students of Christian history as well as Islamic history."

Surprisingly, very little has been written about poverty in Islam even less in Judaism, which holds poverty and charity as cornerstones of its faith.

"At least now there will be a pioneering study," said Cohen.