Books Features

New Medieval Books: The Illustrated Cairo Genizah

The Illustrated Cairo Genizah

By Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee

Gorgias Press
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4772-0

The Cairo Genizah stands as one of the most significant collections of medieval documents, offering unparalleled insights into the past. This book highlights hundreds of fascinating examples from the Genizah, complemented by images of the original documents. Through these preserved fragments, it delves into the diverse stories and knowledge they reveal, showcasing the breadth of information hidden within these historical treasures.

Excerpt:

This is the first illustrated volume intended to provide an introduction to the Cairo Genizah that is accessible to everyone, even those who have never heard of it before. Within these pages, you’ll tour ancient artefacts that are entirely unique in world history – manuscripts that have redefined our understanding of the Middle East, the Mediterranean world, and most of all, the history of Judaism. Among them are some of the world’s oldest Bibles, the official records of long-defeated empires, and works of literature once thought lost to the ages.

You’ll see the writings of some of the most famous names in history, people like Avicenna, Origen, Augustine, Galen, Saladin, Joseph Karo, and Moses Maimonides. You’ll read about the daily travails of ordinary people in the Middle Ages – residents of Egypt, Iberia, India, Byzantium, Iraq, and Palestine – through the personal letters that they sent to their loved ones. You’ll begin to understand the evidence for how modern legal, economic, and religious systems are built on foundations that are more than 1000 years old. All of these things and more survived to the present day because of the Cairo Genizah, a medieval repository of worn-out manuscripts created by the Jews of Cairo.

Who is this book for?

This is one of our best books of 2024, and for good reason. It is an excellent introduction to the Cairo Genizah, giving readers a great visual sense of what can be found in this treasure trove. Those interested in the medieval Middle East, Jewish community, or just daily life in the Middle Ages will find a useful book.

The Authors

Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee were both researchers with the Genizah Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, which is the main home for the most of the Cairo Genizah collection. Nick tells us about why they wrote this book:

We both came at it from different angles, but I think the main motivation was public outreach. I had spent about 2 years running the Cambridge Genizah Research Unit’s Instagram page (@CambridgeGRU), curating the most interesting Genizah fragments I could find and sharing facts about them with whoever would listen. I really enjoyed engaging with so many people who were clearly interested in the material, but had no other way to access it. I think I ended up doing a little over 200 posts there, each about a different fragment. The comments and questions from our followers really helped to hone in on what people were interested in and sharpen the content in what became The Illustrated Cairo Genizah. They’re pretty much the reason we have whole chapters dedicated to magic and marriage contracts. In spring 2023, we were throwing around ideas for ways to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Genizah Research Unit in 2024. I pitched a plan to our boss: if we used the Instagram page as a base for curation, we could have a complete coffee table book ready to go in time to commemorate the anniversary. That might have been a little ambitious, but Mel had already been planning a coffee-table book for years based on her experience in our public tour programme, so we joined forces.

We were both really invested in giving readers the best possible visual experience alongside accurate historical information. There are plenty of books about the Cairo Genizah, but none of them have anywhere close to the number of photos in TICG (we actually lost count, but there are at least 320!). That led us to hire a graphic designer to lay out the whole book (shout out to my boy Andy at H2 Associates). What we created with him is a unique way to connect with history for people who maybe haven’t seen a lot of manuscripts before. Many of our colleagues wondered how we could afford this and still sell the book for £45/$60. I’ll tell you, I spent a lot of time convincing my grant funder (the Leverhulme Trust) that this book was a better use of their money than sending me to nerd conventions or whatever it is normal academics do. In the end, they agreed to contribute almost £12,000, nearly 2/3 of the total discretionary funding from my project. We absolutely could not have finished the book without them. I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.

You can see more pages from this book on Academia.edu

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