Book launch: The Illustrated Cairo Genizah
Heffers Bookshop, 20 Trinity Street Cambridge CB2 1TY. 18.00 – 19.00
Join authors Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee for a visual journey through over 125 years’ Cambridge Genizah research, complete with surprising tales of coexistence and interaction. Almost 1000 years ago, the Jews of Old Cairo began to place their worn-out books and scrolls into a hidden storage room - a genizah - of their synagogue. Over the years, they added all sorts of writings to the pile, sacred and secular texts alike. When the chamber was emptied at the end of the 19th century, it held hundreds of thousands of paper and parchment fragments. Now known as the “Cairo Genizah” , it has become one of the most important sources of knowledge for the history of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world. This book offers the first illustrated introduction to the unique collection of Cairo Genizah manuscripts at Cambridge University Library. …