Dr. Moshe Gil writes in 1985: Reconstructing Jewish history It is now 88 years since Solomon Schechter transferred the greater part of the Cairo Genizah to Cambridge University Library. One of the leading students of Jewish history of that time, David Kaufmann, noted in an article published shortly afterwards in Hashiloah that, besides having an immense value for research in such fields as Bible and Talmud, these manuscripts were also enormously important since they enrich our knowledge of our nations history. It is as if whole pages missing from the volumes of our history have been restored to their places. And then, further: These wonderful discoveries shed light not only on the history of our brethren in Egypt, but also on the history of the Jews in all lands of the Diaspora. Most of the attention given by Jewish historians engaged in the study of the Genizah documents has been directed towards Palestine. If it were not for the Genizah, our knowledge of Jewish history in Palestine between the Arab conquest of the seventh century and that of the Crusaders over four and a half centuries later would have been next to nothing. One can easily verify this by examining early Jewish historiography, such as Graetzs History of the Jews; and even the works of later polyhistors give the same impression. It is thanks to the well known Genizah scholars, Schechter, Harkavy, Poznanski and others, and their most important and productive successors, Mann and Goitein, that we can now reconstruct several important chapters of Jewish life in Palestine. For the past fourteen years, I have myself devoted much of my time and energy to locating and deciphering the whole corpus of documents pertaining to the topic, and to summing up the findings - of others as well as of myself - in one comprehensive book (Palestine during the First Muslim Period [634-1099], Tel Aviv, 1984). Much credit for the completion of this enterprise - whether academically successful or not is for others to judge - goes to Dr Reif and his staff, in whose care is to be found the greater part of these documents. There are in that corpus of documents pertaining to Palestine a total of 618 manuscripts, mostly in Judaeo-Arabic; several of these have been pieced together from fragments found under a variety of classmarks or even in different libraries. One may safely assume that through further Genizah study some additional ones - not many, I believe - will surface. The following is a very succinct survey of the main topics covered by this corpus: (1) Information on Jerusalem, beginning with the location of its Jewish quarters, both Rabbanite and Karaite. (2) Data on many other Jewish communities, such as Tiberias, Ramla, Tyre (then the main port serving the needs of Palestine), Ashkelon (conquered by the Crusaders only in 1153), Hebron, Baniyas and various other localities in Galilee. (3) Eye-witness accounts, by contemporaries and survivors, of the Crusader conquest. (4) A most surprising account of the Yeshiva of Palestine, of which almost nothing had previously been known. It turns out to have been not simply an institution of learning, or academy (as often wrongly translated), but rather the true leader of a substantial part of the Jewish Diaspora, including those communities which had formerly been under Byzantine rule. This means Palestine itself, Egypt, Syria, Sicily and, to a certain extent, North Africa; the communities still in Byzantine lands, such as Constantinople and other parts of Byzantium; and even Southern Italy. This Yeshiva was the successor to the ancient Sanhedrin (= Greek synhedrion, precisely corresponding to the Hebrew yeshiva). We now become familiar with its personalities of the eleventh century, the bulk of manuscripts having their initial date around 1000. We also read about their internal policies and frequent conflicts as well as their relations with the Muslim (then Fatimid) authorities. (5) New data on circumstances and events of a general nature, concerning the history of Palestine during the first period of Muslim occupation. Thus, for instance, some 60 letters of Jewish merchants engaged in Mediterranean maritime trade give us an interesting picture of the economic life of the period. There is also fresh evidence about political and military developments. In conclusion, I have to stress that the information thus obtained from the Genizah material acquires its full significance only if seen in the general framework of the history of Palestine in that period. In other words, it must constantly be compared with the non-Jewish - that is, Muslim and Christian - sources. Moshe Gil, Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 11:20:18 +0000
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