Gotha Manuscript Talks: A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo as a Source for Arabic and Islamic Studies

The Cairo Genizah is rightly famous among scholars of Jewish Studies. A corpus of more than 300,000 manuscript fragments found in the attic of an Egyptian synagogue, for over 125 years it has redefined the way that we understand medieval Judaism and the history of Jews in the Middle East. It is also well-known as a source for the study of economic history, containing numerous documents that describe the movement of people and goods across the Mediterranean Sea. More recently, scholars have begun to examine how Genizah sources can help us understand the Arabic language and Islamic History, and they have made some intriguing discoveries about Cairo's Jewish communities and their relationship to Islam. From ancient Qur'ans and Classical Poetry to Fatimid documents and Arabic folk tales, this lecture will explore recent discoveries in Islamic Studies as revealed by the Cairo Genizah.

Nick Posegay researches interfaith exchange in the intellectual and material history of Middle Eastern manuscripts. He earned his PhD from Cambridge in Middle Eastern Studies (2021) as a Gates Scholar and member of Corpus Christi College. Previously, he completed a BA in Near Eastern Languages/Religious Studies (2016) and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies (2017) at the University of Chicago. He recently completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He is also the author of The Illustrated Cairo Genizah (Gorgias Press, 2024) and the award-winning monograph Points of Contact (Open Book Publishers, 2021). His publications can be found here: linktr.ee/NPosegay.