Judaeo-Romance and Judaeo-Arabic Word-list from the Genizah

Abstract

The Cairo Genizah was a depository of old scrolls, books and documents discovered in the nineteenth century mainly inside a Jewish synagogue in old Cairo, which was called Fustat in the Middle Ages. The Muslim ruling dynasty at the time was the Fatimids (969-1171) under whose control lived in relative peace Jews and Christians, mainly Copts. The archive comprising about 250,000 fragments is scattered around the world in a dozen centres and private collections. However, the bulk of the material, estimated at over 140,000 fragments, was moved from Egypt to Cambridge by Dr Solomon Schechter in 1897. The collection contains parts of known and unknown works written by personalities such as Maimonides, liturgy, responsa, poetry, philosophy, sciences, including medicine, pharmacology, astronomy and astrology, as well as thousands of private and official letters, messages, lists and commercial correspondence which throw light on daily life of the Mediterranean Society, as has fascinatingly been portrayed by scholars such as Mann, Assaf, Goitein, Ashtor, Gil and others.1 The Genizah and other sources clearly prove the existence of very active and co operative communities which maintained at the time extensive commercial and social ties stretching from Muslim Spain to India and beyond. Moreover, the co operation between all these communities was not restricted to Jews but indicates strong links between Muslims, Jews and Christians who only kept their distinctive features regarding religious matters and some internal community business. The common denominators, however, included a common language, i.e. Arabic, common beliefs and folklore and many customs and manners. Hence, peaceful co-existence was not a slogan but a reality. The multifarious modes of life and the organization of the communities are reflected in the various and extensive genres of writing and languages. Thus, Muslims used Arabic; Jews used mainly Judaeo-Arabic for daily communication as well as for various scholarly and non-scholarly works (which were mainly written in Arabic but also included some Hebrew and Aramaic phrases) and Hebrew for liturgy and poetry, and to much lesser extent, some Aramaic (e.g. ketubbot), while Christians used Christian-Arabic and occasionally Coptic. Arabs and Christians used the Arabic script (Copts used sometimes the Coptic alphabet and mainly Coptic numerals), while Jews usually used the Hebrew alphabet to write Arabic and other languages, and only seldom, especially in official letters to the authorities, such as requests, petitions and the like were they * University of Cambridge. 1 For an excellent account of the Genizah collection at Cambridge, see S.C. Reifs book mentioned in the Bibliography.