The Cairo (Egypt) Genizah is a collection of hundreds of thousands of documents preserved in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo (Fustat). According to Jewish practice, sacred writings that can no longer be used must be buried, and before their burial they are to be stored in a special repository called a “genizah.” For unknown reasons, the materials deposited in the Ben Ezra Genizah were never sent for burial, so the Genizah preserved discarded writings from the time of its original construction in the 9th century to the time of its discovery by Europeans in the 19th century. In addition, many of the documents found in the Genizah were not sacred writings. The community seems to have believed that Hebrew letters themselves are sufficiently sacred to require deposit of writings using these characters in a genizah, and since the Arabic speaking Jews of Cairo wrote their Arabic using Hebrew letters, many types of common documents wound up in the Genizah. 

Among the materials discovered in the Genizah were the archives of the most famous of all Jewish residents of Cairo, Maimonides (1135/8-1204), the great philosopher and rabbinic scholar. While in Cairo, Maimonides wrote his two most famous works: his comprehensive code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah (Hebrew), and his work of Aristotelian philosophy, the Guide for the Perplexed (Arabic). He also served as head of the Jewish community for part of his time there, as well as physician to the Sultan.

The page in front of you is Maimonides own formulation—with his own corrections!—of the twenty-second chapter of laws of lending and borrowing. It is fascinating the way we can see Maimonides working here: offering an initial formulation, changing words here and there, deleting or adding to create an as-perfect-as-can-be final product. It is thanks to this painstaking work that Maimonides work of law still serves as a foundation for the study of halakha in our own day.