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A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection. By Stefan C. Reif. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. xix, 277 pp. $15.00 (paper). ISBN 0-7007-1312-3.
Almost every page of this phenomenal volume could become a chapter, but the narrative style is so economical and clear that it engages and leads the reader through the history, personages, and adventures that produced the publication of a musty archive of varied documents for the benefit of all who want to understand medieval Jewish life in the Mediterranean during Arab-Muslim governance. The author has been deeply and devotedly involved in supporting and guiding the acquisition, analysis, study, and translation of many of the more than 200,000 manuscripts found in the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue since becoming director of Genizah Research at the University of Cambridge Library.
The initial discoveries began in the 1890s and continue until the present by many collectors, both individual and institutional. The checkered history of the discoveries, collections, and treatments forms the story of this book, which reads like a...