Medical And Para Medical Manuscripts In The Cambridge Genizah Collections

A catalogue describing important texts and illuminating medical practice in medieval Egypt.

The manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah are a unique source for medieval medical history. In Medical Prescriptions in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, Lev and Chipman offer an insight into the everyday practical medicine of medieval Egypt, which reflects medical practice in the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole, by analysing thirty selected prescriptions from the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection (Cambridge University Library). The prescriptions, which are in Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic, are transcribed and translated, with accompanying commentaries, photographs and glossaries. Introductory chapters discuss the theoretical background of the prescriptions and the practical medicine of the Cairo Genizah, while the conclusion considers their significance for the study of the medieval medical tradition.

In the Semitic languages the vowels are not part of the alphabet and each Semitic language has its special method of marking its particular vowel values. In the Hebrew of Late Antiquity, a supralinear method of doing this was first introduced after the Arabic conquest of Palestine in the seventh century. It was used mainly for liturgical purposes in complicated poetic texts, and it was soon displaced by the classical Tiberian system. The oldest existing specimens of this supralinear method are on vellum manuscripts from Cairo where the remaining fragments were deposited by Jewish refugees from Crusader Palestine at the end of the eleventh century. The fragments from the Cairo depository, known as the Cairo Genizah, are best represented in the Genizah Collections at Cambridge University Library. This volume gives for the first time a full description of the scattered and torn fragments, as well as of their notational value.

This volume describes almost 9,500 Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic fragments of the Cairo Genizah.

The Taylor-Schechter New Series contains over 40,000 manuscript fragments that originated in the world famous Cairo Genizah. These fragments are extremely important for research, but students are hampered by the difficulties involved in identifying and gathering the fragments pertaining to particular works or genres. This volume represents an important step toward classifying the contents of the collection and increasing its accessibility, especially with regard to those fragments that belong to the various genres of rabbinic literature.

Comprehensive catalogue of Hebrew Bible fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Additional Series, describing 14,679 items.

Comprehensive catalogue of Hebrew Bible fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Additional Series, describing 14,679 items.

Forms the first part of a project to classify and describe the Arabic portion of the Genizah Collection.