Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #genizah
Most recents (3)
1/đ§”So thereâs this box in the Genizah Research Unit at @theUL. Itâs labelled âWorman Archive.â Itâs supposed to be full of stuff associated with Ernest James Worman, a librarian who catalogued the #Genizah collection 120 years ago. Yesterday I found out thatâs not all true. 
2/See, Wormanâs story is actually quite tragic. He was born in 1871 to a working-class #Cambridge family. Thatâs not the tragic part. In 1895, @theUL hired him as a âLibrary Assistant.â He then taught himself Arabic and Hebrew to catalogue the #Genizah manuscript collection.
3/After 1902, Worman was the main employee at the library working on this collection. Solomon Schechter, the man responsible for bringing the collection to Cambridge in the first place, had left for America, leaving Worman more than 150,000 fragments to tend to (almost) alone.
Some fun facts for your #fragmentfriday: medieval Samaritans, caliphal tax officials, and #Latin terminological fossils in #Arabic. All converge in a Cairo geniza document from @theULSpecColl.
2/This tattered yet beautiful Arabic parchment is a 12th c qadi court record. Legal documents from medieval Egypt were written on both parchment and paper after about 900, and on papyrus before that. (Hereâs another 12th c parchment deed regarding a sharÄbÄ«, a seller of potions.)
3/The Arabic deed is a bill of sale for part of a house in Fustat (?) from 1135. Fustatis were constantly subdividing their properties, like brownstones in NYC today. You would find 1/24 of a house leased out, tho not measured out as precisely in reality as in the court record.
Also I learned a new word at the gorgeous Discarded History exhibition: #genizah
Ft. Ladybird books and magic:
Go go go if squashed, destroyed, worn & very very old books do it for you! John Latham eat yr heart out! #genizah
