Posegay, Nick

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Collections Collections & departments Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit Fragment of the month FOTM 2021Cambridge University Library Fragment of the Month: June 2021Jewish Parchment, Muslim Prayer – Uncovering an Early Abbasid Palimpsest: T-S Ar.51.73Nick PosegaySometimes it takes a while to identify a Genizah fragment. No one is an expert in all the languages, genres, and scripts that appear inGenizah collections, and even for experts, it is often difficult to decipher severely damaged manuscripts. The Genizah Research Unit hasworked for almost five decades to catalogue the Taylor-Schechter Collection, but it is not uncommon to spend several hours identifying asingle fragment, so many thousands have still never been read.I first tried to identify T-S Ar.51.73 in 2018 while surveying Genizah collections for manuscripts of the Qurʾan.  The fragment stood outbecause it has an old style of Arabic script that usually indicates Qurʾanic writing. Damage to the manuscript meant I could not immediatelydecipher the entire text, but it quickly became clear that this was not a section of the Qurʾan. It went on a list of unidentified classmarks Ihave labeled “Suspicious Fragments,” and then I promptly forgot about it.That is, until March of 2021, when I suddenly remembered T-S Ar.51.73 while cataloguing another Arabic fragment.  I searched up themanuscript again when I was supposed to be doing my job, and it seems that no one else identified it in the interim, so here we are.T-S Ar.51.73 is a parchment fragment measuring 15.5 cm x 16.5 cm. It was originally part of a bifolium in a sewn quire booklet (notice theinner margin holes where the leaf was sewn), but only this one folio remains. Its small size suggests that the original codex was meant forprivate reading, rather than public use. The upper, lower, and outer margins have been cut off, but the extant fragment is still slightly widerthan it is tall, suggesting that the original was in a “horizontal” format. Horizontal parchment manuscripts in the Genizah tend to be olderthan vertical parchment manuscripts, so this folio is probably from the earlier end of the Genizah period (ca. 10th/11th century). Fig. 1: T-S Ar.51.73 recto Unlike paper, parchment is made from animal skin, which means that manuscripts like T-S Ar.51.73 are (mostly) waterproof. This propertyallowed ancient scribes to wash the ink off of old folios that they no longer wanted to read. Combined with scraping to remove residual ink,this process created (mostly) blank surfaces to write new texts. Such manuscripts are called “palimpsests.” Some of the most famous MiddleEastern manuscripts are palimpsests created in this manner, including the Ṣanaʿāʾ Qurʾan, the Codex Sinaiticus Syriac Gospel, and theGenizah fragments of Aquila’s Greek translation of Kings.  In what is probably a coincidence that we did not plan, the Cambridge UniversityLibrary is currently running an exhibition on medieval palimpsests, including Genizah fragments, which you can tour online.T-S Ar.51.73 is indeed a palimpsest, with an Arabic undertext overwritten by Hebrew. The recto undertext is almost completely washed away,but a few Arabic letters are discernible near the bottom right corner. The rest of the page is several lines of rough Hebrew text comprisingliturgical phrases related to death, possibly meant for a funeral. The parchment’s owner probably wrote these informal notes on the freshlywashed leaf.In contrast to the recto, the verso Arabic text was never erased. No Hebrew scribe has overwritten it, although there are a few remnants ofHebrew letters that seem to have rubbed off when T-S Ar.51.73 pressed against another fragment.  Fig. 2: T-S Ar.51.73 verso The Arabic is difficult to decipher due to heavy staining and water damage. It is written in an early Islamic script style known as the “EarlyAbbasid” type E.I.  Early Abbasid scripts are most common in manuscripts produced between the 8th and 10th centuries, during the era ofthe Abbasid Caliphate, and they fell out of use around the 10th or 11th century. This range correlates with the period that we expect for ahorizontal parchment palimpsest created in Egypt. Early Abbasid scripts were also used almost exclusively by trained scribes to copy theQurʾan, which makes T-S Ar.51.73 irregular, since it is not a Qurʾanic manuscript.The exact identity of T-S Ar.51.73’s Arabic text is still uncertain since we can only read a few lines with confidence. The clearest portion(verso lines 5-10) reads: سبحانك بالجالل متوحدا وبالتوحد معروفا وبالمعروف موصوفا وبالصفة على لسان كل [قائل] ربا وبالربوبیة على جمیع العالم قاھرا بالقھر ل[...]الخالئق جبارا وبالجبروت ملكا وبالملكوت في العز حلیما وبالحلم في المنعة عظیما وبالعظ[م] روفا رحیما [..........] Praise be to You, singular in exaltation, renowned in singularity, distinguished by renown, Lord by the distinction upon the tongue ofevery speaker, victorious over all the world in lordship, almighty over the created […] in victory, ruler by might, gentle in ruling withpower, magnificent through gentleness in strength, and benevolently merciful through magnificence . . .This section is part of a duʿāʾ, an Islamic prayer of supplication. It corresponds to similar prayers in several known texts, although it containssignificant insertions and variations in vocabulary. The earliest close match that I have found is a section of a prayer in al-Durūʿ al-Wāqiya byal-Sayyid ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 1266). He records a duʿāʾ supposedly recited by the Caliph ʿAlī (d. 665) on the eleventh day of each month, and thefinal few lines are clearly related to this passage.  Ibn Ṭāwūs was a Shiʿi jurist, and the Shiʿi Fatimid Caliphate ruled Egypt at the time whenwe expect T-S Ar.51.53 was copied, so the fragment may be part of a Shiʿi prayer book.Other close matches come from the works of Zakariyyā al-Ansārī (d. 1520), a fifteenth-century Sunni Muslim judge who lived in Cairo, andhis student, Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 1566).  Ibn Ḥajar even attributes his version of the duʿāʾ to the Prophet Muḥammad via the ḥadīthscholar al-Tirmidhī (d. 892). Still, none of these authors record exactly the same prayer as the one in T-S Ar.51.73, so we can only concludethat these different texts are descended from a common ancestor in an earlier medieval duʿāʾ tradition. Variations of that tradition remainedsignificant in Egypt even after T-S Ar.51.73 was retired in the Cairo Genizah.We cannot be sure why a later scribe used this Arabic leaf for their Hebrew writing. Parchment was an expensive material in the medievalperiod, so it was not uncommon for people to reuse pieces of old manuscripts as a method of cost saving. The Hebrew writer may havepurchased an old Arabic codex with the intention of removing individual leaves like T-S Ar.51.73 for this kind of reuse. It is also possible thatthey purchased just this single leaf, an option that may be supported by the fact that the margins have been cut down to a specific size thatdoes not correspond to the Hebrew writing area. Alternatively – though less likely – the Jewish scribe may have already owned a Muslimprayer text for some other reason, perhaps for polemical writing or left over from personal conversion (and later reversion) between Judaismand Islam.No matter who owned T-S Ar.51.73 or how it was used, we know that it ended its life in the Cairo Genizah. Its presence there reminds usthat the Jews of medieval Fustat had regular contact with their Muslim neighbours, and if they wanted, they could also access Muslimreligious texts. Some of these texts are preserved in Arabic Genizah fragments, even if they are not the first things that most people think ofwhen considering a “Jewish” genizah. Many remain unidentified (or even misidentified), and only time will tell what else there is to uncover. Footnotes1 See Magdalen M. Connolly and Nick Posegay, “A Survey of Personal-Use Qurʾan Manuscripts Based on Fragments from the Cairo Genizah,”Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 23.2 (2021).2 I believe it was a medical text about the various types of swellings. The mind works in mysterious ways.3 The Aquila fragments are T-S 12.184 and T-S 20.50.4  https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ghostwords and, from 24th May 2021, in person too.5 E.I is related to the D-group styles but lacks a lower right-hand return on the letter alif. T-S Ar.51.73 is otherwise most similar to the D.IVstyle. See Alain George, The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy (London; Beirut: Saqi Books, 2010), 157–58; François Déroche, The AbbasidTradition: Qurʾans of the 8th to 10th Centuries A.D., vol. 1, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (Khalili Collections, 1992).6 al-Sayyid ibn Ṭāwūs, Al-Durūʿ al-Wāqiya (Qom: Yārān, 1993), 181, 199.7 See Sulayman al-Jamal, ed., Ḥāshiyya Al-Jamal ʿalā al-Minhaj li-Shaykh al-Islām Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, vol. IV (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 2006),27–29; Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, Al-Fatāwī al-Kubrā al-Fiqhiyya ʿalā Madhhab al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī, vol. I (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2018),397. If you enjoyed this Fragment of the Month, you can find others here. Contact us: genizah@lib.cam.ac.uk The manuscripts in this article are part of the Cairo Genizah Collection in Cambridge University Library. To see more items from this collectionvisit: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/  1234567Contact usCambridge University Library, West Road,Cambridge CB3 9DR, UKEmail: library@lib.cam.ac.ukTel: +44 (0) 1223 333000Fax: +44 (0) 1223 333160Privacy PolicyPrivacy PolicyDiversifying Collections and PracticesDiversifying Collections and PracticesSocial MediaLibrary blogsInstagramTwitterFacebookYouTubeJoin usJob opportunities© 2022 University of CambridgeUniversity A-ZContact the UniversityAccessibilityFreedom of informationTerms and conditionsStudy at CambridgeUndergraduatePostgraduateInternational studentsContinuing educationExecutive and professional educationCourses in educationAbout the UniversityHow the University and Colleges workVisiting the UniversityMapNewsEventsJobsGiving to CambridgeResearch at CambridgeNewsFeaturesDiscussionSpotlight on...About research at CambridgeFOTM 2021Fragment of the Month: December2021Fragment of the Month: November2021Fragment of the Month: October 2021Fragment of the Month: September2021Fragment of the Month: August 2021Fragment of the Month: July 2021Fragment of the Month: June 2021Fragment of the Month: May 2021Fragment of the Month: April 2021Fragment of the Month: March 2021Fragment of the Month: February 2021Fragment of the Month: January 2021FOTM 2022FOTM 2020FOTM 2019FOTM 2018FOTM 2017Fragment of the Month: December 2016Fragment of the Month: November 2016Fragment of the Month: October 2016Fragment of the Month: September2016Fragment of the Month: August 2016Fragment of the Month: June 2016Fragment of the Month: May 2016Fragment of the Month: April 2016Fragment of the Month: January 2016Fragment of the Month: September2015Fragment of the Month: August 2015Fragment of the Month: June 2015Fragment of the Month: April 2015Fragment of the Month: March 2015Fragment of the Month: February 2015Fragment of the Month: January 2015Fragment of the Month: December 2014Fragment of the Month: November 2014Fragment of the Month: October 2014Fragment of the Month: September2014Fragment of the Month: May 2014Addendum to November 2011'sFragment of the MonthFRAGMENT OF THE MONTH ARCHIVECambridge University LibraryCollectionsCollections & departmentsTaylor-Schechter Genizah ResearchUnitFragment of the monthHome ContactUsing the Library Research Teaching & Learning What's On Search & find Collections About GivingStudy at Cambridge About the University Research at Cambridge Quick links Search.

Jewish Parchment, Muslim Prayer – Uncovering an Early Abbasid Palimpsest: T-S Ar.51.73

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/1810/335180/2/Fragment%20of%20the%20Month%20June%202021%20Cambridge%20University%20Library.pdf

Jewish Parchment, Muslim Prayer – Uncovering an Early Abbasid Palimpsest: T-S Ar.51.73

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