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New Genizah Documents:
Three Fragments on Practical Medicine
in Medieval Egypt

Amir Ashur and Efraim Lev

Introduction

Numerous Genizah collections have been studied ever since the documentary
trove of the Cairo Genizah was discovered by Western scholars.1 Individual
fragments have been published, catalogues written, and much research focusing
on a wide variety of topics has yielded a wealth of articles and books. Among
the main fields studied are various religious and biblical subjects, Jewish law,
education, poetry, social life, trade, communal organization, and so on.

The Cairo Genizah fragments supply us with a unique opportunity to learn
about the place of medicine within a minority community in Fusta¯t (Old Cairo),
one of the most important cities of the medieval Islamic world. The Jewish
community is a good test case since it comprised all socio-economic strata
and therefore represents a complete paradigm of medieval society. Historical
sources tend to record only the highest layers of the rich, educated and learned.

An early study on medicinal materials in Muslim Egypt conducted by Dietrich
and published in 1954 was a scholarly work based on single manuscript
replete with information on trade in pharmaceutical substances.2 A decade later,
on the basis of his unique knowledge and expertise, Goitien wrote a detailed

1 S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah
Collection (Curzon , Richmond, Surrey, 2000), 1y12.

2 P. Heidelberg 912, published in A. Dietrich, Zum Drogenhandel im Islamischen A¨ gypten (C.
Winter, Heidelberg, 1954).

Ginzei Qedem 9 (2013)