There is no doubt that the Cairo Genizah, which is a well-known repository of manuscripts and fragments preserved in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in al-Fustat, offers scholars an invaluable opportunity to uncover hitherto hidden dimensions of Mediterranean societies in the medieval and early modern periods.Footnote 1 With its vast array of texts spanning multiple genres, languages, and scripts, the Genizah has reshaped our understanding of the social, cultural, and intellectual lives not only of Jewish communities but also of the broader Islamic world in which they were embedded.Footnote 2 Although the Genizah has long been valued for its contribution to Jewish history and cultural heritage in the Middle East, it increasingly serves as a vital resource for the study of Arabic and Islamic literary and cultural history as well. Scholarly interest in Arabic literature and Arabic poetry in the Genizah has grown considerably in recent years.Footnote 3
Although the Arabic poetry preserved in the Cairo Genizah spans a wide range of forms and registers, this article focuses specifically on Arabic poetry that explores themes ranging from Sufi mysticism and colloquial oral epics to material and bodily realities, including food, wine, proverbs, and medical practices.Footnote 4 This subset of Arabic poetic texts offers a lens through which we can examine some aspects of everyday life as reflected in the Genizah corpus.
Understanding poetry as a cultural and social artifact offers an alternative venue for cultural inquiry. Rather than treating poetic texts merely as aesthetic or literary products, their treatment as social and cultural artifacts seeks to embed them in the lived realities and expressive practices of the communities that produced and circulated them.Footnote 5 Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone” provides a compelling framework for understanding the Arabic poetry preserved in the Cairo Genizah.Footnote 6 Pratt explores how texts produced in cross-cultural settings often reflect complex processes of negotiation and cultural hybridity.Footnote 7 Drawing on Pratt’s concept, this analysis offers a new window into the literary and cultural interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Many Genizah documents feature Arabic poetry written in Hebrew script, including folk and colloquial forms. This linguistic hybridity, that is, Arabic in Hebrew script, illustrates how Jewish authors, scribes, and readers navigated their way and participated in the wider Arabic cultural sphere.
Following Pratt’s perspective, the Genizah itself may be viewed as a contact zone, both in its physical form and its textual content. The act of copying and composing Arabic poetry in Hebrew script is not merely a functional practice but can be seen as a cultural intervention that reflects a deeper social dynamic. According to Goitein’s leading work on Genizah documents, Jews living in Islamic countries of the Mediterranean, including Spain, Sicily, and most of North Africa and Western Asia, primarily spoke in various Arabic vernaculars. They mostly wrote Arabic vernaculars in Hebrew characters. This was not unique to Jews; Syriac Christians, for instance, wrote Arabic in Syriac script. The choice to use the “script hallowed by one’s own religion” was a common habit for minorities in many societies.Footnote 8 The use of Hebrew script for Arabic content allowed Jews to participate fully in the surrounding Arabic-speaking civilization while preserving their distinct religious and cultural identity. It allowed them to internalize Arab culture while also contributing significantly to the intellectual and artistic sphere.Footnote 9 Furthermore, calligraphy, encompassing both Arabic and Hebrew scripts, was a “distinctive mark of a person belonging to the professional or higher classes.” Students of various professions, including government officials, physicians, religious scholars, and merchants, were trained in it.Footnote 10 The ability to write in good Arabic style was highly valued, even if rendered in Hebrew script.Footnote 11
This suggests that engagement with Arabic literary culture, expressed through Hebrew script, was a mark of sophistication and intellectual integration within the broader elite, while also signaling one’s specific Jewish identity. The preservation of shared literary forms in written format and participation in a broader regional Arabic literature are evidence of cultural integration in a multicultural society. Jewish communities engaged in transcultural literary practices, creating texts that were embedded in Arabic and Egyptian folklore tradition while also grounded in Jewish communal life.
Arabic poetry in the Cairo Genizah exhibits a wide variety of poetic forms and themes. It includes compositions in both Classical Arabic and colloquial Egyptian Arabic. The thematic scope is broad and includes nearly all established themes of Arabic poetry. Another article, in this special issue and authored by the coauthor of the present study, examines selected excerpts of love poetry. The focus of this article is on Arabic poems from the Cairo Genizah associated with communal and collective memory. Whereas the former engages with expressions of individual sentiment, the present article traces broader cultural elements embedded within Egyptian society at large.
The central analysis focuses on key cultural dimensions of this poetry, organized around cultural and moral commentary. Through selected excerpts and contextual interpretation, the article aims to provide a preliminary mapping of the principal cultural features that merit consideration when reading these poetic forms.
The present study is the result of over three years of reading and translating a corpus of approximately ninety Genizah fragments of Arabic poetry.Footnote 12 This corpus encompasses a wide range of poetic themes, including moral advice, epic narratives, religious songs, sexual prescriptions, and astrological content, all rendered in Arabic poetic forms. A considerable number of these are written in Arabic script, and the majority are transcribed into Hebrew script. The primary poetic forms represented are the Classical Arabic qasida (ode) and muwashshaḥ (strophic poetry), alongside colloquial verse, predominantly zajal (popular strophic poetry in everyday dialects) and, on occasion, mawwāl (a colloquial poetic genre characterized by wordplay).Footnote 13 The majority of the poets or scribes of these poetic texts remain unidentified. The identified names belong primarily to the medieval period, with a few traceable to the Ottoman era. In general, the authorship of the colloquial poems in this corpus is significantly more difficult to ascertain than that of Classical Arabic compositions.
It is important to acknowledge certain limitations inherent to the corpus under examination. Unless the poems from the Cairo Genizah can be attributed with certainty to known Arabic poets, the use of Hebrew script alone does not necessarily indicate Jewish authorship. Indeed, several poems feature references to Islamic, and, to a lesser extent, Christian, characteristics, which in some cases preclude the possibility of Jewish composition. Consequently, it is problematic to assume that all these texts were originally authored by Jewish poets. Furthermore, unlike business letters or legal documents, most of these poetic texts are undated. Our estimated dates of the fragments rely on paleographical and codicological criteria, including the script style and the condition of the paper.Footnote 14
Regarding orthography, the use of Arabic script alone indicates that the original manuscript fragments were written in that script. Conversely, entries presented in both Hebrew and Arabic scripts represent poems originally composed in Judeo-Arabic; in these instances, we have provided an Arabic-script transliteration alongside the original. We strictly adhere to the orthography of the source fragments, preserving any deviations from Classical Arabic grammar and punctuation. Similarly, our Hebrew script representations are faithful transcriptions of the original manuscripts, provided without editorial intervention or Judeo-Arabic standardization.
Within this context, we turn now to a selection of excerpts from the corpus that are representative of cultural elements reflecting communal features. The elements to be discussed are prominently Sufism, oral epics, liturgical expressions, and medicinal and culinary elements.
Sufi Poetry and Everyday Piety
The Cairo Genizah holds a significant number of Sufi poems both copied from renowned Arab poets and others anonymously penned and modeled on Sufi poems. In addition to the explicitly Sufi poems, some love poems in the Genizah employ the language of Sufism and asceticism. Although the latter are clearly love poems, their anonymous authors resort to Sufi and religious language and motifs to express conventional love. Both Sufi poems and religious expressions in love poetry, whether explicit or implicit, reflect individual experiences as well as communal cultural understanding around the expression of piety, grief, and love.
Before turning to Sufism in the Genizah and a sample of poetry from our corpus, we need to consider briefly Sufism in Egypt and the flourishing of Jewish pietism as a spiritual movement that drew its inspiration in large part from Sufism. Understanding pietism and the Sufi influence helps contextualize the Genizah fragments that contain explicit Sufi poems and implicit Sufi allusions and explain why Sufism finds its way into the corpus. As a movement, pietism influenced the two dominant Jewish sects in medieval Cairo: the Karaites (who relied solely on the written Torah) and the Rabbanites (who adhered to the rabbinic oral law).Footnote 15
Egypt’s religious sanctity in holy books and the spread of ascetic practices in Egypt presented fertile grounds for the emergence of Sufism from the eighth century onward. Gradually, Egypt attracted more Sufis who traveled to meet with prominent Sufi figures, such as Dhu al-Nun al-Misri, among others.Footnote 16 Sufi orders in Egypt were venerated by the successive ruling dynasties of Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, and Ottomans throughout the tenth century to the eighteenth century.Footnote 17 Sufism took root and became architecturally visible through the building of khankahs (loosely translated as monasteries) that “formed cultural and theological centres” and zāwiyas (literally corner; translated as cloister) that were used “for smaller units, like the solitary dwelling place of a sheikh.”Footnote 18 Both khankahs and zāwiyas soon dotted the Egyptian landscape of Cairo.
Sufism or Islamic mysticism received its name because people with ascetic tendencies would allegedly wear coarse and woolen clothes.Footnote 19 Challenging to define, Sufism is the quest for God and the practice of assuming his character traits. Perceiving the presence of God in everything through the connective faculty of khayāl (imagination) is at the heart of Sufism. Some characteristics of Sufism found in Sufi works and poems by Rumi (1207–73) and ʿAttar (1145–1221) are drunken expressions, because “intoxication is the fruit of finding God.”Footnote 20 Along with this, the language of love is employed to express the quest for the divine. Dhikr (remembrance or invocation of the divine) as well as listening to music and dancing have become part of Sufi practices.Footnote 21
Within this rich Sufi background that spanned eastern lands and the Iberian Peninsula, the burgeoning movement of pietism (or ḥasidut to its adherents) emerged and flourished among the Jews of Egypt, and Spain as well.Footnote 22 The spiritual movement started in the second half of the twelfth century and gained momentum in the first half of the thirteenth century, as attested in documentary sources. It was an all-embracing movement that attracted the affluent and the poor, scholars and nonscholars, and men and women alike in medieval Egypt.Footnote 23
The reasons behind the rise of the pietist movement and its widespread appeal among Egyptian Jewry across different segments of social strata are difficult to pin down and reduce to a single cause. Scholarly perspectives range from cultural symbiosis at its apex, to rejection of “the excessive rationalism professed by the peripatetic philosophical trend,” and the need to “revive the inner core and ancient traditions of Judaism.”Footnote 24 Added to these possibilities, scholars have hypothesized that the attraction of the Karaites to Sufism reflected, on the one hand, their need to replace the rabbinic moral ideals they had dismissed with another source of “inspiration for their own ethical code,” and on the other the political upheaval at the time—namely, the persecution by the Almohads in twelfth-century Spain in the west and the Crusaders’ attacks in the east.Footnote 25
The last possibility might indicate that the Karaites subscribed more to pietism than the Rabbanites. True, there were differences between the two sects, and a schism that manifested itself at times, yet the emerging spiritual movement appealed to both.Footnote 26 There has been no evidence that the two sects practiced pietism independent of each other “with a separate master disciple.”Footnote 27 If anything, pietism seems to have succeeded in diminishing the existing differences and uniting the two groups “by means of a fruitful partnership as members of a common mystical fellowship” across varying economic and social strata.Footnote 28 In a sense, one could say that pietism became the shared space between Rabbanites and Karaites, and between Egyptian Jewry in general and Islam.
Jewish pietism was led by Abraham Maimonides (1186–1237), the spiritual leader of the Egyptian Jewish community following his father, Moses Maimonides. During Abraham’s time, the “Judeo-Arabic cultural synthesis” and hybridity that had flourished over the previous two centuries reached its culmination.Footnote 29 A supporter of the Sufi form of Jewish pietism, he did not shy from expressing his admiration for the Sufis “in whom he [saw] the heirs of ancient Israelite traditions.”Footnote 30 Maimonides led a call for a spiritual renewal and a revival of ancient traditions, with delicate appropriation from the flourishing Sufi and Islamic practices around him. In this context, he reintroduced discontinued rites and postures into religious practices.Footnote 31 The recorded practices in the introduction to his Mishnah Avot (known as the Eight Chapters) included fasting, abstinence from wine and meat, separation from women, maintaining nightly vigils, wearing wool cloth, and dwelling in the desert and mountains.Footnote 32
The pietists adopted these Sufi practices among their own circles and in their personal lives.Footnote 33 They even adopted the Sufi initiatory cloak known as the khirqah, placed by the Sufi master upon the novice to mark the rite of initiation into the Sufi path and Sufi order.Footnote 34 Preaching asceticism, condemning wealth (despite at times being wealthy), and upholding poverty were shared ideals of Sufis and pietists. Outer manifestation of poverty in tattered clothing was a common feature.Footnote 35
Several letters in the Genizah provide proof of the pietists’ adoption of Sufi practices. One letter dating from the mid-thirteenth century, for example, confirms the practice of the forty-day Sufi retreat (khalwa) among Jews.Footnote 36 In a complaint addressed to the Nagid David II b. Joshua (c. 1335–1415), a wife complains that her husband was attracted to Sufism and neglected his family.Footnote 37 Other letters show adherence to fasting during the days and praying during the nights.Footnote 38 It is worth mentioning that the same compelling practices of pietism elicited opposition among some Jews as well. The charges leveled at pietism understandably included heresy and antinomianism, and imitation of Islamic worship, among others.Footnote 39
With all these sociocultural and religious connections between Sufism and pietism in mind, we turn now to samples of poetry in the Cairo Genizah, which fall into two categories. The first are Sufi poems copied from known Arabic poets or poems that are inspired by Sufi poetry. The inspired poems might be copies from lost Arabic sources that are no longer extant. The second are secular love poems that include Sufi allusions and religious expressions. Although this is not the place to study all the poems in depth, it will suffice to look at a few examples and trace some of these religious and cultural connections.
Regarding Sufi poetry, the Genizah fragments include a significant number of classical Sufi poems, including works by renowned poets such as the Abbasid poet Abu al-ʿAtahiya (748–828), as illustrated in the following example.Footnote 40
The collection includes poems copied directly from Arabic as well as poems that include similar lines to Muslim Sufi sayings like this one, whose author is unidentified.Footnote 42
This line is modeled after the Muslim Sufi saying من ذاق عرف ومن عرف اغترف (He who tastes knows and he who knows scoops up/ladles). The saying underscores the value of the spiritual status, man’s attempt to reach the divine, and the direct knowledge of self and God that Sufis hailed. Maʿrifa (knowledge) is synonymous to what later was called Sufism and is used in classical texts to designate Islamic mysticism. This type of spiritual knowledge of self and God is often explained in view of the Prophet’s saying, “He who knows [ʿarafa] himself knows his Lord.”Footnote 43 Sufi figures like al-Hallaj, Rumi, and Ibn ʿArabi focused on this aspect of knowledge in their thought and life.Footnote 44
Turning once more to the poem, knowledge is at the heart of the entire poem. It opens with al-taqarub wa-l-ʿibāda (getting closer [to God] and worshipping).Footnote 45 Several pieces of advice are offered: to acquire sciences or knowledge (tahsīl al-ʿulum), seek al-maʿarif (knowledge), and leave behind al-zakhārif (embellishments).Footnote 46 The line “He who tastes knows,” similar to the Sufi saying, emphasizes that there is no lazza (pleasure) but the pleasure of knowledge.Footnote 47 It follows a comparison between two extremes, the mind of the people of knowledge who exercise sobriety and abstinence and the lustful soul that lacks control. Denouncing the lustful soul demonstrates the practice of asceticism inherent in the Sufi tradition.Footnote 48
If knowledge and sciences run through the above poem, intoxication and invocation appear throughout the next example, a short colloquial Sufi muwashshaḥ of seventeen lines. Once more, the poet is unidentified. The poem opens with a quest for intoxication.Footnote 49
As mentioned, intoxication, which correlates with the notion of fanāʾ (annihilation), is characteristic of Sufism. It is the state of ecstasy that brings one closer to God and makes one lose oneself to Him. It leads one to overcome human limitations and see one’s true self and God.Footnote 50
The following stanza is interspersed throughout the poem and recurs four times. The poem ends with it as well.Footnote 51
Sufi dhikr (invocation of God) is explicitly mentioned toward the end of the poem.Footnote 52 The poet contrasts a subject intoxicated with God’s love and a sinful subject to show the difference between seeking God and turning away from Him:
In addition to Sufi poems, Sufi and devotional tones often serve as a vehicle for expressing love in poetry. Some fragments invoke God’s help to win the beloved and express love. The following love poem opens with a call to God in the first two lines.Footnote 53 The beginning deceptively invokes a religious poem that turns out to be the beginning of a love poem.
Right after this invocation of divine power in an ascetic tone, the lover turns to the object of his love, asking for reunion.Footnote 54 For the rest of the fragment, the poet extols the physical beauty of the woman and seeks her mercy.
In another short fragment of five lines, the poet starts with a prayer to be gifted the beloved by God.Footnote 55 The remaining four lines praise the beauty of the woman.
If the last two fragments draw on religious language, the following has clear echoes of Sufism and ascetism. The petitionary love poem is a long one, in the Egyptian colloquial dialect. The structure of the poem includes back and forth questions and answers between the lover and the beloved. The woman asks a series of questions to which the man tries to answer wittingly and impressively to win her love. Throughout the poem, she demands expensive objects, and at the end she rejects the lover because of his tattered clothes. The lover’s Sufi response is worth quoting at length here.Footnote 56
Material comfort and wealth, such as gold and camphor, are juxtaposed to ascetism with striking contrast.Footnote 57 Although not the same, the ascetic lover’s response recalls the Sufi theme of investiture, in which the Sufi master invests his disciple, although here the lover exchanges clothes with a poor man in a clear reversal of the initiation practice. The exchange of clothes places the lover in a Sufi-like status, just as pietists who adopt tattered clothes. Perhaps the lover’s tattered clothes ultimately help him transcend corporeal love and unite with God rather than the beloved. The social aspect is evident when the woman alludes to her affluent status and wonders why the man, who is part of an affluent social circle as well, is dressed in rags.
Overall, Sufism in the Arabic poetry of the Cairo Genizah deserves more profound study. It reveals many aspects of the sociocultural life of the medieval Jewish community in Cairo and the cross-cultural contacts that took place. Cairo and Arab culture formed a contact zone that unfolded in many other literary domains as well, such as oral epics, or sīras, which we turn to now.
Cultural Memory and Moral Commentary
Sīra and Oral culture
In her work on African oral traditions, Karin Barber maintains that popular and oral poetry functions as a central medium of social communication, in which artistic form is inseparable from social function.Footnote 58 Poetry, she argues, simultaneously entertains, instructs, and preserves collective memory. In her words: “Oral texts are the outcome of a concerted effort to fix words and make them outlast the here-and-now. But they are also a vivid demonstration of the emergent and the improvisatory. So, looking at the constitution of oral texts, and at what oral texts say and show about themselves, might shed light on a crucial question: how do people simultaneously conserve culture and generate new things out of it?”Footnote 59 This question is particularly pertinent when examining Arabic poetry in the Cairo Genizah. In many instances, the poetic material preserved within the Genizah offers not only a record of Jewish cultural life but also a rare window into broader Egyptian cultural expressions in medieval and premodern times. These fragments frequently contain vibrant representations of folk traditions, many of which are otherwise unattested in surviving Arabic sources, whether from the Genizah or other manuscript collections to date.Footnote 60 The examples cited below may be interpreted as manifestations of a shared communal memory within a multicultural society bound by overlapping cultural and moral frameworks.
A particularly vivid instance of such cultural preservation is the poetic transmission of epic narratives revolving around themes of love, heroism, moral virtue, and social justice. These epics encapsulate the idealized attributes of heroic figures or champions of truth and justice as well as moral instruction. The concept of sīra (epic) in Arabic literature encompasses a wide array of works of Arab heritage, all sharing the crucial characteristic of an engaged audience. These popular sīras are distinguished from biographical works written by known authors by virtue of their role as entertainment, enjoyed by listeners and readers alike. They function as both historical narratives and part of the popular imagination in the way they represent exemplary figures and reflect social values through their widespread accessibility and different recorded versions.Footnote 61
A small number of Cairo Genizah fragments, mainly in Arabic script and to a lesser extent in Hebrew script, preserve examples of Arabic epic prose and verse. Among these is T-S NS 166.41, which appears to contain a portion of the renowned Arabic epic Sirat Bani Hilal (also known as al-Sira al-Hilaliyya).Footnote 62 This fragment includes narrative passages from the epic, accompanied by verses of Egyptian Arabic poetry written in Arabic script.Footnote 63
The verses here refer to Saʿda (سعدة), a prominent character in the Sirat Bani Hilal and the daughter of al-Zanati Khalifa (الزناتي خليفة). As with much of the sīra, values of morality and heroism are strongly reflected in this episode, and the present verses are no exception. Heroism in Arabic epic literature is intertwined with moral and ethical choices. Epics explore concepts, including courage versus cowardice, honor versus infamy, and fidelity versus infidelity, which place heroes in positions that test their adherence to heroic ideals. The sīra hero embodies noble morals and values.Footnote 64 Drawing on epic literature and its performative nature, heroism is a central theme in Arabic colloquial literature, particularly within the Sirat Bani Hilal oral epic tradition performed in many places in Egypt. The epic chronicles the history, migration, conquest, and eventual defeat of the Bani Hilal tribe, pitting bedouin warriors and heroines against urban rulers.Footnote 65 The preservation of epic literature in the Cairo Genizah shows that the values embedded in these texts were broadly embraced regardless of the audience’s background or religion. They also hold undeniable folkloric aspects commonly shared between Muslim and Jewish groups, who were bound together by the Egyptian Arabic dialect. This takes us to the use of the dialect in yet another, more formal, area, liturgical poetic expressions.
Liturgical Poetic Expressions of the Everyday
More values and virtuous ethics are found in a considerable number of Genizah fragments in Classical Arabic poetry that are copied from Arabic divans (poetic anthologies). However, we will focus on examples in Egyptian colloquial texts.
The Cairo Genizah contains several notable examples of Hebrew literary texts structured as alphabetical acrostics, in which each phrase or line begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.Footnote 66 These compositions often served mnemonic, liturgical, or even aesthetic purposes. Many piyyutim (liturgical Hebrew poems) discovered in the Genizah employ alphabetical acrostics. Some liturgical poems begin each line with successive Hebrew letters, forming an acrostic from aleph (א) to tav (ת). These structures are evident in various fragments, which include piyyutim in which each verse starts with the next character in the Hebrew alphabet.Footnote 67 This structural device also can be found in some Judeo-Arabic texts. The excerpts in the following lines are part of a long rhymed prose text. The first word in each part starts with the Hebrew letters in alphabetical order. The text might have been recited and orally transmitted, because it is full of virtuous sayings, wisdom, and moral ethics and values.Footnote 68
For comparison, the fragment T-S Ar.13.13 contains a collection of Egyptian Arabic proverbs written in Hebrew script. These proverbs are organized alphabetically following the Arabic, not the Hebrew, alphabet. We can read the lines on the recto featuring proverbs beginning with the Arabic letter ʿayn (ع) and on the verso with those starting with ghayn (غ).Footnote 71
Although the Hebrew alphabet in T-S Ar.43.247 might suggest an Arabic translation of Hebrew proverbs or liturgical or religious texts, this example shows the extent of cultural integration of the Jewish people with the Egyptian community. Even the religious or liturgical poetic texts were translated into and apparently performed in Egyptian Arabic.
To further support this claim, we find another more complete poetic text from the Cairo Genizah that contains an Egyptian Arabic translation of a well-known Hebrew liturgical poem by Judah Halevi (מי כמוך ואין כמוך).Footnote 72 This poem was translated into Arabic in multiple versions and was widely circulated among Jewish communities in Arab lands.Footnote 73 The Egyptian version preserved in the Genizah reflects a distinctive use of vernacular language, as evident in the following lines.Footnote 74
This example clearly demonstrates the rich cultural texture embedded in the compositions and highlights how Egyptian vernacular functioned as an integral part of Jewish daily life, particularly in liturgical contexts. Notably, the Arabic poem מי כמוך (“Mi Kamukha”) appears to have been frequently recited among Jewish communities in the Middle East.Footnote 75 This suggests that Egyptian vernacular was deeply entrenched in the oral traditions of these communities, extending beyond everyday communication into the domain of religious practice. The fusion of Hebrew and Arabic in the two examples cited above, that is, T-S Ar.43.247 and T-S Ar.37.232, offers a valuable glimpse of the extent to which these two languages were intertwined in the cultural hybridity of Jewish life in Egypt.
But perhaps more obvious and delightful examples of the cultural interplay between the Jewish community and its Arab neighbors are the medicinal and culinary poems.
Medicine, Food, and Wine
These poetic texts also contain references to everyday elements such as food, wine, and medical prescriptions. Starting with the latter, the joint fragments, T-S Ar.41.66 and T-S Ar.41.97 are remarkable, as they are among the few surviving poetic texts with medical content. The two pieces, written in elegant vocalized Arabic script, appear to be part of a medical treatise composed in verse (urjūza), employing the rajaz poetic meter. Regrettably, neither the original Arabic source nor the author has been identified. The headings are marked in rubric, and the individual poems are organized thematically, each addressing a specific disease or providing a medical prescription.
More broadly, the Cairo Genizah preserves a significant number of fragments related to medical literature, including texts concerning sexual health.Footnote 76 Fragment T-S Ar.41.66, for example, contains Arabic verses intended to enhance sexual performance. Some of these verses read as follows.Footnote 77
The composition of medical texts in poetic form was a well-established tradition in Arabic literature. Prominent figures such as Ibn Sina (d. 1037), also known as Avicenna, and Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185) authored extensive urjūzas for medical instruction, also employing the rajaz poetic meter.Footnote 78 Despite our efforts, we have not been able to link the two Genizah fragments discussed here to any of the well-known medical poems attributed to the above renowned physicians. Nevertheless, the presence of such literary material within the Genizah corpus attests to the extent to which Jewish readership participated in this shared cultural practice and were deeply engaged in the consumption of Arabic poetic forms.
More commonly, food and wine are vividly represented in numerous Genizah fragments, offering invaluable insights into the dietary practices, food preferences, and socioeconomic conditions of the Egyptian Jewish community.Footnote 79 It is no surprise to find traces of these themes in poetic forms. One such fragment in Arabic script preserves a poem written in al-tawīl poetic meter by the Mamluk poet Ibn Sudun (1407–63), dedicated to the culinary culture of Egypt in his time. The recto opens with the verse: وكم شاقني من ذاك أصفر فاقع (How I longed for that vivid yellow …). The verso begins with another poem by the same poet, likewise centered on food, opening with مائدة قد نصبتها كرام (A banquet prepared by generous hosts). The poem in the analysis appears within a decorative frame.Footnote 80
Recto
Another example can be found in T-S NS 324.105, where the verso holds a collection of Arabic poems. The first one belongs to the Abbasid poet Ibn Wakiʿ al-Tinnisi (d. 1003). It is a wine poem in al-tawīl poetic meter, and the first verse reads as follows.Footnote 83
Further down in the same page, we read a poem, which describes almonds.Footnote 84
Wine poetry is well-represented in the Cairo Genizah. An example is found in the following verses from a long poem on the subject.Footnote 85
The metaphor of aflāk rāh (the orbits of wine) in line 2 draws on cosmological imagery: just as heavenly bodies revolve in their celestial spheres (falak), so too do the cups of wine circulate among the drinkers, suggesting a kind of harmonious, almost sacred order to the ritual of drinking.
Another example is a verse attributed to the Andalusian poet al-Aʿma al-Tutili (1092–1131), which opens with the striking line:Footnote 86
Several other fragments from the Genizah may be attributed to the Abbasid poet Ibn al-Muʿtazz (861–908). On the recto of one folio, two of his poems are preserved. One begins,Footnote 87
The other opens with the line,Footnote 88
On the verso of the same folio, additional verses from Ibn al-Muʿtazz are preserved. One poem begins,Footnote 89
The above fragments provide insight into the aesthetic sensibilities and literary tastes of medieval Jewish communities in the Islamicate world, and attest to the vibrant circulation of Arabic poetic khamriyyāt (wine poetry) within their textual and cultural milieu. They also shed light on the significance of wine among these communities, aligning closely with Goitein’s findings regarding wine as a prominent commodity and beverage in Mediterranean society during the period (c. 950–1250), with notable cultural and religious implications.Footnote 90 In daily life wine played an important social role among the Jewish communities of medieval Egypt. Gathering with friends over a cup of wine appears to have been a common pastime, as evidenced in the Geniza, and one shared by both religious and educated individuals.Footnote 91 The presence of Arabic wine poetry in these fragments confirms an everyday cultural practice within the community, as well as a shared literary engagement with the broader Arabic tradition in which the Geniza Jews actively participated.
Conclusion
This article has explored how vernacular poetic fragments preserved in the Cairo Genizah offer a unique lens into the cultural and linguistic hybridity that characterized medieval and early modern Jewish communities in Egypt. By examining poems composed in both colloquial and Classical Arabic, the article argues that these texts should not be seen as marginal curiosities, but rather as active participants in the broader literary and oral traditions of the Islamicate world.
Through close textual analysis of diverse poetic forms, including Sufi, epic, liturgical, medical, food, and wine poetry, this study has demonstrated that Jewish individuals in medieval and Ottoman Egypt not only were deeply immersed in the literary canon of the Muslim majority, but also maintained strong connections to their own Hebrew and Jewish cultural heritage. This dual engagement reflects a rich intercultural dynamic in which Jewish voices contributed to, and were shaped by, the wider Arabic-Islamic milieu.
The use of Egyptian Arabic vernacular, even in religious Jewish contexts, as in the example of the poem “Mi Kamukha,” reveals the extent to which Egyptian cultural forms were woven into the fabric of Jewish life. Far from being incidental, these linguistic choices highlight the integration of Jewish communities within the everyday cultural and social environment of Egypt.
This article positions the Genizah’s Arabic poetic corpus as an invaluable source for examining the intersection of personal expression and communal memory. It contributes to emerging scholarship on Jewish-Muslim intercultural exchange and suggests that the Arabic cultural material in the Genizah corpus warrants renewed scholarly attention as a vital repository of multilingual and cross-cultural creativity. Future research will further investigate how performance, orality, and context shaped the composition, transmission, and reception of these poetic texts within and beyond Jewish communal boundaries.
Open access
