A Synagogue in Old Cairo

July 30, 2006

Throughout the Middle East there are remnants of Jewish communities. Jewish cemeteries and old neighborhoods from Morocco to Syria can be visited by anyone who has the inclination. The living communities in these places have disappeared.. or are confined to a few scattered (and often old) individuals. The communities as a whole have migrated to Israel..

Like other Middle Eastern countries, Egypt has its traces from the Jewish past. Those traces happen to be difficult to photograph right now.. Shaar Hashamaim in downtown Cairo is off limits to photography from the street (I was stopped several years back attempting to take a picture). Ben Ezra in old Cairo can be photographed on the outside, but the inside has prominent cards forbidding photography. That has presented a problem for this blogger, who likes to rely on photographs to drive the text along.

At the end of his Khitat al-Maqrizi, having described in detail the urban topography of Islamic Cairo, comes round to Jews and Christians. The Jews are treated first (probably because they are the more ancient group, and al-Maqrizi tends to order things chronologically). The various synagogues in Cairo make up the first chapter.. except they are not called "synagogues", but "churches" (kinâis). Al-Maqrizi refers to the theologian Ibn Taymiyya to explain the word: "Kinisah is a Hebrew word, its meaning in Arabic being 'a place in which people gather for prayer.'" Which is true: a synagogue was known as a beit knesset, or "House of Assembly." And you can see how knesset could turn into kinisah in Arabic. Today the word kinisah is used exclusively for Christian churches.. but for al-Maqrizi it was appropriate for either Christian or Jewish places of worship.

Al-Maqrizi devotes a few lines to describing the Ben Ezra synagogue in old Cairo:

The Jews venerate this place of worship (kinisah), which is located in the quarter of al-Musasa in old Cairo. They claim that it was restored during the Caliphate of the Commander of the Faithful 'Umar ibn Khutab. Its setting is on what is known as the street al-Karamah. It was built in the year 325 of Alexander, which is prior to the religion of Islam by about 621 years. The Jews claim that this place of worship was a place of council for the Prophet Ilyas. [2:471]

Ilyas is the prophet Elijah.. although I cannot say how he gets down to Egypt. A little further reading would probably answer that question. But it is interesting that this is reported as a Jewish claim, and so we have a hint about the way Jews, as a minority group, were creating a landscape connected to their own stories.

Al-Maqrizi recognizes the legitimacy of Jewish claims about the age of their place of worship. The place of worship was "renovated" during the time of 'Umar ibn Khutab (the second Caliph). Its existence is then tied back from Islam 621 years, and forward from Alexander 325 years.. which puts us at 1 AD. The present setting of the synagogue tends to support this kind of dating, since directly behind the synagogue is an old wall that was part of the Roman fort that was once here:

Although the synagogue that now stands on the site was constructed at the end of the 19th century, there can be no doubt that the site itself, and Jewish worship here, goes far back in time.

In the process of restoring/rebuilding the synagogue they stumbled onto a cache of papers from the 9th to 13th centuries. Since Jews did not just throw away a piece of paper with the name of God written on it, they deposited them in a storage place.. known as a geniza. In the late 19th century (at the same time as the renovation of the synagogue) the importance of the documents in this collection was recognized and they were fanned out to several research libraries. For an example of what is to be found in this collection go to this Cambridge University site (there are some beautiful samples of the documents on this site).

I naturally wanted to know where this storage place was. I asked the man who worked in the small Hebrew library, and he pointed to a locked door underneath the library. Obviously the building itself is rather recent, but I had to believe that the geniza must have been under there:

Looking through what al-Maqrizi had to say about Jews in Egypt I decided that my next translation project from the Khitat might well be these 15 or so pages. Their interest deriving from what they say about a minority group creating a meaningful world for itself here in Egypt. The Geniza documents also provide an interesting check by which I may be able to see what is missing in al-Maqrizi's account. Just another way to enter and get to know these narrow streets: