Ben Ezra Synagogue description and photos - Egypt: Cairo (Topic)

Ben Ezra synagogue description and photos - Egypt: Cairo. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Ben Ezra Synagogue.

Photo and description

The Ben Ezra synagogue is located in Fostat (Old Cairo) and was originally called the "synagogue of the Israelites." It was built in 882 on the remains of a Coptic church that was sold to Jews. The building was dedicated to the prophet Elijah, and the locals called it by the name of Abraham Ben Ezra, a rabbi. One of the most famous Jews of the Middle Ages, Moses Maimonides (Moshe Ben-Maimon-Harambam), a doctor, philosopher, specialist in religious laws, while living in Cairo, went to this synagogue, as a result of which it received another popular name - the Maimonides synagogue.

During the restoration in the 1890s, a great discovery took place here: a medieval geniza cache was found. Sacred books and old scrolls of laws were collected and hidden in the attic, the collection was thousands of authentic documents of the Middle Ages. An exceptional find is a collection of documents known as the Jinees, written primarily in Hebrew Arabic. - variations of the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, which were used exclusively by Jews in the Middle Ages. They reflect the political, economic and social conditions of the Jews under Arab rule, as well as the subordination of organizations and relations between various Jewish sects.

These documents contain a number of rare manuscripts from interpretations of the Old Testament, fragments of linguistic studies in Hebrew, as well as testimonies explaining how Jews interacted with the Arab Muslim authorities. These documents were copied several times, the earliest manuscripts were compiled in the Fatimid era in Aramaic, later were rewritten in Arabic,

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Topic: Ben Ezra Synagogue description and photos - Egypt: Cairo.