Researchers working on an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project to catalogue and digitise the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester’s collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts have discovered a rare section of text describing a Jewish exorcism.
The 150-word fragment, which, according Dr Renate Smithius from the University of Manchester, probably dates from eighteenth century Cairo or Palestine, details a ceremony carried out in order to exorcise the spirit of a dead man, Nissim Ben Bunya, from his widow, Qamar Bat Rahma. The prayer ritual used is ascribed to the famous eighteenth-century Kabbalist Rabbi Shalom Shar’abi, but this new find offers a rare, if not unique, example of its actual use in a synagogue.
The John Rylands Library collection holds some 11,000 documents, most of which are small fragments of lost manuscripts, dating from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries and covering a vast range of subjects, from religion and philosophy to grammar and medicine. The collection is known as the Rylands Cairo Genizah, and originally came from the Genizah, meaning storeroom, of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo.
Since 2003 a research team led by Professor Philip Alexander has been cataloguing the Rylands Genizah documents, and in 2006 the AHRC awarded the team a grant of over £361,000 to digitise the collection. This has enabled the creation of a searchable online database, soon to be completed, which will include over 22,000 high-resolution digital images of the fragments, accessible both to the public and to academics around the world.
More information on the Rylands Cairo Genizah project can be found on the University of Manchester's website.
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AHRC Media Contact: Tom Chlebik, Communications Team. Tel: 0117 9876 780
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Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £102 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.