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Geniza fragments before conservation and encapsulation, JTS Library, 2016. Photo by Amy Gerbracht Armstrong
Since 1986, the Princeton Geniza Lab has been studying and digitizing historical documents from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of roughly 400,000 fragments of paper and parchment preserved in a medieval Egyptian synagogue.
We study the geniza's ephemeral, everyday texts — unique sources for the history of the Middle East and of premodern Jewish communities from Spain to Sumatra. The documents include letters, legal documents, accounts and lists.
The lab’s work consists of research, transcription and database design. We've built an open-access database called the Princeton Geniza Project to make geniza documents available to researchers and the interested public.
Our team includes undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs and faculty from Princeton and elsewhere.
