The Cairo Geniza's occult and magical manuscripts in modern scholarship
- Date of account
- 1970–1989 research and cataloguing
- Location
- Cairo Geniza materials, chiefly studied in Cambridge, Oxford, New York, and Jerusalem
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
Research on the Cairo Geniza during this period increasingly identified Jewish magical, astrological, divinatory, and protective manuscripts alongside liturgical and commercial documents. These fragments offer concrete comparison material for scrying, amulets, angelic names, healing, and practical ritual in medieval Middle Eastern Jewish life. They are archival texts rather than evidence that the prescribed rites worked supernaturally. Because fragments are dispersed and catalogued unevenly, identification depends on shelf marks, editions, language, and manuscript context; later occult anthologies may silently modernize or mistranslate them.
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