The Ben Ezra Synagogue and its Geniza

This modest building once held one of the greatest documentary treasures of the Middle Ages. But first, the tradition.

1Moses on the Nile

A local tradition holds that here, on the riverbank, Pharaoh's daughter found the baby Moses in his basket of reeds. A well bearing his name used to be shown in the courtyard. Other legends say the building was once a church, or that the prophet Jeremiah prayed on this spot. None of these stories can be verified.

2What we do know

The synagogue already existed before 882. Around 1012 the caliph al-Hakim had it torn down, and it was rebuilt between 1025 and 1040. The building you see dates from the early 1890s, and a restoration completed in 2023 gave it its current look. Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher and physician, prayed here; he lived in Fustat from 1168 until 1204.

3The storeroom of papers

Jewish law forbids destroying writings that contain the name of God, so they were placed in a depository, the geniza. At Ben Ezra the dry climate preserved them for nearly a thousand years: letters, contracts, prescriptions, shopping lists, poems.

In December 1896 the scholar Solomon Schechter arrived from Cambridge. Some 400,000 fragments ended up in his university's library.

Thanks to them, daily life in the medieval Mediterranean is known in remarkable detail.

4What to look for

• The stepped crenellations on the roof.
• The tall arched windows, in the manner of a basilica.
• The garden, which occupies the site of the old riverbank.