A catalogue of Cairo Genizah fragments at the Bodleian Libraries

Help

This page provides information on searching and browsing the catalogue. For information on how to order material, please see the Order special collections page.

Browsing

You can browse the catalogue by clicking on the following buttons:

  • Manuscripts (or volumes of fragments, identified by their classmarks/shelfmarks)
  • Works
  • People (personal names of authors, translators, copyists, etc.)
  • Places

Results can be filtered using the "Limit results by" options on the left, such as by language, century (in the Gregorian calendar), or role (for people).

Searching

For a simple search, type your query into the search box at the top of every page and press enter. You can then filter your search results as explained above.

To search for something specific click one of the four buttons - manuscripts, works, people or places - then enter your search terms.

Search tips

Search terms can be entered in all languages and scripts present in the records. For searching in Roman script please use the LC transliteration standard. Diacritical signs may be omitted. For example, instead of Hafá¹­arot you can search for Haftarot.

You can use additional formatting to more precisely define your search query. These include:

  • Quotation marks (")

    • You can place quotation marks around multiple words so that only that specific phrase will be found. Anonymous commentaries (without quotes) produces many more results than "Astronomical tables" (with quotes)

  • AND / OR

    • You can combine words into groups using AND, OR and brackets. AND is used as default when nothing is specified. AND and OR must be capitilised for this to work. For example you could search for Barocci AND (Aristotle OR Plato) which will find only records with Barocci in and at least one of Aristotle or Plato in.

  • Plus (+) / Minus (-)

    • With the plus and minus you can define which phrasesmust be found and those which must not be found. The plus is default. For example geomancy -astrology will return everything with the word geomancy but not the word astrology.

  • Wildcards (*,?)

    • You can use wildcard values to match only part of words. A question mark (?) will match a single character while the asterisk (*) will match one or more characters. A search for astro* will match words like "astronomy", "astrological" and "astrology"

  • Combinations

    • You can combine all the above options into a single query, such as: astro* -astrology which finds every starting with "astro" but excluding "astrology"

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