Solomon Schechter at work in Cambridge

After the polymath twins Mrs Lewis and Mrs Gibson introduced their Cambridge colleague Solomon Schechter to manuscripts they had acquired in the Middle East in 1896, he endeavoured to locate the source and acquire the bulk for study. Today the Taylor-Schechter Collection of the University of Cambridge holds about 140,000 manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah. Schechter (shown here at work in Cambridge) described the Genizah thus: ‘It is a battlefield of books, and the literary production of many centuries had their share in the battle, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area.’