HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
IN THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF RUSSIA

Further Acquisitions

Firkovich called the Karaite Geniza the "Cairo Geniza". But in Old Cairo, in the Ben Ezra Synagogue there was another geniza that later became famous due to the English scientist Samuel Schechter (the manuscripts acquired by him have now been archived at Cambridge) and thanks to the Russian Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin, 1817-1894) who headed the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem for almost three decades, was engaged in biblical archeology and collected ancient Greek, Syrian, Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts.

The Archimandrite Antonin Kapustin Collection which contained, among other things, more than a thousand Jewish manuscripts and fragments from the 11th to 18th centuries as well as documents from Cairo (Fig. 25, 26), entered the Imperial Public Library in 1899 in accordance with his last will.

In addition to the mentioned collections, the Library has received and continues to acquire individual manuscripts (Fig. 29). However, the most famous, the most ancient, the most valuable landmarks of Jewish literature, history and culture are housed in the collection of Abraham Firkovich, bought by the reguest of Alexander II who thus, in the apt remark of an Israeli scientist, inlarged the country's gold reserves.