Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Life in Fragments: Stories from the Cairo Genizah

The Essay: Life in Fragments: Stories from the Cairo Genizah: Episode 2: Letters

Factual: History

Life in Fragments: Stories from the Cairo Genizah

Episode 2

Episode 2: Letters

Letters

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Life in Fragments: Stories from the Cairo Genizah, LettersClose menu

Ben Outhwaite reveals an intercultural trade network across the medieval Mediterrean.

Ben Outhwaite reads private letters between merchants to reveal an international trade network uniting Jews, Muslims and Christians across the medieval Mediterranean.

Ben Outhwaite, Head of the Genizah Research Unit, shows how private letters between medieval merchants reveal an international trading network that united Jews, Muslims and Christians across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of manuscripts from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo that portrays over 800 years of community life. Rediscovered in the 19th century, this vast communal paper-bin contained hundreds upon thousands of scraps of rag-paper and parchment. It's an unedited archive of prayers, letters, poems, magical spells, alchemical recipes, children's exercise books, divorce deeds and pre-nuptial agreements that paints a lively and intimate picture of daily medieval life in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.


Produced by Michele Banal and Miranda Hinkley.

First broadcast in May 2013.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series about the Cairo Genizah, a collection of documents from the synagogue in Old Cairo

Series focusing on the Cairo Genizah - a collection of documents from the synagogue in Old Cairo that is thought to be one of the most signficant bodies of medieval texts being researched today

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Life in Fragments: Stories from the Cairo Genizah

Episode 2: Letters

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3