Since the discovery of the Cairo Genizah—the repository of discarded documents long kept at the Ben Ezra Synagogue—scholars have encountered numerous documents written by the great philosopher, rabbi, and physician Moses Maimonides. A scholar at Cambridge University, where the bulk of this accidental archive now resides, has recently discovered another such item. Stuart Roberts writes:
The pages are a glossary of basic terms relating to herbs, basic foods, and colors and were identified by José Martínez Delgado, a visiting professor to Cambridge University Library’s Genizah Research Unit, from the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada.
Around 60 fragments written by Maimonides have been found in the Cairo Genizah manuscripts, and most are written in Maimonides’ customary Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written with the Hebrew alphabet). His writings include letters, legal rulings, and early drafts of his important works.
What makes this fragment unique, however, is the fact that Maimonides has added the translation in a Romance dialect below some words. It is the first evidence for Maimonides knowing Romance, an evolving dialect version of Latin that is a precursor to what would eventually become modern-day Spanish. . . .
Maimonides must have written these fragments—later deposited in the Cairo Genizah from where Cambridge’s collection derives—sometime between 1168 when he arrived in Egypt and 1204, the year of his death.
Read more on Cambridge University Library: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/maimonides-fragments-discovered