OXFORD'S Bodleian Library has made its collection of the Cairo Genizah fragments available online.

The Cairo Genizah is an collection of almost 280,000 medieval Jewish manuscript fragments, mostly written in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic.

They were discovered in the late 19th century in an annex of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, now Old Cairo, Egypt.

Documents accumulated there from the ninth to the 14 century, and remained there until their value was discovered.

The launch of the website www.genizah.bodleian.ox.ac.uk was marked by a bequest of five Genizah fragments from the library of the late Eli Weinberg.