A geniza (warehouse) was found in this synagogue in the 19th century, which contains a real wealth of accumulated Hebrew, Aramaic and Judeo-Arab secular and religious writings. The collection was taken to Cambridge, under the auspices of Solomon Schechter, and is now owned by several academic libraries.
Ben Ezra as an institution is ancient, and has had at least three buildings in its history. It has suffered a lot of damage and minor and major renovations. The current building dates back to 1890.
The date of the founding of the Ben Ezra synagogue is not known, although there is evidence from documents found in the genesis that it existed before 882, and probably before Islam. During 882, the Alexandrian patriarch of the Coptic Oriental Orthodox Church sold the church and the area around it to a group of Jews, and some scholars from the 19th century assume that this is the date of the creation of the Ben Ezra synagogue. However, the buyers were followers of the Talmudic Academy in Babylon, and Ben Ezra is the word that followed the teachings of the opposite Talmudic Academy in Syrian Palestine. Modern scholars agree that in 882 the land was sold to a rival synagogue.
The original Ben Ezra Synagogue was demolished, and the synagogue was rebuilt between 1025 and 1040. The study of the wooden carved door of the room where the Torah scrolls are kept sheds light on the history of the renovation of the synagogue. The door is jointly owned by the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Yeshiva University Museum in New York
Historically, synagogues also contained a genesis, or a repository for unnecessary or outdated documents containing God's name, because Jewish customs dictate that such works must be stored in awe and then buried in a cemetery. The building from the 11th century contained an unusually large genesis, on two floors, more like a silo than an attic, with a roof that can be opened from above. Some of the documents found in it have been transferred from a previous building, and the oldest dated document is about 150 years older than the genesis itself. Documents continued to pile up in it for the next 850 years.
During 1168, a deliberate fire destroyed a large part of the city of Fustat, where the synagogue was located at the time. Fustat is now part of Cairo. The Muslim vizier Shawar ordered that the entire city be burned in order to prevent its conquest by the Christian crusader army. Saladin, becoming sultan of Egypt soon after, ordered the restoration of Fustat.
The style of carving on the door of the Torah display case is not in line with the art of the Fatimid Caliphate (909-1171), and is closer to the art of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1571), more precisely from the 15th century. The medallion that adorns the door was designed with a motif that is common for bookbinding in that period. It is known that a fire in the 15th century in the synagogue damaged Bima, or the pulpit. One theory is that the wood from the damaged beam was used as a material for the new door on the Torah display case. The synagogue was repaired and renovated in 1488.
The door also has traces of paint that conservators have identified as dating back to the 19th century. The synagogue is known to have been renovated in 1880, completely renovated in the early 1890s, and then redecorated in the early 20th century.
The Egyptian Jewish community is at the end of a dramatic decline, from about 80,000 people living in 1920 to a dozen Jews of Egyptian descent still residing in Cairo
Accordingly, the Ben Ezra Synagogue now functions as a tourist attraction and museum, and does not hold religious ceremonies.
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