Geniza Lab

Letter addressed to Netanel ha-Zaqen b. Aharon and his son Shelomo. The letter consists entirely of blessings for the holidays. Mainly in Hebrew. The passages in Arabic are written in Arabic script.

Letter of complaint. In Judaeo-Arabic, calligraphically written, with wide line-spacing. Against an adversary who denounced the sender to the government, gave false witness against him in qāḍī courts and told the Nagid Mevorakh that the sender alowed his cows to be grazed on Shabbat by Gentiles. Same scribe as T-S 13J34.5 (Alexandria, 1090 CE). (Information from Goitein's note card.) Same scribe likely also wrote T-S H10.171. Verso contains a seliḥa for the New Year (יי שמעה בקולי ראה), with alphabetic acrostic (information from CUDL).

Awaiting description - see Goitein's index card.

An eloquent appeal by a learned merchant from Damascus who had lost all his riches. May be connected with verso, List of donors. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 474-475, App. C 8)

Awaiting description - see Goitein notes and index card linked below.

Awaiting description - see Goitein notes linked below.

Letter from the sons of Berekhya concerning the matters of the yeshivot of Baghdad when Dosa b. Saadya Gaon was the head of the yeshiva of Sura, and concerning the strengthening of the status of Avraham b. Natan ('Ata), the amir's doctor in Adis, August 1015.

Letter from Abū l-Majd, in Fustat, to Barakāt b. Hārūn Ibn al-Kūzī, in Alexandria, sent via the shop of Maḥāsin al-Ḥarīrī. Dated: Ramaḍān, 620 AH, which is October 1223 CE. Abū l-Majd complains of the difficult times and his illness, and the problems of selling a sick female slave who actively resists being sold (recto, margin). Part of his haste to sell her is that he was denounced to the government (ghamazū ʿalayyā l-dīwān) and lost 52 dirhams, evidently taxes related to the slave. (Cf. ENA NS 77.254, an outline for a deed of sale of a slave, where "if someone tattles to the government" is a specific eventuality that is addressed.) Abū l-Majd asks Barakāt to come to Fustat and try to sell her. If it weren't for the bitter cold, Meir himself would come with her to Alexandria. (Information in part from CUDL.) ASE

Awaiting description - see Goitein's index card.

Awaiting description - see Goitein's index card.

Recto: Unidentified text in Arabic script. Perhaps a business letter? "... al-Andalusī wa-akhūhā (l. 4)"; pepper may be mentioned several times. Vecto: Halakhic text, possibly part of a responsum, written by Efrayim b. Shemarya, dealing with excommunication (11th century). Information from CUDL.

Awaiting description - see Goitein notes and index card linked below.

Alexandria (?); 15 of Iyar; April 17, 1139 Saʿdān b. Thābit Levi al-Baghdādī, a resident of Alexandria who is known to us from two letters he wrote to Ḥalfon (document ח85, ח88) and is also mentioned in document ח89, writes to Avraham b. Muʿṭī, a man from Tlemcen. Even though the addressee's father's name is missing, there is no doubt about his identity, because the writer addresses not only him, but his friend Abū Yaʿqūb Yosef, Yosef b. Ezra. The main part of the letter deals with the writer's great disappointment that the two mentioned merchants did not arrive in Alexandria on the ship in which Ḥalfon was traveling, and especially that they did not send with Ḥalfon the goods that Saʿdān ordered from them, and did not even send him a letter (as Ḥalfon thought they did). The letter was written in the middle of the month of Iyar, and it is possible to learn from this the time of Ḥalfon’s return from Spain. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Awaiting description - see Goitein notes and index card linked below.

Letter from Ramla, from Shelomo b. Yehuda to his son Avraham in Fustat, May 1029, describing in great detail the economic and other calamities which haunted the country. Includes the line, "The nation (al-umma) must be treated gently, as a sick man is treated gently" (v23).

Letter from ʿEli b. Yehezqel ha-Kohen, Jerusalem, to Eli b. Hayyim ha-Kohen, Fustat, concerning Eli b. Yehezqel's travels to Acre and Tyre, return to Ramla, and his serious illness there. "I was attacked by vomiting; I exploded from above and below, over 300 times (lit. "sittings"); everybody in the house gave me up. The doctors came on Saturday night and saw that I was finished and that there was nothing to be done any more. I made my will... [then improved]... but I still have terrible weakness." Also mentions the rent from the heqdesh (pious foundation) to the poor people in Jerusalem and other private and public affairs. 1060 (Gil's estimation). (Information from Gil, Palestine; and Goitein's index cards, including index card #27100.) VMR; ASE.

Letter (tadhkira) from Hasun b. Yitzhak al-Khavlani, probably to Musa b. Yahya al-Majani, probably from Alexandria. Around 1030. The writer lists a list of merchandises and products including a stone that he sent for selling in the Maghreb. The addressee is probably in Mahdiyya and Hasun includes a list of things he asks Musa to do for him when he arrives in Qayrawan. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, #219) VMR

Awaiting description - see Goitein notes and index card linked below.

Awaiting description - see Goitein notes and index card linked below.

Partnership settlement recorded in the home of Rabbi Moshe Damūhī in Cairo that bears a date in line 34 of 9 Ḥeshvan 5304 AM (1543 CE). This is not the exact date of recording for this document, which has been lost to damage in the lower right corner and was likely somewhat later in the sixteenth century. The partnership settlement is related the cost of rent and repairs for a building in which a section was used as a house of prayer for the Maghrebi congregation. Some of the names of the individuals involved are: Raḥamim b. Mordechai Ḥadād and Najma bt. ha-Rofe Saʿadia Tawīl. The witness Badusa b. Asher may have also scribed this document. He is listed as the sole witness in a nearby shelfmark from 1569CE (CUL T-S 13J4.20). Information from Goitein's linked index card and Dotan Arad's edition. MCD.