Geniza Lab

Letter from Nahray b. Nissīm, Fusṭāṭ, to Barhūn b. Ṣāliḥ al-Tāhartī, probably in Egypt, ca. 1045, concerning business between the two. Mentions a shipment of pearls. Nahray sends his blessing to Khalfa, from the Tāhartī family, for his marriage to a woman from the Uqba family. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, pp. 711-714, #242). VMR. Nahray anxiously mentions to Barhūn that he has already paid the Amīr's emissary Abū Ishāq 150 dīnārs in Fusṭāṭ and it concerns him that the Amīr is still demanding the same from him in Alexandria. "If, God forbid, he continues to demand payment from you after he knows that it was already collected from me, then you will certainly remind him of his own letter to his emissary Abū Isḥāq, so that he will return to us what he has taken from us." YU.

Hayfa, daughter of Sulayman Ibn al-Ariq, writes to the Ḥaver Eli b. Amram, the spiritual head of Jerusalem congregation of Fustat, during the third quarter of the eleventh century. She asks him to write to Damascus (from Egypt) to her husband Said b. Muamar, the silk weaver, after he had deserted her twice. She was forsaken by her family as well. She had a boy from Said and she wants his compassion or that he will set her free. (S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society; and Goitein's index cards) VMR

Legal document recording Surūra bt. Shelomo’s suit for maintenance from her husband Surur b. Yaʿaqov Ibn al-Jāsūs. For the expenses, Surūra was ceded one-half of a bill of debt given in Qayrawān to her husband’s father by a merchant in Alexandria in summer 1029 CE (the date on the bill quoted is Tammuz [4]789 [A.M.]), amounting to 280 silver pieces, worth 23.33 dinars. Surūra presented the bill to a court in Fustat with the request to have it collected in Alexandria, and further stated that her husband had left her an ʿaguna and thus owed her and the children this maintenance. T-S 13J8.2, part of CUL Or.1080 J7, and T-S NS J149 all include versions of the same document, or at least concerning the same case. (Oded Zinger, Women, Gender, and Law; S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3:203, 319.) EMS

Yaʿaqov ha-Kohen b. Moshe declares that Abu al-Ala Mevorakh b. Avraham al-Safuri, owed him 1/3 and to his brother Aharon 2/3 of a sum of 230 dinars, but left for their payment only 100 dinars. Now Yaʿaqov wishes to take not 33 1/3 but only 20 dinars, so that he and his dead brother's four children - Moshe, Daniel, Shemuʾel, and Sara - should get each 1/5 of 100. (Goitein) VMR

Document of release concerning Avraham b. Shemuel and Sa’dan b. Sa’id, witnessed by Yosef ha-Kohen. (Information from Goitein's index cards.) See also BL OR 5550.1, another legal document involving Sa'dan b. Sa'id, dated 979 CE. EMS, ASE.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Reused for business accounts on verso, which are in the hand of ʿArūs b. Yosef (according to Goitein's notes). The letter is written in a very difficult hand. The addressee is asked to meet with Abū [...], Abū l-Barakāt, and the latter's mother and to convey the sender's greetings and the message that he only cut off his correspondence with them because they cut it off first. It seems that the sender's father (al-marḥūm abī), who was intimately associated with the addressees, has died. (Goitein read "abī" as "ṣabiyy" and a previous PGP transcription interpreted this as his son—but presumably that would have been written "al-ṣabiyy." Another possibility is "akhī"/brother, since the scribe does not carefully distinguish between כ and ב.) The death has led to various financial/business complications. The addressees are to send him all the things they are supposed to send, "just as you would to your father." The sender did not want to write a power of attorney as he has done with others. Apparently he wants to try resolving the dispute without resorting to legal instruments. He closes by asking them to do what is right, then a threat to escalate the situation if they don't. (All of this is tentative, because the letter has still not been adequately transcribed.) EMS. ASE.

Letter from Abū l-Barakat b. Abū l-Ḥasan to Shelomo b. Eliyyahu. In Judaeo-Arabic. The sender is evidently a family member of Shelomo's wife Sitt Ghazāl bt. Abū l-Faraj. Abū l-Barakat reminds Shelomo that Sitt Ghazāl’s relatives had only reluctantly agreed to let her depart for Alexandria in the first place, and that they had made this concession in good faith, believing that he would treat her well. The writer goes on to defend Shelomo’s charges against Sitt Ghazāl’s slothfulness, lambast him for his boorishness and lack of empathy for his young wife, and attempts to socially shame the husband into proper behavior. (Eve Krakowski, “Female adolescence in the Cairo Geniza documents,” PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2012, 68, 236, 238–39, 278–79.) EMS. Likely a join with T-S 6J3.15 (identified by Oded Zinger).

Pre-marital contract containing a stipulation allowing the bride to opt out of a patrilocal household even without proof she had been mistreated: “Whenever she hates living with his father and mother, he must lodge her wherever she chooses.” Egypt, twelfth century. (Eve Krakowski, “Female adolescence in the Cairo Geniza documents,” PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2012, 202, 206-7) EMS

Verso: Formulary in Aramaic for a deathbed will, dated Av 1552 (= 1241 CE) in Fustat. (Information from CUDL)

Deathbed will by Yefet ha-Levi. Location: Probably Damascus. Dating: Unknown, but see verso. In which he dedicates one-third of an orchard and a house located in the village of Hammuriyya near Damascus and stipulates the income of the estate is to be used to purchase food for students of the law. Two trustees are appointed, Yequti’el and Petahya. (Moshe Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza, Brill, 1976, 482-4) EMS

Letter concering the apperance of a prophet, and inauguration of the messianic age in 1226 with the appearance of Elijah, of the messiah in 1233, and of the kingdom of God in 1240 (5000 of the creation). Original letter was sent from Marseilles to Qabes; this copy went to Alexandria. The letter mentions that Elazar of Worms believed in this prophet. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Recto: Report to a vizier of al-Ḥāfiẓ by a military official in which the sender references previous petitions and also makes a new request for a rescript. Dating: second quarter of the sixth century AH / 12 century CE. (Information from Khan, ALAD.) EMS

Verso: Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. A scholar is asked for the hand of his daughter in a complete letter (written calligraphically by a scribe) asking the prospective father-in-law to exercise utmost secrecy.

Letter in which the writer sends greetings to R. Hananel, “al-dayyan al-jalil” (the illustrious judge) and to the judge Yehiel b. Eliakim (of Aleppo). The note, mostly in Judeo-Arabic, begins with the Hebrew expression, “In the name of the Merciful, (a letter) to the honorable, great, holy, precious, crowned, glorious […] judge Eliyyahu the wise.” (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:515; Esther-Miriam Wagner, “The Weakening of the Bourgeoisi,” in From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif,” ed. Ben Outhwaite and Siam Bhayro, Brill:2010, 347) EMS

Legal document concerning power of attorney in which Shelomo b. Hatim appoints Menachem b. Shelomo to pursue his claims against Ḥasan b. Avraham and Shemuel b. Nisin. EMS

Deed of sale for a male Abyssinian slave (ghulām ḥabashī) named Muqbil, a minor (dūn al-bulūgh), who was tattooed on a covered part of his body (malʿūṭ laʿṭ khafiyy). Location: Probably Alexandria (or potentially Damietta; a city on the Mediterranean). Dated: Wednesday, 9 Tammuz 4912 AM, which is 13 June 1152 CE. Seller: Abū l-Faraj Yeshuʿa b. Mevasser Ibn al-ʿAnī. Buyer: Moshe b. ʿIwāḍ b. Moshe Ibn al-Riqāʿī. Price: 10.25 dinars. All additional fees and taxes (samsara, maks, wājib, juʿl) will be paid by the buyer, according to a clause inserted between lines 17 and 18. (Information from Goitein's index card; for potential identification of Yeshuʿa b. Mevasser, see Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine, p. 457.) EMS

Letter from Yosef Ha-Kohen b. Shelomo Gaon, Jerusalem, to Efrayim b. Shemarya, approximately 1050.

Court record from 22 Sivan (4)802 A.M. (June 1042) regarding the marriage of a minor. On the other side of the page a legal opinion of a Muslim Judge in Arabic letters written on Rabi' al-Awwal 434 A.H. (October-November 1042). The two honorable members of the community who testified before the Muslim judge are the judge, Yosef b. Sulayman, and the cantor, Sahl b. Musa. Apparently, the Muslim judge had a mistake in writing the name of the cantor's father. The cantor should be identified with Yosef b. Yehoshuaʿ (Information from Frenkel).

Letter from an unknown writer, in Alexandria, to Maṣliaḥ Gaon, in Fustat. Dating: 1127–38 CE. In Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew. The purpose of the letter is to beseech Maṣliaḥ to investigate the matter of the death of a family member of the writer, a case with which Maṣliaḥ was clearly somewhat familiar already. It seems that the legal proceedings in Alexandria had not gone in the writer's favor, and he blames a group of evildoers not only for this but also for the death of the family member in the first place. The writer opens with the rabbinic dictum (Bava Meṣiʿa 58b) that verbal oppression is graver than monetary oppression, because the latter can be restituted but the former cannot. This is all the more true, he adds, when frauds or conspiracies (ghabā'in) have been perpetrated on somebody. He continues by saying that a physician who has personal experience of illness and treatment is all the more effective in treating others; that Maṣliaḥ himself has been the victim of conspiracy of rank (? ḥāl) and money (māl), but God in his mercy restored to each person what they deserved; thus, Maṣliaḥ will be the most suitable person to take up the case the writer is about to present, which is one of conspiracy of rank and money and family and connections (? wasā'iṭ) and witnesses. Indeed, there is a group of well-known evildoers in Alexandria who seek to pervert justice and corrupt the judges, and make it appear as if their victims are the ones at fault. As for the dead man (l. 20f), and how he lost his mind and perished after drinking the medicine—what truly killed him, according to the writer, was the fact that he had been slandered by others who complained about him to Maṣliaḥ, when in fact the dead man was the one who was wronged and ought to have been the one complaining. The writer's only desire is for Maṣliaḥ to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter. The writer prefers this to the entire inheritance, for which he has no need. He then cites a (sadly faded) saying of certain physicians about the delirium (hadhayān) that certain illnesses produce; all the more so for someone (the dead man) who suffered multiple illnesses, of mind, of body, and a conspiracy (ghabīna) against him. He concludes with formulaic praises and pleas, and finally writes, cryptically, "Ben Zoma is still outside" (Ḥagiga 15a). ASE.

Letter from Yosef b. Musa al-Tahirti, from Mahdiyya, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Around 1059. Mentions trading with Byzantium and Sicily. Writes about beads, especially from one type (“Hab Ruman” – “pomegranate seeds”). (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 3, #368) VMR