Geniza Lab

Fragment of a document concerning a husband and wife, written in Cairo during the time of Mevorakh b. Saadya (d. 1111). Later its signatories were confirmed in Fustat.

Document concerning a settlement of accounts in which Hillel b. ʿEli the cantor was both party and scribe. Involves ʿAlam al-Dawla b. Quraysh. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Fragmentary record of testimony (left half missing). Dated: [..]68 Seleucid, so probably 1056/57 CE or 1156/57 CE. Signed by Moshe b. Shelomo and [...] b. Avraham.

Court testimony. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Concerning fifty new Egyptian dinars which were recorded in the will of Yosef b. Banan and are now acknowledged to be owed to the son of his paternal uncle known as Ibn Banan. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

List of sundry expenditures made for the Nagid, mentioning items for his kitchen and marking prices using Coptic numerals. Dated to the early 13th century. (Information from Goitein, Mediterranean Society, IV, pp. 245, 440)

Certificate for Natan b. Shemarya concerning his cheese. Signed by Menashshe b. Yiṣḥaq. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter of condolence written by a man to his sister, Rayyisa, on the occasion of their mother's death. "If you cried for a thousand years, it would have no benefit except to sicken you, and no one would perish other than you. My sister, I ask you by God to have endurance, and for all that you endure, there will be a great reward. My sister, read Ecclesiastes, the word of Solomon, for he will counsel forbearance (taqwā) to you. I am sending you al-Faraj baʿd al-Shidda to occupy yourself with it. Know that I wrote this letter only after softening my eyes with tears for she whom I have lost. . . . . My sister, by God, I ask you not to make yourself perish for something that will not benefit you. Look at others who have lost their mother and father and children and who endure the judgment of God. . . . Occupy (shāghilī for shaghghilī) yourself so that you do not perish." (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, p. 22 and Goitein, Hadassah Magazine.) ASE.

Letter from Mūsā to his maternal uncle Eliyyahu the Judge. Conveying flowery greetings for the New Year.

Beginning of a letter from Avraham b. Benjamim the Teacher written in high 'Torah' script and very artificial style, perhaps to a Nagid. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Hebrew letter in late script, pertaining to the relationship between Jews and Muslims. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

One of a pair of letters written by Umm Sitt al-Nās to family members when she had been thrown out of her husband's and mother-in-law's house. The match was identified by Oded Zinger. The other letter is CUL Or.1080 3.46, addressed to her brother Abu ʿUmar Ibn Sabra. The present letter is addressed to Abū l-Faḍl Ibn Sabra, whom Goitein identified as her maternal uncle and as Mevorakh b. Avraham b. Yiṣḥaq Ibn Sabra. She describes some of the background of her current situation: her mother-in-law (the addressee's sister) had long nursed enmity against her. At one point Umm Sitt al-Nās had to leave her own family's location and move in with the husband and mother-in-law. "First, we all moved into one house. Soon my mother-in-law began to work against me, isolating me from everyone and putting enmity against me into the heart of her son. The least she did was that she said to me: 'Go away and become like your notorious mother.'" Umm Sitt al-Nās then probably alludes to her mother (the sister of both the addressee and the mother-in-law) when she writes, "You remember well how everyone reacted to your sister Baqā'." A man—perhaps the writer's husband or perhaps her father-in-law (per Goitein)—then accused Umm Sitt al-Nās of adultery with her cousin (ibn ʿamm). Ultimately she was turned out of the house, "naked and lost." She has been staying with a widow who took her in, and she wishes to travel to her uncle and stay with him, as she has no one else to turn to. She requests 20 dirhams and a mantle (ridā') and a "women's cap" (? maʿraqa). Goitein speculated that she is suffering from "a grave palsy" (shallan adīda) but there is nothing in the context to suggest an illness, and adīdah is a much rarer word than the other possibility, urīduhu. Perhaps the sentence simply means that in the widow's house, she cannot even obtain a skein of yarn (this would also fit with her preoccupation with her lack of clothing). For more, see Goitein's translation and discussion in Med Soc III, and see CUL Or.1080 3.46.

Letter from Eliyyahu b. Kalev b. Leon, a Byzantine, to the Egyptian Nagid Shemuel b. Hananya. Written en route to Cairo, Eliyyahu complains of the dearth of learning among the Egyptian Jews and their laxity of observance. (Information from Goitein's index cards and Ben Outhwaite, “Byzantines in the Cairo Genizah,” in Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions, ed. Nicholas de Lange, et. al., 208) EMS

Beginning of a letter from Shemuel b. Hofni (977-1013) to Avraham and Tanhum, the sons of Yaʿaqov, in Fez, Morocco, in excellent calligraphic script. Dated August or September 1004. (Information from Gil and Mediterranean Society, III, pp. 19, 430)

Letter by the Jewish community of the village of Qalha, Egypt, apparently to Eli ha-Kohen b. Yahya in Fustat, 2nd half of the 11th century. The Jews of Qalḥa report to the Parnas in Fustat that Abū ʿImrān Mūsa b. Yequtiel arrived in their village on 17 Tammuz, injured and/or sick from the violence he experienced during the nahb (plunder) of Fayyūm. In addition he was robbed of everything by robbers near the village. He died a few weeks later, in Av. One of his two wives and the daughter of the other died also. The remaining wife was brought to Fustat at the expense of the community, because she had a cousin (ibn ʿamm) there. The little boy could not live in the village because of the Kushim (Sudanese soldiers?). Information from Goitein's note card.

Letter written in a beautiful hand, requesting that the bearer receive help in selling his cheese, which was prepared in the prescribed manner. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter from Abu al-Hayy b. Barhun Khalila, in al-Mahdiyya, to Barhun b. Musa Tahirti, reporting several losses of ships and merchandise. (Information from Gil)

Letter from the Karaite David b. Ḥayyūn, in Jerusalem, to Yosef b. Yaʿaqov, in Tripoli (Libya). Dating: Probably middle of the 11th century. The sender confirms receipt of something that was sent with his sister's son Ismāʿīl, and he thanks the addressee. He emphasizes that he prays for him at all times, including when he goes up to the Mount of Olives and when he is at 'the gates of mercy.'

Letter from Salmān b. Hārūn, al-Faḍl and Avraham b. Farrāḥ, Alexandria, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Early 1054 (Gil). Salmān b. Hārūn, who had married into the al-Qābisī family, asks Nahray to collect debts for him from various people in Fustat, and to help his sister's son, Yosef b. Peraḥ al-Qābisī, to buy goods with said money. If there isn't enough money, Salmān instructs, then he should sell a quantity of soap deposited with in Fustat with a wakīl. Al-Faḍl then asks Nahray to run other errands related to clearing up a conflict with a certain Abū al-Surūr, which precipitated the severance of his relationship with Yosef b. ʿEli ha-Kohen al-Fāsī. The third writer, Avraham b. Farrāḥ, adds to the letter permission from the tax authorities to import raisins (from Syria?) and the khums related to them. The letter also mentions the Muslim shipowner Abū ʿAbdallāh b. al-Baʿbāʿ, here called Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. On the dating: in Gil's introduction to his edition he claims that the letter dates to some months after Bodl. MS Heb. d 66/ 81, since it contains similar information; however, in that same introduction, Gil dates this letter to early 1054, but in his introduction to Bodl. MS Heb. d 66/ 81, he dates it to October 1056; and to make matters even more confusing, in Kingdom, secs. 315–316, he says this letter dates to ca. 1057. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, #771)

Note in the hand of Daniel b. Azarya to Eli, the parnas of Fustat, concerning aid for a poor man, Wahb of the city of Raqqa, ca. 1051-1062.

Letter from Yeshua b. Isma’il al-Makhmuri from Alexandria to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Around 1060. The writer describes the event when the regime’s soldiers forced him to pay debt in Fustat’s port. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 3, #315) VMR