Geniza Lab

Letter in Hebrew. Looks like the handwriting of Shelomo b. Yehuda. Needs examination.

Letter or petition in Arabic script. Needs examination.

Table in Arabic script. The Christian name Buṭrus may appear (upper left). Needs examination.

Legal document. Only a few lines from the introduction are preserved. The date is not preserved. The handwriting is very similar to that of the court scribe Yosef b. Shemuel b. Seʿadya ha-Levi (c.1181–1209).

Business letter. Small fragment. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Likely 11th century.

List of communal contributions. Dated: 5580 AM, which is 1819/20 CE. Many names.

Prayer for Queen Victoria, Albert, and Edward Prince of Wales. Calligraphic, multicolored, in the shape of an orb, and written in both Hebrew and English. Almost certainly from Gaster's personal collection rather than the Cairo Geniza. There are four other blocks of text from various parts on the other quadrants (to be folded into a siddur?).

Recipes in Judaeo-Arabic. Alchemical: dhahab kāmil in shā' allāh.

Recto: Document in Arabic script. On verso there is literary text in Hebrew; the hand looks late.

Four fragments smushed together. Very damaged. On the lower right, there is a medieval document in Judaeo-Arabic that includes the words "tadhkira" and "raṭl" and the name Sālim b. Wahb.

Business letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Likely 11th century. Mentions brazilwood, but otherwise the remaining text is quite vague.

Essay on the intercalation of the calendar: אדא ארדנא אלוקוף עלי עלם אלחיבור. The hand is familiar, perhaps 13th century.

34 pages of an exegetical work or sermon in Italian and Hebrew. The writer refers at one point to his teacher Menaḥem b. Yiṣḥaq (image 17 in the FGP app interface). Dated: 5519 AM, which is 1759 CE (image 2).

Table of contents of a literary work: sermon(?) funebre, sermon moral, orden de la oracion, sermon penitencial, vindiciae judeorum, A Short Demurrer to the Jewes, Collection of Testimonies Concerning Religious Liberty. Probably not Geniza.

Two or three amulets containing remarkable illustrations: a demon with a tail, tutu, scepter, horns, and curly hair; a seated woman; and a man being swallowed by a fish. The text surrounding the images is mainly in Hebrew, but there is also Arabic script and possibly some Judaeo-Persian. Gaster acquired these items from Tehran via Alfandary Bros., Oriental Merchants, April 1914 CE; this shelfmark also contains Gaster's provenance notes and the original letter he received from M. Alfandary accompanying the shipment.

Mizraḥ. Illustrated with a vibrantly colored bouquet of flowers. Probably non-Geniza, like the neighboring shelfmarks.

Document in Arabic script. With a doodle in the margin. Needs examination.

Document in Ladino, perhaps a letter.

Bifolium from Kitāb Tawārīkh Mukhtaṣar Yunabbi'u ʿan Mamālik wa-Bilād ʿAdīda. Printed in Malta by the Church Missionary Society in 1833 CE. The faces of the people in the frontispiece have been scratched out. On the background of Arabic printing in Malta and the Church Missionary Society, see Geoffrey J. Roper, "Arabic Printing in Malta 1825–45" (PhD Diss, University of Durham, 1988). Scans of the full book may be readily found online, e.g., https://archive.org/details/1164pdf2228/page/n137/mode/2up.

See join.