Geniza Lab

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Recto: Letter(s) in Arabic script. These may be copies or model letters. Each seems to contain only the opening portion and consists mainly of formulaic expressions of longing. They are in different hands and are very similar (but not identical) to each other. One of them is addressed to Shabbetay عثيبي(?). Verso: A few lines of a letter draft in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic, a few numbers in eastern Arabic numerals, and some geography homework in Arabic script. "Who founded the kingdom of Babylon? Nimrod. Who lived in Tuscany in ancient times? The Etruscans (الاتورويانيون)." The part about the Etruscans is from one of the chapters of Kitāb Tawārīkh Mukhtaṣar Yunabbi'u ʿan Mamālik wa-Bilād ʿAdīda, printed in Malta by the English Church Missionary Society in 1833 CE (see JRL Gaster heb. ms 2110b/17 and corresponding PGP record).

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Recto: List of names and numbers (written out in words) in Arabic script. Purpose unclear. On verso a list of names in Judaeo-Arabic: "The house of al-ʿIjl ("the calf")... Saʿīd...." The handwriting looks Yemeni.

Palimpsest. This parchment contained an Arabic legal document, which was scraped. The part on recto refers to [...] b. Yaḥyā al-ʿAfṣī (the gallnut merchant) and Abū Saʿīd the Jew. On the verso, at ninety degrees to the original text, a later hand wrote a table of names in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals, with one entry in Hebrew script possibly reading Natan b. Yona. (Information in part from JRL Catalogue.)

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