Geniza Lab

Tax receipt from the archive of Abū l-Ḥasan b. Wahb (see Khan, ALAD, pp. 140–59). He pays a half dinar for the year 404 AH.

Debt contract. In Judaeo-Arabic. Location: Minyat Ghamr. Dated: middle third of Shevat 1543 Seleucid, which is January 1232 CE. Nuṣayr b. Bāqī al-Kohen owes 140 dirhams to Moshe the judge. If he does not repay the debt by Shavuʿot, it seems that the debt will be acquired by the qodesh of the synagogue of Minyat Ghamr. Witnesses: Yehoshuaʿ b. Seʿadya ha-Levi; Shelomo b. Yishmaʿel ha-Kohen; Elʿazar b. Berakhot.

Table/diagram comprised of Greek/Coptic numerals and a single phrase in Arabic script.

Accounts in Arabic script. 2 bifolia. Needs examination.

Letter of appeal for charity. In Judaeo-Arabic. The sender complains that Sayyidnā al-Rayyis and Abū Man[ṣūr?] al-ʿAfīf have cut off the payments with which they used to support the family in the lifetime of the sender's father al-Shaykh al-Faḍā'il. (The latter used to give 1/2 dirham per head.) The addressee is asked to approach them and ask them to restart the payments. On verso there is Hebrew alphabet practice.

Epistolary introduction to a medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic. "Your letter arrived, O brother, inquiring after the books of Galen... and the Alexandrians..."

Literary work entitled Ṣifat al-Mulūk. In Arabic script. It gives a census of the tribes of the jinn (72 tribes in all, including Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Samaritans, Sudanese and Persian, etc.) and descriptions of the kings of the jinn.

State document: report to a high bureaucrat (with taqbīl clause), written under the Fatimid caliph al-‘Āmir, 509/1115; in the Hebrew on verso, the date is 517/1123. Coptic and other pen trials on the back. Verso: a minute in Judaeo-Arabic noting the date of the corresponding ḥujja, Muḥarram 517.

Letter from Yosef ha-Kohen b. Ḥalfon, al-Maḥalla, to Binyamin b. Yaʿaqov (who has a son named Yaʿaqov as well), Cairo. The writer reports that he spent only a couple days in al-Muʿizziyya (Cairo) and regrets not being able to pay his respects in person before he had to travel. The letter mainly consists of blessings, with a request at the end to forward the writer's question (legal query?) to Abū l-Maʿālī.

Letter from Yeshaʿyahu ha-Kohen b. Khalaf and his son Yaʿaqov (Qifṭ) to Nahray b. Nissim (Fustat), ca. 1070. Describes the hardships of ship travel from Fustat to Qifṭ. The ship was attacked by pirates near Dahrūṭ and many passengers, including Yeshaʿyahu ha-Kohen and his son Yaʿaqov, were stabbed. The attackers were driven away and the ship reached Qifṭ. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, p. 423. See also Goitein notes linked below.)

The first document is a fragment of a letter from the Qaraite community of Fustat to the Qaraite community of Alexandria. On recto, only the flowery Hebrew beginning seems to be preserved, and a few fragmentary lines in Judaeo-Arabic in the margin. On verso, there is the address in calligraphic Hebrew and four lines of text in Judaeo-Arabic in a different hand, mainly blessings for the addressees but perhaps also encouraging them to give charity. Following the letter are two leaves of piyyutim. ASE.

Rotulus. 5 Arabic-script fragments were pasted together to form a long rotulus for a Hebrew literary text on verso. Text 1 is a decree (wide line spacing, large script). Text 2 has numbers (fiscal hand?). Text 3 has rubrication (could be literary?). Text 4 addresses a qāḍī and contains blessings (state/legal document?).

Accounts in Arabic script. Mentions gold, Sunday, ʿAbdullāh al-Ṣā'igh. Needs examination.

Header of a ketubba, with large colorful letters and fleurs-de-lis and micrography.

Accounts in Arabic script.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: 11th century. Mentions Ibn ʿAlī b. Raḥmūn al-Bazzāz, Abū Yiṣḥaq b. Sughmār, the brokers (dallālīn), and many other matters. Needs further examination.

Letter addressed to a certain Daniel. In Hebrew. Dating: Late, perhaps 15th or 16th century. The sender asks to be forwarded any letter or news that arrives from אירודוס (=Rhodes?). He also asks for the 12 dirhams that he is owed. He passes on regards to various people, including 'the pharmacy student (? תלמיד הרוקח) with whom we traveled in the villages and whose name I don't recall.'

Header of a ketubba, probably. With fleurs-de-lis. Dating: Likely 12th century. The hand looks familiar.

Betrothal (qiddushin) contract, with an elaborate floral border. Location: Salonica. Dated: Monday, 2 Ṭevet 5590 AM, which is 28 December 1829 CE. Groom: Vilaysid (? וילייסיד) b. Ḥayyim Ṣevi. Bride: Rayna bt. Natan Ṣevi. Needs further examination. Verso contains a similarly elaborate document, which appears to be the prenuptial agreement. The currency used in both documents is לב׳ נק׳, presumably a kind of levanim (akçe).

Business letter from Shelomo b. Avraham [. . .] Ruqqī to Abū l-Faraj Nissim b. Shelomo Ruqqī. "Abū l-Faraj Nissim, the recipient of this letter, was an India trader, against whom, while in India selling precious Western textiles and mercury, a power of attorney was issued in Fustat. The date of that document is not preserved, but the names of the signatories, known from other sources, put it around 1090. [Goitein notes elsewhere, Med Soc I, 379, that the names of the sender and recipient also both occur in a document dated 1079.] The sender of the letter shared with him the family name, and since he writes in a style possible only among close relatives, he was most probably his nephew. Both clearly were Maghrebis; therefore, their family name must be read as al-Ruqql, derived from a little town in Tunisia named Ruqqa, and not al-Raqqi, from Raqqa, the ancient city on the Euphrates in northern Mesopotamia. The letter was sent from Fustat to Alexandria, for the writer refers to goods brought by him from North Africa ("the West"), but still remaining in the town of the receiver of the letter (sec. D). Many other details in this letter tally with this assumption. The writer most probably left Alexandria on a Thursday and passed the Sabbath in Fuwwa, where he embarked on a Nile boat; or he could have made the whole journey on a boat, using the KhalIj canal, which connected Alexandria with the Nile. See Med. Soc., i, 298-299." Goitein, Letters, 239–40. “People occasionally explain why they had not done something that was expected of them by their frame of mind, their mood, or their lack of nahda, energy, verve, bounce, pep.” Cf. the word ruḥiyya in this letter, and Med Soc V, x, B, 2, no. 111. From the letter: "Business here is slow and practically at a standstill. For there is much confusion in the rate of exchange and, at the present time, 50 dirhems are to be had for 1 dinar, more [or less]. An epidemic is raging in the environs of the town, and because of this, the flow of good dirhems has been cut off so that everyone is having difficulties with his business." Med Soc I, 379, no. 41. The word for epidemic here is بئة, a derivative of وباء, see Lane and Blau.