Geniza Lab

Poem composed by Yehuda b. ʿAllān al-Ṭabarānī (= of Tiberias).

Letter(?) mentioning Manṣūr and Yeshaʿya the sons of ʿAmram. Piyyut on verso

Quittance - the releaser is named Yiṣḥaq b. Amram. It looks like his name was later blotted out. There are at least eight signatories : עלי בר טרפון, אפרים בן עלי, שלמה בן עלי, אברהם כהנא בר שלמה, מנחם הלוי בר תמים, צדוק בר יצחק. On the back is a prayer

Owner's note on a codex - the name is hasa[n?] b. Musa.

Business letter from a Maghribi merchant. Yiṣḥaq is mentioned as well as Nahray. Three fragments in same shelfmark; this is the middle one.

Letter, copy, from the Palestinian Yeshiva to the people of Babylonia regarding the Ben Meir controversy. Published

Epistle regarding the calendar controversy of 921–22 CE, including a response by Aharon b. Meʾir, who writes from Palestine to Baghdad. The letter begins with a preface in liturgical-poetic style. The text was copied onto oblong parchment, possibly in the late tenth century; it is a quire consisting of four bifolios, three now in Oxford and a fourth in New York. The last folio (Bodl. MS Heb. f 26/6) is damaged, and the text is reconstructed here in comparison with the transcription that Harkavy published in 1891. In the publicly available images of ENA 2556.2 on FGP and PUL, the manuscript is warped and wrinkled and part of the text hidden. The newly treated manuscript, flattened and more legible, is available here on PGP. Join: Sacha Stern.

Literary text in Hebrew and Aramaic with Judaeo Arabic instructions ("this is the rashut said about the Torah" "this is the rashut said about the haftarot") at the bottom of the page there is a Judaeo-Arabic note : "This page [is meant?] for your lord, so keep it with him" - so this is both literary and documentary. Moreover in the back another hand wrote in Judaeo Arabic: "Know my lord that I sent the mistress of the house to Rabbi Efraim ...."

Verso: Letter from Moshe b. Barhūn al-Tāhirtī to Yosef Ibn ʿAwkal. Describes how he induced Avraham b. ʿAtāʾ and Abū Zikrī Yehuda b. Yosef to contribute to a collection for the yeshiva of Hayya Gaon. (Information from Goitein's index card). VMR. NB: Gil published a fuller version of the text Goitein published, but gave ENA 2 B as the shelfmark, believing that ENA 2556 was the old shelfmark.

Recto: Legal document. Location: Fustat. Dated: Elul 1308 Seleucid, which is 997 CE. “A bride's mother wrote in an interesting detailed Hebrew deed issued at Fustat in 996, for the transfer of one half a house in Ramla, Egypt, to her daughter, that ‘this half a house is what I wrote for her in her ketubba’“ (Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine 1:302n53). Names mentioned: Ḥisān bt. Yosef Ibn al-Zāmir ("the flute player"); Sirwa bt. ʿImrān. On verso (see separate record) there is a letter in Judeo-Arabic from Qayrawān to Yosef Ibn ʿAwkal, published by Gil, Kingdom of Ishmael, 2:581–586. Note that this document is misdated in the Danzig Catalog (evidently the year was read as ושמונים instead of ושמנה). AA

Letter draft addressed to Abū l-Ḥasan, starting with a taqbīl clause. The writer asks the addressee to sell some commodity (hādha l-ʿadl) for whatever price God provides. On verso there are pen trials including the name of a Babylonian Gaon: Yisra'el ha-Kohen head of the diaspora yeshiva son of Shemuel head of the diaspora yeshiva son of Hofni head of the diaspora yeshiva son of Kohen Ṣedeq.

Letter addressed to the judge R. Yeshuʿa in Fustat. The sender's name may be legible: [...] al-[Iskan?]darānī b. Ibrāhīm. The sender asks the addressee "to help him get rid of his wife to whom he has already sent the bill of divorce but needs an official confirmation of its being received before being allowed to marry another woman (on this see Friedman, Polygyny, 241). The sender writes: I have heard that she is in Fustat and the bill of divorce reached her, but you did not send me an answer. Do not neglect the small one (i.e., the writer's child) and do not allow him to travel down to Alexandria. May God deal with her as she has acted. She separated me from my son. If there is Paradise, it is Damascus. I have heard that the son of R. Moshe arrived in Jerusalem. By your faith in God! do not listen to her, for [or: claiming that] she will come to Syria (Bilād al-Shām). For she has broken me and exhausted me, behaving like an idiot (taballadat) in the land (fī l-balad). I swear I have been sick for 30 days..." Translation based on Oded Zinger's translation in "If There is a Paradise, It is Damascus" (2012). ASE

Letter, communal, from Alexandria in the first half of the 11th century. The name Yeshua ha-kohen Prince of the diaspora is mentioned and the letter is signed by many signatures

Letter from a physician named Menahem ha-kohen b. Sadoq from Aleppo including greetings from many men including his nephew Yahya ha-kohen b. Mevorakh the physician his son Sadoq who wrote the letter, his two grandsons Dosa and Elijah, from the elder Avraham b. Shemuʾel and his two sons Shemuʾel and Tamim - all these men populate the bet midrash of the great Rabbi Baruch b. Yiṣḥaq of Aleppo. Published in Miriam Frenkel, MA Thesis on Aleppo, p. 306-307. on the back a drawing of a cypress tree?

Deed of restitution written in Jerusalem regarding alimony, in the hand of Eliyyahu Ha-Kohen Gaon, May or June 1071.

Letter fragment in Arabic script. Approximately 8 lines are preserved, and they are unusually readable.

Letter from Abū Naṣr b. Sha'ul, a poor teacher, to his friend. In Judaeo-Arabic. The writer asks him to intercede on his behalf with a powerful lady, the mother of the rayyis Abū al-ʿAlā who bestows kindness on both Rabbanites and Qaraites. The writer's family is starving.

Legal document long and faded, from 1078. Ghālib b. Avraham comes to court with a deed of appoint by Yehuda b. Meshullam b. Zecharia the scribe b. Anan and Ghalia bt. Zecharia the scribe b. Anan. He might being litigating against Avraham ha-Melammed ha-Levi b. Joseph b. Annan in a monetary affair. Many other names are mentioned. On verso is a Hebrew prayer.

Letter from Perahya b. Yosef Ibn Yiju (which he wrote in his and his brother Moshe's name) in Messina to his father Yosef Ibn Yiju (the brother of Avraham) in Mazara, ca. 1153. He has by now married his cousin, the daugther of Avraham Ibn Yiju, and fled the Norman invasion of Ifriqiya in 1148 for Mazara, then Palermo, then Messina, en route to Egypt. This letter describes the journey along the coast of Sicily. Peraḥya also sends a medical prescription for his mother's illness: a mithqāl (slightly over 4g) of sagapenum (sakbīnaj) every three days and a cumin stomachic (jawārish kammūn). He also tells the addressees not to afflict themselves with fasting and weeping on his behalf, because his heart and liver are wounded if he hears about such excessive behavior (istifḥāl]).

Contract of debt. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Location: Fustat. Dated: The case came before the court in the last decade of Kislev 1438 Seleucid, which is December 1126 CE, but the deed was written and signed in the first decade of Ṭevet (so anywhere from 1 day to 20 days later). Berakhot b. Seʿadya acknowledges that he owes 32 dinars to Abū Isḥāq Avraham b. Sasson, a perfumer (al-ʿAṭṭār) from al-Maḥalla (al-Maḥallī). He promises to pay by Passover. The fragment is torn above the part where the witness signatures would have been. (Information in part from Goitein's index card.)