Geniza Lab

Recto: State document in Arabic script. Reused for Hebrew literary text (recto) as well as a draft of a document of the qodesh (verso, see separate record). Join was identified by Moshe Yagur.

List of distribution of twenty wax candles. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, II, App. B, #89. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic. The names are interesting and include Sayyidnā Waliyy al-Dawlah.

Deed of sale in Judaeo-Arabic. Small fragment, containing text written at a strange angle; perhaps this came from the margin of the original document. This portion is describing the surroundings of a property and mentions Ḥalfon the father of the buyer.

Beginning of a draft petition from a woman. After ca. 1120 (includes taqbīl clause).

Recto: letter to Abū l-Ṭāhir (?). Verso: recipes featuring cheese, lemon, meat, fish, and chicken. (Information from CUDL)

Late and unusual letter in Judaeo-Arabic to the writer's brother Faraj Allāh. The writer opens with greetings to a large number of family members and friends. He has sent 5 chickens, a pair of pigeons, blue and white yarn, white buttons, and colored silk. Faraj Allāh is instructed to sell these only to Jews in the ḥārah, not to any goyim. The people greeted at the beginning (after the brother Faraj Allāh) include: the writer's sister; the boy Manṣūr and the boy Yūsuf; the writer's maternal aunt; the teacher Shemuel; the boy Faraj Allāh; the (female) teacher Qamr; the (female) teacher Sawād; Umm Sulaymān and her daughter ʿAzīzah; the son and wife of his maternal uncle; the neighbors; Manṣūr Dayyān and his mother and wife and children.

Letter of appeal in the name of an old woman, whose mantle was stolen while she was about to wash it in the Nile, asking the community in a well-styled address to help her to buy at least a large shawl. She emphasizes her age and frailty and eye disease as the reason why she cannot help herself. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 170, 500.) ASE.

Letter from a Byzantine silk dyer to the elder al-Najib Ezra in Fustat, detailing that the writer is afflicted by severe agony (al-ʿadhāb al-shadīd) after having been tortured and his children seized as a security. He had allegedly spoiled some previous silk garments, and asks Ezra al-Najib to help in reclaiming his children. (Information partly from Goitein’s index cards.) EMS. Verso also contains the draft of the beginning of a family letter in rudimentary handwriting, in which the writer defenes himself against his brother's rebukes. ASE.

Bill of divorce. Scribed and signed by: Aharon ha-Mumḥe b. Efrayim. Also signed by: Avraham b. Shabbetay.

Ketubba, probably. Small fragment. Very damaged. Reused for an alphabetical (divination?) table on verso.

Ketubba (marriage contract) by proxy form from the siddur of Shelomo b. Natan of Sijilmasa, 12th century. NB: The shelfmark has changed, and it will take some work to find the current one.

Liturgical.

An interesting letter in rhymed Hebrew prose, with one line of Judaeo-Arabic, spanning 4 leafs (7 pages). It opens with a blazon of a certain person's beautiful features (arched eyebrows as if inscribed by a pen, temples and cheeks like scorpions that sting the heart of all who behold them, etc.). The addressee seems to be named in the last line of Image 6: "his name is Avram and Avraham is his father, like Elʿazar purifying with animals' blood," i.e., they are Kohanim. The writer asks several times for a letter and then for an ambiguous favor "based on the convenant between you and me [made] on Shabbat Teruma." He says he always asks seafarers for news ot he addressee. Then, "Write to Daniel your servant on the day he goes (or: you go) down to the city of און בימה (Heliopolis?) / To accompany a brother as he travels to Spain, and your slave to 'Sin' of the West (? סין שבימה)." Information largely from FGP. Merits further examination.

Beginning of a letter from Daniel b. Azarya Gaon or David b. Daniel to a community, ca. 1092. NB: The shelfmark has since changed, and it will take some work to find the current shelfmark.

A letter to Damietta concerning a teacher. NB: The shelfmark has since changed, and it will take some work to find the current shelfmark. Mentioned Med Soc V, X, a, I, n. 6 (p. 505).

Letter from Hillel Ha-Ḥaver b. Yeshu'a Ha-Hazzan, Tiberias, to Sahlan b. Avraham in Fustat, end of 1034. NB: The shelfmark has changed, and it will take some work to find the new one. Possibly DK M69, which is not available on FGP.

Letter from Avraham b. Shelomo b. Yehuda perhaps to Efrayim b. Shemarya. In Hebrew. Complains about a Coptic kātib (הסופר הערל, lit. "the uncircumcised scribe") and how "the Ishmaelites and the Qedarites" are demanding a heavy burden of taxes. He asks for help for the sake of the synagogues. The response should be secret and the kātib must not find out. NB: This does not seem to be the correct shelfmark, as DK 123 on FGP does not correspond to this document. The good news is that there is a photograph of the fragment in Scheiber, Acta Orientalia (Hung.), 27 (1973), p. 328.

Piyyut (qina) by Elʿazar ha-Qalir. Information from FGP.

Piyyut.