Geniza Lab

Fragment in Latin script. Needs examination.

Fragment (very faint) in Latin script (unless all we are seeing is the impression of the facing fragment).

Document in Latin script. Needs examination.

Bifolium from a literary work.

Formulary for a Karaite marriage document, edited by Judith Olszowy-Schlanger.

Eight lines of mysterious strings of Arabic letters and numbers. Likely but not definitively a join with CUL Or.1080 14.25.

Poem in elegant Arabic script followed by a curious note: (the poet and/or scribe?) "Mukhliṣ al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Hādī l-Islām Iyādi (?) was born in 1233H (1817/88 CE). 1263-30=1233." Presumably he was calculating his date of birth based on knowing that he was currently 30 and that the current year was 1847/48 CE.

Diagrams, text, and calculations of an astrological/astronomical nature, perhaps also magical. Arabic, late.

Three bifolia from a compendium of Bedouin proverbs, with commentary.

From a diwan of Arabic poetry dating from 1847/48 CE.

Mysterious strings of Arabic letters and numbers along with two diagrams. One diagram has a caption, stating that it protects a person against iron and guns (banādiq) and spears and anything else which a person fears. Likely but not definitively a join with CUL Or.1080 14.13.

Bifolium from an Arabic work, mostly consisting of prayers and verses from the Quran and names of God, but also including a line of probably-magical symbols, headed with a six-pointed star.

Several bifolia from an Arabic and Persian grammatical treatise.

The Arabic title page of the Quran with al-Zamakhsharī's commentary, edited by William Nassau Lees (وليم ناسو ليس الايرلندي), printed in Calcutta, 1856.

Qaṣīda, ending, by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. Ṣāliḥ al-Makkūdī (d.1405 CE), with a colophon giving the date 11 Rajab 989H (1581 CE). Verso contains many lines of Arabic text (90 degrees to recto, so probably not the same work), almost completely blotted out with ink. Much of it may still be legible though.

Calendar (astronomical/agricultural) for Eygpt for four of the Coptic months (Hātūr, Kiyāk, Ṭūba, and Amshīr), also giving the names of the corresponding Gregorian months (in Arabic). At the top of the one page the year 1090, presumably Hijri, is named (1679/80 CE). (To read this as the Coptic year would yield an implausible date in the 14th century CE.) At the top of the other page, someone named Riḍwān Effendi is named. Most of the entries seem to be recurring events: "wheat is planted," "the south winds blow," "the planting of the poppy," "the beginning of the lawāqiḥ," etc., but one of them (the first entry under Ṭūba) reads, "the lifting of the plague (wabā') in Miṣr."

Arabic work of literary criticism, several pages, probably Khazānat al-Adab wa-Ghāyat al-Arab of Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 1433).

Bifolium from an Arabic literary treatise, including the pious opening and, on the other two pages, several (al)chemical recipes.

Historical treatise (many pages), it seems mainly discussing the rulers and wars of Ifrīqiyya (Al-Jazā'ir, Tūnis, Qayrawān, etc.) in the mid-13th-century. Needs further examination.

19 small scraps, more or less neatly cut from a literary work. Many of them have Arabic on one side and Syriac on the other, with approximately the same line spacing and occasional use of red ink, suggesting that they belong to the same work or at least were written by the same scribe. The Arabic text on f.14v, one of the larger pieces, mentions idol worship and includes the sentence, "O Sergius, o most beloved of friends. I am abashed of. . . ." Perhaps this is the martyrdom of Sergius and Bacchus? Other pages (including the join P2 + P3 + P15 + P17) seem more liturgical. Needs further examination. ASE