Geniza Lab

Late accounts in Judaeo-Arabic.

Accounts in Arabic.

Ladino accounts dated July 1734 (15 Tamuz 5494).

10 pages of invoices (faturas) in Spanish.

Writing exercise.

Writing exercise.

Interesting fragment of a grid containing prognostications in Judaeo-Arabic with interspersed Arabic for various questions. E.g., "This man swore falsely" or "This woman will become pregnant" (הדא אלמראה حبلى באדן אללה).

Document in Yiddish. Dated: 5637 AM, which is 1876/77 CE. Recto: This fragment is a page of the accounts book of the Bikur Holim [Visiting the Sick] Society of Cairo for the year 1876–77. The Yiddish text lists the expenses of the Society for the year, but the fragment does not include the actual amount for each item. These expenses include those for staffing (for the Jewess of the hospital, the sexton, Doctor Hess), for laundry and cleaning, for repairs and upkeep, for ink and paper, and for postal fees. It lists costs for sending patients to the hospital as well as expenses incurred for handling the deceased, including costs for candles placed beside the corpse, cost of guarding the corpse and of cleaning the hospital after a death. A few specific family names are listed, including Shpiglman, Herman, Hess and Perets. Place names listed include Warsaw and Keshenof [probably Kishinev] The ledger page is signed by Yosef Berkovitsh who held the accounts of the Society. The page is stamped with the official stamp of the Ashkenazi Bikur Holim Society, which reads (in Italian): Società Soc{c}orsale de{gl}i Am{m}alati {della Communità} Israelitica Tedesca in Cairo 1867. Verso: This Yiddish fragment is a list of accounts receivable from people who have paid or are owing payment. Amounts are listed in 4 columns but the column headings are missing so it is unclear what each figure represents. Only a few family names are listed, including Stoler, Eynbinder, Zoger, Kats, Shmikler, Avtsi. Most entries are only by personal name. The amounts listed seem to refer to dues [uncertain - using the abbreviation Kh”d], pledges, circumcisions, guarding [the infant prior to circumcision], weddings and being called to the Torah on Passover. Information kindly provided by Agnes Romer Segal, January 2021.

18 pages from a Judaeo-Arabic medical treatise.

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic.

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic on the factors that make animal meat unkosher.

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic on stings and bites.

Medical treatise in Hebrew.

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic. Bifolium from a Judaeo-Arabic paramedical treatise on the virtues of various kinds of animal substances. ¶ . . . grind it and knead it with sheep dung and some saffron and apply it to the gout that arises from the cold. ¶ And against bedbugs, take the bile of a billy goat and mix it with oil and beat it gently and paint with it the bed and the walls, and the bedbugs will go if God wills. ¶ The brain of the kid. Cook it in oil and add sugar and Kirmani cumin and mix it gently, and drink one mithqal in hot water for pain of the heart and the lung. ¶ The brain of the goat. . . . ¶ Goat milk is lighter than the milk of women or donkeys, and camel milk is good for a dry cough. ¶ To make iron poisonous, take sour goat milk and mix it with the blood of a billy goat and the urine of an ox, and mix it together and rub it on the blades and the arrowheads, and immerse the blades in it when they are red-hot. . . . This is for an enemy. ¶ The hide of the weasel. If you make parchment from it and write on it for the insane and the possessed (or captives? מחבוסין), it is effective. ¶ The Barbary sheep. The bile of the Barbary sheep, if it is mixed with frankincense and ginger and drunk in the bath on an empty stomach, is effective against pain of the spleen. ¶ The brain of the Barbary sheep. Mix it with honey and rue water, and he who has pain in the liver should drink two dirhams of it on an empty stomach. It is hot. ¶ The monkey. He who tastes the meat of a monkey will never speak again but will ישיר (?). ¶ The heart of the monkey. It should be roasted and יגכף (?). Grind it and dissolve two dirhams of it in wine and aged honey, and palpitations and shortness of breath will go away, and it will give courage to the coward and sharpen the mind and help with a headache. And if you wish to give someone bad dreams, put the hide or the hair of a monkey under his head. ¶ Take as snuff a lentil-sized piece of monkey kidney with the milk of a female slave and violet oil for the smell that [the fragment ends here]." ASE

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic on the factors that make animal meat unkosher.

Medical treatise in Hebrew, 8 pages, with magical/astrological/demonic elements.

8 pages from a Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew medical treatise.

12 pages from a Judaeo-Arabic medical treatise.

4 pages from a Hebrew collection of proverbs and advice. For example, "There is no cure for the madman except to go far away from him." Some of the lines rhyme, and some have to do with medicine and physicians.

12 pages from a Judaeo-Arabic medical treatise.