Geniza Lab

State decree, fragment of right margin, line 3 mentions "this day"

Recto: calendar reckoning for the year [4]814 of the Era of Creation (= 1053-1054 CE), mentioning the Hebrew months and their new moons, with calendar reckonings for other years. Verso: two different letters. The first is a business letter mentioning the city of Alexandria and a certain Ibn Mahdī, referring to the trade in oil (mid-11th century). The second is also commercial, and refers to Abū Sa‛īd Mūsā Ibn Barhūn, Ibn Yūsuf and Abū l-Ḥasan. (Information from CUDL)

Account of Barhūn b. Sāliḥ ha-Tāhartī, 1055. Three bifolios (six pages) with two binding-holes on either side of each centerfold. Contains details about commodities such as pearls, silk, textiles, oil, mercury, perfumes, metals, hides, almonds, glue, resin, and saffron, mostly with the cities of Sfax and Palermo. Most amounts are in dirhams. Also mentions Ibn al-Baʿbāʿ traveling in the amīr's qunbar carrying a pouch containing 4,000 dirhams belonging to Barhūn b. Mūsā al-Tāhartī. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, and from CUDL)

P1: f. 1r: description of a dream dated 525 AH (= 1130 CE); f. 1v: alchemical recipe called ‘the operation of mixture’; f. 2r: invocation to God. P2: f. 1r: alchemical recipe (continues from P1 f. 1v); f. 1v: calendar in which the Hebrew months of Sivan and Tammuz are mentioned; f. 2v: invocation to God and separate letters. P3: leaf 1: magical words and description of their use, with a mention of the city of Damascus; calendar mentioning Jewish festivals (Passover, Ḥanukka). P4: f. 1r: sequence of letters arranged according to the abrade; f. 1v: on the substitution of letters in words according to the Kabbalah; P4 leaf 2: calendar with mention of Hebrew festivals (continues from P3, leaf 1). P5: f. 1r: very damaged, only a few letters legible; f. 1v: list of some of the months of the Jewish calendar; f. 2r: description of movements of the sun (first 8 lines) and list of some months of the Jewish calendar; f. 2v: badly rubbed. P6: f. 1r: description of celestial phenomena; ff. 1v, leaf 2: on the reckoning of the days of the festival with mention of the leap year. P7: ff. 1r-2v: mention of a musical instrument in Arabic and Hebrew; f. 2r: mention of Rabban Gamaliel and reckoning for the rising of the New Moon. P8: unidentified Hebrew text. P9 recto: alchemical recipe involving the use of vitriol; verso: Arabic (separate letters and words and unidentified partial text). (Information from CUDL)

Description of disasters, famines and frightful events due to happen in each of the Jewish months, mentioning the Jews and their slavery, the Arabs and their need for food, and the River Nile and its drought. (Information from CUDL)

Predictions of events that will happen if the tequfot of Tishri and Nisan occur in particular hours of the day or night, in the form ‘if the tequfa happens on the first hour of the night, a murder will take place among the people [...] and the doors of the wealthy will be closed’. Mentions the angel Yaqfiʾel. (Information from CUDL)

Rental contract of some kind. In Arabic script. The bottom 19 lines are preserved. Involving an agent named Abū l-Ṭāhir Ismāʿīl (l. 1), a drug store (al-ʿiṭr wa-l-ʿaqāqīr, l. 4), and describing the boundaries of a property. Dated: Dhū l-Ḥijja [..]5 AH (the full year should be legible with further examination). Signed by ʿAbd al-Khāliq b. Ismāʿīl. On verso there is a calendar in Hebrew script for the 263rd and 264th cycles (maḥzors), corresponding to 1217–55 CE. Needs further examination.

Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic and Greek/Coptic numerals concerning "Dīwān Maṭābikh al-Mulk," which sounds like the government office in charge of royal sugar refineries. Dated: "four," "five," and "six" Hijrī, probably 704–7 AH (=1304–7 CE), but could plausibly be 604–7 or 804–7. Every section starts with the sentence ‘and they also had […]’. Mentions a receipt (wuṣūl) in the hand of ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm. (Information in part from CUDL.)

Petition to Saladin from ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Yaḥyā, the Jew, a resident of Malīj, in the province of al-Gharbiyya, in the Delta. Dating: ca. 564–89 AH, which is 1169–93 CE. The petitioner complains about the tax collectors, who forced him to leave his family and job and to work for them, and asks for the issuing of a rescript that would allow him to go back to his town and family. On verso is an answer to the petition maintaining that since ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Yaḥyā had some experience as a tax collector, he could not avoid this service. Also on verso is a work on calendar reckoning mentioning the maḥzorim, the moladot and the different kinds of Hebrew year; names of the months of the year in the Julian(!) calendar and the numbers of their days are written vertically on the leaf. There are also a few draft lines of some phrases contained in the petition that appears on verso, and a list of figures in the marginalia. (Information in part from CUDL)

Hebrew formulary of congratulations for a Nagid at his appointment. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Placard of a Spanish pilgrim to Jerusalem "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither [Psalms 137:5]. [I am] Avraham b. Yehuda—m[ay he rest in] E[den], the Spaniard, from the town of Jayyān [today Jaén] called al-Ṣarrāf [the Banker]. May God, for the sake of his name, let me arrive in Jerusalem, the Holy City—may it be rebuilt and established during the lifetime of all Israel—and let me become one of its inhabitants. May this be His will. Amen, in eternity, Selah. Written. . . . [Here, probably the date of the pilgrim's departure from his hometown was given.]" (Information and translation from Goitein, Med Soc V, p. 401.)

Public prayer (mi sheberakh) for a representative of the merchants ("neʾeman ha-soḥarim") named Moshe ha-Kohen in gratitude for his works of charity on behalf of the poor, scholars, synagogues, and yeshivas. The prayer is entirely in Hebrew and mostly formulaic until the final line where a custom wish in Judaeo-Arabic was added after "may God grant all his wishes": that Moshe be reunited with Abū Naṣr his sister's son. (Information in part from Goitein's index card.) ASE

Account of the Qodesh: building expenditures and revenues from rent, ca. 1037. The expenditures listed are for clay work, carpentry, sewage work. In this early period, the qodesh is already in charge of cleaning operations and removal of garbage. Some of the expentitures, such as the candlesticks, are probably related to the synagogue, but the majority pertain to the compounds of the qodesh. The revenues are mostly for longer periods, in some cases even a whole year. Several occupations are listed, of people who had their businesses in shops of the qodesh: a jeweler, a donkey driver, a spindle-maker, and a shoemaker. Written in the hand of Yefet b. David b. Shekhanya. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 154 #8)

Ketubba, Palestinian, dated to the 10th or early 11th century. Reused for a magical text in Hebrew. Unusually, the later scribe also wrote over the text of the original ketubba. See Ginsburskaya, M. (2009). A Ketubba in Palimpsest (T-S K23.3). [Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, December 2009]. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.55272

Palimpsest. Undertext: Bohairic Coptic, probably liturgical. Overtext: Writing practice of the Hebrew alphabet, and a Judaeo-Arabic list of birds, perhaps a translation of the unkosher birds from Leviticus/Deuteronomy. Information in part from GRU catalog via FGP.

Legal deed or letter. In Judaeo-Persian. There are at least two separate sections, one of which is a list of names. The document mentions Khurāsūh(?, כוראסוה) bt. ʿAbbās and [...] b. Yusūf-i Ardabīlī. The text might discuss to their marriage. The bottom part of the text contains witness signatures, suggesting that the text is of a legal nature. The names of the witnesses are: Siman-Ṭov b. Men[aḥem]; Siman-Ṭov b. Si[man-Ṭov]; Daniel b. Bundād; Moses b. Samuel; Ezra b. Eli; Faḍlān b. Yosef; Ḥasan b. Yaḥyā. On verso there is a Judaeo-Arabic literary text discussing the Land of Israel in question-answer format. The fragment is labeled "L17" in Shaul Shaked's (unpublished) classification of Early Judeo-Persian texts. OH. See Thamar Gindin's edition on FGP for further information.

Letter in Sahidic Coptic (information from Jacques van der Vliet, "Coptic documentary papyri after the Arab conquest," The Journal of Juristic Papyrology 43 (2013), 187–208, at 204). On verso there is the Coptic alphabet. Needs further examination.

Verso: Document in Arabic script. Probably accounts. Mentions Abū Jamīl and various sums weights and sums of money.

Literary text in Ladino.

Dirge in Ladino (headed קינה בלעז).