Geniza Lab

Complete note written in both Arabic script and in Judaeo-Arabic. Crude hand. Quite faded. Mentions honey. Needs examination for content.

Personal letter. Very damaged. The sender greets people such as Makārim, Abū l-Mufaḍḍal and Abū Naṣr. A sum of 20 dinars is mentioned, but the text is to fragmentary to put it into context.

Magical recipe.

Account, headed `the expenditure (al-masruf)

Fragment of a personal letter.

Small fragment of a letter

Small fragment. On recto an Arabic letter- needs examination. On verso Judeao Arabic account.

Two list headed `for Wednesday and `for Thursday

List in Arabic script - needs examination.

On recto beginning of a letter. On verso Arabic list - needs examination.

Account

Letter in Hebrew. Might be in the hand of Yehoshuaʿ ha-Nagid. Dating: Likely 14th century. The sender issues instructions about communal and/or legal cases. There is a woman who will either be seen by the judge or by the sender himself. The sender wishes to know the content of the letters that arrived with ha-Ṭarṭūshī. He then gives instructions about the legal case of a man named Shelomo. AA. ASE.

Legal deed involving R. Yiṣḥaq Luria Ashkenazi and Rafa'el Kalonymos. Location: Egypt. Dated: Tevet 5319 AM, which is 1559 CE. The deed details the terms under which a certain Refaʾel Kalonymos will settle a loan with Yiṣḥaq Luria Ashkenazi by working in the latter's "bazares/באזאריש" in Alexandria (l.5). As Avraham David notes in his description, "bazares/באזאריש" is most likely a reference to market shops. The witness Yosef b. Meʾir Somekh ha-Kohen is also likely the scribe, given that he penned at least four other legal documents across the sixteenth century (T-S 13J5.6, Moss. VII.20.1, T-S AS 145.222,T-S 13J4.23.) The scribal production of Yosef b. Meʾir Somekh ha-Kohen is also widely attested in responsa: Rabbi Meʿīr Gāviṣōn, responsum 9; Rabbi Beṣalel Ashkenazi, reponsum 33; Rabbi Yaʿacov Castro, responsum 18; Rabbi Ḥayīm Kapūsī, responsum 33, cited in Leah Bornstein-Makovetsky, "The Community and its Institutions / הקהילה ומוסדותיה", in The Jews of Ottoman Egypt 1517-1914, ed., Jacob Landau (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1988), 177. (Information in part from Avraham David's edition on FGP.) MCD.

Recto: Beginning of a letter in the hand of Shelomo b. Eliyyahu to al-Shaykh al-Najīb Abū l-Barakāt.

Verso: Accounts listing relatively large quantities of medicinal substances. In Judaeo-Arabic, Arabic script, and Greek/Coptic numerals. Items include: pomegranate syrup; two pomegranates; quince oxymel; sorrel; barberry syrup; apple syrup. There is also a Hebrew "emet" at the end of the Arabic-script section.

Magic recipe.

Legal document in the hand of Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi. Small fragment (upper left corner). Location: New Cairo. Dating: No later than 1195 CE, as it was written under the authority of the Gaʾon Sar Shalom ha-Levi. The document concerns Yūsuf al-Ḍarīr ("the blind"). On the scribe, see A. Elbaum, "Assembling a Life: Several Dozen New Fragments on Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi" (FOTM April 2020). Several documents indicate that although Moshe lived in Qalyūb, he regularly came into Cairo for work (e.g., as a scribe) and to Fustat to see his wife and father and brother. AA. ASE.

Small fragment from a letter

Minute fragment from the bottom of a legal deed from Fustat

Small fragment from a bill of release regarding a shipment of tamarind to (or from) Mahalla an-Kubra by Abu al-Hasan, written by Halfon b. Menashshe Halevi (Date: 1100-1138). AA