Geniza Lab

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)

Legal document, probably a partnership deed, but this is admittedly speculation. Mentions a sum of 53 new Sulaimānī dīnārs. Dated: 19 Shaʿbān 955 AH. Needs further examination.

Petition to Sitt al-Mulk from Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥasan complaining that a local amir has confiscated his grain, 411–14/1021–24. See under PGPID 19304 for explanation of the join. Note that the main Arabic-script documents on ENA 3974.3 and Bodl. MS heb. b. 18/23 do not join with each other.

Petition draft. From Manṣūr b. Salāma (or rather Ṣadaqa?) to the Fatimid caliph al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām Allāh (1101–30 CE). In Arabic script. The petitioner lives in Sindiyūn (on the east bank of the Rashīd arm of the Nile, between Fuwa and Rashīd) in the province of al-Muzāḥamiyya. His father may have been a tax farmer (though Khan reads the word as ṣāmitan rather than ḍāminan) in an unidentified location called Maḥallat Salīm ibn Sahl. The petitioner's mother died, and he has been living in her house enclosure (dār). Manṣūr asks for a rescript (tawqīʿ) to be written on the back of his petition instructing the judge of al-Maḥalla to register the house enclosure as his property. He also asks for a copy for his own records. Information from Khan's edition.

Arabic, literary.

Legal document. In Arabic script. Dated: First decade of Jumādā II 440 AH, which is November 1048 CE. Involves Azhar b. Khalaf al-Isrāʾīlī, the agent of al-sayyida al-sharīfa al-malika al-jalīla(!?). Well preserved, and merits examination. The al-Sayyida al-Sahrīfa mentioned here could be al-Sharīfa bt. Ṣāḥib al-Sabīl, who is believed to have provided meals to the caliph al-Mustanṣir Billah during the Shidda 'Uzma (see al-Maqrīzī: Ighāthat al-Umma bi Kashf al-Ghumma, pg. 99). On verso there is a lovely prayer in Judaeo-Arabic, with copious praises for God and expressions of repentance (and the psychic and bodily distress that ensues from reflecting on one's sins). AA. ASE. YU.

Letter in Arabic and Hebrew script dated 438/1046. The opening politesse consists of many lines in Arabic script in a calligraphic chancery hand with wide line-spacing. When the letter switches to Arabic script, it is to discuss a matter concerning some enemies of the writer and addressee. Meira Polliack, "Dual Script Mixed Code Literary Sources from the Cairo Genizah," Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 7 (2019): 340-41 contains a careless edition of the Arabic and errors in the Judaeo-Arabic, the readings in PGP edition are preferable.

Arabic script (VMR)

Contract of lease. In Arabic script. Involves Ismāʿīl b. Ḥasan b. al-Ḥāmī and his three sons, the 13-year-old Bū ʿAlī, the 12-year-old Ṭāhir, and the 2-year-old Abū l-Faraj. The date 544 AH (which is 1149/50 CE) is mentioned in the body of the document (l. 7). (Information in part from Wissem Gueddich via FGP.)

Arabic script (VMR)

Arabic script (VMR)