Geniza Lab

Multifragment. (a) Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic. Late. (b) Probably too faded to read. Looks like Judaeo-Arabic, and looks older.

Verso (original use): Fragment of an Arabic-script business letter. Someone is bringing a bit of yarn and someone should use it, and the proceeds should be sent with whomever is available. Recto (secondary use): A Hebrew blessing or spell or amulet for someone's wishes to be fulfilled and to be like a warrior and a wise man.

Legal document. Draft, probably. In Judaeo-Arabic. The wife of Yiftaḥ ha-Dayyan declares that she sold Abū l-Barakāt...

Letter fragment in Judaeo-Arabic. Only the beginning is preserved. The name of the addressee may be very faintly visible. Handwriting of Berakhot b. Shemuel?

Calendar. In Hebrew script.

Letter. In Ladino, with the address in Hebrew. Needs examination.

Legal document. In Hebrew. Someone makes a declaration about the inheritance his brother left him, whether in Damascus or Cairo, whether of flax. . . .

Guardianship document from the court of Daniel b. Azarya, Jerusalem. An unknown person b. Ezra appoints Ishaq b. Abraham to be the guardian and get what his brother left him in his will. (Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, #216) VMR The second document, ENA NS 44.31 forms the second portion of lines 7 - 18. For the exact location of the tear please see the original text.

Fragment with text in Aramaic. Damaged/faded. Possibly legal.

Legal document. In Hebrew with business phrases in Judaeo-Arabic. Location: Fustat/Cairo. Dated: 15 Adar II 5578 AM, which is 23 March 1818 CE. Partnership agreement between Mordekhai ha-Kohen and Avraham al-Vilda(?). The business is the collection of מירי(?) from the freights (anwāl) in the region east of Bilbays. Merits further examination.

Letter fragment. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Perhaps 12th century. Conerning business in saffron and ambergris.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Likely in the same hand as T-S 13J7.24. Describing some kind of dire period of war or the like. "The slave of the king came . . . 30,000 dinars on the two wakālas(?) and the dīwān and all the merchants, and the country is closed (maghlūqa), and the exchange is 42.5 [this is tentative], and no one has a dinar any more, and the collection (istikhrāj) of all the remaining capitation taxes, and the poor are in perplexity, I have informed the master [this]." The surviving portion of the letter on verso is much more quotidian, consisting mainly of the standard closing salutations. Mentions the fatwā (jawāb al-faqīh) for the writer's cousin (ibn ʿamm) Maʿānī. Needs further examination. ASE.

Business letter from Zekharya b. Yaaqov b. al-Shama, from Tripoli (Libya), to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Around 1065. The writer is about to travel to Sfax to sell textiles. With the money he will receive, he plans to buy oil and needs 100 jugs for that. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, #670) VMR

Fragment of a state document, three lines of Arabic in a chancery hand. The date of the tawqīʿ is Dhul Qaʿda (3)70?

Prescription in Judaeo-Arabic.

Tiny fragment in Hebrew script.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: probably early 13th century. The writer complains that the Rayyis does not trust him to deliver letters for him, thus he gave leters to R. Yūsuf to deliver, who then lost them. The writer gathered the courage to write to Rabbenu Avraham and al-Ḥaver about this matter, but he has not received a response from 'his Majlis', thus he writes the present letter. On verso he discusses the case of a (his?) wife, the daughter of Bū Saʿd b. Maqdūnsa (an Ibn Maqdūnsa is also mentioned in T-S Ar.54.91). Her husband sent her a get from Damascus with Muẓaffar. She then remarried in Fuwwa (?) Yūsuf b. al-Yaqṭīn. "And the purpose of your letter to Damascus is that perhaps you can give him a ruling regarding (re-)marriage. The story is confusing and would likely be clarified by the missing part of the letter. An Abū Zikrī is mentioned in the margin. ASE.

Letter fragment from Khiyār b. Yaʿqūb to Abū l-Afrāḥ ʿArūs b. Yūsuf. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Late 11th century. Reused for business accounts on verso. On the writer, see India Book II, 6 (DK 230.3) and II, 9 (Moss. II,160). Very little of the content of this letter remains.

Letter from Daniel b. ʿAzarya possibly to Yoshiyyahu b. ʿAzarayahu ha-Kohen. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: ca. 1055 CE (per Gil). Verso is covered with Arabic-script jottings of many kinds (mainly drafts of legal and epistolary formulae). May also join with ENA NS 2.33.

Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic.