Geniza Lab

Legal document. Partnership agreement. Location: Cairo. Dating: 1204-1237. Partnership agreement in cloth trade between Pinhas b. Elazar ha-Kohen and Moshe ha-Levi. Both partners seem to be active. Profits are to be split evenly, and each of the partners is to be trusted (that is, without requiring the testimony of witnesses) as to partnership accounting, suggesting that the partners did not spend their time together in a single location. The term of the partnership is also specified, though not preserved. The date has not been preserved, but the incomplete titles on lines 23-24 suggest that it falls during the headship of Avraham Maimuni (active between 1204-1237). (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture", 47-49)

Verso: Letter of appeal for charity from Umm Abū l-Khayr to R. Yiṣḥaq (probably Yiṣḥaq b. Sason). (Information in part from Goitein's index cards.)

List of belongings of the deceased Abu Ali b. al-Raqqi, which were left behind and sent from the Maghreb to Alexandria. (Information from Mediterranean Society, IV, pp. 170, 403)

Business letter mentioning a silk-merchant and a fuller/bleacher. The writer mentions that when he travels away again, he will not forget the recipient's goodness and benevolence and his family. (Information from Goitein's index cards). Names: Yiṣḥaq, Mufaddal, Bu al-Khayr, Bu Mansur b. Baqa, Abi al-Barakat, Abu Sa'd wife, the son of Sitt Ziara al-Qazaz. Place: Rashid

Letter, detailed, about the pressing of grapes and the making of wine in which the writer informs his relative that for his three dinars, thirty jars of wine were produced.

Letter, fragmentary, from Yisrael b. Natan, Jerusalem, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. ca. 1065

Note in Arabic letters to lady in matters of engagement. The words כשני עדים כשרים נאמנת are written in Hebrew

Petition in Arabic script from a physician employed in the hospital in Cairo who had received orders to the effect that his pay would be cut (?), even though he hardly earns five dinars per month. He asks for the benefaction and kindness of a decree to the effect that (there the petition is cut off). The formulary is Fatimid but suggests the 12th century rather than the 11th. Reused for a private petition in Arabic and Hebrew script from and/or two a woman.

Letter in which the sender sends a request for help. R. Avraham is mentioned

Recto: Letter or letter draft. There is a poetic introduction in Hebrew, with wide space between the lines. The marginal text is Judaeo-Arabic, filled with deferential phrases of patronage. Verso: Letter or letter draft in Arabic script. Addressed to 'the brother.' Mentions Galen's books on the illnesses of the [body?] in the last 2 lines.

Letter written by someone who trains himself in writing a letter. The beginning of the letter reads: (1) bismi llāh al-raḥmān al-raḥim (2) waṣala kitabuka ayyuhā al-ʾaḫ al-fāḍil ḥafiẓaka (3) llāh bi-rāfatihi

Caligraphic Hebrew script. Probably literary

Letter addressed to Menaḥem the physician, in the horseshoers' market (fī al-musammirīn) in Fustat or New Cairo. Mainly in Judaeo-Arabic, with the first five lines written in Arabic script. The sender conveys everyone's grief over the death of the addressee's mother. He says they have sent 10 letters with Mukhalliṣ the tax farmer, but they have received no response. He asks for small quantities of silk. Umm ʿAjam also asks for news and tells the addressee to return as soon as he has finished his work. "If we had known you would stay in Cairo for a year, we wouldn't have let you go." Greetings to family members and from ʿAjam and ʿIwāḍ. ASE

Account, dated 1516 (ttqkb = 922, i.e. 1516 CE), in Hebrew, mentioning a khizana, treasury, seemingly a box in which all revenue was deposited and from which all expenditure was made. Nothing like this appears in documents from the classical Geniza period, which, Goitein writes, reflects 'the cumbersome system of financing the social services [which] had its source partly in the general technical imperfections of medieval administrations. The accumulation of public funds in one treasury was to some extent avoided in order to preserve them from the overreaching of rapacious government officials.' Written in the Hebrew language, and the writer, although using that Arabic word and dating according to Muslim months, apparently was a European, to judge from his spelling of Arabic names. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 101 [date given on p. 543]). Perhaps better explained by the non-corporate nature of the community in those centuries, at least. This late document may reflect the custom of Jews from Europe, who were used to a more corporate form of organization. One side: assets (=left in the khizana); other side, payments (=I gave to), with recorded total of one thousand 186 dr. (dirhams) (Information from Cohen)

Accounts. Perhaps in the hand of one of Ben Yijū’s workers, but not his handwriting. Similar to India Book III 19 (shelfmark CUL Or.1080 J95). The account was clearly written in India, as the prices are given in Indian coinage, Kūlamī fīlīs, i.e., from the famous port city Quilon on the Malabar Coast, and fanam. The writer's anonymous associate, whose account is registered here, was charged for the receipt of various commodities, including both Indian products and items usually imported for personal use from Yemen and the West. He must have been a Yemeni or from elsewhere in the West, who was staying in India. Commodities: civet, cinnabar, a copper pot, glass vessels, raisins, a lamp (or Indian horse chestnut? what is written is "qandalī"), sugar, honey, myrrh, storax, and Egyptian sugar. One of the important pieces of information to emerge from this document (assuming the merchant was careful with his sums) is that the fanam was not precisely a quarter of a fīlī but rather slightly less: the ratio is 0.236 in this document. (Information from India Book and Goitein’s index card.) Not edited in the India Book: an additional list of accounts on verso, written in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals and headed by the glyph. One of the items on that list is zabada (civet), indicating that it is probably connected to the Judaeo-Arabic account. The word "fīlī" in Arabic script may also appear at bottom left.

Letter from Yosef b. Farah, Fustat, to his brother Farah b. Ismail in Busir, December 1055 (Gil), or to his nephew Ibn al-Surur Farah b. Ismail b. Farah before 1058 (Ben Sasson). The letter discusses commercial matters (i.e., exchanging checks and coins) and the departure of ships containing goods to Sicily. (Information from Gil and Ben Sasson)

Accounts of community of revenue from houses rent, Ca. 1250. Contains, listed in two columns, several current entries of revenue and expenditures. Both Hebrew letters and Coptic numerals are used. In addition, both sides of the leaf have various scribblings, mainly names of Hebrew months, written in another hand. These are unconnected with the document and may be writing exercises. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp.476 #143)

Letter from Abū Naṣr, in Alexandria, to his brother al-Thiqa, in Fustat. There are greetings to Abū l-Ṭāhir Ismāʿīl and his son Sharaf(?), but these do not appear to be the actual addressees. In Arabic script. There are also a few words in Judaeo-Arabic in the address. The sender reports that he arrived safely from Fustat to Alexandria and found the children well. He stayed with his son Sulaymān. He claims that he could not find anyone with whom to send a letter for a span of two months, until he found Abū l-ʿAlā' b. al-ʿAfīf(?), with whom he is sending the present letter. The sender is apologetic and worried about two women, Sitt [...] and Fāḍila. He asks about the price of wheat. He asks for a loan/advance of 2 dirhams either from the addressee or from Sulaymān al-Dujājī, and he asks the addressee to buy okra with it and send it to him, no matter the price. ASE

Letter probably in the hand of Berakhot b. Shemuel (active early 13th century); not immediately clear if he is writing for himself or as a scribe on behalf of somebody else. Addressed to a certain Abū Saʿd (v15). In Judaeo-Arabic. Full of petition-esque expressions of deference. He is seemingly asking only for advice, but in reality also for help (per Goitein). Sulaymān had written to the addressee to recommend the sender. "The greatest of my wishes is travel from Alexandria into the Mediterranean (al-baḥr al-māliḥ) in the ṣalībī ships." (These were the ships that sailed westward in September, named after the Coptic Feast of the Cross; see Friedman, Dictionary, 738, and Goitein, Med Soc I, 317, 481–82 note 31.) Mentions wishing to 'go into (work in) the matbakh with Shemuel.' The sender uses a version of the same phrase as in T-S 8J17.33 to express his desperation: "Could I find death without sin, I would not hesitate." (Information in part from Goitein's index card.)

Letter sent to Abu Ishaq Ibrahim, in which the writer announces that he is traveling to Palestine and sends greetings to his family members and friends. (Information from Goitein's index cards)