Geniza Lab

Rotulus. 5 Arabic-script fragments were pasted together to form a long rotulus for a Hebrew literary text on verso. Text 1 is a decree (wide line spacing, large script). Text 2 has numbers (fiscal hand?). Text 3 has rubrication (could be literary?). Text 4 addresses a qāḍī and contains blessings (state/legal document?).

Accounts in Arabic script. Mentions gold, Sunday, ʿAbdullāh al-Ṣā'igh. Needs examination.

Header of a ketubba, with large colorful letters and fleurs-de-lis and micrography.

Accounts in Arabic script.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: 11th century. Mentions Ibn ʿAlī b. Raḥmūn al-Bazzāz, Abū Yiṣḥaq b. Sughmār, the brokers (dallālīn), and many other matters. Needs further examination.

Letter addressed to a certain Daniel. In Hebrew. Dating: Late, perhaps 15th or 16th century. The sender asks to be forwarded any letter or news that arrives from אירודוס (=Rhodes?). He also asks for the 12 dirhams that he is owed. He passes on regards to various people, including 'the pharmacy student (? תלמיד הרוקח) with whom we traveled in the villages and whose name I don't recall.'

Header of a ketubba, probably. With fleurs-de-lis. Dating: Likely 12th century. The hand looks familiar.

Betrothal (qiddushin) contract, with an elaborate floral border. Location: Salonica. Dated: Monday, 2 Ṭevet 5590 AM, which is 28 December 1829 CE. Groom: Vilaysid (? וילייסיד) b. Ḥayyim Ṣevi. Bride: Rayna bt. Natan Ṣevi. Needs further examination. Verso contains a similarly elaborate document, which appears to be the prenuptial agreement. The currency used in both documents is לב׳ נק׳, presumably a kind of levanim (akçe).

Business letter from Shelomo b. Avraham [. . .] Ruqqī to Abū l-Faraj Nissim b. Shelomo Ruqqī. "Abū l-Faraj Nissim, the recipient of this letter, was an India trader, against whom, while in India selling precious Western textiles and mercury, a power of attorney was issued in Fustat. The date of that document is not preserved, but the names of the signatories, known from other sources, put it around 1090. [Goitein notes elsewhere, Med Soc I, 379, that the names of the sender and recipient also both occur in a document dated 1079.] The sender of the letter shared with him the family name, and since he writes in a style possible only among close relatives, he was most probably his nephew. Both clearly were Maghrebis; therefore, their family name must be read as al-Ruqql, derived from a little town in Tunisia named Ruqqa, and not al-Raqqi, from Raqqa, the ancient city on the Euphrates in northern Mesopotamia. The letter was sent from Fustat to Alexandria, for the writer refers to goods brought by him from North Africa ("the West"), but still remaining in the town of the receiver of the letter (sec. D). Many other details in this letter tally with this assumption. The writer most probably left Alexandria on a Thursday and passed the Sabbath in Fuwwa, where he embarked on a Nile boat; or he could have made the whole journey on a boat, using the KhalIj canal, which connected Alexandria with the Nile. See Med. Soc., i, 298-299." Goitein, Letters, 239–40. “People occasionally explain why they had not done something that was expected of them by their frame of mind, their mood, or their lack of nahda, energy, verve, bounce, pep.” Cf. the word ruḥiyya in this letter, and Med Soc V, x, B, 2, no. 111. From the letter: "Business here is slow and practically at a standstill. For there is much confusion in the rate of exchange and, at the present time, 50 dirhems are to be had for 1 dinar, more [or less]. An epidemic is raging in the environs of the town, and because of this, the flow of good dirhems has been cut off so that everyone is having difficulties with his business." Med Soc I, 379, no. 41. The word for epidemic here is بئة, a derivative of وباء, see Lane and Blau.

Medical prescription or recipe. In Arabic script. The first item is hiera picra (ايارج فيقرا). Also uses pulp of colocynth (shaḥm ḥanẓal). There are 3 lines in the same hand in the middle of verso.

Testimony in Arabic script. Fragment (top cut off). Dated: first third of Jumādā I 528 AH, which is 1134 CE. The bottom is divided into two columns, each with its own witness statement. On verso there is a column of script on the right completely blacked out (appears to be Hebrew script, but this is not certain). Mentions several people by name, including the broker in Dār al-Tuffāḥ (line 3). Needs further examination.

Legal (or state?) document in Arabic script. Rental contract for a piece of land on the west shore of the Nile by two Christians (= shares) from a Muslim man for a period of one year. Dated: 19 Ramadan 496 AH, which is 26 June 1103 CE. (Information from Tamer el-Leithy.)

Letter from Salmān b. [...] to Zayn b. Abū l-Faḍl. In Judaeo-Arabic. The sender was happy about the recent letter from the addressee, and is very grateful for something the addressee did. Another Salmān recently arrived after a 5-year absence. The sender was saddened to hear about the addressee's fight (probably legal) with his father. He reports that Sittānā has given birth to a boy. Regards to the addressee's father and the father's wife and the addressee's mother. Salmān has returned to the west(?) to his maternal uncle(?); he and Ḥasan and Raḥel send their regards. On recto there is an Arabic-script document dated Ramaḍān 496 AH, which is June/July 1103 CE.

Letter from Najm [...] al-Muʿallim the brother-in-law of Kamāl b. Yūsuf, in Fustat, to his 'brother' the cantor Musāfir ha-Bavli, in Alexandria. Spellings are eccentric. The first half is obscure, but mainly has to do with how much he misses and is worried about the addressee. He reports that the addressee's sister is still sick. His sister and his mother send regards and kiss his eyes. Turfa and Najm and Yehuda send their regards. Abu Yaʿqūb and his brother and father send their regards. Verso contains the address and a lot of random jottings. Related to Bodl. MS heb. d 66/23. ASE.

Letter from the physician Ibrahim to the physician Ya‘qub in Bilbays, whom he addresses as “my brother.” Ibrahim rebukes Ya‘qub for his failure to send letters or to fulfill his end of various agreements. This is a response to a recent letter in which Ya‘qub rebuked Ibrahim for a delay in forwarding the recipes of two compound drugs: the preventer (al-māni‘) and a drug for swelling (li-l-natwā). Ibrahim explains that he had to research the former and that he had to wait for Abu l-Baha to arrive and verify his recipe for the latter. He promises to send the mirror and the sign together with the rest of Ya‘qub’s goods, but not until Ya‘qub sends him the Shaykh, a medical textbook. Abu l-Ḥasan the physician is also upset at Ya‘qub’s tardiness and failure to communicate, and Ibrahim has had to make excuses for him, saying that he is busy in the shop. After finishing the letter, Ibrahim wrote the requested prescriptions in the margins (one version of the Preventer and two versions of the drug for swelling) and noted that all the ingredients for the third prescription are available in Bilbays. In yet another postscript, he emphasizes that it is only to be used after purging the patient. Greetings are sent by: Abu l-Ḥasan the physician. Greetings are sent to: Ya‘qub’s brothers, Najib, and R. Shemuel. ASE.

Legal document. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. The first few lines and the last few lines are missing. Somebody forfeits their right to the 1/2 of the big dār located off of al-Darb al-Jadīd from the inheritance of his or her father, it seems leaving the entire house under the control of the other heirs. The document is almost entirely legalese, to the effect that this is a final and irreversible agreement. (Note that DK 317 and DK 318 are two different shelfmarks for the same fragment.)

Letter from a father to his son Abū l-Riḍā the physician. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dealing with various financial and family matters. The father is in distress from unemployment ('and you know the character of your mother...'). The portion on verso mentions Abū l-Faraj the Christian silk merchant 'who is in your market.' The father has sent a book on sheḥiṭa and asks for copies of other books. Everyone is worried about the capitation tax.

Letter in Arabic script. Complete, filling all of recto and verso. The sender is Christian: he (or she) swears by the baptism in r15 (wa-ḥaqq al-maʿmūdiyya) and by Christ in v7 (wa-haqq al-masīḥ). The letter itself addresses a woman (ishbīnatī, mawlātī, sayyidatī), though the address is made out to Fahd b. Abū l-Ḥasan, in Fustat. The sender is angry about an impertinent letter from the addressee. There is a lot here about financial matters. Needs further examination.

Letter of appeal for charity. Addressed to a ḥaver. In Judaeo-Arabic with phonetic spellings (e.g., אלמותראתיף for المترادف and אלבֵרי for الباري and דיליך for ذلك). The sender is suffering from the cold weather, and there is somebody in his family who is unable to bear it. The addressee is asked to provide a covering or anything that will help.

Business letter from Abū al-Surūr b. David (al-Mahdiyya) to his cousin Abū al-Afrāḥ ʿArūs b. Yosef (Fustat), ca. 1095. The writer sent to the recipient 100 Murābiṭī dinars, worth 267 less 1/3 dinars in the currency of al-Mahdiyya, and now gives instructions to buy jewellery. His other purchase requests from Fustat are for indigo, blue and green “fayyūmī clothes, pearls and more. The letter also mentions Abū al-Surūr’s purchases in al-Mahdiyya, including that of lapiz lazuli for which he was unable to find a buyer and intended to send it to Sicily. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, p. 312.)