Geniza Lab

A Fatimid decree fragment reused for the canon of Andreas of Crete, a ninth-century text, here in later copy. (Information from Naïm Vanthieghem and Marina Rustow)

A couple pages of medical and philosophical texts and a couple pages of Abbasid history text. Several anecdotes on the deaths of various kings and amirs are included, including Hārūn al-Rashīd, one al-Amīr Muḥammad, and al-Maʾmūn. The writer mentions arriving in Constantinople. (Information partially from Goitein’s index card)

Letter by Yehoshua Maimonides to a physician known as al-Muhadhdhab, dated Heshvan 1646 (=1334 CE), from Cairo to another city. The letter has to do with the son of the addressee, a cantor in Cairo, who subsequently added his own postscript.

Letter from Avraham b. Farrāḥ, Alexandria, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Dated 27 Iyyar, which Gil renders 1 May 1052. Contains details about the sailing of ships from the Alexandria port. The letter contains an order of payment for 40 dinars to be paid by Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Ṣāʾigh (Ibn al-Baʿbāʿ) to Nahray b. Nissim. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 3, p. 813.)

Letter from Avraham b. Farrāḥ/Peraḥya, Alexandria, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat, 1 May 1052. Contains details about the sailing of ships from Alexandria. The letter contains an order of payment for 40 dinars to be paid by Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Ṣāʾigh (Ibn al-Baʿbāʿ) to Nahray b. Nissim. Also mentions a vizier. (Information from Goitein's index card and Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 3, p. 813.)

Letter from Abū Sahl Levi, in Fustat, to his son Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi, in Qalyūb. In Judaeo-Arabic. "As for the news of your paternal uncle, your brother Abū l-Ḥasan (Yedutun) is looking after him, and thank God, he has turned the corner and is recovering, and there is no longer cause for fear. As for traveling, the bible codex was consulted and it came out good/auspicious for you, and I too saw for you that it would be good. But as you know, no one knows the unknown except God the almighty and exalted. My son, you know that if you stay in Qalyūb, you would earn money ("a dinar") in the same time that you would be traveling, and I would lead a good life, hearing your news every hour. But if you travel, you know that the traveler has no control over his own fate, and we fear that the winter will come, and you will be delayed longer than you intended. May God guide you to the best choice. Your siblings and mother and I send our greetings." On verso he offers an excuse for why Moshe's brother (presumably Yedutun) has not come to visit (Abū Khalaf told him not to travel ṭarīq al-khawḍ(??)). Then, "As for news of Abū Zikrī (=possibly the Gaʾon Sar Shalom ha-Levi), he met with me but did not tell me anything. If you have need of anything when your brother comes out, let me know." ASE

Debate poem between hashish and wine. In the hand of Nāṣir al-Adīb al-ʿIbrī. The narrator is a partisan of wine: "Hashish has a way / Of flipping the brain around. / If you want to go to Qalyub / You end up in Banhā! / Check out that stoned dude (masṭūl) .../ He looks like a ghoul (ghūl)." At the end, the narrator goes to a monk and pays him a dower to betroth 'the daughter of the vine.' This is one of the fragments that Nāṣir signs (anā al-ʿibrī...). ASE

Draft of a letter in Hebrew, ca. 1043, from Efrayim b. Shemarya to Shelomo b. Yehuda, the Gaon of Jerusalem. Efrayim requests Shelomo to thank “the dear and righteous elder Hesed [al-Tustari], the respected dignitary” for the powerful aid he affords him, and then details the strife occurring in his community. Efrayim directs the Gaon to strongly reprove the disputants and impress upon them the need for unity, furthermore asking Shelomo to write a letter to Hesed thanking him for his part in bringing peace. (Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community (Ithaca, 2008), 321; and Jacob Mann, The Jews in Egypt and Palestine under the Fatimids (New York, 1920-22; reprint 1970), 1:108-9) EMS

Letter from Ibrahīm b. Yosef al-Ṣabbāgh (Fustat) to Barhūn b. Mūsā al-Tahirtī (Alexandria), ca. 1050. Avraham b. Yosef al-Ṣabbāgh, one of Yosef b. Yaʿaqov b. ʿAwkal’s business partners, describes the strenuous relationships between Maghrebi merchants and Jabbāra, the amir of Barqa, Libya. Avraham b. Yosef al-Ṣabbāgh expects a consignment of Sicilian lead. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, p. 611.) Contains interesting details about the methods of piracy of Jabbāra. The writer asks the addressee to ransom his goods (especially lead) should they arrive in the pirate’s ship. (Information from Goitein index cards and notes linked below.)

Awaiting description

Court record in the hand of Ghalib ha-Kohen b. Moshe, August 1, 1038. In the court of the Jerusalem community in Fustat. Community members spread rumors about Elazar ha-Melamed b. Shemuʾel b. al-Maghribi, that he cursed Shelomo b. Yehuda ha-Gaon. But these members did not say it in public, in front of the court. Elazar ha-Melamed delayed the Torah reading in the synagogue to dispel the rumor. (Information from Gil, Palestine, vol. 2 p. 607-610, #331). VMR

Letter from Saʿīd b. Marḥab on behalf of the court, in Aden, to the druggist Hillel b. Naḥman (aka Sayyid al-Kull), in Fustat. In Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Adar I [1]467 Seleucid, which is January 25–February 23, 1156 CE. The letter gives a uniquely detailed report on a shipwreck, as the addressee's son-in-law Hiba b. Abū Saʿd was on board, and the addressee had requested verification of his death and details about the retrieval of his possessions. The sender devotes the entire letter to the former and adds only one brief sentence in the margin of verso, about the possessions, which were confiscated by the sultan. The ship belonged to the Nagid Ḥalfon b. Maḍmūn b. Ḥasan. Most of the cargo on the ship belonged to him, though every Jewish trader in Aden had some cargo on it. There were only four Jews on board. It was called the Kūlamī ship as it set out for Kūlam aka Kollam aka Quilon on the Malabar Coast. The court of Aden here presents all of the available evidence for the shipwreck: eyewitness accounts, secondhand reports, and legal pronouncements. The main source of the information that the ship sank came from the Barībatanī ship which sailed together with it, i.e., the ship for Valapattanam aka Valarapattanam aka Balyapattanam, a port five miles from Cannanore aka Kannur, which is north of Kollam. During the rest of that year and the following year, travelers arrived in Aden coming from all over India, from East Africa ("the land of the Zanj"), from Somalia ("the inland region of Berbera"), from Abyssinia and its provinces, and from the south Arabian regions of Ashḥār and Qamar, and the accounts of all travelers were consistent with the Kūlamī ship having been wrecked. The court in Aden had ruled that the evidence was sufficient to free Sitt al-Ahl, the daughter of Hillel b. Naḥman, from being an ʿaguna, but they defer to the authorities in Egypt, as this was a lenient and tenuous ruling. The sender of this letter, Saʿīd b. Marḥab, is incidentally the earliest known Yemeni Jewish poet. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Traders; see analysis and translation there for further details.)

Legal document. Left lower corner. Dated: 4717 AM, which is 956/57 CE (this is Goitein's reading; the century word is extremely faded and difficult to confirm). Involves Baqā' b. Hillel. There are no other details (14 lines of legal phrases). There are many signatures, including ʿEli b. Moshe and Yiṣḥaq b. Yehuda. (Information from Goitein's index card.)

Letter from a European Jew whose ship sank en route on his way to fulfill a vow to visit Jerusalem, and lost all his belongings by jettisoning. The writer’s appeal to the congregation, written in Hebrew on a piece of vellum, describes his multi-faceted journeys: first to Alexandria, where the Muslims tried to collect the capitation tax from him, and secondly, to (likely) Fustat after being rescued by a Jew and where he was currently hiding out after being harassed by the tax collector and fearing imprisonment. (Mark Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt, 120; and S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:323, 483) EMS

Ketubba, Aleppo, 1026/1027/1028. The document omits the divorce clause, and the groom notably refers to himself and his bride as the "Jew" and the "Jewess." (Friedman, Jewish Marriage, vol. 2, 88-95) EMS

A list of about 40 contributions. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Marriage contract, fragment. Location: Cairo. Dating: 1310–55 CE, based on the reshut clause naming the Nagid Yehoshuaʿ (b. Avraham II Maimonides). See Goitein's note card for further details.

Placard in large beautiful letters including Jeremiah 17:7 and other verses. Information from Goitein's index card.

Dowry deed from Fustat, 1171 CE. It was customary to bring together all the objects of the dowry and to record them publicly in a trousseau list, as can be seen, for example, in document T-S Ar.54.78. Each object was recorded with its value in a special list and such lists were called taqwīm. The deed at hand is not a taqwīm, but rather a 'dowry deed'. Such deeds were composed at times of political unrest, when the two sides were cautious of making financial commitmants in public. This is why one often finds in such deeds the expression 'due to the time (ʿawāqib al-zamān)' seen here in lines 3 and 20. The deed, scribed by Mevorakh b. Natan (1150-1181), contains the trousseau list and the testimony of the groom that he accepts the dowry and its stated value. The manuscript is cut in the shape of a circle and is missing some of the text in the sides. There are a few lines in Arabic script on verso.

Legal document. Location: Fustat. Dating: 1120-1150 CE, based on the mention of Yakhin b. Netan'el Rosh ha-Qehillot. This range may be narrowed to 1120–38 if Ḥalfon b. Menashshe is the scribe. The document is a release for a certain India merchant [...] b. Rajā ha-Zaqen from any potential claim against him from the orphans of his deceased traveling companion, and from having to give any further testimony or make any vow. The document explains that the merchant acted with great valor hiding his companion's merchandise from the rulers of Dahlak who would have confiscated it—and would have killed the merchant himself if they had found out what he had done. This merchant also made haste to go to the court and declare all the goods belonging to his companion (and therefore his orphans) as soon as he returned to Fustat (l. 10), and even mentioned "several things that were not in the account ledger (daftar al-ḥisāb)." Information in part from Goitein's attached discussion, transcription, and translation. ASE.