Geniza Lab

Ketubba (marriage contract). Location: Rashīd. Dating: Late, perhaps 18th or 19th century. Very damaged. With an ornate, colorful border. Witnesses include Aharon Ṭawīl, whose name, perplexingly, appears twice. Perhaps there are two documents in two columns? Needs further examination. NB: There may be a Goitein index card that has been misplaced.

Legal document. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Location: Fustat. Dated: last decade of Iyyar 1431 Seleucid, which is April 1120 CE. Settlement between Amat al-Qādir Sitt al-Gharb, the wife of Abū l-Faḍāʾil Yosef, and her sister Qurrat al-ʿAyn Sitt al-Milāḥ, the widow of Abū Yaʿqūb known as Ibn Naḥum. The two women are the daughters of Abū l-Faḍl Shela b. Shelomo Ibn al-Qaṭāʾif. The legal case concerns the inheritance from both their father and mother. Moss. VII,116.3 concerns some of the same people. (Information in part from Goitein's index card.) On verso there is Hebrew poetry.

Letter from ʿAmram ha-Kohen b. Aharon, in Damascus, probably to his father-in-law Ṣadoq b. Yoshiyahu, in Tyre. Dating: ca. 1093 CE.

Letter from Yefet b. Menashshe ha-Levi to his brother Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi. In Judaeo-Arabic. (The letter is also intended for Peraḥya b. Menashshe, as Yefet greets his "brothers" in it.) Reports that Abū l-Munā received a certain shipment. He has sent "ṣūfat al-waran" (speculation: wool impregnated with monitor lizard oil? cf. ENA NS I.14) with Abū l-Ḥasan al-Rūmī al-Zajjāj and asks for it to be sold. He asks for good-quality aloe (ṣabr). Baqāʾ reports that the cardamom is "lost," and Abū l-Surūr should be informed. Greetings to Manṣūr Ibn al-Ghaniyy (or Ibn al-Jinnī?), and a reminder to send the large trays (ṣuḥūn). Likewise, Zayn the son of the convert should be reminded about something. Yefet has sent several letters to Abū l-Surūr (=their brother Peraḥya?) without receiving any response; he wants Abū l-Surūr to come help him in the shop. Yefet has sold the gold. He has heard that his in-laws are being sought (by the tax collectors) in Sanūh(?). Regards to various people including Sitt Naʿīm. (Information in part from Goitein notes and index card linked below.)

Letter from a Jewish shipowner from Alexandria. Dating: ca. 1212 CE. He provides an exciting story about traveling to Cyprus but being diverted by a storm to Tarsus (then the capital of Lesser Armenia, a Christian kingdom ruled by Leon II (1187–1219)). The shipowner was afraid that the king would force him to take up his residence in Tarsus instead of Alexandria. But a Christian business friend, probably himself a native of Egypt, helpfully secured a strong letter of safe-conduct. The writer had a good time in Tarsus and would have remained longer, had not illness forced him to hurry back to Alexandria. The second part of the letter reports the successful treatment of the writer and mentions the name of four physicians. In the third section the writer alludees to an illustrious person of Sicily, Yiṣḥaq b. Avraham, who had been forced to leave his home. The community in Alexandria was unable to take care of him for at the same time a large company had arrived from France, and the cost of their stay in the town and the expenses for their travel (to the Holy Land) put a heavy strain on public charity. Information from Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (attached). The handwriting looks like that of Berakhot b. Shemuel (which, if correct, may simply mean that he was hired as scribe by the sender). ASE