Note: This database is re-populated every day at midnight, Eastern Standard Time. Information in this database may become unavalable for approximately 10 minutes while this process completes.
Regular expressions
The Princeton Geniza Project database allows for search expressions containing certain 'regular expressions'. Regular expressions are codes that can be inserted in search queries to match patterns of text.
| ^string | Matches the text at the beginning of the string |
| string$ | Matches the text at the end of the string |
| . | Matches any single character (including special characters) |
| a* | Matches the sequence of zero or more of the specified character |
| a+ | Matches the sequence of one or more of the specified character |
| a? | Matches zero or one occurrence of the specified character |
| abc|def | Matches either one of the specified strings |
| [abc] | Matches any one of the specified characters |
Boolean Search
The Princeton Geniza Project database uses a boolean full-text search. This type of search allows users to combine keywords with operators to refine searches. Possible operators and examples of their use:
| מולאנא מולאי | Search for rows that contain either of two words by simply typing them consecutively. In this case, the search will find documents that contain either מולאי or מולאנא. |
| כתאבי +מולאי+ | Use a + sign before word to search for rows that contain all of them (in this case the words כתאבי and מולאי) |
| כתאבי AND מולאי כתאבי OR מולאי | The keyword AND indicates that both search terms must be present in the results. OR matches either search term. |
| כתאב –כתאבה | Use a - sign to exclude a term from your results (in this case, the search will include כתאב but exclude כתאבה) |
| *כתאב ?כתאב |
Use an asterisk or a question mark as a wildcard. An asterix matches any number of characters. A question mark matches any single character |
T-S Ar.34.286
Letter addressed to Abū l-Faraj Yosef b. Yaʿaqov (Ibn ʿAwkal) and his two sons Hilāl/Hillel and Binyamin. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dated: Rabīʿ I 407 AH, which is 1016 CE (this is the date of the arrival of the letter, recorded in Arabic script next to the address). The name of the sender is faded, but may be legible with effort. The sender has recently lost his only son in a particularly traumatic way (at sea?). There is no grave to visit and feel consoled, and there was no period of illness during which his father could care for him (this part is not completely clear, ll.4–5). "It is now a month and a half that my weeping [is greater?] than the waves of the sea." The bottom part of recto and the upper part of verso are torn away. At some point he turns to business matters and mentions various sums of money. This letter is uncited in the literature. Cf. CUL Or.1080 J154 for another letter addressed to Ibn ʿAwkal and his two sons from 8 years earlier. (Evidently Ibn ʿAwkal's other two sons Abū Sahl Menashshe and Abū Saʿīd Khalaf were not born until after 1016?). For information on Ibn ʿAwkal and his family, see Stillman, "The Eleventh Century Merchant House of Ibn ʿAwkal (A Geniza Study)," JESHO 16 (1973), 15–88.
Library: CUL
Type: Letter
Tags:
grief
