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 AS 158.173
Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Probably a Maghribī business letter of the 11th century. Fragment (lower half of recto). Mentions the qāḍī Ibn al-[...] and someone called al-ḥāfiẓ. The sender asks the addressee to send a letter on his behalf thanking Manṣūr b. ʿAṭiyya and his father. He asks to be sent the 'miḥbas' (either a collar necklace or a cotton textile, according to the Diem-Radenberg dictionary) so that he can do something with it to keep it from going bad. He reports that many ships have arrived from Sicily. The sender knows that al-Shaykh al-Muwaffaq is saying about him "what I heard from/about him in Alexandria." The continuation in the margin is too damaged to read. AA. ASE.
