Geniza Lab

Recto/verso: recto and verso

Letter to Maimonides with autograph response on verso. "T-S Arabic Box 46, fol. 97, is a small sheet of paper the verso of which contains a note with a request for medical advice. It is interesting to note the ethical note introduced into this medical business by the sentence: 'since my entire aim in this matter is to seek the nearness to God'. The writer presumably means that through preserving health it is possible to better devote onself to the service of God. This brings to mind another similar request addressed to Maimonides in a letter published by D. H. Baneth [see the autograph letter published by Baneth, "Me-halifat ha-Mikhtavin shel ha-Rambam", Studies in Memory of Asher Gulak and Samuel Klein, pp. 50 ff.]: 'I desire from your bounty, my lord--since you, together with God, can heal my soul and its organs, so that it can employ itself in the study of the sciences--to prescribe for me what I should eat, since this is necessary, so that I can more easily understand these matters [the philosophical problems described in the first part of the letter]'. That letter has also in common with ours the fact that Maimonides' reply is written on the back of the sheet." - S. M. Stern. There are two blocks of text in Maimonides's hand on verso, at ninety degrees to each other. One is almost entirely illegible, does not appear to relate to the question on recto, and (very speculatively) could be a responsum for a legal question that the writer sent separately (though Stern would differ, as he read "dirham of lemon" where I read "shall be bound by a vow"). The other block is the answer to the dietary questions on recto. ASE.