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 |
P. Heid. Arab. III 42
Letter draft from Barakāt b. Abū l-Faraj al-Dayyān (=Shelomo b. Eliyyahu) to al-Shaykh al-Rashīd Abū l-Ḥasan. In Arabic script. The writer asks for a loan of forty dirhams against a turban as collateral. He also conveys condolences on the death of the addressee's brother. Information in part from Werner Diem's edition via the Arabic Papyrology Database. The identification is based on the exact match of the name Barakāt b. Abū l-Faraj al-Dayyān. The word Dayyān is an uncommon Arabic word and a very common Judaeo-Arabic word for 'judge'. Moreover, the opening formula (yuqabbilu l-arḍa ṭā'iʿan lillāhi. . .) appears in exactly one document in the APD database and in two documents in the PGP database, one of which is T-S 10J8.2, a letter by Shelomo b. Eliyyahu. The identification is all but clinched by ENA 3927.1, which is a letter from Barakāt/Shelomo addressed to Abū l-Ḥasan (presumably the same as in P. Heid. Arab. III 42, but written at a different point in time), asking for a loan of 20 dirhams against his turban as collateral in order to pay the capitation tax for himself and his father. Note that P.Heid.Arab. III 43 (a request for 20 dirhams from Abū l-Najā) and P.Heid.Arab. III 44 (sympathy for a sick woman, addressed to Abū l-Maḥāsin) are also by Barakāt/Shelomo. ASE.
Editor: Ed. and trans. Werner Diem, (in German).
Library: Heidelberg
Type: Letter
Tags:
arabic script
