Geniza Lab

List issued by the Grand Rabbinate of Cairo naming the butchers who are permitted to slaughter chickens on the eve of Yom Kippur Tishrei 1920-1922 – Museum of Islamic Art – (number 41) – in Judeo-Arabic. (information from Ḥassanein Muḥammad Rabīʿa, ed., Dalīl Wathā'iq al-Janīza al-Jadīda / Catalogue of the Documents of the New Geniza, 38). A scan of this document is available in Al-Janiza wa-l-maʿābid al-Yahūdiyya fī Miṣr, where Ḥasan and Sarrāj also offer a transliteration of its contents to Arabic script. This is a fascinating list because it lists the approved kosher butchers by twelve specific locations in Cairo: Hārat al-Yahūd, Ismaʿilīya, Tawfīqīya, al-Ẓāhir wa al-ʿAbassīya, Darb al-Barābarā[?], Heliopolis, al-Mansi wa al-Khalīj, Suq Khuḍar Bāb al-Lūq, Sharʿa Ġamara, Meydān Fakhrī Qabīsī, Fustat [Miṣrayīm al-ʿAtiqa], and Ḥelwan. The names of each butcher are handwritten below each of these typewritten locations and they are all in the same hand. This document is also crucial for establishing that when nineteenth- and twentieth-century documents refer to the Ḥakhamhāne Miṣr/Rabanūt ha-Rashīt bi-Miṣrayīm, the implication is that Miṣr/Miṣrayīm is refers to Cairo, specifically, rather than Egypt as a broader territory (this is confirmed by the tri-lingual letterhead which includes the French "Grand Rabbinat du Caire" parallel to the other two titles). MCD.