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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.
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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. |
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| *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 K8.95
Letter of condolence from a woman (name unknown) to Ṣedaqa b. Ṣemaḥ, the son of her late brother. Opens with four lines of biblical verses in Hebrew commonly referred to as צידוק הדין, then continues in Judaeo-Arabic. The deceased seems to be female family member named ʿAzīza, who left orphaned girls behind (ll. 10–11). The sender says that the pain of her bereavement is equal to the pain that she experienced when her brother (Ṣedaqa's father) died (ll. 5–6). She invokes the trope that it is best not to grieve for too long, "because it does no good, all I have gained from sorrow and weeping is blindness." If God sends health to the addressee and his family, they should inform her (the nature of their ailment is not clear, whether it is an organic disease, or illness on account of grief, or something in between). Greetings to Mūsā and to all the addressee's sisters again. Abū ʿAlī, Hiba, and Surūr send their condolences. One of them (likely Surūr) is "sick and ruined" ever since he came from Ṣedaqa with the news. Greetings to Faḍāʾil and Abū Saʿd. On the identity of the addressee: Sedaqa b. Semah (sometimes called "the poet," ha-Meshorer) appears in numerous Geniza documents, including Bodl. MS heb. b 11/3 (dated 1130 CE), Bodl. MS heb. d 66/7 (dated 1132 CE), Bodl. MS heb. d 66/96 (a letter from the silk weaver Abū Saʿd Seʿadya b. Avraham, perhaps the same cousin mentioned here), and DK 230.2 (likewise a letter from Abū Saʿd Seʿadya). (Information in part from Ezra Chwat.)
Library: CUL
Type: Letter
