Geniza Lab

Dialogue between the Misri (the man from Old Cairo) and the Rifi (the man from the countryside). Literary, probably late, very colloquial. The writer is consistent with diacritics, not replicated in this transcription. Full of interesting stereotypes and vocabulary of city versus country life: prices, foods, clothes, bathing habits, goods available in the market, sewage ("your bowel movements remain with you, their stench is blinding"). Also names Bayn al-Qasrayn and the glorious fruit and paper markets at Bab Zuwaylah. In the third and final leaf of the story (recto of BL OR 5565G.27), the Misri and the Rifi declare a truce. Then the narrator chimes in with a prayer and an announcement of who he is and how great his stories are, for the benefit of the gathered audience: "I am the מחסווך (??) the Jew... my name is Sulayman... my speech is well-balanced, my meanings divine... my trade in Misr is cantor, as a poet I am known in the Rif...." The verso of BL OR 5565G.27 then begins a comic tale about someone whose pack was seized by a greedy man; they go to court, and the judge says he will award it to whomever can say what's in the pack. ASE.