Geniza Lab

Hebrew literary work, reused for drafts of phrases from an Arabic letter.

Book list in both Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic script, with some overlap between the two sections. From Avraham Maimonides' own library? These are all but a few: • al-Adwiya by [...] (on medicines) • al-Mayāmir ('the book of homilies') • Manāfiʿ al-Aʿḍā' • The Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī • [Galen's Therapeutics to] Glaucon (اغلوقن/אגלוקן) • Sharḥ al-ʿAqqār by Ibn Jannāḥ • Nihāyat al-Iqdām by al-Shahrastānī (on kalām theology) • Sharḥ al-Khiṭāba (on oratory) • al-Ḥummāyāt wa-l-Buḥrān (on fevers and crises) • al-Taysīr by Ibn Zuhr • al-Kāfī fī l-Ṭibb • Tadbīr al-Ṣiḥḥa (on regimen) • Al-Miʿyār [fī l-ʿIlm] by al-Ghazālī (on logic) • Isḥāq b. ʿImrān "On the Head"

Recto (verso as catalogued): Accounts in Arabic, including the line "[...] that went with the fleet." Verso: Magical instructions in both Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic.

Original text: (draft of?) Arabic legal document involving a certain Hārūn b. Sulaymān. Needs further examination. Later text: In Judaeo-Arabic, the archaeological secrets revealed by a certain "nāẓir," not explicitly about treasure hunting (like AIU VI.B.99), but with a distinctly esoteric flavor. Mentions al-Mayādīn, the Umayyad Castles, Cairo and Miṣr, Kahf al-Sūdān, Kahf al-ʿAqaba.

Page 1: Hebrew work, perhaps kabbalistic. Page 2: Fragment of an Arabic family letter (ʿalā l-wālid afḍal al-salām....), reused for a Hebrew text between the lines. Needs further examination. Pages 3 and 4: Magical recipes in Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew.

Fragment of a letter in Arabic. Needs examination. Cut and reused for a Hebrew literary (liturgical?) text between the lines of verso (as catalogued) and on recto.

Two different fragments. First fragment: An abridgement of some of the dietary and lifestyle advice from Chapter 4 of the Hebrew plague treatise "Moshiaʿ Ḥosim" (Venice, 1587) by Avraham Yagel (a.k.a. Gallico). This page dates from after 1623, since זלהה is written after Galiko's name. The advice includes: boiling all water before drinking it or mixing it with wine; cooking all produce to "remove the disease from it"; or to pick wild herbs growing in desolate locations; to dwell in spacious, airy, and beautifully decorated houses; and not to eat too much, not to sleep too much, not to eat excessively warming foods, not to wear excessively warming clothes. On Yagel/Gallico, see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician, HUP 1988. Second fragment: This is labeled as "Image 2" and contains one line of Arabic script. However, the shape of the paper and the location of holes do not correspond to Image 1, suggesting that we are missing two images (verso of both Image 1 and Image 2).

Recto: Fragment of a late account in Arabic. Verso: "Mikhael, Gavriel, Uriel" repeated three times.

Recto: Informal note in difficult Arabic script, scrawled basmala on top, possibly a memorandum to do with land tenure? Needs further examination. Verso: Informal note in Judaeo-Arabic from a sick man to his son's teacher informing him that his son behaves outrageously and needs to be disciplined. "A teacher must tell the boy if he tries to leave, 'Don't go around to the houses and the markets.' The gist of the matter is that if the boy comes this Friday afternoon and if he behaves thus (?) at that time, please inform me in your response to this note, in large Hebrew letters, because I am sick (wajiʿ), prostrated beneath my bed (or bedcovers? rāqid taḥt al-firāsh). Uncover his legs and give him a good beating." Perhaps the note on recto is from the teacher, and the man had a hard time reading it, so asked for the next one to be in Hebrew script?

Probably an Arabic letter reused for jottings in Hebrew and Arabic.

Recto: At least two different drafts of late Arabic letters. Bottom of recto and verso: Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic--lists of money received from various individua

Fragment of a Judaeo-Arabic letter mentioning packages of paper and the writer's distress and confusion (al-inziʿāj. . . baqīt dhāhilan mutaḥayyiran. . .). Verso contains both Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic sections (in different hand than recto).

Mostly blank, but part of one line in Arabic script remains.

Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic mainly for materia medica.

Arabic accounts.

Bifolio from a register containing multiple entries recording fiscal payments, including name of the taxpayer and amount paid. Registration marks visible. Could be identified as one of the various types of ledgers (makhzūma, ruznamaj, khatma, and tawālī) described by Fatimid fiscal manuals.

Late account in Arabic, along with sums. There is introductory text saying that this is the blessed register of what is owed by Ibn al-Muʿallim Yūnus (or Yūsuf?) al-Ḥakīm al-Yahūdī al-Ḥarīrī (?).

Difficult-to-read and very brief Arabic document, containing the common but mysterious glyph لے at the top of recto and phrases such as "mamlūkuhu", 'li l-sharṭ' and "inshallah," so probably a letter or a legal document. There are also a few words on verso, perhaps the remnants of an address.

4 pages. 3 of them are brief notes, along with accounts, signed and sealed by Anṭūn al-Wakīl aka Anṭūn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf to a certain muʿallim Yūsuf [Isḥāq? ʿAqqāq?]. The note on Page 3 seems to have been written by someone else. Dated 8 and 9 October 1821 (11 and 12 Muharram 1237). The format is the same as AIU XII.118, from 6 months earlier, and involving different people.

List or table in Arabic script. Needs further examination.