Geniza Lab

Legal document. Mentions a certain Rabbenu Shelomo. Signed by [Avraham?] b. David b. Avraham b. Moshe Maimonides. Dating: Before 1313 CE, as Avraham II Maimonides lived 1245–1313.

Recto: Letter from an unknown busybody in Minyat Zifta to the Nagid Avraham (II?) in Fustat/Cairo. In Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic. The purpose of the letter is to relate various improprieties ("matters proceeding not as they should," r13–14) of a muqaddam (perhaps of Minyat Ghamr?), al-Shaykh al-Sadīd. The first episode (r17–32): The local schoolteacher had to go to Cairo to pay his capitation tax (jizya) because he was originally from the Levant. When the teacher was delayed in returning, the community began talking about hiring a new teacher. Al-Sadīd caught wind of this and vetoed the proposal, fearing that a new teacher would be a nuisance (tashwīsh) to him, and he insisted that he teach the children himself. They responded that he was far too busy with his medical practice and serving as muqaddam, not to mention his business dealings. He persisted, and they said, "But you don't even live here!" He said that he would come live there until the original teacher came back. The teacher came back, and al-Sadīd was so enthusiastic about the additional income that he refused to let the children return to the original teacher, and he had made their parents vow to that effect. The community felt pity on the original teacher because of his poverty. The second episode (r32–45): During the same period of al-Sadīd teaching the children, someone fell sick in Minyat Zifta. A group of people, including another physician named al-Shaykh al-Muhadhdhab, came to visit the patient and found al-Sadīd attending him. Al-Sadīd rudely ignored al-Muhadhdhab. After everyone had sat around the patient, al-Muhadhdhab said, "Are you angry at me? I have been courteous to you, just like the community. I don't know what you want from me. I left you the synagogue and didn't attend today." Al-Sadīd (saracastically): "Thank God you found people to support you (against me?)." The writer of the letter editorializes: There were many people present who also don't attend the synagogue, but not because they were supporting al-Muhadhdhab, rather because they heard about how al-Sadīd had disparaged them. Back to the story: Al-Sadīd sighed and said: "How I hold back from complaining about my travails!" The writer: He didn't hold back at all. The third episode (r45–end): A certain judge (qāḍī al-ḥukm) was seriously ill (marīḍ bi-maraḍ shadīd), and al-Muhadhdhab was attending him "[against] his will and not for his good." This is unclear: was al-Muhadhdhab treating the judge incompetently, or was al-Muhadhdhab the one somehow coerced into this job? Meanwhile, al-Sadīd had been angling to get a connection to this judge. The judge had a slave with jaundice (khadīm bihi yaraqān). This too is unclear: is the slave acutely ill, or is this simply a description of his chronic state? Al-Sadīd came and spoke to the slave, and then came back with something to give to the slave—and the story ends here, unless the join is found. This document is possibly related to Bodl. MS heb. a 3/15, a letter from Avraham (I) Maimonides ordering a territorial muqaddam in Minyat Zifta/Minyat Ghamr to share his duties with his cousin al-Shaykh al-Muhadhdhab. (Information in part from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 189, 560.) Verso: Mysterious page of notes in Judaeo-Arabic in at least two different hands. The items on this page include two recipes for staining (or dying? or removing stains? the word is tulaṭṭakh/laṭkh); Judaeo-Arabic poetry; a riddle or two; and an extended grammatical discussion of case endings after 'kāna and her sisters' and related topics. ASE.

Official letter from either the office of Yehoshuaʿ Maimonides (r. 1310–55) or his father Avraham II Maimonides (r. 1300–13). (Goitein favors the latter, even though the same clerk wrote many more documents for Yehoshuaʿ.) This was written at the time of the Jewish New Year (usually late September) in which Yehoshuaʿ Nagid commands that a collection 'from the women' be taken up by two women, one of them the wife of the beadle Sulayman. The women are referred to as “house,” from the rabbinic idiom, “his house means his wife.” (Mark Cohen, Voice of the Poor, 196–98.) EMS.