Geniza Lab

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic on the factors that make animal meat unkosher.

Medical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic on the factors that make animal meat unkosher.

8 pages from a halakhic work on shehitah

Bifolium from a halakhic work on shehitah

Bifolium from a Judaeo-Arabic treatise on kosher and unkosher meat, including instructions for how to cook meat.

Deed of appointment for a kosher slaughterer Shemuel [surname lost]. Location: Cairo. Dated: [5]288 AM, which is 1527/28 CE. The term of the appointment is two years with a monthly salary of 40 medins. (information from Dotan Arad's editions.) MCD.

Announcement of the Jewish community in establishing a religious institution for the training of faith leaders, kosher slaughterers, and mohelim beginning with the sending forth of a delegation to Palestine on account of the circumstances of the war and the establishment of an optical clinic – during the Second World War – Museum of Islamic Art – (number 197) Arabic- and French-language. (information from Ḥassanein Muḥammad Rabīʿa. ed. Dalīl Wathā'iq al-Janīza al-Jadīda / Catalogue of the Documents of the New Geniza, 28). MCD.

Testimony signed by Aharon ha-Kohen b. Amram and two others regarding the kashruth (ritual lawfulness) of some cheese made by the Karaites (of Samaritiqa), ca 1050.

Certification of ritual purity of a cheese shipment is signed by Judge Eliyyahu in 1241.

The Nagid R. Yehoshuaʿ warns against disqualified kosher butchers. Middle of the 14th century.

A religious slaughterer who was careless in the exercise of his duties is flogged and forced to make a public confession. Dated 9 Iyyar 1339/ May 1028 in Cairo. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 330, 568)

Certificate of kashrut. Location: Alexandria. Dated: First decade of Tammuz 502[.] AM, which is 1260–69 CE. Abū l-Ḥasan b. Abū l-Karam b. Bū l-Barakāt purchases 97 moulds (qālib) of Sicilian (Rūmī Siqillī) cheese from Jewish merchants who have arrived in Alexandria. The cheese has a seal on it, and reliable witnesses testify that it is kosher (lā rayba fīhi, a phrase borrowed from Quran 2:2). Witnesses: Yehuda b. Aharon Ibn al-ʿAmmānī; the teacher Yefet b. Yosef ha-Melammed. Cf. T-S 13J4.8 for a very similar document from 1243 CE (signed by the same Yehuda).

Short letter from Avraham b. Natan Av ha-Yeshiva ("the head of the (Palestinian) Academy") to an unknown recipient (called only Rabbenu). In Judaeo-Arabic. Acknowledging the receipt of a large consignment of "kaysī" cheese and the corresponding heksher (certificate of kashrut) brought by Ṣadaqa b. Shemarya. According to Goitein's notes, the sender "at that time" was the Jewish Chief Justice of Cairo, and he is writing to his colleagues in Fustat. (Information in part from CUDL.)

Recto: Legal testimony. Location: Alexandria. Dated: Kislev 4917 AM, which is November/December 1156 CE, under the authority of the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya. A legal authority in Alexandria [...] b. Meshullam writes to the judges of Fustat and Cairo, the representatives of the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya, in order to confirm the kashrut of the 8 moulds of Cretan "mixed" (with herbs) cheese (weighing 80 jarawī raṭls) which are being transported by the bearer of this document Abū l-Munā Tiqva b. Abū ʿAlī Yefet. The moulds are stamped with the names of Zeraḥ and Amaṣya, the merchants who imported the cheese from Crete (איקריטיש). The buyer was an Alexandrian Jew, and Abū l-Munā bought the 8 moulds from that buyer. When Zeraḥ and Amaṣya originally imported the cheese, they brought with them letters/documents bearing the signatures of the elders of Crete, which were recognized as valid in Alexandria. Those documents from Crete described the entire cheese-making process, from the milking stage onward, and proved that there was no blemish disqualifying the cheese. When the authorities in Alexandria saw this, they allowed the cheese to be sold. (Information in part from Frenkel and Goitein, Med. Soc. 1, 124n66, 429.) Join: Alan Elbaum. ASE