Geniza Lab

Folktales of King Solomon and his wisdom and Ashmoday/Asmodeus.

Bifolium, probably from a literary compendium. Dating: Late, possibly 18th or 19th century. Two of the pages are a story about a female slave and a king—needs further examination. The other two pages are love spells in Judaeo-Arabic, apparently transcribed from Islamic/Arabic-script models, as one of them invokes the prophets Moses and Jesus(!).

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.

Lower part of a fragment of rhymed lines in colloquial Judaeo-Arabic ("fī kull ḥāra... wa-kathura al-shaṭāra... laqad jā' khaḍāra...") The penultimate line mentions al-kanīs wa-bayt al-midrash and the final line reads, "All say." So some kind of call and response?

One side: Judaeo-Arabic retelling of the story of Joseph. The other side: remnants of an interesting design in black ink and ~6 extremely faded lines in Judaeo-Arabic, possibly documentary.

Literary. A theological discourse in Judaeo-Arabic, in the form of a dialogue with a Muslim ruler (amīr al-mu'minīn). Discusses the books of Esther and Maccabees.

A story in Judaeo-Arabic, involving Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Meir and a woman who tries to sate her desire with the latter while he remains asleep.

Literary. Rhymed maxims in Judaeo-Arabic, organized alphabetically. Cf. T-S Ar.13.13, discussed in the November 2019 Fragment of the Month by Mohamed A. H. Ahmed. Information in part from Goitein's note card.

Story in Judaeo-Arabic. Probably popular literature (mentions "the gate of the castle").

A tale from Kalīla wa-Dimna in Judaeo-Arabic. In the hand of Yosef b. Yaʿaqov Rosh ha-Seder ha-Bavli (active late 12th and early 13th century). A goldsmith fell into a pitfall (zibya) together with a monkey, a snake, and a tiger. A traveler passed by and peered in and lowered a rope to save the man, but each time he lowered the rope, one of the animals came up instead. The animals instructed him not to save the goldsmith, because they would be sincere in their gratitude whereas the goldsmith would not. The traveler doesn't heed their advice and saves the man. All the animals and the man honor the traveler and tell him that they will help him if he ever comes through their city, Nawārjūr. The Geniza fragment ends here but the continuation can be read in the versions of Kalīla wa-Dimna available online (e.g., https://al-maktaba.org/book/26537/296#p1 or Bodleian Library MS. Pococke 400, fol. 143a at digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk). When the man comes to the city, the monkey welcomes him by bringing him fresh fruit. The tiger welcomes him by killing the king's daughter and bringing him her jewels. The traveler brings the jewels to the goldsmith intending to have him sell the jewels on his behalf. The goldsmith betrays him and goes to the king and says that he's captured the man who murdered his daughter. Ultimately the snake cunningly manages to save the traveler from execution, and the king executes the goldsmith in his place as punishment for betraying a benefaction. Interestingly, in the published editions of Kalīla wa-Dimna and in the Arabic manuscripts, the third animal is a babr (tiger/leopard/lion) whereas in this fragment it is spelled "nabr," which does not refer to any large cats according to the Arabic dictionaries. Presumably the letter was undotted in the Arabic manuscript which Yosef used as a template and he mistakenly read it as a nūn, or else "nabr" was a dialectal variant. Another interesting discrepancy is that the name of the city seems to have as many spellings as there are manuscripts: here it is spelled Nawārjūr/נוארגור/نوارجور. You can compare ~25 different editions of this story in ~10 different languages with the Kalīla Reader app: https://www.theobeers.com/kwd-reader/#ch=17-Tg&ver=prompt. On verso there is additional (unrelated?) text also in the hand of Yosef Rosh ha-Seder. It is fragmentary and difficult to understand; needs examination. ASE

Popular literature in Judaeo-Arabic. Conveys the tale of a wise man who is continually amazing a king with his powers of deduction. For instance, he can tell from looking at a Bedouin's horse that it was nursed by a dog, and he can tell from the pre-purchase palpation (taqlīb, dukhūl al-yad) of a female slave that she is not a female slave at all. He explains all of his deductions when the king questions him. With every feat, the king increases his salary/ration of bread. Finally, he informs the king that he (the king) is the illegitimate son of a baker, proves that this is the case, and the king swears him to secrecy and lets him go with enough money to live happily ever after. The document is written across two pages; the second also contains a Hebrew piyyut prefaced by "Yeshaʿyahu b. Elʿazar b. Jābir to Shemarya Kahana b. Aharon." The name Yehuda b. Peraḥya also appears on the final page. ASE.

Arabic poetry. With a popular character: it has extremely short verses with dense rhymes: (1) wa-starhabūhā al-ruhbān. . . wa-staqsamū [..] al-ṣulbān. . . (2) yā ṣāḥ ludhdh bi-alwāḥ wa-nhaḍ [...] al-afrāḥ [...] al-mirāḥ [...] al-aqdāḥ. The latter poem is full of conventional love imagery and reminiscent of Yemeni Shabazian poetry (but there is nothing to suggest that this fragment is late or that it has any connection with Yemen or even with Jews). There is also what may be a name of a woman: Ghālī bt. al-Dawālī.

Popular literature in Judaeo-Arabic. Set in the time of Muḥammad. Involving ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl, Zayd, and a female slave. Needs further examination.

Popular literature. A battle scene from Sīrat ʿAntar. This excerpt begins with the line "وبوارق البيض الرقاق لوامع في عارض مثل الغمام المرعد." There are at least another 300 pages from the same book preserved in the Geniza. The largest chunks are in T-S Ar.13.3 (228pp) and AIU VII.B.1 (38pp).

Fragment of a story in Judaeo-Arabic. Very late; on grid paper.

Sīrat ʿAntar. In Judaeo-Arabic. There are at least 300 pages from the same volume scattered through the Geniza:

Tale in the style of A Thousand and One Nights, told partly in the first person, mentioning a period of seven years, robbers who took all the narrator’s possessions, and a (barren) wife praying to God in the night. (Information from CUDL)

Story (ספר חסות) from Yemen about the relationships between the Jewish community and the Muslims. Describes the protection that the Jews received from Muhammad, concerning observing the Shabbat and other traditions. (Information from Goitein, The Yemenites, pp. 288-294). VMR. NB: The current shelfmark is unknown.

Story of (illicit) love involving a woman named Hind and her husband, a man named Bishr and an old woman.

Philosophical treatise. Stories of Alexander the Great and Aristotle in a calligraphic hand.