Geniza Lab

Fragment of a ketubba (שטר פרנא). Location: Likely Tyre. Dating: ca. 1090s. The handwriting of the scribe seems to be identical with T-S 16.198, T-S 16.375 (Friedman, JMP, doc. 46), T-S AS 146.83 (Friedman, JMP, doc. 60), and ENA NS 3.22 (Friedman, JMP, doc. 64). Bride: Sutūt bt. Ṣabāḥ, a virgin. Her agent is Elʿazar b. Yosef. Few other details preserved. Goitein also identified T-S 8J4.18c and UPenn E 16516 as having been written by the same scribe. (But there is some potential ambiguity since on his index card for T-S 16.198 (#8182), he writes, "No! Simply Ḥalfon b. Menashshe.") (Information from Friedman's edition and Med Soc III, pp.201–02 and 466–67 note 145.)

Small fragment of a marriage document.

Fragment from a ketubbah of Joseph b. Shmuel b. Asad (groom), described as 'the esteemed notable', and the divorcee of Eleazar, called Manṣūr, known as Saʿāda (bride). Dated Thursday [...] Adar 52[...] (= 15th century CE) in Alexandria (Nā Amon), during the reign of Joseph ha-Nagid. AA Old shelfmarks: T-S 8.249 and T-S 8.88

Fragment of a marriage contract stipulating a total of 20 dinars as a marriage gift at the conclusion of the contract in the event of the termination of the marriage. Partial listing of the dowry, ca.1100.

Marriage contract (ketubba). Bride: Nājiya bt. Hiba. Fragment (upper right corner). On verso there is a rhymed poem of praise for a certain person, with the acrostic ‘... b. Isaac’, mentioning the names Isaac and Ezekiel. (Information from CUDL)

Fragment of a marriage contract giving details of the remarriage of a divorced couple. Tishri 1370/February-March 1058. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, 391, 395, 448)

Marriage contract containing details of a dowry and written at the time of the Nagid ʿAmram (1378-1383). The name Avraham is preserved. (Information from Goitein's index cards.) The hand is very close to that of the clerk of Yehoshua Maimonides (d. 1355); see T-S 13J4.15 for another document from the time of the Nagid ʿAmram possibly written by the same scribe.

Recto: Letter from Shelomo b. Eliyyahu to his paternal aunt Umm Daʾūd, asking for her daughter Sitt al-Yumn in marriage and enquiring about the dowry. Dated Tammuz 1530 of the Seleucid Era (= 1219 CE). In the margins of verso and recto are drafts of a release form in the hand of Shelomo b. Eliyyahu, concerning the claims between two sisters and Thanāʾ, the mother the late Manṣūr concerning the inheritance of the late Ibn Abū l-Majd the dyer Ibn al-Nāʾila. Abū l-Maḥāsin guarantees his mother ʿIbād’s release for her sister Ḥasab and Thanāʾ bt. Sayyid al-Ahl. (Information from CUDL)

The widow of Abu al-Fadl Sela b. 'Amram arranges with his bride Mubaraka bt. Shelomo ha-Kohen that she agrees to live with his son in the same apartment and to eat with him at the same table. In the case the son marries, she promises to be like a sister to his future wife. In the case her husband dies, she has no right to live in the house. Elul 1112, Wednesday, September 4, 1112. (Information from Goitein's index cards) VMR

Testimony in which a wife, a widow with three sons, releases her husband from from all obligations other than paying the delayed marriage gift and dowry and letting her live in his house for five years after his death as promised, and declares that her three sons would have no claims whatsoever against him and that her husband would not sue her sons, in Sanbutya/Sunbat, Adar 1427/February 1116.

Letter from Muslim to his son ʿIwaḍ. In Judaeo-Arabic. Concerning sugar cane molasses (quṭāra) and wine. "Stop occupying yourself with marriage plans and such idle things," writes a father, reminding his son, a fledgling physician, that he had not yet made enough money for such ventures. (wa-tukhalli ʿannak al-ishtighāl bil-jīza (=zija) wa-l-umūr al-hadhayāniyya. First Goitein took bljyzh as bil-ijāza (with Imāla) in the sense of tazkiya (certificate of good conduct for a physician), see Med. Soc, II, 250. But the reading suggested here seems to be preferable. Later in the letter the father says: anta muḥārif, "you are a poor man." (Information from Goitein, Med Soc III, p. 245 and 480 note 158).

A Karaite legal deed in which the bride, Dhukhr, who is in Tyre, appoints her father, David b. Ishaq ha-Levi, in Fustat to betroth her to any man he wishes. Published by Gil, Addenda to Palestine. Mentions Abu Nasr ha-nasi. The bride's sister's husband is named Adiyya, known as Abu Sai'd b. Menashshe. The two witnesses in court are Moshe b. Sib'a and Aharon b. Faraj. Signed by Shemuel Hakohen b. Wahab, Musafir b. Simha, Yosef Hakoen b. Efrayim, Yosef Hakohen ha-haver b. Ya'aqov the scribe, Eli b. Shelomo. Join: M. A. Friedman, JMP, I, 218, n. 5 (see Ashur, PhD diss., p. 65. n. 54).

Unsigned deed from Fustat, dated May 1217, concerning the potential marriage of a female slave, Akramiyya. She had been purchased by As'ad, the physician when she was an infant, raised under him, and then freed. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:82, 443; Oded Zinger, Women, Gender, and Law, 283) EMS One of two copies; the other is ENA 2559.13 (PGPID 6594). Alternative description: this is a second draft of an unsigned testimony from late Iyyar 1528 sel., regarding the origins (and implicitly, eligibilty for marriage) of Akramiyya. It is not stated specifically that she was a slave, or that she was freed. ENA 2559.13 is not another copy but an earlier version, from mid-Iyyar 1528, which includes erasures of text which indeed is not to be found in the later version.

Letter from a man to his prospective father-in-law. In Judaeo-Arabic. Expressing his enthusiasm about the future connection (ittiṣāl) with him and stating to have heard from the Ḥazzan Ṣadaqa Ibn Nufayʿ (the go-between) that the younger and not the elder daughter was to be the prospective bride. The letter appears to have been left unfinished. Information from Goitein's note card.

Agreement concerning Levirate Marriage between the widow of Shelomo Ben Yosef Hanagid and Yeshu'a Ben Hanagid Yosef, Cairo, 1482.

Fragment of a ketubba (marriage contract) which stipulates that the bride would move from Tyre to Akko in twelve months, ca. 1028-1037. Text in Arabic script on verso.

Legal document (actually two different documents concerning the same persons) concerning the poor treatment afforded to R. Moshe, a new hazzan, by R. Nissim, the muqaddam of al-Maḥalla, and centered on issues relating to a marriage ceremony and the public evaluation of a dowry. Thirteenth century. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:74, 538; Mordechai Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine, 1:296; Eliyyahu Ashtor, “The Number of Jews in Medieval Egypt,” JJS (1967), 238) EMS.

Letter from Nahray b. Nissīm, Fusṭāṭ, to Barhūn b. Ṣāliḥ al-Tāhartī, probably in Egypt, ca. 1045, concerning business between the two. Mentions a shipment of pearls. Nahray sends his blessing to Khalfa, from the Tāhartī family, for his marriage to a woman from the Uqba family. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, pp. 711-714, #242). VMR. Nahray anxiously mentions to Barhūn that he has already paid the Amīr's emissary Abū Ishāq 150 dīnārs in Fusṭāṭ and it concerns him that the Amīr is still demanding the same from him in Alexandria. "If, God forbid, he continues to demand payment from you after he knows that it was already collected from me, then you will certainly remind him of his own letter to his emissary Abū Isḥāq, so that he will return to us what he has taken from us." YU.

Letter from Abū l-Barakat b. Abū l-Ḥasan to Shelomo b. Eliyyahu. In Judaeo-Arabic. The sender is evidently a family member of Shelomo's wife Sitt Ghazāl bt. Abū l-Faraj. Abū l-Barakat reminds Shelomo that Sitt Ghazāl’s relatives had only reluctantly agreed to let her depart for Alexandria in the first place, and that they had made this concession in good faith, believing that he would treat her well. The writer goes on to defend Shelomo’s charges against Sitt Ghazāl’s slothfulness, lambast him for his boorishness and lack of empathy for his young wife, and attempts to socially shame the husband into proper behavior. (Eve Krakowski, “Female adolescence in the Cairo Geniza documents,” PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2012, 68, 236, 238–39, 278–79.) EMS. Likely a join with T-S 6J3.15 (identified by Oded Zinger).

Verso: Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. A scholar is asked for the hand of his daughter in a complete letter (written calligraphically by a scribe) asking the prospective father-in-law to exercise utmost secrecy.