Geniza Lab

Letter from an unknown writer, probably in Qūṣ, to an unknown addressee, probably in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Probably 12th century, but this is a guess. The writer describes a harrowing Nile voyage "due to the illness of the passengers and loathsome odors. Three of them ended up dying. The last one survived for a day and a half until he died. I remained in distress from the stench that wafted from him, and nearly perished." The writer then safely arrived in Akhmīm on Friday as evening was falling, so he spent Shabbat in the city. He had to pay 10.5 dirhams (of customs?) upon leaving on Sunday, after swearing that he had nothing with him except the clothes (? qumāsh) on his back. He mentions al-Shaykh Abū Isḥāq b. Mushrif/Musharraf who had paid the customs duty for the קמקין (?). The writer wished to inform the addressee of this earlier, but there was a delay of five days before he arrived in Qūṣ. "Your servant arrived in Qūṣ and experienced on the side of aṣḥābunā a measure of hospitality which I am unable to describe even in part. They kindly took an apartment for me, a place which can be locked, before I arrived. . . " On verso there is Mishna Avot. (Information in part from Goitein's index cards and Mediterranean Society 1:298, 474; 5:31-2, 513.) EMS. ASE.

Recto: Abū l-Faḍā'il the cantor begs for money from Sitt Futūn, who also helped fund the construction of the synagogue (!), since he owes four years' worth, and she must have helped him 4+ years earlier. He writes: "You bestow charity on inanimate objects, and I am animate," and, "This is the equivalent of redemption of captives, for I am a captive." Verso: Possibly lines of poetry in Judaeo-Arabic about unrequited love. Probably not connected to recto.

Contract between Abu al-Ḥasan and Abu al-Ma'ali regarding tax-farming in the town of Bush and its environs. Dated Elul 1460/ August-September 1149. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 607)

JRL Series B 4089: This document is the continuation of a letter on the recto. The business letter describes commercial transactions, including taxes paid at the customshouse of the port city of Aden in Yemen, and dates to the 12th century. See PGPID 5479.

JRL Series B 4089: This business letter describes commercial transactions and what the author describes as favors or 'gifts' to a fellow trader. The main commodities mentioned are copper and pepper; customs dues, freight charges, porters' fees, and safekeeping are also reported. The mention of a tax paid at al-Furda (the customshouse at the port city of Aden) and the names of Ali al-Nili ('the indigo trader') and Abu Ghalib al-Rubban ('the captain') suggest that the author reports from the port city of Aden in Yemen sometime in the 12th century. The letter continues on the verso. On the men mentioned by name see Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages, 145, 603; and 153, 325-27; on al-Furda see Goitein and Friedman, India Traders, passim; and Margariti, Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade, passim. See PGPID 5479.

Letter from Yūsuf, in Alexandria, to family members, probably in Fustat. The letter is addressed to the shop of Abū [...] al-ʿAṭṭār. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: ca. 1160 CE, based on the mention (lines 11–12) that the writer departed Egypt in the year 51, probably 551H (1156 CE). This is corroborated by the mention of Abū ʿAlī Ibn al-Amshāṭī (see Goitein and Friedman, India Traders, pp. 103–04). The writer summarizes the events of the last four years. He suffered terrible illnesses and nearly perished en route to Constantinople. He lived there for two and a half years, where it seems he developed a new illness and also suffered from "the illness you know about." He survived only due to the grace of God and their prayers for him. He now asks his family members to go to Ẓāfir the tax collector and bribe him with a half dinar or dinar to register the writer as a newcomer (ṭārī) so that he will not have to pay for all four years he has been gone. "Remind him of my name, Yūsuf, who was under the Muʿallaqa (the Hanging Church)." Information in par from Goitein’s index card. The handwriting looks very similar or identical with that of T-S 10J11.11, and some of the same names appear in each letter, including Abū l-Surūr, Abū ʿAlī, and Sitt Ikhtiṣār. ASE.

Letter from Menaḥem to the judge Yehosef. In Judaeo-Arabic. A letter of recommendation poor man who has debts and must pay the capitation tax. Menaḥem also promises to send the quires (karārīs) as soon as he has finished writing them. "As for the capitation tax, it is said that it will not be demanded from the poor, who may obtain for it a rescript from the government (khaṭṭ al-sulṭān)." ASE.

Letter from Malīj containing a detailed description of a legal case involving a fabric manufactured while evading the tax due on it and sold to an acquaintance who did not keep the secret. Dating: ca. 1100 CE. (Information from Mediterranean Society, I, p. 116)

Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic. Includes expenses for the maks (customs duty?), and the capitation tax (jāliya) in Syria for the years 20 and 21. Names mentioned: al-Shaykh al-Rashīd Ṣayrafī b. al-Dayyan; Ibn Karīm al-Iskandarī Ṣabbāgh; Ibn Bayān; Bū l-Ghayth the tax farmer of Hebron (ḍāmin al-Khalīl); and [...] Ibn al-Ghuzūlī.

Legal document. Partnership agreement. Abū al-Makārim b. Bishr and Abū al-Ḥasan b. Saʿīd partner in tax collection in three towns in Upper Egypt, paying an unnamed party a total of 5.5 dinars each month for the duration of the eight-month partnership. Tax revenues from Būsh are allocated to Abū al-Makārim and those from Mīdūm are allocated to Abū al-Ḥasan. Revenues from Wanā are allocated to each of the partners for four out of the eight months, each of the partners collecting for two months, and then ceding control to the other. Profits from the tax collection are to be evenly split between the two parties. Both parties are prohibited taking on another partner during the period of their tax collection in Wanā. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 91-92) NB: Goitein refers to this document as folio 13; Lieberman refers to it as Firkovitch II 1700 13 a III.

Letter from an unnamed Fatimid official in Alexandria to Najīb al-Dawla. Dating: second half of the eleventh century. 36 lines preserved, written in an elegant chancery hand with very wide line-spacing. Najīb al-Dawla is a higher-level official than the author of the letter, but the author also has quite a bit of command and responsibility, and the ability to issue to levy and cancel taxes and to issue decrees on the spot in a region of the delta, so perhaps he is a local governor — although he refers to a different ʿāmil in his letter. The author writes to report to Najīb al-Dawla on his activities in the delta and in a village called Tarūja, which is southeast of Alexandria. Topics, in order of appearance: 1. Soldiers who have taken an oath of loyalty to the Fatimid dynasty. 2. The author's postponement of one leg of his journey, to Tarūja, until the coming Thursday, which will cut short his time with the governor. 3. A state occasion attended by all the soldiers, leaders and elders of the city (unclear which city), as well as its governor and its postmaster, on which occasion a certain adopted son of the Sharīf repeated an admonishment to the leaders of said city and to the Banū Qurra. 4. The arrival of the addressee, Najīb al-Dawla, and his touring with the addressee around the rest of the districts to collect taxes. 5. The soldiers’ protests about staying in the garrison, which furnish the author with an excuse for failing to fulfill his other duties, perhaps collecting taxes. 6. The author's success in eliminating crime in a certain district thanks to a tax-farm of 400 dinars that paid for policing. The elimination of crime allowed him to reward the district by lifting taxes on popular foods (al-maṭāʿim al-ḥabība), provisions and necessities, a policy he announced by writing [decrees], reading them in the town and having them sent to the rest of the districts. 7. The delay of the endorsement of a certain memorandum concerning the writer. 8. The return of the author's son to him. 9. The author's wish to receive more official duties from Najīb al-Dawla, a request he expresses with what might be a raʾy clause (but there is a lacuna). 10. A visit that the author made to the aforementioned adopted son of the Sharīf, Abū Ṭālib al-Ḥusayn, at his estate (which is named, but there is a lacuna); there, he ran into Ḥusay[n] and Ḥasan b. Mahdī and […] b. Jābir the captain (khardar). The letter was cut up and turned into ten bifolios that were folded into a single quire; on this, the well-known late-eleventh-century Qaraite ʿAlī b. Sulaymān wrote extracts in Hebrew and Arabic script of Kitāb al-anwār wa-l-marākib by the tenth-century Iraqi Qaraite al-Qirqisānī. ʿAlī b. Sulaymān included two colophons with his name (fols. 5r and 17r), but neither is dated or mentions a place of writing. ʿAlī b. Sulaymān was active in Jerusalem ca. 436/1045, where he studied with some of the well-known Qaraites of the Dār al-ʿIlm, and then in Tinnīs ca. 1057 and Fustat ca. 1080, where he signed and dated colophons (see Borisov [1954]). He may have been active as late as 1103, according to a colophon with a problematic date of 415 (is this [1]415 Sel., or 1103? a hijrī dating would be too early). Assuming his floruit was 1045–1103, our letter would date to ca. 1050–1100; this also assumes, as was the usual practice, a relatively brief turnaround time between state-related documents being discarded and their being reused. Where and how did ʿAlī b. Sulaymān acquire the letter? Was he active in state circles in Egypt in the late eleventh century? He was close with Sahl b. al-Faḍl al-Tustarī, a muʿtazilī philosopher-theologian who was a government administrator in Jerusalem in the 1090s under the Seljuks; but the letter reflects an Egyptian Fatimid context, not a Syrian Seljuk one, so al-Tustarī is unlikely to be its author, unless he had an otherwise unattested appointment in Egypt before his appointment in Jerusalem. The FGP images are missing a folio between what it labels folios 14r and 15r. This would be folio 11 according to the pencilled numbers on the bottom of the recto pages of the manuscript, and it would have been part of a blank verso of the original letter. MR

Letter from Avraham Neḥmad to Moshe b. ʿAbd al-Waliyy. Writer and addressee are Qaraites. Written in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic. The letter begins with a recommendation for the bearer, Yiṣḥaq al-Ḥamawī. The whole community of Ḥamawīs (people from Hama) in the writer's location is in great distress on account of the capitation tax (jāliya). The continuation of the letter deals with business matters. Verso also contains sums in

Letter from the Qaraite community of Jerusalem to the Qaraite community of Damascus. The scribe is Meir Rofe Tawrīzī, and the letter is also signed by Mordekhai Hillel and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm. Written in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Unknown, but possibly the 1580s CE based on the mention of the sanjak named Abū Sayfayn, known from other sources to have been the administrator of the sanjak of Nablus under Sinan Pasha. The letter is a vivid account of the dire circumstances and persecutions in Jerusalem. The writers mention that the Rabbanites were in fact oppressed even more, but they subsequently turned on the Qaraites. The writers need assistance, and they write that they are seeking it from Damascus because the community of Fustat/Cairo "is not to be turned to," it seems due to troubles of their own. Needs further examination.