Geniza Lab

Letter. Appeal written from prison by the son of Avraham to Yosef, Yiṣḥaq and Yehuda, sons of Menahem, in Hebrew. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Recto: Letter in Judeao-Arabic. Complaint to a Nagid about utterances made in public, it seems by Abu al-Barakat, which even women were able to hear. Verso: Document concerning financial issues in Arabic script. (Information from CUDL)

Letter from a community written in calligraphy to a muqaddam who had been disobeyed and humiliated in his new post asking him to return to them. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter in the hand of Shabbetay b. Avraham addressed to the Nagid Shemuel b. Hananya. Asking him to obtain a caliphal rescript stopping the local governor from charging the sugar cooks twice the normal price for raw sugar (qand). Dating: ca. 1150 CE. Lines 1–6 and verso are written on T-S 10J15.29; lines 7–18 on T-S 10J15.32. (Information from Goitein, Mediterranean Society II, 45–46, 531.)

Letter from the widow of the cantor Ben Nahman to a Gaon concerning the difficulties she is having with the son of her late husband and his sister over her right to domicile in the house to which she has a claim. Cf. T-S 13J13.6 (subsequent plea, two months later, from the same woman), also T-S Ar.18(1).107.

Letter of complaint from the administrator of the Quppa (the bread basket of the community) in Alexandria to R. Avraham the Nagid. Alexandria had a charity collection out of which it was customary to distribute loaves of bread to the needy. The writer of this letter was the 'Mufarriq al-Quppa,' the official in charged of distributing the bread. The addressee was R. Avraham the Nagid and the letter includes a complaint against an Alexandrian Ḥaver who took it upon himself to distribute the loaves of bread against the instructions of the Nagid and the local judge. Apparently, the letter was composed during a period of food shortage and the Nagid decreed that bread will be distributed in small portions in order to stock up for an emergency. The Ḥaver's decision to distribute all the bread of the collection must certainly have been popular among the needy. The manager of the quppa decided not to bring charges against the Ḥaver but to wait for explicit instructions from the Nagid or for the return of Shemuel, the Judge, who was at the time absent from the city. (Information from Frenkel; see also Goitein Med. Soc. 2:492). Verso: Note conveying festival greetings, citing Isaiah 56:7. (Information from CUDL)

Letter to the Gaon Sar Shalom ha-Levi, head of the Palestinian yeshiva (in office ca. 1170–71 and 1173–95), in which the muqaddam of Qalyub (the handwriting is that of Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi) excuses himself from appearing in person on account of his illness. He certifies that there was no civil or religious impediment to the marriage of the girl called Ama'im, daughter of Abu 'l-Ḥasan. The Gaon ordered an inquiry because the family had moved from one place to another, the girl's sister was married to a freedman, and her brother had moved from Qalyub to the Manufiyya district, where he embraced Islam. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 301, 591; III, p. 81; V, pp. 108, 110) VMR

Letter from Ṭoviyya ha-Kohen b. Judah b. Ṭoviyyahu, a recently appointed judge in al-Mahalla and Sammanūd, to Shemuel the cantor, praising the community for their regular attendance at the synagogue service and for coming to him rather than going to the Muslim court to solve their legal problems. (See also Mediterranean Society, II, 193, 203, 401, 563, 401, and V, 603, and Goitein's index cards)

Petition from Yefet ha-Melammed the schoolmaster to Avraham Maimonides; the latter's answer is on verso, lines 18–26. Yefet writes that he is ill and losing his vision, and consequently has been unable to pay his rent (?) which has accumulated in arrears of six dirhams. Avraham grants him the money. (Information in part from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 37, 529, and Goitein's index cards.) Many of the specifics of the writer's financial situation are lost. There is an ambiguity as to whether "ujra" here means rent or wage/tuition. In "Side Lights on Jewish Education" (p. 96), Goitein prefers the latter: "The community paid for [the tuition of] the sons of those who were impeded by any reason to go after their usual professions (munqaṭiʿ)," referring to recto, lines 9–11. In this reading, the word munqaṭīʿ refers not to the writer of the letter but to the parents of his pupils who have been unable to pay him. "[This] teacher receives 1 dirham per pupil and week, probably for special reasons," referring to recto, lines 13–14 and 17–19. Yefet has evidently continued to work despite his condition, but has not received the wages officially due to him from the community. He thus writes with a description of his current plight (shidda) to expedite the payments. ASE

Letter of appeal addressed to Shelomo ha-Nasi. The writer asks for assistance after having been arrested. He suffers severe poverty and illness and bedbugs (al-baqq). "May God spare you such a trial, and may God place all whom you hate in my situation."

The beginning of two drafts of eloquent complaint against Zikri b. Musallam Ibn al- Naja al-Tabib, to the Nagid Avraham and two of the chief justice in Fustat. On the other side the writer notes that most people in the town knew what had happened between him and Ibn al-Naja. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5:301-302, 590.) VMR. Join by Oded Zinger.

Letter written by Mevōrākh b. Natan and signed in full by the Gaon Sār Shālōm ha-Levi. The latter rebukes the muqaddam, or head of the Jewish community of al-Maḥalla, for neglecting essentials in favor of trifles, citing as an example the cases of two women, one of whom sent a proxy to the Gaon’s court over a matter of 1 and 11/24 dinars, and the other of whom vexed her son-in-law by intrusion into his house, unfounded accusations, and suits before Muslim courts. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, p. 336, 502). EMS

Letter from Daniel b. Azarya (in his handwriting), 1051. He is worried for his status and thinks that people will prefer Yosef ha-Kohen b. Shelomo Gaon. (Information from Gil, Palestine, vol. 2 p. 643-645, #353) VMR

Letter from Eliyyahu b. Aharon Ha-Ḥaver b. Yoshiyyahu, the president of court, to Efrayim B. Shemarya, approximately 1030.

Two paper leaves, very damaged, which form a part of a collection of letters from Evyatar ha-Kohen Gaon b. Eliyyahu, sent from Tyre. The first letter is addressed to Isaac b. Shemuel, the Spaniard, a Dayyan in Fustat. Evyatar appeals to Isaac to help the parnas "ha-Kohen we-ne'eman" ("trustee"), referring to Eli b. Yahya of Fustat. Greetings are sent to a certain parnas Abu al-Ridha and to the Hazzan Abu al-Mu'mar. Dated 1091. The second epistle is evidently addressed to a priestly scholar in Iraq who was authorized by the exilarch Hezekiah. It appears he had written Evyatar about a widow who had become liable to the levirate as her husband Yefet had died without issue. Evyatar sends greetings in the names of his two sons, Eliyyahu and Sadoq, and the banker Shemuel b. Aaron and the shaykh Abu 'Ali Ḥasan are also mentioned. (Jacob Mann, The Jews in Egypt and Palestine under the Fatimids, NY: Ktav Pub., 1920-22, rpt. 1970, 1:192-4, 2:228-9; and Mark Cohen, Jewish Self-government in Medieval Egypt, Princeton University, 1980, 112) EMS

Letter fragment to the congregations of Fustat and in particular to the dayyan Elazar. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter from Yehuda b. Aharon b. al-ʿAmmānī, in Alexandria, to Abū l-Majd Meir b. Yakhin (Thābit), "the Glory of the Cantors," in Fustat. Dated: 14 Iyyar, 1216 CE. The letter contains information about a communal conflict between Anatoli the Judge and Yehuda's paternal uncle—Ṣadoq b. Shemuel b. al-ʿAmmānī—and his son Mufaḍḍal. (Frenkel suggests this is the same case against a judge that Yehuda mentions in T-S 13J21.25, but that letter was written in 1208.) Ṣadoq had made a taqqana and collected signatures of important Alexandrians such as Abū Saʿd b. Nānū and Bū l-Rabīʿ al-Kohen in order to appoint his son Mufaḍḍal to lead the congregation (as judge?), but Mufaḍḍal is young, beardless, and unmarried, and therefore regarded as unfit to lead the congregation over an older, distinguished man. Moreover, Ṣadoq went to the Nagid Avraham Maimonides for approval of the taqqana behind the back of Anatoli the Judge, who was understandably angry when he heard. It seems that Mufaḍḍal has been shunned by most of the population for the last few months. Yehuda himself is waiting for the Nagid to respond with a fatwa to a query of his own, and he is resentful that the Nagid does not recognize that Yehuda is the one who is managing all the affairs of the synagogue, while his uncle is addicted to wine and incompetent (Med Soc V, 39 and 516, n. 148). Yehuda mentions the Tāj (the Aleppo Codex) "which was written and pointed by Ben Asher or Ben Naftali" in the last line of the main text on verso. The addressee Abū l-Majd was recently sick, and others in his household still are. See also T-S 16.305, a letter written in spring 1217 in which Yehuda thanks Avraham Maimonides for resolving the conflict between him and his uncle. Information in part from Frenkel and from Gotein's note card. ASE.

Letter from Daniel b. Azarya to Eli b. Amram, Fustat. Daniel instructs Eli how to summon to the court. On the other side the letter from Eli b. Amram to Daniel b. Azarya. (Information from Gil, Palestine; and Goitein's index cards) VMR

Very blurred letter to the Nasi and the Head of the Diaspora (David b. Daniel?) asking for assistance for hungry people. The needy person is probably Shelomo b. Abraham, named at the bottom of the page. MY. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Upper part of list, in the hand of judge Shemuel b. Saadya (see Bodl. f56.43c), on the reverse side of a document issued on the authority of Maimonides in spring 1172 (and copied by Mevorakh b. Natan). The contributions are partly in dinars (one-fourth - two, the latter sum appearing four times), partly in dirhams. Practically all the names recur in contemporary lists of donors to charity, but because of the dilapidated state of the manuscript no general conclusions are possible. Of the 16 persons whose names are discernible in the left column, four give together with their partners. Dated to last third of twelfth century (see Mediterranean Society, II, App. C 116, Bodl. f56.52, where Goitein speculates that this and other stray lists might have formed part of one booklet). (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, 485, App. C 35)