Geniza Lab

Letter addressed to Sar Shalom, written by a man whose wife and son had been in captivity by Edom (Christians) and who had lost all his property and had no profession, asking for bread and clothing. Possibly dated 1219. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, p. 595, and from Goitein's index cards}

Letter from the wife of Shemuel, a poor woman from al-Maḥalla, addressed to the Gaon Maṣliaḥ. She asks for assistance for herself and for her blind son, particularly for paying the capitation tax. She had already been in Fustat one month without relying on anyone for charity. (Information from Goitein's index cards.)

Letter draft from Efrayim b. Shemarya to Shelomo b. Yehuda. Fragment: the upper part only. Dating: probably 1028 CE (Gil's estimate). The letter praises the army's victory. Written on the front and back of a chancery decree fragment (see PGPID 35179).

Letter from Shelomo b. Yehuda to a group of people in Alexandria, approximately 1025.

Hebrew letter, sent by Shemuel b. Shelomo of Lucena, Spain, to Mevorakh b. Saadya requesting assistance. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter to a Gaon, according to Goitein, perhaps from the time of Nethanel Gaon (1160), congratulating him on his son's recovery from illness, and complaining about the cessation of correspondence. It is also a letter of recommendation for the bearer. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, pp. 294, 295, and from Goitein's index cards)

Letter from X b. Menahem to Elazar ha-Kohen b. Meshullam asking for assistance after losing 350 nasiri and 25 dinars at sea. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter in which Abu al-Majd Uzziel of Damira informs the judge Moshe b. Perahya that he would take up the post of teacher in Minyat Zifta only after Rabbi Nehemiah definitely left the town and when the community would have made him a definite proposal. Verso contains an unrelated text. Dated to the 13th century. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 49, 533, 187, and from Goitein's index cards)

Account of the pledges, pesiqa, for [the synagogue of] Dammuh, during the time of Nagid Avraham Maimonides (1205-1237).

Expenditures of the Jewish court in Fustat, early 11th century.

Recto: Letter fragment from Daniel b. Azarya, probably to Eli b. Amram, Fustat. Mentions the Gaon's opposition to Yefet b. David b. Shekhanya. (Information from Gil, Palestine, vol. 2 p. 625, #342) VMR

Letter from a woman to the Head of the Jews, in Fustat. Dating: Early twelfth century (see explanation below). The writer asks the addressee to send her money for two orphan sisters whose care she was reluctantly supervising. The girls were ten and thirteen years old and had no relatives to take care of them, and nothing to live on. They had been allotted two dinars from communal charity funds, but for some reason (the letter is torn here, and parts are missing) the money had not actually been sent; without it, they had "only enough for a crust of bread." A childless widow who lived nearby had volunteered to teach them embroidery, and the letter's narrator was willing to check in on them once in a while. But she refused to take them into her household, even though the girls themselves wanted her to: "They constantly tell me, 'We want to come to you so that you can take care of us.' She asked the Head of the Jews instead to provide the two dinars that the girls had been promised, along with extra funds to rent them a living space and to hire a religious steacher who could "teach them prayer, so they will not grow up like animals, not knowing shemaʿ yisra'el." Eve Krakowski, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt, p.1. Regarding the date: "The time of the document can be defined approximately by the mention of al-haver Ibn al-Kāmukhi, the member of the yeshiva bearing a family name derived from the profession of kāmukhī, preparer of preserves with vinegar sauce. Two such persons are known, onel iving at the time of the Nagid Mevorakh, around 1095, and another during the incumbency of the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya around 1145. The script of the letter would fit either of the two dates, better perhaps the latter." Goitein, "Side Lights on Jewish Education," p. 88 (doc. 3).

Statement concerning contributions to a public appeal in Minyat Zifta, a small town in the Delta, written in summer, 1266. A special drive was arranged in the town from September 1265 through April 1266 in support of the Jewish community of Cairo. Eighteen people contributed a total of 1,024 and three/fourths dirhams. The statement begins with the words, “We the congregation of Minyat Zafta Jawad, make the following declaration: When in the month of Av 1576 [1265], the decree of the King [that is, God] came upon us because of our many sins, necessitating a collection, we extracted strength from weakness and joined Israel in its tribulation, despite our inability to do so, our poverty and indigence.” (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:44, 137-8, 501, 531, 532, 549, 606) EMS

Letter on behalf of a Byzantine woman named Rachel, in Alexandria, to Eliyyahu the Judge, in Fustat. The main part of the letter (in Judaeo-Arabic) is scribed by the teacher and court clerk Yehuda b. Aharon Ibn al-ʿAmmānī; there is a postscript (in Hebrew) added by Shemuel (a.k.a. Kalev) b. Yaʿaqov. Dated: 19 Adar 1538 Seleucid, which is 1227 CE. The letter concerns Rachel's husband, Yosef of Barcelona, who is about to marry a local woman, leaving their children orphans in their lifetimes (and "pieces of meat"). Eliyyahu is asked to relay her case to the Nagid Avraham Maimonides (1205–37), to intervene and prevent Yosef from doing this to her. Yehuda switches to writing in his own voice on verso, line 3. He sends various respectful greetings and adds that Rachel's eyes (or those of her mother?) have developed ophthalmia (ramad) from all her weeping. The postscript in the hand of (and signed by) the French rabbi Shemuel b. Yaʿaqov corroborates the story in the body of the letter and blames the husband's mother, who tempted him to do these bad things, and also "his wife, the snake, who married him against his will"—which makes it sound that Yosef has already married the local woman. Shemuel seems to conclude by saying that he has taken on the name "Kalev" (or vice versa?) on account of his illness, evidently an effort to change his fortune by changing his name. ASE

Letter of notification by a senior of the academy, probably Nahray b. Nissim, written by Yehuda b. Yosef ha-Kohen, saying that the Nasi (David b. Daniel) had temporarily withdrawn his ban of excommunication of Yosef b. Elazar, who against the orders of the government had made mention of the head of the Jewish community in public. Dated to the second half of the 11th century (between 1082 and 1092). (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, p.538, and from Goitein's index cards)

Colophon in a commentary to the book of Isaiah, mentioning that the book had formerly belonged to Yaʿaqov he-haver b. Ayyub and was purchased from him by Josiah he-haver b. Aharon ha-me'ulle b. Josiah, av of the court in Acre in the year 4791/1031. Later, presumably during the First Crusade, the book fell into Crusader hands and someone, holding the book upside down as if it was a Western book, wrote a short note in Latin identifying its contents: ‘[interpre]tacio esaya prophete’. During their conquest of the Holy Land, the Crusaders took not only prisoners for ransom but also Jewish books and scrolls. This leaf is presumably from one of the books that passed through Crusader hands but was eventually sold back to the Jewish community. (Information from CUDL)

Fragment of a letter from Shemuel Gaon b. Hofni to the community in Qayrawan. Around 1008. The writer assumes that the donations to the Babylon Yeshivas ended up in the Yeshiva of Pumbedita. The writer chooses Yosef b. Berekhya to be in charge of sending the money, after the passing of Ta’akov b. Nissim. He details Yosef’s virtues in his knowledge of the Torah, and his commentaries to the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, #54) VMR

Letter from Eliyyahu ha-Kohen b. Shelomo Gaon to the trustee of a Yeshiva in an unidentified place, approximately 1055.

Letter in the hand of Moses Maimonides containing instructions for a local judge on how to retrieve the assets of a murdered merchant who left his brothers as heirs. One of the brothers brought the letters of the local judge to Moses Maimonides. (Information from Goitein's indexcards)

Fragment of a letter from Nehemya ha-Kohen, the Pumbedita Gaon, to one of the heads of the Babylonian community in Fustat, probably 963. Mentions an internal disagreement among the members of the community in Fustat about the cantor (hazzan). The main part of the letter concerns the Gaon’s desire to renew the community’s support for the Yeshiva. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, #18) VMR