Geniza Lab

Letter, fragment, 8 lines in a fainted script. Mentions a congregation (ijtimāʿ). Some lines read as "inna-nī law sirtu ʿalā".

Tax receipt, Fatimid.

Tax receipt from the archive of Abū l-Ḥasan b. Wahb.

Private accounts according to days (Monday and Friday) listing commodities with an assigned numerical value (quantity? price?). Some commodities include milk, almonds, chicken, meat, raisins, and herbs.

Ottoman-era accounts.

Ottoman-era accounts, might be Arabic but some words have Ottoman Turkish suffixes. Needs examination.

Magical document with a humanoid figure and Greek alphabets.

Fragment, fainted, and unreadable script. Needs further examination.

State document, extremely fragmentary, report or petition. Mentions 'al-majlis al-ʿālī' and 'imtathal ilaihi'.

Recto: Fragment of a state document, possibly a decree. 2 lines preserved. In Arabic script. Some phrases read as "yanālu aṣḥābuhu mimman yaḍumm... wa-akhdh...", "wa-l-muṭālaba bimā lam yajib min gh[...]." There are three interspersed lines of Arabic script between the two lines of the decree which also seem to be in a chancery hand, probably from later reuse. Letter in Judaeo-Arabic, in a Maghribī hand on verso.

Fragment (bottom) of a document, possibly a legal testimony. Two lines at the bottom of the document indicate witness signatures. The first one reads "shahida ʿAbd Allah".

Medical recipes: Judaeo-Arabic on one side, Arabic on the other.

Letter, in Arabic script. Begins with a basmala and ends with a ḥamdala. The contents of the letter are not immediately clear but the writer in l9 asks that he replace the addressee for a certain task "iʿlamanī bihā li-anuba ʿanka". Needs examination.

Report to an Ayyubid official mentioning al-Malik al-ʿĀdil and a deceased official named Shams al-Dīn. The Mainz shelfmark is how it's listed in FGP, but it's not actually in Mainz. The image in FGP is from a microfilm at the National Library of Israel; the original was at a paper museum in Mainz that has since closed, now presumed lost. Join: Marina Rustow.

Business letter in Arabic script. Dated: 1119 AH, which is 1708 CE. Concerning a property dispute in Damietta. On verso there is a seal as well as a ẓidduq ha-din in Hebrew. Information kindly provided by Jane Hathaway. Line 3 mentions "الامير(?) محمد اغا" and other Ottoman officials throughout, line 4 "waqf"?

Document in Arabic script. Wide space between the lines. Miniature طs above certain words (=ihmāl). May simply be pen trials. On verso there are seliḥot.

Arabic text, undeciphered. Line four includes the phrase من الامور وحكم الله(؟). Sharing a fragment with Hebrew poetry (arhāṭ) by (or dedicated to?) Abū Saʿd b. Yisra'el ha-Zaqen (al-Tustari?), copied by his student.

Court record in the hand of Efrayim b. Shemarya. A litigant named Moshe has claimed that his loan of 50.5 dinars to Ṣadaqa was guaranteed by Ḥesed ha-Zaqen al-Ṣayrafī (possibly Abu Naṣr al-Tustari?), and refuses to have a decision ratified in the Muslim courts. See Goitein's note card, Penn catalogue on FGP, and Bareket's edition for further information.

Draft of a deed of compensation in the hand of the court reporter Yefet b. David Shekhanya, around 1030. It was given to Efrayim b. Shemarya ha-Ḥaver, the head of the Jerusalem community in Fustat. (Information from Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, pp. 53-54). VMR

Testimony in Arabic script probably meant to accompany an investiture petition from the gaʾon Shelomo b. Yehuda to the newly appointed caliph al-Mustanṣir billāh, listing the prerogatives the gaʾon has enjoyed for the past eleven years of his tenure. If this interpretation is correct, the document dates to 1036 CE. Goitein writes that the script and style are identical with those of T-S NS 320.45, and also that Halper 354 "is the most important Geniza document found thus far illustrating the official position of the Jerusalem Gaonate within the Muslim state."