Geniza Lab

Letter in Judeo-Arabic to Sitt al-Nas bint Moses b. Josiah from a female cousin (both are also in-laws), the daughter of Joseph b. Josiah, asking her to live with her after the death of her husband. On verso is an Arabic love poem (in a different hand). (Information from CUDL and Cecilia Palombo)

Legal deed. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Location: Fustat. Dated: Av 1413 Seleucid, which is July/August 1102 CE. The blind teacher Abū Saʿīd Ḥalfon b. Mevorakh sells to Turfa, the daughter of the late Ṭayyib al-ʿIblānī, half of a house in the Ḥarrānī street in Qaṣr al-Shamʿ for 51 dinars. The money was offered to him by the daughter’s mother, who is described as being from Aden. (Information from Mediterranean Society, IV, p. 283, and from Goitein’s index card, where he adds: cf. Worman, JQR 18 (1905): 25–26.)

Letter from Barhun b. Yiṣḥaq ha-Tahirtī, in al-Mahdiyya, to a younger relative. Around 1050. Barhūn informs that a shipment of goods is on its way, mentions that a few relatives are in Sūsa, and shares his willingness to send his father's bones to Jerusalem (his father died in 1049). (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 3, pp. 302-303, #383). VMR

Letter from a brother in Byzantium to his sister in Fustat.

Letter from Manṣūr b. Sālim, in Alexandria, to his son Abū Najm, who has gone on an adventurous journey or had run away to the army. The father mentions that he has sent to his son twenty letters and then twenty more, but the son never replied. The father states ‘I have never seen a character or religion like yours and never heard of the like’ and closes his letter with an exhortation ‘return to God and bring your mind back to yourself.' Abū Najm's mother perishes on account of his actions, and her vision is fading (alternate readings are possible, but "inḍarra baṣaruhā" seems likely as inḍarra derives from the same root as ḍarīr/maḍrūr, both meaning "blind"). Several other letters by the same man are known, all of them either addressed to Manṣūr's contacts in Fustat, asking them to help him find his son, or directly to his son (like this one). See tag. (Information from CUDL and Mediterranean Society, II, p. 379; V, p. 189.)

Letter, possibly a draft. In Arabic script. Fragment (bottom part only). The sender may be writing from Qūṣ (l. 3). The letter contains many greetings, including to the sender's mother and father and siblings.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Possibly in the hand of the court clerk Yosef b. Shemuel b. Seʿadya. The letter opens with condolences for the addressee's loss. Then the sender goes into his own problems: his son Abū Manṣūr does not pay attention to what he says nor accept advice from him. The son has married, or plans to marry, a bad woman. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, p. 122.) On verso there are accounts in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals. OZ. ASE.

Letter from Iṣḥaq b. Eli al-Majānī (al-Mahdiya?) to his son Wāfī (Fustat?), probably spring 1059. Badly preserved. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, p. 114.)

A mother buys her little son the privilege of reading the book of Esther in public, Damira in the Nile Delta, February/March 1244.