Geniza Lab

Letter of recommendation from the office of Yehoshua Maimonides, to be read in the synagogue, on behalf of a pregnant woman who has no money to support her sick son. ASE. Mentioned in Goitein, "The Twilight of the House of Maimonides," Tarbiz 54 (1984), 67–104.

Letter from the Gaon Shelomo b. Yehuda, in Ramle, to his son Abū Isḥāq Avraham, in Tyre or Damascus (Shelomo does not know which, so he arranges for the letter to reach Avraham in either case). In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: June 27, 1033 CE, based on Gil's assessment. Shelomo had traveled from Jerusalem to Ramle to see his daughter, because she had given birth prematurely to a boy at 7 months. It seemed at first that the newborn would survive (kānat ʿalāmatuhu khayr), but he died soon afterward (r4–6). Shelomo's daughter remains ill with an intermittent fever (r19, where the word "nawba" is probably to be understood in its technical sense of "paroxysm"), however it seems not dangeorusly ill, since Shelomo plans to return to Jerusalem in two days. Shelomo had sent two previous letters with the same content: he had sent one copy to Tyre, to be forwarded to Damascus, and he had given the other copy to a Damascene Muslim in Abu Musa's caravanserai in Ramleh, who was to pass it on to R. Moshe al-Ḥaver (r6–10). Information in part from Goitein's note card and in part from Gil ASE