Geniza Lab

Business accounts. Notes of receipts etc. Seven instructions to a (Goitein: "?") to meet with different persons and to arrange matter with them. (Information from Goitein's index card). VMR

Enormous letter from Yoel ha-Melammed to Avraham the pious and to his brother Yosef, containing a request for help. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter requesting (probably financial) help from someone addressed as ‘my lord': the writer asks for something to be sent to him through his sister's husband. He complains that his expenditure is increasing and makes reference to ‘more than an Egyptian dinar'. A number of names and titles are given, including ‘the son of the Ga'on זצ״ל', Shemuel ha-Kohen and Nataniel he-haver. (Information from the Cambridge Genizah Research Unit via FGP).

Letter asking for charity in which the writer describes how “exacting” the upcoming holiday of Passover is in terms of expenses, noting that his "prayer shawl" for Sabbath is torn and although it’s patched, he’s embarrassed to been seen it. He also mentions the purchase (not yet carried out) of new bowls and cups for Passover. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society 4:156, 397, 444) EMS Verso: Jottings in Hebrew and Arabic script. (Information from CUDL)

Petition from Yusuf requesting help from the addressee, Natan, for a woman who has weak vision and a blind daughter. The sender also enquires after another woman.

Petition from Yaʿaqov b. Aharon, a man of some learning. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Unknown. The sender petitions the addressee for financial help and for an appeal through the addressee to the council of elders to arrange a public collection for him. He describes himself as 'naked and bare with nothing upon me and nothing beneath' and having three children and a wife. In the margin the sender offers to copy out for the recipient the 'prayer for rain,' a long and extremely difficult liturgy (recited on the concluding holiday of the Feast of the Tabernacles) which Yaʿaqov obviously knew by heart. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, pp. 90, 531.) Possibly in the hand of the clerk of Yehoshua Maimonides (d.1355).

Letter (petition) addressed to a certain notable named Perhaya. AA

Communal petition. Petition from a man claiming to be without shelter and saying he was living in a donkey's stable without anything to eat. He asks the recipient to extricate from another man the 13 5/8 dinars he owes him and apologizes for being unable to attend public prayer service because of his present state. "For one month, thirty days, I have been living in a donkey's stable, alone, starving, and ill; most of the time I do not eat or drink. Meat, fish, or rich food do not come into my mouth. My strength fails because of my sinfullness" (Mediterranean Society, V, pp. 90, 91).

Account of burial expenses of a dead man who belonged to the lower middle class. The account lists the expenses in three coins: dinars, qirats and dirhams. Besides a tunic, two robes and a cloak, the dead man got a scarf, which also covered a large part of the body. (Information from Mediterranean Society, IV, p. 160)

Accounts of Abu Zikri Tabib in the hand of Nahray b. Nissim (Goitein) or Yehuda b. Saadya (Gil). A leaf folded to four pages, of which the last one is blank. All three pages are crossed out. Dated 1065 (Gil). (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, p. 901, and Goitein's index cards)

Petition to Avraham al-Nafis from Bu al-Faraj. (F. Niessen and A. Shivtiel, ed., Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 602) EMS