Geniza Lab

Bifolium filled with Judaeo-Arabic poetry. There is some earlier text from Psalms.

Informal note in Arabic script. (Addressed to a dignitary according to the Baker/Polliack catalog, but this does not seem to be founded.) "By God, man, I heard..." (billāh yā sīdī balaghanī...). The margins and the remaining three pages of the bifolio are filled with Judaeo-Arabic poetry.

Recto: Literary text in Arabic script. Historical or philosophical. Containing various questions; the first is attributed to Amīr al-Mu'minīn and mentions Muʿāwiya. Verso: Judaeo-Arabic poetry. Information from FGP.

Right column: Judaeo-Arabic love poetry. A blazon of the beloved, mentioning, among many other things, his "gaze of Babylonian enchantment." Left column: Written in larger letters but probably the same hand. At first glance it reads like a draft of the opening of a standard Judaeo-Arabic letter. But it is heavier on the lovesickness than usual, and this is poetry, not prose, which is given away by the rhyme and the long vowels of qalaqī and taḥtariqī. Further, the speaker is not addressing the recipient but rather the bearer (not necessarily human) of the love letter: "Deliver my letter to my master and in{f}orm him that great is my longing and distress. / I am deprived of all joys and pleasures of the world because of his absence, my heart blazes in the fire." ASE

Poem addressing the soul (yā nafs). In Judaeo-Arabic.

Love and/or wine poetry in Judaeo-Arabic. The layout deceptively resembles a letter.

Two unrelated Arabic-script documents glued together for the sake of reuse. Upper document: Legal document. Parties mentioned include Abū l-Faḍāʾil Nāṣir b. Karam b. Ṣadaqa and Abū Muḥammad Qāsim b. ʿAlī(?). Possibly mentioning a marriage, an adolescent boy, and a house - but needs examination. One witness signature is preserved (with a date that is difficult to read). Lower document: State document. Only the first few words are preserved from ~12 lines. The Judaeo-Arabic text on top of the state document is mixture of love poetry and humorous anecdote. On verso there is the continuation of the same text, but mostly Hebrew poetry.

Mysterious document. Late. In Judaeo-Arabic. There are two lines of Judaeo-Arabic poetry about "ahl al-hawā." There follows the Hebrew alphabet. There follow three lists of different types of textile (kamkhā, misḥ, and mukhmal) in different colors.

Arabic poem, transcribed into Hebrew script. At least some of the originally Islamic elements were kept ("fa-wa-lladhī anzala furqānahu ʿalā l-nabiyyi l-muṣṭafā l-muntajab"). There are two bifolia here, so 8 pages. The order is somewhat difficult to reconstruct, but it appears to narrate the love between a woman named Jamal(?) and a man named Ghamr(?) and the poetic letters they exchange. Ghamr dies, and she elegizes him, and a man named Qutayba then starts to court her. Al-Ḥajjāj (the king?) appears as well. There are several joins (see T-S Ar.37.15, T-S AS 161.95, and FGP Joins Suggestions). Merits further examination.

Poem(s) in Judaeo-Arabic containing advice for the lovesick, written as a faux medical prescription. In the hand of Nāṣir al-Adīb al-ʿIbrī. The recto contains a marriage contract dated 1298 CE. Nāṣir made a pair of bifolios by making a horizontal cut across the ketubba and then placing a vertical crease in each of the resulting halves. Probably the upper bifolio nested inside of the lower bifolio, as the lower bifolio contains both the beginning and the end of the text. (Information in part from Cecilia Palombo and Goitein's attached notes.) ASE

Pious composition in Judaeo-Arabic, possibly poetry (fragmentary and hard to tell if there is a rhyme).

Judaeo-Arabic poetry. The first is a version of "يأيها المعشوقُ بالله مَن" by Tamīm al-Fāṭimī (d. 985) (compare https://www.aldiwan.net/poem50895.html).

Judaeo-Arabic poetry.

One side: Judaeo-Arabic poetry on ʿishq al-maghānī (see T-S Misc.25.44). The other side: Instructions for the reading of the Shema before sleep.

Decree, probably. Only a few enormous words are preserved, including ʿalayhi. Reused for poetry in Judaeo-Arabic.

Recto: Possibly the end of a letter in Judaeo-Arabic, with a closing line in Arabic. There is also more text at 90 degrees. Verso: Poetic retelling of the story of Moses in Judaeo-Arabic.