Geniza Lab

Letter from the sister of Yeshuʿa b. Ismāʿīl al-Makhmūrī, in Tripoli, Libya, to her brother Yeshuʿa b. Ismāʿīl al-Makhmūrī. In the handwriting of ʿAllūsh the shammash. Dating: ca. 1065. While Yeshuʿa is dealing with the import and export of goods, his sister asks for help because she is in a very bad situation. T-S 10J19.20 is another version of the same letter (differences are noted in curly brackets in this partial translation). "I have been waiting all year for a letter from you to learn your news. The fuyūj came, and I did not see a letter. {This increased the preoccupation of my heart.} I went out to inquire about your news, and they told me you were ill (ḍaʿīf). I went out of my mind. {I fasted and wept and did not change my clothing or enter the bath, neither I nor your sister.} I vowed not to eat during the day, not to change my clothing, and not to enter the bath, neither I nor my daughter, until your letter arrived with your news. The ships arrived, and I went down, with my hand on my heart, to hear your news. The men came down and told us that you were well. I thanked God who made the end good." Goitein, and later Krakowski, used this letter to illustrate the intense affective bonds between brother and sister, as well as the notion of fasting as an intercession for a loved one who is sick (Goitein, Med Soc V, p. 97). Yet it is also the case that their relationship has lapsed—the brother has not contacted the sister in a year, not even sending greetings in his letter to Tammām ("my heart was wounded by this"). In the meantime, she has fallen into terrible financial difficulties. Her vows of self-negation and insistent repetition of "I have nobody except God and you" are also a demonstration of how much the sister has suffered from the brother's behavior, how much she thinks about him despite his neglect, and an attempt to elicit a response from him at last. Regarding the specifics of her financial difficulties, see Krakowski, Coming of Age, p. 150, where the relevant passage is translated: "My brother, I have become embroiled in a quagmire from which I do not think we can be freed—I and a young orphan girl (i.e., her daughter). What occurred was that my son-in-law (i.e., the girl’s fiancé) wintered in Salerno and returned only with the Egyptian ships; then he said to me, “I will take the girl.” I said to him, “What are you thinking? As I was this year, I have nothing.” Then people advised me that I should borrow and incur debt (i.e., for a lavish dowry) and give her to him, because the Rūm (i.e., Normans) have burnt the world. Now . . . if free persons could be sold for dirhams, I would be the first to be sold, for I cannot describe my predicament to you . . . (I swear) by these lines that when Passover came I had not even a farthing’s worth of chard, nor even a dirham; instead I cut a nettle from the ruins and cooked it. . . . My brother, help me with some portion of this debt engulfing me—do not abandon me and do not forsake me." Yeshuʿa b. Ismāʿīl al-Makhmūrī, incidentally, was prone to illness: see also T-S 16.163 and T-S Misc.25.124 (as noted by Krakowski), and T-S 12.389 and BL OR 5542.20. (Information largely from Goitein, Gil, and Krakowski.) VMR. ASE.

Letter from a husband to his wife after she bore him a daughter while he temporarily left her, waiting until her father gave the couple the twenty dinars he had promised them. The sender expresses his joy and his gratitude to God for the safe delivery by his wife. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, pp. 218-219 and partial translation in Mediterranean Society, III, p. 228)

Letter of condolence from David b. Daniel to Abu'l Muna.

Letter draft. In Hebrew. Abandoned after the introduction. Addressed to Aharon (identified by Scheiber as Aharon b. Yeshuʿa Ibn al-ʿAmmānī) and conveying blessings to his father and his son. Congratulations on his new book (sefer/dīwān) of poems. (Information from Scheiber and Goitein's index card) VMR

Letter in which the writer asks his uncle to send a certain document. Refers to different business activities including trade in wheat. (Information from Goitein's index cards and CUDL)

Letter from Miryam to her brother, Moses Maimonides (1170-1204). Miryam asks her brother to enquire after the whereabouts of her son and to induce him to contact her, last quarter of the 12th century.

Letter from Shelomo b. Eliyyahu to his father-in-law Abū l-Faraj. The addressee's daughter Sitt Ghazāl is well. Shelomo writes that when two letters went unanswered, he immediately assumed that Abū l-Faraj was ill. (There is probably more to this than mere preoccupation: see the discussion of Abū l-Faraj's deliberate cutting-off of correspondence with Shelomo in Krakowski, Coming of Age.)

Letter conveying good wishes for Purim and Passover. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 5:351, 603; and Goitein's index cards) VMR

Verso: Autograph letter from Moshe Maimonides to al-Shaykh al-Wathīq, i.e. Avraham b. Yaḥyā al-Najib, the tenant of a parcel of land near Dammūh belonging to the qodesh. Regarding both business and personal matters. Dating: ca. 1180 CE. The letter is written in a familiar style which indicates a close relationship between the two. Apparently, al-Wathīq, being on the spot, had to take care of the synagogue (removal of garbage and repairs are mentioned here), and of some other piece of land, apparently also adjacent to the synagogue. That land is farmed by a Muslim, whom Maimonides trusts. In his role of physician, Maimonides had apparently advised al-Wathīq to drink milk regularly, for which the latter rented a cow; he now advises him to give the cow up, since two cups a day are enough. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 321, #76.)

Fragment of a lovely family letter sent from Alexandria by Abu Sa'id al-Bazzaz to his brother, Abu al-Barakat b. Yefet, at the shop of Abu al-Fakhr b. al-Mashati in the perfume sellers' market (Suq al-'Attarin), He expresses deep mourning over the death of Abu Nasr and his sister Zayn. (Information from Goitein's index cards)

Letter written by a man on behalf of his wife to her brother, inviting him to come out to the countryside for a full month to find relief from his stress and also to bring his boys with him, who would be better off in the countryside than in bible school. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, p. 532)

Letter from Natan b. Yehuda of Alexandria to Sasson b. Meshullam, a judge of Cairo. The letter contains many personal matters that reflect the milieu of the political elite in Alexandria and Cairo. The letter reveals important details on the life of Avraham b. Yaʿaqov Darʿī. On al-Darʿī's deathbed, he accused the writer of having sent a messenger to intercept a medical prescription and swap it with a counterfeit prescription, hence murdering him. Apparently, the person who served as the representative of Mevorakh b. Saadya (referred to in the letter as 'the rayyis Abū l-Faḍl) in Alexandria after the year 1094 died in the end of the first decade of the twelfth century due to a sudden disease. The letter quotes a lament of Shemuel ha-Nagid. (Information from Frenkel)

Letter from a man to his sister Umm Bū l-ʿAlāʾ. Sent care of Eliyyahu the Judge. In the hand of a scribe. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Early 13th century. The letter contains an extremely vivid account of the imprisonment and tortures to which he and Abū Saʿd were subjected. (Information in part from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 609; III, pp. 43, 432). Discussed in Esther-Miriam Wagner, "‘Only death remains for him’, T-S 10J7.4" (Fragment of the Month, May 2011). Same scribe as ENA NS 48.26 (likewise an account of torture). ASE.

Letter of the Berekhya brothers to Ibn 'Awkal concerning loss of friendship between them and concerning the inheritance of an emancipated slave.

Letter dated 25 Tishrei 1212 (4973) from Yehuda b. al-Ammani, a cantor, schoolmaster, and clerk in Alexandria, to Abu l-Majd Meir b. Yakhin, a senior colleague in Fustat. Recapitulating previous communication between the two (cf. T-S 13J21.25 written four years earlier), Yehuda notes with frustration that the addressee asked him to send dirges for the deceased, and so he sent him about thirty, and the addressee had replied that he had them all with the exception of two or three. Yehuda advises the addressee to advise him of the first lines of the poems so that there would not be unnecessary duplication (Med Soc V:179, 556.) Almost all of the letter deals with this topic and with the vicissitudes of mail delivery, since many letters both from Yehuda and from Abu l-Majd's brother Abu l-Najm Hilal were either delayed or never arrived at all. Starting on line 16 of verso, Yehuda writes, "On the night that I wrote this letter, seven great and learned rabbis arrived, and behind them 100 people—men, women, and children—asking for bread. This is apart from the 41(?) beggars we already have in the city [Alexandria], and most of the congregation has been exhausted by poverty." Along with other family news, Yehuda writes, "Your brother Sa'id quarreled with his wife and traveled, and no one knows where he traveled. A roof fell on his wife, but she was saved from death." EMS. ASE.

Letter from the physician Yosef, in Alexandria, to the physician Abū l-Faraj b. Abū l-Barakāt (c/o Abū l-Faraj al-Sharābī), in al-Sūq al-Kabir, Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic, with the address in both Hebrew script and Arabic script. Dating: 13th century, according to Goitein. The sender calls himself the son of the addressee, but this is not literal. Goitein surmised that the sender and the addressee were paternal cousins and that the sender was married to the addressee's sister (thus his own paternal cousin)—but Goitein did not explain his reasoning. The subjects discussed include: (1) obtaining books from the addressee's warehouse; (2) the capitation tax; (3) an incident translated by Moshe Yagur as follows: "As for what happened on the Day of ʿArava [last day of the Feast of Tabernacles]: Yaʿqūb b. al-Muʿalim argued with his crossed-eyed son and beat him in the middle of the market with his shoe. And so the boy cried out [in the name of] Islam, and the Muslims gathered in his support (wa-ʾinna al-muslimīn taʿaṣṣabū maʿahu), and they took him [the father] and brought him before the governor. He [probably the boy] said to them, “The punishments of Islam (ḥadd) are not applicable, since I am not mature yet.” The qāḍī Ibn Ghāriḍ deliberated [the matter] and ratified his conversion to Islam (rajaʿa jaddada ʿalayhi al-islām). And there were many debates concerning this, [which] will be too long to elaborate"; (4) lancets (ruwayshāt) for bloodletting that the addressee promised to send; (5) a report that friends and family speak well of the addressee (he had asked to be told what people were saying behind his back); (6) a bakers' strike translated by Goitein as follows: "On the second day of the Sukkot feast there were great disturbances in Alexandria because of the bread, which could not be found all over the city, until God brought relief by the end of the day; the governor (al-amīr) and the superintendent of the markets (al-muḥtasib) rode out and threatened to burn down [the houses of] the bakers because of the bread, after they had inquired with the people at one oven in the east and one in the west. At the end there remained fifty hundred weights of bread in the ovens that night. So do not worry"; (7) the sender's brother has been sending letters asking everyone he knows to pray for him (likely because he is about to depart on a journey). (Information from Goitein's index cards, Med Soc IV, p. 238, and Yagur, "Several Documents from the Cairo Geniza Concerning Conversion to Islam" (2020).)

Letter from Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi, in Qalyub, to family members in Fustat. He inquires briefly about commercial dealings before insisting that there is no need for his mother to trouble herself with coming to visit. If she wishes to give him the fabric, they can simply send it with Safi, and if she wishes to tell him in person about the illness of his sister, then she should simply write the news in a letter: “There is no shame in that; people are accustomed to writing the secrets of people in letters and sending them.” He mentions that the Amir Sajja‘a al-Din has arrived in Qalyub and is asking about Moshe’s brother Abu l-Ḥasan. In a postscript, he apologizes for the many errors. ASE.

Letter from Ya'qub to his mother (שקר בנת מבחל?) in Cairo, mainly assuring her that everyone is doing well. Isḥāq recently arrived from the writer's brother, and he and Furayj are doing well. Shemuel the son of the merchant and the writer's wife have also arrived. He asks his mother to assure Shemuel's wife that Shemuel is doing well, and Shemuel's wife's sister (Marḥaba or Muraḥḥaba) that her husband Faraj Allāh is doing well. He says to show this letter to Hārūn the teacher. The bottom of recto and the top of verso are torn off. He sends regards to his cousin (bint khālatī). The name ʿAfifa is written a few lines below the end of the letter. ASE.

Letter from an unidentified writer to Eliyyahu the Judge. In Judaeo-Arabic. The writer conveys condolences for a death in the family of Eliyyahu (r6–9). He says that the blow is even harder to bear than his own trials with the sick woman (al-ṣaghīra) in his household. The rest of the letter is about this woman. (Motzkin identifies her with Eliyyahu's daughter-in-law Sitt Ghazāl, but he does not explain why.) The writer asks Eliyyahu to obtain a medical consultation with the Rayyis (Avraham Maimonides?) concerning the patient. The writer provides a detailed, albeit cryptic, account of her problems (r15–v1). First she withdrew from mingling with people (inʿazalat ʿan al-khalṭa—unless this refers to a khilṭ/humor) and remained either silent (sākita) or with some altered mental status (sābita). Those around her attributed this to the wakham (bad air/epidemic) and to her pregnancy. But in the fifth month of her pregnancy, she was afflicted with "dullness of mind (balādat khāṭir), irritability (ḍajar), confusion (taḥayyur), and disorientation (taghayyub)." The family members refrained from giving her any medicine to drink on account of the pregnancy. Finally, God had mercy and she gave birth. (Motzkin understood this as a miscarriage, but the letter does not. She could just as well have carried the fetus to term and given birth to a live child.) But, the writer continues, her situation is still unstable, and they anxiously await Eliyyahu's response with the Rayyis's advice. ASE

Family letter from a brother to his sister trying to dissuade her from marrying a certain man from Syria whom he describes as being 'not a Jew, nor a Christian, nor a Muslim,' and threatening to cut off all relations with his sister and her family if the marriage goes through. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, pp. 334, 548)