Geniza Lab

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Probably a Maghribī business letter of the 11th century. Fragment (lower half of recto). Mentions the qāḍī Ibn al-[...] and someone called al-ḥāfiẓ. The sender asks the addressee to send a letter on his behalf thanking Manṣūr b. ʿAṭiyya and his father. He asks to be sent the 'miḥbas' (either a collar necklace or a cotton textile, according to the Diem-Radenberg dictionary) so that he can do something with it to keep it from going bad. He reports that many ships have arrived from Sicily. The sender knows that al-Shaykh al-Muwaffaq is saying about him "what I heard from/about him in Alexandria." The continuation in the margin is too damaged to read. AA. ASE.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Fragment. Contains mostly blessings for family members. The margin of recto contains some business instructions ("do not sell it for that price [or for] less than 3 dinars, since there is demand for it here from me"). The sender asks for the news from Sicily. Mentions people such as "his brother Barakāt Ibn al-Maqdisī"; ʿEli; Menashshe the cantor; and Efrayim. AA. ASE.

Small and much damaged fragment from a letter, probably relating to business. A reference is made to the Sicilian.

Legal testimony. In Judaeo-Arabic. Location: Mazara, Sicily. Dated: Sunday, 10 Sivan 4898 AM, which is 1138 CE. Signed: Yosef Shemuel ha-Sofer and Moshe b. Yaʿbeṣ(?). Seʿadya b. Mevorakh Jazā'irī appeared before the court bearing a power of attorney from Berakha b. Yosef Ibn al-Sartī(?). The power of attorney may have guaranteed the goods (ʿilab?) of Ḥayyim b. Reuven for 40 rubāʿīs. Someone's daughter is mentioned. The document is long and very well-preserved, and there is a large bibliography on FGP.

A letter from a man from Palermo in which he described the hardship of the Jews in Sicily during civil war and invasion of foreign armies. The letter addressed to a Jewish notable. Scheiber and Z. Malachi, who were first to publish this letter, suggested it was sent to Spain to Hasdai Ibn Shiprut, and dated it accordingly to the 10th century. This assumption is based on the reconstruction of the opening lines which are very damaged, and the name of Hasdai is not mentioned at all in the letter. The historical event fits well with the 1030's-40's. (Data from FGP)

Letter written by Yefet b. Menashshe, mostly dealing with general issues. A trip to Sicily is mentioned.

Possibly a certificate of conversion to Islam. In Arabic script. May be part of a will (says "bi-amri hādhihi l-waṣiyya" in the last preserved line). It is for a Sicilian named ʿUthmān b. ʿUmar al-Ṣiqillī/al-Siqillī al-Anṣārī (or al-Naṣārī?). Lines 6–15 consist of his profession of faith in the tenets of Islam. Much of the scholarship on legal certificates of conversion to Islam has focused on formularies rather than actual documents. E.g., see Linda Jones, "Notarial Forms for the Conversion of Non-Muslims to Islam, by Ibn al-ʿAttār (d. 399/1008)," in Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age (ed. Nimrod Hurvitz), University of California Press 2020. This document differs substantially from the formularies which have been published so far and merits further examination. The same ʿUthmān b. ʿUmar al-Ṣiqillī appears in T-S AS 177.607. ASE

Recto: Long query addressed in 1058 to the Gaon of Jerusalem by Eli b. Amram, the head of the Palestinians in Fustat. (Or rather, this may be the partnership contract that is the subject of the legal queries/responsa edited in Gil, Palestine #395, #396. Another copy of the same contract is T-S 20.79.) The note describes a legal matter concerning a Jewish Egyptian merchant who entrusted a business friend returning to his native Sicily with a large shipment of goods, including spices and drugs. The agent died while at sea, and the shipment ended up in Tripoli (Libya?) instead of Sicily. The Jewish authorities in Tripoli seized the goods in order to protect the rights of the deceased agent’s widow and daughter. The Egyptian merchant wanted his goods returned to his possession, but the authorities in Tripoli refused unless he pursued a full-fledged lawsuit against the representatives of the heirs in Sicily. The case went to the rabbinical court in Cairo and then the high court in Jerusalem. Verso: Dirge. (Information from S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:236, 395-5, 574, 613; CUDL; EMS; and Moshe Yagur, who also identified the join.