Geniza Lab

Maqāma-like work in rhymed Hebrew prose by a certain Shelomo b. Yehuda (not the 11th-century gaʾon, as this fragment is probably 12th–13th century), describing how his father Yehuda migrated from Spain to Egypt to Yemen, married a woman in Yemen, and returned to Egypt, where Shelomo was born. But then the devil led the father astray to take a second wife, who gave birth to a son named Evyatar and two daughters "of different religions"(?!). One of the girls died; Shelomo accuses his brother Evyatar of trying to sleep with the remaining sister; both Evyatar and the remaining sister died; and now Shelomo is writing this hymn of gratitude on account of how God liberated him from his wicked half-siblings. Recto is written over jottings in Arabic script, mainly formulae. (Information in part from CUDL.)

Summary of the extraction and medicinal uses of myrrh gum (from "a type of tree in Yemen"). In Judaeo-Arabic.

Recto: Legal document dated 1089–1188 CE, describing a son whose father, before traveling to Yemen, had given him, as ẓedaqa, two houses. The father then gives this on his death-bed to his wife (the son's mother) and declares that everything in and outside the house either belongs to or is given to her. He frees her from all oaths. (Information from Goitein's index card). VMR