Geniza Lab

Order or report in multiple hands to do with 131 dīnārs paid to the treasury (bayt al-māl). Person mentioned is Saʿd al-Mulk Ilyās, possibly a tax collector, asking for the issuing of a decree (al-amr al-ʿalī). Check for joins.

Petition submitted to the Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir upon his accession in 1036 CE. Requesting that he confirm the appointment of Yosef ha-Kohen, a judge of Alexandria. Goitein writes that the script and style are identical with Halper 354. (Information from Gil, Goitein, and Rustow, Heresy, p. 94 n. 58.) Alternate possibility (from DIMME database): Arabic-script draft of a testimony to be submitted to the government, written by Efrayim b. Shemarya in 1016 CE. On verso there is a legal deed in the hand of Efrayim b. Shemarya in which two partners release Yeshuʿa b. Seʿadel from all claims.

Legal document in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Dating: 1126–29 CE. Containing a statement about Salāma and Ibn Siman Ṭov, Jewish aides/accomplices to the rapacious Coptic finance minister known as "the monk" (al-rāhib), Abū Najāḥ ibn Qannāʾ. The background is summarized by Mark Cohen as follows: "In October 1125, the vizier al-Maʾmun, implicated in a plot against the caliph al-Āmir, was deposed and imprisoned along with five brothers, and later executed (in 1128). The caliph, then twenty-nine years old and tired of being cloistered in the shadows of highhanded dictators, attempted after 1125 to rule by himself. Unfortunately, however, he entrusted financial affairs to a rapacious Coptic bureaucrat, Abū Najāḥ ibn Qannāʾ, known as "the Monk" (al-rāhib), who, from the autumn of 1126 until his execution in 1129, managed to terrorize all segments of the populace, including the Jews, with his promiscuous confiscations and arrogant demeanor" (Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, p. 284). This document consists of two manuscripts; the right half is T-S NS J272 and the left half is T-S NS 12.91 (the transcription here includes both documents beginning at line 16). (Information from Goitein's index cards; Mediterranean Society, II, p. 281; and Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, pp. 284–85.)

Recto: Letter/petition to Avraham b. Yaʿaqov ha-Ḥazzan. In Judaeo-Arabic. This is either intended for the eyes of Mevorakh or simply mentions previous petitions submitted to Mevorakh. It is a complaint about the excesses of Shela the Judge and his brothers and sons, who have seized power over the community in Alexandria by "violence and lack of government control(?)" and are behaving in ways unbecoming of judges. (See Mark Cohen, Jewish Self-government in Medieval Egypt, Princeton University Press, 1980, 243.) Join: Oded Zinger. EMS. ASE. Verso: Draft of a court record after the death of the well-known ʿEli ha-Kohen ha-Parnas (b. Ḥayyim/Yaḥyā), confirming that his nephew has received the 20 dinars willed to him. Join: Oded Zinger. ASE

Letter from an unnamed Fatimid official in Alexandria to Najīb al-Dawla. Dating: second half of the eleventh century. 36 lines preserved, written in an elegant chancery hand with very wide line-spacing. Najīb al-Dawla is a higher-level official than the author of the letter, but the author also has quite a bit of command and responsibility, and the ability to issue to levy and cancel taxes and to issue decrees on the spot in a region of the delta, so perhaps he is a local governor — although he refers to a different ʿāmil in his letter. The author writes to report to Najīb al-Dawla on his activities in the delta and in a village called Tarūja, which is southeast of Alexandria. Topics, in order of appearance: 1. Soldiers who have taken an oath of loyalty to the Fatimid dynasty. 2. The author's postponement of one leg of his journey, to Tarūja, until the coming Thursday, which will cut short his time with the governor. 3. A state occasion attended by all the soldiers, leaders and elders of the city (unclear which city), as well as its governor and its postmaster, on which occasion a certain adopted son of the Sharīf repeated an admonishment to the leaders of said city and to the Banū Qurra. 4. The arrival of the addressee, Najīb al-Dawla, and his touring with the addressee around the rest of the districts to collect taxes. 5. The soldiers’ protests about staying in the garrison, which furnish the author with an excuse for failing to fulfill his other duties, perhaps collecting taxes. 6. The author's success in eliminating crime in a certain district thanks to a tax-farm of 400 dinars that paid for policing. The elimination of crime allowed him to reward the district by lifting taxes on popular foods (al-maṭāʿim al-ḥabība), provisions and necessities, a policy he announced by writing [decrees], reading them in the town and having them sent to the rest of the districts. 7. The delay of the endorsement of a certain memorandum concerning the writer. 8. The return of the author's son to him. 9. The author's wish to receive more official duties from Najīb al-Dawla, a request he expresses with what might be a raʾy clause (but there is a lacuna). 10. A visit that the author made to the aforementioned adopted son of the Sharīf, Abū Ṭālib al-Ḥusayn, at his estate (which is named, but there is a lacuna); there, he ran into Ḥusay[n] and Ḥasan b. Mahdī and […] b. Jābir the captain (khardar). The letter was cut up and turned into ten bifolios that were folded into a single quire; on this, the well-known late-eleventh-century Qaraite ʿAlī b. Sulaymān wrote extracts in Hebrew and Arabic script of Kitāb al-anwār wa-l-marākib by the tenth-century Iraqi Qaraite al-Qirqisānī. ʿAlī b. Sulaymān included two colophons with his name (fols. 5r and 17r), but neither is dated or mentions a place of writing. ʿAlī b. Sulaymān was active in Jerusalem ca. 436/1045, where he studied with some of the well-known Qaraites of the Dār al-ʿIlm, and then in Tinnīs ca. 1057 and Fustat ca. 1080, where he signed and dated colophons (see Borisov [1954]). He may have been active as late as 1103, according to a colophon with a problematic date of 415 (is this [1]415 Sel., or 1103? a hijrī dating would be too early). Assuming his floruit was 1045–1103, our letter would date to ca. 1050–1100; this also assumes, as was the usual practice, a relatively brief turnaround time between state-related documents being discarded and their being reused. Where and how did ʿAlī b. Sulaymān acquire the letter? Was he active in state circles in Egypt in the late eleventh century? He was close with Sahl b. al-Faḍl al-Tustarī, a muʿtazilī philosopher-theologian who was a government administrator in Jerusalem in the 1090s under the Seljuks; but the letter reflects an Egyptian Fatimid context, not a Syrian Seljuk one, so al-Tustarī is unlikely to be its author, unless he had an otherwise unattested appointment in Egypt before his appointment in Jerusalem. The FGP images are missing a folio between what it labels folios 14r and 15r. This would be folio 11 according to the pencilled numbers on the bottom of the recto pages of the manuscript, and it would have been part of a blank verso of the original letter. MR