Geniza Lab

Letter from Yeshūʿa ha-Kohen b. Avraham ha-Galili, in Shubra Damsīs, to Efrayim b. Meshullam (judge, active 1142–54). Dated: 1142 CE (month of Av). The writer sends greetings in the name of his two sons. He encloses a letter from Rabbenu Zakkay for Efrayim, as well as another letter from R. Zakkay and a letter from himself to be delivered to the Nagid, whether by Efrayim himself or by the bearer of the present letter. The bearer is a worthy man and has with him a sick girl whom he "wishes to treat," and the bearer himself is also chronically ill and weak of sight. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:513; Norman Golb, “Topography of the Jews of Medieval Egypt,” JNES 33 (1974), 141. See also Goitein's index card) EMS. ASE.

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 in which a tax-farmer named Yehuda, who received one and a half dinars a month, is mentioned. Dated to the 12th century.

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.)

Petition from Hibatallāh b. Bū l-Faḍl Ibn al-Shofeṭ to Moshe Maimonides. Dating: ca. 1180 CE. The sender complains concerning a part of the revenue of the house of Ibn Pinḥas in Fustat, which had been allocated to him some time before. The petition is written in a very flowery and flattering style, in which besides biblical phrases there are also some more original figures of speech. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 325 #79)

Legal document. Acknowledgement of loan. Dating: February 1135, in (new) Cairo. Document recognizing a loan of 10 dinars from Yosef ha-Levi to Yefet b. Yaḥyā for the term of one year, to coincide exactly with the term of a partnership between them ("the beginning of Adar II", 1446). Per Maimonides, whenever one gives funds to another person to transact, half of the funds comprise a loan for which the active partner is fully responsible, even in the case of an unavoidable circumstance. The concurrent nature of the loan and the partnership to which the loan agreement alludes suggests the application of this principle, as does the fact that Yefet is responsible for the debt. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 211)

Legal document (written by Yosef b. Shemuel. AA) . Lease of an apartment of the Qodesh ca. 1194 and 1199. A deed of lease is concluded between the qodesh and a certain Abu'l-Surur. The deed is written in the name of the court, by a scribe whose handwriting we know from other documents of the qodesh of this period. It is validated by Shemuel b. Saadya. Abu'l-Surur was apparently in the perfume business, and the representatives of the qodesh wished to prevent the qa'a rented by him from being used for anything connected with his occupation. He is therefore absolutely forbidden to arrange for any reservoir of rose water, or to make any breach in the wall, or to use arsenic or any other drugs whose production entails the use of fire. The verso of the document, written five years later by Shemuel b. Saadya, lists a series of payments collected by him from the same Abu'l-Surur, on account of another period of lease during which he occupied the same qa'a. Some of the payments are made indirectly through a third party. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 372 #98)

Legal agreement between spouses on the question of a second wife. Written in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi. Location: Fustat. Dating: 1130–38 CE.

Lease of land belonging to the Qodesh, ca. 1180. Written on the surviving upper part of a leaf, this is a draft of a deed leasing a parcel of land belonging to the qodesh to Avraham ha-Levi (B. Yahya) al-Najib (al-Watiq). The parcel (saha) is in Dammuh, near the synagogue. It had been dedicated to Yesha'yahu ha-Levi b. Misha'el (Maimonides' brother-in-law) who, in a previous document, was appointed general administrator of the qodesh. The lessee is granted the right to build on the land and also to cultivate it and operate the saqiya on it. The lease is for a period of 30 years, for 180 dirhams, i.e. six dirhams a year; it is apparently a small parcel. In 30 years, it will revert to the qodesh. The purpose of the deal, from the point of view of the qodesh, might have been the revival of the Dammuh area, to prevent it from falling into decay. This was a practice known in Egypt during many centuries, taken over by the Muslim administration from the Hellenistic-Roman-Byzantine emphyteusis, meaning lease for a symbolic price, and sometimes exeption from taxes, in order to revitalize abandoned land. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 319 #75)

Letter from Natan Ha-Kohen b. Mevorakh in Ascalon, to Ulla Ha-Levi Ha-Parnas b. Yosef in Fustat, probably ca. 1110.

Letter from the Qaraite Jews of Ashqelon to the Qaraites and Rabbanites of Fustat. Dating: Summer 1100 CE. The letter deals with the ransoming of Qaraite captives from Jerusalem following the Crusader conquest of the city. (Qaraites represented a large percentage of the small number of Jews who still lived in Jerusalem after the Seljuk conquest[s] in the 1070s.) The letter also explains that the fortified city of Ashqelon had not yet fallen, but the residents are struggling to cope with an influx of refugees and the need to make large payments to the Crusaders to ransom back Jewish captives - men, women and children - as well as books and scrolls pillaged from the synagogues of the Holy Land. Despite the terrible circumstances, they take solace in the fact that that the Crusaders appeared not to have mistreated the women. The writers report that they had received the suftaja (bill of exchange), at least the second substantial donation from the Jews of Fustat to the campaign to redeem captives and books. This letter is a request for further donations. The community in Ashqelon had spent over 500 dinars; ransomed over 40 captives; continues to bear the high expenses of caring for the 20 redeemed captives who remain in Ashqelon; and is now in debt for more than 200 dinars. The writers also mention Jews who had escaped from Jerusalem on their own, and others who had been given safe-conduct with the wālī. Of the refugees who arrived in Ashkelon, many had died of the epidemic they encountered there: "The attacks of these illnesses (amrāḍ), the falling of that plague (wabā'), that pest (fanā'), that disaster (balā')" (recto, lines 17–19); later, describing how the refugees perished, "Some of them arrived here healthy, and the climate turned against them (ikhtalafa ʿalayim al-hawā'), and they arrived at the height of that plague (wa-waṣalū fī ʿunfuwān dhālik al-wabā'), and many of them died" (recto, lines 42–44); then, twice more, the writers emphasize their great expenses caring for those who have survived but are still sick, who need not only food and clothing but medicines and syrups (recto, lines 53–55 and right margin 19–20). There are notes by the writers and forwarders of the letter in the right margin on verso, including Yehayyahu ha-Kohen b. Maṣliaḥ, David b. Shelomo and Ḥanina b. Manṣūr b. ʿUbayd. See DK 242 + T-S AS 146.3 for a letter written one year earlier from the Rabbanites of Fustat to the Rabbanites of Ashqelon, also having to do with the campaign for the ransoming of captives. (Information CUDL and from Goldman, "Arabic-Speaking Jews of Crusader Syria" (PhD diss., 2018), 49–58. See also Goitein, Med Soc 5:537; Goitein, "New Sources on the Fate of the Jews during the Crusaders' Conquest of Jerusalem" (Heb.) Zion, 17 (1952), 136; Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, pp. 241-242; and Goitein's notes attached to Bodl. MS Heb d 11/7 (page 9f). ASE/MR

Legal document. Partnership agreement. Dated: Dhū l-Qaʿda 530 AH, which is August 1136 CE. A wine-making partnership, the amount of the partnership being 1,510 dinars. The manager, Abū l-Faraj Yeshuʿa b. Abū l-Ḥusayn Yefet b. Benaya, is to take a third of the profit. Two of the remaining three partners, Abū Saʿd Netanel al-Zajjāj and Ṣedaqa b. Bunān, contribute 400 and 100 dinars respectively; the name of the fourth partner and the amount of his contribution is not preserved. The verso seems to record the partnership receipts of 540 dinars. Yeshuʿa apparently violated a prohibited from trading or contracting with others outside the partnership for its duration, but the partners have stated that his violation need not be notarized by witnesses. Yeshuʿa is also the party under whose name the wine-producing enterprise has been registered with the tax-collecting authorities. Signed by Avraham b. Shemaʿya. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 204)

Trousseau list from the Egyptian town of al-Mahalla. Ca. 1155

Letter fragment (lower right corner) in Judaeo-Arabic, dated Nissan 14[26?] Seleucid = 1115 CE; the last two digits of the year are not completely clear. Very little of the subject matter is discernible. The first few lines seem to be formulaic praises about yearning for the recipient. Later on: "your hands, regarding what you take out"; and "from weakness, strength"; and "God will open unto thee His good treasure." ASE.

Legal document. Agreements on prepayment of rent ca. 1180-81. Twenty years after agreements on repairs to be made jointly were signed between the qodesh and al-Nadiv, Abu'l-Makarim, we have such agreements now with Judge Shemuel b. Saadya, and three elders signing for the qodesh. These are three consecutive agreements covering together a period of four years. Again, the matter of repairs made jointly is settled. Abu'l-Makarim first advances the rent owed by him for a period of two years for the lease of al-Burj; this compound, as shown by its name, was probably originally some stronghold and was no completely owned by the qodesh. Abu'l-Makarim rents it both as a dwelling place and for the purpose of his business, which is mainly rose water. The first of the three agreements is for a period from June 1180 to June 1182; the third is from May 1183 to 1184. The second of the three is missing, but certainly covered the lunar year from June 1182 to May 1183. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp.314 #74) (Probably written by Mevurakh b. Nathan. AA)

Letter from a woman to the Head of the Jews, in Fustat. Dating: Early twelfth century (see explanation below). The writer asks the addressee to send her money for two orphan sisters whose care she was reluctantly supervising. The girls were ten and thirteen years old and had no relatives to take care of them, and nothing to live on. They had been allotted two dinars from communal charity funds, but for some reason (the letter is torn here, and parts are missing) the money had not actually been sent; without it, they had "only enough for a crust of bread." A childless widow who lived nearby had volunteered to teach them embroidery, and the letter's narrator was willing to check in on them once in a while. But she refused to take them into her household, even though the girls themselves wanted her to: "They constantly tell me, 'We want to come to you so that you can take care of us.' She asked the Head of the Jews instead to provide the two dinars that the girls had been promised, along with extra funds to rent them a living space and to hire a religious steacher who could "teach them prayer, so they will not grow up like animals, not knowing shemaʿ yisra'el." Eve Krakowski, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt, p.1. Regarding the date: "The time of the document can be defined approximately by the mention of al-haver Ibn al-Kāmukhi, the member of the yeshiva bearing a family name derived from the profession of kāmukhī, preparer of preserves with vinegar sauce. Two such persons are known, onel iving at the time of the Nagid Mevorakh, around 1095, and another during the incumbency of the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya around 1145. The script of the letter would fit either of the two dates, better perhaps the latter." Goitein, "Side Lights on Jewish Education," p. 88 (doc. 3).

Legal fragment. Dating: early 12th century. Signed by Yiṣḥaq b. Shemuel ha-Sefaradi. ASE.

Letter to Araḥ b. Natan ha-Sar and the Seventh in the Congregation of Righteousness (השביעי בחבורת הצדק) (ca. beginning of the 12th century) thanking him for his letter. Greetings are sent to Efrayim and his brother Netanel, and to Berakhot. Most of the letter is in Hebrew (with one phrase in Aramaic), and the continuation in the right-hand margin is in Judaeo-Arabic. (Information from CUDL.) See also Goitein's note card.

Rescript of the judges of the court appointed by the Nagid Mevorakh to the community of al-Mahalla, advising the community in strongest terms to take back their judge who had left. Dated ca. 1105. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, 193, 561; V, 49, 519, 542 and from Cohen)

Letter from Ṭoviya b. ʿEli ha-Kohen to his cousin the Judge Natan b. Shelomo ha-Kohen regarding alleged arrears in a compound of the Qodesh, ca. 1130. The two overseers of the qodesh who were in charge of an unnamed compound complained about arrears of two months owed by one of the tenants, Abu'l-Ḥasan b. al-Hazzan. The tenant in the meantime has left the apartment. The complaint was addressed to the gaon, the head of the yeshiva, himself. He asked one of the parnasim of the qodesh to inquire about the matter. The writer brings the results of his inquiry to the knowledge of the Judge. The inquiry has shown that there were no real arrears, but to make the matter totally right, a copper lid left by the tenant was to be handed over to Abu'l-Bayan, apparently one of the prominent leaders of the congregation of the Palestinians, in order to spare the parnasim his reproaches. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 251 #46)