Geniza Lab

This text is preserved in one very fragmentary folio, T-S AS 160.96. What survives indicates that it is about the midday calendar limit, whereby the New Year is postponed if the molad of Tishri occurs after midday. Babylonians and Palestinians are not explicitly mentioned, but the text contrasts the Babylonian limit of midday with the Palestinian limit of midday and 641 parts. An original feature of this text is the distinction it makes between an ‘astronomical’ month, which begins on the astronomical conjunction (presumably, the true conjunction), and a ‘numerical’ month (lines 9-10, 15-16). The latter probably means that its dates are calculated, and refers to the (Rabbanite) calendar month.The text is too fragmentary to be understood with certainty.

Calendar. In Hebrew. Late.

Table of numbers. In Hebrew script. Probably calendrical.

Table of numbers. In Hebrew script. Probably calendrical.

The text is responding, in the fragment extant, to two arguments that were made by ben Meir against the Babylonians at the time of the calendar controversy: that the Four Gates, a Babylonian algorithm, are inadequate because they do not cover all the days of the week, and that festivals should not be excessively postponed, as the Babylonians did in the years of the contro versy. It also rejects the Palestinian addition of 641 parts to the midday calendar limits.

P1: f. 1r: description of a dream dated 525 AH (= 1130 CE); f. 1v: alchemical recipe called ‘the operation of mixture’; f. 2r: invocation to God. P2: f. 1r: alchemical recipe (continues from P1 f. 1v); f. 1v: calendar in which the Hebrew months of Sivan and Tammuz are mentioned; f. 2v: invocation to God and separate letters. P3: leaf 1: magical words and description of their use, with a mention of the city of Damascus; calendar mentioning Jewish festivals (Passover, Ḥanukka). P4: f. 1r: sequence of letters arranged according to the abrade; f. 1v: on the substitution of letters in words according to the Kabbalah; P4 leaf 2: calendar with mention of Hebrew festivals (continues from P3, leaf 1). P5: f. 1r: very damaged, only a few letters legible; f. 1v: list of some of the months of the Jewish calendar; f. 2r: description of movements of the sun (first 8 lines) and list of some months of the Jewish calendar; f. 2v: badly rubbed. P6: f. 1r: description of celestial phenomena; ff. 1v, leaf 2: on the reckoning of the days of the festival with mention of the leap year. P7: ff. 1r-2v: mention of a musical instrument in Arabic and Hebrew; f. 2r: mention of Rabban Gamaliel and reckoning for the rising of the New Moon. P8: unidentified Hebrew text. P9 recto: alchemical recipe involving the use of vitriol; verso: Arabic (separate letters and words and unidentified partial text). (Information from CUDL)

Petition to Saladin from ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Yaḥyā, the Jew, a resident of Malīj, in the province of al-Gharbiyya, in the Delta. Dating: ca. 564–89 AH, which is 1169–93 CE. The petitioner complains about the tax collectors, who forced him to leave his family and job and to work for them, and asks for the issuing of a rescript that would allow him to go back to his town and family. On verso is an answer to the petition maintaining that since ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Yaḥyā had some experience as a tax collector, he could not avoid this service. Also on verso is a work on calendar reckoning mentioning the maḥzorim, the moladot and the different kinds of Hebrew year; names of the months of the year in the Julian(!) calendar and the numbers of their days are written vertically on the leaf. There are also a few draft lines of some phrases contained in the petition that appears on verso, and a list of figures in the marginalia. (Information in part from CUDL)

Informal note from Seʿadya to an unidentified addressee. In Judaeo-Arabic. Asking him to send a 'khidma' informing him whether it is the 3rd or the 4th year of maḥzor 263 (4979–97 AM), i.e., whether it is currently 4982 AM (1221/22 CE) or 4983 AM (1222/23 CE).

Document in rudimentary script naming sums of money to be paid for a period of time in the year '52, using the Islamic calendar.

Calendar in Hebrew.

Calendrical text in Judaeo-Arabic.

Two folios of this 12-folio manuscript of the Book of the Calendar Controversy, about the disagreement between Jewish leaders of Palestine and Babylonia on how to calculate the calendar year in 921/2. This led the Jews of the entire Near East to celebrate Passover and the other festivals, through two years, on different dates. The controversy was major, but it became forgotten until its late 19th-century rediscovery in the Cairo Genizah. The two folios found are T-S NS 194.92, the second, and T-S 8K4, the fifth. Stern supposes that the manuscript is twelve parts and that extant here are the second and fifth parts because of comparison to parallel manuscripts.

New discovery of a copy of the Book of the Calendar Controversy. About the disagreement between Jewish leaders of Palestine and Babylonia on how to calculate the calendar year in 921/2. This led the Jews of the entire Near East to celebrate Passover and the other festivals on different dates over the course of two years. Fragmentary and partially reconstruction by other text witness of the book. See Stern for detailed overview of reconstruction.

This recently discovered document presents a detailed account of the calendar controversy from the perspective of a Qaraite. It is also the only source confirming that the controversy continued until the beginning of 924, when Palestinian and Babylonian calendars converged back to the same dates, without however either side emerging victorious over the other.

Calendar calculations

Calendar calculations.

Accounts in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals. Very neat. On verso there is a calendar in Hebrew script, listing years in the 12th century CE (maḥzors 256 and 257).

Calendar for years 4756–4757 of the Era of Creation (= 995-996 to 996-997 CE) and 4760-4761 of the Era of Creation (= 999-1000 to 1000-1001 CE). The calendar includes information on the length of the variable months and intercalation, on moladot of all months, on days of the week of beginnings of months, festivals and fasts, and on the time of tequfot. The calendar also mentions that the tequfa of Nisan 4761 of the Era of Creation (= 1000-1001 CE) is the beginning of a new 28-year cycle of tequfot. (CUDL)

Recto: calendrical text discussing the months of Marḥešvan and Kislev. Verso: jottings.

A brief narrative of the calendar controversy of 921/2 appears within a treatise or manual in Judaeo-Arabic on the Jewish calendar, which was composed and written only a few decades after the controversy. The author is unknown, but appears to be an outsider and might even have been non-Jewish. One bi-folio of this manual has been preserved, T-S NS 98.47. The purpose of this manual is to provide essential guidance on how the rabbinic calendar is constructed. The calendrical data in the manual relate to ‘cycle 249’, a 19-year period beginning in 954/5CE.