Geniza Lab

Letter from Shelomo b. Maymūn, in Spain, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel. Consists almost entirely of polite expressions of longing and flattery. Dating: Probably 1138–39 CE. (Information from India Book 4; Hebrew description below.)

Spain; Probably Toledo; August 1138 This short letter from Yehuda ha-Levi to Ḥalfon deals mostly with the cooperation between these individuals in collecting thirty-two mitkal (= a full dinar) and two-thirds, in order to redeem a Jewish girl who was imprisoned, a mitzva that Yehuda ha-Levi succeeded in doing. The 'accuser' possessed the girl, and it is likely that she was in prison in Toledo, and Yehuda Halevi probably lived there or in her vicinity (see Certificate ח36, ע"ב, line 2). (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Spain; Probably 1138-1139 A short letter of longing for Ḥalfon and greetings of peace to him. The writer Yiṣḥaq b. Shabbā compares separation from the recipient to separation from life and he adds two stanzas to express his grief for this. He compares them to the fading of the sun and the light that has gone away, and with them, the joy of life, which is likened to perfume and myrrh, is nullified. Demands of peace were also sent to Yiṣḥaq b. ʿOvadya and Abū ʿAmr b. Barukh. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Spain The beginning of the letter is missing, including the beginning of the lines written in the margin, but most of the text is preserved in this section. It is possible that the names of the writer and recipient were written at the beginning of ע"א or ע"ב, but these are now missing. Apart from the request to know the recipient's travel plans, the letter contains only the usual polite words in such correspondence, namely confirmation of receipt of a letter, description of the praises the writer heaps on the recipient, the longing for him and the hope that God will bring the meeting with him again soon, a request for a response and blessings for peace. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Letter from Yosef Ibn ʿEzra and Avraham b. Muʿṭī, in Tilimsān, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi. Mainly in Judaeo-Arabic, with some phrases in Judaeo-Persian. Dated: 28 Ṭevet 4898 AM, which is 13 January 1138 CE. India Book 4 (Hebrew description below; full English description to come.) See also Shaked, "Persian-Arabic Bilingualism" in From A Sacred Source, pp. 322–24 (edition and translation)

A letter about a merchant who handles the business of others. Alexandria, mid-eleventh century. An example of the difficulties and challenges for the researcher, which are posed by the fragmentary letters of the traders from the Genizah, in the identifications and the combination of what is written of them in the research. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Memorandum from Maḍmūn b. Ḥasan to Ḥalfon ha-Levi b. Netan'el. Location: Aden. Dating: ca. 1135 CE.

ʿAydhab; End of the summer or fall of 1131 Halfon wrote from ʿAydhab, the Sudanese port city on the coast of the Red Sea, to his older brother Eli the Judge, who was living in Cairo. In a letter of account and a brief account of Ḥalfon’s unsuccessful journey to Yemen and India and especially the difficult dispute that arose in Yemen, which revolved around the confrontation between the Jewish authorities in Egypt and Baghdad in general and the mention of the authority of the Gaʾon Maṣliaḥ ha-Kohen, the head of the Jews in Egypt, in the prayer. Ḥalfon fought the war of Maṣliaḥ, but he and his fellow foreign merchants suffered severe insults from the Persian Jew, the cousin of the head of the exile, who ordered Maṣliaḥ‘s permission to be revoked, and from the dignitaries of Eden. His letter was run by Ḥalfon to Cairo by the North African merchant Avraham b. Muʿṭī, who, together with his fellow traveler Yosef b. Ezra, cooperated with him in the quarrel and defended the rights of a successful man. Ḥalfon advised Ali to bring Avraham before the Gaon, so that he would tell him about the events in Yemen in detail and so that the Gaon could prepare a suitable response to those who insulted his honor. It is possible that Certificate ח10 is the last document written about the affair, which has survived, even though it summarizes it from the beginning, and the first document is Certificate ח5. The background to the dispute and its events are discussed in the introduction, including the considerations for determining the estimated time of writing the ח10 certificate. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Aden, 1131 This document is a draft, or more precisely, partial lists that Ḥalfon wrote to himself, and based on them, he obviously intended to write a letter with orderly instructions to so-and-so. The certificate begins in the middle of the sentence, and there must have been at least one page before it that was not preserved. The writing is difficult to decipher (and translate), and the fragmentation of the things and the closed and sealed style make it more difficult to understand the matters. In the first part of the certificate, Ḥalfon describes the interest of Masmun b. Hassan or his messenger in the letters that arrived, and also mentions the matter of delivering other letters. Mentioned ben Jumayhīr (̇גַמַאהִר) (line 25), who, as is known from document ח7, ח8, ח10, objected to mentioning the 'authority' of a successful person in the prayer. The general tone of these lists indicates that they were written at an earlier stage of the affair than that known from the previous documents. A sign of this is Ḥalfon's doubt about whether he will return to Egypt or go to India (line 35-36). He may be telling about what happened the night after the day the foreigners arrived in Aden (line 24-25). Rabbi Yaʿqūb’s letter, mentioned in line 7, is probably one of the letters of Yaʿqūb b. Sālim mentioned in document ח5, line 14 onwards, and it becomes clear, therefore, that document ח6 was written after document ח5. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Spain This section of a letter to Abū al-Saʿad ha-Levi, that is Ḥalfon, is written in a typical but very eloquent Sephardic script. The letter was short to begin with, and now only a little of its opening and most of what is written in the margins is missing. The writer, whose identity is unknown, scribbled words in Arabic letters inside the Arabic text - The writing is in Hebrew letters. It seems that he wrote everything in a hurry, and it is not always clear whether a certain letter is written in Hebrew letters or in Arabic letters. Because of these difficulties and the poor state of preservation of the letter, the decipherment and translation are provided in several places. The writer also sent blessings in the name of his father. The inscription حضرة المرتبة حرست (ח̇צר̈ה אלמרתב̈ה חרסת, in translation: Darat his majesty, may God preserve it') has not been found in the same language in another place by the hour. 2 (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Legal document. Agreement between Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi and his partner Abū l-Faraj b. Abū l-Khayr. Location: probably Yemen. Dating: No later than Kislev 1442 Seleucid, which is November/December 1130 CE. Mentions ʿAydhāb. (Information from India Book; Hebrew description below) Probably Yemen; Before Kislev, 1442; November 4 - December 2, 1130

Letter from Abū Naṣr b. Avraham, in Alexandria. In Judaeo-Arabic with several lines in Arabic script on verso. Dated: 11 Sivan [4901] AM, which is 18 May 1141 CE. Abū Naṣr informs the addressee that Yehuda ha-Levi set sail on Wednesday, the first day of Shavuʿot, after leaving him a letter for the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya, which accompanies this letter. The Arabic text on verso—which may or may not be related—reads "... he did not accept from him, and he went up with him/it to Cairo and was declared bankrupt. . . to go with them, and he met the Rayyis and told him, and he saved him from them." (Information from CUDL and from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV.)

Letter from Khalaf b. Yiṣḥaq, in Aden, to Ḥalfon ha-Levi b. Netanel, in Bharuch, India (v14). Dating: ca. 1134 CE. Damaged and missing the ends of the lines. The letter mainly deals with business, much of it in pepper and textiles. It mentions that a ship capsized at the entrance to the city [in fact, the join clarifies that it was a man named Yarbaḥ who drowned] (r15); that Maḍmūn b. Ḥasan did not send any merchandise to Egypt this year [in fact, that he did not sell any pepper this year] (r17–18); various Jewish merchants who reached Aden from Egypt this year, including Abū l-Ḥasan Ibn al-ʿAkkāwī, the son of Ibn al-ʿAfṣī, the son of Sibāʿ, [...] al-Mahdawī, and Ismāʿīl al-Maghribī, who brought good news about relations with the sultan (or government, r22–25); the arrival of two ships from India (r32); and Khalaf's six-month illness, from Tevet to Sivan (v8–10). Greetings are extended to colleagues in al-Qaṣṣ and Bharuch. Information in part from Goitein and Friedman. (Goitein initially identified the addressee as Avraham ben Yijū.) Join by Amir Ashur. ASE. Aden; 1134

Excerpt from a Gaon's responsa in Ḥalfon's writing A very small section of a genius answer. בע"א, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, remains of a halachic discussion in which it is quoted from the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 31a-12b) regarding the joining of witnesses to each other and the matter of a court. According to the hypothesis, the subject of the discussion in this part of the answer is the joining of testimonies or evidence to maintain a yard. In the Hebrew text, remnants of the end of Gaon's answer letter, which includes a request for support for his yeshiva, as found in Gaon's Babylonian answers. Although little can be gleaned from the passage, it is published here in the hope that other passages connected to it will be discovered in the future. As with the other passages that were identified based on the writing alone as being written by Ḥalfon, the identification is certainly not complete, but in this case, it seems most likely. The passage adds, therefore, some addition to the character of Ḥalfon as a sage who copies the answers of the geniuses for his needs. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Small fragment of a letter from Ḥalfon b. Netanel, in Fustat or Cairo, to his brother Yeḥezqel. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: No later January 1136 CE, as Ḥalfon refers to his attendance before the Gaʾon (=Maṣliaḥ), so it must have been written before he departed for Spain in January 1136. (Information from India Book 4, Hebrew description below.)

Account. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Ca. 1134 CE. Probably sent together with the letter from Khalaf b. Yiṣḥaq, in Aden, to Ḥalfon b. Netanel, in Baruj (India). This is an account that Khalaf wrote summarizing an entire year of his commercial activities on behalf of Ḥalfon. It is the only surviving account in the Geniza that a merchant in Aden sent to a business partner in India. The prices are given in the coin of Aden, the Malikī dinar, corresponding to 24 qirats. See Hebrew description below for further information.

India Book 4 (Hebrew description below; English to come)

Letter from Yiṣḥaq b. Yosef Ibn Ghiyāt, in Spain, to Ḥalfon b. Netanʾel ha-Levi. Dating: ca. 1138/39 CE. The letter mostly consists of pleasantries. Yiṣḥaq received Ḥalfon's letters "perfumed with myrrh and frankincense" (כתבך אלכראם מקוטרות מור ולבונה), praises Ḥalfon's nobility and generosity, and asks him when he plans to travel. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV; Hebrew description below.)

Spain; Probably Tamuz or Av, 1138 This is a large remnant of the epistle written in Ḥalfon’s handwriting and the addressee is Rabbi Yosef ha-Levi b. Meir, that is Rabbi b. Migash. Although it is not the original letter, as we learned from two matters: the very fact that it is in the Genizah and the fact that it is written on invalid government paper, a sheet on which there are remains of monumental Arabic writing, and it is unlikely that Ḥalfon would have sent his letter to the rabbi on used paper. However, the writing is neat and beautiful and has no erasures or corrections, and it turns out to be a clean copy after the completion of the letter. Less than half the width of page A survived. The first lines of page B survive intact, but a large part is torn and missing later. Yes, the last lines of the entire manuscript are missing, however, based on the surviving text, Goitein assume that the number of lines that are completely missing at the end of the page is only small. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)

Notes in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Netanel regarding a sugya in Bava Metzia. Very possibly written during his stay in Lucena, Spain, 1138/39 CE, while he was studying under Yosef Ibn Migash. (Information from India Book IV, Hebrew description below). Probably Spain; 1138-1139