Geniza Lab

Family letter, partly in Hebrew and partly in Judaeo-Arabic. The handwriting seems to be that of the judge Mevorakh b. Natan. Dated: End of Ṭevet 1492 Seleucid, which is 1180/81 CE. There is a long passage (in rhymed Hebrew) about the addressee's mother ailing ever since he departed for Alexandria with the caravan. The scribe wrote the letter while very sick (marīḍ lāzim lā aʿaql ʿalā nafsī min al-ḥamāʾil(?) ṣudāʿ(?) al-bārī yulaṭṭif bi-raḥmatihi fa-tabsuṭ al-ʿadhr...). (Information in part from Goitein’s index card)

Letter from Ibrāhīm, in Sunbāṭ, addressed to a Nagid. In Judaeo-Arabic. Requesting assistance for his family in time of need. His family members are all sick, and he has no money even for a medicinal syrup.

Letter sent from al-Mahalla by a man who is sought by the controller of revenue, asking a friend to obtain for him a letter from Shams al-Din (the director of revenue in the capital), saying that he is registered as absent. "Do not ask about my state of illness, weakness, want, and terrible fear of the supervisor's warrant." (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 382)

Letter from Benaya b. Mūsā to Abū l-Afrāḥ ʿArūs b. Yūsuf. In Judaeo-Arabic. The purpose of the letter is to explain why the writer never managed to make it to Abū l-Afrāḥ's location for the last two years. The first year, he fell ill in al-Maḥalla, and never even believed he would make it back to Alexandria. This year, he intended to travel, but was unable to "for reasons that cannot be mentioned." Benaya's children--or at least one of them--are hoping to travel this year, and he prays for their success. Benaya is very preoccupied because he heard that his cousin (bint ʿammī) is sick, and he asked the Kohen Abū l-Surūr for news about her but has not heard back, so he now asks Abū l-Afrāḥ for news about his cousin's health.

Letter from Mūsā b. Yiṣḥaq b. Nissim, in al-Mahdiyya, to Ismāʿīl b. Barhūn al-Tāhirti. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: ca. 1030. The writer is looking forward to the addressee's intended visit to al-Mahdiyya. He describes the situation in the Maghreb, and he mentions silk business and a large transfer of money to a yeshiva. "In a letter sent from Fustat to Qayrawan, Tunisia, we read this: 'A wakham like this I have not seen since I have come to Fustat. I was ill for a full four months with fever and fits of cold, which attacked me day and night. But God, for the sake of his name, not because of my merits, decreed that the illness leave me; I am now restored to complete health. The wakham has ceased, and all our friends [meaning the compatriots from Tunisia] are well." (Goitein, Med Soc V, 113.) ASE.

Recto: Note from Rashīd inviting a physician to come urgently to Rashīd's home, and to bring a friend. Verso: The physician responds that if he is being invited to a drinking party, he cannot come today because the Christians prevent him (? li-ajli moqesh al-'arelim). If he is being summoned to treat (mudāwā) somebody, probably al-Sadīd, it can be postponed to another day. Rashīd should tell al-Sadīd that the writer already came looking for him several times but could not find him. He was worried on his account ("the first was in my heart"), and he wondered if perhaps al-Sadīd no longer needed his services. Changing the topic, he concludes, "As for the the [Ar?]abic letter, I have it with me. I will make a copy of it and return it." Information in part from Goitein's index cards. ASE.

Letter sent by a physician from Qalyub, who had opened an office in Fustat, inviting his wife (who is his paternal cousin) to join him there and mentioning that the response of the public had been excellent, although he suffers from professional competition. Her daughter, who lives in the capital, is pregnant and wishes her mother to assist her at the time of birth. Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 256; III, p. 30. The writer also conveys his sadness upon hearing that the addressee had an eye illness; he wishes he could be there to treat in in person, but suffices with sending a prescription together with this letter. ASE.

Petition in Judaeo-Arabic to help Thābit al-Hazzan b. al-Munajjim, who was ill and had been imprisoned for two months for not paying his capitation tax. (Information from Goitein's note card)

Letter of appeal in the name of an old woman, whose mantle was stolen while she was about to wash it in the Nile, asking the community in a well-styled address to help her to buy at least a large shawl. She emphasizes her age and frailty and eye disease as the reason why she cannot help herself. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 170, 500.) ASE.

Letter from ʿAmram b. Yosef to Netanel b. Yefet regarding goods sent by Ḥasan b. Bundār. Location: Alexandria. Dating: 1094–97 CE. ʿAmram mentions his ophthalmia ('it seems as if I have found slight relief') and the wretched woman (ʿaguna for ʿaguma, as in CUL Or.1080 J24) who suffers pain in the joints of her hands and feet (this woman and her arthritis also appear in T-S 13J23.10). ʿAmram excuses himself from paying his respects to the Nagid on account of his ophthalmia, so he asks Netanel to represent him. ʿAmram makes the same request of Mūsā b. Abī l-Ḥayy in Halper 394 and of Nahray b. Nissim in Bodl. MS heb. d.75/19. ASE. See Med. Society II, 478, Section 18. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Letter from Yaʿaqov b. Yosef b. Ismāʿīl al-Iṭrābulusi, Ascalon, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Circa 1060. Discusses the import and export of goods through Ascalon. (Information from Gil, Palestine, Vol. 3, p. 186.) The writer has been suffering from a severe case of ophthalmia (ramad), "but even so I have never neglected my correspondence (r6–7).

Letter from Yeḥezqel b. Eli ha-Kohen b. Yeḥezqel, in Jerusalem, to Eli ha-Kohen b. Ḥayyim (aka Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAllūn b. Yaʿīsh), in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic with the address in Arabic. Dating: second half of the 11th century. See also T-S Misc.28.171. The writer expresses his relief at the news that the addressee recovered from his illness. He devotes much space to excusing himself for failing to send any letters until now. He asks the addressee to remind 'the Rayyis' (probably identical with al-Rayyis Abū l-Ṭayyib in T-S Misc.28.171) to remind his son to fulfill the money order (suftaja) that had been sent. In a postscript, he conveys the news that the sister of Hiba ('who is with Shimʿon al-Rav') died, who was also the mother-in-law of Abūn b. Ṣedaqa. Information from Gil. ASE. NB: The first Goitein note card (#6240) belongs with DK 228.4 (PGPID 31342).

Letter from Meʾir b. ʿEli ha-Kohen, in Damascus (חדרך סוריא), to his brother Ṭoviyya b. ʿEli, in Fustat. Dating: beginning of September 1127 CE. The letters deals with financial matters and the purchase of flax and indicates that the Gaon (Maṣliaḥ) was by then in Egypt. "Mutual affection was expressed by kissing the eyes" (Goitein, Med. Soc., viii, C, 2, n. 117). Cf. T-S 10J17.8. Also mentions someone who got very sick (balagha kathīr) but God sent health (recto, 8–10). Mentions the same Yaḥyā b. Najm who appears in T-S 6J2.13.

Letter from Yiṣḥaq b. David b. Sughmār, Fustat, to his partner Makhlūf b. ʿAzarya, Jerusalem. (DK XV, ed. Gil, Palestine, Pt. 3, pp. 178-183.) The market was at a standstill because of an epidemic (amrāḍ). ASE.

Letter (likely a draft) dictated by the wife and written by the son (Zayn al-Dār) of the India trader ʿAllān b. Ḥassūn, beseeching him to return. She has just weaned the infant, who has been sick. The only other adult male in the family has also been absent. The family is in financial straits and has had to sell household furnishings and lease the upper floor in order to pay the physician and buy medicine and two chickens every day. (Information from Med Soc III, 194, where there is also a translation.) "When a boy writing to his father abroad sends regards from his mother, grandmother, maternal aunts, the widow of a paternal uncle, and the maidservant, and adds, ‘The travel of Grandpa coincided with yours so that we have become like orphans," one gets the impression that all the persons mentioned formed one household.’” (Goitein, Med. Soc., 3:39 at n. 28.) "Adult children showed their reverence toward their parents by kissing their hands, or hands and feet—at least in letters." (Goitein, Med. Soc., viii, C, 2, n. 116; see also T-S 10J17.3, CUL Or.1081 J5, T-S 16.265 and T-S 13J24.22.)

11th century letter from Avraham b. Yiṣḥaq near Tripoli to his son Mevorakh b. Avraham Ibn Sabra. See Oded Zinger’s dissertation, which mentions this letter several times and gives a partial translation on p. 305. “Avrahamʼs daughter had been divorced from her husband and her son returned her home to her fatherʼs place in Fustat. It seems that at least two children remained with the husband. The daughter was deeply depressed and longed to return to her abusive husband.” She had been in bed for three months, abstaining from baths and festivities, and saying that she will be grief-stricken until she dies and that she will never marry again so that her ex-husband will be punished for her sins. Remarkably, Avraham returns to this story in the last phrase of the letter: "It is a problem with the mind, to ask after someone who does not ask after you." He also conveys family news, including his delight that Mevorakh's wife has given him a daughter in his "old age." Abu Sa'd, whose "life is renewed" after surviving a serious illness, is on his way to Mevorakh's location from Tripoli. Oded Zinger, “Women, Gender, and Law: Marital Disputes According to Documents from the Cairo Genizah,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2014, p. 305.

Letter from Yosef ha-Kohen b. Ḥalfon, al-Maḥalla, to Binyamin b. Yaʿaqov (who has a son named Yaʿaqov as well), Cairo. The writer reports that he spent only a couple days in al-Muʿizziyya (Cairo) and regrets not being able to pay his respects in person before he had to travel. The letter mainly consists of blessings, with a request at the end to forward the writer's question (legal query?) to Abū l-Maʿālī.

Business letter from Shelomo b. Avraham [. . .] Ruqqī to Abū l-Faraj Nissim b. Shelomo Ruqqī. "Abū l-Faraj Nissim, the recipient of this letter, was an India trader, against whom, while in India selling precious Western textiles and mercury, a power of attorney was issued in Fustat. The date of that document is not preserved, but the names of the signatories, known from other sources, put it around 1090. [Goitein notes elsewhere, Med Soc I, 379, that the names of the sender and recipient also both occur in a document dated 1079.] The sender of the letter shared with him the family name, and since he writes in a style possible only among close relatives, he was most probably his nephew. Both clearly were Maghrebis; therefore, their family name must be read as al-Ruqql, derived from a little town in Tunisia named Ruqqa, and not al-Raqqi, from Raqqa, the ancient city on the Euphrates in northern Mesopotamia. The letter was sent from Fustat to Alexandria, for the writer refers to goods brought by him from North Africa ("the West"), but still remaining in the town of the receiver of the letter (sec. D). Many other details in this letter tally with this assumption. The writer most probably left Alexandria on a Thursday and passed the Sabbath in Fuwwa, where he embarked on a Nile boat; or he could have made the whole journey on a boat, using the KhalIj canal, which connected Alexandria with the Nile. See Med. Soc., i, 298-299." Goitein, Letters, 239–40. “People occasionally explain why they had not done something that was expected of them by their frame of mind, their mood, or their lack of nahda, energy, verve, bounce, pep.” Cf. the word ruḥiyya in this letter, and Med Soc V, x, B, 2, no. 111. From the letter: "Business here is slow and practically at a standstill. For there is much confusion in the rate of exchange and, at the present time, 50 dirhems are to be had for 1 dinar, more [or less]. An epidemic is raging in the environs of the town, and because of this, the flow of good dirhems has been cut off so that everyone is having difficulties with his business." Med Soc I, 379, no. 41. The word for epidemic here is بئة, a derivative of وباء, see Lane and Blau.

Letter from Najm [...] al-Muʿallim the brother-in-law of Kamāl b. Yūsuf, in Fustat, to his 'brother' the cantor Musāfir ha-Bavli, in Alexandria. Spellings are eccentric. The first half is obscure, but mainly has to do with how much he misses and is worried about the addressee. He reports that the addressee's sister is still sick. His sister and his mother send regards and kiss his eyes. Turfa and Najm and Yehuda send their regards. Abu Yaʿqūb and his brother and father send their regards. Verso contains the address and a lot of random jottings. Related to Bodl. MS heb. d 66/23. ASE.

Business letter from a Maghribi merchant. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Probably 11th century. Not mentioned in the literature. Avraham b. Yamān is mentioned. The sickness of Abu Zikri is mentioned. Written on parchment. Needs to be unfolded and conserved.