Geniza Lab

Magical text written in a striking melange of Hebrew script, Arabic script, and nonsense script. The main instructions are in Judaeo-Arabic. The practitioner is to light a wick with pure violet oil inside of a human skull. A black raven is also involved, and three pegs are to be driven into the skull-lamp. When the desired aim is achieved, the lamp should not be extinguished. ASE.

Magical recipes in Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic script and magical script. Including a birth control recipe: "If you want a woman not to become pregnant. . ." Contains some Arabic words inserted into Hebrew script; 'law taʿllaq ʿalā', muʿallaq ʿalaihā, muʿallaq. The bottom half of the recto contains 6 lines in what looks like code or a cipher with some symbols that look like Arabic letters. Possibly a talisman or incantation. Verso contains lines of Hebrew script and a box bisected by two lines with Hebrew script inside and on the outside.

Recto: Magical instructions in Judaeo-Arabic. Verso: A page of magical letters encompassed by an ouroboros. (Information in part from Goitein's index card)

Magical fragment. From top down: 1 line of names in Hebrew (Elʿazar, Hillel, Shela, Yefet, ʿEli); 4 rows of magical symbols; 1 line in Judaeo-Arabic, "the [r]esponse to a letter from the land of the Franks"; 4 lines in Arabic script, an invocation of God (who split the sea for Moses and destroyed [Pharaoh], etc.) to do something (taḥill?) to fulāna.

Document in Arabic script. Two very narrow vertical strips filled with rudimentary Arabic script. Likely magical, but this is based entirely on appearance rather than reading any of the content. (MR) The name of God appears very often and is sometimes followed or preceded by a shahāda. A prayer or incantation? (YU)

Magical recipe written in Arabic and Hebrew. The Arabic script reads "ṣifa kāghaḍa (=kāghadh) saḥiḥa wa-hiya lā tataghayyar wa-taṣnaʿ minhā mā shiʾt" on verso. Recto: pen trials and signature practices in Arabic script including taqbīl clause, and cartouches. Late. Perforations for binding.

Magical fragment. In Arabic script. Including epithets of God (Ḥayy, Qayyūm, Dā'im, Dayyūm, Huwa Huwa) and Quranic verses (idhā qaḍā amran innamā yaqūlu lahu kūn(!) fa-yakūn) alongside nonsense words.

Template fragment of a divination/magical charm starting with a few words of prayers followed by a spell: "fulān b. fulān". Then: 'blind his heart and block his vision and mute his tongue'.

Letter from Shelomo b. Eliyyahu to Abū l-Barakāt, the uncle of Sitt Ghazāl. He writes of the terrible sickness that has not relented ever since he married. "I have perished. If you saw me, you wouldn't recognize me. I am thin as a toothpick and a ghost in my clothes." All his money goes to potions and chickens, and all the women who visit him tell him that he is the victim of a spell. He begs Abū l-Barakāt and Sitt Ghazāl's father Abū l-Faraj to intercede with the Gaon (Avraham Maimonides per Goitein) and Avraham b. Simḥa the judge and physician and obtain their agreement for a ban of excommunication against whoever bewitched Shelomo ("man or woman, Jew or Gentile, male or female slave, or whoever ordered them to cast this spell") and who does not reverse it. He hopes that the judge Avraham b. Simḥa will declare the ban of excommunication himself, or, failing that, another God-fearing elder. Greetings are sent by: Shelomo, Sitt Ghazāl, Shelomo's brother (Abū Zikri), his maternal aunt (Umm Abū l-'Izz?), her son (Abū l-'Izz?). Greetings are sent to: Abū l-Barakāt, his wife, his brother Abū l-Faraj (al-mawlā al-makīn), and his father (Abū l-Ḥasan). Information in part from Goitein's note cards. See T-S NS J223 for another note in which a person asks for a ban of excommunication against whoever bewitched him. There does not seem to be any way to determine if these two documents are connected. ASE.

Recto: The Book of Gathering the Winds. In Hebrew. See Goitein's index card for more information.

Verso: In a script different from recto, a page from a magical treatise in Judaeo-Arabic, with a colophon, Iyyar 1146 CE (4906 AM). See Goitein's index card for more information

Magical fragment in Hebrew and Aramaic calling down eternal fire.*

Palimpsest. The earlier text is extremely faded; it is in Judaeo-Arabic and at least partially deals with recipes or prescriptions. The later text is also Judaeo-Arabic, in a late hand. It is an elaborate recipe/prescription followed by a magical invocation ("I bind you, O Maymūn. . . Ehyeh bar Ehyeh. . .") ASE.

Magical fragment. In Arabic script, with pious Islamic phrases (incl. lā ḥawla wa-lā quwwa illā billāhi al-ʿaliyy al-ʿaẓīm). With stars of David.

Document in unconnected Arabic script interspersed with cryptic symbols. Only the first few characters of each line are preserved. Perhaps magical. The fragment was reused for Hebrew literary text.

Letter fragment in Judaeo-Arabic. Mentions al-Ḥakīm Abū l-Barakāt and having received two letters containing matters of accursed magic (al-siḥr al-mayshūm). Regards to the writer's brother and mother and maternal aunt.

Formularies for a love (maḥabba) spell and a love (tahayyuj) potion (using סבנאדג, the brain of a colored pigeon, and some of your urine).

Amulet against scorpions: same spell as the ones in T-S AS 143.26, except with two more magical names and no illustration. On verso there is a list in a cryptic script. See Gideon Bohak, "Some 'mass-produced' Scorpion-amulets from the Cairo Genizah," in A Wandering Galilean (2009), 35–50.

Magical fragment in Arabic script, including a spell for 'inflaming' (tahyīj).

Amulet in Aramaic and Hebrew against various afflictions, such as "scare-crows of the night, afflictions, fever, ague, fear of evil, the voice, the crushing of the viscera. . . and the Succuba." Information from Gottheil-Worrell, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah, p. 106.