Geniza Lab

CUDL: Part of a legal ruling from Ramla, mid-11th century CE, in which the brothers Joseph and Nahum, sons of Yannay b. Nahum al-Baradānī the cantor, enlist the Sicilian judge Maṣlīaḥ b. Elijah, in a claim against Hillel b. Isaac. Gil: Segment of a court proceeding in Jerusalem, approximately 1065, in the hand of Shelomo b. Ṭoviya ha-Shelishi.

Letter from Abun b. Sedaqa in Jerusalem to Nahray b. Nissim in Fustat. Dating: November 1064 CE. The main subject is the tension between the writer and Nahray's cousin, Yisrael b.Natan. Other subjects include details about the burning of ships in Sicily. Opens with a vivid description of the general grief following the death of Sittāt, the wife of R. Natan, who left a boy of 2 years. "How terrible is our grief! It has destroyed us (haddatnā) and sickened us (amraḍatnā).” A government edict threatened to make a dignified funeral impossible, so the mourners considered simply burying her within the walls. “We contracted from this a terrible convulsion (rajf ʿaẓīm),” Abūn writes, “and we gave a bribe and brought her out at night.” ASE

Letter of business from Isma'il b. Ishaq al-Andalusi, in Tyre, to Nahray b. Nissim. The writer alludes to his great losses at sea while simultaneously thanking God, who has replaced what has been lost many times over. Also includes a quotation from II Shemuel 14:20. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:60, 332, 405, 485; 5:239, 571, 572) EMS

Testimony signed by Aharon ha-Kohen b. Amram and two others regarding the kashruth (ritual lawfulness) of some cheese made by the Karaites (of Samaritiqa), ca 1050.

Legal deed concerning Yosef ha-Parnas the physician, who claims to be unable to support his daughter Sittūna, and her little son, after she was divorced by Netanel. Her ex-husband responds that she has assets and can indeed support herself. The text also mentions Avraham (known as Abū Kathīr) b. Shelomo b. [...]. Written by Efrayim b. Shemarya (thus Fusṭāṭ c. 1030s CE). (Information from CUDL)

Letter by the Jewish community of the village of Qalha, Egypt, apparently to Eli ha-Kohen b. Yahya in Fustat, 2nd half of the 11th century. The Jews of Qalḥa report to the Parnas in Fustat that Abū ʿImrān Mūsa b. Yequtiel arrived in their village on 17 Tammuz, injured and/or sick from the violence he experienced during the nahb (plunder) of Fayyūm. In addition he was robbed of everything by robbers near the village. He died a few weeks later, in Av. One of his two wives and the daughter of the other died also. The remaining wife was brought to Fustat at the expense of the community, because she had a cousin (ibn ʿamm) there. The little boy could not live in the village because of the Kushim (Sudanese soldiers?). Information from Goitein's note card.

Letter from Salmān b. Hārūn, al-Faḍl and Avraham b. Farrāḥ, Alexandria, to Nahray b. Nissim, Fustat. Early 1054 (Gil). Salmān b. Hārūn, who had married into the al-Qābisī family, asks Nahray to collect debts for him from various people in Fustat, and to help his sister's son, Yosef b. Peraḥ al-Qābisī, to buy goods with said money. If there isn't enough money, Salmān instructs, then he should sell a quantity of soap deposited with in Fustat with a wakīl. Al-Faḍl then asks Nahray to run other errands related to clearing up a conflict with a certain Abū al-Surūr, which precipitated the severance of his relationship with Yosef b. ʿEli ha-Kohen al-Fāsī. The third writer, Avraham b. Farrāḥ, adds to the letter permission from the tax authorities to import raisins (from Syria?) and the khums related to them. The letter also mentions the Muslim shipowner Abū ʿAbdallāh b. al-Baʿbāʿ, here called Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. On the dating: in Gil's introduction to his edition he claims that the letter dates to some months after Bodl. MS Heb. d 66/ 81, since it contains similar information; however, in that same introduction, Gil dates this letter to early 1054, but in his introduction to Bodl. MS Heb. d 66/ 81, he dates it to October 1056; and to make matters even more confusing, in Kingdom, secs. 315–316, he says this letter dates to ca. 1057. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, #771)

Note in the hand of Daniel b. Azarya to Eli, the parnas of Fustat, concerning aid for a poor man, Wahb of the city of Raqqa, ca. 1051-1062.

Recto: Letter from Natan b. Avraham, in which he urges his supporters to be in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, lest their party be underrepresented, mentioning the ḥaver Avraham b. Shela. Dating: summer 1039 CE. (Information from CUDL)

Letter by Avraham b. Natan ('ata) concerning the disorder in Tunis and concerning the burial of his father in Jerusalem, 1st quarter of the 11th century.

Letter by Daniel b. Azarya, apparently in Ramla, to Avraham ha-Kohen b. Ishaq b. Furat, ca. 1054.

Megillat Evyatar, probably composed by Evyatar Gaon and was read in synagoges. Probably was composed in 1094. (The scribe might be Shmuel b. Ya'aqov- a French rabbi active in Egypt in the first two decades of the 13th century. AA)

Letter requesting aid for the poor of Palestine, 11th century. Recto: Fully vocalised poetry in a very crude (almost unreadable) hand. (Information from CUDL)

Karaite document, compiled by a delegation of 12 Gaza and Jerusalem Karaites, regarding the state of fields in the spring in order to determine whether to intercalate the year, March 1052.

Letter to the Gaon, probably from Aleppo, complaining that the Gaon is paying too much heed to those who slander the writer, approximately 1035. Verso: Very faded and mostly illegible text, possibly liturgical or a sermon. (Information from CUDL)

Letter fragment from the lepers of Tiberias to Faraj b. Avraham, probably in Ramla, approximately 1030.

Recto: Letter opening to Joseph the Nagid (יהוסף, probably the Nagid Joseph b. Samuel, from the second half of the 11th century CE). Only extensive opening greetings are preserved. Verso: Commentary in Judeao-Arabic on Psalms. The text on verso is in a different hand and much less neatly written. Information from 2018 Genizah Research Unit catalog. The text on verso appears to be instructions for when to invoke certain Psalms for various needs: against an enemy (Psalm 2), for example, or for a headache. ASE.

Letter from Shelomo b. Yehuda, in Jerusalem, to Sahlān b. Avraham, in Fustat. In Hebrew. Dating: 1029 CE. "Here is a description of old age in the hand of Solomon b. Judah Gaon, the president of the Jerusalem yeshiva and official head of the Jews of the Fatimid empire, written nineteen years before his death. The time was excruciating for him: things in the yeshiva and the community at large did not go according to his wishes. Abraham b. Sahlan, a leader of Egyptian Jewry, Solomon's 'peer,' with whom he had probably studied many years before, had just died, and his own son was on his way to Aleppo in northern Syria, a voyage fraught with danger. . . . But old age, like life in general, has its ups and downs: the rich correspondence of the Gaon shows him as being active in affairs and rich in style during the long years following the passage translated above, although a premonition of death is certainly felt in it. 'I am a descending sun, soon to set. My soul is very much depressed since my peer passed away, may he rest in Eden. I ask God only to keep me alive through this year so that people should not say: "Both died within one year." Take notice, my dear, that I am going about like a shadow [cf. Psalms 39:7]. I have no authority (reshut), only the title. My strength is gone, my knee is feeble, and my foot staggers. My eyes are dim, and, when I write, it is as if I was learning it, sometimes the lines are straight and sometimes crooked, and so is my style, because my mind is disturbed since the day my beloved [son] traveled to Aleppo to fetch some goods he had left there. I pray to God to bring him back in safety "before I depart and be no more" [Psalms 39:14]'" (Goitein, Med Soc, V, p. 120, translating lines 19–25).

Letter from Mūsā b. al-Mughanī to Yosef Raʾs al-kull b. ʿAwkal, spring 1011.

Letter from Hillel Ha-Ḥaver b. Yeshuʿa Ha-Hazzan, Tiberias, probably to Efrayim b. Shemarya, Fustat, approximately 1050.