Geniza Lab

Prescription in Judaeo-Arabic for Abū Yaḥyā, including instructions for both medicine and diet. The name of the recipient at the beginning and the phrase "effective if God wills" at the end are written in Arabic script. Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 583.

Recto: Lists in Arabic script. Verso: A table of mysterious symbols. Coptic numerals?

Recto: State document in Arabic script. Reused for Hebrew literary text (recto) as well as a draft of a document of the qodesh (verso, see separate record). Join was identified by Moshe Yagur.

Business letter in Arabic script from the circle of Nahray b. Nissim, in Arabic script. Mentions the arrival of a certain Salmān, mentions al-Ashmunayn, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Ḥarīrī. Fragmentary and difficult to read.

Letter in Arabic script from Umm Zayn to Umm Isḥāq. The writer seems to want to travel to the addressee's location but has no money. The recurring refrain is "He doesn't give me anything." Needs further examination

Business letter in Arabic script from Mubārak b. Isḥāq to Abū l-Faḍl Sahl b. Yaḥyā al-Baṣrī (or al-Baṣīr), expressing longing for the addressee and sending greetings to Abū l-Faḍāʾil b. Baqāʾ and Abū Saʿd b. Abū l-Baqāʾ.

Recto: A long, interesting letter from a judge to a cantor. The writer is publicizing the ban of excommunication that the late Nagid (אדונינו ראש ישיבתה שלתורה הקדוש זצל) placed on Makārim b. Manṣūr al-Sammāk who encroached on the rights of the tax farmer of al-Maṭariyya—either Heliopolis (Goitein) or the district with the same name in the Delta—who is named Sālim. Goitein: Letter of a dayyān of Cairo to the ḥazzān of al-Maṭariyya, requesting him to intervene with Nāṣir al-Jazzār who had farmed the taxes of the locality from the Amir Malik al-Umārā' and then asked from Sālim 60 instead of 40 dirham nuqra, after Makārim b. Manṣūr al-Sammāk overbade him. See Med Soc II, 606. Verso: Accounts in Arabic script. Needs further examination

Tax receipt from the archive of Abū l-Ḥasan b. Wahb (see Khan, ALAD, pp. 140–59). He pays a half dinar for the year 404 AH.

Letter or petition. In Arabic script.

State document: report to a high bureaucrat (with taqbīl clause), written under the Fatimid caliph al-‘Āmir, 509/1115; in the Hebrew on verso, the date is 517/1123. Coptic and other pen trials on the back. Verso: a minute in Judaeo-Arabic noting the date of the corresponding ḥujja, Muḥarram 517.

Accounts in Arabic script.

Business letter from a Maghribī merchant. Addressed to Yosef b. Yaʿaqov and Hilāl (or at least these names appear in the address) In Judaeo-Arabic, with one line of Arabic script in the address. Dating: Likely 11th century. Mentions silk and Abū l-Khayr Mūsā b. Barhūn. Unpublished.

Qur'an 64-65 (FGP)

Qur'an 64-65 (FGP)

Pen trial consisting of the formula wa-mā tawfīqī ʾillā bi-llāh

State document, fragment of a longer text, dismembered at the collesis. What has remained is wa-mā tawfīqī illā bi-l-lāh. Possibly Ayyubid (tawfīqī billāh was an Ayyubid ʿalāma).

Five lines remaining of an official report mentioning two messengers sent from the caliph (al-ḥaḍra al-ṭāhira) to Damascus and also mentioning the Banū Hilāl. The document was reused to make a kind of frame or possibly to plan an inscription.

Text in Ottoman Turkish.

On recto, Hebrew piyyuṭ. All around it and on verso, Arabic jottings and pen trials.

Verso: Account in Arabic script (Naïm Vanthieghem; description to come).