Geniza Lab

Page 2 is a calligraphic letter in Hebrew to the elders of Alexandria, dated 1697/8 CE (5458), signed by three men, on behalf of a woman who, along with her infant son, had been abandoned by her husband Ya'aqov al-Luzio (? אללוזייו or possibly אללומיו) b. Avraham. Ya'aqov had moreover sent to tell her that if she attempted to follow him, he would steal away in the dead of night and she would be left to wander the land. The writers of this letter ask for the addressees' help to bring Ya'aqov before a court before he escapes from Egypt, and make him give her the get and pay her ketubbah in full (6000 mu'ayyadi) as well as the cost of food that he has been negligent in providing for his wife and his son all this time. Page 1 is a puzzling set of drafts of letters and perhaps legal documents in Hebrew, including one that opens in the same manner as the letter on Page 2, but others of which have nothing to do with it. Needs further examination. ASE

Letter from Yosef b. Shemuel al-Dani in Palermo to Isma’il b. Avraham in Damsis. The first part of the letter deals with the tragedy that happened in the sea, near Gabes (Qābis), on the way to Sicily. After the writer arrived in Sicily, he found out that he had been expelled from his house. In the other part, Yosef writes about his wife that is still in Egypt. He wrote her a divorce certificate in case he will not be able to come back. He is willing to sell his land and take the risk to come back to Egypt, to take her and their son to Palermo, if she swears she will go with him. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, #173) VMR

Letter from a woman, probably in Damascus, to her distant husband. Written in Judaeo-Arabic and some Hebrew. She chastises him for abandoning her for the last 15 months, in violation of the oath he swore over a Torah in front of the judge of Damascus. "I thought you were a religious, praying man. . . ." She also mentions that her mother died. Needs further examination. ASE

Letter of appeal/recommendation from the community of Damascus to the community of Fustat. The senders are writing on behalf of an ʿaguna who has been abandoned by her husband. He is a redheaded Qaraite named Yosef who was traveling with another man named Yosef. They heard that he settled in Fustat and became a Rabbanite. She is living in poverty with four children in Damascus. The addressees are to find the husband and try to force him to return or, if he has died, to send word about him.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Apparently describing the situation of an ʿaguna (a woman abandoned by her husband without a divorce). "Their summoning to the court. . . " It seems she has also been deprived of access to her athāth (=qumāsh=dowry?) and any money with which to feed herself (tataqawwatu bihi).

Letter from Shelomo b. Yehuda, Ramla, to Efrayim b. Shemarya (=Abū Kathīr Efrāyim b. Maḥfūẓ), Fustat. Dating: 1040 (after Kislev). It is about a father who is constantly "complaining" (קובל בכל עת) to Shelomo b. Yehuda about his daughter, an aguna, who is constantly "screaming" (צועקת בכל עת) to be released from her condition. See Zinger's dissertation, pp. 319, 322.

Letter from Saʿīd b. Marḥab on behalf of the court, in Aden, to the druggist Hillel b. Naḥman (aka Sayyid al-Kull), in Fustat. In Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Adar I [1]467 Seleucid, which is January 25–February 23, 1156 CE. The letter gives a uniquely detailed report on a shipwreck, as the addressee's son-in-law Hiba b. Abū Saʿd was on board, and the addressee had requested verification of his death and details about the retrieval of his possessions. The sender devotes the entire letter to the former and adds only one brief sentence in the margin of verso, about the possessions, which were confiscated by the sultan. The ship belonged to the Nagid Ḥalfon b. Maḍmūn b. Ḥasan. Most of the cargo on the ship belonged to him, though every Jewish trader in Aden had some cargo on it. There were only four Jews on board. It was called the Kūlamī ship as it set out for Kūlam aka Kollam aka Quilon on the Malabar Coast. The court of Aden here presents all of the available evidence for the shipwreck: eyewitness accounts, secondhand reports, and legal pronouncements. The main source of the information that the ship sank came from the Barībatanī ship which sailed together with it, i.e., the ship for Valapattanam aka Valarapattanam aka Balyapattanam, a port five miles from Cannanore aka Kannur, which is north of Kollam. During the rest of that year and the following year, travelers arrived in Aden coming from all over India, from East Africa ("the land of the Zanj"), from Somalia ("the inland region of Berbera"), from Abyssinia and its provinces, and from the south Arabian regions of Ashḥār and Qamar, and the accounts of all travelers were consistent with the Kūlamī ship having been wrecked. The court in Aden had ruled that the evidence was sufficient to free Sitt al-Ahl, the daughter of Hillel b. Naḥman, from being an ʿaguna, but they defer to the authorities in Egypt, as this was a lenient and tenuous ruling. The sender of this letter, Saʿīd b. Marḥab, is incidentally the earliest known Yemeni Jewish poet. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Traders; see analysis and translation there for further details.)

Hayfa, daughter of Sulayman Ibn al-Ariq, writes to the Ḥaver Eli b. Amram, the spiritual head of Jerusalem congregation of Fustat, during the third quarter of the eleventh century. She asks him to write to Damascus (from Egypt) to her husband Said b. Muamar, the silk weaver, after he had deserted her twice. She was forsaken by her family as well. She had a boy from Said and she wants his compassion or that he will set her free. (S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society; and Goitein's index cards) VMR

Legal document recording Surūra bt. Shelomo’s suit for maintenance from her husband Surur b. Yaʿaqov Ibn al-Jāsūs. For the expenses, Surūra was ceded one-half of a bill of debt given in Qayrawān to her husband’s father by a merchant in Alexandria in summer 1029 CE (the date on the bill quoted is Tammuz [4]789 [A.M.]), amounting to 280 silver pieces, worth 23.33 dinars. Surūra presented the bill to a court in Fustat with the request to have it collected in Alexandria, and further stated that her husband had left her an ʿaguna and thus owed her and the children this maintenance. T-S 13J8.2, part of CUL Or.1080 J7, and T-S NS J149 all include versions of the same document, or at least concerning the same case. (Oded Zinger, Women, Gender, and Law; S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 3:203, 319.) EMS

Letter from Shemarya b. Elhanan (966–1011 CE) about a woman abandoned by her husband ('Agunah) for seven years. The letter is apparently written to the maternal uncle (a communal official) of the deserting husband. This official is encouraged to sort this matter out, so that his family sets a good example. Letter is undated. (Information from CUDL)

Letter in the hand of Shelomo b. Eliyyahu to Ḥisday ha-Nasi (a Qaraite communal leader) concerning a husband who wishes to divorce the wife he had been coerced into marrying in Alexandria. The husband demands to pay the marriage gift in installments (i.e., never completely) after all that he had suffered from her bad character (al-tarbut raʿa). He has been with her for three years, but it feels like twenty. He is perishing from his illness (maraḍ) and poverty and bad wife. If his request is refused, he threatens to flee the country and leave her an ʿaguna. Shelomo is probably not writing on his own behalf, as it is unlikely that he would consult a Qaraite Nasi for a legal opinion. Contains elements of both a petition and responsum. There is a provocative (mis)quotation of Leviticus 14:45 on verso: "I have broken (should be: he shall break) down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, etc." With this the husband is comparing his wife (referred to as one's 'house' in Judaeo-Arabic) with a house stricken with ẓaraʿat. (Information from CUDL and Oded Zinger, Women, Gender and Law: Marital Disputes According to Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 87, 149, 180, 220, 260.) EMS. ASE.

Legal query probably addressed to a Muslim jurisconsult. In Arabic script. Concerning a Jewish woman whose husband converted to Islam and later traveled to India, where he seems to have disappeared. "Concerning a Jewish [man] who converted to Islam (aslama) and was attached to a Jewish woman, after he had converted, for a year. Then he wished to travel, and the aforementioned wife said to him, “You will not leave without giving me my bill of divorce,” to which he replied, “I won’t be gone but for a little while.” And he left and has now been missing for ten years. And she requests to [re]marry, seeing her dire economic condition, for she lacks support due to the hardships of the hour and the difficulties of the time. Is it possible that she will marry after all this time, and no news were heard from him, since he is in India (fī bilād alHind)?" Information from Yagur, "Several Documents from the Cairo Geniza Concerning Conversion to Islam" (2020). Verso contains piyyutim; Goitein's attached edition suggests that they may be in the hand of Ben Yijū.

Recto: Letter from communal leaders, in Alexandria, to the judge Shemuel, in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Unclear; likely early 13th century, based on handwriting and Goitein's identification of the judge Shemuel as the same one mentioned in T-S 10J16.6. Regarding a woman in Alexandria with a sick daughter, whose husband had fled his creditor and gone to the capital. The letter says that she had been deserted for a long time, that she had to maintain herself and her little girl, to pay rent, and on top of this, was sued in court by the creditor of her husband. The writers of the letter ask in the politest terms that Shemuel approach the Nagid for action in this matter. Verso: Letter from the judge Shemuel to the Nagid. The writer reports that he had sent several summons to the runaway husband, but since both the High Holidays (approx. September) and Hanukka (approx. December) had passed without response from him, sterner measures were now required, and, to the judge's dismay, the Nagid had to be troubled. The matter was of utmost seriousness since the Alexandrian wife asserted that her husband had married another woman and was living with her in Cairo. Clearly, the police now had to be instructed to bring the man to court by force. But only the Nagid, as official representative of the state, was authorized to give that order. (Information from Goitein, Med Soc, III, pp. 203–04 and Friedman, Jewish Polygyny, pp. 213–16.) ASE.

Formulary for a legal document, for an abandoned wife (ʿaguna) to appoint a representative (called אפטרופא/"guardian") to receive her bill of divorce and ketubba payment from the husband who has abandoned her. There are two lines of crossed out text on verso.

Legal document, Qaraite. Conditional divorce. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dated Sivan 5503 AM, which is 1743 CE. It is a detailed record of how David b. Reuven Nāqish wished to travel to Istanbul for business, and how he agrees that if he is absent for longer than 2 years, his wife Masʿūda bt. Avraham Fayrūz may receive a bill of divorce from the court. There appears to be only one witness, a certain Yaʿaqov. Merits further examination. Cf. Yevr.-Arab. II 1573 (another conditional divorce).