Geniza Lab

Legal deed. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Location: Fustat. Dated: Av 1413 Seleucid, which is July/August 1102 CE. The blind teacher Abū Saʿīd Ḥalfon b. Mevorakh sells to Turfa, the daughter of the late Ṭayyib al-ʿIblānī, half of a house in the Ḥarrānī street in Qaṣr al-Shamʿ for 51 dinars. The money was offered to him by the daughter’s mother, who is described as being from Aden. (Information from Mediterranean Society, IV, p. 283, and from Goitein’s index card, where he adds: cf. Worman, JQR 18 (1905): 25–26.)

Legal deed. Location: Qūṣ. Dated: Shevaṭ 1527 Seleucid, which is 1216 CE, under the authority of Avraham Maimonides. In which the physician Abū l-Manṣūr Elʿazar b. Yeshuʿa ha-Levi gifts the entire contents of his late wife’s dowry, “consisting of gold, silver, copper, and other items worth 200 Egyptian dinars,” to his two minor daughters, Nasab and Kufūʾ (or Kufāʾ?). The declaration was made in the house of Abū Saʿd Seʿadya, in the presence of his son Abū l-Mufaḍḍal Yehuda ha-Talmid ("the scholar"). (Information from Eve Krakowski, “Female adolescence in the Cairo Geniza documents,” PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2012, 34; and S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:278–79, 489) EMS