Geniza Lab

Fragments from a copy of a letter. The writer is a person from Pumbedita (which belongs to a family of several Gaons) to a person in Spain, might be Hisdai b. Shafrut. The copy from the 11th century. Original letter from March/April 953. The letter contains important details about the connections with Spain, as well as about main figures in the Iraqi yeshiva. Mentions the head of the Gola – Shlomo b. Yisha’ayahu. (Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, Doc. #13) VMR

20 small fragments. Image 4 and Image 14 and Image 17 are fragments of legal documents in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Images 5 and 15 are from a printed work on the laws of Shabbat in Ladino. Images 6 and 16 are a Judaeo-Arabic letter (right side of recto, left side of verso) regarding business in foods/drugs (pepper, wormwood) and mentinoing Abū l-Surūr, from Yefet b. Menashshe to his brother (Abū Saʿīd?). Image 7 lists the names of various Nasis, Hizqiyah ha-Nasi and Shelomo ha-Nasi ben David ha-Nasi Rosh ha-Golah. Image 9 is another literary printed fragment in Ladino. Image 13 + Image 19 is a list of materia medica on one side, mentioning Abū Saʿd on the other, and preserving the remnants of an Arabic document.

Letter from Nahray b. Nissim in Fustat, probably to Barhūn b. Mūsā al-Tahirtī in Būsīr, ca. 1053. Nahray sends details of various sales in Fustat and of related payments. A man arrived in Fustat, who fell ill and died within 15 days. During his illness he prepared a will, leaving 10 dinars for charity in Fustat. Some of this money was given to the son of raʾs al-galut instead, whom Gil identifies as David b. Ḥezekiya. The receiver of the letter was appointed as one of the executors of the will. On verso there are illegible accounts in the hand of Barhūn b. Mūsā al-Tahirtī. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, p. 744.)

Fragment of a letter sent from Alexandria to the Head of the Congregations, perhaps R. Eliyyahu the Dayyan, describing a meeting of about fifty elders headed by R. Shemuel, the Dayyan and Ras al-Jaliya (the Nasi). Regret is expressed about a letter sent by the Nagid Avraham, and about letters by the addressee (Information from Goitein's index cards) Letter to someone addressed as ‘Adon ha-Tora Sar he-Te'uda Rosh ha-Qahal Yehid ha-Dor', concerned with community matters, sent to the perfumer's market to Abu l-Faraj (?). Mentions people and titles including the Nagid Abraham, Sulayman, Shemuʾel and ‘al-Nasi Shams al-Din Rosh ha-Galut'. (information from CUDL)

Polemical composition narrating the story of the exilarch Bustanay. For a parallel text and fuller description, see PGPID 6078.

Copy of the story of Natan b. Yiṣḥaq the Babylonian, from 'Akhbar Baghdad.' In Judaeo-Arabic, in the hand of Natan (ha-nezer) b. Shemuel. This is a mid 12th-century copy of a mid 10th-century story. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, p. 40.)

Copy of the story of Natan b. Yiṣḥaq the Babylonian, from 'Akhbar Baghdad.' In Judaeo-Arabic, in the hand of Natan (ha-nezer) b. Shemuel. This is a mid 12th-century copy of a mid 10th-century story. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, p. 40.)

Polemic against the house of the exilarch. Dating: 1040–41 CE. After a disagreement between Kafnai, Bustanay's father, and his father in law, the head of the Yeshiva, the entire family of the exilarch dies (and King David appears to the head of the Yeshiva in a dream). Bustanay is only surviving descendant of King David. The head of the Yeshiva raises him and occupies his place among the elders of Baghdad, but refuses to cede the position when Bustanay turns 16. The case comes before the caliph ʿUmar Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who is impressed that Bustanay does not flinch when a mosquito bites him. The caliph appoints Bustanay as exilarch and marries him to a daughter of the King of Persia, who had been captured in battle. She bears children to Bustanay but is never manumitted and never converts to Judaism. The point of the polemic: all the descendants of Bustanay are compromised, and the true house of King David will be revealed only in messianic times. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, p. 4) Join: Moshe Gil. In the hand of Sahlān b. Avraham (per Gil, Kingdom, vol. 2, p. 4), copied in the following circumstance: Daniʾel b. ʿAzarya, who was a nasi (from the house of the exilarch), had arrived from Iraq in Palestine and supported the gaonate of Shelomo b. Yehuda. Followers of the rival gaʾon, Natan b. Avraham, including members of the Iraqi congregation in Fustat, among them Sahlān b. Avraham, cast aspersions on Danʾiel b. ʿAzarya presumably also against Shelomo b. Yehuda. (Rustow, Heresy, 314) For a parallel text, see PGPID 35180.