Geniza Lab

Booklet containing Judaeo-Arabic glosses on sections of Genesis and Noah. Of documentary interest because there are a great number of biblical place names given their Judaeo-Arabic equivalents (Kittim = Cyprus(!), Tuval = China, Meshekh = Khorasan, and so forth).

Leaf from a geographic treatise written in a combination of Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic script.

Fragment of a geographical study discussing some of the parts of Africa concerning Angola and Mozambique – undated – Museum of Islamic Art – (number 105) – in French. (information from Ḥassanein Muḥammad Rabīʿa. ed. Dalīl Wathā'iq al-Janīza al-Jadīda / Catalogue of the Documents of the New Geniza, 28). MCD.

Treatise on geography in Judaeo-Arabic. See Yossi Ben-Artzi and Esther-Miriam Wagner, "Geography in the Genizah," Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, December 2010.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. In a lovely hand; the same scribe seems to have reused numerous Arabic-script documents for literary/liturgical text (see Joins Suggestions). This letter was intended to be sent from Fustat to an addressee who had recently set sail from Alexandria (presumably this is a draft or it was never sent). The letter opens with a quotation from Jeremiah 17:7. A few days after the addressee(s) set out to sea from Alexandria, Abū l-Faḍl (or Ibn al-Faḍl?) Ibn Sabra arrived "drowning" (ghāriq), which caused distress to everybody (did he survive a shipwreck?). The sender reports that the Nile completed its flood (al-māʾ qad awfā) at "5 from 17," which probably means 5 fingers short of 17 cubits. ("A cubit until the height of twelve cubits was divided into twenty-eight fingers, and equaled 0,539m≈54cm. A cubit above the height of twelve cubits consisted of twenty-four fingers, and equaled 0,462m≈46cm," per Kristine Chalyan-Daffner, "Socio-Cultural Attitudes to the Flooding of the Nile (13th–16th Centuries)" (2015).) The sender reports that everything in Egypt is perfect under the ruler (al-Mustanṣir or a vizier?), that new territory is conquered by him every day, that coins have been minted for him, ואלדעוה פי מכות (this phrase is difficult to understand—does it refer to the Fatimid Daʿwa?), and his forces have reached as far as Minyat al-Rudaynī (in the Sharqiyya district in the Nile Delta). ASE.

Accounts in Judaeo-Arabic. Late. Of interest because many of the line items are the names of Egyptian towns: Gharbiyya, Bahnasa, Manṣūra, Fuwwa, Ṭunūb, Shawbak, and many more. Needs examination.