Geniza Lab

Verso: Letter in Judaeo-Arabic to Abu l-Ḥasan, sending money with the messenger and asking Abu l-Ḥasan to purchase hashish for the writer.

Recto: The first part is a description of a plant (ḥashīsha) that is effective against toothache. Its branches and leaves are like those of the eggplant plant; it has something on its branches that resembles a white mulberry but it is actually a fine thorn pod that latches on to anything it touches; indeed it cannot be touched due to its roughness; it has no fruit except for this white mulberry-like thorn. The second part is a wine recipe, translated by Goitein (Med. Soc. IV, p. 260): "Take two and a half dirhems' weight of each of the following: lichen (shayba), ginger, pepper, and barley flour, and half a dirhem of saffron. Mix all these together, pound them and bind the mixture with the same quantity [weight] of Egyptian bee honey and put it aside. Put two and a half dirhems' weight of this, together with one dirhem of colophony (qulfūniya or qalafūniya, a resin extracted from a pine tree or a terebinth), into each jar and plaster it over (wa-tulayyis). Leave it in the sun for seven days, after which it can be used. If you wish to have vinegar, put only one and a quarter of this stuff into each jar and leave it in the sun for eleven days. (Information in part from Ekaterina Pukhovaia.) ASE

Debate poem between hashish and wine. In the hand of Nāṣir al-Adīb al-ʿIbrī. The narrator is a partisan of wine: "Hashish has a way / Of flipping the brain around. / If you want to go to Qalyub / You end up in Banhā! / Check out that stoned dude (masṭūl) .../ He looks like a ghoul (ghūl)." At the end, the narrator goes to a monk and pays him a dower to betroth 'the daughter of the vine.' This is one of the fragments that Nāṣir signs (anā al-ʿibrī...). ASE

Letter, apparently the second folio of what used to be two folios. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dealing with some business matters and containing an urgent request for the addressee to try to remember where he left the key to the chest belonging to the writer's shop. They have looked everywhere and cannot find it. It seems the mice have broken into the chest and are damaging the goods, mainly clothing (qad naqaba l-fa'ru l-ṣandūq wa-akalahu). The handwriting resembles that of CUL Or.1081 J28 (containing a similar complaint about mice). This letter also mentions business in cannabis (qunnab).

Legal document dealing with a loan granted by Abū Naṣr Elʿazar b. Karmī Ibn Shabīb to Abū Manṣūr Elʿazar Ibn Zabqala. Dated: Tammuz 1543 Seleucid, which is 1232 CE. Same case as T-S Misc.25.2. Goitein originally described the borrower as a communal official and described the occasion of the loan as public expenses such as dues on the import of myrtles into Fustat. He later wrote, "The 62 Kāmilī fulūs were dirhems and not copper coins and were regarded as an equivalent of 9 Nāṣirī dirhems plus customs dues paid to the makkāsīn Miṣr, the customs officials of Fusṭāṭ. (I had read instead of mksyn - mrsyn, and translated consequently "myrtles"!). Thus, 62 Kāmilī fulūs do not correspond exactly to 9 Nāṣirī dirhems, but to a somewhat higher amount. The customs dues were paid for... anbāq ḥashīsha. Should we assume that in those days not only the leaves and stalks of the hemp, but also its berries were used as drugs?" (Information from Goitein's index cards, Mediterranean Society, I, p. 385, and S. D. Goitein, “Erratum to JESHO 8 [1965] on The Exchange Rate of Gold and Silver Money in Fatimid and Ayyubid Times,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 12, no. 1 (January 1969), 112.) VMR. ASE. Join: Alan Elbaum.