Geniza Lab

Letter from Shemuel b. Yosef Yiju, in Mazara, to his brothers, Perahya and Moshe, in Alexandria or Fustat. Around 1156.

Letter from Perahya b. Yosef in Mazara, Sicily, to Avraham b. Eliyyahu in al-Mahdiyya, inquiring about Perahya's uncle, Avraham Ibn Yiju and letter No. 68 (?). Dating: ca. 1151/2.

Letter from Yosef ha-Kohen b. Meshullam, in Aden, to Avraham Ibn Yiju, in inland Yemen, written around 1150-51.

Letter from a man who might be Perahya b. Yosef Ibn Yiju, probably in Fustat, to his wife, in al-Maḥalla. She is the daughter of the judge of al-Maḥalla. The sender reports that he was given the honor of delivering a sermon before the two congregations of Fustat. He implores his wife, with both sweet words and threats, to join him in Fustat. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, 218, 567, 568; III, 219, 220)

Letter from Perahya Yiju to his brother Shemuel. Written probably in al-Mahalla around the seventies or eighties of the twelfth century. Perhaya copies questions on religious law and asks his brother to obtain authoritative answers for them in Fustat.

Accounts of Avraham Ibn Yiju's workshop for bronze vessels, India 1132-1139, 1145-1149. The verso of this document is III, 21.

Two accounts of Ibn Yiju about transactions with the Nakhuda Abu Abd Allah Ibn al-Kataib, Aden, 1140-1145. This is the verso of III, 19.

Accounts. Perhaps in the hand of one of Ben Yijū’s workers, but not his handwriting. Similar to India Book III 19 (shelfmark CUL Or.1080 J95). The account was clearly written in India, as the prices are given in Indian coinage, Kūlamī fīlīs, i.e., from the famous port city Quilon on the Malabar Coast, and fanam. The writer's anonymous associate, whose account is registered here, was charged for the receipt of various commodities, including both Indian products and items usually imported for personal use from Yemen and the West. He must have been a Yemeni or from elsewhere in the West, who was staying in India. Commodities: civet, cinnabar, a copper pot, glass vessels, raisins, a lamp (or Indian horse chestnut? what is written is "qandalī"), sugar, honey, myrrh, storax, and Egyptian sugar. One of the important pieces of information to emerge from this document (assuming the merchant was careful with his sums) is that the fanam was not precisely a quarter of a fīlī but rather slightly less: the ratio is 0.236 in this document. (Information from India Book and Goitein’s index card.) Not edited in the India Book: an additional list of accounts on verso, written in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals and headed by the glyph. One of the items on that list is zabada (civet), indicating that it is probably connected to the Judaeo-Arabic account. The word "fīlī" in Arabic script may also appear at bottom left.

Letter from Yeshua ha-Kohen b. Yaʿaqov in Dhu Jibla, Yemen, to Avraham Ibn Yiju, then in Aden, 1150.

Letter from Perahya b. Yosef Ibn Yiju (which he wrote in his and his brother Moshe's name) in Messina to his father Yosef Ibn Yiju (the brother of Avraham) in Mazara, ca. 1153. He has by now married his cousin, the daugther of Avraham Ibn Yiju, and fled the Norman invasion of Ifriqiya in 1148 for Mazara, then Palermo, then Messina, en route to Egypt. This letter describes the journey along the coast of Sicily. Peraḥya also sends a medical prescription for his mother's illness: a mithqāl (slightly over 4g) of sagapenum (sakbīnaj) every three days and a cumin stomachic (jawārish kammūn). He also tells the addressees not to afflict themselves with fasting and weeping on his behalf, because his heart and liver are wounded if he hears about such excessive behavior (istifḥāl]).

Memorial list for the family of Yosef b. Perahya Yiju, Egypt, early thirteenth century.

Letter from Peraḥya b. Yosef Yijū, in al-Maḥalla, to Abū l-Fakhr Saadya b. Avraham Ibn al-Amshāṭī, in Fustat. Dating: 1161–72 CE. Peraḥya conveys his happiness to have learned that the family members of Abū l-Fakhr who had been sick are now recovered (and for this reason opens the letter with Deut. 7:15, "The Lord will ward off from you all sickness"). Peraḥya is supervising the production of kosher cheese and encountering difficulties: "I have already perished from the cheese and have become perplexed as to what I should do." He writes that he would like to travel to Sicily or Damascus {al-Shām}, but since 'the little one' (his cousin and wife, Sitt al-Dār) was grown up and "had no one in the world except God" (that is, her father was dead), he could not do this. Peraḥya thanks Abū l-Fakhr for his generosity with his brother Shemuel, and he urges him to help convince Shemuel to come to Peraḥya's town, where the congregation will accept him as a schoolteacher with a salary of 20 dirhams a week plus gratuities (nawāfil), a generous salary for a teacher. Information from Goitein and Friedman India Book 3.

Deed of lease of an apartment in Sicily for forty years for Yosef Yiju, Probably Mazara, after 1136. Yosef Yiju pays the rent for forty years in advance (!) to the owner Umm al-Aziz.

Letter from Perahya Yiju, in Egypt, to the Nagid complaining about Avraham Ibn Yiju, probably around 1156.

Note from Maḍmūn b. Ḥasan, written by one of his clerks, to Avraham Ibn Yiju during the first half of the twelfth century. The letter describes the highhanded tactics of Bilāl b. Jarīr, the governor of Aden and Maḍmūn's occasional business partner. Madmun complains about Bilal’s habit of demanding the first pick of the goods in the port, specifically of ‘drky,’ a commodity exported to Aden from India that was not always available. (S. D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Book, 357) EMS

Account by Avraham Ibn Yiju of Indian products sold for another merchant, Aden, ca. 1141-44.

List of Ibn Yiju's deposits and expenditures after arriving in the Egyptian capital.

Deed of manumission for Ashu, an Indian female slave, written by Avraham Ibn Yijū, Mangalore, October 17, 1132. On the verso and on the margins of the deed Ibn Yijū copied drafts of 3 poems for Maḍmūn b. Ḥasan of Aden (See II, 40). Both Goitein and Friedman suggest that Ibn Yijū bought Ashu so that he could release her and then marry her. This deed is especially important for the 'reshut' clause, written in India, and mentioning both Daniel b. [Ḥ]isday, the Exilarch in Baghdad and Maṣliaḥ b. Shelomo, the head of the Palestinian Yeshiva residing in Cairo.

India Book, II, 21a (T-S NS J241). See PGPID 5479.

Letter from Khalaf b. Yiṣḥaq in Aden to Avraham Ibn Yiju in Mangalore, dated July-August 1148. The letter contains information about their commercial dealings and some personal matters.