Geniza Lab

State document, Fatimid period. Dated: 4 Rajab 523H, which is 23 June 1129 CE. Reporting that two trustworthy witnesses from Alexandria had given testimony, and that a document had come in answer to their testimony. One of their names has been preserved: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b Ḥātim b. Ṣadaqa b. ʿUmar. Contains a registration mark (al-ḥamdu li-llāh ʿalā niʿamih). Another scribe has reused the document to copy the Fihrist of Shemu’el b. Hofni gaʾon. Details: An official document belonging to X (unnamed person: the هـ of kitab) was presented somewhere, but it needed to be verified, so two witnesses ratified it, presumably in Alexandria. The ratified document was then sent to a chancery where our writer recorded its contents, and equally importantly, registered the names of the two witnesses who had vouched for its authenticity. This is a bifolio register destined for the central Fatimid archives. Without more information on person X, and on the nature of this كتاب (was it a receipt, a legal deed, a rescript?), the document remains tantalizing and opaque, but useful as evidence of registration and archiving. Reused for the fihrist (index to the writings) of Shemuʾel b. Ḥofni (one fragment) and for Bava Metzia 49b (the other fragment: someone buying wine learned that Parzak the vizier was going to confiscate it, so he tried to renege before taking possession of the wine. R. Hisda approved: "just as they instituted 'pulling' with regard to sellers, so did they institute 'pulling' with regard to buyers"). (MR)

Official memorandum with the signature of an official called al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad. Belongs together with ENA 2697.8 + ENA 2697.9 + T- S Ar.31.58 + T-S Ar.30.245, but it's not clear precisely how. Join: Marina Rustow.

Contract of lease for an irrigation channel on the jazīra of Fustat (the Nile island later known as Rawḍa). Dated: 18 (or maybe 28?) Shawwāl 407 AH (March 1017 CE). The lessees are Maḥāṣin b. Sayyidihim b. ʿAbdallāh; Muḥammad b. Abdallāh; Abū l-Faraj b. Sayyidihm; Khalīl al-Naṣrānī; Sulaymān b. Maḥāsin b. Naṣr al-Naṣrānī. The lease is for a period of 5 months, beginning on 23 Shawwāl 407. The lessees are to pay 600 dirhams paid in 5 monthly installments (munajjama) of 120 dirhams. The property borders that of the town (Fustat) and contains an orchard of date palms, strawberries, sycamore. No signatures are preserved. Reused for Hebrew poetry.

Bottom part of a decree of a Fatimid Amīr titled Surūr al-Malikī to a provincial governor or fiscal official, dated 2 Jumâda II, no year. Concerns collection of the kharāj on the refining of sugarcane (qaṣab) and taro (qulqās) in the village of Jawjar, where there was a press. The men of a high official (amīr muntakhab) titled Dhukhr al-Mulk wa-Sadīduhā (Treasure and Bulwark of the Realm) should be allowed to collect tax as the latter sees fit, while allowing the iqṭāʿ holders their income. Glued at top to a Judaeo-Arabic letter (see separate entry).

State document: report to a high bureaucrat (with taqbīl clause), written under the Fatimid caliph al-‘Āmir, 509/1115; in the Hebrew on verso, the date is 517/1123. Coptic and other pen trials on the back. Verso: a minute in Judaeo-Arabic noting the date of the corresponding ḥujja, Muḥarram 517.

Report or petition to a Fatimid caliph or vizier, opening blessings only. Dating: ca. 1100–71. Cuts off after the taqbīl clause. Addressee may be al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī (cf. Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, p. 284). Cf. also CUL Or.1080.15.77 (Khan, no. 84).

State document: fragment of a decree (sijill manshūr). Reused for piyyutim.

State document: A set of responses to petitons (?). Join: Marina Rustow. T-S Ar.31.58 is dated 507. Possibly related to BL OR 5553.1 + BL OR 5553.2 + T-S Ar.51.49 + BL OR 5553A.1 + BL OR 5553A.2.

Field-guide to taxation. Parts of two paragraphs. Written in a large, calligraphic hand. Collesis joint, suggesting it was once a longer rotulus, but also holes where it may have been bound into an archive, quire or codex. Discussed and translated in Rustow, Lost Archive. On verso is a liturgical text and a letter draft in the hand of Efrayim b. Shemarya (see PGPID 6698).

Petition or report, Fatimid, fragment from near the beginning containing end of blessings, the taqbīl clause, and part of the qiṣṣa. Dating: 1100–71.

Fatimid state report from a lower official to the caliph or other high official(s), including raʾy clause, ḥamdala and ḥasbala. Only the last two lines before the ending are preserved. Mentions Ibn al-Anbārī and excuses for why a group of people were prevented from arriving somewhere (possibly tempests—anwāʾ).

Copy of a petition to the caliph al-Ẓāhir (matn only) against acknowledgement of the Iraqi authority in Palestine. Dating: original document ca. 1030, but this copy may be several decades later. Discussed in Khan, JRAS, p53; Rustow, Heresy and elsewhere; Rustow, Lost Archive, p. 347. Previous description (Goitein's?): Shelomo b. Yehuda to al-Mustansir defending his position against Yūsuf al-Sijilmasi, the Iraqi leader in Palestine. In the same hand as ENA NS 13.15 and T-S K25.244.

Decree to a lower official commanding him to retrieve bricks and everything belonging to the government from a certain location (a ruined mosque?); and from other ruined mosques; and to assert the government's authority over the aforementioned mill.

Report to an Ayyubid official mentioning al-Malik al-ʿĀdil and a deceased official named Shams al-Dīn. The Mainz shelfmark is how it's listed in FGP, but it's not actually in Mainz. The image in FGP is from a microfilm at the National Library of Israel; the original was at a paper museum in Mainz that has since closed, now presumed lost. Join: Marina Rustow.

Official letter in a Fatimid chancery hand, mentioning Abī l-Bayān Mūsā, may God sustain him, and Abū ʿAlāʾ (?).

Decree fragment, probably Ghaznavid, containing the order clause and the beginning of the date clause; date cut off. From an 11th-century archive or Geniza of a Jewish land-owning and trading family at Bāmiyān that came to light in the late 20th c in Bāmiyān province, Afghanistan. In Persian and Arabic.

Petition. Report fragment, probably early Ayyubid period (taqbīl clause + paleography + reused by Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi, whose documents cluster ca. 1190–1210; see description of verso of this document). Difficult to decipher. Contains a registration mark in faded (iron gall?) ink.

State document: Official report (fragment) concerning armed insurrection and civil unrest. For verso, see separate entry.

Recto: State document. Report to al-Ẓāhir about a tax farmer, beginning only. Dating: 1021–36 CE. (Cited in Khan, BSOAS 53 (1990) 25; Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections 311 n27 with partial transcription.) Indirect join: Oded Zinger.

A Fatimid decree fragment, possibly of an investiture. Recycled by Efrayim b. Shemarya.