Geniza Lab

Records of sales of books. Written by Shelomo b. Eliyyahu, who was the broker in two of the sales and the buyer in one of them. The seller is a certain Abū l-Bayān in all three sales. (1) Abū l-Bayān sold The Small Art [of Medicine, by Galen] to Faḍl Allāh b. Abī l-Faraj the teacher. The price was 11 dirhams, of which Shelomo got 1 dirham as commission. (2) Abū l-Bayān sold Shelomo a copy of Bava Qamma for 7 dirhams. (3) Abū l-Bayān sold a copy of the Guide [for the Perplexed] to al-Mawlā al-Raṣuy for 32 dirhams, of which Shelomo got 2 dirhams as commission. The last sale is dated: Monday, 17 Tammuz 1540 Seleucid, which is 1229 CE. The first two sales happened earlier in Tammuz. ASE

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Arranged in an unusual format with breaks between paragraphs. The teacher ʿIwaḍ tried to sell the Masoret but couldn't find a buyer. As for the physician al-Ḥakīm al-Naṣīr(?), the sender told him about Sayyidnā's request concerning Kitāb al-Taṣrīf fī Istiʿmāl al-Adwiya (perhaps a volume of al-Zahrāwī's magnum opus?). The physician was abashed and said that he has had a most pressing need for it lately so has been unable to fulfill the request. The next paragraph is extremely vague: "as for the person who had the matter, he sent me a messenger concerning doing the thing. . . ." The portion of the letter on verso mentions the mizmorim and a scene that took place when the sender walked in on somebody in the majlis where he prays, as he was wearing a ṭallit and praying. That man's son appeared and seems to have rebuked the sender. The letter then mentions 'the house where the Torah scroll is.' And another person mentions Ben Sarjado/Sargado and the numbers 8 and 4. The document needs further examination to make sense of all this. ASE

Letter from a physician in Silifke (Seleucia) to his sister's husband, presumably in Fustat. Dated 21 July 1137. "The Emperor John II Comnenus was on his way to Antioch—held at that time by Raymond of Poitiers—and a part of his powerful army passed through the town in which this letter was written. The Byzantines arrived before the gates of Antioch on August 29. Our letter, however, reports a rumor that the city had already fallen forty days earlier. The writer, a physician, even expresses the expectation that the Emperor might take Aleppo and Damascus as well and already placed an order for medical books which would be looted there from the homes of his colleagues." The writer had emigrated from Fatimid Egypt to Byzantium. Goitein suggests that he traveled initially with the Fatimid navy, as he lists letters he sent in previous years from the army camp at Jaffa, from Rhodes, and from the island of Chios, which were occupied by the Venetian navy in 1224. The physician also stayed in Constantinople before settling in Seleucia and marring a woman with a Greek name (Korasi). He repeatedly describes how wealthy he is despite having arrived penniless, and urges his in-laws to follow his example and join him, no matter how much they have to leave behind. [Recto 1-8:] He opens with a discussion of the fertility of his sister; she has already borne two girls to the recipient, who is now presumably hoping for a son. She has not been able to become pregnant "due to her emaciated state"; the writer believes he would be able to give her medications to allow her to conceive "even after the emaciation." (Goitein's reads shurb instead of shaḥb, and zawāl instead of huzāl, yielding, "My sister did not become pregnant despite the many medicines. If you were here, I would fix her pregnancy, by my life, even after she had ceased to bear children.") The writer's own wife never conceived except with medication. [Recto 8-9:] The writer was unable to cure Avraham, "the little beggar from Akko," who died and left his son an orphan. [Recto 10-17:] The writer provides a detailed list of the dowry that he gave his son-in-law Shemuel b. Moshe b. Shemuel the Longobardian merchant, worth altogether 200 dinars. [Recto 17-21:] The writer explains that his own letters may have never arrived because he used to send valuable materia medica with them, including mulberry concentrate (rubb tūt), ribes (rībās), barberries (barbārīs), Gentiana (ghāfit) leaves and extract, and absinthe (afsintīn). [Recto 21-27:] He lists the five letters he has sent in past years in exchange for only one from the recipients, including Abū Zikrī Yaḥyā and Abū Naṣr b. Isḥāq. [Recto 27-31:] He offers messianic wishes, citing Daniel 12:11 and a piyyut for Havdala written by the recipient's father. [Recto 31-38:] He writes of his great happiness and wealth, including a house worth 200 dinars and 400 barrels of wine. [Verso 1-4:] If the recipient really does join him, he should bring the medical books that the writer left behind. Regardless, he is hoping to obtain some medical books from the loot of Aleppo and Damascus. [Verso 4-22:] He conveys news of family and friends. [Verso 22-24:] He requests a quarter dirhem of seeds of mallow (mulūkhiyah), mandrake (yabrūḥ), and althaea (khiṭmiyyah), as these are unavailable in his location. Information from Goitein's attached summary and translation. EMS. ASE.

Letter from ʿIwaḍ to Peraḥya the judge. In Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, with the address in Arabic script and Hebrew. Written on a very long strip of paper, for which the writer asks forgiveness, because time was tight and the matter was urgent. The writer reports that Ibn al-Yamanī rejected the authority of Avraham Maimonides, while he himself vigorously defended the Nagid. The writer gives a blow by blow report of his argument with Ibn al-Yamanī. The writer adds that the ḥaver R. Eliezer was sick (mutamarriḍ) at the time the letter was written (or: at the time he wrote his letter). Eliezer is upset at Peraḥya for failing to respond to his letter or to send him Isaac Israeli's Book on Fevers. (Information in part from S. D. Goitein, The Yemenites, 125–29.) VMR. ASE.

Letter/petition from Yehuda(?), probably in Cairo, to an important person called Sayyidnā, probably in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. Rudimentary orthography. Dating: Probably late 12th or early 13th century. He first makes an excuse about why he could not come in person. Then he asks the addressee to obtain for him a copy of Tadhkirat al-Kaḥḥālīn ("The Oculists' Handbook") in the best handwriting possible. "For this is a khilʿa (robe of honor?) from Sayydinā"—i.e., receiving the book would be like receiving a robe of honor? He explains that the book cannot be found in Cairo. The addressee should spare no expense; the sender will reimburse him. ASE