Geniza Lab

Recto: The colophon to a copy of a certain Sharḥ attributed to Samuel Ibn Tibbon (d.1232). Verso: A brief medical prescription.

Recto: A Karaite betrothal document from Fusṭāṭ 1048 CE (Kislev, 1360 Seleucid) for Maḥfūẓ b. Menaḥem and Fāḍilah bt. Avraham b. Muslim. The dower (mohar) is 50 pieces of silver (dirhams). The early marriage gift (muqdam) is 25 dirhams. Verso: Three recipes in Arabic. The first may be medical ("Smear it on the place. Effective.") The second, which occupies the bulk of the page, may be a recipe for red ink. The third, written sideways in the margin, is unclear. Its first ingredient is shelled walnuts. ASE

Recto: Fragment (upper right corner) of a Judaeo-Arabic letter to Abū l-Barakāt regarding a fatwā and the nagid Av[raham]. Verso: Three lines of neat Arabic at the top, significance unclear but possibly medical in nature. Below are several recipes (medical prescriptions?) in Judaeo-Arabic. ASE.

Recto: Medical prescriptions in Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic. Verso: Arabic script, perhaps accounts, perhaps connected to recto.

4 bifolia from a Judaeo-Arabic medical treatise.

Recipes in Arabic, purpose unclear. One of them is attributed to al-Rāzī and al-Zahrāwī.

A recipe or prescription in Arabic. Needs further examination.

Medical prescription in Arabic.

Probably a medical prescription or a recipe in Arabic, mentioning hiera picra (a cathartic powder made of aloes and canella bark), chebulic myrobalan (iḥlīj Kābulī), lavender (isṭarkhūdus), sugar, and ghārīqūn (agaric).

Recto: Medical prescription in Arabic (or a page from a medical treatise). Verso: A statement in Arabic signed by Hiba b. Mufaḍḍal al-Mutaṭabbib and dated September 1260 (18 Shawwal 658). It has to do wtih a payment in "plain black dirhams" (sawād sādhij).

See also BL OR 5547.3. Recto: two blocks of text in Arabic. The bottom one at least is a medical prescription (يوجذ على بركة الله وعونه) using ingredients such as chebulic myrobalan (اهليلج كابلي) and lavender (اسطوخوذس). Verso: upper block of text is Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, giving detailed instructions for how a cantor should recite certain verses and prayers. Lower block of text is another Arabic technical text, conceivably from a work on alchemy, as in the verso of BL OR 5547.3 (by the same writer).The overlap of the Hebrew script with the Arabic technical passage (see the title of the section, باب אל...) suggests that the same writer is responsible for the the entirety of verso. ASE.

Recto: a medical prescription in Arabic for ʿAlī b. [..]Allah. Verso: scribal practice in Hebrew. ASE.

Medical prescription. In Arabic script. Ingredients include: "Indian"; borage; pistachio kernels; sugar. Diet: boiled young chickens (farrūj maṣlūq).

Medical prescriptions in Judaeo-Arabic, or perhaps drafts for a medical treatise. The text on recto contains many words crossed out and many corrections. The main text on verso is in the same hand. The text oriented at 90 degrees may also be in the same hand, but it is difficult to tell as it was written with a wider calamus.

Bodl. MS heb. f 22/19–52 is a notebook of a notary and bookseller, containing drafts of legal deeds, some of them dated (1155, 1159, 1160, 1162), entries about books received in commission for sale or loaned out, accounts, and prescriptions. Within the notebook, Bodl. MS heb. f 22/20v–25r is a Passover Haggada. (Information from Goitein's index card.) See individual records for individual descriptions. The book-related portions were edited by Allony et al., The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah, 157–80. Transcription awaiting digitization.

Recto: Several drafts of legal documents. Item #1: Legal document regarding a business partnership (but not the original partnership agreeement), from Fustat/Cairo, dated January 1790 (end of Tevet 5550), between Yiṣḥaq Aripol b. Shelomo who lives in Fustat/Cairo and Moshe b. Nehoray Torongi (?) who lives in Istanbul ["Costa"]. Item #2: Drafts of a document regarding a partnership between the same Moshe Torongi and Yaʿaqov Bibas. Item #3, at a right angle: Draft of a betrothal document for Seʿadya Angel (?) b. Avraham and Galiya (?) bt. Ḥayyim Madikhah (?). Verso: Contains some text from a legal document with 5 elaborate witness signatures (but at least two belong to the same person--perhaps someone is practicing their signature?). Also contains an account, a draft of a letter, and medical prescriptions for an infertile woman, all at different angles.

A miscellany. On recto there are very elaborate praises for God in Judaeo-Arabic. On verso there are three different keys to Hebrew ciphers. The first is the same as in Bodl. MS heb. f 102/28, the second is simply atbash, and the third is based on the mnemonic הקץ עצל דיך מנום כזב גרש פן תסף חטא, a Hebrew version of "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." On the facing page there is a prescription for a medicinal syrup ("sharāb mudabbir") (cf. Chipman, The World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists, p. 189).

Prescription in Judaeo-Arabic, it seems for hemorrhoids (arwāḥ, see Blau's dictionary, p. 264).

Prescription in Judaeo-Arabic for Abū Yaḥyā, including instructions for both medicine and diet. The name of the recipient at the beginning and the phrase "effective if God wills" at the end are written in Arabic script. Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 583.

Medical prescription or recipe. In Arabic script. The first item is hiera picra (ايارج فيقرا). Also uses pulp of colocynth (shaḥm ḥanẓal). There are 3 lines in the same hand in the middle of verso.