Geniza Lab

Leaf from a notebook or register of some sort. The two pages are each headed "faṣl," like other documents from the dossier of the Mosul Nasi Shelomo b. Yishay (and this document may be in the same hand). Goitein initially read the date on verso as Elul 4955 AM, but it seems more likely that it is Elul 1553 Seleucid, which is 1242 CE. On recto there is a formulary for a clause in the marriage contract in which the groom is held responsible if he has intercourse with his wife before she has counted the full seven days and immersed in the ritual bath (miqve), in which case he has to divorce her with full ketubba payments. On verso there is the beginning of a court record, mentioning Shelomo ha-Talmid ha-Mevin, with pen trials in Hebrew script and jottings of accounts in Arabic script (mentioning two commodities and their weights; one of them is ṭabāshīr/bamboo chalk). (Information in part from CUDL and Goitein's notes.) ASE

Marriage contract, probably. Fragment. Contains a warning to the wife concerning menstrual purity. (See Eve Krakowski, "Maimonides’ Menstrual Reform in Egypt," JQR 110, No. 2 (Spring 2020), 280–83, 289.)

Ownership inscription of a book that belonged to Mevasser b. Yeshuʿa ha-Levi. The book was then purchased by Nadiv b. Saʿadya ha-Levi in 1469 of the Seleucid Era (= 1157 CE) and later inherited by Shelomo b. Shemuel ha-Levi. In the top part of recto, there are Judaeo-Arabic notes in which an unidentified person recorded all the items of titillating gossip that (s)he and his or her brother "Ab" heard mainly from Abū l-Khayr. (1) Abū Manṣūr used to think that your father was מכשוף אלדאר אלכומר, the meaning of which is not entirely clear. (2) The "family" of al-Raḥbī does not observe the laws of purity (טומאה וטהרה) and sits in front of him exposed in a diaphanous gown (ghilāla), and al-Raḥbī drinks on the Sabbath. (3) Ibn al-Baṭṭāl sits with al-Raḥbī and curses you with "the Z and the Q" (from "zawj qaḥba," the worst curse possible; see Ibn Taymiyya, Minhāj al-Sunna, https://lib.eshia.ir/11366/1/458) and al-Raḥbī joins in the cursing even as he pretends to be among those who love you, but "promise not to tell that I told you." (4) [Some days later in Suwayqat al-Shamʿ or al-Jāmiʿ]: Al-Raḥbī said that someone was his "son" in Alexandria; the rest of this tidbit is cryptic and mentions a certain Kohen; (5) ʿUqayb said that al-Raḥbī told him that Ibn al-Baradānī fornicated (fasaqa) with the juwayra (presumably a diminutive form of jāriya, female slave, perhaps implying that she was also a minor) whom he redeemed from captivity, "and he is even more wicked than that" or "could there be someone more wicked than that?" (פיכון רשע ארשע מן האדא). (6) ʿUqayb said something about running into Ibn al-Baṭṭāl. (7) He said that Abū ʿImrān cursed me with a curse that would be too long to tell. (8) Among the various things he said about Abū Isḥāq and his brother-in-law. . . . [this one is tricky to figure out, and involves a drunk Ibn Kulayb and a house known by the name of Samāʾ al-Mulk]. (Information in part from GRU catalogue via FGP.) ASE