Geniza Lab

Legal document. Draft of a acknowledgement regarding a sale of a store in Tiberias. Mid-September 1034.

Records of book sales, in the hand of Shelomo b. Eliyyahu. Dated: Monday, 16 Tammuz 1540 Seleucid, which is 1229 CE. "To increase their meager income teachers got involved in book selling. In this sales contract the teacher Shelomo b. Eliyyahu the judge (dayyan) sells books."

An incomplete deed of a sale of one quarter of a house by a public leader, Ibn al-ʿAjamī, to the wife of a money assayer for 1,000 dirhams. The sale took place with the permission and in the presence of the woman’s husband. The purchase may have been an investment. Fustat, 29 Marḥeshvan, 1541 Seleucid (18 October 1229). Verso is blank. (Information from Goitein notes and index card linked below and Goitein, MedSoc, Vol. 1, p. 462n123, Vol. 3, p. 328, Vol. 4. p. 283.)

Contract of a commercial sale – 192_CE [digit missing] – Museum of Islamic Art – (number 30) – in Arabic. (information from Ḥassanein Muḥammad Rabīʿa, ed., Dalīl Wathā'iq al-Janīza al-Jadīda / Catalogue of the Documents of the New Geniza, 67). MCD.

A testimony of a person who received 47.5 "Harf" (each of them equal to 40 "Vuksha" silver) for selling his part of the house in Sana'a. Around 1603-1628. (Goitein, The Yemenites, 150-152) VMR

Legal document between Maḵlūf b. Jacob and Sitt al-Riḍā bat Mufarraj b. Ḵalaf. Record of testimony concerning the sale of a female slave for the price of 17 dinars. (Information from Mediterranean Society, I, pp. 138, 433, 434 and CUDL)

Bill of release. Location: Minyat Zifta. Dated: Monday, 23 Ṭevet 4864 AM, which is 24 December 1103 CE. Shelomo b. Yiṣḥaq ha-Kohen had sent with Yāsīn Ibn al-Khabbāza a bale of flax and empowered Abū ʿAlī b. Fahd (al-wakil), known as Ibn Khulayf, to sell it. Abu Bishr Shelomo b. Furqan al-Kohen was present and reported the price garnered for it. One qintar belonged to Yiṣḥaq b. Yehuda. (Information from S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:188, 446; Med Soc 2:532, n. 41; Goitein’s index cards; and Norman Golb, “Topography of Jews of Medieval Egypt,” JNES, 33 (1974), 145.) EMS

Deed of sale. In Arabic script. Fragment (upper right corner). Dating: ca. 11th–12th century. Abū Aṭibbāʾ b. Abū l-Faḍl b. Abū Aṭibbāʾ the Jew buys 1/4 of a shop from [Sitt al-]Kuttāb bt. […]; 1/2 of the property belongs to her. Also mentioned are Ṣāʿid b. Shukr and his wife ʿAzīza bt. Ḥāmid, who may also be buying or already own part of the same shop. The document contains a detailed physical description of a man (probably the buyer). The property is near ʿAqabat al-ʿAddasīn and Sūq Wardān. (Information from CUDL, Khan, and Goitein’s index card.)

Legal deed for real estate, Mamluk period, with lots of archival process. 710s-750s AH

End of a document recording a sale, in which an unnamed male is released from obligations concerning some goods he offered his uncle for sale of any future restitution claimed by the uncle. Verso has four lines an unrelated account in Arabic.