Geniza Lab

Letter from Mansur b. Salim in Alexandria to a friend in Cairo inquiring about his son, who had run away to the army and had perhaps travelled as far as Yemen. See also T-S 10J13.10 and T-S Ar.18(1).137, letters by the same sender concerning the same matter. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 379)

Legal document. Partnership agreement. Written in the hand of Avraham b. Natan. Moshe ha-Levi and his father (identified as Ṣedaqa ha-Levi b. Moshe in T-S 12.464) participate in a partnership in a shop. The relationship itself resembles an apprenticeship, as Ṣedaqa explains that Moshe is to transact only with his father’s permission. Furthermore, line 16 makes it clear that the two are to work side by side. That line 17 assigns to “each of the two of them…total responsibility” suggests a corporate liability, not restricted to each partner’s share in the joint concern but instead to fulfillment of the sum total of partnership losses or debts. Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman edited both T-S 12.464 and T-S 16.168 in his dissertation, but these could not be proven to be a join until T-S NS 325.11 was identified as the missing piece by Alan Elbaum. (Information in part from "A Mediterranean Society, I," 443; "A Mediterranean Society, V," 331, 336, 597, 599; Goitein's index cards; and Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 138)

Letter from Manṣūr b. Sālim, in Alexandria, to his son Abū Najm, who has gone on an adventurous journey or had run away to the army. The father mentions that he has sent to his son twenty letters and then twenty more, but the son never replied. The father states ‘I have never seen a character or religion like yours and never heard of the like’ and closes his letter with an exhortation ‘return to God and bring your mind back to yourself.' Abū Najm's mother perishes on account of his actions, and her vision is fading (alternate readings are possible, but "inḍarra baṣaruhā" seems likely as inḍarra derives from the same root as ḍarīr/maḍrūr, both meaning "blind"). Several other letters by the same man are known, all of them either addressed to Manṣūr's contacts in Fustat, asking them to help him find his son, or directly to his son (like this one). See tag. (Information from CUDL and Mediterranean Society, II, p. 379; V, p. 189.)

A mother buys her little son the privilege of reading the book of Esther in public, Damira in the Nile Delta, February/March 1244.

Legal document. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. A mother concludes a contract for the teaching of her boy in Arabic. Malīḥa the sister of Shelomo Ibn al-Amʿaṭ ha-Levi and Abū l-Faḍl Ṣadoq b. Shemarya agree that the latter will teach the Arabic script and the calculations of baqasāt(??) and dhāqāt(??) to Hiba b. Abū Saʿd (presumably her son) for two dinars. NB: This document is sometimes cited as T-S NS J401.21. (Information from Goitein's index card.)