Geniza Lab

Note from Yefet b. Yosef (both son and father are called "teacher," melammed) to Abu Zikri the physician, the son of Eliyyahu the judge asking him to send the tutty (zinc oxide for ophthalmic use) that he had promised the writer before his departure. Information from Goitein's note card. ASE.

Fragment of a letter in Judaeo-Arabic. The main part deals with business transactions, including shipments of Marāzībī tutty and walnuts. Abū l-Faḍl b. Maʿlā is mentioned, probably identical with the Abū l-Faḍl Yūsuf b. Maʿlā of T-S 13J14.12 and T-S 13J15.3. The margin contains part of a recommendation for a poor man (the bearer of the letter?), naked and lost, "yatīm al-aḥyā'." ASE

Note on a deposition in court about a sending of oriental goods carried by two merchants killed in the East African port ʿAydhāb. Location: Fustat. Dating: ca. 1104 CE. Hastily written by Rabbi Avraham b. Shemaʿya. See Goitein's attached notes for a translation with extensive commentary. The goods include "a piece of Chinese jasper, a mann of Chinese (petrified) craw-fish, and 3 aprons of asbestos, which are not burnt by fire."

Letter to Yosef b. Ṣāliḥ from his son Ṣāliḥ, containing many orders, such as for Iraqian purple; brazilwood for a quarter of a dinar; combs; mirwads; pepper; sarcocolla (ʿanzarūt); verdigris (zinjār); "marāzībī" tutty (according to the review by Theo Loinaz, this commodity is discussed on pp. 368-9 of Fabian Käs (2010), Die Mineralien in der arabischen Pharmakologie); ammoniac (kalakh); and many more. Mentions the arrival of Khalaf b. Qashīshāt (an Ibn Qashīshāt is also mentioned in ENA 2738.23) and other unusual names: Wahīb b. Safīq (?) and Ibn Maqḥaf. The writer sends regards to Abū Isḥāq and his business partner. ASE.

Letter from Yefet b. Menashshe probably to his brother Abū l-Surūr Peraḥya b. Menashshe. In Judaeo-Arabic. (We know the addressee has to be Peraḥya, because Yefet talks about their brother Abū Saʿīd Ḥalfon in the third person.) Yefet complains about his isolation and urges the addressee(s) to come quickly. He reports that the mummy (אלמומיא) has sold for 6 dinars and 45 dirhams. The term mūmiyāʾ referred to three different medicinal substances in this period—bitumen, pissasphalt, and a substance extracted from mummified corpses—and it is hard to know which of these is most likely in this letter. (For a review of the evolving meanings of mumiyāʾ, see Karl Dannenfeldt, "Egyptian Mumia: The Sixteenth Century Experience and Debate," The Sixteenth Century Journal 16 no. 2 (1985), 163–80.) Yefet has spoken to Ibn Salma and to Efrayim about something. There follows advice or exhortations about travel, but these are tricky to understand (". . . if you wanted to travel every two months, you would, and others are not cleverer(?) than you. Rent from Fustat to Alexandria. . . the time of the departure of the ships, may God guide them. . . ." Greetings to Ḥalfon and "those with him" (man ʿindahū). Greetings from their mother and sisters. It seems the letter initially ended here. Yefet continues with a reminder for Ḥalfon to obtain a letter or document from the judge "concerning the thing I asked him about." Yefet wants the addressee to bring tutty and other medicinal ingredients, since they have been prescribed for his eyes and they tell him that nothing else will work. Greetings to Sitt Naʿīm and to Ibrāhīm (who should come together with the addressee). Joins: Oded Zinger. ASE

Mercantile letter. On parchment. Dating: Early 11th century. The address is only partially legible and written in a confusing way. The sender appears to be al-Faḍl b. Yūsuf. The addressee is Abū l-Surūr Faraḥ b. Yehuda al-Kīnānī(?) known as ṣāḥib (the friend of?) al-Baradānī; underneath is written "to Abū l-[Faraj] Yūsuf b. Yaʿqūb Ibn ʿAwkal" (the most prominent merchant in the Geniza documents of this period). The letter was sent to him "either in Fustat or al-Ramla." The sender may be in Tripoli. He is angry about something to do with a huge shipment of 581 cases of "that damned tutty" (tūtiyāʾ, zinc oxide) and a financial loss that is "beyond repair. . . you have destroyed us." He bemoans his loss of reputation among "the Tripolitans, the Sicilians, the Maghribīs, and the Levantines, let alone among the Baghdādīs." Mentions the arrival of a group of traders who had been in Egypt, among them Abū ʿImrān Mūsā b. Yaḥyā Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥāla. Mentions the (arrival of?) the ship of ʿArūs. The letter concludes with something about a woman named Sitt ʿAlam. Uncited in the literature & should be edited. AA. ASE