Geniza Lab

Partnership deed regarding a money exchange store. Around 1085. Yahya b. Eli b. Yosef Kohen Fasi and Sason b. Natan agree to have a partnership. Yahya would be the main partner with investing 90% of the money, and Sason would invest the rest but would do most of the work. The goal for their investment is to increase money for trading partnerships. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, #811) VMR

Question to Muslim jurisconsults. In Arabic script. Concerning a case of inheritance: ما يقولوا سادتي الشيوخ اطال الله . . . . وتاييدهم في رجل مات . . . .The last two lines contain the names of two apparently deceased people: Isḥāq [...] and Abū ʿAlī b. Abū l-Surrī the teacher ("raḍiya l-lāhu ʿanhumā"). On verso there is a Hebrew dirge. Needs further examination.

Legal document, in which Sitt al-Rūm, a former slave who had been freed by her master Abū ʿ[...] before his death, appears in person before the rabbinical court of Alexandria to appoint an attorney to collect a loan. Mentions Salmān and Haffāẓ b. Ibrāhīm the cook, and signed by witnesses including Shelomo b. Yaʿaqov, Aharon b. Ṣedaqa, ʿAmmār b. Yeshuʿa and Sahl b. Mevasser. Location: Alexandria. Dated: Nisan 4830 AM, which is 1070 CE. (Information from CUDL.) NB: The transcription below is only partial; full document awaiting transcription.

Two fragments from a legal document. Location: Fustat. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi and under the reshut of Maṣliaḥ Gaʾon, yielding a date range of 1127–38 CE. Somebody receives a formal warning (התראה). The case involves Abū l-Faḍāʾil Ṣedaqa. AA

Fragment from a ketubbah of Joseph b. Shmuel b. Asad (groom), described as 'the esteemed notable', and the divorcee of Eleazar, called Manṣūr, known as Saʿāda (bride). Dated Thursday [...] Adar 52[...] (= 15th century CE) in Alexandria (Nā Amon), during the reign of Joseph ha-Nagid. AA Old shelfmarks: T-S 8.249 and T-S 8.88

Ketubba with no names preserved, dated 15 Ḥeshvan [...]. Mentioning a dowry of 90 dinars. Signatories are too fragmentary to be legible. (Information from CUDL.)

Partnership or investment (ʿisqa) agreement. Probably from a court notebook. Between Ḥalfon b. Netanel ha-Levi and Abū Yaʿaqov Yosef b. Shuʿayb/Shaʾul Ibn al-Najera. Location: Fez. Dated: Last decade of Ṭevet 4898 AM, which is January 1138 CE. (Ḥalfon's father Netanel was still alive when this document was written.) No witnesses. The document is written almost entirely as a first-person declaration by Ibn al-Najera. He has contributed 40 murābiṭī mithqāls and Ḥalfon has contributed 60 murābiṭī mithqāls to the partnership. The active partner (the sole partner doing business with the money) is Ibn al-Najera. (Information from India Book IV; Hebrew description below.)

Legal document in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi. On parchment. Fragment (long vertical strip from the left side of the document). Mentions the Nagid and Abū l-Munā al-ʿAṭṭār. Seems to be the dissolution of a partnership (the same partnership as in T-S 10J4.10, which involves Abū l-Munā al-ʿAṭṭār Yaʿaqov b. David?) and a mutual release by the partners.

Legal document(s). In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Involves a woman probably related to the Yaʿaq[ov] mentioned in l. 1 and/or the Sason ha-Levi mentioned in l. 2. She testifies concerning the will that the father of her son made for that son and bemoans her state as a "cut-off" woman. There is also someone named Moshe b. Yeshuʿa involved. The continuation of the document is damaged and difficult to make sense of, but mentions an orphan son, debts, expenses, and quotes different people's speech. This legal record is followed by a blank space and what may be a new legal record underneath.

Recto: end of a legal document concerning an inheritance and the sum of four dirhams, signed by Joseph ha-Kohen b. Ab[raham]. 11th century or earlier. Verso: piyyuṭim, the second introduced with אחר (‘another one’). (Information from CUDL)

Deed of manumission (geṭ shiḥrur) for a female slave. Location: Fustat. Dated: Tishrei 1510 Seleucid, which is 1198 CE. Theoretically the date could be 1520 Seleucid, but that is probably too late, given the signature of Shemuel b. Seʿadya ha-Levi on verso. Abū l-Maʿālī al-Levi al-Tājir b. Khalaf al-Dajjānī frees his female slave named Saʿāda. Written in the hand of the court scribe Yosef b. Shemuel b. Seʿadya ha-Levi (c.1181–1209). Signed: Menashshe b. Yosef. The attestation on verso that the deed was delivered into her hand ('in the Iraqi synagogue') is scribed and signed by Yosef's father, Shemuel b. Seʿadya ha-Levi (c.1165–1203). Also signed by Menashshe b. Yosef. (Information in part from Moshe Yagur via FGP.) ASE

Fragment of a will by Abū al-Faraj b. Maʿarūf the perfumer in Fuṣṭāṭ, 1130 CE. He gives to his wife her ketubba, trust, and control of the household goods and her children's inheritance. Scribe: Natan b. Shelomo haKohen. RR. See Rivlin, Inheritance and Wills, #39, pp. 366-367.

Recto: sermon or ethical treatise, quoting many biblical sources, continued on verso. Verso: form of a divorce deed (geṭ) with spaces left for the names, with Judaeo-Arabic interlinear text. (Information from CUDL)

Fragment of a ketubba. The trousseau is listed in ll. 3–9. (Information from Goitein's index card.) The hand is probably known; Natan b. Shemuel?

Bill of sale for a female slave. Not completed. In the hand of Hillel b. Eli. Dated: Friday, 2 Tammuz 1409 Seleucid, which is 4 June 1098 CE. The slave is named Naʿīm, of Nubian origin. The seller is Shemarya b. Ḥalfon. The buyer is a woman named Khāliṣa. There is the heading שהדותא in the top margin. (Information in part from CUDL.)

Legal document. Location: Fustat. Dating: Probably 1094–1111 CE, as it was drawn up in the court of [Mevorakh b. Seʿadya after he became known as] Sar ha-Sarim. Involves Yehuda b. Faḍlān; [...] b. Moshe known as Ibn ʿUṣfūra; and several members of the Ibn al-Shuwaykiyya family, including Meshullam [b. Hiba] (who is probably dead), Abū l-Faḍl, and Nissim and his mother Bahiyya bt. Ḥalfon (the wife or widow of Meshullam). Refers to a person who presented powers of attorney and two people who separated after a mutual release. The court questions various people, including relatives of the parties. Mentions the large sum of 102 dinars and a sum of 72 dinars. Needs further examination. T-S 12.94, T-S 10J5.13, and T-S 13J37.9 are all draft documents related to each other (possibly a join), and they are somehow related to T-S 20.30. All need further examination.

Fragment of a marriage contract stipulating a total of 20 dinars as a marriage gift at the conclusion of the contract in the event of the termination of the marriage. Partial listing of the dowry, ca.1100.

Marriage contract (ketubba). Bride: Nājiya bt. Hiba. Fragment (upper right corner). On verso there is a rhymed poem of praise for a certain person, with the acrostic ‘... b. Isaac’, mentioning the names Isaac and Ezekiel. (Information from CUDL)

Fragment of a marriage contract giving details of the remarriage of a divorced couple. Tishri 1370/February-March 1058. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, 391, 395, 448)

Testimony about a certain Elhanan and a Muslim slave, and the refusal to accept a si'aya (work imposed on a slave for obtaining his freedom), witnessed in Aleppo, in the month of Tishri '[1]326'/1014-15.