Geniza Lab

Marriage contract (ketubba). Location: New Cairo. Groom: Natan b. David. Bride: Sitt al-Sāda bt. ʿOvadya. One of the oldest and largest illuminated medieval ketubbot from the Geniza. Containing six layers of calligraphic borders of varying widths, including piyyutim in micrography; one thin border of gold outlined in blue; one wide border of gold calligraphy on a blue background; two arches of intersecting circles of micrography interspersed with red, blue, and gold shapes, and the monumental calligraphy of the poetic superscription in gold and blue. As a whole, this ketubbah appears to have been executed to the highest standards of medieval Levantine Jewish book art. Some portions of other decorated and illuminated ketubbot from this period have been preserved, but because of their fragmentary state they have not yet received extensive scholarly attention (see, for example, T-S 16.104, T-S 16.73, and T-S 24.17). Join by Noam Sienna, and information from Sienna, N. (2018). Reunited At Last: T-S K10.4 and Bodl. MS. Heb. c. 13/25. [Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, July 2018]. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.34050. Note that Goitein treats Bodl. MS heb. c 13/25–26 and Bodl. MS heb. c 13/27–28 as if they are pieces of the same ketubba. This is possible but not certain, as the fragments are not continuous.

Ketubba. Location: Cairo. Groom: Natan(?) b. David. Bride: Sitt al-Sāda b. ʿAdaya. In the handwriting of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe? (Information from Goitein’s index card.)

Legal document from Fustat, Elul 5500 (1740 CE), involving the division of profits between the three partners Avraham Serrano, Moshe Meyuḥas, and Avraham Ṣadīq and a fourth merchant, Avraham Revaḥ. The four businessmen are in the גֿוהאגֿיליך trade and they supply the princes and nobles of Egypt. This may be çuhacılık, which seems to be a type of weaving, but somebody who knows Turkish ought to examine it. Verso is also filled with text, in at least different hands, apparently a halakhic discussion. It is not clear if it relates to recto. A sum in reales is named. ASE

Bill of sale for a female slave. Written and signed by Moshe b. Elʿazar. Also signed by Avraham b. Hillel b. Ṣadoq Av. Location: Cairo. Dated: 5 Kislev 1519 Seleucid, which is 1207 CE. The name of the female slave (here called Heb. shifḥa) is missing. Seller: Shemuel ha-Levi. Buyer: Ḥasan/Yefet ha-Levi known as Ibn al-Batnūnī (אלבתנוני). Price: 21 dinars. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card and from Craig Perry.)

Legal document, Sunday 3 Adar II 4845 A.M. (1085), Alexandria. Yehuda b. Moshe b. Sighmar appoints Eli ha-Kohen b. Hayyim (=b. Yahya) as his agent to represent him in a litigation against a business partner, Avraham Ha-Kohen b. Faraj al-Rahbi. This is three years after Yehuda had asked Eli to help him to get the money that Avraham owed him and ten years after the original deal between the two. See also Bodl. MS heb. d 65/5 (ed. Cohen in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 56 [2013], pp. 218-263, also in Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 4, #623).

Engagement (shiddukhin) contract for a second wife. Location: Fustat. Dating: ca. 1165–66 CE, as the reshut clause invokes the Gaʾon Netanʾel ha-Levi (1160–66) and the document is written in the hand of the court scribe Shemuel b. Seʿadya ha-Levi (active 1165–1203). Manṣūr b. Makārim of Bilbays, already the husband of a woman named ʿAmāʾim, came before the court (probably in Fustat or Cairo) together with Abū Naṣr b. Abū Saʿīd, the half-brother (shared mother) of a woman named Maʿālī. Together the two men agree on the conditions for Manṣūr's marriage to Maʿālī. (1) Maʿālī will have her own apartment, not shared with ʿAmāʾim. (2) Manṣūr will not take a third wife. (3) Maʿālī will live with Manṣūr's daughter Milāḥ, likely the daughter of ʿAmāʾim (Goitein speculated that ʿAmāʾim must have suffered from a physical or mental illness preventing her from taking care of her own daughter). (4) Marriage payments: 2 + 15 = 17 dinars. (Information from M. A. Friedman's edition.)

Legal declaration, missing its beginning, inolving several Bibles (maṣāḥif), the speaker's brother Abū Saʿīd, abū l-Barakāt al-Ḥazzan, and Abū l-Makārim al-Levi. The original document is signed by Avraham ha-Kohen b. Aharon and ʿOvadya b. ʿŪlla. The addendum is signed by Shemuel ha-Levi b. Seʿadya, Elʿazar b. Mikha'el, and Mevorakh b. Natan ha-Ḥaver (active 1150–81).

Legal query from Shelomo b. Yaṣliaḥ to the Sahlān b. Barhūn ha-Ḥaver (titled Rosh Kalla). It is a veiled complaint about a cantor, clad in a carefully worded series of questions about the desirability of a hindrance to public prayer, especially when the latter is improperly conducted. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Legal document. In the hand of Yefet b. David. Location: Fustat. Dated: Monday, 3 Nisan [47]88 AM, which is 1 April 1028 CE. Barhūn b. Sahlān receives from Menashshe b. Yosef 30 gold dinars (זהובים טובים), to be paid back in installments of three dinars a month. As security he empowers him to [something]. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Debt contract. Location: Fustat. Dating: First decade of Kislev 1462 Seleucid, which is 1150 CE, under the authority of the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya. According to which a debt of 4 dinars, 19 qīrāṭs, and 454 dirhams, resulting from a sale, is to be repaid in weekly installment of 50 dirhams. beginning on Sunday 5 Kislev 1150 CE. The debtor seems to be Sayyid al-Kull b. Shabbetay ha-Shofeṭ ha-Mumḥe. The creditor is Abū Isḥāq. Witnesses: Yeshuʿa b. Aharon ha-Kohen; Yeshuʿa b. Ḥotam ha-Levi. On verso there are entries of repayments: 5 repayments of 1 dinar each and 11 repayments of 40 dirhams. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card.)

Contract. Location: Fustat. Dated: 2[.] Ḥeshvan 1352 Seleucid, which is 1040 CE. In which Yiṣḥaq b. Seʿadya al-Manbijī agrees to teach Fahd ha-Levi the liturgy in evening courses to be continued over a period of 3 years. Witnesses: Shabbat b. Elʿazar; Natan b. Yeshuʿa; Maṣliaḥ b. Shemuel; Efrayim b. Shemarya. Also concerns figures from a town in the Nile delta. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card)

Recto: Legal document. Partnership agreement. Dated: November 1076. Manṣūr b. Khalaf al-Ṣūrī (from Tyre) will partner with Yefet b. Avraham and Shelomo b. Avraham for one year, beginning in the month of Ṭevet in 1388. Goitein suggests that the three were involved in minting, on the basis of another document which shows a relationship between Yefet and Manṣūr in the sifting of gold dust. Here, Manṣūr is prohibited from traveling or mentioning travel or even expressing a wish to see his family – perhaps his partners are afraid that he will abscond with the gold used in minting? – if he does so, he must pay 20 dinars to the poor, a standard penalty clause. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture", 36-37) Verso: Unidentified document in Arabic script. Mentions "al-kātib ... al-ishrāf(?) Muḥammad b. Ḥammūd al-Qāḍī." (Information in part from Goitein’s index card and attached notes.)

Legal document. Power of attorney given by Abū Isḥāq Avraham b. Yeshuʿa known as Ibn Nissim to his nephew, to claim various ornaments and sums from three different people. Monday 4 Kislev 1125. (Information from Goitein’s index card)

Legal document in Hebrew demanding a punishment of excommunication and three days of house arrest for Sabyan b. Saadya who libelled his kinsman Yosef b. Perahya as being a descendant of slaves. Fustat, 1043.

Court record, 1039. Banīna bt. Avraham in Alexandria, who had been deserted by her husband Yosef, appointed her brother Shelomo as her attorney. Accompanied by two witnesses to this arrangement, the brother appeared before Efrayim b. Shemarya’s court in Fustat, where the power of attorney was ratified. The brother appointed a cantor and clerk of the court as his sister’s permanent representative. Verso is blank. (Information from Goitein notes and index card linked below, Goitein, MedSoc, Vol. 3, p. 203.)

Copy of a court record from the Pumbedita Yeshiva under Sharira Gaon, October 997. The event was in Baghdad and the copy was made in Fustat with the signatures of two people from Fustat. Regarding a will and inheritance. (Information from Gil, Kingdom, Vol. 2, #29) VMR

Legal document. Location: Ṣahrajt. Dated: Monday, 11 Kislev 1372 Seleucid, which is 1060 CE. Ḥarīza b. Abraham appoints Mevorakh b. Abraham (most likely her brother) as her agent to receive a bill of divorce from her husband Ṣadaqa b. Ṭayyib. Written and signed by Yehuda b. Avraham, who also wrote T-S 13J13.2 and ENA 2465.8–9. Also signed by: Ḥalfon b. Shelomo; Ṣadaqa b. Furqān. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card.)

Legal document written by Shemuel b. Saadya ha-Levi, specifying the estate of the deceased Avraham b. Abu al-Karam, the perfumer. Dated Adar 1514/ March 1203. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, p. 412, and from Goitein's index cards)

Legal document. Memo about the actions taken by the rabbinical courts in Alexandria, in an unspecified place, in Fusṭāṭ, in Minyat Ziftā, and again in Fusṭāṭ. In Alexandria, al-Karīm b. ʿAlī had received ten dinars from Abū l-Munā Iṣḥāq b. Yehuda. Before, al-Karīm had declared that he agreed to that settlement (i.e., had made a mōdaʿ) only under duress and would not honor it. On examination, the court in Fusṭāṭ found that the mōdaʿ preceded the settlement in Alexandria and invalidated it, and instructed Avraham b. Shabbetay of Minyat Ziftā (where the case originated) accordingly. Thanks to the intervention of “righteous, upright, and peace-loving elders” of Minyat Zifta, Abū l-Munā agreed to pay six more dinars and Shelomo ha-Kohen ha-Zariz stood security. Finally, in Fusṭāṭ, Abū l-Munā paid the dinars, and three releases were issued: Karīm to Abū l-Munā, al-Karīm to Zariz, and Zariz to Abū l-Munā. Since this is only a memo, only two people signed it: Yiṣḥaq b. Shemuel ha-Sefaradi and the scribe, Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. See also ENA 4101.16c. (Information from Gershon Weiss's edition and Goitein’s index card.)

Legal document from Minyat Zifta in which a wife conveys to her husband full proprietorship of half a house given to her by her father and renounces her rights in a house belonging to her husband, serving as a collateral for her marriage gift. Dated Shevat 1471/ January 1160. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, p. 389)