Geniza Lab

Administrative note in Arabic script. Unclear exactly how it is related to all the Avraham Maimonides material in this folder. Might be his own handwriting (should be checked against all the other examples), the handwriting of another Jewish official, or even a bulk receipt from a jahbadh? Registering an expenditure of 2005 qarārīṭ (=83.5 dinars) for the ground rent (ḥikr) for the poor Jews of Qaṣr al-Shamʿ for Dhū l-Qiʿda 614 AH (=January/February 1218 CE). T-S K25.240 ff.3–6 comprise one cluster (ḥikr receipts?) and T-S K25.240 ff.1, 2, 7, 9, and 10 comprise another cluster (jāliya receipts?). All need examination.

Declaration of receipt of a quantity of barley. In Arabic script. Hiba b. Buqṭur b. […], companion of the amīr Dhakhīrat al-Dawla Ḥaydara b. Muḥammad b. ʿAdnān (appears also in T-S 13J26.13, twenty years and a promotion later), acknowledges the receipt of 1124 irdabbs of barley from Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Judayd. The barley has been ‘conveyed to the coast with the lighthouse’. Dated: 25 Shawwāl 422 AH, which is 15 October 1031 CE. (A previous description gave 438 AH and 1047 CE). The document was subsequently folded to create a bifolio. On the top of recto and on one page of verso, there is a Judaeo-Arabic formulary for legal documents. On the last page, in a different hand, there is a draft of a legal document in Hebrew. Location: Alexandria. Dated: Thursday, 20 Kislev 4815 AM, which is 1054/55 CE. The name Sahl b. Mevasser appears underneath. (Information in part from CUDL and Khan.)

A notary's draft concerning three houses and two ruins forming the object of a settlement. Among the most detailed description of houses in Cairo. Description of a mansion. Dating: ca. 1190 CE, per Goitein. Partial translation in Med. Soc. 4:79. Complete transcription (into Arabic script) with translation in Goitein, "A Mansion in Fustat" (1977).

Legal document, probably. In Aramaic and Hebrew. Dating: Maybe 11th century if not earlier. Involves someone named Yoshiyya. Extremely faded. Needs examination.

Responsum, probably from the eleventh century, regarding the marriage of Reuben with a female slave in India. See also PGPID 5544.

Responsa in Avraham Ibn Yiju's hand: legitimacy of a manumitted female slave's marriage and status of her children, Yemen, ca. 1140. See also PGPID 1347.

Deed of manumission of a slave. Only the bottom left corner of the document is preserved (or perhaps the entire left half of a very short document).The owner is named Mevasser b. Yefet. There are no details about the freedperson. Signed: Tamīm b. Shemuel ha-Kohen; Seʿadya b. Khalfān.

Ketubba fragment. Only a small portion of the overall document is included but a portion of the bride's name Fāʾiza is legible. The groom's name appears solely as [...] b. Shelomo. MCD.

Legal query, draft. In Judaeo-Arabic. Concerning the purchase of half of a house in Muslim courts. On a reused Aramaic Targum.

Legal testimony. In Judaeo-Arabic. Location: Mazara, Sicily. Dated: Sunday, 10 Sivan 4898 AM, which is 1138 CE. Signed: Yosef Shemuel ha-Sofer and Moshe b. Yaʿbeṣ(?). Seʿadya b. Mevorakh Jazā'irī appeared before the court bearing a power of attorney from Berakha b. Yosef Ibn al-Sartī(?). The power of attorney may have guaranteed the goods (ʿilab?) of Ḥayyim b. Reuven for 40 rubāʿīs. Someone's daughter is mentioned. The document is long and very well-preserved, and there is a large bibliography on FGP.

Legal testimony, draft or abandoned. Needs examination.

Legal document recording the sale of biblical books including codices of the Torah and of a targum to the Prophets, mentioning their prices in dirhams (90 dirhams, 120 dirhams). The parties are Elʿazar ha-Parnas ha-Shammash b. Hillel and Joseph b. Yefet (Information from CUDL)

Formulary for legal deeds, with quotations from responsa (frequent quotations of Binyamin Zeʾev - 16th century) followed by or with full description of the deed. (Information from CUDL)

List of books found in the estate of Yiṣḥaq b. Moshe, the local judge (nāʾib) of Sunbāṭ, in Lower Egypt. Dated: Jumāḍā II 545 AH, which is October 1150 CE. The list includes talmudic tractates, works by Isaac al-Fāsī, Hayy Gaʾon, Saʿadya Gaʾon, midrashim, responsa by Rabbi Joseph ha-Levi, and geonic responsa. (Information from CUDL and Goitein's index card.) T-S K3.32 (listing the books) and ENA 4020.60a (listing the goods) are part of the same inventory.

The end of a ketubba with a dowry list, referring to either Nathan or Jonathan. The list has been reused for writing practice, with many of the words repeated between the lines in a different hand. (Information from CUDL)

Legal records. Four pages (bifolio) in the handwriting of the judge Natan b. Shemuel. Dating: ca. 1150 CE. The first page consists mainly of memorial lists, while the other three contain digests of many documents to be issued by him. One of the entries according to Goitein's index card (but this portion does not exist on the digitized fragment—perhaps the shelfmark has changed): Sitt al-Iraq bt. Yaʾir the wife of Abū l-Maʿālī Netanel gives her son Abū Saʿd one quarter of a house in the Darb al-Zanājiliyyīn ('the street of the canister makers') and the other quarter to her daughter Sitt al-Banīn. Her husband has the right to live in the house but has to keep it in repair.

Ownership inscription of a book that belonged to Mevasser b. Yeshuʿa ha-Levi. The book was then purchased by Nadiv b. Saʿadya ha-Levi in 1469 of the Seleucid Era (= 1157 CE) and later inherited by Shelomo b. Shemuel ha-Levi. In the top part of recto, there are Judaeo-Arabic notes in which an unidentified person recorded all the items of titillating gossip that (s)he and his or her brother "Ab" heard mainly from Abū l-Khayr. (1) Abū Manṣūr used to think that your father was מכשוף אלדאר אלכומר, the meaning of which is not entirely clear. (2) The "family" of al-Raḥbī does not observe the laws of purity (טומאה וטהרה) and sits in front of him exposed in a diaphanous gown (ghilāla), and al-Raḥbī drinks on the Sabbath. (3) Ibn al-Baṭṭāl sits with al-Raḥbī and curses you with "the Z and the Q" (from "zawj qaḥba," the worst curse possible; see Ibn Taymiyya, Minhāj al-Sunna, https://lib.eshia.ir/11366/1/458) and al-Raḥbī joins in the cursing even as he pretends to be among those who love you, but "promise not to tell that I told you." (4) [Some days later in Suwayqat al-Shamʿ or al-Jāmiʿ]: Al-Raḥbī said that someone was his "son" in Alexandria; the rest of this tidbit is cryptic and mentions a certain Kohen; (5) ʿUqayb said that al-Raḥbī told him that Ibn al-Baradānī fornicated (fasaqa) with the juwayra (presumably a diminutive form of jāriya, female slave, perhaps implying that she was also a minor) whom he redeemed from captivity, "and he is even more wicked than that" or "could there be someone more wicked than that?" (פיכון רשע ארשע מן האדא). (6) ʿUqayb said something about running into Ibn al-Baṭṭāl. (7) He said that Abū ʿImrān cursed me with a curse that would be too long to tell. (8) Among the various things he said about Abū Isḥāq and his brother-in-law. . . . [this one is tricky to figure out, and involves a drunk Ibn Kulayb and a house known by the name of Samāʾ al-Mulk]. (Information in part from GRU catalogue via FGP.) ASE

Recto: deed in which a man and his sons gift a house to an adult woman, ʿAʾisha (known as al-Wuḥsha), the daughter of the owner. Mentions Abū l-Qāsim ʿUbaydallāh, Abū Manṣūr Jaʿfar, and Abū […] Hibatallāh. Witnessed by ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad Ibn Khalaf and ʿUbaydallāh Ibn Rajaʾ. Ca. 11th-12th century. Verso: list of books in Judaeo-Arabic mentioning a Massekhet Berakhot by Isaac al-Fāsī. (Information from CUDL)

P1: Legal document. Arabic script, badly rubbed, with signatures of witnesses at the bottom of the leaf (in a different ink). P2 recto: ownership note of a book belonging to Ḥalfon ha-Kohen b. Moses he-Ḥaver. P2 verso: one line of Arabic script. (Information from GRU catalogue via FGP.)

Court record from Minyat Ghamr regarding the rent for a shop and involving Shelomo the cantor and Abraham son of Al-Marḥūm.