Geniza Lab

Letter to a son. (Information from CUDL)

Probably a letter since verso shows address of a letter, mentioning Judah and David, and Alexandria. (Information from CUDL)

Letter. (Information from CUDL)

Business letter to Abū l-Dar in Fusṭāṭ, mentioning commodities such as musk and saffron. (Information from CUDL)

Letter. (Information from CUDL)

Damaged, top part of what appears to be a poetic letter in Hebrew.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Possibly in the hand of the court clerk Yosef b. Shemuel b. Seʿadya. The letter opens with condolences for the addressee's loss. Then the sender goes into his own problems: his son Abū Manṣūr does not pay attention to what he says nor accept advice from him. The son has married, or plans to marry, a bad woman. (Information from Mediterranean Society, V, p. 122.) On verso there are accounts in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals. OZ. ASE.

Letter fragment from Shelomo b. Yehuda, probably to Efrayim b. Shemarya.

Letter. (Information from CUDL)

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Draft. Addressed to Yishay the Nasi, probably one of the Mosul Nasis active in first half of the 13th century. Mentions the sender's gladness when he heard that the addressee had arrived in Damascus ("maḥrūsa Dimashq"). (Information from CUDL)

Address, probably accompanying shipment, from Fusṭāṭ to Jerusalem into the hands of Naṣrullah Bashāʿ (?). (Information from CUDL)

Letter, sent to Fusṭāṭ, mentioning Abū l-Qāsim b. Abū l-Faraj. (Information from CUDL)

Letter, written around an Arabic text, probably a letter, mentioning the sultan, Ashkelon, the Gaʾon Abraham and a letter from a ḥaver. (Information from CUDL)

Letter, with quotations such as Isaiah 40:31 and Psalms 103:17. (Information from CUDL)

Recto: letter by a certain Shelomo to his father Yeshuʿa, also mentioning ‘the brother’ Jacob ha-Talmid and the arrival of the addressee’s brother in law in Fusṭāṭ. (Information from CUDL)

Probably a letter, mentioning four ships. (Information from CUDL)

Letter. (Information from CUDL)

Letter, written around an Arabic text, probably also a letter. (Information from CUDL)

Letter to a judge (shofeṭ), apparently in Damīra, mentioning Abū l-M[...] b. Abū l-[...] (the addressee?). (Information from CUDL)

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