Geniza Lab

Appears to be a letter. (Information from CUDL)

Recto: letter with sender and addressee in Judaeo-Arabic. Verso: unidentified text in faint Hebrew characters. (Information from CUDL)

Small fragment from the margin of a letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Mentions the Rīf, Sambūṭya (=Sunbāṭ) and an old woman named Umm [...]. (Information in part from CUDL)

Recto: possibly the beginning of a letter. Verso: one line of very faint script. (Information from CUDL)

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Small fragment torn from the margin, since the text is diagonal. Mentions some people looking after some other people (yakūnū murāʿiyyīn lahum) and Sayyidnā al-Nagid. AA. ASE.

Probably a letter. (Information from CUDL)

Beginning of a letter in Arabic script. Reused for Hilkhot ha-Rif and Birkat ha-Mazon.

Letter in Hebrew. Late. Possibly embedded within a literary text. It begins on line 5 of recto. See FGP for further information.

Ketubba for Sitt al-Banāt. In the hand of Natan b. Shelomo ha-Kohen (1125–50). The ends of 6 lines are preserved. The groom undertakes not to curse the bride or treat her with disrespect. The identification of the scribe as Natan b. Shelomo ha-Kohen allows us to tentatively date the letter to the last years of Maṣliaḥ Gaʾon (1138–39) when there was a mutiny against the government, and Maṣliaḥ picked the wrong side, so that many Jews were jailed and Maṣliaḥ himself was executed in 1139. (Information from Amir Ashur.)

Verso, continuing onto recto between the lines (secondary use): Letter describing a requisition (muṣādara) carried out against a whole town, in which Muslims, Christians, Samaritans and Jews were all affected, with the latter suffering even more than the others. All clothing and provisions of wheat and wine hoarded in the house of the writer's maternal uncle were plundered; even the rope of the well was taken way. The authority ordering the requisition is referred to as the biblical 'Haman the wicked'. (Information from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 393.) The sender himself was interrogated by the raqqāṣīn who were searching for his uncle, but he pretended to be not from there and fled. The letter refers to three obscure torture devices or techniques: "they in{ser}ted the ʿṬY (עטי), the hinbāzīn (הנבאזין), and the khazm (? כזם) in their (the Jews') noses (v3). Later, the sender explains that a person who has had the ʿṬY enter his flesh will not heal (r5–6). The meaning of ʿṬY is not clear; khazm is also not clear, but comes from a root referring to piercing, sometimes nose piercing. The term hinbāzīn/הנבאזין/هنبازين is apparently known from Coptic martyrologies (according to some sources deriving from Greek ἑρμητάριον < Latin armentarium < Armentarius, the nickname of the emperor Galerius Maximianus); see https://st-takla.org/Coptic-Faith-Creed-Dogma/Coptic-Rite-n-Ritual-Taks-Al-Kanisa/Dictionary-of-Coptic-Ritual-Terms/9-Coptic-Terminology_Heh-Waw-Yeh/henbazeen.html and Phillips Barry, "Martyrs' Milk" (1914) (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Open_Court/VuoXAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ermetarion&pg=PA563&printsec=frontcover). Recto (original use): Ketubba for Sitt al-Banāt. In the hand of Natan b. Shelomo ha-Kohen (1125–50). The ends of 6 lines are preserved. The groom undertakes not to curse her or treat her with disrespect. The identification of the scribe as Natan b. Shelomo ha-Kohen allows us to tentatively date the letter to the last years of Maṣliaḥ Gaʾon (1138–39) when there was a mutiny against the government, and Maṣliaḥ picked the wrong side, so that many Jews were jailed and Maṣliaḥ himself was executed in 1139. (Information from Amir Ashur.)

A letter, almost complete, from Shelomo b. Shem Tov, who served as a proxy of the Jerusalemite community in Egypt. The writer admonish the addressee for his lack of support for him. Closer to the end of the letter the writer explain his mission, to encourage Jews to arrive and live in Jerusalem. Probably 2nd half of the 15th century (data from FGP by Avraham David)

Letter from Yehuda b. Ṭuviyyahu ha-Kohen, in Bilbays to Berakhot ha-Sar, presumably in Fustat. The subject matter is cryptic; Yehuda assures the addressee that he is fulfilling his promise. He excuses the lack of a letter by saying there was no messenger, but then he found the addressee's brother outside of the Muslim court (dār al-qāḍī) one morning with a riding beast, so he asked him to wait until he could scrawl this note. On verso there are two legal queries in adifferent hand.

One of two drafts (the other is Moss. Ia,7) of a curious and obsequious letter from a man whose handwriting is known, apparently to a man named Yahya b. Khalid who has a son named Abu l-Mahasin. In this version: he describes how he saw the recipient in the kitchen on Sunday and an idea occurred to him that the recipient approved of (possibly to travel to somewhere other than Bilbays?). However, the writer decided it would be better for him to travel to Bilbays. He has not traveled yet, because it is unthinkable to travel when the doors of the house are still in their sorry state: the main door needs to be fixed, and the door of the upper floor/apartmnet needs to be replaced completely. He alludes in very vague terms to his personal difficulties (according to the other copy, a febrile illness since Friday). He then gives his excuse for not having come to attend the recipient (before he traveled?) as requested; he says merely that he had a good reason (in the other copy, he cites his fever) and that he cut off his prayers and tried to fulfill the command. He goes back to the matter of the doors to explain why he has not yet left the house. Other letters that may be in his handwriting (distinctive in part for including Arabic diacritics over Hebrew letters, e.g. two dots for "t" and three dots for "th"): T-S 12.346, T-S 8J15.20, T-S 12.652 (dated after 1165/6), and T-S AS 151.22. ASE.

Letter from Abū l-Faḍl, in Alexandria, to his son Ismāʿīl al-Fāṣid al-Yahūdī, in Aden. In Judaeo-Arabic with the address in Arabic script. Dated: Iyyar of the year 571 AH, which is 1175/76 CE. Awaits more detailed summary. See Goitein notes linked below.

Copies of various letter by Ishaq Laniado. Late.

Recto: upper part of a leter in Arabic from [Majd? Umar?] b. Yusuf, asking the recipient to fulfill the request of "mawlay al-qa'id (?)" and to send a messenger. Verso: from the Torah commentary of Shemuel b. Hofni Ga'on. ASE.

Business and/or family letter in Arabic script. Fragment (lower part only). The sender reports that he arrived in Tinnīs. Greetings to the teacher Sulaymān, to Yūsuf, to Bū ʿAlī, and to the sender's wife and a girl. On verso (and bottom of recto) there is Hebrew piyyut.

Letter fragment in Judaeo-Arabic. Probably the same scribe as T-S 13J34.5 (Alexandria, 1090 CE) and T-S 13J35.5. Mentions Avraham the Byzantine scribe (who also features in Bodl. MS heb. d 66/43). Twice mentions sūq al-bazz (the clothiers' market). The substance of the letter is a dispute involving the writer and the cantor and the synagogue service. On verso there are piyyutim.

Business letter dealing with spices. In Judaeo-Arabic. The hand is likely that of Yedutun ha-Levi. (Goitein, too, flagged the script as familiar.) The letter is addressed to a 'brother' (Moshe ha-Levi?); mentions Abū Saʿd and 'your paternal uncle Bayān.' The letter is damaged but is a valuable source of information for the business of a druggist (ʿaṭṭār). Commodities mentioned include storax (mayʿa) and saffron. The writer does not know precisely the weight of the saffron; the addressee should weigh the burniyya together with the saffron in it and subtract the weight of the burniyya. The writer is suffering an attack of ophthalmia (and Isḥāq is too), but he will try to "go out" (from Fustat) if he is able to. On verso there are piyyutim (not necessarily in the same hand as recto; needs examination). ASE

Fol. 1v: Letter in Arabic script. Likely business-related. There are some deferential phrases (versions of the raʾy formula). Needs further examination. Fol. 2v: Possibly state correspondence, possibly a draft. Wide space between the lines.The same scribe reused verso of each fragment for Hebrew poetry. Needs examination.