Geniza Lab

Judaeo-Arabic instructions for making amulets to be hung up, drawing on the power of Quranic verses (e.g. 53:1 والنجم اذا هوى). There is also one line in Arabic.

Bifolium from a book of prognostications structured on the calendar and astronomical events, in both Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic.

Several fragments from a kabbalistic and/or magical work.

Bifolium from a kabbalistic and/or magical work in Judaeo-Arabic as well as Hebrew and Aramaic.

Interesting Judaeo-Arabic paraphrase of Genesis 22 (the binding of Isaac). Very small bifolio on parchment with two binding-holes at the fold.

Medical recipes in Judaeo-Arabic, two folios faded with water damage but legible in most places. On the recto of the first folio the term "rūḥ / רוח" is reused in varied combinations such as "רוח אל כצרד", "רוח אל שראב", "רוח אל בארוד" (l. 7r, 10r, 13r). On the first folio's verso the unit of measure "אווק" is also in use which in medieval Geniza documents is similar to our current notion of ounces that are proportional to pounds (Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean, xix). In an early modern context, however, these "אווק" may indicate a much heavier unit of weight closer to 1.28 kilograms per "אווק" (Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, 157). These units are accompanied by eastern Arabic numerals that indicate the weight of ingredients such as "wax / שמע" and perhaps "saffron / זפראן" (f. 1 l. 6-7v). Based on the script usage in this fragment it is likely that its date of recording lies between the 15th-19th centuries therfore these weights are more likely in the heavier Ottoman-era variant of "אווק". MCD.

Leaf from a Judaeo-Arabic manual for pharaonic treasure hunters, this section focusing on the area around Dahshur. Contains topographical descriptions paired with magical acts & incense prescriptions that will reveal the next steps and undo the protective charms. See Okasha El Daly's The Missing Millennium for a discussion of this genre (focusing on Arabic treatises).

84 pages of a book of segulot.

Two different fragments. First fragment: An abridgement of some of the dietary and lifestyle advice from Chapter 4 of the Hebrew plague treatise "Moshiaʿ Ḥosim" (Venice, 1587) by Avraham Yagel (a.k.a. Gallico). This page dates from after 1623, since זלהה is written after Galiko's name. The advice includes: boiling all water before drinking it or mixing it with wine; cooking all produce to "remove the disease from it"; or to pick wild herbs growing in desolate locations; to dwell in spacious, airy, and beautifully decorated houses; and not to eat too much, not to sleep too much, not to eat excessively warming foods, not to wear excessively warming clothes. On Yagel/Gallico, see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician, HUP 1988. Second fragment: This is labeled as "Image 2" and contains one line of Arabic script. However, the shape of the paper and the location of holes do not correspond to Image 1, suggesting that we are missing two images (verso of both Image 1 and Image 2).

8 pages of a Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic work on magic and medicine.

Bifolium from a book of segulot.

Leaf from a magical treatise, including illustrations of Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof.

Literary text in Judaeo-Arabic. Ethical exhortations attributed to Talmudic sages. Late.

Literary text listing various Talmudic sages. Late.

Narrative text about the destruction of the second temple — Yossipon? Mentions Titus, bayt al-maqdis, al-Quds (Jerusalem), and "a village called Maṣitā" (Masada?) to which the remaining Jews fled; then Elʿazar al-Dayyan, burj al-rūm and requesting safe-passage (amān) from the Romans. Copied in a scribal hand, but much of the ink has chipped off. Still, probably most of it can be deciphered. MR

Dialogue between the Misri (the man from Old Cairo) and the Rifi (the man from the countryside). Literary, probably late, very colloquial. The writer is consistent with diacritics, not replicated in this transcription. Full of interesting stereotypes and vocabulary of city versus country life: prices, foods, clothes, bathing habits, goods available in the market, sewage ("your bowel movements remain with you, their stench is blinding"). Also names Bayn al-Qasrayn and the glorious fruit and paper markets at Bab Zuwaylah. In the third and final leaf of the story (recto of BL OR 5565G.27), the Misri and the Rifi declare a truce. Then the narrator chimes in with a prayer and an announcement of who he is and how great his stories are, for the benefit of the gathered audience: "I am the מחסווך (??) the Jew... my name is Sulayman... my speech is well-balanced, my meanings divine... my trade in Misr is cantor, as a poet I am known in the Rif...." The verso of BL OR 5565G.27 then begins a comic tale about someone whose pack was seized by a greedy man; they go to court, and the judge says he will award it to whomever can say what's in the pack. ASE.

Rabbinic literature.

Halakhic discussions.

Lower part of a fragment of rhymed lines in colloquial Judaeo-Arabic ("fī kull ḥāra... wa-kathura al-shaṭāra... laqad jā' khaḍāra...") The penultimate line mentions al-kanīs wa-bayt al-midrash and the final line reads, "All say." So some kind of call and response?

Talmudic.