Geniza Lab

Letter fragment. In Hebrew. Containing only praises and blessings for the addressee. On verso there are some verses of Hebrew poetry.

Letter fragment addressed to a dignitary whose son is named Daniel. In Hebrew, often rhyming. What remains is mostly the formulaic content. Possibl a letter of appeal.

Letter of petition to Sa'adya the great prince - probably the father of Mevorakh b. Sa'adya. The writer complains that he and his family are hungry.

Letter in Hebrew narrating the trouble caused by Ben Meir including quoting at length a letter sent by the elders. Entered in Geniza collection as an independent manuscript (in 2017, citing Alder) and as the second folio of the most extensive text witness of the Book of the Calendar Controversy (in 2021, citing Stern).

Account in Hebrew of the Ben Meir controversy. Calendrical discussion

Letter(?) mentioning Manṣūr and Yeshaʿya the sons of ʿAmram. Piyyut on verso

Business letter from a Maghribi merchant. Yiṣḥaq is mentioned as well as Nahray. Three fragments in same shelfmark; this is the middle one.

Epistle regarding the calendar controversy of 921–22 CE, including a response by Aharon b. Meʾir, who writes from Palestine to Baghdad. The letter begins with a preface in liturgical-poetic style. The text was copied onto oblong parchment, possibly in the late tenth century; it is a quire consisting of four bifolios, three now in Oxford and a fourth in New York. The last folio (Bodl. MS Heb. f 26/6) is damaged, and the text is reconstructed here in comparison with the transcription that Harkavy published in 1891. In the publicly available images of ENA 2556.2 on FGP and PUL, the manuscript is warped and wrinkled and part of the text hidden. The newly treated manuscript, flattened and more legible, is available here on PGP. Join: Sacha Stern.

Letter, copy, from the Palestinian Yeshiva to the people of Babylonia regarding the Ben Meir controversy. Published

Literary text in Hebrew and Aramaic with Judaeo Arabic instructions ("this is the rashut said about the Torah" "this is the rashut said about the haftarot") at the bottom of the page there is a Judaeo-Arabic note : "This page [is meant?] for your lord, so keep it with him" - so this is both literary and documentary. Moreover in the back another hand wrote in Judaeo Arabic: "Know my lord that I sent the mistress of the house to Rabbi Efraim ...."

Verso: Letter from Moshe b. Barhūn al-Tāhirtī to Yosef Ibn ʿAwkal. Describes how he induced Avraham b. ʿAtāʾ and Abū Zikrī Yehuda b. Yosef to contribute to a collection for the yeshiva of Hayya Gaon. (Information from Goitein's index card). VMR. NB: Gil published a fuller version of the text Goitein published, but gave ENA 2 B as the shelfmark, believing that ENA 2556 was the old shelfmark.

Letter draft addressed to Abū l-Ḥasan, starting with a taqbīl clause. The writer asks the addressee to sell some commodity (hādha l-ʿadl) for whatever price God provides. On verso there are pen trials including the name of a Babylonian Gaon: Yisra'el ha-Kohen head of the diaspora yeshiva son of Shemuel head of the diaspora yeshiva son of Hofni head of the diaspora yeshiva son of Kohen Ṣedeq.

Letter addressed to the judge R. Yeshuʿa in Fustat. The sender's name may be legible: [...] al-[Iskan?]darānī b. Ibrāhīm. The sender asks the addressee "to help him get rid of his wife to whom he has already sent the bill of divorce but needs an official confirmation of its being received before being allowed to marry another woman (on this see Friedman, Polygyny, 241). The sender writes: I have heard that she is in Fustat and the bill of divorce reached her, but you did not send me an answer. Do not neglect the small one (i.e., the writer's child) and do not allow him to travel down to Alexandria. May God deal with her as she has acted. She separated me from my son. If there is Paradise, it is Damascus. I have heard that the son of R. Moshe arrived in Jerusalem. By your faith in God! do not listen to her, for [or: claiming that] she will come to Syria (Bilād al-Shām). For she has broken me and exhausted me, behaving like an idiot (taballadat) in the land (fī l-balad). I swear I have been sick for 30 days..." Translation based on Oded Zinger's translation in "If There is a Paradise, It is Damascus" (2012). ASE

Letter, communal, from Alexandria in the first half of the 11th century. The name Yeshua ha-kohen Prince of the diaspora is mentioned and the letter is signed by many signatures

Letter from a physician named Menahem ha-kohen b. Sadoq from Aleppo including greetings from many men including his nephew Yahya ha-kohen b. Mevorakh the physician his son Sadoq who wrote the letter, his two grandsons Dosa and Elijah, from the elder Avraham b. Shemuʾel and his two sons Shemuʾel and Tamim - all these men populate the bet midrash of the great Rabbi Baruch b. Yiṣḥaq of Aleppo. Published in Miriam Frenkel, MA Thesis on Aleppo, p. 306-307. on the back a drawing of a cypress tree?

Letter from Abū Naṣr b. Sha'ul, a poor teacher, to his friend. In Judaeo-Arabic. The writer asks him to intercede on his behalf with a powerful lady, the mother of the rayyis Abū al-ʿAlā who bestows kindness on both Rabbanites and Qaraites. The writer's family is starving.

Letter fragment in Arabic script. Approximately 8 lines are preserved, and they are unusually readable.

Letter from Perahya b. Yosef Ibn Yiju (which he wrote in his and his brother Moshe's name) in Messina to his father Yosef Ibn Yiju (the brother of Avraham) in Mazara, ca. 1153. He has by now married his cousin, the daugther of Avraham Ibn Yiju, and fled the Norman invasion of Ifriqiya in 1148 for Mazara, then Palermo, then Messina, en route to Egypt. This letter describes the journey along the coast of Sicily. Peraḥya also sends a medical prescription for his mother's illness: a mithqāl (slightly over 4g) of sagapenum (sakbīnaj) every three days and a cumin stomachic (jawārish kammūn). He also tells the addressees not to afflict themselves with fasting and weeping on his behalf, because his heart and liver are wounded if he hears about such excessive behavior (istifḥāl]).

Letter from Berakhot b. Avraham Ibn al-Ḥājja (aka Abū l-Barakāt Hibatallāh b. Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāʾigh), in Būsh, in northern Upper Egypt (בעמאל אלצעיד אלאדנא/بعمال الصعيد الادنا), to his mother, in Alexandria. The letter is dated: Sunday, the fast day of 17 Tammuz 4918 AM, which is 1158 CE. The address is made out to Alexandria, the goldsmiths' market, to be given to Abū Zikrī Yehuda b. Yiṣḥaq, who is to forward it to the house (or wife) of Abū l-Wafāʾ b. Ḥalfon al-Ḥaddād in the Bīr Jabr neighborhood, at the Iraqi synagogue (simply called Kanīsat al-Yahūd in the Arabic version). One of those men is the brother-in-law of the sender. The letter is written in Judaeo-Arabic, in a beautiful hand. The address is written in both Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic script. He opens with a complaint about the lack of letters from his mother and from his brother Abū Saʿd and even says that he took an oath not to write again, which he clearly failed to keep. He says he is sick and tired of working in Upper Egypt (bilād al-ṣaʿīd), which is why he came down to Būsh, but he is still not content there, so he hopes to move on to Fustat after the holiday. He says that caravans from Alexandria frequently come to Būsh to buy flax. He wants to find a trustworthy man with whom to send some flax to his mother so that she can make him a nice linen garment for Shabbat and holidays; he already has plenty of garments for everyday use. He mentions 100 dinars, but the context is not clear. He was told that ʿAmāʾim and Raḥel her maternal aunt are in Fustat, together with her husband Abū l-Faḍl and a certain Abū l-Surūr. The text in the margin contains some juicy gossip: "A letter came for me (with the news) that Hārūn divorced his wife Yaman. Praise God! She married him and divorced him while we were absent. Keep her with you—(away?) from the wife of Abū l-Wafāʾ—in the house until God grants her a livelihood." The situation is unclear, but it appears that the sender is on the side of Yaman, who also has a son to rear. It is not clear how the wife of Abū l-Wafāʾ—who is supposed to receive this letter, according to the address—fits in. In any case, the addressee should shelter [Yaman] and feed her until the sender can arrive and take her to her brother in al-Shām. The best way to contact the sender is to send letters to Fustat to al-Bilbaysī or to Abū Sahl in Darb al-Kharrāṭīn, and they will forward them with the Jewish merchants to Abū l-Barakāt al-Ṣāʾigh the Jew in Būsh. On verso, the letter concludes with greetings to various people, including: Abū l-Bishr and his mother; Yūsuf; Mukhtār who was in Barqa; the teacher Abū Zikrī Yehuda and his children. (The sender's family name, Ibn al-Ḥājja, means 'son of the woman who made the pilgrimage,' but there is a chance it could be Ibn al-Ḥāja and a nickname for someone with many needs). OZ, AA, ASE.

Letter from the office of the Nagid Yehoshuaʿ Maimonides (d. 1355) to a certain Rabbenu Avraham "the diadem of [...]." Yehoshuaʿ informs Avraham that Sayf al-Dīn Bahādur appeared (before the court) and sued ʿIwāḍ the Alexandria for silver that he was owed. ʿIwāḍ had taken a strict oath not to travel without his creditors' consent—but of course he has done just that. Yehoshuaʿ instructs Avraham to inform ʿIwāḍ's wife that if her husband is with her, and he does not come forth, she too will be placed under the ban, and she will be obliged to pay the 'tarsīm' on his account (this probably refers to paying the debt for him, rather than the other meaning of tarsīm, which refers to the government fees for house arrest). Yehoshuaʿ emphasizes that the creditor is a good man, so his word can be believed; plus, he took a mighty oath that he is not playing a trick. On verso there is the response in Hebrew, signed by Avraham ha-Sefaradi. The hand is distinctly sefaradi and would probably have been dated to a couple centuries later if it weren't for the context. The text is very faded, but some information can be extracted: Avraham found either ʿIwāḍ or his wife or at least people who knew him and threatened to place a ban on him the next day under the authority of the Nagid, unless he paid up the 120 silver pieces that he owed—but ʿIwāḍ refused. Then, "people... to us in the name of ʿIwāḍ that he said that if... him, he will pay... the religion. See [what] should be done in the matter, and inform your slave the son of your maidservant. Avraham Sefaradi." (A previous cataloguer also saw the word "convert" somewhere in here.) OZ, AA, ASE.