Geniza Lab

Verso: Letter addressed to the parnas ʿEli b. Yaḥyā ha-Kohen ha-Shofeṭ. Fragment (right side only). The sender may be asking for help of some kind. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card.)

Letter addressed to a dignitary (Sar) offering congratulations on the holidays. The sender had sent a messenger, who had not found the addressee at home, so he now sends a letter instead. Note that "yeshaʿ yiqrav" at the bottom is not the sender's name but rather a motto. Gil identifies the sender (on the basis of handwriting) as Natan b. Avraham and the addressee (perhaps on the basis of his titles) as Avraham Ha-Kohen b. Yiṣḥaq b. Furat. Gil further speculates that it was sent between Purim and Passover, in the spring of 1039 CE. (Information from Gil and from Goitein’s index card)

Letter from the congregation of Tripoli, Lebanon, to Hesed b. Sahl. Synagogues in other places have been returned to the Jews, but in the writer's town the synagogue was turned into a mosque. See also PGPID 767 (Gil's edition of the same document). Verso has Hebrew poems.

Letter from the community of Tripoli (Lebanon) to Hesed Ha-Tustari. 1025. See also PGPID 766.

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. The sender cites his debts in Fustat as an excuse for his delay. Refers to Abū Zikrī ha-Kohen (perhaps the well-known trader Abū Zikrī Kohen). Refers to a house or houses; a group of people the sender is worried about; and his hope that someone's wife will give birth soon. (Information in part from Goitein's index card.)

Verso: Letter from Shabbetay b. Avraham, in Minyat Zifta, to the judge Zakkay b. Moshe, perhaps in al-Maḥalla. In Judaeo-Arabic. (Zakkay was in al-Maḥalla in 1147 CE, per T-S 13J3.6v.) Shabbetay asks Zakkay to assist the bearer Abū l-Surūr b. Abū Saʿd in getting his wife to come back with him to Minyat Zifta, as they need to pay the capitation tax there. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, pp. 178, 464 and from Goitein's index cards.) NB: Goitein refers to ENA 4011.12 as ENA 4011.34.

Letter from David b. Daniel to a parnas (leader of the Jewish community). Written in his own hand, per Gil. In Judaeo-Arabic. Instructing the addressee to obtain from Abū l-Riḍā Shelomo b. Mevorakh 60 wariq (low-quality) dirhams and to pay them to the divorcee of Abū l-Baqāʾ Shemuel. He is to inform her that this payment is for maintenance of his (Shemuel's) daughter for a period of two full months. Her family and kin must cease their objections, because this monthly payment (30 wariq dirhams) is more than she has a right to by law. The parnas should convey this payment to her every month going forward.

ENA 4011.19b (lower fragment): Mercantile letter addressed to Ḥananel b. Nissim ha-Parnas. In Judaeo-Arabic. The sender details the garments and/or textiles which he has sent with Abū Yaḥyā. Also mentions Abū Saʿīd and the addressee's brother. Mentions sums of 12 and 15 dirhams, and also the price of the lapis lazuli (lazuward).

Letter of thanks. In Judaeo-Arabic. Praising a scholar who had spent a certain amount of time, it seems during the High Holidays, in a provincial town. His presence highly enhanced the prestige of the Jewish community and both Jews and Muslims were happy with him. He prayed from the prayerbook of Saadya Gaon. The document mentions al-Shaykh al-Thiqa Abū Ghālib, but it is not clear if he is the man so beloved. The letter has at least 10 signatures. The first is that of David b. ʿAmram ha-Kohen, in the same hand as the document itself. Other signatures: Berakhot b. [...]; Seʿadya b. Avraham ha-Levi; Yefet b. Yesh[uʿa?]; Elʿazar b. Ṣedaqa; Ṣedaqa b. Yiṣḥaq(?) ha-Kohen; Yoshiyya b. Araḥ; Sheʾerit b. Maṣliaḥ ha-Levi ha-Ḥazzan. (Information in part from Goitein's index card and Med Soc II, 299.) NB: Goitein called this document ENA 4011.19.

Note addressed to Yaʿaqov Abū l-Munā. The sender, a scribe, already sent with Abū Manṣūr the cantor what he needed to send, and asks the addressee to send him paper and 10.5 dirhams for expenses. (Information from Goitein's index card.) NB: Goitein refers to ENA 4011.24 as ENA 4011.23.

Note addressed to Ṣedaqa b. Yeshuʿa ha-Kohen Rosh ha-Seder. In Hebrew, in a crude hand. Asking him to send something, and not too late.

Letter fragment from Peraḥya b. Yosef to Seʿadya b. Avraham. In Judaeo-Arabic. Only the address and the upper right corner of recto are preserved. An earlier description contained the sentence 'Avraham b. Yiju son nephew.'

Letter from Abū Naṣr b. Barakāt b. Ziz al-Tujjār and Abū l-Faraj b. Moshe ha-Kohen addressed to R. Avraham (possibly Avraham Maimonides). Mainly in Judaeo-Arabic. The senders are asking for help on behalf of somebody else. Regards to a woman in the addressee's family (al-sitt al-ʿazīza).

Recto: Legal deed in Arabic script. (Abū l-)Faḍāʾil b. Khalaf al-Yahūdī al-Ḥarīrī, the tax farmer of the silk, has to receive 474 dirhams from Khalaf, a sum composed of the price of a certain kind of silk worth 425 dirhams, plus other dues from Khalaf, to be pain on 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja 544 AH, which is 10 April 1150 CE. The document was written on the last day of Dhū l-Qaʿda 544 AH, which is 30 March 1150 CE. On verso (see separate record) there is an acknowledgement made by the Jewish court concerning the content of the Arabic deed, signed by Shelomo b. Seʿadya and Avraham b. Natan ha-Kohen. (Information from Goitein's index card and Med Soc II, 614n30.) NB: Goitein refers to ENA 4011.34 as ENA 4011.33.

Letter from Sulaymān to Abū l-Bayān. In Judaeo-Arabic. Very brief and hastily written. The writer asks the addressee to kindly bestow the favor that he previously bestowed (or that his father bestowed?), urgently. There is a single line in Arabic script at the bottom, probably repeating the urgency of the request (لا تنعاق).

Letter. Dated: beginning of Kislev 1456/1144 (אתנו, not אתט). Mentions that tefillin had been sent, people who feel envy and the name Maḥrūz. Sends greetings to Abū Saʿīd al-Dimyāṭī and Muslim/Musallam al-Kaʿbī. India Book V, 10.

Letter of Yoshiyahu ha-nasi to Elazar ha-sar. generous spacing between the lines. On the back is some text that is hard to make out.

Letter (copy) from the exilarch Daniel b. Ḥisday (d. probably 1175) of Baghdad to Netanʾel b. Moshe ha-Levi in Fusṭāṭ recognizing his new position in Egypt. Published by Mann in his HUCA Supplement to his Jews volume and later by Assaf in his Letters of Shemuʾel b. Eli (Tarbiz, 1930).

Letter from the judge Mevorakh b. Natan ha-Kohen, apparently in or near Ashqelon, to ʿAmram b. Yefet (aka Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAmmār b. Ḥusayn), apparently in Shanshā/Shanashā (شنشا), which is in the Nile Delta north of Minyat Ghamr. In Judaeo-Arabic, with some Hebrew and with the address partially in Arabic script. Written in haste on the road. Dated: 1453 Seleucid, which is 1141/42 CE. The lower part of the letter, together with almost all of the substance, is missing. Mevorakh asks the addressee to obtain or send some gold. (Information in part from Goitein's index card.) NB: Golb cites ENA 4011.8 as ENA 4011.7 in "The Topography of the Jews of Medieval Egypt" (p. 139).

Letter from Peraḥya b. Yosef Yijū, in al-Maḥalla, to Abū l-Fakhr Saadya b. Avraham Ibn al-Amshāṭī, in Fustat. Dating: 1161–72 CE. Peraḥya conveys his happiness to have learned that the family members of Abū l-Fakhr who had been sick are now recovered (and for this reason opens the letter with Deut. 7:15, "The Lord will ward off from you all sickness"). Peraḥya is supervising the production of kosher cheese and encountering difficulties: "I have already perished from the cheese and have become perplexed as to what I should do." He writes that he would like to travel to Sicily or Damascus {al-Shām}, but since 'the little one' (his cousin and wife, Sitt al-Dār) was grown up and "had no one in the world except God" (that is, her father was dead), he could not do this. Peraḥya thanks Abū l-Fakhr for his generosity with his brother Shemuel, and he urges him to help convince Shemuel to come to Peraḥya's town, where the congregation will accept him as a schoolteacher with a salary of 20 dirhams a week plus gratuities (nawāfil), a generous salary for a teacher. Information from Goitein and Friedman India Book 3.