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[יו]
shelfmark:"Bodl ms. Heb a 2/3"
Naḥman ha-Kohen the cantor, the father of Yakhin the agent (al-wakīl). Hand of Hillel b. ʿEli? On verso there is a commentary or learned discussion of the biblical prophets and kings of Israel, mentioning Iraq, Esther and the book of Daniel, and including Hebrew citations.
No Scholarship Records
"For one month, thirty days, I have been living in a donkey's stable, alone, starving, and ill; most of the time I do not eat or drink.
1 Transcription 1 Discussion
T-S AS 155.397 (PGPID 37995)) the son of... of Khaybarī origin, an in-law of the noble [feminine name or noun]. I have transcribed all the foregoing from Arabic script into Hebrew script, letter by letter, for the sake of the knowledge of a sect of the Jews... and I have taken their testimony in it....
One notable feature of the diplomatics is that the ʿalāma (the signature/trademark of the official who issued the document or had the document drawn up by a kātib in his name) is written between lines 2 and 3, where the scribe left a large space for this purpose.
Recto: Mathematical table of the powers of 2 through 2^15 = 32768, all in Hebrew numerals. Verso: Ladino ditty signed by Moshe Ḥaddād, which reads roughly as follows (in modern Spanish spelling): "Metralla me demandas metralla te daré / y si no la ficieres azotes te daré / anda gato por tejado sin orejas y sin rabo."
1 Transcription
Beginning on verso: Mentions books including Tehillim, the Torah, the Targum, and commentaries (tafāsīr); al-Dhahabī and ʿUmayr; apparently a woman (baqiya lahā. . .).
Concerning the opening of the canal (Fatḥ al-Khalīj, a major festival in Fatimid Fustat).
The right margin of the leaf is missing; however, we have in it an almost complete list of revenue for one month, Rabīʿ I, and fragmentary details on the preceding one, i.e.
.... 3 dir. From Ṭaʾūs, 3.
.. . .Dār al-Ḥaffār : The room of al-Baʿlbakī, 4.
. the room of b. Sulaymān, 6 dir.
. . . . added it u…
1 Transcription 1 Translation 2 Discussions
The writer, in deferential chancery style, reports to a superior authority on matters relating to tax-farmers (ḍāmin al-kharāj), including the administration of the revenues of Damīra and possibly a sāqiya.
Fragment mostly consisting of pen trials and alphabet exercises in Hebrew and Arabic script. There are a few notable features: (1) On verso a drawing of a ship with seven oars.
Husband: name missing. Wife: Sitt al-Banāt bt. Nuʿmān ha-Kohen. Dated: Tammuz 14[.]3 Seleucid, meaning 1413 (=1102 CE), 1423 (=1112 CE), 1433 (=1122 CE), or 1443 (=1132 CE).
Listing mainly fabrics and garments (mandīl, niṣāfī, khirqa, thawb, sarāwīl, fūṭa (sometimes specifically maghribī), maqṭaʿ (sometimes specifically siqillī), and something called kārūka / كاروكة (sometimes speficially Kīshī / كيشي / from Kīsh?) along with corresponding figures. Prices are given mainly in malikī dinars (the gold dinar of Yemen minted from 1086 and used till the mid-12th century).
Yaḥya Fayrūz oath to Yaʿaqov al-Ḥazzan that, before the holiday of Shavuʿōt, he will deliver "sound/whole earthenware jars... in exchange for the ones that broke."
This page from the court register is torn and detached along the edge where it would have once been bound.
Then they read some of "the Ḥibur" or the Halakhot, then pray Minḥa, then they study Kitab al-Amānāt by Saadya Gaon. The rest is cut off.
A man who was known as an impious alcoholic fell ill and began screaming, while covering his face, "Save me from these cruel ones who want to eat my flesh!
The couple is getting remarried after an earlier divorce. Although a divorcee, the bride is still a virgin. The value of the trousseau is 2 dinars and the marriage gift is 5 + 15 dinars.
2 Transcriptions 1 Translation 1 Discussion
He mentions two Jewish traders in Aden, Moshe Hakan and David al-Kehlado, who are involved in business with him in Calicut and Surat.
3 Transcriptions
The debtor seems to be Sayyid al-Kull b. Shabbetay ha-Shofeṭ ha-Mumḥe. The creditor is Abū Isḥāq.
1 Discussion
(Information mainly from Mediterranean Society, III, p. 390, and from Goitein's index cards.) CUL Add.3339a–c all have the same reuse on verso (biblical story of Joseph).
The "people of the Great Synagogue," i.e. the representatives of the congregation of the Palestinians, in Ramla, lease one half of a ruin owned by the synagogue, to a certain Sedaqa b. Yefet al-Shiraji. The lease is for a period of 20 years, at the price of hald a dinar yearly, to serve for repairs and other needs of the synagogue.
(1-2) Record of the testimony given before us, we the Court and the witnesses, who have signed at the bottom of this deed. This happened to p…
3 Transcriptions 1 Translation 1 Discussion
There are 36 tenants in all. The arrearss come to baout 11.5% of the panned revenue (162 as against 1337 dir.).
1 Transcription 1 Translation 1 Discussion
If the addressees have gotten their hands on Abū Naṣr's silver, they should send it, because Abū Naṣr has already come to the house asking for it 3 or 4 times "and he doesn't know that I am in Fustat."
The introduction of the copy in the Bodleian notes that the manual was composed in the early thirteenth century during the reign of the Artuqid ruler Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn Qara Arslān (r. 1201-1222 CE).
Mentions Barhūn and a robbery (נזלו עליה לצוץ) (recto l.5); the addressee's mother praying for him (recto l. 10 and verso l. 4); documents including a power of attorney (recto l. 11); Yosef and Nissim al-Muʿallim (recto l. 12); an instruction to find someone to comb (flax) (recto l. 16); news of the ships and the commodities arriving from the West (recto right margin); Abū Yūsuf (recto top margin); and concluding greetings (recto margins and verso).
This shelfmark is intriguing on a material level, for the amount of compression it must have taken for so many pieces of paper to fuse together: at least 5-6 are visible on the recto alone. Some of the paper layers are very fibrous.
See Steinschneider, Koṿets ʹal yad, sidrah 1, kerehh 1 (1885), p. 4, 15. Followed by Hebrew instructions for preparing a prescription for sorts of leprosy.
2 Transcriptions 1 Discussion
On the verso, many more names appear: Moshe Angel, Shelomo Moznino, Avraham Zin[?], Mordechai al-Sheikh, Menaḥem Kohen, Na'im Heykel, David Na'im, and Moshe Kohen.
People named include: Avraham Yerushalmi; Yehuda Leon; Yeshūʿa al-Ḥāmī; Moshe Sūsī ("the stranger"); Avraham Abulafia; Meir and Yehuda Gabizon (גאביזון).
List of names designated according to a column of sequential eastern Arabic numbers. Although the meaning is unclear, a preliminary reading of the cursive is "אורל עלה פראד אורז רשידי לא איסר".
The writer reports that a noble decree (manshūr karīm) reached him through two intermediaries, ordering him to summon the raʾīs al-muwān/mawān(?). The damaged passage appears to concern individuals who had fled and possibly the exercise of authority over them.
The first version is preserved in a secondary source, Abraham bar Ḥayya’s monograph on the Jewish calendar known as Sefer ha-'Ibbur (3:7), first published by Herschell Filipowski in 1851. Although these two versions share much in common, there are significant textual variations between them, and extensive passages that are unique to only one or the other version.
In the second, Reuven gave Shimon a house but claims that the scribe forgot to include an important condition about Reuven's continued access to the house ("all the days of my l[ife]"?). Does Shimon have to swear that there was never such a condition?
Menashshe (fl. 1100-1138 CE) concerning a dispute among the heirs of a murdered woman named Sitt al-Husn. She had concluded two marriage contracts after the death of her first husband, but perished (in what is called "the murder case") together with her mother and her two husbands.
Netanel concerning the ransom of a captive woman in al-Andalus. The amount of money that is needed is 32⅔ dinars, after Yehuda ha-Levi gave ⅔ dinars (the total amount to redeem a captive, by common convention around the Mediterranean, was 33⅓ dinars).
2 Transcriptions 2 Translations
Shabbat came to the court and asked to examine the court register (shimmush) with a document between him and Ḥisāna bt. Ḥasan al-Simsār concerning a sum of money. His request was granted and the document was copied out for him (l. 4 onward).
Above, the court orders Abū l-Faraj Ibn al-Shofeṭ to provide sustenance (mezonot) for his wife Sārra for a period of 30 days.
Shemarya) and a daughter called Mulk, are already of age, as was established by the late Elkhanan ‘Head of the Row’, while another son, called Mufarraj, is only four years old.
Further, the speaker is not addressing the recipient but rather the bearer (not necessarily human) of the love letter: "Deliver my letter to my master and in{f}orm him that great is my longing and distress. / I am deprived of all joys and pleasures of the world because of his absence, my heart blazes in the fire."
In Judaeo-Arabic. He had already been paid 1 dinar weighing 21 qirat + 2 ḥabbas worth (ṣarfuhu) 36.5 dirhams (i.e., the dinar:dirham rate of exchange was 1:40).
The letter was possibly written by a Muslim for a Muslim, as it refers to "lanā fī l-sayyid al-rasūl uswatun ḥasanatun" (l. 22). But this conjecture is complicated by verso.
اطال الله ياخي وسيدي بقاك وادام عزك واعتلاك ومكن
جزاك وسراك وكبت حسدتك واعداك وحرس من غير
الليالي والايام ارجاك وو…
Ḥasan, Ibn Jamāhir, Ḥalfon's doubts about whether to return to Egypt or go to India, the arrival of foreigners in Aden, and Yaʿqūb’s letter, probably Yaʿqūb b. Sālim. Based on all the above, Goitein and Friedman date the letter to 1131.
Salmān, Nissin Yosef, Hillel, Ḥātim, Yiṣḥaq, Khalaf, Saʿīd, Manṣūr, Faraj, Muʿammar, Moshe al-Khayyāt and his travel companion (rafīq), Yeshuʿa b. [...], Manṣūr, Netanʾel b.
Similar ciphers may be found in T-S K5.7, T-S Misc.10.60, T-S Misc.11.91, T-S Misc.22.218, T-S K24.23, and ENA 3211.1–2 Information from Gideon Bohak, “Cracking the Code and Finding the Gold: A Dream Request from the Cairo Genizah,” in Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Núñez and Sofía Torallas Tovar, eds., Edición de Textos Mágicos de la Antigüedad y de la Edad Media (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2010), 9-23.
Recto: Legal query sent to Maimonides along with his autograph responsum. Dating: ca. 1168–1204 CE, based on the years when Maimonides was active in Egypt.
Massive account with an inventory of a (druggist's) shop (headed "muḥāsabat al-dukkān"). In Arabic script. Some of the very numerous commodities and items mentioned: pear (ijjāṣ); tamarind (tamr hindī); hazelnut (bunduq); borage (lisān thawr); palm ointment (marham nakhlī, cf.
Friedman and Amir Ashur.) Joins: Alan Elbaum and Oded Zinger.
Instruction to Abū l-Bishr to deliver to ʿOvadya b. Shelomo ha-Kohen all that had been deposited with the court for him, after his 3 elder brothers had reclaimed their rights.
Ḥisday, who died in 600 AH (1203/04 CE) according to Ibn al-Hiti's Arabic Chronicle of Arabic Doctors. In that case, the present document can be dated to roughly seven generations following ~1200 CE.
Agreement between spouses Mahja bt. Shemuʾel known as al-Sīrjānī and her husband Aharon b. Eliyyahu Yakīn.