טקסט ספרותי: Moss. VIII,379

תיאור

Beautifully written dirge in Judaeo-Arabic on the sudden death of a young girl or woman ("she died suddenly unawares, no illness struck her, she never sickened, and no doctor diagnosed her"). She is referred to with epithets such as "sitt al-banāt" or "sitt al-kull" or "bint al-munā," but it's not clear if any of these are actually her name. At the bottom the name of the scribe: "written by Elʿazar(?) b. Ghālib ha-Ḥazzan." At a right angle to this, apparently the name of the author: "composition of Ṣedaqa [...] al-Muʿallim al-Qalʿī in which he fulfills some of his obligation to those whom he owes service (aṣḥāb al-khidma)." Ṣedaqa al-Qalʿī appears also in T-S NS 226.105 (PGPID 24246) (dating: 1100–38), and al-muʿallim al-qalʿī appears in ENA 3704.4 (PGPID 39588) and T-S NS J35 (PGPID 4328).