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Lorenzo, what are you working on at the moment?
I’ve been spending some time on T-S 10J12.26, a business letter from the prominent Genizah merchant Nahray b. Nissim, writing from Fusṭāṭ to his associate Barhūn b. Mūsā ’l-Tāhartī, who was out in the Egyptian hinterland (specifically in the town of Būṣīr). This document has been edited and discussed by Genizah scholars, starting from Goitein himself, but I still could not quite wrap my mind around it. What is so interesting about... Read More
Has tags: Fatimid, Genizah Fragments, Goitein, letter, Q&A, trade
Haru, what are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on T-S 8.12. It is a letter between two traders, and reveals much about the activities of the merchants at this time, in particular their trading networks and how these functioned. I’m looking at this manuscript because in November I will be giving an introductory lecture to my students, and this letter offers a good example of the kinds of trader letter we find in the Genizah.
How many students do you have?... Read More
Has tags: Genizah Fragments, Japan, letter, Q&A, trade
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 58 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 2009, by Esther-Miriam Wagner.
Although the amount of Yiddish material in the Cambridge Genizah collections is very small in comparison with that written in Judaeo-Arabic, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic or even Ladino, the few existing fragments are rather extraordinary. The most important literary example is the 14th-century Dukus Horant, a narrative... Read MoreHas tags: Genizah Fragments, letter, Yiddish
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 42 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 2001, by Ben Outhwaite.
“Many times have we written to our distinguished one, beloved of the academy, and our heart was preoccupied with the lateness of his replies until it became clear to us that the ‘godless congregation’ had been taking them.” So writes the scholar Nathan ben Abraham to a supporter during his protracted struggle to take control of the Yeshivat Ha-Sevi – the... Read MoreHas tags: Arabic, Genizah Fragments, Hebrew, language, letter
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