Genizah Fragments

To mark Refugee Week (14–20 June 2021), here’s a letter from Alexandria, Egypt from September 1212 CE, reporting the arrival of a large number of French refugees at the port. As Europe became less and less hospitable to its Jewish population – Phillip II of France had been enacting policies to confiscate Jewish property since 1180 – refugees began to flee across the Mediterranean to safety in Egypt. Their arrival is mentioned towards the end of a letter (T-S 12.299) sent to the cantor Meʾir ben Yakhin in...

Nadia, which fragment are you working on today?

I am working on T-S AS 158.147. It’s a fragment of a Karaite calendar chronicle for the end of 410–418 AH (1020–1028 CE). I’m looking at it as part of the project ‘Qaraite and Rabbanite calendars: origins, interaction, and polemic’, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. It is a joint project between UCL and LMU (Munich).

What are the key things...

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from our Fragment of the Month in September 2007, by our late colleague Friedrich Niessen and Gideon Bohak:

‘Take a plate of lead and write on it in the first hour of the day; bury it in a new grave which is three days old’. Thus starts a Judaeo-Arabic instruction preserved in the Additional Series (...

A new article in the Guardian (‘Unchain your wife’: the Orthodox women shining a light on ‘get’ refusal) raises the issue of Jewish women who are chained – that is, unable to get remarried although they have been left by their husbands. According to Jewish law, a divorce is not complete until the husband, willingly, gives his wife a get – a formal bill of divorce – written in accordance with very strict rules. A slight error, even in one word or letter, can make...

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 49 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April 2005, by Avi Shivtiel:

A number of talmudic sages seem to have favoured the learning of languages, since the Talmud records several statements to the effect that this was a skill to be encouraged among scholars.

An early and important midrash claims that God gave the Torah to Israel in four languages - Hebrew, Latin, Arabic and Aramaic (Sifrey, Ve-Zot Ha-...

It has long been customary in both Genizah studies and Arabic codicology to describe the numerals frequently found in documentary texts as ‘Coptic’.[1] Recent work has shown that these curvilinear numerals may better be termed ḥurūf al-zimām (‘the letters of accounts/registers’) or ‘zimām numerals’ (Chrisomalis, 2010). In what follows, I will give a (very) brief overview of the Coptic alphabetic numerical system, ḥurūf al-zimām, and the related Mozarabic/Toledan and Rūmī/Fāsī numerals to explain why the Genizah Research Unit will be adopting this more accurate terminology in future...

Amir, which manuscripts are you working on today?

I'm actually working on dozens of manuscripts relating to Abraham Maimuni, as part of a project led by Mordechai Akiva Friedman. Right now, I’m looking at T-S 10K8.9, T-S 12.205, T-S 13J9.11, T-S 13J26.21 verso, T-S NS 100.74, T-S Ar.18(2).73, T-S AS...