Two legal documents concerning the betrothal of a nine year old orphan girl. Recto: legal document dated Bilbays 1532 of the Seleucid Era (= 1221 CE). The maternal grandmother of the bride Sutayt refuses to provide the full dowry after the groom Abraham b. Yefet did not fulfil his financial promises stipulated in the engagement document on verso. Verso: the original betrothal deed, dated 1529 of the Seleucid Era (= 1218 CE). It is stipulated that the groom Abraham b. Yefet will marry the bride Sutayt three years later.
Recto: legal document from Cairo, written under the authority of the Nagid Jonathan, concerning Raṣon b. Samuel. Dated Tišri 1807 of the Seleucid Era (= 1495 CE). Verso: accounts in Arabic script.
Recto: testimony by Nissim b. Šemarya that Sason b. Nathan had deposited with him 17 counterfeit dinars. When Nissim tried to exchange the dinars the deceit was discovered and he was in mortal danger. Yaʿir ha-Šofeṭ b. Abraham resolved the matter but the money was lost. Dated ca. 1090 CE. Verso: originally an official Arabic document, probably a letter, which was later reused for drafts of various documents, such as a replacement ketubba from Abraham Kahana b. Yešuʿa to his wife Rayyisa bat Yefet, dated 1081 CE. On the top of the right side of the page, there is a draft of a bill of release, and below, written inverted in relation to the other Judaeo-Arabic documents, there is another legal document, mentioning names such as Solomon b. Kalev, Ephraim b. […], and Joseph ha-Kohen. A paragraph written transversely appears to belong with the ketubba on the left side.
Recto: letter from the Palestinian Gaʾon Solomon b. Judah in Jerusalem, in his son Abraham’s hand, to Solomon ha-Rofe b. ʿEli, in Tripoli, dated 1039 CE. Solomon b. Judah writes about Nathan b. Abraham, a young challenger who had set himself up as a rival Gaʾon in Ramla and had written letters to Egypt soliciting support. Solomon was livid and describes how he set off for Ramla and excommunicated Nathan and his supporters. He warns Solomon b. ʿEli that any letters arriving from Nathan should be ignored as they are ‘iniquitous scribblings and mischievous missives’. Verso: address and, in a different hand and ink (brown), a Hebrew piyyuṭ referring to the story of Pharaoh and the exodus, concluding in two lines at the top of recto.
Khulāṣat al-ikhtiṣāṣ fī maʻrifat al-qūwā wa-al-khawāṣṣ Contains Ibn al-Raqqām’s Kitāb khulāṣat al-ikhtiṣāṣ fī ma‘rifat al-qūwā wa’l-khawāṣṣ [Compendium of competence in knowing faculties and characteristics], preceded by an anonymous poem on agriculture. As stated in the incipit, Ibn al-Raqqām’s treatise is an abridgement of Ibn Waḥshīya Ibn Waḥshīyah, Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī, 9th cent. ’s Al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭīya. The work consists of an agricultural tract in fifteen chapters, and an account of 309 plants, with their actions and properties, which are listed and numbered in the table of contents
Layout: 23 lines
Script: Clear Naskh, black ink
Additions: Catchwords in the interior bottom-margin of versos marginalia Marginal commentaries in black ink marginalia Numbers referring to the index of plants written in red ink in the margins of ff. 30v-118v
