Princeton Geniza Lab

@genizalab.bsky.social

Digitizing Cairo Geniza documents since 1985. https://genizalab.princeton.edu/, https://geniza.princeton.edu

Great to see the actual color of lac! This pigment was a major commodity traded from India to Yemen and Egypt. One of the Geniza merchants who dealt in dyes and dyed cloth was known as al-Urjuwānī, "the purple dealer" Some of the Geniza documents about lac --> geniza.princeton.edu/en/documents...

Documents

Search and browse Geniza documents.

geniza.princeton.edu

Joumana Medlej@majnouna.com · last mo.

Lac pigment collected after I demonstrated the process in an online class a few weeks ago, before and after drying/pulverising. #medievalpigments

Mortar full of wet purple lake

"For humans and jinns sleep, but your father does not sleep—he stays up and prays for you all night and day, weeping so much over his separation from you that he has lost his vision in one eye." (12th-century letter sent from Alexandria to a brother in Yemen) geniza.princeton.edu/en/documents...

Letter: T-S 13J28.15

Letter from a certain Yosef, in Alexandria, to his brother, an India trader. Mentions Aden (verso, right margin, l. 15)…

geniza.princeton.edu

For the first time since the Princeton Geniza Project began in 1986, we have published our metadata collated from over 30,000 Geniza documents and the People, Places, and histories of the Middle East and premodern Jewish communities found therein! zenodo.org/records/1583...

Princeton Geniza Project Dataset

Since 1986, the Princeton Geniza Lab has been studying and digitizing historical documents from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of roughly 400,000 fragments of paper and parchment preserved in a medieval Eg...

zenodo.org

Given the expanded capabilities of the new PGP site (v4), we're finally retiring PGPv3. We chose April 3, 2025 as its final date, S. D. Goitein's 125th birthday. Many thanks to Ben Johnston of @mcgrawect for building the site & running it. You can find the archived content here:

A very sweet letter reminiscing on a visit to the house of Maimonides, who is depicted here enjoying lemon drops and playing with a cute toddler. "I kissed his noble hand, and he received us with a most cordial welcome. He said to me, 'Come and sit...'" geniza.princeton.edu/en/documents...

Letter: T-S 8J14.18

Letter from a member of the nasi family of Mosul addressed to Shelomo b. Yishay. Dating: the events described in…

geniza.princeton.edu