Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries Blog //Talking the Talk: Poetry
Blog //Talking the Talk: Poetry

In this series we honor the contributions made on the Zooniverse Talk boards for our project, Scribes of the Cairo Geniza . Talk is a way for citizen scientists on Zooniverse to converse with one another and experts on the different material they are working on, ask questions, and explore new insights. Each week we will feature a talk conversation that we love. Thanks for the participation #genizascribes!

@gginat: Another wow! Will dispose of verso first, which I classified as Arabic — but from what appear to be end of word flourishes running from right to left, seems like it may not be. But I’m speculating.

OK, recto, #poetry #piyyut
Starts off with fragment (presumably, end of a poem) with two lines ending on “laylah” and reference to midnight and 10th plague, which sounds like, but isn’t, Haggadah piyyut on that theme. Then segues (presumably, new poem) into an invocation “shiru…” etc. followed by Shir Ha’Shirm quotations and paraphrases, then ending as follows, as near as I can make out:
[?]שיר השירים אמרות. שרים סדרוה כשירים כלכלוה
סלסלוה משוררים כעשרים וערבע הספרים וכשישה
סדרים
Not sure kafs, may be bets.

@js613: Beautiful! Here’s what I have for the last lines: ,שיר השירים, אמרות ישרים, סדרוה כ/ב-שירים
פלפלוה סלסלוה, משוררים בעשרים וארבע הספרים, ובשישה סדרים.

@citsci-rancho: #arabicscript is upside-down, and on recto (?)
Perhaps commentary on the poetry on the other side?

@msra: the forced ligature of the Arabic script and the spacing between the lines on the recto make it appear to be a formal document, possibly with signatures.

Read the full conversation on the talk boards here.

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By Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries on .

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Exported from Medium on April 14, 2020.

Cite this post: admin. “Talking the Talk: Poetry”. Published March 05, 2019. https://judaicadh.github.io//blog/2019-03-05-talking-the-talk/. Accessed on .