Genizah Piyyutim: Late literary Aramaic piyyutim from the Cairo Genizah not included as JPA in Yahalom and Sokoloff SYAP (see file no. 53420). The reader should also note that some of the poems published by M. Klein within his "Genizah Manuscripts of the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch" and thus included in DJPA, probably are better assigned to this category. The student should note that not all the Aramaic poetic material found in the Genizah or subsequent manuscript sources is included in our database. The paytanic tradition was a tradition of literary inventiveness, and the poets willingly and gleefully combined Hebrew and Aramaic sources and allusions and gave themselves tasks such as writing extensive poems using (almost) only words from Biblical Aramaic. Subsequent but inevitable scribal corruption makes the identification of those texts that might reflect a consistent and authentic dialect difficult if not impossible.
SahlanMonths: A poem on the dispute of the months by Sahlan ben Avraham, a member of the Babylonian Jewish community in early 11th century Fustat, Egypt. Inasmuch as it is a text of known date and location, it offers us a good test case for the nature of literary Aramaic compositions at the end of the period of texts coming from a Semitic, Near Eastern context prior to the composition of liturgical poetry among medieval European Jewish scholars, which often reflect the strong influence of Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic.
Our reading is based on the publication of Michael Rand, "AN ARAMAIC DISPUTE BETWEEN THE MONTHS BY SAHLAN BEN AVRAHAM," Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies 9(2012):101-13.
Although an occasional vowel is indicated in the manuscripts, the vocalization here is his, and with a few exceptions based on his notes, it is difficult to know what may be in the ms.
For other examples of the disputes between the months see at GT GG (54000) to Ex.12:2 and SYAP #37.
Rand has now re-edited this Piyyut with additional notes in: "New data on Aramaic in Classical piyyut : תשמיע ניחומים ללישה, a silluq for Shabbat Shim“u by Yoḥanan ha-Kohen", Aramaic Studies 13(2015): 128-60, where one can also find his discussion of the nature of the Aramaic used in these late compositions.