The use and abuse of commercial letters from the Cairo Geniza
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03044181.2012.673299
ISSN1873-1279
Autores Tópico(s)Islamic Studies and History
ResumoAbstract The Cairo Geniza contains thousands of pieces of correspondence, but they have not been analysed as genres. Separating out the ‘commercial letters’ from this mass of correspondence shows that this kind of letter was a discrete genre, written according to norms that differed from other kinds of correspondence. These norms were largely a result of the particular ways letters could function as instruments of long-distance trade. Letters were primarily ephemeral business instruments that allowed a merchant to designate a fellow merchant as agent for his goods and make orders, maintaining his executive authority at a distance, but they had no intrinsic value in the legal system and were not used or kept as records. Their ephemeral nature helped make them more effective in their main secondary use: as tools to manage and negotiate business relationships within a geographically dispersed merchant community. Understanding these functions not only lets us see commercial letters as part of the institutional structure that sustains long-distance trade, but also suggests how these letters can be used more accurately and effectively in historical research. Keywords: Cairo GenizaletterstrademerchantsinstitutionsMediterranean Acknowledgements Parts of this article were written while I was a Mellon Foundation Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. I thank Adam Kosto, Francesca Trivellato, the anonymous referees of the Journal of Medieval History, and the members of the 2009–2010 Medieval Seminar at the Institute for all their helpful thoughts and suggestions. Notes 1 The following abbreviations for collections of Geniza fragments are used in this article: AIU: Paris, Archives of the Library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; BL: London: British Library (formerly the library collections of the British Museum); Bodl.: Oxford, Bodleian Library; DK: Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, David Kauffman Collection; ENA: New York City, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Elkan Nathan Adler Collection; Gottheil and Worrell: Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art (catalogued in R.J.H. Gottheil and W.H. Worrell, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection [New York: Macmillan, 1927]); Halper: Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Halper Collection; INA: St Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies; JNUL: Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library; Mosseri: Jacques Mosseri Collection (formerly held in Paris, on loan to Cambridge University Library since 2006); John Rylands: Manchester, John Rylands University Library, Gaster Collection; TS: Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection; ULC: Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Oriental Collection. ‘ + ’ indicates two fragments with separate shelfmarks that have been reconstructed as a single document. Cairo Geniza refers to one specific geniza, that of the Ben Ezra synagogue of the Palestinian Rabbanite congregation of Fustat. The heyday of the ‘documentary geniza’ that includes these kinds of documents is c.1000–1250. Estimates of the number of individual pieces of paper in the Cairo Geniza are currently 350,000 divided among over 30 libraries, thus the 8000–18,000 items in the ‘documentary geniza’ make up a tiny fraction of what is mostly a repository of religious texts. See the description in S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–93), vol. 1: 1–23 [referred to hereafter as MS I, MS II, etc.]. Goitein described both the Geniza and the ‘documentary geniza’. Since cataloging is still in progress, estimates from scholars and archivists have varied substantially over the years – the number above represents the range of views derived, in addition to the other sources cited in this note, from R. Jefferson, ‘The Historical Significance of the Cambridge Genizah Inventory Project’, in Language, Culture, Computation: Studies in Honour of Yaacov Choueka, ed. N. Deshowitz and E. Nissan (forthcoming); M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), xix–xxii; B. Outhwaite, personal communication, June 2009; G. Bohak, personal communication, June 2009, on the problem of numbering documents as opposed to pieces of paper. For descriptions of on-going work to create a union catalogue and database under the auspices of the Friedberg Geniza Project, see their website: www.genizah.org. For a description of the Cairo Geniza, the custom of geniza among Jews, and the extant documents, see M.R. Cohen and Y.K. Stillman, ʻGenizat Qahir u-minhagei geniza shel yehudei ha-mizraḥ; ‘iyyun hisṭori ve-ethnografiʼ, [in Hebrew: ʻThe Cairo Geniza and the Custom of Geniza among Oriental Jewry: an Historical and Ethnographic Studyʼ], Peʻamim 24 (1985): 3–35; S.C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge Universityʼs Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000). 2 The writing and collecting of elegant letters was a literary sport of the classical Islamic world. See the general discussion in the Encylopedia of Islam. 2nd ed. 13 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2009) [hereafter EI 2 ], the articles on ‘Risāla’, on the literary side, and ‘Inshā’’ on the chancery side – personnel and norms sometimes overlapped. Some artifacts of this culture from the Fatimid milieu of which the Geniza merchants were a part are discussed in P.E. Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and its Sources (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 76, 136–7. Any geniza is by definition a place to discard items, not to preserve them. As Goitein aptly put it, the geniza is best thought of as an anti-archive: Goitein, MS I, 7. 3 Though legal materials are most numerous (Goitein, MS I, 10) and the subject of a number of monographs, they have not been as widely or constantly used. 4 In addition to letters, there are various legal materials, accounts, notes, IOUs, orders of payment, wills, communal materials and marriage contracts that relate to these men; there are well over 1500 documents that can be considered as a mercantile corpus. See n. 12 below. The exact nature and origin of this group has been the subject of some debate, but the constant re-appearance of individuals in letters means there has been little doubt that these men formed a kind of business community. See M. Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, trans. D. Strassler (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 615–79; S.D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 3–15; A. Greif, ʻThe Organization of Long-Distance Trade: Reputation and Coalitions in the Geniza Documents and Genoa during the Eleventh and the Twelfth centuriesʼ (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1989), 104–5; A.L. Udovitch, ʻFormalism and Informalism in the Social and Economic Institutions of the Medieval Islamic Worldʼ, in Individualism and Conformity in Classical Islam, ed. Amin Banani and Speros Vryonis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977), 61–81. 5 Cohen's work on letters of petition, an entirely separate group of materials, is exceptional in collecting letters by type and describing their special form. See M.R. Cohen, The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 10–12. 6 Collections of edited or translated merchant letters include M. Gil, Be-malkhut Yishma‘el bi-teḳufat ha-ge′onim [in Hebrew: In the Kingdom of Ishmael], 4 vols (Tel-Aviv: University of Tel-Aviv, 1997) [hereafter Gil, Kingdom]; Goitein, Letters; N.A. Stillman, ʻEast-West Relations in the Islamic Mediterranean in the Early Eleventh Century: a Study of the Geniza Correspondence of the House of Ibn ʻAwkalʼ (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970). Place-oriented collections include M. Ben-Sasson, N. Zeldes and M. Frenkel, Yehude Sitsilyah, 825-1068: teʻudot u-meḳorot [in Hebrew: The Jews of Sicily, 825–1068: Documents and Sources] (Jerusalem: Mekhon Ben-Tsevi, 1991) [hereafter Jews of Sicily]; M. Gil, Erets-Yiśraʼel ba-teḳufah ha-Muslemit ha-rishonah (634–1099) [in Hebrew: Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099)], 3 vols. (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 1983) [hereafter Gil, Palestine]; S. Simonsohn, The Jews in Sicily. Vol. 1. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), (translated into English from the Gil translations in Hebrew). 7 Goitein, Letters, items 33, 35, 41, 45. 8 Though some important aspects of composition are discussed below, a sustained discussion of the rhetorical and diplomatic norms governing the letters, and their further implications for studying the data in commercial letters, is the subject of J. Goldberg, ʻGeniza Commercial Letters: Diplomatic and Rhetorical Aspectsʼ, (forthcoming). An initial consideration of both aspects of letters is found in J. Goldberg, ʻThe Geographies of Trade and Traders in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1150: a Geniza Studyʼ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2005), 47–131, 213–49. 9 I include a few documents that are arguably datable to the last decade of the tenth century. 10 See n. 31 below. 11 Goitein documents these activities in Goitein, MS I, 80–92. Most partnerships like this involve production oriented to the particular urban market in which the partners lived and worked. Though these documents deserve their own study for a proper consideration of the workings of the urban markets in this period, the Geniza shows limited connections between these people and the merchants discussed in this article (the merchants provided manufacturers as individuals and groups with some of their supplies, and sometimes extended credit to local manufacturers, but they were not part of general exchange networks, and neither correspondence nor contracts connected these groups). 12 These letters, either fragmentary or whole, constitute my commercial letter corpus. It represents 77% of some 900 individual documents that can be associated with the eleventh-century merchants, but accounts for just under 90% of the overall text related to the merchants in the Geniza – as letters contain more text than most of the other kinds of documents. A list of the more than 900 documents assembled can be found in J. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: the Geniza Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012), Manuscript Sources. Statistics are based either on the entire corpus of letters, or on a typological sample set of one-fifth of the letters; see Goldberg, ʻGeographies of Tradeʼ, 52–4, on the methodology employed. There are undoubtedly still more letters to be found. As several collections are currently the subject of greater review and cataloguing, it is likely that more items will come to light. Given the efforts of Goitein, Gil, Ben-Sasson, Frankel, Zeldes and Udovitch in combing and re-combing the main collections for commercial papers of the eleventh century, Udovitch estimates conservatively that at least 90% of the material has been found (personal communication, 2004). The number 900 is approximate, as I have hesitantly included some texts whose dating is the subject of dispute, and omitted others from the count while considering them as comparative material. 13 See further discussion in Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 3. 17 ‘Upsetting’ ? 18 80 7/24 gold dinars. 19 מעלק אלקלב. Literally, constriction or narrowing of the heart. This expression is common for those in a state of anxiety. Goitein suggests that ‘the person affected usually themselves felt that they were transgressing the limits of accepted propriety’: Goitein, MS V, 242. It might perhaps be more accurate to say that such expressions of anxiety were used as an excuse for frank and demanding comments that might follow, given how commonly we find this or similar locutions. See the discussion below. 20 That is, not local flax. 21 The flax of the area around Būṣīr, where the recipient was located. 22 ‘Abd's warehouse or bourse. 23 A colleague based in Alexandria. 24 An island city near the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile famous for its textiles. 25 The traditional Egyptian New Year, celebrated cross-confessionally as a holiday. 26 The implication is again that Nahray should be watching over Qāsim, now on behalf of ‘Ayyāsh's uncle. 27 This seems to be a lapse of the pen from one margin to the next, or awareness that the last part of the marginal comment was almost illegible, hence the repetition of the ‘ibn’. 28 5/48 of a dinar. 29 1/72, thus 2 1/9. 30 That is, of low quality. 14 Following normal usage, ‘b.’ is used for ‘ibn’, that is, ‘son of’, part of the standard patronymic of Arabic names. In some cases, such patronymics are adopted as family names; in these cases, the full ‘ibn’ is retained. Below, note especially the ibn al-Majjānī and ibn ‘Awkal clans. 15 The centrality of flax is discussed in A.L. Udovitch, ‘International Trade and the Medieval Egyptian Countryside’, in Agriculture in Egypt: from Pharaonic to Modern Times, ed. A.K. Bowman and E.L. Rogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1999), 267–85. Further evidence is provided in Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 9. 16 TS 13J 13.11. My quotations throughout are based on comparison of available editions and translations (many of which are discussed above at n. 6), some are available through digital collections – that of the Princeton Geniza Project, http://www.princeton.edu/~geniza, and the related Friedberg Geniza project, http://www.genizah.org/ – and study of the original document. The resulting readings and translations – and any errors they may contain – are my own, except where cited. The following conventions are used in translated quotations: roman type indicates original in Judeo-Arabic, underline is Hebrew, strikethroughs represent the writer's own strikethroughs; double slashes around a word or two indicate the author put it in above the line; ellipses indicate editorial omission, while ellipses enclosed by brackets indicate lacunae in the text of any length; words or letters enclosed in brackets indicate editorial filling of a textual lacuna; words enclosed in parentheses indicate an editorial comment or clarification; words or letters enclosed in caret brackets indicate editorial completion of the writer's intentional omissions and abbreviations. Commercial authors sometimes wrote out numbers, and sometimes used a standard system of Hebrew letters to indicate numbers – I have followed their practice, writing out the numbers they wrote out, and using numerals where Hebrew letters are used. Emphases, given in italics, are my own. 31 A responsum is a reply by a legal expert to a query about a point of Jewish law, similar to a Muslim fatwa. Gaonic refers to the Ga'ons, heads of the rabbinic academies (yeshivot, traditionally of Jerusalem, Sura and Pumbedita), active from the seventh through to the eleventh centuries. Though Geniza study continues to revise radically traditional histories of the authority and history of the Ga'ons, R. Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) provides a good overview. Reuben and Simon are generally used in responsa literature to indicate two anonymous persons. See J. Mann, ʻThe Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a Source of Jewish Historyʼ, Jewish Quarterly Review, new series 10 (1919): 326f. 32 TS 16.278, r 8; ULC Or 1080 J 25, r 24. 33 Discussed, along with the examples above, in Goitein, MS V, 229. 34 In a good example of this sentiment from the commercial corpus, Ya‘qūb b. Isma‘īl al-Andalusī writes in reply to a letter from his cousin ‘I was longing for your letter, because I am glad whenever I get a letter from you … I pray to God to keep you well and to let me see your face or your letters.’ TS 20.76 + TS 10J 20.10, r 5–7. 35 TS 8J 19.27, r 2–15. 36 Some more insistent requests to use couriers: TS 20.69, rt mar; TS 13J 8.5, r 3–4; TS 20.71, r 38–9; TS 16.7, v 5; Bodl. MS Heb. a. 3.13, v 9. 37 See TS 12.279, r 18–20, rt mar, in which letters destined for Sicily and Alexandria are sent from Jerusalem to Fustat, with the request for forwarding. See also the marks for Fustat on letters destined for Alexandria: e.g., TS 13J 25.12. 38 This account of postal systems relies on EI 2 , ‘Faydj, fuyūdj’; S.D. Goitein, ʻThe Commercial Mail Service in Medieval Islamʼ, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 84 no. 2 (1964): 118–23. Some revisions, especially on the subject of co-ordination, together with a map of the effective system, are found in Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 7. 39 It is clear that recipients sometimes acted in opposition to the wishes of the writer, e.g. TS 20.127, r 1–2. 40 TS 13J 18.8, v 11–12; in TS 12.279, r 5 the writer expresses satisfaction that an earlier, indiscreet letter was burned. 41 They do so in over half their letters; for a few examples with longer reports on whose letters the couriers brought: TS 13J 19.29, v 1–9; TS 13J 19.27, r 6–16; TS 13J 28.9, r 11–13 and v 9–10; TS 8J 18.10, r 4–7. See also TS 13J 25.12, r 23–25, where a merchant in Jerusalem notes that another may be embarrassed to get his letters, but knows by report that they had been received in Fustat. 42 For example, TS 13J 17.3, r 13–25 and TS 13J 19.29, r rt and upper margin, and verso, passim. 43 Letters had a uniform sending height of about 25 mm. The reverse of the folded paper was often used when an address was written once in Hebrew characters and sometimes again in Arabic ones. 44 On the preponderance of individual ventures carried out through agency over partnership, see S.D. Goitein, ʻCommercial and Family Partnerships in the Countries of Medieval Islamʼ, Islamic Studies 3 (1964): 316, Udovitch, ʻFormalism and Informalismʼ, 72–3; Greif, ʻOrganizationʼ, 55–7, 109; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 5; cf. M. Gil, ʻThe Jewish Merchants in the Light of the Eleventh-Century Geniza Documentsʼ, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient [hereafter JESHO] 46, no. 3 (2003): 273–86. 45 On the Islamic law, I.A.K. Nyazee, Islamic Law of Business Organization: Partnerships (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1999), 59–61; J. Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 119–20, A.L. Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 68–9, 98–9, and especially 85. The similarity of the concept in Jewish law is discussed in P.I. Ackerman-Lieberman, ʻA Partnership Culture: Jewish Economic and Social Life Seen Through the Legal Documents of the Cairo Genizaʼ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2007), 1: 15–26. Similarly, rather than discussing partnership, al-Dimashqī's manual of business turns immediately to the role of the agent after describing the major types of principals. A.l.-F.J.f.i.A. al-Dimashqī (fl. 11th century CE), al-Ishārah ilā mahḥāsin al-tijārah (Éloge du commerce), ed. Yassine Essid, trans. Y. Seddik (Tunis: Arcanes, 1994), chapter 21. 46 See the documents on a lawsuit over an agent ignoring instructions in S.D. Goitein and M.A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza. India Book, Part One (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 167–210. As we will see below, there were some tricky legal issues in letters substituting for the speech of the principal. 47 Mosseri VII 101 (L 101), r 3–14. 48 TS 13J 27.9, r 14–19. 49 Indeed, witnessing was an important and constant market activity, part of the system of legal guarantee of public acts. See Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 5. 51 TS 13J 16.23, r 9–14. 50 TS 13J 19.20, r 14–16. 52 INA D 55.14, r 5–6. 53 TS NS J 463, v 1–6, below the address and a signature cartouche. 54 This is a qinyan, which appoints an agent to collect a deposit or debt recorded in a document. 55 TS 10J 5.12, v 22. The line is cut off here. 56 On such powers of attorney, see Ackerman-Lieberman, ʻPartnership Cultureʼ, 1: 15–26, G. Libson, Jewish and Islamic Law: a Comparative Study of Custom During the Geonic Period (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School, 2003), 92–5. See also the later formulation in M. Maimonides, Sefer Kinyan: the Book of Acquisition, trans. Eliyahu Touger (Jerusalem: Moznaim, 1999), Laws of Agents and Partners, section 3:1 ff. Though Islamic law allows many more powers of attorney in commercial use, the necessity of either writing only one set of instructions to maintain one's authority, or conveying full discretion on the agent, made these too unsatisfying for business, where reports from agents and shifting market conditions made it necessary to have the latitude to change orders or agents. 57 See the lawsuit mentioned in n. 46 above, and Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 5. 58 Yeshū‘ā b. Isma‘īl, writing to his senior associate, gives orders in this descending fashion, specifying types of goods and even particular dealers, in TS 12.389, v 1–3. 59 See, for example, TS 20.180, r 31–2; TS 16.7, r 17–18, 20, 25; Bodl. MS Heb. a. 2.20, r 23; TS 10J 9.3, r 22; Bodl. MS Heb. d. 47.62, r 12; TS NS J 12, v 11–12; TS 13J 18.8, r 33–4; TS 16.339, r 27; TS 20.76 + TS 10J 20.10, r 10; ENA NS 18.35, r 22, v 14; TS 13J 17.7, v 19. This instruction may well have had the specific meaning in Islamic law of giving the agent an unlimited mandate with regards to the goods the principal had put in his trust. The wording is close, though not identical, to that of Islamic law. See Schacht, Islamic Law, 120. 60 The shorthand bi′l-qism wa′l-rizq for bi-qism allāh wa-rizqihī is discussed in Goitein, MS I, 185–6, 445. The commercial meaning of this phrase is ‘sell now for ready money’, that is, to the buyer and at the price granted by God, rather than trying to get a better or set price with normal, deferred payment. As we see in this case, the writer wants the investment turned around. Goitein mentions this phrase is often misunderstood, through the use of the word qism, as ‘division of the profits’. See Gil, ʻJewish Merchantsʼ, 293–5. 61 TS 20.76 + TS 10J 20.10, r 10. 62 TS 20.180, r 31–2, translated in Goitein, Letters, 151. A letter he received a few years later from Barhūn's cousin, Barhūn b. Mūsā, gives a miscellany of instructions on particular purchases and voyages for Nahray. Barhūn makes clear that what Nahray had seen fit to do over the last winter did not meet expectations, and his new orders are both more specific and backed by a threat: if Nahray does not act as requested, he will send his brother to do it instead (ENA NS 18.24, passim, but especially r 14–21 and r rt margin 1–16). 63 The organisation of business relationships in the Geniza has been the subject of much scholarly interest. See principally Goitein, MS I, 164–91; Gil, ‘Jewish Merchants’, 274–82; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, chapter 5; A. Greif, ʻReputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade – Evidence on the Maghribi Tradersʼ, Journal of Economic History 49, no. 4 (1989): 857–82; A. Greif, ʻContract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade – the Maghribi Traders Coalitionʼ, American Economic Review 83, no. 3 (1993): 525–48; Greif, ʻOrganizationʼ; A. Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 58–90, 269–303; Udovitch, ʻFormalism and Informalismʼ. For a recent debate on the nature and enforcement of the underlying contracts, see J. Edwards and S. Ogilvie, ‘Contract Enforcement, Institutions and Social Capital: the Maghribi Traders Reappraised’, Economic History Review (2012, forthcoming); A. Greif, ‘The Maghribi Traders: a Reappraisal?’, Economic History Review (2012, forthcoming). 64 See G. Weiss, ʻLegal Documents Written by the Court Clerk Halfon ben Manasse (dated 1100–1138): a Study in the Diplomatics of the Cairo Genizaʼ (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970). It is worth noting further that exceptions are not letters with a year, but letters between Fustat and Alexandria that sometimes included only the day of the week. Letters of the twelfth century sent from India sometimes included the year, for a letter might indeed take this long to arrive. 65 Though some letters mention making as many as five copies (for example, TS 13J 17.3, r 13–26), only a few near copies are extant in the corpus (for example, TS 20.76 and TS 16.7). See the discussion in Ben-Sasson, Zeldes and Frenkel, Jews of Sicily, 259. A letter from Isma‘īl b. Faraḥ in Alexandria to his son Faraḥ in Būṣīr is among that 1% of letters that mention a date, and also refers to multiple copies: ‘Today I received your letters dated 2 Tishrī, in 2 copies’, TS 10J 20.12, r 3–4. Isma‘īl and Faraḥ wrote frequently, so here the date may indeed have been meant to clarify which letter was received. 66 Bodl. MS Heb. a. 2.17, r 2–5. 67 See Stillman, ʻEast-West relationsʼ, 73–5. The dated letters: TS 12.218; TS 16.266; ULC Or 1080 J 248; ULC Or 1080 J 154; Bodl. MS Heb. d. 65.10; TS NS J 388; TS 13J 29.2; TS 13J 19.29. 68 Again, a single exception proves the rule – a letter in which the recipient, Nahray b. Nissīm, in small script, corrects a detail of a transaction described by the writer, Mūsa b. Abī al-Ḥayy, which he notes is off by a qīrat (1/24 dinar): TS 8J 24.15. 69 Goitein, Letters, 42–3; Goitein, MS I, 7–9. 70 TS 16.163, verso, passim; TS 13J 17.11, r 8–14. See Gil, ‘Jewish Merchants’, 282–90; H.S. Khalilieh, Islamic Maritime Law: an Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 93–7. 71 See, for example, TS 10J 29.5a, 16–19. On the preparation of accounts, see Gil, ʻJewish merchantsʼ, 282–90, with discussion and examples in Ackerman-Lieberman, ʻPartnership Cultureʼ, 1: 32–6; 2: 52–6, 60–1, 122–7, 248–9. 72 We do have many extracts from them made at a fellow merchant's request, and there are a few particularly large and elaborate account pages that may indeed be the remains of account books. Gil, ʻJewish Merchantsʼ, 284–5; cf. S.D. Goitein, ʻBankersʼ Accounts from the Eleventh Century A.D.ʼ, JESHO 9, nos. 1–2 (1966): 28–35. 73 TS 16.163 (II). The letters: Bodl. MS Heb. a. 3.13; ENA 2727.6, v; TS 12.389. Bodl. MS Heb. a. 3.13 and TS 12.389 are translated in Goitein, Letters, 119–27. 74 Literally, he argues in an argument: יחג פי חגה. 75 TS 12.371, r 8–11. In the query itself, the writer is unsure whether in the case even of a deceased merchant production of his letter is preferable to a sworn declaration of the recipient: ‘If, God forbid, Isḥāq were to say: I shall not hand over a thing to ‘Aṭā’ b. Zikrī, has he then to produce the late Khiyār's letter, to be read by the judge and the community? Or is he to take an oath to the effect that he did not know that ‘Aṭā’ owns part of the 300 dinars which had been deposited with the late Khiyar b. Zikrī?’ TS 12.371, v 8–11. 76 Bodl. MS Heb. d. 66.5; Bodl. MS Heb. c. 28.11. Re-edited, translated, and discussed in M.R Cohen, ʻA Partnership Gone Bad: a Letter and a Power of Attorney from the Cairo Geniza, 1085ʼ, forthcoming. 77 Bodl. MS Heb. d. 66.5, r 19–20. 78 Mosseri VII 101 (L 101), r 9–19. 79 In presenting a case against Yaḥyā b. Mūsā ibn al-Majjānī for refusing to honour his deceased father's debts, Ya‘qūb b. Ibrahīm ibn ‘Allān was able to bring to court four letters from the deceased Mūsā ibn al-Majjānī, and four merchants to testify that they were genuine. Bodl. MS Heb. a. 3.26 + John Rylands 1772.14, v 44–63, sheet 2, passim. This case is partially translated and discussed in Goitein, Letters, 95–101, using only the first sheet. 80 The full text of ‘Ayyāsh's letter includes references to four further letters. 81 For example, TS 20.69, r 24–9; TS 20.76, r 35–40. 82 See the discussion in Goitein, MS I, 169–79, and examples in Ackerman-Lieberman, ʻPartnership Cultureʼ, vol. 2. 83 See F. Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: the Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 153–76, especially 154. 84 TS 13J 19.27, r 19–20. Qinṭār is a hundredweight, 100 Egyptian pounds or approximately 45 kg. Shām is the general term for greater Syria; balad al-Rūm can mean any part of the Catholic or Byzantine Mediterranean. Modern Arabic distinguishes between balad (town, city, place, community) and bilād (country or nation). In Geniza letters, no such distinction can be found; the form balad al-Rūm is invariable. 85 As Udovitch notes, there might not be a specific request in each letter so much as an agreed duty to keep one's correspondent up-to-date on specific kinds of information. Princeton: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections and Department of Near Eastern Studies, unpublished materials of A.L. Udovitch. 86 For example, JNUL 577.3.2, r 6. 87 In addition to the major episodes of both recorded in the chronicles, the Geniza shows that epidemics and plagues were much more frequent as localised events, with obvious bearing on market planning. Merchants’ reports on shifts in political authority are rarer. In some cases, they may have wished to avoid arousing the interest of the ‘inspectors’, who checked up on the port and market authorities, and were capable of reading the merchants’ Judaeo-Arabic. See Goitein, MS I, 271–2. 88 DK 3; Goitein, Letters, 240–3. 89 I have found only one instance in which a merchant suggests that his colleague might return goods already sent – and this is for goods that only went east from Egypt to Tyre. See JNUL 577.3.2, right margin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fustat and Tyre also had the most frequent postal service on the dependab
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