رسالة: ENA 3959.1

الوصف

Petition in Ottoman Turkish from a merchant named Mūsa to "an unnamed Ottoman official, quite possibly the governor of Egypt." Dating: mid-sixteenth century (per Hathaway). In the introduction to her edition, Jane Hathaway notes: "This Ottoman Turkish petition is addressed to an unnamed Ottoman official, quite possibly the governor of Egypt, since the author introduces key personages with minimal explanation, as if his addressee has prior familiarity with the provincial scene. The author, a merchant called Mūsā, asks the official to rescue him from an onerous situation into which he has stumbled. He is apparently a client of Maḥmūd Ketḫüdā, almost certainly an officer in Egypt’s Janissary regiment. Maḥmūd in turn has links to another Jewish merchant who had come to Cairo to dispose of the estate of a member of the Banī Baghdād, the powerful Bedouin tribe, mentioned in the previous document, who dominated Gharbiyya and Minūfiyya sub-provinces during the sixteenth century. This could conceivably be Muḥammad ibn Baghdād, the chieftain addressed in the previous document, or possibly another of the several family members whom the Ottoman governor executed or deposed between 1538 and 1561.... Thus, this petition probably dates from the middle years of the sixteenth century, and the disposition of the estate almost surely follows on an execution.... Ibn Baghdād’s estate seems to consist largely of clothing or, perhaps more accurately, textiles (Egyptian colloquial aswāb, standard Arabic athwāb, literally ‘robes’). This is consistent with what few details of Bedouin life and custom we can glean from chronicles of Ottoman Egypt. Sixteenth-century chronicles note Bedouin populations hiding their textiles or depositing them with peasants, along with livestock and money, when under attack." (Hathaway, Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah, 183-184)