رسالة: Bodl. MS heb. d 66/87

الوصف

Letter from Abū l-Riḍā, it seems in Fustat, to his wife's brother Meʾir, perhaps in Damīra or at least nearby in the Rīf. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dated 21 Heshvan קנא, which would normally be 4800 + 151 = 4951 AM = 1190 CE, or possibly 1551 Seleucid = 1239 CE. But there are enough unusual features (format, language) of the letter that it could plausibly be 5151 AM = 1390 CE. In any event, the writer's father recently died. He thanks the addressee for his letter of condolence, though in a backhanded sort of way ("I knew that you would not have honored me with a letter if this calamity had not occurred to me"). He is preoccupied with the failure of everyone in his in-laws' family to write to him or to ask about him in letters to his wife. At the end, he brings up various business matters to be conducted by al-Shaykh al-Sadīd together with the writer's maternal uncle Abū l-Munā. These involve textiles (a wasaṭ, yarn, and silk) and roasted flaxseed oil (zayt bizr kattān muqlā) from Damīra. ASE