Letter: T-S NS J380

Description

Abū l-Faraj b. Khalaf (?), probably in Minyat Ghamr, writes to his cousin (ibn ʿamma), Eliyyahu the Judge, in Fustat. These cousins had prior correspondence and business dealings—Eliyyahu sent 22 dirhams with his previous letter, and the writer has a store in which he deals in indigo. The purpose of this letter is to ask Eliyyahu to write to the judge R. Menaḥem in the hope of obtaining permission for Abū l-Faraj to take a second wife. Eliyyahu is familiar with the case already, but Abū l-Faraj repeats some of it here. He has endured 20 years of suffering because of the illness of his wife, which prevents her from going to the bath (presumably a problem for him because of menstrual purity laws rather than because of hygiene). When Abū l-Faraj arrived in Minyat Ghamr from Jerusalem, he found a second woman whom he wanted to marry. The local judge, Mufaḍḍal the ḥaver, refused to marry them on his own authority and said that permission would need to come from higher up. Mufaḍḍal sent a letter to R. Menaḥem with Ḥabīb the shohet, but there was no response; Abū l-Faraj himself was unable to accompany Ḥabīb. Abū l-Faraj thought that Eliyyahu would already have intervened on his behalf, but no news of that has reached him. He visited Alexandria, but it seems that Mufaḍḍal discouraged him from seeking a ruling from the judge [A]natoli on account of his strictness. In the remainder of the letter, he repeats his request in various ways. He is willing to come to Fustat in order to marry. Information from Friedman's edition and translation. The writer quotes a saying in lines v13–15, where he is urging Eliyyahu to act quickly, and Friedman marked his translation as somewhat tentative. Cf. alternate versions of the same idiom in ENA 2558.21, T-S 13J21.20, Moss. II,167, T-S Misc.28.33, and Bodl. MS heb. d 66/14, e.g., "mā baqiya fī l-ʿumr mithla mā maḍā," literally, "there do not remain [years] of life like those which have passed," apparently corresponding to the English "we aren't getting any younger, [so please help me]." Another version of the phrase also appears in the first chapter of Ibn Buṭlān's Daʿwat al-Aṭibbā', in the mouth of a physician whose income has dried up and who has nowhere to go: mā baqiya aqallu mimmā maḍā ("what remains is less than what has passed"). See also T-S AS 162.167 + T-S AS 151.29 and Oded Zinger's edition in "You and I will enjoy each other's company until God decrees our death in the Land of Israel," Cathedra 174 (2020), note 22. ASE.