Letter: T-S 20.67

Description

Letter from R. ʿAzarya Zeʾevi of Jerusalem to R. Yiṣḥaq Castro in Egypt. Dated: 1638 CE (6 Tammuz שע׳׳ך ב׳׳ו = 5398 AM). Should be read together with AIU VII.D.102—same writer and same addressee. This letter contains a lengthy and convoluted account of the exchanges and transfers of a certain sum of money and how ʿAzarya bested their enemy who had other designs on the money. There is a great wealth of information here about market values of different currencies. People mentioned: הר"י אפמאדו (also mentioned in the other letter, identity unknown, appears to be the same "enemy" alluded to at the beginning); הר״מ זגאן; Yaʿaqov Yaʿish; the writer's father Yisrael Binyamin Zeevi (d. 1688 after an illustrious career in Alexandria and Jerusalem); Zerahya Gota (from Istanbul, a student of Yosef de Trani. In the 1630s he was known as one of the sages of Jerusalem and Hebron. Later he lived in Rashid and then Fustat/Cairo); Yizhaq Baso; Eliyya Ovadya; Shelomo Barukh; Yaʿaqov Levi; Mordekhai Kohen; Azarya b. Vilisad (? וילייסיד), also mentioned in the other letter by Zeevi to Castro, a sage who moved from Istanbul to Jerusalem in the first half of the 17th century. Denominations mentioned: sharifis (=ashrafis from the mid 15th century); arayot (=European coins used in the east, Löwenthaler in German); ibrahimis (=coins minted by Avraham Castro in the first half of the 16th century); gerushim (=sometimes identical with arayot, sometimes identical with reales, apparently); zecchinos (Venetian sequins); and reales (Iberian coins from the 14th century); muayyadis (Ottoman coin named after the Mamluk sultan al-Muayyad Shaykh, current in the 15th and 16th centuries). (Information from Avraham David's transcription and footnotes.)