Letter: T-S Ar.39.435

Description

Badly damaged letter in Ottoman Turkish concerning shipments of firewood. Dating: circa 1736 CE or later (per Hathaway) based on the mention of the Ottoman gold coin zeri maḥbūb which was first minted in Cairo in 1736 CE(?) (although the earliest coins from Cairo in Uslu's numismatic catalogue date to 1143 AH/ 1730 CE). It should also be noted, that 1703 CE (1115 AH) marked the first year these coins were minted in Istanbul, therefore yielding a plausible chronological threshold over three decades earlier (Kaan Uslu et. al., Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Madeni Paraları, 69, 114-115). MCD. In the introduction to her edition, Jane Hathaway notes that this fragment and the letter T-S NS 306.84 were penned by the same scribe: "These two badly torn documents are letters in Ottoman Turkish, concerning shipments of firewood (odun). The author addresses the recipient as ‘my father’ (benim pederim), which could mean either his biological father or a revered elder. In the second letter, however, ‘my father’ gives way to ‘my brother’ (benim ḳarındaşım), suggesting that the recipient is a friend and/or comrade, much like the Sayyid Muḥammad and Sayyid ʿUmar to whom the writer sends greetings at the close of the first letter. These features, as well as a reference to Mevlevī dervishes in the first letter, open the possibility that the firewood may have been destined for the lodge, or tekke, of the Mevlevī dervishes in Cairo. No date survives on either letter, but if the Mevlevī connection is accurate, then both must have been written after 1016 AH/1607 CE, when the Mevlevī lodge was founded. The language and script of the letters and their overall appearance suggest that both were composed by the same author at around the same time, and possibly to the same recipient, namely al-Ḥājj Muḥammad.... Trees for firewood were, however, not abundant in Egypt, and firewood was regularly imported from Anatolia. This may be what our two documents describe, although in both cases, the wood is carried by Egyptian, or at least Arab, navigators (Ottoman Turkish singular, reʾīs): in T-S Ar. 39.435, ʿAbdullāh Anṣārī al-Saʿīdī delivers 275 qinṭārs of wood; in T-S NS 306.84, Muḥammad Shāfīʿī Būlāqī, from Cairo’s Nile port of Būlāq, delivers 300. These are enormous quantities: 275 qinṭārs is equivalent to 13,750 kilograms or 30,313 pounds (over fifteen tonnes), 300 to 15,000 kilograms or 33,069 pounds (over sixteen tonnes). Moreover, the writer’s use of the expression ‘this time’ (bu defāʿ) suggests that these deliveries were regular occurrences.... If we posit that the firewood was destined for Cairo’s Mevlevī lodge, then the letter’s invocations of ‘my father’ and ‘my brother’ could indicate that the writer was likewise a Mevlevī, perhaps writing from one of the great Melevī lodges in the Otto- man central lands, such as Istanbul’s Yenikapı lodge, the largest in the entire empire." (Hathaway, Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Geniza, 373-375)