Letter: CUL Or.1080 J173

Description

Letter from the mother of Dā'ūd, in a provincial town, to her son Sulaymān al-Jamal, in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. She complains about a lack of letters from him and reports that she is fasting and crying day and night. She had traveled with her daughter and son-in-law to her present location ("balad al-ghurba"). She would return on her own, but must stay with her daughter who is pregnant (muthqala). The writer urges her son to come and thereby "cool [the fire in] my liver." Her son-in-law had promised to bring her back to Fustat, but when the daughter became pregnant, he said that he would never go back to Fustat again. The writer cannot bear witnessing her daughter's suffering (nakālhā) at the hands of the second wife (ḍarrathā). Information from Friedman's edition. ASE.