Letter: Bodl. MS heb. e 98/69

Description

Recto: Letter of appeal for charity from a cantor to a dignitary named Mevorakh, likely the head of the Jews Mevorakh b. Saʿadya. In Hebrew, for the copious blessings, and in Judaeo-Arabic, for the substance of the message. The Judaeo-Arabic orthography is particularly poor/colloquial. The sender complains that his clothes have been lost or ruined in the Nile (...shidda fī al-baḥr wa-ʿaṭiba al-thuwaybāt alladhī kānat lī...) and reminds the addressee of his "renowned generosity toward cantors" (...fī mā jarat ʿādatuh bihi maʿa kull ḥazzan...) (Cohen, JSG, 260–61). Goitein reads מא לי מאעיד בה עלא חֶלי (mā lī mā uʿayyid bihi ʿalā ḥalī) and translates "I have nothing beautiful with which to celebrate the feast” (MS IV:156). He asserts that "the Arabic word for 'beautiful,' ḥalī, refers mostly to female ornaments. The Hebrew vowel segol (three dots), put beneath the ḥ of ḥalī, was pronounced (and is still pronounced so by Yemenites) as a short 'a' in Arabic" (Med. Soc. IV:397n43). However, a more plausible reading is "mā lī mā aʿūd bihi ʿalā ḥālī," which is a stock phrase used in similar begging letters, and ḥālī simply means "my state/condition" (compare T-S 8J16.30, line 14). (Information in part from Goitein's index card and Mediterranean Society, references above; see also Cohen, JSG, 261, 263, 297, 363. Rustow, Lost Archive, ch. 14, nn. 37, 39 and 40 gives the shelfmark incorrectly as 95/69). (MR, YU, ASE)