Letter: T-S NS J7

Description

Letter from Yeḥezqel, probably in Qalyūb, to his brother Ḥalfon in Alexandria. Dated/dating: Iyar 1140. Yeḥezqel complains rather winningly and at great length about his various business problems: "I'm oppressed, but being painted an oppressor" (anā maẓlūm fī ṣūrat ẓālim), i.e., I’m being blamed for things that aren’t my fault. The problems in question: their cheese venture (see IB ח69, ח68, ח64) and the legal proceedings related to it, on which the judges were unable to reach a decision; goods delayed in the bayt al-wakīl, about which the judges wanted the parties to reach a compromise; and a legal action related to the sale of a house, with judges unable to reach a decision: should the decision be according to the approach of Hayye Gaʾon or Yiṣḥaq al-Fāsī? One of the judges suggests to Yeḥezqel that Ḥalfon should have solicited a responsum (fatwā) from Ibn Mīgash, which would have strengthened their hand. Also discusses trade in donkeys (sold without tack because otherwise the price would have been higher) and a long story about transporting silk from the village of Banhā in the delta together with a tax-farmer named Abū Saʿd (perhaps the same one who appears as a former tax-farmer 25 years later in T-S 13J2.24 = PGPID 1008). This Abū Saʿd the tax-farmer (ḍāmin) worked as a pair with a ḍāmin from Cairo, and so couldn't just show up in Banhā at the drop of a hat to help Yeḥezqel transport Abū Zikrī Kohen's silk back to Qalyūb (an eight-hour walk according to Google Maps). Moreover, two tax officials — a fellow tax-farmer in the dār al-ṣināʿa, the main customs point entering Fustat (see Med. Soc. .2:360, 606n34) and the tax-collector (mushidd, an Ayyubid term for the tax-collector at ports, on which Friedman cites Cahen, ’Le régime des impôts dans le Fayyūm ayyūbide,’ Arabica 3 [1956], 19), meaning the one working at the dār al-ṣināʿa? — "don't let him take (even) one raṭl (of silk) as a fee (or bribe?), or it's said to him, 'That's not yours!' The injustice is rampant." Unclear whether here we have the striking picture of a tax-farmer deeming it an injustice that his superiors forbid him from taking bribes; he uses the Hebrew word ḥamas, which in this period, according to Friedman, is a technical term for government-imposed injustice, so perhaps this is by comparison to some earlier period, when it was understood that tax-collectors could enrich themselves in kind. Mentions the death of Abū Naṣr b. al-Minqār, who was Ibn Yijū’s cousin, the son of his maternal aunt. Mentions the India trader Abū ʿAlī b. al-Kirnīb, who also appears in Maimonides' responsa. Although the names of the writer and addressee aren't stated explicitly because the letter has no address (it was probably hand-delivered), Goitein and Friedman identified them based on content and paleography. (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book) IB ח70 (ד60)