Letter: ENA NS 19.29

Description

Letter from Shemuel b. Sahl al-Hawwārī, in Aleppo, to [...], in Fustat. (The names are written in Arabic, so the writer's is tentative and the addressee's may yet be legible.) Written in calligraphic Judaeo-Arabic. Shemuel calls the addressee 'my father'; he seems to be the father-in-law of Shemuel's brother Abū l-Faḍl rather than Shemuel's actual father. Shemuel has received a letter informing him that his brother Abū l-Faḍl died in one of the villages of the Egyptian Rīf. Shemuel has no further information—which village, how he died, whether naturally or killed by Bedouins ('bādiya'), where he is buried, and in whose possession are the goods/money (apparently substantial) that Abū l-Faḍl had with him at the time of his death. Shemuel is sending his other brother, Abū ʿAlī, to travel to Egypt and investigate the matter. He asks the addressee to assist Abū ʿAlī when he arrives, so that the family can be 'consoled a little, though consolation is distant from us.' There are surprisingly few words of consolation at the beginning of the letter, but around here Shemuel writes that he and his brother and his mother have all 'melted' from grief, and commiserates with the addressee and 'our sister.' The addressee should send his response to Shemuel's mother in Jerusalem, to the alley of Yosef al-Sofer. There is the customary urging of a rapid response so that an old woman can be consoled before she dies of grief. ASE