Letter: T-S K25.244

Description

Letter from an ardent supporter to Daniel b. ʿAzarya. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Ca. 1055 CE (per Goitein). This is the first leaf of a longer letter. The sender puts his money and his friends at Daniel's disposal. The letter is also an attack on ʿEli b. ʿAmram, who is never directly named. The sender describes communal strife in Fustat after the death of the gaon Shelomo b. Yehuda (d. 1051) and Abū Kathīr Efrayim b. Shemarya (d. after 1053 CE, probably ca. 1055 CE). The other supporters of Daniel b. ʿAzarya wanted to appoint the Rav (=Yehuda b. Yosef) as the successor of Efrayim b. Shemarya, and they did not want ʿEli b. ʿAmram to assume the position. (The Rav was in the camp of Daniel b. ʿAzarya despite being the cousin of his rivals Yosef and Eliyya, the sons of Shelomo ha-Kohen b. Yehosef, who was briefly gaon in 1025 CE.) However, the sender paradoxically thinks that their enemy, ʿEli b. ʿAmram, should succeed Efrayim, precisely because then he will have to pay obeisance to Daniel, and the two camps will be united. The letter's contents are as follows: (1) condolences on the death of Daniel's sister (r1–12); (2) praise and seeking forgiveness for the fight that had had in the house of al-Damsīsī—Goitein understands this to be because the sender had advocated for ʿEli b. ʿAmram, Daniel's enemy (r13–21); (3) ʿEli ("the idiot") didn't understand that the sender had long been a supporter of Daniel b. ʿAzarya, even before the death of Shelomo b. Yehuda; and anything the sender has done for ʿEli is like what David did for Saul—serving him despite the latter's intention to kill him (r23–36); (4) an explanation of how the sender supported ʿEli b. ʿAmram over the Rav, against the objections of the rest of Daniel's contingent, including Abū Isḥāq (Avraham b. Yiṣḥaq Ibn al-Furāt) (v1–12); (5) ʿEli b. ʿAmram's boorish behavior once he assumed leadership, which alienated the other leading figures of the community (including Abū Sahl al-Kohen, a certain Abū l-Surūr, and a certain Elḥanan), to the point that they boycotted the synagogue (v12–28); (6) ʿEli, fearing that he would be deposed in favor of the Rav, recruited his son-in-law Ḥunayn and started spreading malicious rumors about the Rav, including something he supposedly said to Ibn al-Talmid involving the latter's mother. Then, "Ḥunayn went and gathered some potters and quarrelsome people, and hired about fifty of them, and they wrote legal deeds about the Rav, [saying] that he had apostatized (pashaʿa) in al-Shām and [later] arrived in Egypt to re-Judaize (yatahawwada)" (v29–36). (Information from Goitein's edition. Translation of the last section from Moshe Yagur, "Several Documents from the Cairo Geniza Concerning Conversion to Islam" (2020).) (Alan Elbaum) The handwriting on this letter is the same as that of ENA 4020.65, a copy of what Goitein believed to be a petition from Shelomo b. Yehuda to al-Ẓāhir during the rivalry with Yosef al-Sijilmāsī. (Marina Rustow)