Letter: Bodl. MS heb. e 105/38

Description

Letter in Judaeo-Arabic. Wide space between the lines. The writer is a tax farmer (or perhaps the agent/wakīl of one) in a rural area with cattle and water wheels and wood. He seems to be complaining about how little of the ḍamān proceeds he got to keep and how much work it is to supervise the cowherds and waterwheel users and get them to pay up. But there is a lot of technical language that requires further examination. "By the covenant! I had no resort but to drink with some qāḍī named Abū ʿAbdallāh and some uncircumcised (Christian) tax collector. The drinking was for a profitable thing they had proposed, not on account of any idleness of mine. They said..." In the margin he mentions Rabbenu, possibly the Nagid, and asks for a favor for a relative of his. On verso there are many very deferential phrases and a cryptic passage about insulting people and people's wives and things that can't be repeated in letters to the likes of the addressee. On verso there is also Hebrew liturgical text.