List or table: T-S NS 297.252

Description

Commercial accounts in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals (with the name of the month מרחשון written in Hebrew script three times). Written on cloth. The other few documents written on cloth in the Geniza are from India, which is suggestive but not proof that this is also from India. Information from recto: The 'thānī' at the top of the page indicates that this is the second folio of the account. It was written in a year when 4 Ḥeshvan fell on a Thursday. Seems to be a detailed list of expenses for construction work on a house over the course of ~5 days. Red brick and the bricklayers are mentioned several times. The sums seem low, in the tens of dirhams. There is one entry apparently for "four game boards" (alwāḥ alʿāb). Another is an expense for "the Jews" for 5 days of water flow (sayl al-māʾ). Information from verso: The unit of measure farāsila is mentioned twice (typical for India trade documents). "The elder Ibrāhīm" is named in four different places, including the header ([...] ḥawāʾij Ibrāhīm); it seems very likely that this is Avraham Ben Yiju, and the account is being prepared on his behalf. At the bottom, there is a list of debts owed to Ibrāhīm including one from "his father-in-law al-Shaykh Kardār." See India Book, III, documents 18–21 for other commercial accounts coming from the same milieu (in Judaeo-Arabic). (Information from Amir Ashur, who identified the document as related to the India trade, and Alan Elbaum.)