Letter: MIAC 23973.48

Description

Letter to an eparch at Ibrīm from ʿAbd Allāh, son of the qāḍī ʿAlī ibn al-Zubayr. ʿAbd Allāh has sent his sons Qāsim and Abū ʿAbd Allāh to Erkinun to be guests of the king. He says he has not sent them so they can trade and make profit but only to be "at the disposition of the king" (fī ḥasab al-malik). He has sent cloth with them so that they can receive an audience before the king and present him with it. He adds at the end that he has sent Iraqi cloth and apologizes that he has not sent cash instead. ʿAbd Allāh spends much of the letter recounting his family history of allegiance to the Nubian king. His grandfather, father and cousin (the qāḍī Abū al-Faḍl) traveled to Soba to see the kings Basil and Mūyis (Moses George) as messengers from the sultan. His father allegedly helped make a peace treaty between the sultan and the king during the reign of a Nubian king David. When he was young, the sender himself traveled to Soba with his cousin to see the king Mūyis. The sender's son Hibat Allāh traveled all the way to Dongola to see Mūyis as well. The references to specific kings here provides some indication as to the dating of this letter relative to the dynastic history of kings in Nubia. Some of the letters in this corpus give the impression of a united kingdom of Makuria, Nobadia and Alodia under the king Mūyis mentioned in this letter (Khan (2024), 99). In decades prior, these kingdoms were not united. This letter gives the impression of an itinerant king who is sometimes in Soba and sometimes in Dongola (Khan (2024), 99). Since the king Basil mentioned in this letter precedes the kings Mūyis and David, this Basil may have been a king of Alodia at Soba. Alternatively, it could refer to the king Basil in Makuria in 1089, who was then succeeded by a king George (1132) and a king David (Khan (2024), 98). Finally, the treaty (ṣulḥ) between the sultan and the king mentioned in this letter might refer to a raid by a Nubian king in 501 AH/1107 AD, as reported in al-Maqrīzī (Khan (2024), 97). ʿAbd Allāh was evidently a member of a prominent family, but Khan writes that his brother al-Qāḍī al-Rashĩd Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī was executed by the vizier Shāwar "on suspicion of attempted rebellion" (Khan (2024), 92). "It is possible," he writes, "that ʿAbd Allāh was seeking asylum for himself and his children in Nubia with a view to shifting his allegiance to the Nubian king (Sartain 1993, 25–26)." Of course, many letter-writers who are faithful to the Fatimid regime nevertheless make statements about being "servants and slaves of the crown" in Nubia (QI 22r:4–5; see Khan (2024), 93). The letter contains some intriguing hints about the king and the eparch's roles in allowing people to settle in the region. ʿAbd Allāh writes that his family lives off property in the country of the Nubian kings (amlākuna alladhī naʿīsh minha fī bilādihim). He sends his sons ahead of him now in the hopes of beginning a "long-term acquaintance and friendship" (maʿrifa wa-ṣadāqa lil-zamān) between himself and the eparch. He asks the eparch to send a letter ahead to the king indicating ʿAbd Allāh's wish to come to Nubia. He also asks the eparch to provide him with a house in Ibrīm, a house in Adminna and a house in Erkinun, so that he can "build them and... live in whichever of these houses [he] wish[es]" (abnīhum wa-askun anā wa-awlādī fī bayt ashtahaytu minhum). PG Khan, Qaṣr Ibrīm, doc. 21.