Letter: T-S NS J277

Description

Petition from Abū l-ʿAlāʾ b. Abū l-Faḍl Ibn al-ʿAnīnī to the Nagid. The addressee can be identified as Shemuʾel b. Ḥananya (r. 1140–60) based on the titles and the fact that there are blessings for his two sons. The petitioner is also known from a dossier of five capitation tax receipts in his name (see his "People" page) ranging from the 1130s to 1150/51. Here, Abū l-ʿAlāʾ reports that he works in a silk shop (dukkān qizāza) together with Muslim artisans, including a Jewish convert to Islam (rajul posheaʿ) who has antagonized him by seeking to expel him from the shop. To this end, the apostate bears false witness against him and accuses him of taking vain oaths in the name of the king. The petitioner wants to leave his employment as a result, but he is reluctant because he owes money to his employer (muʿallim). He asks the addressee to issue an order to the judges (al-dayyānīn) to allow him to repay the debt in installments, lest he be arrested. Goitein adds, "The employer certainly was a Jew himself; otherwise, the Jewish judges would have had no jurisdiction over him. He employed Muslims, a Jew and a renegade, certainly in order to have easier control over his employees, and precisely for this reason the renegade wanted to oust the only Jew. The contract between the employer and the laborer indebted to him certainly stipulated that the latter had to pay the whole sum, in case he left the job. This was a means to ensure that the employee would not leave in time of a boom, see the preceding document. The Nagid, or head of the Jews of the Fatimid empire, was a secular authority and, as a rule, did not give judgments himself. He issued however instructions to the judges, indicating in which spirit a case should be decided." (Information in part from Mediterranean Society, II, pp. 35, 36, Goitein's attached notes, and CUDL.)