Letter: T-S 8J21.7

Description

Letter from Faraḥ b. Yosef b. Faraḥ, Alexandria, to Abū Saʿd Khalaf b. Sahl in Fustat. Dating: mid-eleventh century. In which the writer asks the recipient to help a third merchant, Abū l-Ḥassan b. Sasson with the sale of textiles from Sicily. Mentions the recipient's brother Abū l-Faḍl. Goitein identified this document as the last page of a letter written by Abū Naṣr b. Avraham to Halfon b. Netanʾel, and identified the recipient's brother as Abū l-Faḍl b. Abū al-Faraj al-Dimyāṭī; Gil and Fleischer and then Miriam Frankel followed this attribution. But Friedman rejected the paleographic and stylistic identification of the author as Abū Naṣr b. Avraham and finds no evidence that Halfon is the recipient, supporting instead an earlier attribution of Gil's to Faraḥ b. Yosef b. Faraḥ. Despite being included in the India Book corpus, then, the letter deals with Mediterranean trade and its protagonists have nothing to do (as far as anyone knows) with the Indian Ocean trade. 83ח = 79ד (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Book IV)