Letter: ENA 2730.7

Description

India Book (IB I, 25). Small fragment of a letter sent by a merchant in Egypt to the Maghrib. The sender asks the recipient to buy for him good quality corals. He mentions sending dīnārs with Dāwūd Ibn Sughmār with which the recipient is to buy corals. His circumstances — lack of work or inability to earn money for four years — have necessitated that he must now travel far from home. Goitein/Friedman suggest that the sender's intent is to take the corals east to Aden or al-Hind, where they sold for higher prices. The sender urgently requests the recipient's help and also asks him to form a partnership with a merchant from Córdoba who had spent the winter in al-Mahdiyya. The letter contains information about Yosef Labdī's arrival in ʿAydhāb after a successful trip to India. The sender informs the recipient about the arrival of merchants in Qūṣ, and about the merchandise they brought. Remarkable is the piece of information regarding the entire amount of merchandise that has arrived in ʿAydhāb after the roads were reopened and merchants began receiving "governmental prescripts" (sijillāt al-sulṭān): 9,000/13,000 bales of goods. Among these merchants was Labdī with a shipment of 80 bales of lac packed in Nahrawara (Gujarat), 50 bales of pepper and other merchandise. Friedman dates the letter to approximately 1101. (Information from Goitein/Friedman, India Traders) PG