List or table: ENA 1822a.66

Description

Accounts. Perhaps in the hand of one of Ben Yijū’s workers, but not his handwriting. Similar to India Book III 19 (shelfmark CUL Or.1080 J95). The account was clearly written in India, as the prices are given in Indian coinage, Kūlamī fīlīs, i.e., from the famous port city Quilon on the Malabar Coast, and fanam. The writer's anonymous associate, whose account is registered here, was charged for the receipt of various commodities, including both Indian products and items usually imported for personal use from Yemen and the West. He must have been a Yemeni or from elsewhere in the West, who was staying in India. Commodities: civet, cinnabar, a copper pot, glass vessels, raisins, a lamp (or Indian horse chestnut? what is written is "qandalī"), sugar, honey, myrrh, storax, and Egyptian sugar. One of the important pieces of information to emerge from this document (assuming the merchant was careful with his sums) is that the fanam was not precisely a quarter of a fīlī but rather slightly less: the ratio is 0.236 in this document. (Information from India Book and Goitein’s index card.) Not edited in the India Book: an additional list of accounts on verso, written in Arabic script and Greek/Coptic numerals and headed by the glyph. One of the items on that list is zabada (civet), indicating that it is probably connected to the Judaeo-Arabic account. The word "fīlī" in Arabic script may also appear at bottom left.