Letter: T-S 20.145 + T-S AS 153.176 + T-S AS 153.177 + T-S 18J5.3

Description

Letter/petition probably from ʿAmram b. Aharon ha-Kohen "the seventh" (the son-in-law of the head of the Palestinian Yeshiva, Evyatar b. Shelomo ha-Kohen) to "our rabbi the third" (Rabbenu ha-Shelishi), possibly identical with Ṣadoq b. Yoshiyyahu, in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic with some Hebrew. Calligraphically written with wide space between the lines. Dating: 1108–09 CE. The sender wants the addressee to exercise his influence and intervene with the Nagid Mevorakh b. Saʿadya to have the Fatimid navy rescue Evyatar and his family from Tripoli in the period between the summer of 1108 CE (when the populace of Tripoli overthrew Ibn ʿAmmār) and 12 July 1109 CE, when the Franks sacked Tripoli. Goes on to refer to the flight of Fakhr al-Mulk Ibn ʿAmmār from Tripoli and how he left it in the hands of his cousin Abū l-Manāqib. The sender says that he has previously sent a letter concerning "the same matter" to "our cousin," a great dignitary and a kohen. "They took it and traveled with it... toward the beginning of Shabbat Vayoshaʿ (=Beshalaḥ?), the day that Ibn ʿAmmār traveled for Beirut—let him return no more to his house, and let not his place know him any more (Job 7:10)—and then traveled for Tiberias (? טברי) to fortify himself there, and the city is now in the hand of his cousin (ibn ʿamm) Abū l-Manāqib." In the bottom section (note that there is still a gap between T-S AS 153.177 and T-S 18J5.3), refers to "in this crisis and others..."; the sender says that he has already explained the condition of the 'brother' Abū l-Faḍl and his family in other letters; he reiterates greetings to the addressee and his two sons; and his own two sons, ʿAzaryahu and Maṣliaḥ, convey their greetings. Ends with a motto that might be reconstructible as [yu]ḥash [yeshaʿ] be-qarov (יוחש ישע בקרוב). In the mirror-image text, a few words from other sections of the document are preserved, which may help find the remaining pieces: Abū l-Faḍl al-Levi and al-Shaykh Abū l-Ghanāʾim. (Information in part from CUDL and Brendan Goldman's edition.) Joins by Alan Elbaum (except for T-S AS 153.176 + T-S AS 153.177, which is from CUDL). There is a possibility that T-S 18J5.3 is actually a distinct letter, from the same sender to the same addressee, since the interlinear spaces are a couple millimeters wider. See also T-S NS 327.127 (PGPID 25798), which may be by the same scribe, but the right margin is a little bit smaller. For an example of the Fatimid state document format which this is emulating, see another report concerning this period in Tripoli (unpublished): T-S AS 129.149 + T-S AS 116.11 + T-S NS 137.20 + T-S NS 207.44 + AIU I.C.73 + T-S NS 238.99 + T-S NS 244.84 (+ T-S NS 125.135). ASE