State document: T-S Ar.41.49

Description

Petition from a group of people to a chief vizier (Sayyid al-Wuzarāʾ) titled "al-Kāmilī." In Arabic script. Fragment (upper half only). The petitioners complain that there is a Jewish man named Sulaymān in Fustat, the son of an Indian female slave (ibn jāriya hindiyya) who spends all his days extorting payoffs (يقطع المصانعات), frightening people in the drug/perfume market (sūq al-ʿaṭṭārīn), just like Ibn al-ʿUṣfūr used to do. (Goitein wonders if there might be a connection to T-S K25.64 and BL OR 5566B.30, which feature a troublemaker nicknamed ʿUṣfūr al-Jinn.) This man Sulaymān apparently raves about nonsense or impossible things (qawl al-muḥāl). When the Jews were resting in their houses on Shabbat, he assaulted them with "raqqāṣīn" (policemen) and expelled (? akhraja) their women, and frightened "us" (the pronoun slips here from "them" to "us"—an indication that the petitioners are the persecuted Jews themselves?). (Information in part from Goitein's index card.) ASE