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Yeshuʿa b. Ismāʿīl al-Makhmūrī

Metadata

Gender
Male
Dates
Active dates
1045–1096 CE
Social roles
  • Jewish community member
  • Merchant
Other name
Abū l-Faraj

Description / Bio

Egypt-based trader in the Nahray b. Nissim group. According to Jessica Goldberg, his "fifty-year career has left many an irritated trace in the Geniza records. Yeshuʿa's letters reveal an attitude toward his fellow merchants that is a compound of suspicion and a sense of ill-use (occasionally leavened by paranoia), expressing itself in petty sniping, righteous indignation, sarcasm, and counter-attack by way of self-defense" (Trade and Institutions, 122). Many merchants broke ties with him, as did the slave of Khalaf b. Mūsā al-Ṣāʾigh, Ṭayyib, who fled the service of Yeshuʿa. He is also, according to Goldberg, "the only merchant known to have so angered a customs officer that the officer chased him down the Nile on his way out of Fustat" (citing T-S 13J19.20 r28–29). "Yet for all this, Yeshuʿa's commercial career was long and successful – he died at home in 1090, leaving a will typical of a respectable merchant."

Alan Elbaum, Marina Rustow, and Ksenia Ryzhova, "Yeshuʿa b. Ismāʿīl al-Makhmūrī," available online through the Princeton Geniza Project at https://geniza.princeton.edu/people/yeshua-b-ismail-al-makhmuri/, accessed November 17, 2025.
https://geniza.princeton.edu/people/yeshua-b-ismail-al-makhmuri/