מכתב: T-S 12.433

תיאור

Letter addressed to Abū l-Faraj b. al-Rayyis (=Eliyyahu the Judge?). In Judaeo-Arabic. Regarding a certain Abū l-Bayān al-L[evi?] (=Moshe b. Levi ha-Levi?). Apparently Abū l-Bayān recently arrived in the sender's town (al-baladiyya). He has been working for a teacher (mushtaghil ʿinda muʿallim) and staying with the sender (nāzil ʿindī fī l-bayt). But he seems to have acted in a bad way, spurning the sender's favor and causing pain to everyone (...faḍlī ʿalayhi li-anna ḥasala lana minhu alam...). (This sentence might also mean the opposite, if it actually reads "uns" instead of "alam.") Someone mentioned to someone that the shop was in need of "someone like him." Abū l-Bayān consulted the sender on this matter, who told him that it would be better to go back to his own town, but Abū l-Bayān said that he couldn't do that "for various reasons." The sender now asks the addressee to employ this man. Goitein translates the next bit, "As long as this wheel [of fortune] turns, nothing remains in its accustomed state, except for one to whom God grants a respite. May the Creator spare you and me the hostilities of Time and its vicissitudes, and may he not let us taste, or even see again, anything like that we have gone through and may he accept it [what we have gone through] as an atonement for our sins" (Goitein, Med Soc V, 48). The sender greets the young men (the addressee's sons? but Eliyyahu did not have sons by these names) Abū l-Najm(?) and "the noble branch" (al-farʿ al-najīb) Abu ʿUmar or Abū ʿImrān. In the margin he asks the addressee to convey his regards to Sayyidnā A[vraham? ha-. . .] ha-Gadol. ASE.