מכתב: Bodl. MS heb. c 50/24

תיאור

Letter sent to Sitt al-Ghazal, wife of the judge Eliyyahu b. Zechariah (?), by her elder son (?), Abu Zikri, asking her to put up a newly acquired friend, Abu l-Faraj Hibatallah, and his wife. Information from Mediteranean Society, V, pp. 36, 515. Mentioned in Rustow, "Formal and Informal Patronage," Al-Qantara (2008), p. 363. [Goitein's identifications here are not completely certain. The individuals named and the content support the identification with Abu Zikri. It is not his usual handwriting, so Goitein suggests that he dictated it. Judge Eliyyahu's wife in other documents was Sitt Rayḥān. Abu Zikri's younger brother Abu l-Barakat Shelomo was married for a time to a woman named Sitt Ghazal. If Abu Zikri is the writer, could he be writing to Shelomo's wife intead ("the mother," not "my mother")? It seems that Shelomo is currently with him (lines 19-21), so he couldn't have directed this request to Shelomo. And he opens, "God give you joy with the precious boy, the master, the brother" (line 5), consistent with a letter to a sister-in-law. ASE.]