מכתב: T-S K25.73

תיאור

Letter addressed to a certain Abū l-Faṭḥ (according to the internal address) or to the perfume/drug shop of Abū l-ʿIzz (according to the external address). In a mixture of Arabic in Arabic script and Judaeo-Arabic. The Arabic-script hand and spellings are somewhat rudimentary, while the Hebrew-script hand seems more practiced. The sender is agitated about having misplaced the bag (kharīṭa) containing the Torah codex and the fūṭa garment. He suspects the camel drivers might have taken it—"Wālī and his rabāʿa"—maybe the head driver is named Wālī and "rabāʿa" refers to his workers? In any case, Wālī has announced a reward of three dirhams for whoever returns it. The sender asks the addressee to complain about them (the goods? the camel drivers?) to 'the ustādh,' likely a government official. He asks the addressee to send the skins/hides (al-julūd, misspelled اجلود). The main part of the letter concludes with greetings for the addressee and Khalaf. There is a postscript (or possibly a response?) in Judaeo-Arabic, which repeats verbatim some of the information from the main part of the letter but also has some differences. "If the fūṭa is not with you on the maṣṭaba, the mukārīs (animal drivers) have taken them... Wālī said that he will give 2 or 3 dirhams to whoever returns it. I told him to have it delivered to the shop, and they will pay you whatever they lost." In this section, it says that the muṣḥaf will arrive with Khalaf, and the fūṭa—with God's help. ASE