מכתב: T-S AS 178.88

תיאור

Petition in Ottoman Turkish from Salmūn [al-Iskandarānī] to "a high official, possibly the governor of Egypt" per Hathaway. Dating: late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. In the introduction to her edition, Jane Hathaway notes: "T-S AS 178.88 gives voice to Salmūn himself, who petitions a high official, possibly the governor of Egypt, to take action against rapacious ‘kāshifs’ men’ who steal the sheep and other provisions that form part of the māl-i mīrī, the money and provisions that Egypt delivered to the imperial palace every year. These provisions were shipped to Istanbul from Alexandria and Damietta, and this petition underlines the customs director’s role in assembling and dispatching them. Naturally the director of the port customs would be preoccupied with protecting state property from theft and damage before it shipped out. However, this petition deals specifically with a tax farm, or muqāṭaʿa, that Salmūn controls: that of Ḫażra, possibly al-Khaḍra (‘green’ in Arabic), a village southeast of Alexandria in Buḥayra sub-province. This village and its surroundings apparently produced sheep and crops that formed part of the māl-i mīrī.... Kāshif, literally ‘inspector’, was the administrator of one of Egypt’s sub-provinces, responsible above all for the maintenance of irrigation works. The post had originated under the Mamluk Sultanate, and the Ottomans had retained it, although in the early centuries of Ottoman rule, the ranks of kāshifs were often filled with military officers from the imperial palace or the Balkans.... The kāshif of Buḥayra sub-province, immediately south of Alexandria, was responsible for the port city’s fresh water supply: once a year, he entered the city with 300 oxen, which over the course of a month, usually coinciding with September, turned the water wheels that filled the city’s 130 cisterns with water from the Naṣiriyya Canal, which formed Alexandria’s sole link to the Nile.... The followers of this kāshif and other Nile Delta kāshifs are surely the ‘kāshifs’ men’ against whom Salmūn rails. In fact, this annual ritual may have given the Buḥayra kāshif’s men the perfect opportunity to pilfer and damage the provisions intended for the palace." (Hathway, Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah, 130-131)