מכתב: T-S 12.458

תיאור

Letter (draft) from one community leader to another with an appeal for support for refugees from Christian persecution and cursing on anyone informing against converts to Judaism. According to Goitein, the letter was dictated to Ibn Yijū many years before he traveled east, even though his wife and brother-in-law were converts and the letter mentions both India and Yemen as places to which copies of the letter should be sent. See Goitein, Med. Soc., 2:305 (592, n. 29), on the puzzling nature of this text; Friedman connects it speculatively with "the Norman invasion of the East, which began in 1153." (Information from Goitein and Friedman, India Traders, p. 724.) Although the text has an India Book number (III,40c), Goitein and Friedman didn't edit it since it doesn't concern the Indian Ocean trade.