מכתב: T-S 12.308

תיאור

Mercantile letter. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Likely 11th century. Large, well-preserved, and essentially unstudied. Sender and addressee are unidentified; the sender is probably writing from Ifrīqiyya. Goitein pithily describes it as "mostly about losses" (hence all the sender's excuses and justifications). The sender previously sent the addressee's business accounts with a man who traveled first to Barqa and then traveled on to Egypt by land(!). Discusses commodities such as "the goods of the East," lac, and flax. The sender learned that a caravan arrived in "the mountain" (al-Jabal) from Ghāniya (? גאניה)—referring to the territory of the Banū Ghāniya?—for the first time in years. Merits further examination.