מכתב: ENA 2727.15d + T-S Ar.7.16

תיאור

Letter in the hand of Yehuda b. Ṭoviyyahu (muqaddam of Bilbays, active 1170s–1219). In Judaeo-Arabic. Containing a complaint about illness. The purpose of writing seems to be that the sender is unable to support a Ḥaver who came to stay with him. “[I was] constrained by my great expenses for medicines and chickens… An illness came upon me, on top of my chronic illness: shortness of breath and fever...” Mentions the boy Abū l-Bayān and al-Shaykh al-Muhadhdhab. Cites Berakhot 3b: “A handful cannot satisfy a lion, nor can a pit be filled up with its own clods.” Goitein read the word farrūj as surūj (meaning lamps -"perhaps he stayed up at night"), but see, for instance, Halper 410 and DK 238.3 for the formula "the medicine and the chicken." Regards to "our rabbi Avraham (Maimonides)" in the margin. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card.) Join: Alan Elbaum. AA. ASE.