Amitav Ghosh - In an Antique Land - History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

30 Yet there must … have been anxieties:The letter in question is Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr. d. 66 (Catalogue n. 2878), fol. 61. Lines 10–15 deal with the safety of the roads and were evidently written in answer to a query from Ben Yiju. The Yemen in this period was riven by struggles between the Mahdids and the Najâ ids (see G. R. Smith, Ayyûbids and Early Rasûlids , p. 58).

31 .… such marriages were commonplace:Khalaf’s relative Madmun for example, was married to the sister of Abu Zikri Sijilmasi, who was, of course, originally from the Maghreb (see S. D. Goitein, Letters , p. 62).

32 Instead, he began to dream:For a brief review of the literature on cousin marriage in the Middle East see J. M. B. Keyser’s article, ‘The Middle Eastern Case: Is There a Marriage Rule?’, ( Ethnology , 13, pp. 293–309).

33 ‘Shaikh Khalaf [ibn Ishaq]’:T — S 12.337, recto, lines 20–25.

34 ‘and we will rejoice’:T — S 12.337, recto, line 19.

35 ‘Address your letters to me’:T — S 12.337, recto, lines 30–32.

36 ‘Suliman and Abraham’:T — S 12.337, recto, line 34 & margin.

37 But it had other compensations:At this time, and until well afterwards, the Jews of Sicily looked to North Africa in matters of liturgy and religion (see David S. H. Abulafia, ‘The End of Muslim Sicily’, in Muslims Under Latin Rule , ed. James M. Boswell, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990).

38 The young Surur:My description of Surur’s voyage to Messina is based on S. D. Goitein’s translation of the letter he wrote home after reaching that city (Letters, pp. 327–330).

39 Sulîmân ibn a rûn:Mentioned in Ben Yiju’s second letter to Yusuf (T — S 12.337, recto, lines 25–6)

40 In this instance, … in a letter:In his letter home Surur evidently spelt this name as ‘Ben Si lûn’. Goitein points out in his translation of this letter, that the name is identical with ‘Ibn a rûn’ and it seems almost certain the individual in question was the same person that Ben Yiju referred to in his letter to his brother Yusuf (T — S 12.337, lines 25–26.)

41 The letter … was a short one:The letter contains a reference to one ‘Abû’l Fakhr al-Amshâ î’ who was a family friend, and Surur’s contact in Fustat.

42 But Surur had … another reason:T — S 8 J 36, fol. 3, recto, lines 4–6.

43 Their parents, already prostrate:Surur’s letter home has not survived, but the letter his brother Shamwal wrote back in reply has. Its catalogue number is Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., b. 11 (Cat. no. 2874), fol. 15 (S. Shaked, Tentative Bibliography , p. 207).

44 ‘We were seized with grief:Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., b. 11 (Cat. no. 2874), fol. 15, recto, lines 8–9. I would like to thank Dr Geofrrey Khan for translating the Hebrew phrase in this passage (in italics).

45 ‘well and in good cheer’:T — S 13 J 20, fol. 7, recto, lines 22–23.

46 Food was short:Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., b. 11 (Cat. no. 2874), fol. 15, recto, lines 34–35 & 36–37.

47 ‘If you saw [our] father’:Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., b. 11 (Cat. no. 2874), fol. 15, lines (recto) 45—(verso) 4 & (verso) 8–13.

48 ‘Come quickly home’:T — S 16.288, recto, lines 10–11.

49 The marriage did indeed take place:S. D. Goitein, Letters , pp. 202.

50 Both Surur and Moshe:Ibid., pp. 186 & 328.

51 I discovered that the name Abu-Hasira:The most important scholarly work on the cult of saints amongst North African Jews is that of the eminent Israeli folklorist, Issachar Ben-Ami. See, for example, his article ‘Folk Veneration of Saints among Moroccan Jews’, (in Studies in Judaism and Islam , ed. Shelomo Morag et al., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1981). In the course of their fieldwork amongst Moroccan Jews Ben Ami and his associates compiled a list of 571 saints, twenty-one of whom were women. The French scholar, L. Voinot, estimated in 1948 that forty-five Jewish saints in Morocco were revered by Muslims and Jews alike while thirty-one were claimed by both Jews and Muslims as their own (quoted by Ben-Ami in ‘Folk Veneration of Saints’, p. 283).

52 ‘The tomb of Rabbi’:See Alex Weingrod’s article, ‘Saints and Shrines, politics and culture: a Morocco-Israel comparison’, pp. 228 (in Muslim Travellers , ed. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990); Gudrun Krämer, The Jews in Modern Egypt , 1914–1952, pp. 114. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1989; Issachar Ben-Ami, ‘Folk Veneration of Saints’, pp. 324–328; and Baba Sali, His Life, Piety, Teachings and Miracles (Rav Yisrael Abuchatzeirah), by Rav Eliyahu Alfasi & Rav Yechiel Torgeman, written and edited by C. T. Bari, trans. Leah Doniger (Judaica Press Inc., New York, 1986).

Epilogue

1 The document is one of Ben Yiju’s sets of accounts:Dropsie 472. The following are the other Geniza documents I have used in reconstructing Bomma and Ben Yiju’s lives. This list includes only those documents with which I have worked principally or in part from my own transcriptions, made directly from the manuscripts (in such instances where I have worked with published transcriptions or translations, the references are provided in the endnotes). I would like to thank the Syndics of the University Library, Cambridge, for giving me permission to use and quote from these documents. I would also like to thank the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Annenberg Research Centre, Philadelphia, for allowing me to consult their Geniza collections.

l. T — S 12.235

2. T — S 12.337

3. T — S 16.288

4. T — S 20.130

5. T — S 20.137

6. T — S N.S. J 1

7. T — S N.S. J 5

8. T — S N.S. J 10

9. T — S K 25.252

10. T — S MS Or. 1080 J 95

11. T — S MS Or. 1080 J 263

12. T — S MS Or. 1081 J 3

13. T — S Misc. Box. 25, fragm. 103

14. T — S 6 J 4, fol. 14

15. T — S 8 J 7, fol. 23

16. T — S 8 J 36, fol. 3

17. T — S 10 J 9, fol. 24

18. T — S 10 J 10, fol. 15

19. T — S 10 J 12, fol. 5

20. T — S 10 J 13, fol. 6

21. T — S 13 J 7, fol. 13

22. T — S 13 J 7, fol. 27

23. T — S 13 J 20, fol. 7

24. T — S 13 J 24, fol. 2

25. T — S 18 J 2, fol. 7

26. T — S 18 J 4, fol. 18

27. T — S 18 J 5, fol. 1

28. Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., b. 11, fol. 15

29. Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., d. 66, fol. 61

30. Bod. Lib. Ox. MS Hebr., d. 66, fol. 139