Copyright

Dotan Arad, Esther-Miriam Wagner

Published On

2025-07-22

Page Range

pp. 290–300

Language

  • English

Print Length

11 pages

P.5.a: Letter from Elijah b. Elyaqim to Moses b. Judah

Chapter of: 'Wisdom and Greatness in one Place': The Alexandrian Trader Moses ben Judah and his Circle (pp. 290–300)

The letter, written in Hebrew, was sent from Damietta to Alexandria, probably on 30 November 1486, and was written two and a half years after another letter from Elijah b. Elyaqim, sent from Candia, which is also preserved in our collection (P.5.b). Elijah responded after two letters from Moses had reached him. Moses had expressed his disappointment about the quality of the paper and the script in one of the books Elijah bought for him, and the latter sought to justify himself in that regard. Moses was also dissatisfied with the price he had to pay for the book and Elijah tried to explain the details of the expenditure. He updated the addressee about other purchases of books. In addition, he offered a suggestion as to with whom the addressee could send his money and his response letter, and pleaded with him to pay attention if letters addressed to the writer should arrive in the port of Alexandria from other people. The letter was first published by Benayahu (1984). The letter reflects the central place that the Jewish holidays took in people’s minds. The writer wrote his letter on the eve of Hanukah, and his mind was already on the next holiday, Purim. The year of 5247 (1486/7) was a leap year in the Hebrew calendar, so Purim fell on a date four months later (on 18 March 1487). Nevertheless, the writer was worried that he still did not have an Esther scroll and asked the addressee: “If you have one old (scroll), send (it) to me for Purim, and I will send it back immediately [with those who come first].” Another two letters probably written by Elijah (MS Budapest, Kaufman 36.11r and 371; published by David 2016, 391–97) were sent by him from Candia to Egypt, to the brothers Leon and Elijah, and dealt with his trade businesses.1

Contributors

Dotan Arad

(author)
Senior Lecturer in the Israel and Golda Koschitzki department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5395-6653

Dr. Arad is a senior lecturer in the Israel and Golda Koschitzki department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry in Bar-Ilan University. Dotan has a PhD in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the Jews in Egypt, Syria and Palestine during the Mamluk and Early Ottoman period. Between 2012 and 2014 he published, with Prof. Shmuel Glick and other colleagues, a series of volumes containing responsa fragments of Jewish Sages in the Ottoman Empire, from the Cairo Genizah. His current research focuses on the Judeo Arabic letters of the Karaites in the Ottoman empire and on the social history of the Damascus and Cairo’s Jews during the Ottoman Period.

Esther-Miriam Wagner

(author)
Executive Director of the Woolf Institute at University of Cambridge
https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-esther-miriam-wagner

Esther-Miriam Wagner is the Executive Director of the Woolf Institute. She is a Fellow of St Edmund's College and teaches the MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies: Muslim-Jewish Relations at the University of Cambridge. Miriam has written broadly on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics of Judaeo-Arabic and Yiddish, scribal practice, and Jewish-Muslim relations in Egypt and Muslim Spain as reflected in the Genizah sources. Her books include Linguistic Variety of Judaeo-Arabic in Letters from the Cairo Genizah (2010), Scribes as Agents of Language Change (2013), Merchants of Innovations. The Languages of Traders (2016) and A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic (2021). Her work has been featured on TV and Radio programmes, such as on BBC3 The Essay, in History Magazine and in documentaries on the Cairo Genizah.