Maintaining Friendship and Commercial Relations in Eighth-Century Egypt: Three Letters from Abū Yūsuf to Abū Yazīd

Summary

The Austrian National Library Papyrus Collection houses three Arabic letters sent by one Jewish merchant to another in Egypt, in the eighth century CE. Although the individuals and events appearing in the letters cannot be identified or precisely located in time and place, palaeographical similarities among them, as well as their near-consecutive inventory numbers (suggesting that the three documents were found together) strongly point to their being part of a connected series. More letters in the series may yet emerge, but even with just three, exciting opportunities suddenly emerge: we have the opportunity to compare them and to identify differences that might otherwise be explained by style, personal idiosyncrasy, or regional variation. We can see rhetorical strategies at work and distinguish them more certainly from the merely formulaic and reflexively conventional. We now have some context.

These letters chart the interactions of three protagonists: Abū Yūsuf, the writer of all three letters; Abū Yazīd, the recipient mentioned in the three letters; and Abū Yazīd's son-in-law Yahūdā: all residing somewhere in the Fayyūm oasis. Three additional actors, Abū Isḥāq, Abū al-Ḥārith, and Abū Yaḥyā, have walk-on parts. Abū Isḥāq was a distant business partner of the protagonists, most probably fulfilling the function of capital investor. He is mentioned as the recipient together with Abū Yazīd of one of the three letters. Abū Yaḥyā and Abū al-Ḥārith were also commercial associates, but their positions are harder to identify, as will be discussed below. There were presumably return letters to which Abū Yūsuf was reacting, but these have not survived. The time lapsed between the letters are all unknown.

The context depends on understanding the letters as a sequence, an exchange that tells a story as it unfolds. Although that sequence cannot be known with absolute certainty, I propose to read the letters as they appear in my Appendix, which is also the numbering I use throughout this article. Letters 1 and 3 have already received a good deal of scholarly attention, including two editions with translations, to be discussed in detail below. I recently discovered Letter 2, and identified it as belonging to the same sequence. A translation is provided here for the first time. Letter 2 supports some of the observations made by previous scholars on the basis of Letters 1 and 3, especially concerning the Jewish background of the correspondents.