Jewish Merchant Writes Home

Indian commerce, however, was not confined to a single ethnic group. One group that played an active role was the Arabic-speaking Jewish community of Egypt, which served as an important intermediary in moving goods that originated in East and South Asia into the Mediterranean market. Those Jewish-Egyptian merchants who chose to deal directly with India sailed down the Red Sea, using the Aden on the southern tip of Arabia as their midway point. From there they followed the trade winds to their Indian ports of call—usually the cities of the western coast. With luck, they returned home the next year, driven by the opposite trade winds. At a minimum, the merchant was away from home for two years. Often circumstances could extend that absence for many more years.

A fairly large body of documents from the pens of these India traders from Egypt exists thanks to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah. A genizah is the place attached to the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where discarded scraps of paper in which the name of God was or might have been written are deposited. In order to preserve them from profanation, these writings are subsequently buried. When unearthed, genizah collections are a rich treasure trove for the historian. What makes the Cairo Genizah especially valuable is the fact that a large percentage of its documents are primarily secular in nature: business letters, contracts, accounts, shipping bills, court records, and the like.

The document below is a letter that dates from around 1204 in which an India trader writes to his wife back home in Cairo. Portions of the letter are missing, as the brackets in the present translation show. The modern editor and translator of this letter concluded that the letter’s lack of an address and some other major missing parts indicate that the author of the letter probably never sent it to his wife, perhaps having second thoughts about its revealing frankness. Rather, he returned to Egypt safely, was reunited with his wife, and personally deposited the draft letter in the geniza. Whatever the truth, the fact is this letter is an important document because it clearly shows us the hazards and strains of long-distance commerce

A. Escape of the Family from the Plague

Would I try to describe the extent of my feelings of longing and yearning for you all the time, my letter would become too long and the words too many. But He who knows about the secrets of the heart has the might to bring about relief for each of us by uniting us in joy.

Your precious letters have arrived; I have read and scrutinized them, and was happy to learn from them that you are well and healthy and that you have escaped from those great terrors, the like of which have not been experienced for many generations. [1]Praise be to God for your deliverance and for granting you respite until you might be recompensed in a measure commensurate with your sufferings.

[1] - A reference to the famine and plague that devastated Egypt between 1201 and 1203.

B. The Dedicated Husband

In your letters you alternately rebuke and offend me or put me to shame and use harsh words all the time. I have not deserved any of this. I swear by God, I do not believe that the heart of anyone traveling away from his wife has remained like mine, all the time during all the years—from the moment of our separation to the very hour of writing this letter—so constantly thinking of you and yearning after you and regretting to be unable to provide you with what I so much desire: your legal rights on every Sabbath[2] and holiday, and to fulfill all your wishes, great and small, with regard to dresses or food or anything else. And you write about me as if I had forgotten you and would not remember you had it not been for your rebukes, and as if, had you not warned me that the public would reprove me, I would have not thought of you. Put this out of your mind and do not impute such things to me. And if what you think or say about my dedication to you is the product of your mind, believing that words of rebuke will increase my yearning—no, in such a way God will not let me reach the fulfillment of my hope, although in my heart there is twice as much as I am able to write. But he is able to have us both reach compensation for our sufferings and then, when we shall be saved, we shall remember in what situation we are now.

[2] - Talmudic law dictated that a scholar was to visit his wife once a week on the night of the Sabbath—namely, Friday night. This merchant considered himself a member of the class learned in the Law.

C. Travel beyond the Coromandel Coast[3]

You rebuke me with regard to the ambergris[4]. You poor ones!!! Had you known how much trouble and expenses I have incurred to get this ambergris for you, you would have said: there is nothing like it in the world. This is the story: After I was resurrected from the dead and had lost all that I carried with me I took a loan of […] dinars[5] and traveled to countries beyond al-Ma’bar[6]. I checked my accounts and found with “the decimals”[7]. I took them and paid to one our coreligionists who traveled back from al-Ma’bar to Aden…and for it he bought for you […].

[3] - The southeast coast of India. Few Jewish merchants from Egypt went to India’s eastern coast. To sail to the Southeast Asian lands beyond it was extraordinary.

[4] - A waxy substance that sperm whales expel and that is added to perfumes.

[5] - Arabic gold coins.

[6] - The Coromandel Coast on the eastern side of South Asia.

[7] - His abacus.

D. Drunk but Pious

This was my way of life from the moment I left you until I arrived in Aden[8] (and from there to India) and from India back to Aden . Day and night I was constantly drinking, not of my free will[9], but I conducted myself in an exemplary way[10] and if anyone poked fun in foul speech in my presence, I became furious with him, until he became silent, he and others. I constantly fulfilled what God knows, and cursed my soul by fasting during the days and praying during the nights. The congregations in Aden and in India often asked me to lead them in prayer, and I am regarded by them and regard myself as a pious man.

[8] - Apparently he is back in Aden at this point.

[9] - But out of the sorrow that came from his separation from his wife.

[10] - Apparently he drank himself silly but avoided prostitutes.

E. As to Divorce—the Choice is Left to the Wife

Now in one of your letters you adjure me to set you free, then letters arrived from the old man[11] saying the same.

Now, if this[12] is your wish, I cannot blame you. For the waiting had been long. And I do not know whether the Creator will grant relief immediately so that I can come home, or whether matters will take time, for I cannot come home with nothing. Therefore I resolved to issue a writ which sets you free . Now the matter is in your hand. If you wish separation from me, accept the bill of repudiation and you are free. But if this is not your decision and not your desire, do not lose those long years of waiting: perhaps relief is at hand and you will regret at a time when regret will be of no avail.

[11] - Her late father.

[12] - The divorce (setting her free) mentioned above.

[13] - A conditional bill of repudiation, which becomes a valid divorce once she accepts it.

ABOVE: The three circuits of the Indian Ocean Trade (based on Chaudhuri)

BELOW: Trading ports and cities in the Indian Ocean, 618-1500