Letter to Her Son, Judah

My advice, which, if you had borne in mind . . . give precedence to all these words of mine according to the strength of my grief and to . . . strong and the yearning for you far away in a city not . . . [and] not close and not . . . but you are there—alone and by yourself. I, therefore, am unable to be patient.

Your brother married off Qabalah and Yamāna in Ragusa, and I am with them . . . in Ragusa. But from the day I married them off, my tears have not stopped out of my yearning for you. Your [other] brother, Abū Yūsuf, I married off in Syracuse, and he wept [out of longing for] you. If you saw him, you would not recognize him, [so changed is he] from the depth of his longing for you . . .

. . . three years we had no news while you were missing. We had a massive funeral for you. We cried over you[r loss], weeping for a man who died in a strange city where he had no friends, [where] no one knew him or cried over [his death]. Then this year your letter was read out loud to me! From the very hour of its reading, I felt . . . sorrow for your distance. I longed for your presence—may God reunite us in the most auspicious of circumstances and best frame of mind.

Right now, my son, I will make you swear by God that you will not spend more time away than you already have. I make you swear by God, my son, I pray, from the moment that you read my letters, you will make haste to come to me by any means before I die. I have not seen you nor been in your presence . . .

Your father, may God have mercy on him, died when you were present. Take it to heart, bear in mind, awaken your spirit and say, “My father died [Right margin:] in my presence, and so shall my mother die in my presence; [if not,] great guilt will befall me.” That is how it will be, my son, if I do not see your face before I leave this world. I will die with terrible heartbreak from [not seeing] your face, and terrible guilt will befall you. I wrote you a letter bef[ore] this one and i[n it]. . . . [I wrote to you with even mo]re [detail] than in this [letter]. . . . You will gain a great reward from God and the people by doing this. For if a man utterly loses someone . . . that sanctions it will be brought together to him, and he will have a reward that is gre[at] . . . . [All the more so, the one] who returns the son to his parents after [many] ye[ars] that . . . peace of God upon you . . . .

Address

Send to my son Judah ben Elijah al-Dimūnshī in the city of Fustāt. [Sent from] the island of Sicily, from one of its villages called Ragusa, from his mother, Umm al-Khayr, the one who misses him and cries and mourns for him. Handed over and paid for. May God grant you peace.

Source: JTS ENA 3792.4.