Letter from Turkestan

This fragmentary letter is the earliest known text in Judeo-Persian (Persian written in Hebrew characters) and was discovered by the Hungarian archeologist Aurel Stein (1862–1943) in the ruins of Dandān Uliq, a small community located to the north of the Silk Road near Xinjiang, China. It is also the earliest documentary evidence of Jewish traders in China. The text concerns a sheep-trading transaction gone awry and sheds light on mechanisms of communication and of financial exchange. Bracketed italicized words indicate reconstructions of the translator.