Order for Payment (Fustāt, Egypt)

1140

About This Entry

This small receipt, written in a combination of Arabic and Judeo-Arabic, provides documentation for its bearer to receive five dinars as payment for five candles. It is signed by Abū Zikrī Kohen and addressed to his banker, Abū ’l-Khayr Khiyyār. It was found in the Geniza, along with another twenty receipts issued between Abū Zikrī and his banker.

Textured paper with five lines of handwritten vowelless Hebrew, including an underlined heading and two words at the bottom.

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In [your name, O Merciful One].

Truth. 5 dinars.

May the elder Abu’l-Khayr Khiyyar pay to the bearer five dinars for wax candles.

The month of Av, 1451 of the Seleucid Era.

Source: CUL T-S Ar.30.184, 5r.

Translated by Benjamin M. Outhwaite.

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Notes

Image reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Words in brackets appear in the original translation.

Credits

Abū Zikrī Kohen, “Order of Payment,” trans. Benjamin M. Outhwaite, from Benjamin M. Outhwaite, Melonie Schmierer-Lee, and Cayley M. Burgess, Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Library, 2017), 24. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.