Request for Assistance

In this Judeo-Arabic letter, preserved in the Cairo Geniza, a man from al-Maḥalla, a town in the Nile Delta, asked a friend based in Fustāt (Old Cairo) for assistance in avoiding the poll tax imposed on religious minorities. After describing his desperate state, the unnamed letter writer asks that the recipient intervene to arrange for the director of revenue, Shams al-Dīn, to list him as officially missing. The writer’s fear of discovery shows the precarious position in which poor Jews often found themselves. Interestingly, this letter was written using some of the technical terminology of Arabic petitions.