Letter to ‘Alī Abu ’l-Barakāt ibn Rawḥ

1039

About This Entry

During the conflict that arose when Nathan ben Abraham attempted to claim the position of gaon in Palestine in place of the member of the academy who would normally have inherited the role (Solomon ben Judah, here Shelomo b. Yehuda), Nathan wrote to a Karaite living in Fustāt (Old Cairo). A Rabbanite, Nathan hoped to tighten the bonds between himself and the Karaites in that city, whom he wanted to continue supporting him in his quest to become gaon. Despite the polemical arguments that sometimes engaged Karaite and Rabbanite writers, there were often strong personal relationships between members of the two groups. In this excerpt from the Judeo-Arabic letter, Nathan describes a Purim celebration, emphasizing the presence of Karaites at his evening event. A majlis was a kind of meeting room.

As for that [Purim] evening of ours, may God bring such events about for you repeatedly in years to come and grant you the merit to build His Temple—as they [sic] performed miracles for our ancestors in those days, so may He do for us—a better evening has never been witnessed. There assembled in the majlis about four hundred men, and in the adjoining room even more than these. There was not a single Rabbanite or Qaraite who did not attend. It was an excellent thing the likes of which has not been seen. There were perhaps thirty candelabra with more than two hundred candles and about thirty lamps and twenty lanterns, and the whole world was illuminated. And gentiles were in attendance, and the scroll [of Esther] was read from thirty scrolls in expert readings.

[Above the line:] Not a soul remained in the Babylonian synagogue, and only about twenty in the Palestinian, and at the house of the man from Fez [Shelomo b. Yehuda, who had evidently been reduced to holding prayer services in his home], fewer than ten.

In attendance there were perhaps two hundred Qaraites, every notable among them. The learned Qaraites came out among the people, and the people rejoiced at the unanimity of the affair and at the presence of the two parties together. And I prayed for the two parties together, and people departed rejoicing. And everyone agreed that there had not been a Purim like this one since the days of [Menashshe] ibn al-Qazzāz.¹

And it was a good thing, the two communities saying with one voice, “Blessed be the Lord who has united the two parties by your hand and in your majlis!” And the people’s joy was great.

Source: JTS ENA 4020.6.

Translated by Marina Rustow.

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Notes

Words in brackets appear in the original translation.

Menasseh ben Ibrāhīm ibn al-Qazzāz (“silk trader”) was a Karaite who lived in Damascus and then served the Fatimid court in Cairo, at the end of the tenth century.

Credits

Nathan ben Abraham, “Letter to ‘Alī Abu l-Barakāt ibn Rawḥ,” trans. Marina Rustow, from Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 309. Copyright © 2008 by Cornell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.

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