Cohen Mark R. Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World)
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
In his second letter Ephraim, “the poor, poor foreigner,” expresses
displeasure with the banker, Moses b. Nathan, who had evidently failed
to respond to his plea. Ephraim had meanwhile found succor elsewhere,
among his countrymen and friends (ashabi wa-asdiqai), who were pay-
ing his poll tax for him. Moses, he complains, had not done his share.
“Who . . . among the poor of Egypt is more deserving than I, who am
incapacitated?”
44
Do we detect in Ephraim’s letter an intimation that refugees were
sometimes treated as less deserving than captives? Another hint of this
crops up in the letter of a female refugee from Jerusalem at the time of the
Seljuk invasion (early 1070s), now living in exile in Tripoli, Lebanon. She
tells a moving story about her plight. One of her sons had died, her hus-
band had disappeared, and she was on the verge of dying from hunger.
She had had to pawn some family books. Deprived of immediate family
support, she writes to her brother-in-law in Fustat, hoping that through
him the nagid (Judah b. Saadya, in office ca. 1065–78) will help with five
dinars “in the way of charity and thus ransom all the books.” Earlier she
had turned to “our relative Joseph, (who) was not remiss in providing
us with cash, wheat, and other things.” She laments, however: “The
Rum and (other Jewish) captives have it better than me, for when they
are captured, they find someone who gives them food and drink, but I, by
our religion, am completely without clothing, and I and my children are
starving.”
45
The Rum just mentioned were refugees, too, but they belonged to an
especially deserving group. Military disruptions and violence in Asia
Minor in the late eleventh century had brought an influx of Rum refugees
into the Egyptian capital, where they show up prominently on alms lists
from around 1107 in pages separated from a scribe’s record book (dis-
cussed in chapter 2).
46
Another example are the Rum receiving a special
distribution of cash and wheat from the nagid one Friday in a list that
Goitein dates after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 and the
other disasters that beset Byzantium and sent Jewish refugees to Egypt in
search of safety and succor.
47
124 CHAPTER 3
44
*TS 8 J 20.24, lines 3–7.
45
Westminster College, Misc. 35, ed. Goitein, Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 66 (1975–76),
79–83 (revised Ha-yishuv, 278–82, and translated into English in Med. Soc., 5:84–85); Gil,
Eres yisrael, 3:527–39. Translations follow Goitein.
46
See chapter 2, at note 57, and also chapter 8.
47
BM Or 5566 C.2, bottom, Med. Soc., 2:462, App. B 79 (1200–40).
Refugee Proselytes
A related class of refugees in need of charity were the proselytes. I call
them refugees for a specific reason. First of all, most of these were almost
certainly former Christians, not Muslims. I assume this because conver-
sion to another religion is a capital offense in Islamic law.
48
I assume, fur-
ther, that most of the proselytes hailed from Christian lands rather than
from the Oriental communities under Muslim domination.
49
Fleeing
harassment from their Christian families and neighbors in Europe or
Byzantium, they sought and found shelter as protected non-Muslim
dhimmis in Dar al-Islam.
50
The most famous refugee proselyte in our pe-
riod was the learned Norman cleric Johannes-Obadaiah, who left Oppido
in southern Italy for the domain of Islam after his conversion and ended
up in the East in the early part of the twelfth century. In Egypt he left
traces, autobiographical and musical, in the Geniza.
51
Other, less celebrated refugee proselytes also appear in our letters. Not
all of them were poor, and we may assume that many, especially the for-
mer Christian nobles among them, succeeded in taking some of their
wealth with them when they fled.
52
But many lost everything as a result
of their apostasy, and at least until they mastered the Arabic language
and found work in their new home, they required charity, which the Jews
provided seemingly with impartiality.
Proselytes pepper the poor lists as well. A “foreign female proselyte”
(ghariba giyyoret) receives a small jukaniyya (a kind of robe). In a mixed
account of expenditures a proselyte receives fifteen (dirhems) alongside
various salaried community officials and also other needy people. It can-
not be decided whether this recipient of fifteen dirhems was drawing
CAPTIVES, REFUGEES, AND PROSELYTES 125
48
Rudolph Peters and Gert J. J. De Vries, “Apostasy in Islam,” Die Welt des Islams 17
(1976–77), 1–25.
49
Cf. Med. Soc., 2:304–306 and Eliyahu Ashtor, “Some Features of the Jewish Communities
in Medieval Egypt” (Hebrew), Zion 30 (1965), 70. A Christian proselyte converting (re-
ceiving circumcision and ritual immersion) locally, evidentially in Egypt, is mentioned in
ENA NS 21.10. It is not clear whether he was in need of charity.
50
See on proselytes to Judaism Med. Soc., 2:303–11, and Norman Golb, “A Study of a
Proselyte to Judaism Who Fled to Egypt at the Beginning of the Eleventh Century”
(Hebrew), Sefunot 8 (1964), 85–104.
51
Of the considerable literature on this convert, see A. Scheiber, “Die Lebenslauf des
Johannes-Obadja aus Oppido,” in Scheiber, Geniza Studies (New York, 1981), 453–70,
with extensive bibliography, including his many other articles on this personality, some of
which are also reprinted in that volume; and Norman Golb, “The Scroll of Obadaiah the
Proselyte” (Hebrew), in Mehqerei edot u-geniza (Studies in Geniza and Sephardi Heritage)
(Jerusalem, 1981), 77–107.
52
Med. Soc., 2:306–307.
salary for some public service or partaking of charity. More than once we
meet “the proselyte gravedigger, Joseph from Tripoli,” poor, employed in
a poorly paying job, and on the dole. In one instance he receives wheat,
on a list that includes another proselyte and the son of a proselyte. A
woman called merely “the wife of Joseph the grave digger,” who was al-
located a jukaniyya on a “List of Clothing for the Poor, 1451, Year of the
Documents” (1139–40), might be his wife or widow.
53
A female proselyte appears on several of the aforementioned bread dis-
tribution lists from around 1107, in one of them in the subsection headed
“The Rum.” She certainly had joined the Jewish community as a convert
from Christianity in her country of origin. Doubtless she was physically
more secure, though possibly financially more needy, in Egypt than when
she lived as a convert from Christianity in her homeland.
54
As noted, the
Jews on these sub-lists probably hailed from Asia Minor.
55
A “proselyte from Cairo,” the government capital, who appears fifteen
lines after that lady in one of the lists just mentioned, is so identified not be-
cause he had converted in that city, but because after his conversion he had
126 CHAPTER 3
53
Foreign female proselyte: TS Arabic Box 52.247v, right side, line 17, Med. Soc., 2:459,
App. B 72 (1150–90) (jukaniyya, cf. Med. Soc., 2:131 and passim). Proselyte on mixed list:
TS Box K 15.70, line 3, ed. Mann, Jews, 2:247 (reads al-jadd, which he takes to mean,
probably, “the grandfather”); Med. Soc., 2:441, App. B 13 (1060–1100). Proselyte grave-
digger: TS Box K 15.85r, line 5, Med. Soc., 2:448, App. B 34 (1100–40); receiving three
waybas of wheat: TS Misc. Box 28.184, Med. Soc., 2:457–58, App. B 66 (1100–50), also
mentioned by Ashtor, Zion 30 (1965), 71. His wife or widow: TS NS J 293(a)v, right side,
line 4, Med. Soc., 2:448, App. B 33.
54
*TS Box J 1.4v, left-hand page, line 3 (al-gera—two loaves), Med. Soc., 2:443, App. B 23;
TS NS J 41r, left-hand page, line 4 (al-giyyoret—four loaves), Med. Soc., 2:442, App. B 17;
*TS Misc. Box 8.9r, left-hand page, line 9 (giyyoret—four loaves), verso, right-hand page,
line 6 (al-giyyoret—two loaves), Med. Soc., 2:442, App. B 18 ; *TS Box K 15.50r, left-hand
page, line 16 (al-gera—number of loaves missing), Med. Soc., 2:443, App. B 22. Except for
the first list, the Rum are dispersed throughout. It should also be remembered that these lists
are pages that became separated from their original notebooks, as the fold lines down the
center show. Thus, where a person, such as this female convert to Judaism, appears more
than once on the same folio, it is not a mistake or a duplication, but each notation comes
from a different page (representing different distributions), and the pages were probably not
even consecutive in their original bound form. The Hebrew gera is not the standard form
for female proselyte, which is giyyoret and appears only in postbiblical Hebrew. Gera in the
Bible is the cud of an animal (which chews it) or a coin (the twentieth part of a shekel). In
a rare instance in a midrash, Ruth the proselyte is called gera (Bereshit Rabba, Vilna ed.
88:7; the passage is not attested in any but one late manuscript of Bereshit Rabba or in any
of the later midrashic anthologies that draw material from Bereshit Rabba, see the critical
edition Bereschit Rabba by J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, 2nd printing [Jerusalem 1965],
3:1086 in the notes). Possibly there were two different lady converts to Judaism drawing
from the poor dole in Fustat at the same time, and the scribes employed the unusual
Hebrew form to distinguish one from the other.
55
See chapter 2 at note 57.
lived there.
56
The social-welfare distribution system in Fustat was more ac-
tive than that of Cairo, if only because the Jewish population of the capital
in the twelfth century was still largely concentrated in the Old City.
When we find children of proselytes on the dole it is evident that they
inherited their parent’s poverty.
57
But we also find one “Joseph son of the
lute player, the proselyte” as a contributor on a late list (fourteenth cen-
tury, evidently).
58
The proselyte from Rum in another of the lists from
around 1107, who owned a slave girl listed immediately after her master
and collecting her own ration, certainly knew better times before he re-
sorted to the public dole. He received three waybas of wheat and his slave
girl (Mubaraka), only one-half.
59
Letters often tell intriguing stories about refugee proselytes. A European
convert to Judaism, a former cleric of the Church, writes in Hebrew to a
distinguished local Jewish woman who looked after him. Churchmen in
Europe could learn Hebrew during intellectual encounters with Jews,
60
or
independently, if the Hebrew Bible was accessible in a church or monas-
tic library. It was also possible to acquire knowledge of the language from
Jewish acquaintances in the Near East. But gaining literacy in Arabic (as
opposed to speaking skills) in their new land was another matter. The
cleric expresses his gratitude for the fine bread his patroness had sent and
gives her instructions on how to bake certain cakes (“put ginger on
them,” he recommends). He had enjoyed a more sumptuous diet as a
member of his former religion. Goitein uses this text to support his the-
ory that proselytes received more wheat in the Fustat distributions than
others because in Europe (and in their presumably noble status) they had
had different eating habits.
61
Two other letters from the same Christian convert relate more of his
saga. In one, he recounts the story of his impoverishment following his
conversion, his attempt to induce the archbishop and other priests to be-
come Jews like him, his imprisonment and subsequent clandestine release
by a guard who had a telling night apparition, and his flight in search of
CAPTIVES, REFUGEES, AND PROSELYTES 127
56
*TS NS J 41r, right-hand page, line 19. He received six loaves. The dot over the letter
gimel in the word ger probably results from the frequent entry of three (gimel with a super-
dot) as the number of loaves allocated.
57
Abu Said son of the proselyte: TS NS J 179r, line 9, ed. Ashtor, Shazar Jubilee Volume,
505–509; Med. Soc., 2:441, App. B 11 (1040–60) (just names, no numbers). Zayn son of
the proselyte—two waybas of wheat: TS Misc. Box 28.184v, line, 15, Med. Soc., 2:457–58,
App. B 66 (1100–50). The daughter of the proselyte and her son and daughter—six loaves
of bread: TS 24.76v, line 5, Med. Soc., 2:438–39, App. B 1 (1020–40).
58
TS 12.573v, lines 7–8, Med. Soc., 2:497, App. C 73.
59
*TS Box K 15.113, line 3, Med. Soc., 2:444, App. B 26.
60
Aryeh Grabois, “The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the
Twelfth Century,” Speculum 50 (1975), 613–34.
61
TS 12.244. Cf Med. Soc., 2:129, 306; 4:230.
food. In the other missive he complains about being neglected by the two
Rabbanite congregations in Fustat.
62
Again we are tempted to speculate
that refugees ranked somewhat lower on the scale of deservedness than
captives in need of ransom.
One of the most fascinating sagas of a proselyte in the Geniza has ac-
quired some notoriety in scholarship. The principal character is a wid-
owed convert and refugee from Europe, whose case was made famous by
a scholar who believed (wrongly, it now appears) that the letter (first pub-
lished by Jacob Mann) documents an otherwise unknown episode of per-
secution of the Jews in southern France during the First Crusade.
63
The
woman was married to a Jewish notable, R. David, the nasi of Narbonne
in southern France. Pursued by her wealthy Christian family, she and her
husband and children had fled from Narbonne to another place, where
the letter telling her story was written. After her husband’s murder and
the capture of her son and daughter, she remained impoverished and dis-
traught. The letter of appeal attests to her plight and asks that she be
helped. The name and hence the location of the city in which the letter of
recommendation was penned is the matter in dispute, for the word is par-
tially torn away. It has recently been convincingly shown by a pair of
Israeli scholars that the letter was written not in Monieux in southern
France, but in Muño, in northern Spain, by the same scribe who wrote
yet another letter.
64
This second letter, a fragment preserved in two pieces and also bearing
signatures, similarly concerns a widow, and the saga is remarkably simi-
lar. She had suffered intimidation from Christians, we may assume be-
cause she had converted to Judaism. Her husband had been killed and
she was left with daughters and pregnant. Threatened with burning at the
stake, she had been ransomed. The city of Najera in Castile is mentioned.
Ashtor, who published the first fragment of this letter in 1964 and did not
take into consideration the letter published by Mann, thought the
woman came from that city.
65
The second sliver of the letter, only recently
come to light, gives fragmentary but important additional details about
the woman’s predicament, including the fact that officials had had to be
bribed. The continuation of the line in Ashtor’s fragment discloses that
128 CHAPTER 3
62
Conversion: TS 12.732, ed. Assaf, Meqorot u-mehqarim, 149. Cf. Med. Soc., 2:306, 309.
Complaint: TS NS Box 325.7, ed. A. Scheiber, “A Proselyte’s Letter to the Congregation of
Fostat,” in Scheiber, Geniza Studies, 268–72.
63
TS 16.100, ed. Mann, Texts, 1:31–33. Norman Golb, “New Light on the Persecution of
French Jews at the Time of the First Crusade,” Proceedings of the American Academy for
Jewish Research 34 (1966), 1–63. Golb’s “discovery” made the pages of the New York
Times.
64
See also chapter 2 at note 28.
65
TS 12.532, ed. Ashtor, Sefarad 24 (1964), 44–47. Cf. Med. Soc., 2:95.
the targets of the bribe were the bishops (hegemonim), and gives the
amount as thirty-five dinars.
66
Since the first letter was written in north-
ern Spain (Muño), and by the same scribe, it is almost certain that we are
dealing with one and the same luckless widow. She was still being pur-
sued by her Christian family, who wanted her punished for converting.
67
We have here an instance of a widowed proselyte refugee from southern
France who traveled through Spain as far as Egypt in search of charitable
aid, and there left traces of her story in the Cairo Geniza. Perhaps she
died or remarried in Egypt and no longer needed the letters of recom-
mendation. Or perhaps, simply, her letters had become so worn and tat-
tered by the time she reached Egypt that they were no longer readable,
and so were buried in the Geniza.
Our sources do not permit us to say how common such conversions
were. We encounter not a few proselytes in the letters, and converts’ chil-
dren on alms lists, but we cannot judge how representative this data is.
Shall we suppose that Egyptian (or Fustat) Jewry’s reputation for chari-
tableness extended so far and wide that converts in Christian lands heard
about it by remote control? Did the widow from southern France and
northern Spain make her way to Egypt because, on the way, she learned
how beneficent the Jews there were? We cannot know. What we can say,
however, is that, taken together, the captives, refugees, and proselytes of
Fustat made up an important subgroup of the poor.
Another very large group who suffered from poverty, frequently called
captives, were those stricken by debt, including the annual poll-tax oblig-
ation, which constituted a debt to the Egyptian government if not paid on
time. For the poor or marginally subsistent, it was a terrible burden.
CAPTIVES, REFUGEES, AND PROSELYTES 129
66
TS NS Box 323.31, discovered, edited, and published by Edna Engel, see chapter 2, note
28.
67
The word “Narboni” occurs in the part of the letter published by Ashtor, TS 12.532,
line 6.
Chapter Four
DEBT AND THE POLL TAX
8
Debt and Poverty
EBT AND POVERTY have gone hand in hand from time im-
memorial in different cultures. The Bible features the debtor in
its precepts concerning charity: debts should be remitted every
seventh year and loans should not be withheld from the needy.
1
Debt was
a chronic affliction of the Christian poor in the European Middle Ages,
“the poisonous remedy for poverty,” as Michel Mollat calls it.
2
Like cap-
tives, debtors constitute one of the eight categories in Islamic law to
whom the poor-due is to be paid (Sura 9:60), and the Muslim is also en-
joined to be patient with hard-pressed debtors, even to the extent of re-
mitting what he owes as a charitable act (Sura 2:280).
Documents from the Geniza exhibit the same nexus between debt and
poverty. For both the marginally self-sufficient (the “working poor”) and
those who were normally comfortable, once a conjuncture interfered
with their livelihood and they were confronted with their inability to pur-
chase basic daily needs, they might be forced to borrow. Or, already in
debt, they would find themselves unable to repay their obligations and so
risked the wrath of creditors, who then, as today, could be “mean” until
they got repaid. The debtor could even end up in a Muslim debtors’
prison. For that reason, as early as the ninth century, the Babylonian
Geonim, emulating Islamic practices, had instituted new procedures to
authenticate claims of insolvency and to verify the poverty of debtors, al-
lowing them to repay what they owed at a later date.
3
The “debt” most frequently encountered in letters of the needy was the
annual poll tax incumbent upon non-Muslims. It was a harsh burden for
the poor or nearly poor. When they could not pay it on time, it became
an anxiety-provoking debt, because nonpayment could spell physical
mistreatment by the authorities or even imprisonment. For that reason,
D
1
For instance in Deuteronomy 15.
2
Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, 6.
3
“Mean creditors” (ghurama al-su): TS 13 J 20.2, line 8. The man was writing from
prison. Geonic procedures: Gideon Libson, Jewish and Islamic Law: A Comparative Study
of Custom during the Geonic Period (Cambridge, 2003), 113–56.
through charity private individuals as well as the community helped de-
fray the poll tax of the indigent.
The appeals for private charity to offset debt that we have seen in pre-
vious chapters just scratch the surface. There are dozens more. For in-
stance, we read about “one of the notables (ayan)” of the community of
Sunbat in the Delta whose house was normally open to all wayfarers and
who never sought charity. However, hard times had recently fallen upon
everybody and he had been driven into indigence and forced to appeal for
charity. In particular, he was in arrears for two poll-tax payments, his
own and that of his son, as well as for another debt.
4
Debtors in flight—seeking to evade government imprisonment, trying
to escape from their creditors, or soliciting charity outside their home
town to repay them (and thus avoid imprisonment)—appear all over. The
ever-present “ralliers” (Muslims or even Jews) relentlessly sought out
evaders.
5
We recall, too, the man from Ascalon who fled from his credi-
tors and hid out in Fustat. He had compounded his indebtedness before
leaving home by taking new loans from his brother-in-law, obviously to
avoid incarceration for the other debt (of ten dinars). When his work in
Ascalon came to a standstill, he fled, but his poor wife back home was
soon threatened with imprisonment in his place. This story describes a
classic case of a wage-earner experiencing economic crisis and the resul-
tant confluence of debt and poverty, which made him flee, with drastic
consequences for the family he left behind.
6
Yahya b. Ammar, whom we also met before, and whose petition is
translated in full below (chapter 7), tried to escape crushing debts owed
to Muslims in Alexandria.
7
Another Alexandrian refugee from debt, who
had not been able to come up with the poll tax unjustly levied on his little
boy, reached Fustat, along with his son. Unable to find even low-paying
employment (one dirhem per day), he appealed to the head of the Jews,
Abraham Maimonides, who, in a note on the back of his petition, issued
instructions to give the man bread out of the local stores of alms.
8
The
same Abraham Maimonides deals elsewhere with a case concerning a
loan of five hundred dirhems from one Jew to another. When the creditor
DEBT AND THE POLL TAX 131
4
*TS 6 J 3.28, cf. E. Ashtor, Journal of Jewish Studies 18 (1967), 36; Cohen, “Poverty as
Reflected in the Cairo Geniza Documents.”
5
A truncated reference to the “hushshar of Alexandria,” who “wanted to imprison him.”
AIU VII A 43, lines 1–2. On the hushshar, see Med. Soc., 2:370, 385, and *TS Box K
15.58r, line 26, Med. Soc., 2:495, App. C 67 (fourteenth century): Ibrahim ibn al-Hashir, a
Jewish contributor to charity.
6
CUL Or 1080 J 114, ed. Gil, Eres yisrael, 3:489–91; discussed 1:par. 307 (= Gil, Palestine,
197).
7
*TS 13 J 18.14, cf. Med. Soc., 1:25, ed. and trans. Cohen, “Four Judaeo-Arabic Petitions
of the Poor,” 449–56.
8
TS Arabic Box 30.163, Med. Soc., 2:466, App. B 104.
threatened action in the Islamic courts to pressure the man (which meant
he might be thrown into prison), the debtor claimed insolvency. The nagid
ruled in defense of the destitute borrower. In his petition, the debtor sug-
gested a compromise, lowering the terms of repayment from twenty to ten
dirhems per month.
9
This, of course, could only have been proposed by
someone who, like most bankrupt people, still had earnings or some small
amount of reserve assets on which he could draw and who fully expected
to see an end to his temporary difficulties, what we would call his con-
junctural poverty.
10
Other examples of debtors in flight abound, for in-
stance, a man whose good fortune changed and “then he became pursued
by debts,” which caused him to flee to “this city,” doubtless Fustat.
11
In a variation on the theme of flight to escape the consequences of debt,
people hid out from their creditors at home.
12
“Here I am,” writes a strug-
gling man in Jerusalem, “in misfortune and great distress on account of
being cut off from means of making a living and being confined to the
house, desirous of remaining in this Holy City, as is pleasing to (God) the
ex(alted), and to pray at its holy gates before this great house (the holy
Temple), may God rebuild it soon in our days.”
13
He must mean that he
is hiding from the poll-tax collector or a creditor, lying low indoors so he
would not have to abandon his religious goal of living in Jerusalem.
14
If
his confinement had been due to illness, he would have said so to strengthen
his case. He hoped for charity so he could pay his debt and remain in the
city of his dreams. Hiding out was an expediency not just of isolated in-
dividuals. “This week the people experienced adversity because of the
poll tax and we were all hiding in the houses,” writes a scribe who was
132 CHAPTER 4
9
The case has been carefully studied by Mordechai A. Friedman, “Responsa of Abraham
Maimonides on a Debtor’s Travails,” in Genizah Research after Ninety Years: The Case of
Judaeo-Arabic. Papers Read at the Third Congress of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies,
ed. Joshua Blau and Stefan C. Reif (Cambridge, 1992), 82–92. The edited and translated
documents, all of which seem to belong to the same case, as convincingly argued by
Friedman, are: TS 10 K 8.9 recto and verso (two versions of the responsum), *TS 13 J 9.11
verso (draft of a legal question), and *TS 13 J 9.11 recto, the debtor’s petition.
10
A bill of loan (dated June 1210) for 552 dirhems, payable in monthly installments of 10
dirhems for three months and 20 dirhems thereafter, includes an additional note written six
months later by Abraham Maimonides stating that the creditor agreed to reduce the princi-
pal to 290 dirhems at a repayment rate of 10 per month. Since the original principal would
have been reduced to 442 dirhems by then, and since in cases of insolvency the Jewish au-
thorities intervened and sometimes got the loan reduced by one third, this 290 dirhems,
only slightly less than two thirds of 442, may reflect such an arrangement, and the parties
themselves might actually be the anonymous litigants of the responsa, Friedman ingeniously
speculates. Ibid., 83.
11
CUL Add. 3345, lines 36–47.
12
Med. Soc., 2:390.
13
TS 8.64, lines 7–10.
14
Goitein (his index card) surmised that the man was hiding from the poll-tax collector.
very active in poor relief administration in Fustat at the beginning of the
thirteenth century.
15
Evidently the tax collectors (and perhaps creditors in
general) did not invade private property.
The strategy of seclusion was considered necessary to avoid the perils
of imprisonment. A foreigner writing in Hebrew (“I do not know your
language,” he says) tells a woeful story. He had experienced travails on
his way to Jerusalem when his ship sank after jettisoning failed to keep it
afloat. Rescued, he was brought to Alexandria, where the Muslim au-
thorities levied the poll tax on him. He writes—“punished me”; the
Hebrew word here, anash, was used in that period to mean “to compel
someone to pay the poll tax.” This echoes the view of the majority of
Islamic legal scholars, who considered the poll tax an uquba (“penalty”).
16
A Jew of Fustat had taken the newcomer into his house in the capital,
where the writer had been hiding out for two months, “afraid to go out the
door, lest the poll tax collector find me and [put] me into prison, where I
shall die, since I possess nothing with which to save my soul.” His host had
recently announced that he could no longer feed him because of inflated
bread prices, and that is why he wrote this letter of appeal.
17
Confinement at home to escape creditors, let alone incarceration in a
government prison, compounded matters precisely because people could
not leave their houses to work. A miserable man in debt writes pic-
turesquely about the economic problems imposed by his confinement: “I
am [going through] adversity that none but the Creator of all existence
knows. I am hiding out in my house like the women. I cannot go out ex-
cept [in the] evening. I am fleeing from a debt that I owe. I am unable to
do any gainful work unless I go out. My little ones are dying of hunger
because I have been hiding out.”
18
“Captives of Debt” and the Halakha
In popular conception, imprisonment for debt resembled captivity, espe-
cially since seizure by the Muslim police and incarceration until debts
were repaid could be accompanied by a physical thrashing.
19
Such po-
tential physical abuse is a principal reason for the Talmud’s insistence
DEBT AND THE POLL TAX 133
15
Bodl. MS Heb. d 66.135, lines 14–15, cf. Med. Soc., 2:390. The scribe is Solomon b.
Elijah.
16
On the Hebrew usage, see Gil, Palestine, 149. On uquba, see Cohen, Under Crescent and
Cross, 69.
17
PER H 17b, ed. Assaf, Meqorot u-mehqarim, 59–60, rev. ed. Gil, Eres yisrael, 2:748–49.
18
*TS 8 J 17.27.
19
“Persons facing jail for any reason, for example, nonpayment of the poll tax, expected to
be unable to survive torture and life in prison in general.” Med. Soc., 2:373.