Abu Zikri Kohen: Letter Geniza: T-S 8J20.8 (Around 1140) (Fustat-Egypt).
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Taken from: Geniza Lab ; Princeton Geniza Project
https://genizaprojects.princeton.edu/pgpsearch/?a=object&id=9267&q=ivory
Letter apparently from Abu Zikri Kohen (1), in Fusṭaṭ, to an unidentified addressee, apparently in Alexandria. In Judaeo-Arabic. Containing news about Aden. Commodities include: pearl (luʾluʾ), ivory (ʿaj), musk, tusk (? nab), and a siddur (2)—or rather the lack of a siddur; Abu Zikri Kohen even checked the bill of lading (tadhkira) and found that it was never shipped. "As for what you said about Ben Yiju (3), there is no need to postpone the letter, because it is a heartrending situation, and it won't do you any good: every penny that belonged to him drowned with the ship of Madmun (4), for the ship foundered when it was entering (India) and nobody survived. Likewise, three other ships for Bharuch (5) foundered when they were entering, and not a soul survived." Goes on to mention Mahruz; a judge; a fatwa concerning a house; and on verso detailed instructions about garments to be made.
(1) Abu Zikri (Judah b. Joseph ha-)Kohen (al-Sijilmasi) (12th cent.) a merchant in the India trade.
(2) A siddur is a Jewish prayer book containing a set order of daily prayers.
(3) Abraham Ben Yiju was a Jewish merchant and poet born in Ifriqiya, in Tunisia, around 1100. He is known from surviving correspondence between him and others in the Cairo Geniza fragments. Abraham's father was a rabbi named Peraḥya. By some time in the 1120s, Abraham had moved to Aden, where he seems to have gained the mentorship and later business partnership of the nagid (merchants' chief representative), Maḍmun ibn al-Hasan ibn Bundar. It was presumably also here that he met his later Aden correspondents Yusuf Ben Abraham (a trader and judicial functionary) and the merchant Khalaf ibn Isḥaq, along with Maḍmun's brother-in-law Abu-Zikri Judah ha-Kohen Sijilmasi. By 1132, Abraham had moved to the trading port of Mangalore in India (= Malabar).
(4) a ship belonging to Sheikh Madmun: Madmun ibn Hasan-Japheth is referred to as: representative of the merchants and superintendent of the port of Aden, and "Nagid of the Land of Yemen". Or also: 'representative of the merchants of Aden to all rulers of the Land and the Seas.'
(5) Bharuch, formerly known as Bharutkutccha, is a city at the mouth of the river Narmada in Gujarat in western India.