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Memorandum from Joseph ibn Abraham
(in Aden) to Abraham Ben Yiju (in India)
(1134-37) TS 8J 7,f.23
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Abraham Ben Yiju was a Jewish merchant and poet born in Ifriqiya, Tunisia, around 1100. He is known from surviving correspondence between him and others in the Cairo Geniza fragments. 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 ibn 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 and Abu-Zikri's brother-in-law Maḥruz. By 1132, Abraham had moved to the trading port of Mangalore in the region of India then known to Arab traders as Malabar. While Abraham lived in Mangalore, he had a slave who acted as his agent on voyages back to Aden. His name is interpreted as the Tulu name Bomma.
Taken from: India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza India Book By Shelomo Dov Goitein, Mordechai Friedman
There was dispatched to your Excellency (2) for your esteemed household what has no importance and no value, namely a bottle of raisins; a rubaiyya (about 10kg) of almonds and a rubaiyya of soap; an embroidered kerchief, woven in Aden; five dasts (dozen sheets) of Egyptian paper; half an ounce of civet (1); half a pound of kohl; and half a pound of mastic gum. The kerchief, civet, paper, kohl and gum are all in one piece of cloth, on which is written your Excellency’s name. All of this is sent together with the aforementioned Sheikh Maymun (3). And peace.
(1) Civet according to Goitein was exported from India (coming from Malay) to Aden. As we have here a list of products all from Aden and surrounding countries then the civet seems to come from East Africa the other civet producer.
Other works mentioning the civet from Africa are (see my webpage:) Al-Jahiz Al-Fakhar al-Sudan (869); Shah Mardan Ibn Abi al-Khayr (11th); Joseph ibn Abraham (1137); Yakut al Hamawi (1220); Al-Saghani (1252); Nur al-ma'arif (1295); al-Watwat (1318); Friar Jordanus; (1329); Ibn Battuta and the African Diaspora (1331); Cowar el-aqalim (1347); From the Court of Al-Zahir (1439); Ibn al-Ahdal (1451); Ibn Madjid: As-Sufaliyya (1470); Ibn al-Dayba (1496).
(2) his boss Abraham Ben Yiju living in India
(3) Abu ‘l-Hasan Sheikh Madmun b. David was the Nagid of Yemen (the representative of the international traders).