Geniza Lab

Report from a man called only "al-nāʾib" (the deputy), in Malīj, to the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya (in office 1140–59), in Fustat/Cairo. In Judaeo-Arabic. Concerning Ṣāliḥ b. Abū l-Khayr, a man from Malīj who had been robbed by bandits on his way to Cairo, in between a town called Dijwa (likely present-day دجوي just south of Banha) and a town called Kharāb (?! "ruin"). But he managed to conceal some of his possessions from the bandits. He slept in Dijwa and then wen to Kharāb and complained to the local nāʾib that he had been robbed on the land of the town. He made the error of showing the goods that he still had with him as evidence of his claim that the rest had been stolen. The nāʾib assigned him two escorts, who killed him and his donkey as soon as they left the town. The people of the town told this to his children. The nāʾib has acknowledged that he received Ṣāliḥ in his town, in the majlis of the deputy of the Ṣāḥib al-Ḥarb of al-Sharqiyya province. The report ends after a few more faded lines, with a version of a raʾy clause; evidently the Nagid Shemuel is expected to intervene and achieve some kind of justice for the heirs. (Information in part from CUDL and Goitein's index card.)