A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. IV: Daily Life [Paperback ed.] 0520221613, 9780520221611

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MEDITERRANEAN SOCIETY The Jewish Communities ofthe World as Portrayed in the Documents ofthe Cairo Geniza

VOLUME IV:

Daily Life

S. D. Goitein

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

A MEDITERRANEAN SOCIETY

PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE GUSTAVE E. VON GRUNEBAUM CENTER FOR NEAR EASTERN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

Los

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

ANGELES

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Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

S. D. GOITEIN

A Mediterranean Society THE JEWISH COMML'NITIES OF THE ARAB WORLD AS PORTRAYED IN THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CAIRO GENIZA

VOLUME IV

Daily Life

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London · 1983

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England First Paperback Printing 1999 © 1983 by The Regents of the University of California

Goitein, S. D., 1900A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of Cairo Geniza / S. D. Goitein. p. cm. Originally published: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967-cl993. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: v. 1. Economic foundations - v. 2. The community v. 3. The family- v. 4. Daily life - v. 5. The individual. ISBN 0-520-04869-5 (cl. : alk. paper} ISBN 0-520-22161-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jews-Islamic Empire-Civilization. 2. Islamic Empire-Civilization. 3. Cairo Genizah. I. Title. DS135.IAG65 1999 956' .004924-dc21 99-36039 GIP Printed in the United States of America 08

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1984 (R 1997) (Permanence efi'aper). (§)

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Contents of Volumes I through V

VOLUME I. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS Introduction: The Cairo Geniza Documents as a Source ef Mediterranean Social History I. The Mediterranean Scene during the High Middle Ages (969-1250) II. The Working People III. The World of Commerce and Finance IV. Travel and Seafaring VOLUME II. THE COMMUNITY V. Communal Organization and Institutions VI. Education and the Professional Class VII. Interfaith Relations, Communal Autonomy, and Government Control VOLUME III. (Chapter VIII) THE FAMILY VOLUME IV. (Chapter IX) DAILY LIFE VOLUME V. (Chapter X) THE INDIVIDUAL: PORTRAIT OF A MEDITERRANEAN PERSONALITY AS REFLECTED IN THE CAIRO GENIZA (In preparation) NOTE: The title originally planned for Chapter X, The Mediterranean Mind, was relinquished to avoid the erroneous impression that the personality emerging from the Geniza documents is regarded as representative of a hypothetical human type common to the Mediterranean area.

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Contents

PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS MAP OF MEDIEVAL EGYPT IX. DAILY LIFE A. The Home 1. The City The medieval Islamic city-Capitals and port cities-The great cities and "the Province"Cairo and Fustat-Topographic featuresZoning-Ruins-Unoccupied premises-Semipublic buildings and other landmarks-The House of God as the gathering place for the people-The presence of the governmentSecurity and sanitation-The individual and his hometown 2. Domestic Architecture General character-Geniza evidence, archaeology, and the traditional Egyptian house-Types of houses-Front and entrance-The qa'a, or main floor-The living room, its interior, and accessory chambers-The uses of the qaeen already noted. 61 As Ceres Wissa Wassef's book on presenting Coptic cooking shows, all the vegetables noted above are stil I richly used in the modern Egyptian kitchen. 62 It is to be expected that lists originating with people in modest circumstances incl L1de only the more common fruits such as dates, apples, lemons, and bitter oranges. 63 But fruits were eagerly sought after. When the somewhat eccentric clerk Solomon b. Elijah excused himself for not expressing his sympathy to a friend in person, on account of illness, he adds this postscript so that everyone would understand how really sick he was: "Bananas, figs, grapes, watermelon, fish, and beans, by my soul, none of these were tasted by me this week." Indeed, none of these delicacies was offered to the sick foreigner mentioned above. 64 Wheat and bread.-My assertion in the very first sentence of this section, that the Geniza contains little about food, seems to be belied by the countless reports and inquiries about the prices and availability of wheat and bread found in the Geniza letters throughout the centuries. 65 The data from the Geniza, which reflect actual experience, are generally more realistic and reliable than those provided by Islamic literary sources, which are often given in round sums and written down long after their occurrence. 66 But the Geniza data, too, betray bewildering fluctuations. Future research may establish the chronological sequence of the (as a rule, undated) Geniza letters to a higher degree than we are able to do now, and a closer scrutiny of their historical context may contribute to a better understanding of the data contained in them (see below). Be that as it may, one crucial fact of medieval life in the Near East-even in a

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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country of proverbial fertility such as Egypt-emerges with frightening clarity from the mass of information about the prices and availability of wheat and bread. The mind of the average man, that of the middle class included, was constantly preoccupied with providing his household with the most urgently needed life-sustaining food. In times of a low Nile and other disasters befalling agriculture, famine, epidemics, breakdown of public order, or, who knows, shameless grain speculations, such apprehensions were natural. 67 But the Geniza letters seem to betray that state of mind even when the prices reported appear to have been normal, as far as such a thing existed. This is a story not of food but of its scarcity. All one can do here is explore how the insecurity surrounding the most basic food of the population influenced the organization of its daily life and affected its thinking. Whoever had the means to buy wheat at harvest time laid in a sufficient supply for the year. Hence the strong admonitions in letters "I have no more urgent request from you than the [purchase of] wheat and grapes" (for making wine, see below), or "do not neglect the wheat, for it is one of the most basic of all things," or the assurance "Don't worry, I have taken care of the purchase of the wheat, put it into jars and put [the jars] into the sun." 68 The wheat was ground at a local mill, and the dough, prepared at home, was baked at a bakery. This procedure had the triple advantage of being cheaper than buying bread daily, of affording safety against the fluctuations of the market or the outright unavailability of the foodstuff, and, finally, of knowing what went into one's bre~d, although its quality perhaps did not differ as much as in Europe (perhaps slightly later than Geniza times). 69 Laying in provisions carried the risk that the wheat would deteriorate or spoil altogether, or that burglars or robbers would take them away. To avoid such disasters one stored the wheat in big jars of porous clay, put them on the uppermost floor of the house, and, if feasible, on its sunny side, probably to protect it from humidity. 70 The standard measurement of wheat was the irdabb, measuring about 90 liters and weighing about 70 kilograms. It was divided into six waybas, also extremely common. At the distribution of wheat to the needy (on the eves of holidays or fasts) quarters or halves of a wayba were handed out to each. 71 Twelve irdabbs per year, or one per month seem to have been the quantity of wheat needed for an average middle-class household. Twelve are ordered as yearly provisions in a letter written around 1210, 72 and ten in another missive sent from Alexandria to Cairo at approximately the same time. "In case the wheat cannot be had,

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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please, bring with you instead three camel loads of flour." Since the recipient, Moses ha-Kohen, the Pride of the Merchants, commuted, as the letter shows, between Cairo andAlexandria, it would not have burdened him to have three camels added to his caravan. 73 In a letter to :i\.nls b. Joseph (dated documents 1088-1116), a traveling merchant with his seat in Alexandria orders one irdabb of sieved wheat every month; he clearly did not wish to receive the entire quantity of the yearly provision at once, because, as he mentions, the price was high (only four waybas for 1 dinar). 74 When the size of the household was reduced by the absence of husband or wife, the average yearly provision was six irdabbs, and the monthly one was half, or three waybas. The convert and newcomer from Europe, referred to above, who stipulated his right to put six irdabbs on the upper floor occupied by his partner certainly had not yet founded a new family in Egypt (Al-Mal_ialla, 1121). 75 When a well-to-do merchant went away on a long journey (probably to India or beyond), he earmarked the regular twelve irdabbs of wheat per year for his wife; her household comprised only a little boy and a servant with a daughter. But her old parents lived in the same house (Fustat. 1143). 76 In a similar case, where, however, no old parents were in the house, the wife of an India trader, a mother of two little girls, received five irdabbs per year, and the same quantity was foreseen by the court clerk Mevorakh b. Nathan, when he traveled away from home. A merchant who had his business in a provincial town, left six irdabbs to his wife in Alexandria. 77 A merchant from Tyre, Lebanon (which then was menaced by the Crusaders), who sought greener pastures in Egypt, provided his wife with three waybas, half an irdabb, per month (plus the cost of the grinding). 78 Women ate less than men, or, rather, did not have to entertain business friends and other guests during the absence of their husbands; under those circumstances monthly provisions of two waybas were reasonable. We find such monthly provisions of wheat for a mother of one child (dated 1081) 79 and fora mother with several children, where, as in that of the woman from Tyre, the cost of grinding was also borne by the husband (1133). 80 The weekly bread ration handed out by the Jewish community of Fustat to a destitute person was four loaves, each weighing approximately a pound, a total of about 1,750 grams. 81 This meager share was, at least ideally, supplemented by charity from other quarters. We find, however, the same ration of four pounds of bread (per week) allotted by a husband to his working wife, together with one pound of meat. With this nourishment she was supposed "to sit and to make Riimi garments. "82 Ten communal lists written in or around

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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1107 presuppose that a hundred loaves of bread could be had for half a dinar. Since half a dinar corresponded approximately to 20 dirhems, five loaves of bread could be had for one dirhem, and, of course, more at wholesale. One baker provided the community with about 500 loaves. The individual buyer probably paid a little bit more. Yet, those painstaking lists (betraying a concern that no one should get more than he deserved) give the impression that they were com piled in times of stress. The average number ofloaves to be had for a dirhem was probably more than five loaves.83 A number of passages reflecting the fluctuations in the prices of wheat and bread will enable the reader to judge for himself how far the Geniza is able to illustrate the social aspects of this intricate problem of economic history. The time of our first example is fixed by a postscript: "The sheykh Abi84 Munajja occupies today a very high rank and place." Abii Munajja, a Jew in the service of the Egyptian viceroy al-Malik al-Afc;lal, supervised the construction of a canal in the eastern Nile Delta named after the supervisor during the years 1113-1119. 85 The time of writing, therefore, was the beginning of the second decade of the twelfth century. The writer, a Maghrebi living in Cairo, implores his brother-in-law, a physician, to return his wife to him, who, as often happened, had Heel from her husband to her brother. The letter concludes with this note which is w1·ittcn around the four margins of the second page and which is followed by the postscript:

By God, do not disappoint me, my lord, but kindly send my wife back to Cairo in the company of her Maghrebi relatives. For leading the life of a bachelor in Cairo is very, very difficult; I can't bear it. Our prices in Cairo: nine pounds of pure bread-I l/8 dirhems. Wheat (regular)-two irdabbs [for l dinar]. Good [wheat]: nine and a halfwaybas [for l dinar]. Bread does not sell, it is cheap. After the first third of the night some of mine still remained in the bazaar. 86 These lines were written at a time of oversupply. As we shall learn, an irdabb of wheat costing half a dinar was indeed exceptional. A weak economy is unable to control glut, just as it is powerless against scarcity. The big difference between regular and good wheat is remarkable, and the quotation "nine pounds of good bread-I 1/8 dirhems" instead of"a poundofbread-l/8 dirhem," seems to indicate that larger quantities were lower in price. The writer, himself a baker, or proprietor of a bakery, certainly knew what he was talking about. The extel)sive letter shows him to be a man of some learning.

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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This cannot be said about the man who, about a hundred years later, dictated a letter which also reports very low prices of wheat in Cairo and a story of unsold bread. The scribe took his words down verbatim and they appear here as confused and slightly ridiculous as they had come out of the speaker's mouth: When you were in the Fayyum, eight [pounds of] bread could be had for I dirhem. When you came here to Ma~r [Cairo-Fustat], the world collapsed. On Friday, as you know: four for a dirhem! Then you traveled away from us on Monday. On Monday-by the holy religion-six [pounds of market bread] could be had for 1 1/8 dirhem and sixofhome bread 87 for I dirhem. Then the price remained steady: the market bread-six for I dirhem and the home bread-seven for 1 dirhem. By our religion, what I just told you is not a lie. Had you remained in Ma~r for another week, we would have been unable to buy bread. 88 But God had mercy upon us at the time you departed for the Fayyum. Majdiyya89 sold on Monday, the day of your departure-by the holy religion-she sold her tiara for 105 dirhems! Good wheat of first quality-an irdabb costs 36 [dirhems], and one of lesser quality, 30 [did1ems). Every night, ten hundred pounds of bread remain in every market [becoming stale]. 90

Again, a time of glut. Thousands of loaves remained unsold in the bazaars overnight, and an irdabb of first quality wheat cost 36 dirhems, corresponding to 1 dinar, a modest, or, perhaps, standard price. But the writer had to invoke his religion three times to make credible the unbelievable fluctuations during one week, from 1/8 to 1/4 to 1/6 dirhem per loaf. Did the bakers conspire to drive the prices up during the weekend of the three religions, when everyone was supposed to eat more than on weekdays? If so, they received swift punishment for their wickedness. We read about a real bakers' strike in a large thirteenth-century family letter sent from Alexandria to Fustat written immediatel}' after the autumn holidays (Sept. -Oct.): On the second day of the Sukkot feast there were great disturbances in Alexandria because of the bread, which could not be found all over the city. until God brought relief by the end of the day; the governor and the superintendent of the markets rode out and threatened to burn down [the houses of] the bakers because of the bread, after they had inquired with the people at one oven in the east and one in the west. At the end there remained fifty hundred weights of bread in the ovens that night. So do not worry. 91

A quite different situation is. revealed in this letter from Alexandria written between September 26 and October l, 1200. 92 The

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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great famine of 120 l /2 is, of course, a landmark in Egyptian history. But here we see that Alexandria, which in general was provisioned less well than the capital, was already in deep trouble in the autumn of 1200. The writer must have been a respectable person, since he gives personal greetings to Moses Maimonides and to the French rabbi, Anatoli (who temporarily sojourned in Fustat). He must have been a man of some means, as may be concluded from his order of ten irdabbs of wheat when it was so costly, a quantity sufficient for approximately a year. 93 Alexandria is in great trouble: the price of wheat from Upper Egypt, 94 bought from the houses, 95 is 225 dinars per hundred [irdabbs]; 96 every wayba costs 14 waraq dirhems. 97 The mediocre Rifi (Delta) wheat costs 200 dinars a hundred, the bread-one and a half loaves-I dirhem. 98 People eat up one another. This catastrophe came upon the population quite suddenly, may God grant relief in his mercy. Your slave was able to purchase only three irdabbs and most of it has already been consumed. May I ask you to get the wheat under all circumstances. Your servant is [like one] of your family. May I never miss you. 99 Please instruct the Muslim who takes care of the wheat that he should enter the city relying on his high rank, 100 for this [Jewish] nation is closely watched 101 by the gentiles, who menace them with plunder every day. 102

In another letter, from a provincial town it seems, we read indeed about seventy irdabbs of wheat taken from a house during a pillage. •oa The price of 2 dinars or so for one irdabb seems to have been common in times of scarcity. In a report to a notable, who appears in numerous Geniza documents around 1200, he is informed that a man was paid 30 dinars for fifteen irdabbs, bought for the Fustat community, probably to provide bread for the indigent.1° 4 Sixty years earlier, ~in the 1140s, there were some bad years, reflected in the Geniza by the many lists of the poor preserved from that period. Abii Zikri Kohen, from whose hand we have many dated documents from that decade, paid 6 1/4 dinars for three irdabbs. 105 The time of the great famine, 1063-1073, is represented in the correspondence of N ah ray b. Nissim by wild fluctuations of prices, sometimes referred to in one and the same letter (see below). One irdabb costing 2 dinars seems to have indicated that hunger and anarchy prevailed in the writer's place. "Everything edible is sold [or salable]. The wheat: three [waybas] for one gold piece [that is, one irdabb for 2 dinars; both words are written in Hebrew, a kind of secret code]. The city, as you know, is afflicted by hunger-may God make it easier for you," we read in a letter to Nahray from Alexandria. 106

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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From the same city we hear again about the same price (and in Hebrew) in the remark: "It is difficult to get wheat, for the roads are not safe." 107 Naturally, when confronted with prices even higher than 2 dinars for one irdabb, one preferred the latter. "Tell 'Iwac;l that I have not bought anything for him, for hunger is in the countryside, wheat-one and three-quarter waybas [costing I dinar, and six waybas = one irdabb, over 3 dinars] and beans the same, 108 while I have heard that in your place an irdabb of wheat can be had for 2 dinars." The letter is addressed to the Square of Perfumers in Fustat. 109 This is not the only case where the capital is better provided with victuals than the countryside that produced them. A traveling silk merchant, who had passed weeks, including a holiday, in the Rif, after visiting Alexandria, where for only I dinar four and a half waybas could be had, asked his partner in Fustat to send two irdabbs to him in Rosetta (on the Mediterranean coast). Despite the cost of transportation grain was cheaper and more easily available in the capital than in the countryside. 110 The recurrent price of 2 dinars, probably twice the "normal," for an irdabb was perhaps fixed by government order in the big cities at the time of scarcity. The 1020s saw another period of famine, again reflected in the Geniza by extended and carefully executed lists of recipients of handouts. 111 Here some noteworthy data can be observed. A business letter sent from Cairo to Qu~, the terminus of the India trade in Upper Egypt, around 1030 or earlier, notes in the midst of a very long list of prices prevailing in the capital: "Wheat, one tillis 3 [dinars]." The tillis, weighing about 67.5 kilograms, was almost identical with the irdabb (about 70 kilograms). 112 Thus this price was extraordinary and is noted by the Fatimid historian al-Musabbil;i for the hunger year 1024. 113 But the writer of the letter does not mention this horrid price with indignation. Quite the contrary. He introduces his list with the remark "The [prices in the] bazaar are as you love it." Here the supplier, not the consumer, is addressed. Cairene merchants went up to Qu~ to purchase Indian and other Oriental specialities, but used the occasion to carry with them some of the wheat of Upper Egypt, which was renowned for its quality. 114 A letter from Alexandria shows how those exorbitant prices were combated: one imported wheat from abroad. "Eight to nine waybas of the Rumi wheat we have here cost I dinar; we do not miss a thing; life is cheap here, and people have it far better than before." 115 Another letter from Alexandria and the same period has this: "The price of new wheat: nine waybas per dinar, old wheat-eleven waybas," 116 Thus a price of I dinar for nine waybas of good wheat,

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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or 1 1/2 irdabbs, was regarded as cheap. A similar picture emerges from a report fromTunisia sent to Nahray b. Niss1m, when he had already become a merchant of substance in Egypt, say, around 1060: "Prices in Ifr1qiya [Africa, approximately Tunisia today] are extremely low: 25 thumns of wheat cost 1 dinar in Qayrawan [the capital]." This corresponds approximately to 1 2/3 irdabbs, very cheap if compared with the "cheap" I 1/2, listed in Alexandria. 117 But not long before, we read about a terrible rise of prices in Ifr1qiya: for I dinar only 4 thumns could be had! 118 The upshot of all this seems to be that to draw generalizations about the times and regions in terms of the prices mentioned in the Geniza is hazardous. In particular, one must avoid the pitfall of accepting as normal prices noted as a relief from former hardship. The correspondence of Nahray b. Niss1m is full of such cases. Examples from the early thirteenth century, some time after the great famine of 1201/2, illustrate the problem. In a letter to judge Elijah b. Zechariah, then still in Alexandria, the writer notes that he was unable to buy wheat because of its exorbitant price of 20 (dirhems a wayba, 120 dirhems, or over 3 dinars, an irdabb). An unhappy father in that Mediterranean port, whose son had disappeared, reportedly "to the army," sends several missives to Elijah's son, a physician in the capital, with the request to contact the fugitive, assuring him that the situation in the country had improved: "Alexandria is now quiet, no disturbances have occurred-may God make the end well-an irdabb of wheat costs I 5/8 dinars." The writer does not mean to say that 1 1/2 dinars or so was an acceptable, normal price, but that, compared with times of anarchy and insecurity of the roads, the price was an improvement. 119 When a silk weaver escaped from the tax collector to Aswan in Upper Egypt, he was assured by his family in Fustat that he had nothing to fear and that times had become better. "An irdabb of wheat of middle quality costs 42 dirhems-may God make it cheaper." Low-grade wheat should be priced somewhat below, not above, 1 dinar (see above). But the somewhat high price is reported to convince the fugitive that he could make ends meet anyhow, if he returned. 120 In extraordinary times, the price of wheat fluctuated so wildly that the change is reported in one and the same letter. "It was 4 dinars for one irdabb and stands today at 2 1/2 dinars," we read in a letter from Alexandria to Nahray b. Niss1m. Since in the same letter the writer reports that he had already purchased wheat for the higher price and put it aside for the recipient, some time may have elapsed between the two quotations. 121 This cannot be said of a letter sent to the notable Judah b. Moses

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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Ibn Sighmar by his wife, when the capital was menaced by Arab tribes ( 1069). Many Jewish families had left the city, but were held up on their way; even the prominent Dosa family was considering leaving. Numerous maidservants had run away to the Bedouins, and the writer was afraid that the slave agent whom her husband had left behind to look after the business might do the same. And worst of all: "The tillis [of wheat, approximately= one irdabb] has already reached 30 [dinars]." In a long postscript she reports that the Dosas had left on the very day she was writing, that the chief vizier had expelled all other viziers from the town, "and we are exposed to anarchy and hunger [both words in Hebrew], one tillis [of wheat] costs 25 [dinars] and bread 4 1/2 [dirhems] a pound." The prices quoted by a Muslim historian for this period are four times as high.1 22 The writer speaks only ofJewish families leaving the city because she probably knew few Muslims, and because the latter had less to fear than the former. An exodus of Muslims from a city smitten by famine_ is reported by a Jew to emphasize the magnitude of the disaster. The Jewish judge of Barqa, eastern Libya, who sojourned in Alexandria on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem (which he failed to carry out), writes that he was forced to return home, for he had received bad news from his native town: "It is in ruins; most Muslims have gone into exile from there, the wheat costs one wayba a dinar, and business is at a standstill" ( l 060 or so). 123 Moving to Tripoli, the capital of western Libya, during "a year, the like of which no one has witnessed and no one knows even from hearsay," we read that at Passover-Easter half a wayba cost I dinar (one irdabb = 12 dinars), but at the time of the writing of the letter, in August or slightly later of the same year, three waybas could be had for that price (one irdabb = 2 dinars). A new harvest had intervened and some import of wheat must have helped, but both were not enough to reduce the price to so-called normal completely. Yet, the letter concludes: "We are now all right, and the city is quiet." 124 The transport of grain was supervised by the government, partly, perhaps, to insure that the relevant taxes had been paid, and partly for the purpose of confiscating it in times of emergency. Hence, in such times, we find the terms for wheat and coins written in Hebrew, serving as a kind of code, or reports about actual attempts to conceal consignments of wheat. "I tried to transport, together with the flax, 50 or, at least 30, irdabbs [of wheat], but was unable to do so, for the clerk came in," we read in a letter from the flax district of Bahnasa sent to Fustat.m A missive addressed to a business friend in Tunisia contains this instruction: "Buy me 3 qafiz 126 of wheat or whatever

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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[quantity] you can get, grind it and put it inside the hazelnut bales." Flour, although generally regarded as less desirable than fresh wheat, possibly was believed to escape detection more easily than grain_ 121 Since wheat was laid in by everyone in a position to do so, we read little about flour in the Geniza. When the court clerk Mevorakh b. Nathan on coming home discovered that a friend had failed to provide his family with wheat during his absence on a journey, he found it worth mentioning in a letter to an esteemed friend that it was extremely burdensome for him to buy five pounds of flour costing 1 1/8 dirhems every day .128 A large section of the population bought flour because they did not possess the means to buy wheat at harvest time but still preferred to prepare their bread dough at home, or were simply too poor to buy any wheat at all, so they had to apply to the flour dealer when they had a penny available or a pawn to leave with him. 129 Moreover, many types of food, such as sweetmeats or the hari:sa hamburger, were admixed with flour. Thus it seems likely that just as Jews, with few exceptions, did not deal in grain, they did not engage in the sale of flour. One ordered flour in large quantities only when wheat was not available, or for other special reasons. 130 On the preceding pages I have used the word loaf for the sake of convenience, although Near Eastern bread is flat, round, and soft, to be easily broken by hand (no knife being needed) into pieces, which can be used, instead of forks or spoons, for picking up morsels from a tray. I must remark, however, that in a very detailed account of household expenses the writer constantly uses, in addition to the general word for bread, two other terms designating its form. It escapes me whether this was a mere play on words, or whether indeed two different shapes of bread were intended. 131 Barley was completely absent from the table of the urban population, as far as the Geniza goes. This testimony of a respectable merchant, who had to flee from Alexandria before an oppressive government official and to hide in the western desert for years, underlines this fact: "Then I passed a year and a half in other people's houses, and most of the time begging for a ~ii' of barley, which I ground with my own hands .... I sent home two flat cakes of unleavened barley bread, each weighing only fifteen dirhems, to show them on what food I lived." In the very rare cases where the price of barley is noted, the reference is probably to fodder for animals. 132 To sum up. The quality of life in a city was defined in Geniza letters by the prices of wheat available to the common people. The

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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frightening instability of supply, caused by nature as well as by human factors, made the daily bread a constant concern for everyone. I have tried to bring this situation-so strange to us-home to the reader by ample citations from both times of scarcity and abundance. They reflect the extraordinary place occupied by wheat in the daily diet of Near Eastern - Mediterranean peoples. Another remarkable aspect seems to emerge from the texts provided above: a certain standardization of consumption achieved by that age-old measurement of wheat, the irdabb, introduced during the Persian occupation of Egypt, about fifteen hundred years prior to the period of the Geniza documents. Twelve irdabbs a year, one a month, seem to have been the average need assumed for an urban household, and one gold piece seems to have been the ideal price for one. A pound was the average weight of a loaf of bread. Such standardization, imposed not from above, but derived from experience, would indicate that eating habits were common to a fairly large section of the urban population. 133 "All the things men eat with bread."-When the Byzantine emperor Alexius l Comnenus (1081-1118) founded a town for the poor and the crippled, he endowed it with good lands "so that they should have all the things that men eat with bread." 134 This note from the Alexiad of the emperor's gifted daughter Anna Comnena reminds us that the absolute prominence of bread as human nourishment was not confined to the Muslim society of the Mediterranean, nor did it originate there. On the contrary. Witness the cry of the Roman masses for "bread and games" and of the Roman soldier who conquered the world, while receiving as daily fare rations of bread and wine (which often had the taste of vinegar). The Bible expresses the idea of having one's meal by the sentence: "They sat down to eat bread" (Genesis 37:25). And it has already been noted that both Hebrew and Arabic possess special terms for "the things taken together with bread." 135 I hasten to add that, even though we do not have the description of a full evening meal in the Geniza, the variety and quantities of spices, flavorings, and fruits, as well as the many details about meats, cheese, oils, honey, and sugar appearing in the documents point to the fact that the table of families that could afford them was as rich in appetizers, dishes, and desserts as could be observed in well-to-do traditional homes in the Near East not long ago. Spices of all descriptions were the most frequently mentioned items and, consequently. must have been equally well represented in the pantry. And one did not need so many spices except when one prepared a good many dishes which needed different flavoring.

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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Starting at the bottom, for the broad mass of laborers and employees with scanty earnings, greens, such as onions, garlic, thyme, or radishes, formed natural complements to bread, moistening its dryness and stimulating the appetite. Vegetables fulfilled also a more substantial task in the nutrition of the indigent. I do not know when and where it was said that eggplants are "poor man's meat." 136 But it certainly applies to Geniza times. A woman scolding her husband for his long absence writes: "The children had no one who would buy a pound of meat for them. Their holiday meal consisted of burayq 137 for half a dirhem and fried eggplants for a quarter." 138 Not that eggplants did not also find their way into a shopping list for the kitchen of those higher up, for example, a Nagid, or head of the Jewish community of Egypt. 139 In Geniza times, the thick mulukhiya soup, the daily fare of the Egyptian fella}:i, had been adopted, at least by the urban lower class, as shown by the household notes translated above and the sobriquet "Jewish vegetable," listed, it seems, by Maimonides. 140 The sturdy and substantial root of the colocasia must also have been a regular item on the table of the Geniza people, since we find it not only in a household account but also in a letter showing that it was grown on land belonging to the recipient. 141 Beans could substitute for bread when the wheat failed. Since we do not have in the Geniza any descriptions of prepared food, nowhere do we read about the delicious Egyptian dishes made of beans or chickpeas. But when we find in one shopping list a limited quantity of chickpeas taken home together with a number of other kitchen items and in another some fa~ina (sesame-meal paste), we can be sure that it was made into something similar to the tasty ~ummWJ .142 The extremely long list of plants, used cooked or raw (as in salads or dressings) by the most indigenous of all Egyptians, the Copts (many of which are mentioned in the Geniza), proves that the local diet was predominantly vegetarian. 143 Since vegetables are best eaten when fresh, they were picked up at the market or brought or sent in by relatives or friends from the countryside. Thus we read about them, if at all, in household accounts or in letters exchanged between the city and the Rif. For places outside Egypt we have only stray notices: In a letter to Aleppo in northern Syria, written during the first third of the eleventh century, the writer honors the spiritual leader of the local Jewish community by sending him two and a half pounds of truffles and excuses himself for failing to send additional presents because unexpected guests had emptied his pantry during the holidays just ended. 144 In letters from Tunisians we read about a wild herb, ~urrayq, which grew in a ruin of the then capital al-Mahdiyya or on a small island not far away; it was eaten in springtime, raw or cooked,

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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when the Norman invaders had destroyed the crops in the country and when on that desolate island nothing else was to be had. 145 Maimonides' book on the names of medicinal (and culinary) plants listed the different names given to identical plants in the countries of the Mediterranean region. But his modern commentator often had opportunity to note that the different names were for different plants. 146 The contrast between Egypt and the neighboring countries was particularly marked in the supply of fruits. The mass and variety of imported fruits recorded in the Geniza are indeed astounding. In Med. Soc., I, 121, where the subject is treated, I surmised that the tastes and eating habits of the many immigrants from Palestine, Syria, and Iran had been influential in this matter. I should add here that I did not have in mind only the Jews. The Muslim merchants, officials, and scholars were as mobile as their Jewish counterparts, if not more so. At one time, the daily government revenue from the Cairene Market of Apples and Dates, which I take to mean Imported and Local Fruits, was higher even than that from the slaughterhouses and equaled only by that from the fish market. 147 Since many fruits imported from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, such as apricots, peaches, and plums, are highly perishable, they must have been transported in a dried or half-dried state and were then sold in the street of the naqliyyin or nuqliyyin, the Street of the Sellers of Dried Fr Llit, partly to be consumed glazed with sugar or as preserves. 148 Fruits of this type were also grown locally .149 A great variety of nuts, such as shelled almonds, walnuts, pistachios, and hazelnuts, were brought to Egypt from both the East and the West, and were often made into sweetmeats and candies. The processors of almonds, the lawwazin, had a lane for themselves in the bazaar, and persons bearing this family name, both Jewish and Muslim, appear in the Geniza from the eleventh century. 150 A sweetmeat named qata'if, made of almonds, honey, fine meal, and sesame oil, spawned another family name; almonds also went into the making of chewing gum. 151 It is therefore not surprising to find in the Geniza a store for fruit and sugar, the ingredients for homemade candy for those who wished to enjoy the fruit in a state other than natural. An inventory lists a large amount of regular sugar and a small one of rock sugar, a hundred pounds of hazelnuts and smaller quantities of pomegranate seeds, sumac, pistachios and two types of raisins. Banana leaves were among the equipment of the store, probably used for wrapping. 152 When Maimonides was asked by a fledgling student of philosophy what a scholar should eat "together with bread," he recom-

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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mended almonds combined with a few seedless raisins, both praised by him also in his medical writings. This combination of almonds and raisins as ideal food remained alive in Jewish folklore. 153 Vine-growing must have been extensive in medieval Egypt, since wine, as the Geniza shows, was made from local grapes. Numerous letters speak, however, of importing of raisins for both eating and making beverages. Black raisins were preferred for eating.1 54 Dates were the main indigenous fruit of Egypt. As far as urban consumption is concerned, there was no need for laying in provisions; pressed dates were available, but as the household accounts reveal, one fetched one's requirements of fresh dates from the grocer. The situation was different in times of famine, that is, scarcity of wheat. Then the Geniza letters become replete with orders for dates of all descriptions and with notifications how such orders were carried out. These letters are worth studying in the wider context of the replacement of one major element of nutrition by another. 155 As quick food for a scholar and as an alternative for almonds and raisins, Maimonides, in a holograph preserved in the Geniza, recommends honey made of good, fresh dates mixed with water, taken with bread. With a letter from the Fayyiim, chicken and dates were sent as a present for the Day of Atonement. Did Jews, like Muslims, break the fast with dates? They are a bit hard to digest, but replace the missing carbohydrates in minutes. 156 The moving novel, A Handful of Blackberries, by the Italian writer Ignazio Silone, derives its title from the hero's experience that in his youth he often "had nothing to eat together with a piece of dry bread" except some blackberries picked on the mountains surrounding his native village. A few fresh dates or sycamore figs might have performed a similar service to a poor boy in medieval Cairo. The second great provider of sweetness, sugar cane, was not indigenous to Egypt. It was transplanted there in early Islamic times from southern Iran and Iraq (to which countries it had come from India and farther east) and gave rise to a great industry, in which the Jews had a disproportionally high share. 157 This might have had its roots in a phenomenon found elsewhere, namely, that the sugar industry was a new field of economic activity, and an oppressed minority co Lild get a foothold in it more easily than in long-established enterprises. The fact that many Jewish families in Egypt had come from southern Iran and Iraq might also have played a part. Finally, the Jewish propensity for sweetness, attested by Bible and Talmud, might have found the concentrated power of sugar particularly attractive. 158 Several sorts of sugar (depending on the number of cookings of the raw material and the fluids used for the process)

Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World As Portrayed In the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 4. E-book, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00888. Accessed 10 Jan 2021. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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appear in the Geniza, as well as a wide diversity of prices, not easy to explain. But no detailed descriptions of its use in the kitchen or the food industry has been found. 159 Despite the diffusion of sugar, bee honey retained its prominent place in the diet of the urban population. Although Egypt possessed a highly developed apiculture, the quantities imported from the West, mainly Tunisia, and the East, Palestine and Greater Syria, were considerable. The extraordinary fluctuations of prices, reflecting the vicissitudes of an import trade, betray the eagerness of the demand for the sweet commodity "which brightens the eyes. " 160 The combination of honey and vinegar, of sweet and sour, and the potion made of it,. the Greek oxymel, was of such dietetic importance, that two Muslim medical writers, including the great Ibn Sina (Avicenna), dedicated special treatises to it. The oxymel is a regular household item in the Geniza, which shows that scientific theory and daily life were not as separated from each other as one might perhaps assume. 161 Honey, as we have seen, was used for the preparation of sweetmeats, and especially, together with fine, "white·• flour and melted butter for making the c~ula, a thick paste or cake (presented also as a gift on special occasions such as childbirth). A man from the countryside writes to a relative in Fustat: "Please try to find bee honey and fine 'white' flour for the