- Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998); Adrian Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London and New York, 1999); Carole Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives on the Crusades (Edinburgh, 1999); Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, 2009); Paul Cobb, The Race for Paradise: Islamic Histories of the Crusades (Oxford, 2014); Uri Z. Shachar, “Dialogical Warfare: Figurations of Pious Belligerence among Christian, Muslim and Jewish Authors in the Crusading Near East” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014); and Ann Zimo, “Muslims in the Landscape: A Social Map of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Thirteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2016).
- Few scholars have written histories of the Crusades based on Near Eastern documentary sources. Two critical works of diplomatic history based on Arabic documents are M. A. Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades, trans. P. M. Holt, rev., ed. and intr. Konrad Hirschler (Leiden, 2013); and Peter Malcolm Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260–1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalawun with Christian Rulers (Leiden: 1995). Cairo Geniza documents from the period of the crusades are synthesized in S. D. Goitein’s Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in the Light of the Geniza Documents (Jerusalem, 1980) [in Hebrew]; and Joshua Prawer used Goitein’s Geniza editions and other Hebrew manuscripts in writing his The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1988). Goitein only published a fraction of the Geniza documents he discovered related to the crusader states in Palestinian Jewry. Mordechai Akiva Friedman also published an article based on Geniza documents from the crusader period: “Geniza Sources for the Crusader Period and for Maimonides and his Descendants,” Cathedra 40 (1986), 63–82 [in Hebrew]. Goitein translated a few select Geniza documents in “Geniza Sources for the Crusader Period: A Survey,” in Outremer, 306–22.
- See Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, 32. As Hillenbrand notes, few of the authors of Arabic narrative sources lived during the period of the events they purport to describe. There are small collections of poems, the Kitāb al-jihād of ‘Alī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī, and contemporary personal reflections in travelogues like Ibn Jubayr’s Riḥlah and the autobiographical Kitāb al-i‘tibār of Usāmah ibn Munqidh. Ibn al-Qalānisī’s Ta’rīkh Damashq, one of the closest chronicles to a contemporary account, was written toward the end of the author’s life, i.e., four to five decades after the events related here. For a discussion of the challenges of using these late sources to obtain historical data, see Konrad Hirschler, “The Jerusalem Conquest of 492/1099 in the Medieval Arabic Historiography of the Crusades: From Regional Plurality to Islamic Narrative,” Crusades 13 (2014): 37–76. However, as Benjamin Z. Kedar has noted, Hirschler does not utilize evidence from the Geniza documents in his analysis of these histories: see Kedar, Crusaders and Franks: Studies in the History of the Crusades and the Frankish Levant (Abingdon, 2016), Addenda, p. 1.
- Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (New York, 2003), 100–102, 118–23, 166–70. Robinson argues that court histories that emerged after the tenth century, including those of Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ibn al-Athīr and their contemporaries, were intended to present a small group of ruling elites to an audience of literate subjects whose support the court hoped to gain by demonstrating that state elites were “upholders of God’s law” and “guardians of the good life” (119). On God and predestination in Islamic histories, see ibid., 129–34.
- Niall Christie, “Ibn al-Qalānisī,” in Medieval Muslim Historians and the Franks in the Levant, ed. Alex Mallett (Leiden, 2014), 7–28.
- The dispute was between Raymond of St. Gilles’s son, Bertrand, and the count of Cerdagne over who would control Tripoli once it was conquered. The Genoese were also an active party in this dispute. Ultimately, King Baldwin I of Jerusalem was compelled to resolve the disagreement. See Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT, 2005), 90–91. Also Cobb, The Race for Paradise, 110.
- Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl Ta’rīkh Dimashq, ed. H. Amedroz (Beirut, 1908), 163/89. Translated H. A. R. Gibb, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades: Extracted and Translated from the Chronicle of Ibn Al-Qalanisi (Mineola, NY, 2002 [1932]), 88–89. My translation is more literal than Gibb’s. For further information, see Christie, “Ibn al-Qalānisī,” 7–28.
- I refer here to the Princeton Geniza Project (https://geniza.princeton.edu/pgp/), the Friedberg Genizah Project (http://fjms.genizah.org/), the Cambridge Digital Library (http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/islamic/), the Arabic Papyrology Database (www.apd.gwi.uni-muenchen.de:8080/apd/project.jsp), Trismegistos (www.trismegistos.org/) and other databases. Several other universities have also recently digitized their collections of Arabic documents or are in the process of doing so.
- These notables are the group that S. D. Goitein termed “the middle class.” They constituted a relatively small minority of the population of the medieval Mediterranean world. Nevertheless, as Goitein notes, they are the group most prominently represented among the writers of the Cairo Geniza documents. This is not surprising, since the vast majority of the population was not literate. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley, 1967–93), 1:148–266. On the problems of the middle class as representative of Islamicate society, see Phillip I. Lieberman, The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt (Palo Alto, CA, 2014), 200–203.
- Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1: 273–352. On how the Mediterranean facilitated these relationships, see Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000), 342–400.
- Menahem Ben-Sasson outlined these overlapping networks of religious authority, commerce and personal correspondence in two excellent Geniza studies: “Fragmentary Letters from the Geniza: On the History of the Renewed Links between the Babylonian Academies and the West,” Tarbiz 56 (1987): 31–82 [in Hebrew]; and The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800–1057 (Jerusalem, 1996) [in Hebrew].
- Marina Rustow, “The Genizah and Jewish Communal History,” in From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif, ed. B. M. Outhwaite and S. Bhayro (Leiden, 2011), 289–318. See also eadem, Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008), 67–108, 176–99.
- Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099), 3 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1983), secs. 249–50, 418–19 [in Hebrew]; and idem, “The Scroll of Evyatar as a Source for the History of the Struggles of the Yeshivah of Jerusalem during the Second Half of the Eleventh Century – A New Reading of the Scroll,” in Jerusalem in the Middle Ages: Selected Papers, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1979), 45–46, 72 [in Hebrew]. See also, Mark Cohen, Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Office of the Head of the Jews, ca. 1065–1126 (Princeton, 1980), 82–83; and Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:296.
- David Bramoullé, “Les villes maritimes fatimides en Méditerranée orientale (969–1171),” Histoire Urbaine 2/19 (2007): 93–116.
- Ibid., and Gil, Palestine, secs. 603–11.
- The extent of the destruction wreaked by the Seljuq conquests is evident in the dramatic decline in trade-related documents from Syria that Moshe Gil discovered in the Geniza. See Gil, Palestine, 3:96–331. It is telling that, among the dozens of documents that Gil included in his “letters of merchants” section, there is only one letter (doc. 529) that may date from the period after the Seljuq conquests. There are a few trade-related documents from Ascalon during this period (ibid., 3:463–510), but this is unsurprising since Ascalon never rebelled against the Fatimids, nor was it ever cut off from Egypt. See Moshe Yagur, “Between Egypt and Jerusalem: The Geopolitics of the Jewish Community of Ascalon in the Geniza Period” (MA diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012) [in Hebrew]; and Jessica Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge, 2016), 300–305.
- See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:201, 562 n. 14; Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 81–84; Gil, “Scroll of Evyatar,” 82 n. 6; and Rustow, Heresy, 329.
- For a discussion of these roles, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:5–40; Rustow, Heresy, 67–108; Gil, Palestine, secs. 746–61; and Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 28–29, 34–35, 40, 45–46. On Evyatar specifically, see Rustow, Heresy, 20, 63, 326–40, 348; and Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 81–82, 97, 110, 112, 124, 140–41, 180–85, 193–94, 202, 206, 210, 222–27 and 232.
- Rustow, “Jewish Communal History,” 289–318.
- See above n. 13.
- Eliyyahu’s son, Evyatar, asserted the claim of the Palestinian Academy’s authority based on the sanctity of the Land of Israel in a work known as Megillat Evyatar or “the Scroll of Evyatar.” The scroll provides Evyatar’s account of the Palestinian Academy’s conflict with the Egyptian leader, David b. Dani’el. The scroll (Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Collection [hereafter T-S], 10 K 7.1) is edited in Gil, Palestine, 3:391–413 (doc. 559). With regard to the claims relating to the Land of Israel, see especially ll. 20–21. These points are discussed in Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 180–85.
- Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1993–2010), 4:208–30.
- Gil, Palestine, secs. 610, 611.
- Manchester, John Rylands Library L 213, edited in Gil, Palestine, 3:518–20 (doc. 602); New York: The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Elkan Nathan Adler Collection (ENA), 1822 A 44–45, edited in Gil, Palestine, 3:382–84 (doc. 557). One letter from a member of the Palestinian Academy traveling through Tripoli c.1100 refers to the situation in Tyre as “foul” (qabīḥa). The writer makes no mention of the Academy, but it is possible that its members still resided in Tyre at this time. T-S New Series (NS) 264.15 r. l.8, ed. Gil, Palestine, 3:443–44 (doc. 576), ll. 7–9.
- Mark Cohen and Jacob Mann argue that the First Crusade was the reason for the collapse of the Palestinian Academy and its flight from Tyre; see Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 227; and Jacob Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine Under the Fāṭimid Caliphs: A Contribution to Their Political and Communal History Based Chiefly on Genizah Material Hitherto Unpublished, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1920–22), 1:170, 194–95. Gil argues more convincingly that the Academy moved because of conflicts between Muslim forces in the city: Palestine, sec. 916. Tyre only fell to the Franks in 1124, over a decade after every other major Syrian port with the exception of Ascalon.
- A Geniza letter concerning a messianic movement among Constantinople’s Jews, likely during the period of the First Crusade, mentions that Evyatar was residing in Tripoli: University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Heb a3.27, ll. 8–9, ed. in A. Neubauer, “Egyptian Fragments II,” in Jewish Quarterly Review 9 (1896–97): 28; and ed. Jacob Mann, “Messianic Movements during the First Crusades,” Hatequfa 23 (1924–25): 253–59 [in Hebrew].
- Bosworth F. Buhl and Marc Lavergne, “Ṭarābulus (or Aṭrābulus) al-Shām,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., (Leiden, 2002). Goldberg notes Tripoli’s role as the main port of Damascus for Jewish traders in her Trade and Institutions, 227–29.
- For ties between the Geniza merchants and the Muslim leaders of Tripoli, see Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:310–11; 2:366.
- Cobb, The Race for Paradise, 108–11.
- See Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta’rīkh Dimashq 226/51–55, 88–92; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10:310–12, 355–56, 452; Claude Cahen, “La Chronique abrégée d’al-Aẓīmī,” Journal Asiatique 230 (1938): 361–63.
- Two scholars, S. D. Goitein and Menahem Ben-Sasson, made reference to this petition. Goitein dated it to around 1120 and stated that it concerned a head of the Palestinian Academy who had been seized by pirates and was being held in the Muslim city-state of Tripoli. Tripoli, Goitein stated, was then under the leadership of a petty local ruler and therefore could be bullied by the royal fleet into surrendering the ga’on. Ben-Sasson accepted Goitein’s analysis of the contents of the manuscript with regard to pirates and ransoming, but dated it even later to c.1126. There are several problems with these chronologies. First, in 1120, Tripoli had already been under crusader rule for over a decade, having fallen to Frankish forces in July 1109; it is highly improbable that the ra’īs al-yahūd would ask the head of the Fatimid fleet to intervene in crusader-held Tripoli. Second, there is no mention of either pirates or ransoming in the document. Third, neither scholar justified why they dated the manuscript to 1120, but, according to our limited knowledge of the chronology of the Academy’s movement at this period, it seems unlikely that its leadership would have been in Tripoli in 1120, since the Academy was in Damascus then (see discussion above). Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:329–30; and Menahem Ben-Sasson, “The Axis of the Land of Israel and Syria: The Formal Aspect,” Pe’amim 66 (1996), 14 [in Hebrew].
- Mark Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, 2005), 1–72. Cohen discusses the petitions of the conjunctural poor (i.e., those who had fallen on hard times but otherwise were self-sustaining) versus the community-supported chronic poor. Geoffrey Khan provides Arabic-script petitions relating similar relationships between the poor and patrons. He also compiles petitions to government figures; see Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cairo Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 12, 302–409. Marina Rustow discusses the use of the petition in Jewish communal administration in “The Diplomatics of Leadership: Administrative Documents in Hebrew Script from the Cairo Geniza,” in Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark Cohen, ed. A. Franklin, R. Margariti, M. Rustow and U. Simonsohn (Leiden, 2014), 306–51.
- Marina Rustow, “Formal and Informal Patronage among Jews in the Islamic Near East: Evidence from the Cairo Geniza,” al-Qanṭara 29/2 (2008): 341–60.
- Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 174–88.
- T-S 20.145 is written on paper; the verso is blank; there is a broad right margin and almost no left one; the line-spacing is extraordinarily wide (the letters measured from baseline to headline occupy less than one-fifth of the vertical space between lines); there is a slight downward curvature to the start of the line followed by a slight upward one; and there is stacking of words at the ends of lines. These features follow the norms of Rustow’s “Hebrew-script chancery style”; see Rustow, “Diplomatics of Leadership,” 307–13. Rustow’s analysis is based on the eight-part structure for petitions laid out in Geoffrey Khan’s “The Historical Development of the Structure of Medieval Arabic Petitions,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53 (1990): 8–30. Rustow and Khan note that petitions sent to lower officials (i.e. not to caliphs or viziers) often used truncated imperatives like the one that appears in the second-to-last line of T-S 20.145 (“please remind [the nagid] about it...”): Rustow, “Diplomatics,” 327–28; and Khan, Administrative Documents, 306–17.
- See S. D. Goitein, “Tyre, Tripoli- ‘Arqa: Geniza Documents from the Beginnings of the Crusader Period,” Jewish Quarterly Review 2 (1975): 74–75; Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 227; and Gil, Palestine, sec. 916.
- ENA, 2806.8, ed. Gil, Palestine, 3:487 (doc. 589), r. l.7. The letter is to Evyatar’s son, Eliyyahu, and refers to the ga’on as having passed away (zekher ṣadiq li-vrakhah, i.e. “may the memory of the righteous be a blessing”). We know the Academy was well established in Damascus by 1116 from a letter that Evyatar’s brother and successor, Shelomo ha-Kohen, sent to a prominent member of the Academy in Fustat that refers to ongoing correspondence between the head of the Palestinian Academy and people in Fustat. See Cambridge University Library, Oriental Collection (Or.), 5535.1, ed. Gil, Palestine, 3:541–42 (doc. 611), rt. margin, ll. 6–7.
- Neubauer, “Egyptian Fragments II,” 28; Jacob Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature, 2 vols. (New York, 1972), 1:194–95.
- Geoffrey Khan has demonstrated that the qualifying adjective sa’īd– “auspicious” or “fortunate” – used in contexts like this one, suggests that the preceding noun is associated with the government (in this case, a government fleet). See Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 165.
- Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta’rīkh Dimashq 163/89. Ibn al-Athīr’s account copies almost word-for-word from ibn al-Qalānisī’s version concerning the fleet’s delay, but provides a specific (if spurious) detail that the fleet had been expected for over a year. Ibn al-Athīr’s account is much later than ibn al-Qalānisī’s, so the detail about the year-long siege may have been added for literary effect. See Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9:136. The chronicler Ibn al-Ẓāfir, on the other hand, supports Ibn al-Qalānisī’s more modest, four-month estimate: Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī Ibn Ẓāfir al-Azdī, Akhbār al-duwal al-munqaṭi‘ah, ed. André Ferré (Cairo, 1972), 78.
- Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta’rīkh Dimashq, 163/88.
- We know ‘Amram was with the Palestinian Academy, likely in Tripoli, in 1102. See Gil, Palestine, sec. 916. The document Gil cites as being in ‘Amram’s handwriting is T-S 8J4.18C, published in Palestine, 3:530–32 (doc. 606). The writer of T-S 20.145 is unnamed, but his hand is the same as that of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Library of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies MS E16516 and T-S 20.171 (Goitein made the connection between these documents in Mediterranean Society, 5:545–46 n. 90). The latter document is also an undated, Hebrew-script chancery style petition that bears many similarities to T-S 20.145. Gil identified ‘Amram’s hand in University of Pennsylvania Museum E16516 in Palestine, 3:367–70 (doc. 552). The text was first edited and translated in Goitein, “Parents and Children: A Geniza Study on the Medieval Jewish Family,” Gratz College Annual 4 (1975): 50–55. See also Mordechai Akiva Friedman’s discussion of a document (T-S 28.5) that ‘Amram signed: Friedman, “A Kohen Divorces his Wife in Eleventh Century Egypt: A Geniza Study,” Diné Israel 5 (1974), 216 [in Hebrew].
- See the verso of T-S 20.145. This ghost text suggests that the document was folded recto-to-recto between lines 11–12. While there are other fold marks on the manuscript, the ghost text reflects only the above-mentioned fold. This suggests that the ink was still wet when the letter was folded; it bled through the paper.
- Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 219–21.
- Ibid., 178–212; Rustow, Heresy, 323–39.
- Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 222–32.
- The very act of petitioning the nagid – even if done via a subordinate – marked Evyatar’s recognition of Mevorakh’s superior position.
- T-S 20.145, ll. 15–18. Rosh ma‘arkhot yisra’el only appears in one other document in the digitized Geniza corpus, T-S Misc 35.40, but the other honorifics appear in at least a dozen such documents, though not in conjunction with one another.
- Mordechai is the hero of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Second Purims were relatively common in the pre-modern Jewish world. These holidays (usually) celebrated a local historical event during which a Jewish community had been saved from destruction. These events were often recorded in a scroll and had their own heroic figures (Mordechais). It is not surprising, then, that Mordechai proved a compelling figure to invoke here. See Rustow, Heresy, 331 and 200 n. 1; as well as Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 2nd ed. (Seattle, 1996 [1982]), 46–48. See also, Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy (Jerusalem, 2002), 195 [in Hebrew]. The “scroll of Evyatar” that celebrates Evyatar’s victory over his Egyptian rival, Dani’el b. ‘Azarya, was also likely intended to commemorate a second Purim. In that case, the holiday marked an institutional victory (that of the Palestinian Academy), rather than the Jews’ triumph over a genocidal foe.
- Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta’rīkh Dimashq, 164/89.
- University of Pennsylvania Museum E161516. Gil believed the document described the conflict between David b. Dani’el b. ‘Azaryah and Evyatar ha-Kohen. This argument was accepted in subsequent literature. Gil argues that the conflict mentioned here was an intra-Jewish controversy in Tyre and that the refugees were from Tyre (due to the internal discord there). This argument is problematic because: a) there is no basis to assume an intra-Jewish intellectual dispute could have collapsed Tyre’s economy; b) Tyre is clearly mentioned separately from the events that precipitated the captives coming to Damascus (hence why the news of what happened to Tyre arrived subsequent to their being in Damascus), implying the refugees were not from there; c) as far as I am aware, there were no major Seljuq campaigns in the vicinity of Damascus in 1093–94 that could explain such a large influx of refugees into the city. There was a civil war among the Seljuqs of Syria in 1095, after the controversy between Evyatar and David was over. See Songul Mecit, The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty (New York, 2014), 26–27; d) if I am correct about the identity of the lord as Evyatar (see below, n. 56), then the only time when we know that a head of the Palestinian Academy would have been in Damascus was when the Academy’s elite was resettled there in the second decade of the twelfth century; e) The argument for the dating presented here aligns with what we know of ‘Amram’s travels and provides a compelling explanation for why he was in Damascus. Also, the circumstances described reflect contemporary events from 1110. The refugees referred to as burdening the people of Damascus are the survivors of the siege of Tripoli. The cause of the troubles in Tyre is the Franks’ extended siege of that city (29 Nov. 1111–10 April 1112). ‘Amram tells us that at the time of this letter’s composition he had been in Damascus for approximately fifteen months – almost exactly the length of time between the Frankish conquest of Tripoli and the beginning of their siege of Tyre (12 July 1109–29 Nov. 1110; i.e. a little more than fourteen months, a discrepancy that can be explained by the time it took for the news to reach Tripoli).
- The word the writer uses, “maḥaloqet” or “controversy,” most often refers in Geniza correspondence to intra-Jewish disputes. However, it also could refer to a generic conflict among gentiles, which is why Geniza writers would specify that an intra-Jewish conflict was a “maḥaloqet fi Yisra’el,” i.e. “a controversy among Jews.” See T-S 13J25.16, l. 10; T-S 20.102, l. 33. In other words, the conflict here is clearly affecting Jews, but that does not mean it originated among them.
- University of Pennsylvania Museum E161516, r. ll.1–6.
- University of Pennsylvania Museum E161516, r. ll.1–4; 5–6.
- Ibid., ll.13–14. We only learn about these goods when ‘Amram tells Ṣadoq that he had been compelled to sell them to keep himself alive since he could not find work to sustain himself.
- Since ‘Amram does not mention our lord’s name when corresponding with Ṣadoq (despite the fact that Ṣadoq did not live in Damascus), it is logical to deduce that the figure both men, as prominent members of the Palestinian Academy, would have immediately recognized as their shared “lord” would have been Evyatar, the head of their Academy. Also, “our lord” (sayyidunā) is commonly used in Judeo-Arabic to refer to the head of the Academy. Furthermore, since ‘Amram was his father-in-law’s scribe it would make sense that he would have stayed with Evyatar – though apparently the Academy was struggling to provide for its own people at this period. The head of the Academy is not named and it is also possible that “our lord” is Evyatar’s brother, Shelomo. However, this seems unlikely since ‘Amram does not mention Evyatar’s death when he reviews his activities over the last few months, and that would have been important news for the ga‘on’s son-in-law.
- See T-S 18.116 ll. 3–6, ed. Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “Polygamy in the Geniza Documents,” Tarbiz 40/3 (1971): 327–32 [in Hebrew]. The case concerns a certain Abū al-Faḍl Ṣadoq, a refugee from Tripoli whom the Franks had taken captive when they sacked the port. Abū al-Faḍl had lost his marriage contract (ketubbah), and likely other possessions, during this affair.
- FC, 531–33; AA, 11.13, pp. 782–84; WT, 11.10, pp. 509–10; Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta‘rīkh Dimashq, 163/89; and Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10:137.
- Ibn al-Qalānisī, Ta’rīkh Dimashq, 164/89.
- Qui autem in circo regis fuerunt, iuxta pactionem inde factam ab eo defensi sunt: FC, 532–33; Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. Francis Rita Ryan, ed. Harold S. Fink (Knoxville, 1969), 194–95.
- Fulcher, the chaplain of Baldwin I, had every reason to suggest that his master was not responsible for this breach of diplomacy. The Genoese Caffaro, on the other hand, does not mention the massacre and insists that it was Raymond who violated his oaths to the Genoese. On Fulcher, see Marcus Bull, Christian-Muslim Relations, 1050–1200: A Bibliographical History, vol. 3, ed. David Thomas and Alex Mallett (Leiden, 2011), 401–2; and Caffaro, De liberatione civitatum Orientis, in: Annali Genovesi di Caffaro e de’ suoi continuatori, ed. L. T. Belgrano, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 11 (Rome, 1890), 122–24; translation by Martin Hall and Jonathan Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades (Farnham, 2013), 123–25.
- The leaders of the Jewish community of Ascalon note in the letter that the majority (al-akthar) of the city’s Jews had to be ransomed; see T-S 20.113, r. ll. 26–28, ed. in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 241–48; translated to English in idem, “Contemporary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,” Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952): 162–77, here 171–75.
- Riḥlah fī ṭalab al-‘ilm, or “a journey in search of knowledge,” was a common practice for prominent Islamic scholars (“ulamā “). This itinerant lifestyle helped these scholars form inter- and intra-regional networks. See Daphna Ephrat, A Learned Society in a Period of Transition: The Sunni “Ulama” of Eleventh-Century Baghdad (Albany, NY, 2000), 33–74. On the “ulamā” and their relationships with political authorities, see Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge, 1994); and Omid Safi, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006). Concerning similar phenomena among Syria’s Christians and their ties to Islamic states and distant coreligionists, see Gil, Palestine, secs. 702–13; and MacEvitt, The Crusades, 29–43.
- For instance, Maimonides used these networks to delegate to Jews in the Latin ports the responsibility of redeeming Egyptian Jewish captives from the Franks. Also, a taxman from northern Palestine used his ties to foreign Jews to flee to Egypt, escaping the wrath of the Lady of Tiberias to whom he owed money. Moreover, David Maimonides, Moses Maimonides’ grandson, used his relationships with Jews in the Latin Kingdom to escape his political enemies in Cairo and seek refuge in Latin Acre; see Brendan Goldman, “Jews in the Latin Levant: Conquest, Continuity and Adaptation” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, forthcoming).
- Scribal error, should read kenafav; cf. T-S 13J16.21 r. 1. 2; T-S AS 147.2 r. 1. 25; T-S 8J18.28 r. 1. 4.
- The phrase could also be rendered in the passive voice, i.e. “the ga’on’s situation reached him” (bullighat ilayhi ḥālatuhu).
- See above, n. 39.