From Tuscany to Alexandria: Arabic and Hebrew mercantile letters in the Prize Paper Collections.
General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
Final Report Abstract
The Prize Paper Collections in The National Archives in London contain a considerable quantity of business letters in Arabic and Hebrew script that were seized in 1759 by British privateers as part of the loot from a Tuscan ship bound for Alexandria. Virtually untouched since that time – most of the letters were still unopened when we first viewed them - they remain in the pristine condition in which they were archived in the 18th century. They thus present a most exciting and probably unique opportunity to investigate the interaction between Jewish, Muslim and Christian merchants across borders in the 18thcentury Mediterranean. The letters, numbering in the dozens, are particularly valuable, as very little comparative material in Arabic script from that period is known, and virtually nothing has been edited and published on the topic. Overall, the letters consist of two different kinds of correspondence. The first type consists of mercantile letters, written by traders who dealt mainly in leather, cotton, flax, and coffee. The majority of writers and recipients in the Arabic Prize Papers were Christians, but (not unlike the mercantile letters of the Cairo Genizah, for example) they were active in networks that included members from all the Abrahamic faiths. The second type of correspondence was sent by Christian clergy in Rome to coreligionists in Egypt and Turkey. These letters exchange information and send requests, such as, for example, the dispatch of books to Rome. The main aim of this research project was to transcribe and translate all Arabic and Hebrew documents of the Prize Papers Collections. All sources have been subjected to linguistic analyses concerning their orthography/phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. Many of the linguistic features are found in similar form in other Middle/Mixed Arabic texts from the same period, while some notable differences provide fruitful sociolinguistic features. The contents of the letters help us to draw a vivid picture of trade between Egypt and Europe. The detailed information in the letters is of great potential value to economic historians. The clerical letters in the corpus help us to draw a general picture of the Egyptian Christian dignitaries in Rome of the 18th century and shed light on the personal life of some iconic Coptic figures, such as Rafā’īl Ṭūḵī and Yūḥannā Naqqāš. The Arabic letters also shed new light on the history of interfaith relations. Commerce is an arena in which people deal with each other on a business basis regardless of their differing religious backgrounds. Of particular interest is the linguistic divergence between those letters written by merchants and those composed by church dignitaries, as well as the variation found in specific writers, depending on the religion of the recipient and their relationship. All letters have been transcribed and translated into English with linguistic Analysis and commentary which will be published in two volumes in Brill’s Handbook of Oriental Studies series.
Publications
- 2017. ‘From Tuscany to Egypt: 18th-c. Arabic letters in the Prize Paper Collections’. Journal of Semitic Studies 62/2. 389–412
Mohamed Ahmed, Esther-Miriam Wagner
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgx030) - “Arabic Mercantile Letters in the Prize Papers Collections”. Vol. 1 – 2
Wagner, Esther-Miriam and Mohamed Ahmed
(See online at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0208)
