1. Documents from Ottoman Damietta

Chapter 1 presents three Genizah documents from Damietta, Egypt’s Mediterranean port on the eastern arm of the Nile. All three relate in some way to the lucrative tax farm of the port’s customs while illustrating the Ottoman Empire’s desire to encourage trade through Egypt’s Mediterranean ports. The first (CAJS Halper 359), in Arabic, dates from 1538 CE and details repayment of a debt to the powerful Jewish financier Abraham Castro, a close ally of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman ‘the Magnificent’. Document 2 (T-S NS 297.6, in Ottoman Turkish), from the late 16th century, depicts fierce competition over Damietta’s customs in the context of shipping the annual tribute that Egypt supplied to the Ottoman palace. The final document (CAJS Halper 222, in Arabic), dated 1708, shows the commander of Damietta’s Janissary regiment, a branch of the Ottoman elite infantry, enlisting the aid of several of Cairo’s Janissary officers and one of the subprovincial governors known as beys (who happened to be a Jewish convert to Islam) to protect the Jewish administrator of Damietta’s customs. A Jewish burial prayer appears on the verso of this last document for reasons that remain mysterious.