In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

Ghosh launches into a description of Cairo, calling it “Egypt’s metaphor for itself” (32). The Egyptian name for the city, and the name that most, non-western languages use, is Masr, the same word that is used for Egypt itself. The city is more like a series of towns, spread out across the area, Masr meaning “the south of the city,” or called “Old Cairo.”

It was in this area that Ben Yiju and his enslaved Indian man eventually settled. Ghosh describes the storied history of the city. A Roman fort named Babylon was once the center of the area, but with the Arabic conquests a market town named Fustat took prominence. The center of power was then moved slightly Northwards by the Fatamid dynasty in the 10th century to the town of al-Qahira. While Ben Yiju was there in the 12th century, the capital was still relatively bureaucratic and planned, especially compared to nearby Fustat, whose markets played an important role in the global economy by linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. It was likely this trading position which attracted the merchant Ben Yiju, but spiritually he was connected to the old site of Babylon. Here, there were several established Jewish communities and a synagogue he frequented.

By the 1980s, the once-affluent Fustat had declined into what Ghosh describes as a “shanty town” looking out into the Cairo skyline. Ghosh states this is a metaphor for the “decay and regeneration” (39) of Cairo.

In Lataifa, Ghosh often thought about telling Shaikh Musa—a kind, older fellah (an agricultural laborer)—that he wanted to leave Abu-‘Ali’s house. Ghosh had grown close to Shaikh Musa and his family during his stay, being allowed to dine with the family instead of eating in the guest room (a sign of their acceptance of him).

When dining with Shaikh Musa’s family, he met several women who, like everyone else in the area, did not wear veils. Ghosh notes that he may have seen them before but had been worried about offending Egyptian sensibilities; he had taken pains to not look at any (which he later realized was itself rude). Two of the women at the dinner were the wives of Shaik Musa’s sons Ahmed and Hasan. While Ahmed had been educated, Hasan had been raised as a fellah so he could work Shaikh Musa’s land after the end of his mandatory armed service. Ghosh had not yet met him but knew Shaikh Musa was very close to him.

Later that night, Ghosh learned that Shaikh Musa’s first wife had died a year before. He was now married to the daughter of a man named Ustaz Mustafa, a relative of Abu-‘Ali. Ghosh had met Ustaz Mustafa before.

Shortly after Ghosh had arrived in Lataifa, he had met Ustaz (teacher) Mustafa. Jabir, the nephew of Abu-‘Ali and Mustafa, had introduced them and told Mustafa that Ghosh was trying to learn the local dialect of Arabic. Mustafa was extremely religiously devout and constantly afraid of missing his daily prayers. Soon after they met, Mustafa questioned Ghosh on several stereotypes about Indians. Urged on by Jabir, Mustafa asked if Ghosh was Muslim, to which Ghosh replied that he had been raised Hindu. Mustafa asked if this meant that he worshipped cows and did not listen to Ghosh’s statements refuting this. Mustafa decided that he would try to convert Ghosh, asking him to come to the mosque and, later, to pray with him over Mustafa’s father’s grave.

Mustafa continued to question Ghosh, asking him if he was a communist and who created the world. Ghosh was surprised by the constant questioning but soon learned that many of the wealthier people in Egypt focused on talking about religion and politics. Mustafa’s attempts to convert Ghosh only ended when Ghosh said that this would displease his father. Mustafa, a father himself, valued respect for parents highly and thus dropped the issue.

Jumping back to his dinner with Shaikh Musa and his family, Ghosh asked Shaikh Musa’s new wife if she was really related to Mustafa. When she confirmed that she was, Ghosh realized he could not ask Shaikh Musa for help moving out of Abu-Ali’s. They were now related by marriage and so Shaikh Musa could not directly criticize him.

Ghosh returns to the historical narrative, stating that for Ben Yiju, the center of Cario would have been the Synagogue of Ben Ezra, also known as the Synagogue of the Palestinians. The synagogue was built originally around 1025 and remained standing well into the 19th century. Many Tunisian immigrants attended this synagogue, and proved to be industrious members of the community, gaining high standing in the business of trade with India. Many of the members of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra would have been well-travelled, even by modern standards, because of these trade connections.

While some members of this community would become famous, the most notable impact that they had on history was due to fortuitous circumstances. Synagogues had, and often still have, a chamber known as the “Geniza,” where writings would be deposited so they could be disposed of with special rites, to avoid accidentally disrespecting God’s written name. For some reason, the Ben Ezra Synagogue’s Geniza was never cleared out; for eight centuries, documents piled up in there. The documents were discovered by historians in what is described as the greatest find of medieval manuscripts. Ben Yiju’s letters, and the information about his enslaved Indian man’s life, were discovered in this chamber.

Ghosh resumes his Lataifa story by describing his surprise upon seeing ducks mating. Jabir laughed at this and then asked a question which Ghosh did not understand. Jabir was shocked, then asked if he knew about circumcision. Jabir was surprised to find that Ghosh wasn’t circumcised and continued to ask him questions, moving to the topic of shaving and again finding it strange that Ghosh did not shave all his body hair.

That evening, Ghosh again saw Jabir. He had looked up what Jabir was saying earlier and found out that Jabir had asked him if he knew what sex was. This explained his shock when Ghosh had not responded, and Jabir had gone on to gossip to other village youths that Ghosh was ignorant of almost everything.

For a long time after this day, Ghosh was seen as a child by Jabir. One evening, Jabir took him to a mowlid (a fair) celebrating a figure of local legend called Sidi ‘Abbas of Nakhlatain. He was known to be a famously pious man whose legend held that he could not be moved after he died until his body moved itself. The body led the funeral guests to the mosque and commanded that they build him a domed tomb, and to celebrate him every year afterwards. This celebration had since, allegedly, repeatedly produced miracles.

At the fair, Jabir gossiped with others, saying that Ghosh did not know anything because he was Indian and of the wrong religion. Eventually, they made their way to the tomb where several Sufis—followers of a branch of Islam that emphasizes direct connection with divine experience—were performing a ceremonial dance called the zikr. Again, Jabir began to mock Ghosh to others, irritating him.

The next day, Jabir woke Ghosh up with the news that someone had been murdered in a fight over swings at the mowlid. Jabir felt confident that there would now have to be a blood feud between the families of the victim and of the murderer until a reconciliation could be effected by the women in the family.

It was Mabrouk, the nephew of Shaikh Musa, who finally improved Ghosh’s standing in Jabir’s eyes. That year, Mabrouk’s father had done well for himself and bought a diesel water-pump, which they all called an “Indian Machine.” Mabrouk asked Ghosh to inspect the purchase, figuring that he would know if it was good. While Ghosh did not know what made a good diesel water-pump, he pretended to inspect it and praised their choice. This made Jabir respect his apparent know-how and ask him to join his family when they went to buy their own “Indian machine.”

Ghosh began to wonder how Jabir would have treated him if he came from a country famed for their machines, and how Lataifa would seem to someone treated with respect based on their country’s mechanical prowess.

When Ramadan arrived, Ghosh began to think seriously about leaving the village for a time. He wanted to visit Doctor Issa in Alexandria so they could arrange for him to move to Cairo. His wish to leave was exacerbated by the Ramadan fasting, which he had asked to join but had been repeatedly told not to do. This made him feel separated from the community.

Ghosh wondered if anyone broke the Ramadan fast but never saw, or even heard rumors about, anyone doing so. In the evening, families would gather around food and water, listening to the radio so they could hear the announcement of the end of the day’s fast. They did this instead of watching the sunset, so they could be connected to the worldwide community of Muslims doing the same. Ghosh realized why he had not been allowed to join: The fast was a test that defined a part of Islamic identity, and one could not do it without being a member of the community.

The night before Ghosh’s trip, he visited Shaikh Musa. His son, Hasan, had come back from the army for a few days to spend time with his family, though his head was hurting. While at Shaikh Musa’s, Ghosh asked about the blood feud that Jabir had believed would develop. The family said that Jabir was wrong: The police had made a report, and the families quickly settled the issue.

Before Ghosh left, he promised to come back and tell them all about what he experienced in Cairo, which Shaikh Musa reminded him was called by some “the mother of the world” (80).

Returning to the historical narrative, Ghosh states that in the 18th century, European aristocrats with a scholarly interest began to travel to Cairo. By this time, Cairo had long since been ruled by other powers, and the Indian Ocean trade—and the culture that supported it—had been destroyed. Trade was instead directed into Europe. Egypt had also become the fixation of many scholars, with “Egyptomania” taking over fashionable circles. In this context, the first report on the Geniza of the Ben Ezra synagogue was published.

Ghosh tracks the early mentions of the Synagogue in western writings, noting that it was initially ignored because it was not connected to ancient Egypt. The report of Jacbo Saphir, in 1864, began to excite scholarly interest. Saphir spent two days inside the Geniza, studying its contents and wrote in a publication that there was likely much more to discover.

Soon after, another Jewish scholar named Abraham Firkowitch visited and took some documents to a collection in Russia. Ghosh finds irony in a Jewish collector stealing from a Synagogue to bring documents to Russia, but says this was not seen that way at the time—it was simply standard colonial practice to extract valuables to the imperial core.

Over the next few years, more and more people visited the site to take documents. Two people were especially notable in the collections they took from the Geniza: The Cambridge professor Dr Solomon Schechter, and Elkan N. Adler. Dr Schechter was given permission by the British colonial authorities of Egypt to take as much as he wanted without needing to pay the owners (though they surely would have known the documents were valuable). Schechter donated the documents he took to Cambridge, where they have remained ever since. By the First World War, the Geniza was empty. 

Ghosh returned to Lataifa the week before the end of Ramadan with gifts, but noticed many were downcast. He found out that Hasan, Shaikh Musa’s son, had died while Ghosh was away. Ghosh went to visit a deeply-grieved Shaikh Musa, who told him that Hasan’s head pain had increased until he was taken to a hospital, where he later died.

Ghosh left the Quran he brought as a gift for Shaikh Musa. He thought that he did not have the chance to tell Shaikh Musa that Dr Issa had arranged new accommodations for him in the nearby town of Nashawy; he also reflected on the fact that he had broken his promise to tell Shaikh Musa about Cairo.

Ghosh left Egypt in 1981 and only returned seven years later after he had begun to seriously examine the story of the enslaved person mentioned in MS H.6. He had come across references to Ben Yiju and the enslaved man multiple times in studies and hoped to learn more from the scholar Shelomo Dov Goitein. However, Goitein was dead by this time, so Ghosh had to personally track all the references to the enslaved man through Goitein’s enormous body of work. Ghosh discovered references to an unfinished Goitein project named “The India Book,” which was to include a collection of letters concerning the Indian Ocean trade. He travelled to Princeton (where Goitein had worked), where he found out that he had seen most of the translated letters that mentioned the enslaved man already.

To get more information, he realized he would have to read the Geniza letters themselves. This would be difficult because most were written in Judeo-Arabic, a hybrid language of a colloquial dialect of Arabic and the Hebrew script. There was no accepted path to learning the dialect, but one of Goitein’s old students pointed out that if Ghosh studied the Hebrew alphabet, it would not be that hard to decipher the Arabic writing. The result would not be translations of a high enough standard to be published, but they would serve Ghosh’s purpose.

As Ghosh started on translating the letters, he learned that the Arabic dialect Ben Yiju used was startlingly close to the dialect of Lataifa, making his earlier stay invaluable. For the next few years, he would try to uncover all the information he could about the enslaved man, noting that the words or phrases used in these medieval letters sometimes struck him as something Shaikh Musa would be likely to say.