ALT screenshot of 7 different fragments of medieval paper with Hebrew writing, assembled together like a puzzle

ALT ALAN ELBAUM & ODED ZINGER How to Write a Desperate Letter: Structure versus Spontaneity in Six Letters from an Abandoned Father in Ayyubid Alexandria You persisted in disobedience and went to Damietta, (and) we sent you twenty letters. Have you no shame? Acquiesce and come! You went up to Fustat, (and) we sent you another twenty letters. (1) Sometime in the early thirteenth century CE, a young Jewish man named Abū l-Naǧm defied his father Manṣūr b. Sālim and set off from Alexandria, leaving behind him a family business in disarray, an ailing mother, and a father’s pride wounded. From the forty letters that Manṣūr claims to have written to Abū l-Naǧm, three made their way into the Cairo Geniza. Three further letters of Manṣūr addressed to different Jewish notables in Fustat and dealing with his son’s escapade have also been identified in the Geniza. (2) Manṣūr’s letters, probably sent over a period of weeks, are single-minded in their purpose: bringing his son home. The fact that we hav

ALT medieval manuscript covered with Hebrew script