Abstract :
The Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat preserved dozens of
petitions addressed to the Fatimid and Ayyubid chanceries in Cairo and
decrees that they issued in response. This article provides an edition, translation,
and discussion of a petition housed among the Genizah documents
of the Bodleian Library directed to Sitt al-Mulk, half-sister of the caliph al-
H˙
ākim (386–411/996–1021) and head of the Fatimid state between his
death and her own in 414/1023. Geoffrey Khan had previously identified
two petitions to a Fatimid princess housed in Cambridge and New York; it
is likely that they, too, were addressed to Sitt al-Mulk. Such documents
elucidate Sitt al-Mulk’s role in government after her brother’s death and
provide evidence for the chronicler al-Musabbih
˙
ī’s claim that she received
and responded to petitions from subjects. The article offers possible explanations
as to why petitions such as this one, which concerns an Ismaili
mosque, should have found their way to the Jewish community of
Fustat whose members reused and preserved them. It also suggests some
broader conclusions about the dispersal, survival, or disappearance of
pre-Ottoman Middle Eastern archives and documents.
