Abū Surūr Isḥāq Barhūn ben Musa al-Tāhertī, ḥaver al-Palestine Yeshiva

Tāhertī Family

The Tāhertīs were a Maghrebī merchant family active in the period from 1010 to 1075. Together with the houses of Ibn ʿAwkal, al-Tustarī, and Nahray ben Nissim, the Tāhertīs were, in terms of volume of trade, one of the largest and most powerful mercantile operations of their era. While most business endeavors rarely involved cargoes exceeding the value of a few hundred dinars, the Tāhertīs and their counterparts routinely invested in merchandise worth several thousand dinars or more. They were connected to the other great merchant houses via trade, apprenticeship, and marriage; their commercial network also included Muslims. They wielded great power within the Jewish community. In a letter found in the Cairo Geniza from Mūsā ibn al-Majjānī to the merchant Joseph ibn ʿAwkal in Fustat, Mūsā writes that the Tāhertīs constitute “a united group who speak with a single voice” (TS 12.218).

The origins of the Tāhertīs cannot be traced any farther back than their base in Qayrawan, but their surname (nisba) indicates that they originally hailed from Tahert (now Tiaret) in the Central Maghreb (modern Algeria). The family maintained bases in both Qayrawan and Fustat, and did business principally in the markets there, in Sicily, and in al-Andalus. Despite their involvement in the affairs of the yeshivot in Baghdad, no records have survived linking the Tāhertīs directly to trade in the east. The main focus of their trade was the triangle connecting Egypt, Sicily, and Ifrīqiya—and at times al-Andalus.

Like the other traders about whom information has survived in the Geniza, the Tāhertīs were involved with the organized Jewish communities in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Fustat, and Qayrawan. At least two hundred items of incoming and outgoing Tāhertī correspondence have survived in the Geniza.

The Tāhertīs were active as traders over the span of three generations. The first generation included the patriarch of the family, Barhūn (Ibrāhīm, Abraham) ibn Ismāʿīl al-Tāhirtī, who was based in Qayrawan but set up a base in Fustat in the early eleventh century. Barhūn had at least four sons and two daughters.

All four of Barhūn’s sons helped run the firm’s operations during the second generation (1008–ca. 1040). In order of birth, they were Abū Ibrāhīm Ismāʿīl(Samuel), Abū Faḍl Ṣāliḥ (Maṣliaḥ, d. after 1060), Abū Surūr Isḥāq, and Abū al-Khayr Mūsā (d. 1056). Although based in Qayrawan, the brothers traveled regularly to Egypt, staying there for long periods, both in Fustat and in the flax-growing regions of the Fayyum, especially Buṣīr. Two of the brothers apprenticed in Fustat with the Tustarīs of the second generation.

Bibliography

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Gil, Moshe. A History of Palestine, 634–1099, trans. Ethel Broido (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

———. In the Kingdom of Ishmael, 4 vols. (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University; Jerusalem: Ministry of Defense and Bialik Institute, 1997).

———. “The Jewish Merchants in the Light of Eleventh-Century Geniza Documents,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46 (2003): 273–319.

Goitein, S. D. “Medieval Tunisia: The Hub of the Mediterranean,” in Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, new ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 308–328.

———. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967–93).

Stillman, Norman A. “East-West Relations in the Islamic Mediterranean in the Early Eleventh Century: A Study of the Geniza Correspondence of the House of Ibn ‘Awkal” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970).

Citation Marina Rustow. " Tāhertī Family." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online , 2013. Reference. Jim Harlow. 23 January 2013 <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>