The use and abuse of commercial letters from the Cairo Geniza

Abstract

The Cairo Geniza contains thousands of pieces of correspondence, but they have not been analysed as genres. Separating out the ‘commercial letters’ from this mass of correspondence shows that this kind of letter was a discrete genre, written according to norms that differed from other kinds of correspondence. These norms were largely a result of the particular ways letters could function as instruments of long-distance trade. Letters were primarily ephemeral business instruments that allowed a merchant to designate a fellow merchant as agent for his goods and make orders, maintaining his executive authority at a distance, but they had no intrinsic value in the legal system and were not used or kept as records. Their ephemeral nature helped make them more effective in their main secondary use: as tools to manage and negotiate business relationships within a geographically dispersed merchant community. Understanding these functions not only lets us see commercial letters as part of the institutional structure that sustains long-distance trade, but also suggests how these letters can be used more accurately and effectively in historical research.