Returning a Fugitive and Mules

Description

This letter is divided into two parts, not only topic wise, but also by the lay-out of the letter. N��jid b. Muslim starts his letter to ìAbd All��h b. Asìad announcing that some guards (hurr��s) came to him. The relationship between the guards and the s��hib mentioned on the next line is not certain, but they probably all belonged to the same community or town whose name is lost in the lacunae at the end of line 5. N��jid then mentions someone's runaway or stolen mules perhaps belonging to a certain Kh��lid asking that those be returned to him. In the second half of the letter N��jid writes that a certain Marcus who had been holding a safe-conduct (am��n) had absconded. N��jid asks ìAbd All��h to return Marcus to him, ending the letter with the recommendation that ìAbd All��h is to complete these tasks without delay or obstruction. The letter is written by ìAbd al-Ra��m��n, a scribe in N��jid's chancellery, who also wrote 4. The other persons named in this letter: Anio, Kh��lid and Marcus do not appear in any other letter of the corpus.