Motti Haddad
October 18 at 6:32pm · 
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This is a letter written and signed by Moses Maimonides (הרמב״ם), 12th Century CE, Fustat, Old Cairo.

Here he writes to introduce Isaac al-Dari, an immigrant from Morocco.
Maimonides encourages the local Jewish community to pay Isaac’s jizya, a poll-tax imposed by Muslim rulers on their dhimmi (non Muslim) subjects. The jizya was a considerable burden, and the Jews of Egypt established institutions to assist poorer members of society to pay it.
The letter was written on paper in Judaeo-Arabic.

The Jewish community in Cairo had been placing their worn-out books and documents into the Ben-Ezra synagogue‘s storage in Fustat, Old Cairo, since at least the 11th Century CE. This is the Cairo Genizah (הגניזה הקהירית).

In 1897 the Chief Rabbi of Egypt gave permission to Charles Taylor and Solomon Schechter, two scholars from Cambridge University, to take whatever they like from the Genizah. And so some 200,000 manuscripts were shipped in crates back to Cambridge.

This Maimonides’s manuscript is part of the Mosseri Collection of the Cairo Genizah. 
In 1907 Jacques Mosseri, a successful Jewish businessman and native of Cairo, retrieved a further 7000 manuscripts from the Ben-Ezra synagogue .
The Mosseri Collection is on long term loan to Cambridge University and would be, security permitting , transferred to The National Library in Jerusalem.