Geniza Lab

Legal document. Partnership agreement. Dating: ca. 1210s. Location: Fustat. This fragment preserves the right side of a partnership agreement between Ibrahīm b. Mūsā al-Māyurkī ("from Mallorca") and another Ibrahīm b. Mūsā, whose origin isn't preserved in the text. Both would contribute both financial capital and labor. Funds are brought out into a single purse, suggesting that the act of qinyan effected the partnership. Both partners are to engage in trade. The division of profit and loss is not preserved, but line 10 hints that profits and losses were to be divided equally between the two partners. Line 11 affirms the partners' mandate to "avoid betrayal and indolence and neglect", suggesting this may have been a long-distance trading partnership. The partners promise "ethical and honorable", perhaps because certain norms of behavior are expected of the partners. This does not release the partners from the "oath of partners", though, so legal recourse for misappropriation or negligence remains possible. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 185-186) Probably in the hand of the same scribe, some bearing the signature of the same witness, and some cut in half vertically like this document: T-S 13J3.25 (dated 1215), T-S 13J3.27 (dated 1218), T-S NS 226.12 (dated 1217/18 CE), MS 8254, fol. 17a (dated 1216), T-S NS J242 (dated 1214), ENA 2727.23a, and T-S 13J22.18. Another Ḥalfon b. Elʿazar ha-Kohen document: T-S 247. EMS. ASE.