Geniza Lab

Prenuptial agreement between a future husband and his prospective second wife, in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi. Location: Fustat. Joined by AA.

Marriage contract. Location: Fustat. Dated: Sunday, 20 Sivan 1609 Seleucid, which is 1298 CE. The bride agrees to live wherever (in Egypt) her husband chooses, to observe the laws of menstrual purity, and to free her husband from the obligation to provide her with clothing on the condition that all she earns be her private property. Signed: Seʿadya b. Yehuda and Yoel b. [...].(Information in part from Med Soc III, 455 n. 86 and Goitein's index card.) Joins: Alan Elbaum.

Contract of friendship between Elʿazar Maymūn and Yom Ṭov b. Sīd. In Hebrew and Aramaic. Dated: Sunday, 17 Tevet 5324 AM, which is January 1564 CE. As Mann describes, Yevr. II A 236/5 contains 10 (or more) leaves of various notes on Biblical and Rabbinic matters. On fol. 2, upside down relative to the main text, this document is to be found. The parties vow to treat each other as brothers, to help each other in all things, loan each other books, and pray together in the synagogue of Shemuel b. Sīd. (Mann: The synagogue of the Sevillians in Cairo was called by his name. Cp. about this scholar and Kabbalist, a refugee to Egypt after the Spanish expulsion, Sambari's Chronicle (in Neub., Med. Jew. Chron. I, pp. 145, 159, and 151–62)). If one is angry at the other, they will seek to appease each other within 24 hours. The document invokes three of the sages of Safed—Joseph Caro, Moses. b. Joseph di Trani, and Israel de Curiel—and Me'ir de Padova (=Meir b. Isaac Katzenellenbogen (d. 1565)) and Yiẓḥāq b. Sīd (perhaps the son of Shemuel b. Sīd and perhaps the father of the signatory Yom Ṭov b. Sīd; see Mann's notes for these identifications). ASE.

Legal record (#43 and #44). Engagement contract, outline. Dated: Thursday, 14 Sivan 1467 Seleucid. In the hand of Meovrakh b. Natan (like the rest of the notebook). Engagement agreement between a Qaraite man (Abū Saʿīd) and a Rabbanite woman (Sitt al-Naṣr bt. Netan'el ha-Kohen). Goitein suggests that it is an agreement between a husband and wife that was composed after a quarrel (Med. Soc. 3:152–53). But Ashur judges the document to be an engagement agreement because the early marriage payment (muqaddam) is mentioned and there is a condition that the muqaddam will be considered 'a gift', alongside many other conditions common in agreements before the marriage. These conditions include: not to bring into the house anything forbidden by the Rabbanites (ṭā'ifat al-rabbānīn), that the early marriage payment is a gift, that he will not marry a second wife nor take a concubine if she disapproves, on pain of having to pay the delayed marriage payment and giving her a divorce, etc. NB: Goitein and Ashur referred to this document as folio 17 (Firk. II NS 1700.17) in accordance with the foliation written in pen; but the correct folio is 18, as written in pencil (the librarian with the pen gave two folios the number 8). ASE.