Geniza Lab

Bill of divorce (get). Location: Fustat. Dated: Monday, 21 Sivan 1412 Seleucid, which is 1101 CE. Husband: ʿOvadya b. Yeshula ha-Kohen. Wife: Ghāliya bt. Hānī. Witnessed by the cantor Hillel b. ʿEli (compare T-S 10J2.9), and ʿUlla b. Yosef ha-Levi. No documentation of receipt on verso. (Information from CUDL)

Get (bill of divorce) written in Ramla, beginning of 1026.

Fragment of an effaced court record. Location: Fustat. Dated: Middle decade of Ṭevet 1417 Seleucid, which is December 1105 CE. Among other matters, Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi testifies that Mudallala (aka Sitt Baghdād, as we know from T-S 13J2.14) received her bill of divorce together with her ketubba payment of 10 dinars in cash, and also her belongings valued at 10 dinars. She deposited the dinars with Abū l-Ṭāhir al-Ṣayrafī. Witnesses: Yiṣḥaq b. Shemuel, Sasson b. Natan, and Avraham b. Aharon ha-Kohen. T-S 13J2.14 and T-S 10J28.14 appear to be two copies of the same document (Goitein). (Information in part from Goitein's index cards.)

Legal deed concerning Yosef ha-Parnas the physician, who claims to be unable to support his daughter Sittūna, and her little son, after she was divorced by Netanel. Her ex-husband responds that she has assets and can indeed support herself. The text also mentions Avraham (known as Abū Kathīr) b. Shelomo b. [...]. Written by Efrayim b. Shemarya (thus Fusṭāṭ c. 1030s CE). (Information from CUDL)

Bill of divorce signed in 1222 by Eliyyahu ha-dayyan.

Document of divorce settlement, signed by Eli b. Amram, head of the Jerusalemite congregation in Fustat, and Avraham b. David [b. Sighmar], and dated Kislev 1361/November 1049. Last witness signed Tevet (December 1049).

Court record from 1015 concerning a woman in Ramla appointing a representative to sue her Damascene husband who had disappeared two years earlier without leaving her anything. She was prepared to renew their common life, or else demand a divorce, with all the payments involved, including the cost of maintenance for two years. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:198-9, 314, 375, 468) EMS

Document describing a Damascene husband who had settled in Jerusalem and went bankrupt in Ramla, and who was being sued by his Egyptian wife. Her attorney, appointed in Fustat, was to extract alimony from him for the year of desertion, twenty dinars as delayed marriage gift, and a bill of divorce. Summer, 1024. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:199, 468) EMS

Letter from Yusuf ha-Kohen b. Shelomo Gaon, writing from Jerusalem or Ramla, informing the Jewish chief justice of Aleppo that it had taken seven months to find the husband whose wife in the Syrian city had demanded a divorce. The bill of divorce had now been made out and entrusted to a man who would deliver it to the woman, ca. 1035. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:262, 485) EMS

Letter from Avraham b. Rav Shelomo the Yemeni, in Jerusalem, to Eliyyahu the Judge, in Fustat. Written not long after T-S 8J16.3 (same sender, same addressee). Dating: ca. 1214 CE (Goitein's estimate). Avraham mentions a "brother-like" relationship with Abū Bishr that he entered into at Eliyyahu's recommendation, however Abū Bishr has died and the authorities have confiscated all his property. Avraham also mentions divorcing a woman in Jerusalem "after much suffering and paying her more than was due her." Abū Zikrī, Eliyyahu's son and Avraham's former roommate, can tell Eliyyahu more about what happened. Avraham requests that Eliyyahu convey the news of the divorce to Avraham's son and to the son's mother. He also requests charity for a man who recently arrived in Jerusalem after a harrowing journey. (Information in part from S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 3:47, 262, 437, 485.) EMS. ASE.

Document of a full-fledged barāʾa (release of spouse from obligations upon divorce) in which a husband (Abū l-Ḥasan b. Abū l-Faraj) and wife (Maʿālī bt. Manṣūr) from al-Maḥalla appear before the court of Fustat. Dated: Tuesday, 25 Av 4973 AM (=1524 Seleucid), which is August 1213 CE, under the reshut of Avraham Maimonides.

Recto: Bill of divorce (geṭ). Location: New Cairo. Dated: Friday, 24 Adar 1[6]50 Seleucid, which is 5 March 1339 CE. Husband: ʿEzer b. Yehoshuaʿ. Wife: Shumaysa bt. Mordekhay. The divorce was not completed on this occasion, as there are no witnesses. Cf. T-S 20.10 (dating to 1310 CE), which may involve the same couple. Bottom of recto and verso: unrelated jottings in Judaeo-Arabic, and three lines of a child’s handwriting exercise. See ENA NS 55.18 for a similar geṭ with similar reuse (same scribes?). (Information in part from CUDL and Goitein's index card.)

Confirmation by witness of the divorce of Raisa b. Kathir, who wanted to marry Yosef. Written by Yefet ha-Hazan b. David. (information from Goitein's index cards) VMR

Court record concerning a grain dealer who promises to pay his former wife 4 dirhams every week for his five-year-old son, who was staying with her. The document further stipulates the boy visit the father on a Sabbath or a weekday, whenever he (the father) wished. In return, the divorcée acknowledges having received from her husband all that is due to her and agrees not to give him a bad name, nor sue him before a Muslim court or state authority. In case of default, she would be banned or excommunicated. Payments were to be made to a third person in Cairo, specified in the document. September, 1052. (S. D. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:152, 438; 3:334-5, 502) EMS

Fragment of an old court record in which a divorcee, Mubaraka bint Atiyya, is promised 3 dinars per month by her husband, Azarya b. Benjamin, but the reverse side shows a payment of only half a dinar. (Information from Mediterranean Society, III, 267)

Legal document. Copy of a divorce settlement, dated 11th Adar I 4973 (= 1213 CE), from Alexandria, in which Yeshuʿa b. Yosef b. Raṣon Tinnīsī (i.e. linen merchant), declares that he is bankrupt and thus unable to pay the second instalment, thirty dinars, that is still outstanding from the original marriage contract, to his wife, Sitt al-Kull bat Solomon b. Zechariah. The debt is divided into fifteen-dirham 'of good silver' monthly payments, but if he is unable to pay this amount, he must give half of his wage day-by-day instead. Other stipulations forbid Yeshuʿa from leaving Alexandria for four years and from ever remarrying his first wife, and instruct him to sell his clothes and to give the proceeds to Sitt al-Kull. There is also a continuation of the text of the letter from the verso. Verso: Letter, predating the legal document (i.e. prior to 1213 CE), from a certain Beraḵot, who appears to have written the legal document. The name of the recipient has been carefully rubbed out. There is also a continuation of the legal document from the recto. (Information from CUDL and Goitein's index card)

Get (bill of divorce) from Fustat for Menashshe b. Shemuel and Sitt al-Fakhr bt. Yefet Tif'eret ha-Qahal. Hand of Hillel b. ʿEli. Information from Goitein's note card.

Bill of divorce. Incomplete. Location: Fustat. Dated: Monday, 9 Ṭevet 1562 Seleucid, which is December 1250 CE. Husband: Avraham b. David ha-Kohen of the city of מדכסר(?).

Court record concerning a sum that a husband owes his wife as part of a divorce payment. (Oded Zinger, Women, Gender and Law: Marital Disputes According to Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 142-3) EMS

Letter in the hand of Shelomo b. Eliyyahu to Ḥisday ha-Nasi (a Qaraite communal leader) concerning a husband who wishes to divorce the wife he had been coerced into marrying in Alexandria. The husband demands to pay the marriage gift in installments (i.e., never completely) after all that he had suffered from her bad character (al-tarbut raʿa). He has been with her for three years, but it feels like twenty. He is perishing from his illness (maraḍ) and poverty and bad wife. If his request is refused, he threatens to flee the country and leave her an ʿaguna. Shelomo is probably not writing on his own behalf, as it is unlikely that he would consult a Qaraite Nasi for a legal opinion. Contains elements of both a petition and responsum. There is a provocative (mis)quotation of Leviticus 14:45 on verso: "I have broken (should be: he shall break) down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, etc." With this the husband is comparing his wife (referred to as one's 'house' in Judaeo-Arabic) with a house stricken with ẓaraʿat. (Information from CUDL and Oded Zinger, Women, Gender and Law: Marital Disputes According to Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 87, 149, 180, 220, 260.) EMS. ASE.