Geniza Lab

Court deposition in the hand of Hillel b. ʿEli. Dated: 1406 Seleucid, which is 1094/95 CE. Abū ʿAlī Yefet b. Menashshe accuses his wife Milāḥ b. Khayrūn of wishing to divorce him in order to marry Barakāt b. Abū Saʿīd al-ʿAṭṭār, who has "corrupted" (afsada) her. She takes mighty oaths, denying that she would ever marry Barakāt. Later, Abū ʿAlī verbally abuses Barakāt, "Yā fāʿil, yā ṣāniʿ, you corrupt my wife and tell her, 'Divorce him so that I can marry you!'" They have a great fight and hurl accusations at each other ("some serious, some trivial"). Barakāt takes a mighty oath that he will pay a fine of 50 dinars to the poor of Egypt if he ever proposed marriage or anything else to Milāḥ. Signed by Binyamin b. Avraham. NB: Three distinct fragments have been joined and are all photographed under the shelfmark ENA NS 19.14 (this is why there are no photographs under the shelfmarks ENA 4010.7 or ENA Misc. 17). The lower left fragment is still missing. Join by M. A. Friedman. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card.) ASE

Court notebook containing several documents. (i) Marriage contract (ketubba), segment discussing the groom's promises to the bride regarding her exemption from oaths. (ii) Record of an adoption in which a man "sells" his newborn daughter, 16 days old, whose mother had just died after childbirth, to a prominent lady for five dinars and promises that he will not interfere with the girl's upbringing. (iii) Legal document dealing with a business partnership between Yefet b. Wadʿa and Abū Zikrī, and also with a man who was married and divorced before consummation in Tyre and remarried in al-Mahalla.