Geniza Lab

Legal document from 1725 CE (1 Tevet 5486) from Fustat/Cairo formalizing a reconciliation between husband, Yosef Mizraḥi known as Khumays, and wife, Nujūm the daughter of the late Baribas (?) Melichi (?). He agrees to live with her for at least another 6 months and behave well toward her. If she does not become pregnant during these 6 months, he will then have the right to take a second wife. Two of the witnesses are Yiṣḥaq ha-Levi Ghazāl and Aharon Ḥanūn.

Legal fragment. In the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Settlement of a conflict between a husband, Moshe ha-Sar ha-Adir, and his first wife, Sitt al-Kamāl, who nearly got divorced. The husband was spending 2/3 of his funds on his second wife (the 'ḍarra' of Sitt al-Kamāl) instead of treating them equally. He presumably promises to shape up, and she promises not to think or say bad things any more about the second wife or her kin.

Engagement (shiddukhin) contract for a second wife. Location: Fustat. Dating: ca. 1165–66 CE, as the reshut clause invokes the Gaʾon Netanʾel ha-Levi (1160–66) and the document is written in the hand of the court scribe Shemuel b. Seʿadya ha-Levi (active 1165–1203). Manṣūr b. Makārim of Bilbays, already the husband of a woman named ʿAmāʾim, came before the court (probably in Fustat or Cairo) together with Abū Naṣr b. Abū Saʿīd, the half-brother (shared mother) of a woman named Maʿālī. Together the two men agree on the conditions for Manṣūr's marriage to Maʿālī. (1) Maʿālī will have her own apartment, not shared with ʿAmāʾim. (2) Manṣūr will not take a third wife. (3) Maʿālī will live with Manṣūr's daughter Milāḥ, likely the daughter of ʿAmāʾim (Goitein speculated that ʿAmāʾim must have suffered from a physical or mental illness preventing her from taking care of her own daughter). (4) Marriage payments: 2 + 15 = 17 dinars. (Information from M. A. Friedman's edition.)

Letter from the mother of Dā'ūd, in a provincial town, to her son Sulaymān al-Jamal, in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. She complains about a lack of letters from him and reports that she is fasting and crying day and night. She had traveled with her daughter and son-in-law to her present location ("balad al-ghurba"). She would return on her own, but must stay with her daughter who is pregnant (muthqala). The writer urges her son to come and thereby "cool [the fire in] my liver." Her son-in-law had promised to bring her back to Fustat, but when the daughter became pregnant, he said that he would never go back to Fustat again. The writer cannot bear witnessing her daughter's suffering (nakālhā) at the hands of the second wife (ḍarrathā). Information from Friedman's edition. ASE.

Letter from a local Dayyan to Avraham Maimonides. Dating: ca. 1229/30 CE.

Letter from Ṣadoq (b. Shemuel or b. Yehuda) Ibn al-ʿAmmānī, in Alexandria, to Moshe b. Ḥalfon ha-Kohen Ibn Ghulayb ʿAyn ha-ʿEda Paqid ha-Soḥarim etc., in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dated: 11 Sivan, 159 = 4800 + 159 = 4959 AM, which is 1199 CE. The first part of the letter conveys the information that the "rebels" (המורדין) in the congregation of Alexandria have drawn up and signed a decree (taqqana) stating that they will never accept a muqaddam who is not a native of Egypt. They plan to send the decree to Maimonides ("Rabbenu") and ask him to appoint either the judge Yiṣḥaq b. Sasson or the judge Shemuel ha-Levi b. Seʿadya. The congregation offers a hefty initial payment of 50 dinars. (This decree may well be the same one mentioned in T-S 18J3.15, a letter from Barakāt b. Abū l-Ḥasan to Eliyyahu the Judge ca. 1221 CE upon the death of R. Anatoli.) The second part of the letter conveys Ẓadoq's request for Moshe ha-Kohen to intercede with Maimonides so that the new muqaddam will not deprive Ẓadoq of his profession of wirāqa (i.e., his appointment as a warrāq, a copyist and notary of legal deeds). Ẓadoq wants the present arrangment to continue: half of the wirāqa jobs for Ẓadoq and half for the muqaddam. Ẓadoq complains about his difficult financial straits and that he has to sustain two "households," i.e., his two wives. If Ẓadoq loses his income from wirāqa, he will have no choice but to abandon his family and move to Byzantium. In the end, Maimonides did not heed the taqqana of the community, and instead he appointed. R. Anaṭoli b. Yosef of Marseilles as the muqaddam of Alexandria. Ẓadoq's request, however, was accepted. We hear again of the division of the wirāqa between Ẓadoq and Anaṭoli in the year 1216 CE in the document T-S 10J25.3. Information from M. A. Friedman's article on this and related documents.

Court record in the hand of R. Daniel b. Azarya ha-Nasi. Hayyim b. Harun announces his intention to marry a woman in Sahrajt, but people say that he already has a wife in Fustat. The man vows 10 dinars to the waqf if he is indeed married. People check and discover that he is in fact married; he then says he had vowed 5 dinars to the Jeruslaem waqf and 5 dinars to the local synagogue, but people object. The court believes him, but then he argues that he doesn't have the money, so the court allows him to pay only a quarter of a dinar per month.

Reuse: Several legal documents, either drafts or court records. In Judaeo-Arabic. The entries on recto are very faded. The one that begins at the bottom of recto contains a statement by Yosef b. Shelomo that he will not take a second wife (or else he will be punished). Location: Probably Fustat. Dated: 1390 Seleucid, which is 1078/79 CE. The second entry on verso concerns various deposits or pledges. Mentions the wife of Sulaymān, a judge (al-shofeṭ), the house or wife of Abū l-Surūr. Also mentions a mill (ṭāḥūna) and maybe someone named Shāhīn. The bottom entry on verso is a detailed list of the items pertaining to the Dār al-Ṣarf that were sold in the presence of the court (Yefet b. Zarʿa(?), Meshullam b. Moshe, and Avraham b. [...]).

Letter from a woman complaining of abuse by her co-wife

Letter from a woman requesting help in receiving her share from her late husband’s inheritance, with various signatures of support. Mentions government interference as well as her husband's other (simultaneous) wife, the daughter of Abū l-Ṭāhir. Long, well-preserved, and full of interesting details. Should be edited. (Information in part from CUDL)

Legal query in the hand of Berakhot b. Shemuel addressed to the judge Shelomo ha-Talmid, aka Shelomo b. Natan ha-Levi. With his autograph response. Also signed by ʿAmram b. Ḥalfon ha-Levi, a second judge. The same two witnesses also signed T-S 16.200 (dated 1225 CE). In Judaeo-Arabic. This query is divided into three sub-queries. #1 concerns a marital dispute between 'Reuven' and his second wife. Reuven went to the Muslim courts and mortgaged his wife's half-dār, worth 6 dinars, against a loan of 8 dinars. For some reason, they were forced to purchase the other half of the dār. When he died, he willed the new half to his children from his first wife (also in the Muslim courts). Should the debt be repaid from the half-dār belonging to the wife or belonging to the children? The answer: Nothing may be repaid from the property of the widow. There are two additional sub-queries on verso. The same case is probably described in T-S 8J14.3 and several other fragments: see Friedman's article for complete discussion

Letter by the Jewish community of the village of Qalha, Egypt, apparently to Eli ha-Kohen b. Yahya in Fustat, 2nd half of the 11th century. The Jews of Qalḥa report to the Parnas in Fustat that Abū ʿImrān Mūsa b. Yequtiel arrived in their village on 17 Tammuz, injured and/or sick from the violence he experienced during the nahb (plunder) of Fayyūm. In addition he was robbed of everything by robbers near the village. He died a few weeks later, in Av. One of his two wives and the daughter of the other died also. The remaining wife was brought to Fustat at the expense of the community, because she had a cousin (ibn ʿamm) there. The little boy could not live in the village because of the Kushim (Sudanese soldiers?). Information from Goitein's note card.

Letter of a local Jewish leader to his superior in the Egyptian capital. The first part of the letter is irrelevant to polygyny, thus it is excluded from the work.

Letter from Abū l-Majd, in Qūṣ, to Abū l-Mufaḍḍal the judge, in Fustat. Mentions Egypt, Abū l-Riḍā, Ibn Ibrahim al-ʿArīf, Abū l-ʿAlā b. Ḥassūn, Abū l-Ḥasan and Abū l-Khayr. Dated: Wednesday, 23 Tammuz (1400+)145 = 1545 Seleucid, which is 21 June 1234 CE. (Information in part from CUDL.)

Rough draft of a ketubba (marriage contract), with instructions to the scribe for drawing up the final version. Possibly written by the judge Ḥayyim known from other documents as a judge in the court of David I Maimonides and a relation by marriage. Dating: late 13th century, perhaps 1291–92. Written under the authority of the Nagid David b. Avraham b. Moshe Maimonides. The groom, Avraham, redeemed a woman who had been taken captive in ʿAkko, and now wishes to marry her. His wife consents for him to take a second wife and to even take two more wives after her (for a total of 4). Friedman deduces that the year is probably 1291 or 1292, because David Maimonides was in exile in ʿAkko from his enemies in Egypt from approximately 1285–89, and the Muslim conquest of ʿAkko from the Crusaders in 1291 is a likely occasion for a Jewish woman to have been taken captive and need to be redeemed. The Nagid David, back in Cairo, could have presided over this legal case due to his connections to the remaining Jewish community in ʿAkko. This is a very unusual document, and Goitein went so far as to call it, "the most bizarre Geniza document, both in content and outer appearance, I have ever seen." (Information from Friedman Polygyny, pp. 95–106.)

Legal document. In the hand of Hillel b. ʿEli (1066–1108). Rough draft of an agreement between spouses, detailing the conditions that the husband must obey when he takes a second wife. It is implied that the first wife is barren. Among other things, the husband undertakes to leave the female slave to his first wife when he dies. On verso there is a distinct document, also in the hand of Hillel b. ʿEli, dealing with a business partnership between Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm Ibn Ṭībān, Abū l-Ḥasan Yūsuf, and ʿUlla.

Responsum regarding polygyny. Only the relevant passages in this responsum are brought in this work.

Maqāma-like work in rhymed Hebrew prose by a certain Shelomo b. Yehuda (not the 11th-century gaʾon, as this fragment is probably 12th–13th century), describing how his father Yehuda migrated from Spain to Egypt to Yemen, married a woman in Yemen, and returned to Egypt, where Shelomo was born. But then the devil led the father astray to take a second wife, who gave birth to a son named Evyatar and two daughters "of different religions"(?!). One of the girls died; Shelomo accuses his brother Evyatar of trying to sleep with the remaining sister; both Evyatar and the remaining sister died; and now Shelomo is writing this hymn of gratitude on account of how God liberated him from his wicked half-siblings. Recto is written over jottings in Arabic script, mainly formulae. (Information in part from CUDL.)

Recto: Letter from communal leaders, in Alexandria, to the judge Shemuel, in Fustat. In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Unclear; likely early 13th century, based on handwriting and Goitein's identification of the judge Shemuel as the same one mentioned in T-S 10J16.6. Regarding a woman in Alexandria with a sick daughter, whose husband had fled his creditor and gone to the capital. The letter says that she had been deserted for a long time, that she had to maintain herself and her little girl, to pay rent, and on top of this, was sued in court by the creditor of her husband. The writers of the letter ask in the politest terms that Shemuel approach the Nagid for action in this matter. Verso: Letter from the judge Shemuel to the Nagid. The writer reports that he had sent several summons to the runaway husband, but since both the High Holidays (approx. September) and Hanukka (approx. December) had passed without response from him, sterner measures were now required, and, to the judge's dismay, the Nagid had to be troubled. The matter was of utmost seriousness since the Alexandrian wife asserted that her husband had married another woman and was living with her in Cairo. Clearly, the police now had to be instructed to bring the man to court by force. But only the Nagid, as official representative of the state, was authorized to give that order. (Information from Goitein, Med Soc, III, pp. 203–04 and Friedman, Jewish Polygyny, pp. 213–16.) ASE.

Abū l-Faraj b. Khalaf (?), probably in Minyat Ghamr, writes to his cousin (ibn ʿamma), Eliyyahu the Judge, in Fustat. These cousins had prior correspondence and business dealings—Eliyyahu sent 22 dirhams with his previous letter, and the writer has a store in which he deals in indigo. The purpose of this letter is to ask Eliyyahu to write to the judge R. Menaḥem in the hope of obtaining permission for Abū l-Faraj to take a second wife. Eliyyahu is familiar with the case already, but Abū l-Faraj repeats some of it here. He has endured 20 years of suffering because of the illness of his wife, which prevents her from going to the bath (presumably a problem for him because of menstrual purity laws rather than because of hygiene). When Abū l-Faraj arrived in Minyat Ghamr from Jerusalem, he found a second woman whom he wanted to marry. The local judge, Mufaḍḍal the ḥaver, refused to marry them on his own authority and said that permission would need to come from higher up. Mufaḍḍal sent a letter to R. Menaḥem with Ḥabīb the shohet, but there was no response; Abū l-Faraj himself was unable to accompany Ḥabīb. Abū l-Faraj thought that Eliyyahu would already have intervened on his behalf, but no news of that has reached him. He visited Alexandria, but it seems that Mufaḍḍal discouraged him from seeking a ruling from the judge [A]natoli on account of his strictness. In the remainder of the letter, he repeats his request in various ways. He is willing to come to Fustat in order to marry. Information from Friedman's edition and translation. The writer quotes a saying in lines v13–15, where he is urging Eliyyahu to act quickly, and Friedman marked his translation as somewhat tentative. Cf. alternate versions of the same idiom in ENA 2558.21, T-S 13J21.20, Moss. II,167, T-S Misc.28.33, and Bodl. MS heb. d 66/14, e.g., "mā baqiya fī l-ʿumr mithla mā maḍā," literally, "there do not remain [years] of life like those which have passed," apparently corresponding to the English "we aren't getting any younger, [so please help me]." Another version of the phrase also appears in the first chapter of Ibn Buṭlān's Daʿwat al-Aṭibbā', in the mouth of a physician whose income has dried up and who has nowhere to go: mā baqiya aqallu mimmā maḍā ("what remains is less than what has passed"). See also T-S AS 162.167 + T-S AS 151.29 and Oded Zinger's edition in "You and I will enjoy each other's company until God decrees our death in the Land of Israel," Cathedra 174 (2020), note 22. ASE.