Geniza Lab

Legal document in Arabic script. The beginnings of 23 lines are preserved, the last of which is the signature of a witness named Muḥammad something. Reused for Hebrew liturgical text on verso.

Court record, calligraphically written, from a lawsuit about changing the configuration of the main hall of a house. During the dispute a Muslim judge was bribed. The intervention of Shemarya (b. Elhanan apparently), the rav, or highest Jewish religious authority, is requested. Dated ca. 1000. (Information from Mediterranean Society, IV, p. 84)

Legal document from a qāḍī court. Dated: 15 Dhū l-Ḥijja 870 AH (Sunday 29 July 1466 CE). The raʾīs al-yahūd, Yūsuf b. Khalīfa, and his deputy, Shemuʾel b. Naṣr, promise not to prevent the physician Manṣūr b. Ibrahīm b. al-Abraṣ (son of the leper, or possibly the redhead) from entering the synagogue in Zuwayla, the Jewish neighborhood in Cairo. The trigger for the conflict was a motion to renovate the synagogue, a fraught issue during the Mamluk period: in 859 AH (1454–55), under the relatively permissive Sultan Īnāl, a court authorized the repair of the old Rabbanite synagogue in Zuwayla and two Rabbanite synagogues in Fusṭāṭ, as well as the Qaraite synagogues in Cairo and Fusṭāṭ (a copy of this permit, from 18 January 1456, survived in the Qaraite archive in Cairo); under Qāʾitbāy, there was apparently a request to repair some synagogues, but the community objected, fearing that Muslims would destroy them, as they had threatened or sought to do in other cases. The judge is Shams al-Dīn al-Sulamī. Goitein discovered T-S Ar.38.131 and discussed it briefly in Med. Soc.; Rustow found the join with T-S Ar. 42.212 in 2014 using the joins suggestions in FGP; meanwhile Dotan Arad discovered a Judaeo-Arabic court document referring to the same case, BL Or. 4856.2. Arad published both documents in an article that was forthcoming as of June 2021. MR

Legal document: deed of sale in Arabic for the purchase of part of a house. Abū l-Faraj Ṣemaḥ b. Ṣedaqa b. Ṣemaḥ the money-changer buys part of a house in Qaṣr al-Shamʿ in Fustat from his uncle Dāwūd b. Ṣemaḥ the indigo dealer. The house abuts the former church of St Michael, the oven of al-Jalāl, and the house of Maymūn b. Dāwūd. Dated 10–20 Shaʿbān 448 (October-November 1056 CE). On verso there is a liturgical text in Hebrew. (Information from Khan.) It is unusual that the document is written on a bifolio; it may be a court copy, which would also explain what seems to be an archival annotation on verso summarizing the document (which Khan deciphers in part but doesn't discuss). MR

Legal document: bill of sale in which Makhlūf b. Jābir b. Nāṣir buys a house in al-Muʿizziyya (Cairo) from […] b. ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn b. Ibrahim b. ʿAlī, one of two trustees of Cairene legacies, under the supervision of Abū l-Ḥasan Masarra b. ʿAbdallāh. Makhlūf’s father, Jābir b. Nāṣir the miller, acts as his agent in the transaction. The house previously belonged to the wife of the amir, Sitt al-Dawla, and is apparently now intestate, hence the involvement of the trustees. 11th-12th century. On verso (recto as conserved) is a Hebrew liturgical text. (Information from Khan, ALAD)

Shelomo b. Eliyyahu writes to a notable, "I was told that you have made a marriage contract (ṣadāq) for your daughter at a Muslim court. I cannot believe it." Med Soc III, p. 444, n. 50. Information from Goitein's note card.