Geniza Lab

Incomplete legal document from Cairo, dated 6 October 1816 (14 Tishrei 5577), for Raḥamaim b. Nissim who apparently seeks to remarry the woman he had previously divorced. This document lays out the conditions upon him from both the first ketubba and in the remarriage. Needs further examination.

Betrothal document and dowry list: "The clothes and the nedunya and the contante [Italian for cash] of the widow Ms. Dona (name or honorific?) bt. Moshe P[.]so"). The document is in Hebrew but several of the items on the dowry list seem to be in Judaeo-Arabic. She is going to marry Shelomo Maymūn b. Yaʿaqov Maymūn. Dated 1 July 1794 (3 Tamuz 5554).

Marriage contract (ketubba). Location: Sunbāṭ (סמבוטיה). Dated: Monday, 1 Ḥeshvan 1445 Seleucid, which is 2 October 1133 Seleucid, under the authority of Maṣliaḥ Gaʾon. Avraham b. Shelomo remarries his divorcee Rafīʿa bt. Shemaʿya. The bride and groom are very poor. Marriage payments: 1 + 3 =4. The dowry consists of 3 items, amounting to 5 dinars. Witnesses include: Elʿazar b. Avraham; Refaʾel b. Eliyya; Menaḥem b. Yosef; ʿAmram b. [...]. (Information in part from Goitein’s index card.)

Verso: Legal record that Abū l-Surūr b. Ghanya(?) remarried his divorced wife Maʿānī bt. Karīm al-Aqraʿ ha-Levi. Dated: Wednesday night, 29 Tishrei 1541 Seleucid, which is 18 September 1229 CE. There is documentation of the payments returned to her as originally set down in her ketubba. Witnessed by Shelomo b. Eliyyahu. On the margin a notation: the remarriage took place without immersion (ṭevila) for menstrual purity. Goitein speculates that she might have been post-menopausal. Moss. VII,56 is her bill of divorce from 8 months earlier. (Information from Goitein's index card.)

Letter from an unknown man to his niece (bint al-akh). In Judaeo-Arabic. Dating: Probably 13th century. He opens, "How long will you remain a widow?" The writer has found her a promising suitor who recently visited Bilbays, a learned man who works as a teacher, the son of the sister of the teacher Bū l-Ḥasan Hillel al-Shanshāwī. The writer urges the addressee to send the suitor a letter (? תדפעי לה מן ענדך) and go along with this plan. He continues to urge her to cease wasting her youth in spinsterhood ("for I am a man and I was older(?) than you and I did not sit (i.e. as a widower)."). Cairo is also mentioned. The letter ends very abruptly with none of the formulaic regards, so this was probably a draft.

Legal document. Court record. Dated: 1084. Location: Fustat. This document contains a partial court record of a partnership between Yefet b. Wad‘a and Abū Zikrī. While Abū Zikrī was away travelling, Yefet invited Sa‘āda to join the partnership, for which Sa‘āda was to be paid 1.5 dirhams each day. Sa‘āda purchased henna for the partnership, and he called the court to validate his testimony that the value of the henna had dropped. As Yefet both invited Sa‘āda to the partnership in the absence of Abū Zikrī and agreed to pay him a daily wage, he appears to have been either the senior partner or a passive investor, while Abū Zikrī and Sa‘āda are active partners. Given that Yefet has invited Sa‘āda to join the extant partnership (instead of contracting a new partnership with Sa‘āda) Yefet and Abū Zikrī likely both had capital investments in the intial partnership, and Yefet had the task of investing the joint capital while Abū Zikrī pursued other trading opportunities. Unusually, the agreement between Sa‘āda and the other two partners required him to take an oath attesting to partnership accounts should the partnership assets lose value. The remainder of the document (lines 8-28) is a draft of a marriage agreement of a couple who were divorced in Tyre and subsequently reconciled in al-Mahalla. It provides specifics as to the dowry (including money, textiles and clothing, a drinking cup, and a mirror) but lacks the names of the relevant parties. This fragment may have been a page from a notary’s register. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture", 75-76)

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.

Abū ʿAlī b. ʿImrān, Alexandria, writes to the son of his dead sister, to Abū Mūsā Hārūn b. al-Muʿallim Yaʿaqov, Fusṭāṭ, the shop of Abū Naṣr al-Tilmīdh. See T-S 8J17.22, same writer, same recipient. "The troubles caused by agnates—but endured with resignation—are vividly brought home in a letter from Alexandria, addressed to the sons of a dead sister in the capital. The writer must have had a number of children, for he reports the death of the youngest, a boy, only in passing, adding drily: "May God preserve the rest." Two aged sisters lived with him, together with an orphan boy from a niece whose recent death is also reported. Another niece staying with him had a suitor whom she could not marry because she was a divorcee and had not received the legal documents (barā'a) needed for the new marriage, probably proving that she did not possess anything from the property of her former husband. The main purpose of the letter to the nephews was to secure the missing papers (perhaps one of them had been married to the unhappy woman). As though that were not enough: two sisters of those nephews lived in a house belonging to their family in Alexandria. The house was ill-omened (mayshūm), probably because someone had been killed there, or had died an unnatural or premature death. No one came to visit the girls, and they lived in complete solitude, "the most miserable creatures in the entire city with no one to care for them." The writer was prepared to invite these nieces to stay with him, but their brother would not permit them to move, probably in order to have someone to look after the property. Having already been ill for five months, during which time he was able to go out to the bazaar only once, the writer had entrusted one of the sons of his dead sister, Ḥassūn, with some of his business, but he had completely wrecked it. "The complaint is to God alone" (for what can one do against a close relative?). Several other relatives are mentioned in the letter in a rather sarcastic vein." Med Soc III A 3, n.2 (p.34).

F. 2r: Betrothal contract between Ṣedaqa b. M[oses?] and Wazīra bt. Mūsā b. Isaac. Dated Kislev 1691 of the Seleucid Era (= 1379 CE), and signed by Shemuʾel b. [...]. There is a delayed installment gift of 400 dirhams. (Information from CUDL.)

Recto: Marriage contract, fragment. Groom: Abū l-Faraj Yeshuʿa b. Berakhot. Bride: Milāḥ bt. Abū l-Faraj (from verso). Dating: Under the reshut of the Nagid Shemuel b. Ḥananya (1140–59). Witness: Yehuda b. Shelomo ha-Sofer. None of the monetary details are preserved, though we learn from verso that the delayed marriage gift was 5 dinars. Verso: Legal document written on the verso of the torn marriage contract. The husband and wife from recto remarry after the wife promises not to leave the house without her husband's permission. The husband still owed her one dinar which would have to be paid if they quarrelled again. Goitein's note card names Natan b. Shemuel ha-Ḥaver—is this written in his hand? Witnesses: Seʿadya b. Natan, Yehuda b. Shelomo ha-Sofer, and Mevorakh b. Natan. Information from Goitein's note card.

Legal document. Renewed ketubba after an incomplete divorce. Written and signed by Ḥalfon b. Menashshe ha-Levi. Dated: Sunday, 5 Elul 1438 Seleucid = 14 August 1127 CE. The husband, Abū Saʿīd Ḥalfon b. Elʿazar al-Zajjāj had already written the geṭ, but it was not delivered. The new ketubba was written specifying a delayed marriage payment (meʾuḥar) of 9 dinars or less, probably 5. His wife agreed to continue to live with his parents and not ask for separation (furqa). Also signed by Natan b. Shelomo ha-Kohen; Aharon b. Avraham ha-Kohen; and [...] b. ʿEzra ha-Gelili. (Information in part from Goitein's note card.)

Court record of the Karaite community regarding the marriage arrangements.