ثيقة شرعيّة: T-S Ar.51.104

الوصف

Legal agreement regarding the Rabbanite Jewish communal pious endowment of Cairo (al-Qāhira al-Maḥrūsa) and Old Cairo/Fustat (Miṣr al-ʿAtīqa). In Arabic script. Date: 26 Ramaḍān 9[04] AH (1499 CE). In the introduction to her edition, Jane Hathaway notes: "This document is a legal agreement (taṣāduq). Numerous words in the text are obscured by tears, and in addition, the date with which the text concludes is difficult to read, apart from the day and the month, 26 Ramaḍān. Nonetheless, the involvement of Nathan Sholāl, the penultimate Raʾīs al-Yahūd, in the case allows us to interpret the year as ar[baʿ?] tisʿa [miʾa], ‘nine [hun- dred] [and four?]’, i.e., 1499 or thereabouts.... By the terms of this agreement, Nathan Sholāl grants administrative rights over Rabbanite waqf properties in Cairo and ‘Old Cairo’, or Fusṭāṭ, to Muʿallim ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Mūsā ibn Ṣadaqa ‘known as Ibn Ṣanīʿa’ and a man who may be his uncle, Muʿallim Saʿīd ibn Ṣadaqa ibn Muhadhdhab. In the document, Nathan is called first Ibrāhīm, a name not attested for him in other known sources, then Natān ibn Saʿīd ibn Natān.... The properties that the two muʿallims will administer are called waqf in our document. This term was not simply a convenient Arabic synonym for the halakhic endowment known in Hebrew as heqdesh. By the late fourteenth century, all Jewish pious endowments were established in Muslim courts as waqf. This practice was the Jewish community’s response to a 755 AH/1354 CE law placing all inheritance cases, regardless of confessional community, under state jurisdiction, thus assigning them to sharīʿa courts. Endowing properties as waqf allowed the Rabbanite community to control the revenues they produced and avoid having the properties or their revenues confiscated by the Mamluk state. As for the endowed properties themselves, the document does not specify where in Cairo and in Fusṭāṭ they are located." (Hathaway, Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah, 291-292, 294) Previous PGP description: Bill of testimony. In Arabic script. The Raʾīs Ibrāhīm known as Natan b. Saʿīd b. Natan the Rabbanite Jew appoints ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Mūsā b. Ṣadaqa al-Sabbāk the Rabbanite Jew and Saʿīd b. Ṣadaqa b. Muhadhdhab al-Mutaṭabbib the Rabbanite Jew as his representatives/delegates for an official communal position related to the waqf of the Jews of Cairo (al-Qāhira al-Maḥrūsa) and Fustat (Miṣr al-ʿAtīqa). A witness mentioned in the document is Sulaymān b. Yūsuf b. Shemuel known as Ibn al-Tājir the Rabbanite Jew. There are two witness signatures (of Muslims). The date is 26 Ramaḍān but the year is difficult to read. Likely Mamluk or early Ottoman era based on handwriting. ASE