ثيقة شرعيّة: T-S K6.167

الوصف

P1: Legal document on parchment, related to real estate, probably a deed of sale. In Arabic script, badly rubbed. Dated: Jumādā II 346 AH = August/September 957 CE. Location: unknown. Concerning a compound (dār) belonging to a woman who makes a statement regarding property rights of a Jewish man (l. 5). The boundaries of the property include a mosque (l. 2), the compound of Abū l-Khayr b. [...] al-Sāmirī (the Samaritan), and the Samaritan synagogue (al-kanīsa al-maʿrūfa bi-kanīsat al-sāmira) (l. 4). Signatures of witnesses appear at the bottom in a different ink. This may be the only evidence of the Samaritan community in Egypt in the 10th century, and the only known mention of the Samaritan synagogue (kanīsa) prior to al-Maqrīzī (d. 1442), who describes a Samaritan synagogue located in Ḥārat Zuwayla in the street Darb al-Kūrānī. There are earlier mentions of Samaritans in Egypt in a handful of Greek papyri from the 5th and 6th centuries, and they also appear in several Geniza documents from the 11th and 12th centuries. See Pummer, "The Samaritans in Egypt," in Études sémitiques et samaritaines offertes à Jean Margin (1998), 213–32. This may also be the earliest legal document in Arabic script identified in the Geniza. On other pre-Fatimid documents relating to real estate transactions in Fustat, see Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, pp. 38–39. This document was probably used as part of the binding of the book to which the ownership note (P2) belongs. P2 recto: ownership note of a book belonging to Ḥalfon ha-Kohen b. Moshe he-Ḥaver. At upper left, there are a few words jotted in a different ink, including the name Mawhūb. P2 verso: one line of Arabic script. (Information in part from GRU catalogue via FGP.) ASE