ثيقة شرعيّة: T-S 16.148

الوصف

Legal document: three legal documents on a single rotulus. Dated 27 Iyyar 4846 (14 May 1086). All the cases concern Maʿālī b. Khalaf and some ʿadliyya dinars, apparently worth three regular dinars and not in use by the public. Goitein defines ʿadliyya dinars as "special deluxe issues that were not supposed to be circulated" (Med. Soc. 1:231). In the first case, which is fragmentary, Maʿālī b. Khalaf sued his brother Abū Naṣr Manṣūr in connection with a deal in flax valued between 40 and 50 dinars. There is also reference to Yefet b. Avraham, the administrator of the mint (mutawallī dār al-ḍarb), who had rented or purchased part of a house from Manṣūr b. Khalaf and transferred to it a disputed treasure found near the Qubba mosque in the Fortress of the Greeks. Line 6: "He showed him dinars buried in the neighborhood of the Mosque of the Qubba. The continuation seems to contain some suggestion of embezzlement from the mint: the ending, in Goitein's translation (with a light edit by Marina Rustow): "Finally, there appeared before us Barakāt b. Khalaf, who made the following deposition: Maʿālī b. Khalaf brought me to the house of Yefet b. Avraham and gave me a basket with gold dust, which I carried to the house of his brother Manṣūr at nighttime. On the following morning, Manṣūr b. Khalaf sifted the dust that I had carried to him, brought a Muslim customer and sold it to him for about three dinars in my presence. We have written down what has been said before us and signed, so that it may serve as an instrument of securing rights and as a proof." In the second legal document on the recto, which carries the date 27 Iyyar 4846, Menashshe b. Yaʿaqov, testifies that many years prior, Manṣūr b. Khalaf, brother of Maʿālī, had come to him accompanied by two Muslims who demanded payment from him for flax that he had bought from them. Manṣur handed him (Menashshe) some dinars to weigh, and Menashshe found among them 15 or 17 ʿAdliyya dinars, which frightened him, as such coins weren't available to the public. He weighed them and handed them to the Muslims in payment for the flax, and later asked one of the Muslims to exchange three or four of the dinars with him, despite his earlier fear. Menashshe took the ʿAdliyya dinars, presumably in order to prevent Manṣūr from getting into trouble from using them openly; Menashshe then advised Manṣūr that if he had any more of them, he shouldn't show them in public but dispose of them secretly. So ends Menashshe's statement, at which point the court asks Manṣūr what he did next. Manṣūr replied: "I told him that I didn't have any more of these coins, but had borrowed them from my brother," Maʿālī. Two weeks later, the affair of Maʿālī and his embezzlement in the household of Yefet b. Avraham, manager of the mint, came to light. The third document, on verso, is written by Hillel b. ʿEli and signed by him and by ʿEli ha-Kohen b. Yaḥyā and Yoshiyyaʿhu b. Moshe. Yefet presents claims against Manṣūr also involving ʿAdliyya dinars. (Information from Goitein's translation)