Legal document: ENA 3924.1

Description

Muslim legal query with responsum (fatwā). The query concerns a young Jewish man who insulted a venerable Jewish rabbi (...ḥākhān ʿālim al-yahūdī...) by calling him "apostate (kāfir), cursed (malʿūn), swine (khinzīr), blackguard (zarbūn)" in the presence of Muslim witnesses. The ruling is that the young man should receive a severe punishment (taʿzīr shadīd) at the discretion of the presiding judge (ḥākim). The main answer is written by the Shāfiʿī muftī Muḥammad al-Minyāwī (or al-Manbāwī?), which is then endorsed by the Ḥanafī muftī Muḥammad b. [...] al-Dīn and the Mālikī muftī Muḥammad b. Sālim al-Sanhūrī. Literary sources (e.g. https://shamela.ws/book/2138/22) attest to a Mālikī faqīh known as Sālim al-Sanhūrī who died in 1010 AH = 1601/02 CE. A date ca. 1600 CE would be consistent with the handwriting and layout of this document. On the insult zarbūn (at least in modern times), see Susan Slyomovics, The Merchant of Art: An Egyptian Hilali Oral Epic Poet in Performance (Berkeley, 1987), in which her informants define the term as meaning "deep black, ill-mannered, and without family and lineage." ASE