Legal document: Bodl. MS heb. f 56/45 + Bodl. MS heb. f 56/46

Description

Court register. Bodl. MS heb. f 56/45r: Deathbed will. Dated: Wednesday, 18 Nisan 1493 Seleucid = 24 March 1182 CE. Testator: Abū l-Faraj b. Moshe Ibn al-Kallām. He leaves to his wife, the daughter of his maternal uncle, one third of a house, if she does not marry again. If she does, she will receive only what was still due to her from the delayed matrimonial gift. This man owed 2 1/2 dinars to Maimonides, 4 1/6 dinars to al-Shaykh al-Muwaffaq (possibly the physician Ibn Jumayʿ) for a capitation tax paid on his behalf, 1 dinar and 12 dirhams to the poet and judge Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk, 4 dinars to the faqīh Ibn Ṣawla, and 5 dirhams to Abū l-Khayr al-Ḥayfī. Written and signed by Shemuel b. Saʿadya ha-Levi. Also signed by Elʿazar b. Mikhaʾel. (Information from Goitein's notes and from Mediterranean Society, III, p. 31.) Translated and discussed at length in S. D. Goitein, “The Moses Maimonides-Ibn Sana Al-Mulk Circle: A Deathbed Declaration from March 1182,” in Moshe Sharon, ed., Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 399-405.