Legal document: JCC 217
Legal document JCC 217Description
A Muslim court deed documenting the endowment of private property for communal purposes. The owner dedicating the property is Shemuʾel b. Shaʿbān al-Yahūdī al-Ḥarīrī, known as al-Kōhen (line 2). The property dedicated is three quarters (line 3) of a house found “in protected Cairo, in the khut ḥārat al-yahūd in a dead-end street (darb ghayr nāfiḍ) used to be known as darb al-sharīf and currently known as darb al-kanīsa al-turkīyya” (line 4). The endowment should be used, so it seems, for the maintenance of the Turkish synagogue “mentioned above”, and “the poor among the community of the European Jews (al-masākīn min tāʾifat al-yahūd al-faranj)” (line 23). The document is dated to 20th of Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1070 AH (5.12.1659 CE). The modern archive of the Rabbanite Jewish community of Cairo (JCC) was created in the early 20th century based on centuries-old documents preserved by several respected Cairene Jewish families. It was catalogued by Yisrael Ben-Zeev in the 1930's, and he also made some photocopies. The archive has since been lost, and it seems that it was deposited in the Egyptian National Library (see Rustow, A Lost Archive, p. 496 note 8). Currently, only the hand-written catalogue and the photocopies made by Ben-Zeev are accessible, in the National Library of Israel. A photocopy of this document is found at the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) at the National Library of Israel, ET-Ca. 30.