State document: JCC Richards I
State document JCC Richards IDescription
A part of a decree from the court of the Fātimid Caliph al-Ẓāhir, protecting the rights of the Qaraite communities in Palestine against Rabbanite encroachment, 1034 CE. The original decree was kept in Cairo, in the Qaraite community archive at the Dār Simḥa synagogue. There it was identified and first published by Gottheil in 1908, and it was still there when Richards photographed it in 1969. Its current whereabouts are not known, but it seems that it was deposited in the Egyptian National Library (see Rustow, A Lost Archive, p. 496 note 8). Richards' photocopy is kept with his archive at the NLI, and is produced in Rustow's book pp. 144-151. The first section of the extant decree gives both communities (Rabbanites and Qaraites) permission to act according to their customs, and explicitly allows Qaraites to keep their customs in their synagogues without interference. The second section of the decree is addressed to amīr al-juyūsh, the governor of Syria and Palestine (who at the time was Anūshtekīn al-Duzbarī), to enforce this decree. The decree should be kept by its receivers (line 44). The entire affair is discussed in Rustow, Archive, pp. 249-263. The decree is dated to Wednesday, the 11th of Jumāda al-Awwal 425 AH (3.4.1034 CE). A Judaeo-Arabic transliteration of a very similar decree, for the Rabbanites of Palestine, was found in the Cairo Geniza – PGPID 1243. Gottheil's transcription was amended by S.M. Stern, but Stern did not see the original, so his suggested order of the lines is mistaken.