List or table: BL OR 5549.6

Description

Account of the qodesh, ca. September 1201. This is an accoutning written on both sides of a single leaf, detached from a notebook. The peculiar thing about this document is that it shows the existence of two separate lists, of inhabited apartments and of empty ones. The latter have their rents listed, in order to compare the actual with the budgeted revenue. There is also a third class, of people who live in their apartments without paying rent. This is extremely unusual in the accounts of the qodesh and can only be explained by the extraordinary conditions of distress at the time. Seven apartments are listed as occupied rent-free; among them, that of R. Anatoli, whose rent was in any case reduced to five dirhams, as against 52 dirhams that he still paid three months earlier. Among the people exempt from payment are "a poor woman" and some scholars, one of them styled al-khaver. The total sum counted on as revenue was 336.5 dirhams, whereas the actual income was only 171, i.e., a little more than half. (Information from Gil, Documents, pp. 386 #102)