Scholarship on Legal document: ENA 4020.26

We, the undersigned witnesses, say what we know and testify to, an

irrefutable testimony about what is the custom in Miṣr between 

merchants (al-ʿāda bi-Miṣr bayna al-tujjār) regarding shirka: If a group of them enters either

a dār wakāla or a merchants’ warehouse (makhzan tujjār) and they examine the merchandise or evaluate it before one of them

buys it, then they are (indeed) indicating to one another that [they have undertaken a partnership]

in it (the merchandise), and one of them may buy [the merchandise] and sell [it … while registering]

the names of those who indicated to him (that they will form a partnership) with him in the register of the representative of the merchants or the register [of the merchants] (daftar al-wakīl aw al-t[ujjār]?). [But if] 

they say to a broker, “He (A) is buying this for them” and either (A) comes along [to]

his associate (ṣāḥib = B) and says to him in the street – neither at the dār al-wakāla [nor at the merchants’ warehouse] – 

“I saw some goods in such-and-such a place,” and he had evaluated them with such-and-such a broker, 

(if A says,) “If I buy them, pay me half or some (of the capital),” and (B) replies to him,

“OK, if you buy them, I will pay you,” and then (A) goes and buys them after

this, but no one is with him either when he pays or when he concludes the transaction, rather, 

with his money he alone bought it for himself—then (B) has the choice. If he wants

to pay (A), he can pay him, but if he doesn’t want to, then he doesn’t (have to) pay anything. The custom is that (B) should pay 

something only as a favor that he grants, not as an obligation incumbent upon him (because it’s not an official partnership). It has been like this for some

time, as well when merchandise is broken, or there appears in it

some defect, or there is a technical fault in ownership: (A) can’t say to his associate, “You lose with me,” or “the

fault in ownership doesn’t lie with me,” since each of them had the choice for himself (of whether to accept it as a valid partnership, since it wasn’t legally binding in the first place). When he asked us (to testify about) what we

knew, we testified to it in the middle decade of Iyyar, 1452 Sel.

in Fustat, Egypt. Confirmed, valid and enduring. Shelomo ha-Kohen Bar Yosef Zetzel.

Shemrya ha-Kohen Bar Shelomo. … ha-Kohen Bar Moshe.

Yosef Bar Avon Zetzel. Yosef ha-Levi Bar Efrim.