Legal document: T-S 24.20

Description

Legal document. Record of release. Written in the hand of Ḥalfon b. Menashshe. Location: Fustat. Dated: Adar I, 1426 Seleucid. One of two copies of a signed and executed mutual release of the partners Abū l-Karam Nadiv b. Saʿadya ha-Levi and Abū l-Surūr Peraḥya b. Benyamin from their long distance trading partnership. Both partners traveled to Yemen and traded in fabrics and and manufactured commodities. The partners use a number of terms to describe their complicated partnership relationships: khulṭa, shirka, and muḍāraba (commenda). There were also outside investors in their partnership, suggesting that Nadiv and Peraḥya were joint active partners employing this outside capital (as such the other partners are not mentioned in the release). The details of their relationship had been specified in a detailed agreement (kalimnā) which may or may not have been oral [NB: the document actually says "kull minnā," "each of us," which is not a reference to a prior detailed agreement]; this document represents only the termination of their joint relationship. Each party had to settle his account with his outside investors independently, in contrast to the corporate model seen elsewhere. (Information in part from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture," 152)