Legal document: CUL Or.1080 J290

Description

Legal document. Partnership record. Dated: ʿerev Pesaḥ 1351 Sel. (10 April 1039). Location: Cairo. In April 1039, the parties Tuviyah b. Yefet ha-Levi and ‘Allūn b. Faraj (and perhaps Salāma ha-Kohen b. Nissan) came to the home of Sulaymān b. Isḥāq b. Meir in Cairo. Sulaymān was involved in a partnership (mufāwaḍa) with Tuviyya and ‘Allūn. The other partner to the agreement is Khalaf b. Ibrāhīm. When Tuviyya and ‘Allūn demand a payout from the partnership, to be distributed by Sulaymān (evidently the senior partner), Sulaymān disputes this, explaining that Tuviyya and ‘Allūn have received their final settlements, and Khalaf is free from his obligations to them. Sulaymān and Khalaf terminate their relationship, and the April document is given to Khalaf as proof. ‘Allūn's attestation that Sulaymān and Khalaf had “a joint enterprise (mu‘āmala) and not a qinyan”, complicating the understanding of partnership models in this period; the difference between a mufāwaḍa and a mu‘āmala (or between either of these and a qinyan) is unclear Immediately below, in different handwriting, appears the testimony of Salāma b. Nissan ha-Kohen to Sulaymān that he (Salama) has made the same statement in a different location, at the home of an elder. Goitein believed that the Khalaf b. Ibrahīm mentioned in this document was the same one that appeared in T-S 18J1.6 (PGPID 3523); Lieberman disputes this. In yet another handwriting, the document validates the signatures of Tuviyya and ‘Allūn in the permanent court in Fusṭāṭ some months after their initial testimony was recorded in the home of Sulaymān in Cairo. The signatories are the three judges Efrayim b. Shemarya, Avraham b. Mevasser, and Yefet he-Ḥazzan b. David. (Information from Lieberman, "A Partnership Culture", 281-284)