-
Document date
-
Primary language
- Arabic
Dated: 15 Dhū l-Ḥijja 870 AH (Sunday 29 July 1466 CE). The raʾīs al-yahūd, Yūsuf b. Khalīfa, and his deputy, Shemuʾel b. Naṣr, promise not to prevent the physician Manṣūr b. Ibrahīm b. al-Abraṣ (son of the leper, or possibly the redhead) from entering the synagogue in Zuwayla, the Jewish neighborhood in Cairo. The trigger for the conflict was a motion to renovate the synagogue, a fraught issue during the Mamluk period: in 859 AH (1454–55), under the relatively permissive Sultan Īnāl, a court authorized the repair of the old Rabbanite synagogue in Zuwayla and two Rabbanite synagogues in Fusṭāṭ, as well as the Qaraite synagogues in Cairo and Fusṭāṭ (a copy of this permit, from 18 January 1456, survived in the Qaraite archive in Cairo); under Qāʾitbāy, there was apparently a request to repair some synagogues, but the community objected, fearing that Muslims would destroy them, as they had threatened or sought to do in other cases. The judge is Shams al-Dīn al-Sulamī. Goitein discovered T-S Ar.38.131 and discussed it briefly in Med.
T-S Ar.38.131r
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله وحده جرى ذلك اللهم صلى على سيّدنا محمد وآله وصحبه وسلم تسليماً كثيراً
بمجلس الحكم العزيز بين يدي …
In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. Praise be to God alone. God’s prayers and many blessings upon our lord Muḥammad, on his famil…
Tags
1 Transcription
1 Translation
1 Discussion