מסמך משפטי: Yevr.-Arab. I 328

תיאור

Legal record (#116) in a court register/pinqas from a Karaite beit din in Cairo (on f. 38r of Yevr.-Arab. I 328). The date is damaged, with only the month of Tammuz legible. This entry could have been written around the same timespan as the previous record #115: which is dated 1 Tammuz 5326 AM (1566 CE). This legal case deals with a dispute over someone's possession of the materia medica item "China root" (smilax) or perhaps "Chinese licorice" (ʿaraq Sinī) and refers to a specific part of the plant itself (שגאף/شغاف)– which is probably some kind of membrane (the term is commonly used as "pericardium" for human anatomy). The legal case may center on disputed ownership, but much of the opening lines are lost to damage. The lower section of the record deals with a communal fine of 10 qinṭārs of olive oil (zayt ṭayyib) payable to the heqdesh of the Karaites. This is a common fine among early modern Karaite legal documents from Cairo. MCD/ASE. For scholarship on the usage of "China root" in the sixteenth century, see: Anna E. Winterbottom, "Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica," Social History of Medicine, Volume 28, Issue 1, February 2015, 22–44.