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Lease contracts, on the other hand, uniformly concerned real estate. In all the lease
contracts found in the collection, the Assarrafs were the landlords renting property to Muslims—
never the other way around. 102 Again, this is not representative of broader trends, since legal
documents held in other collections preserve examples of Jews renting property from
Muslims. 103
Most of the leases in the Assarraf collection were for the usufruct rights—that is, the right
to occupy the property in question—to stores which belonged to a pious endowment (ḥubs or
waqf). 104 The usufruct rights to a ḥubs property were owned separately from the property itself.
There were a number of different kinds of usufruct titles, though the only one used in the
Assarraf documents is zīna. 105 Specifically, one acquired a zīna on a ḥubs property by “filling
the property with equipment, windows, or similarly useful accessories.” 106 Subsequently, the
usufruct right was transferable, inheritable, and could be leased separately from a lease on the
property itself. 107 (The zīna was not so different from the ḥazaqah in Jewish law, which I
discuss further in the following chapter.) The Assarrafs owned the zīna of at least three different
stores in the millāḥ of Fez, stores that belonged to a pious endowment. 108 The Assarrafs rented
102
The single rental contract in which a Jew was the tenant concerned Ḥaim b. Ya‘aqov Harosh, an associate of the
Assarrafs; Ḥaim rented the usufruct rights (zīna) to a store from al-‘Isāwī b. al-‘Adal (TC, File #6, 4 Dhū al-Qa‘da
1320).
103
See, for instance, UL, Or.26.543 (1), 18 Rajab 1302 (in which Masān b. Harān, the agent of Yeshu‘a Corcos,
rented part of a house in Marrakesh from the Muslim al-‘Abbās b. al-Mahdī al-Sharādī); Or.26.543 (2), 11 Rabī‘ II
1320 (in which ‘Akān b. Ḥaim Corcos rented a funduq from the Makhzan in Essaouira); PD, 30 Rabī ‘ II 1366 (in
which Ya‘aqov b. Avraham Sabbāgh rented a room in Fez from a Muslim).
104
Eleven of the seventeen lease contracts were for the zīna of a store.
105
See Louis Milliot, Démembrements du Habous : menfa‘ā, gzā, guelsā, zīnā, istighrāq (Paris: Editions Ernest
Leroux, 1918); on zīna in particular, see 57-59. See also G. Baer, “Ḥikr,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman,
et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2003); J. Abribat, “Essai sur les contrats de quasi-aliénation et de location perpétuelle auxquels
l’institution du hobous à donné naissance,” Revue Algérienne et Tunisienne de Législation et de Jurisprudence 17
(1901).
106
“…garnir le local du matériel meublant, vitrines ou accessoires analogues utiles” (Milliot, Démembrements du
Habous, 57).
107
Ibid., Chapter 1.
108
One was across from the Funduq al-Diwān, another was the second store on the left of the same funduq, and the
last was the third store on the left of the same funduq. The first such lease contract is from 5 Muḥarram 1301 (TC,
97