IN THE COURTS OF THE NATIONS - DataSpace - Princeton ...

having agreed to buy two silver bracelets, sugar, tea and wax from him for 153 mithqāls and then
refusing to pay the agreed-upon amount. 133 A settlement on the back of this document recorded
a month later notes that Shalom pledged to pay the entire amount he owed al-Faqālī. 134 In other
instances, Muslims accused Jews of keeping mules in their possession which did not belong to
them; 135 of refusing to return property which they held on security or as a mortgage, even after
the debt had been repaid; 136 and for failing to deliver goods they had agreed to sell the
plaintiff. 137
Lawsuits brought before the qāḍī usually took place over a period of weeks or even
months and almost always followed the same procedure. 138 The first step was for the plaintiff
(al-mudda‘ī) to bring an accusation against the defendant (al-mudda‘ā ‘alayhi); this accusation
was referred to as the maqāl (literally, a piece of writing). In most of the maqāls in the Assarraf
collection, a Jewish creditor accused a Muslim of owing him money, either for debts the Muslim
had contracted for himself or for those he had guaranteed for others. 139 The plaintiff would then
ask the defendant to “acknowledge” the claim (iqrār), or to provide an “answer” to the claim
(jawāb). 140 Subsequent steps in the litigation of civil cases usually took place days or even
133 TC, File #5, 9 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1292.
134 Dated 16 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1292. For more such cases, see also File #5, 14 Muḥarram 1277 and File #2, 29 Dhū al-
Qa‘da 1291.
135 TC, File #8, 15 Jumādā I 1296 and 5 Ramaḍān 1301.
136 TC, File #1, 18 Ṣafar 1297 and File #8, 3 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1317.
137 TC, File #5, 15 Rabī‘ II 1292. See also one last type of suit, in which a Muslim sued Shalom for failing to record
a payment he made on his debt: File #7, 12 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1297.
138 For a contemporary, brief description of procedure in sharī‘a courts see Maeterlinck, “Les institutions juridiques
au Maroc,” 478-9.
139 Of the seventy maqāls in the collection, nineteen concern defendants who have only guaranteed debts for others
and thirty-five are for debts owed by the defendant himself (though sometimes the defendant might also have
guaranteed a debt in addition to the debts he owed personally).
140 This plea was sometimes included as part of the original maqāl, though at other times it was written in a separate
entry, almost always of the same date. One exception is the maqāl from TC, File #3, 21 Rajab 1329: this very long,
drawn-out case was brought by Ya‘aqov and his associate Eliyahu b. ‘Azūz Kohen against al-Jilālī b. Aḥmad b. al-
Faqīh b. ‘Ab (?) al-Zarhūnī al-‘Asārī. Before pleading, al-Jilālī had a number of questions about the claim, and it
was not until 4 Ramaḍān (six weeks later) that he finally pleaded not guilty. The standard procedure followed in
104