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

The Assarraf collection provides a good starting point for understanding why Jews
decided to bring their intra-Jewish cases to ‘udūl. 8 As mentioned earlier, approximately 2% of
the documents in the Assarraf collection concern intra-Jewish notarial contracts. The majority of
these (about two-thirds) are powers of attorney in which one Jew grants another Jew agency to
represent him in all legal matters. 9 Often such powers of attorney were drawn up among family
members; for instance, on June 21, 1874, Ya‘aqov made his father Shalom his agent. 10 Others
were among friends or business associates, such as when Maymon b. Sūsān made Shalom his
agent. 11 It is no surprise that Jews drew up such powers of attorney with ‘udūl; if a Jew wanted
to represent another Jew in a sharī‘a court, only an Islamic legal document would constitute
proof that he had power of attorney to do so. 12 In this case, the services of Jewish and Islamic
courts were not competing, since Jews could not use sofrim to draw up intra-Jewish powers of
attorney if they wanted a qāḍī to consider these documents valid.
Most types of contracts did, however, engender direct competition between sofrim and
‘udūl since both types of notaries provided equivalent services. Even in these cases, Jews
sometimes chose notarization in a sharī‘a court. This was especially true for real estate
transactions, particularly sales of property. Real estate transactions constituted about 20% of the
intra-Jewish documents in the Assarraf collection. 13 Among the other collections I consulted,
real estate transactions made up over two-thirds of the intra-Jewish contracts notarized by
8
Since the other intra-Jewish contracts notarized by ‘udūl which I found are not part of larger collections from one
family, they cannot inform us about how individuals or families chose this kind of jurisdictional boundary crossing
as a general rule.
9
That is, 26 out of a total of 39.
10
TC, File #5, 6 Jumādā I 1291.
11
TC, File #4, 21 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1291.
12
For an intra-Jewish power of attorney outside of the Assarraf collection, see PD, 29 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1305, power of
attorney from Avraham b. al-Shaykh Ya‘aqov and his son Moshe.
13
That is, 8 out of 39.
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