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

Simultaneous Use of Jewish and Islamic Courts
The use of sharī‘a courts for intra-Jewish matters could represent direct competition
among the two legal systems. Yet at times, Jews used sharī‘a courts in tandem with batei din—
that is, they had the same contracts notarized in both courts or drew up confirmations of a
contract notarized by sofrim with ‘udūl (or vice versa). There is some evidence that Jews
adopted similar practices in medieval Cairo and in the early modern Ottoman Empire. 31 This
kind of simultaneous use of Jewish and Islamic courts further demonstrates that batei din and
sharī‘a courts could function cooperatively. Far from always imperiling the independence and
thus success of Jewish communities, sharī‘a courts could also work in harmony with the very
batei din with which—according to most scholars— they were in competition.
Moroccan Jewish legal authorities were central to this successful harmonization. Not
only did rabbis and communal leaders recognize the validity of contracts drawn up in Islamic
courts; at times they went even further by enacting communal ordinances (taqqanot, s. taqqanah)
actually requiring Jews to register their legal transactions in a sharī‘a court. In seventeenth-
century Fez the council of elders passed a series of taqqanot requiring the city’s Jews to register
marriages, leases, and property transactions before the qāḍī as well as in a Jewish court. 32 Their
motive in doing so was to prevent Jews from taking advantage of the simultaneous existence of
the Jewish and Islamic legal orders. For instance, some Jews would sell a house to a Jew in a
beit din and then sell the same house to a Muslim in sharī‘a court. Since ultimately Islamic law
was the law of the land, the beit din would be unable to enforce the sale made under its auspices.
When the unfortunate Jewish buyer went to the sharī‘a court with his bill of sale drawn up in
31 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, v. 2, 400; Khan, Arabic Legal Documents, 1; Simonsohn, A Common Justice,
178; Wittmann, “Before Qadi and Vizier,” 112-13.
32 Ankawa, Kerem Ḥemer, Numbers 52-55.
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