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

evidence from the nineteenth century that Jews bothered to have these contracts notarized in both
types of court. Yet Jews did follow the requirement to register real estate transactions in both
courts. It is possible that this practice was even more widespread than the relatively small
numbers of documents I found which have two versions of the same contract on a single sheet of
paper. Perhaps the intra-Jewish real estate transactions notarized by ‘udūl were in fact the
Islamic versions of bills of sale which had also been notarized by sofrim, but on separate
documents. 37 These hypothetical corresponding Jewish legal documents might not have
survived, might exist in private collections, or might even be preserved in one of the collections I
examined yet remain unidentified due to the absence of comprehensive catalogs. Either way, the
existence of Islamic legal documents which duplicated a contract already notarized by sofrim
shows that the practice of simultaneously using both legal systems existed, even if we do not
know how widespread it was.
Notarizing a document with both ‘udūl and sofrim was only one way in which Jews made
simultaneous use of both legal orders. Jews also had ‘udūl draw up documents which attested to
points of Jewish law. I began this chapter with a brief discussion of the legal actions taken
around Shalom Assarraf’s death as an example of this kind of strategy. The document which
Shalom’s heirs drew up in the sharī‘a court concerning the inheritance from their late father is
worth quoting at some length:
When the dhimmī merchant Shalom b. Yehudah Assarraf died, it was necessary to
specify his inheritance. So at that time al-ḥazān 38 Vidāl b. al-ḥazān Abnīr al-Ṣarfātī, who
is among the religious experts 39 of the Jews who knows which Jews inherit and which do
not according to their religion (huwa min asāqifati al-yahūdi al-‘ārifīna bi-man yarithu
min al-yahūdi mimman lā yarithu minhum fī millatihim), came before two witnesses [i.e.
37
I found some documents which clearly indicate that another version of the contract at hand existed, written in the
other religion’s court but on a separate piece of paper: UL, Or.26.544, 19 Ṣafar 1318 and PD, Shvat 5556.
38
Al-ḥazān is a title used in Arabic and Judeo-Arabic to denote a respected Jewish elder, sometimes a rabbi though
not necessarily.
39
Literally, “bishops” (asaqifa); the language here is taken from a Christian context.
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