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

Ghanjāwī bought a building with a courtyard (ḥatzer) from Avraham Nahmiash, his wife
Ḥavivah, Avraham’s brother David, and David’s wife Esther—and notarized the bill of sale in a
Jewish court. 59 On April 9 of the same year, al-Ghanjāwī bought another building from Jews,
again with a bill of sale in Hebrew. 60 He would return to the beit din to register at least three
more bills of sale between 1889 and 1908. 61 It is possible that he was also having these contracts
drawn up simultaneously in sharī‘a courts, but that those documents are lost (or at least not
available in the archives). We do know that on other occasions al-Ghanjāwī used the sharī‘a
court to register his real estate transactions with Jews. For instance, on November 1, 1892, he
sent his representative (nā’ib), a Jew named Dasān b. al-Qara‘, to buy four rooms in a house in
the millāḥ of Fez from a Jewish woman and her two children, and had this sale notarized by
‘udūl. 62 Yet it is also possible that al-Ghanjāwī considered notarization by sofrim sufficient
under certain circumstances, and chose the beit din over the sharī‘a court for some of his legal
needs. 63
Muslims also used batei din in order to notarize leases, either to or from Jews. In the
spring of 1904, Muḥammad b. Ḥamu leased three upper rooms in the millāḥ of Marrakesh to
Yeshu‘a Corcos, the shaykh al-yahūd of the community, for two years. 64 On March 26, 1912,
Yosef Ḥazan b. Shlomo agreed to rent a room in a small house to Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b.
Mulūd for thirteen months starting from April 18 (which corresponded to the first of Iyar), for
59 DAR, Yahūd, 14 Shvat 5649.
60 DAR, Yahūd, 8 Nisan 5649. It is possible that a document in Arabic from April 18 in which the same Jews
(Massan (?) b. David and his wife Zahra) sold al-Ghanjāwī a courtyard is simply a reiteration of this earlier sale but
in an Islamic court. However, the first sale was for 600 duoros while the second sale was for 300 riyāls: see DAR,
Yahūd, 17 Sha‘bān 1306.
61 DAR, Yahūd, 10 Ḥeshvan 5653; 1 Iyar 5668; and one document with no date.
62 DAR, Yahūd, 10 Rabī‘ II 1310. The nā’ib’s name is difficult to read, but it appears to be Dasān.
63 For other instances in which Muslims notarized their real estate sales in batei din, see: University of Alberta,
Bension Collection, Ms. 14 (described in Aranov, Catalogue of the Bension Collection, 44), Nisan 5517; UL,
Or.26.543 (2), 15 Av 5624; Or.26.544, 27 Shvat 5645, 5 Nisan 5664, and 18 Adar 5670; CAHJP, MA/P/12, Shvat
5517; PD, Shvat 5556.
64 UL, Or.26.544, 10 Iyar 5664.
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