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

of debt among Jews and Muslims by sofrim is perhaps even more surprising than that of real
estate transactions, given the frequency with which Jews had ‘udūl notarize their documents
attesting debts owed by Muslims. While real estate had a somewhat special status giving rise to
exceptional notarization practices, inter-religious debts, on the other hand, were regularly
notarized in sharī‘a courts (as indicated by the hundreds of bills of debt which the Assarrafs had
notarized by ‘udūl, discussed in the previous chapter).
In many cases there is no obvious reason why Muslims had their bills of sale, lease, or
debt drawn up by sofrim. As we have seen, sales, leases, and debts among Jews and Muslims
were regularly notarized by ‘udūl according to Islamic law. Perhaps the choices of someone like
al-Ghanjāwī—a Muslim who invested in property in the millāḥ—stemmed from his desire to be
able to produce bills of sale notarized according to Jewish law in the event that the property was
contested in a Jewish court. Of course, it would seem that a Muslim would be able to bring any
dispute in which he was involved to a sharī‘a court, and thus that a document notarized by ‘udūl
would suffice. Yet there might have been advantages to adjudicating such questions in a Jewish
court. Perhaps some Muslims had close relations with the dayyanim presiding over the local beit
din and felt that these ties would help them get a more favorable ruling than they might find in a
qāḍī’s court. It is also possible that certain batei din had reputations for being easily corruptible
with bribes, and that Muslims turned Jewish judges’ immorality to their own advantage. 70
Sometimes the motives of Muslims who availed themselves of the services of Jewish
courts were very clear, such as when they wanted to take advantage of a legal device that existed
in the Arabic text, I believe the only sensible interpretation is one in which ‘Abdallāh was owed money by Jews—
debts which were recorded in Jewish legal documents—and allowed Shlomoh to collect these debts on his behalf as
part of the payment of the outstanding debt.
70
There is evidence that Jews in the medieval period turned to sharī‘a courts which they knew were easily
corruptible (see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, v. 2, 365), and it seems plausible that batei din functioned
similarly at times.
138