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

claimed that Emsellem had no right to the property in question. Instead, the Ibn Masar family
had rented the store to Salomon Roffé, a Jewish American protégé. Roffé was in possession of
documents drawn up before ‘udūl and signed by a qāḍī testifying to his having leased the
property. It was thus Roffé, not Emsellem, who leased the store to Benhaim. Benhaim had
ceased paying rent to Emsellem and had begun paying rent exclusively to Roffé on the order of
the nāẓir. 110
The confusion arose because Emsellem’s claim to the property was based on documents
drawn up according to Jewish law in a beit din. Emsellem had previously gone to the qāḍī in an
attempt to collect the rent he felt was due to him—probably because he was aware that property-
related cases fell exclusively under Islamic jurisdiction. As proof of his claim, Emsellem had
shown the Hebrew legal documents—which supposedly gave him the right to lease the property
in question—to the qāḍī. He claimed that his father had purchased the right to lease the property
(referred to as “the keys” to the property) from another Jew, who himself had purchased this
right from a Jew. 111 It is likely that the right to lease in question was a ḥazaqah, a legal
arrangement that existed exclusively in Jewish law by which Jews purchased the right to inhabit
a property separately from the property itself (discussed in Chapter Three). However, legal
documents drawn up according to Jewish law were not recognized by Islamic law: “…the nāẓir
declared that these purchases are not valid, since they are not based—as they should be—on a
contract in Arabic between the owners of the mosque and the first holder [of the lease].” 112 It is
interesting that Emsellem even attempted to use documents drawn up by sofrim as evidence in a
110
It is not clear why Benhaim would have contracted subleases with both Roffé and Emsellem, or why he was
paying both Jews rent. Unfortunately, the sources do not elucidate this matter further.
111
“Il déclare posséder des papiers, également en hébreu, prouvant que son père a acheté la clef à un israélite, lequel
l’avait acheté à un autre israélite” (ibid.).
112
MAE Nantes, Tanger B 461, Belgian consul to Saint René Taillandier, 19 November 1904.
319