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

I use the terms “beit din” and “sharī‘a court” rather loosely to mean not only the
tribunals presided over by (up to) three rabbis or a qāḍī, but also the services of notaries (called
sofrim, s. sofer in Hebrew and ‘udūl, s. ‘adl in Arabic). Notaries were essential to the
functioning of both Islamic and Jewish law. Moreover, while some of the documents I examine
record actual lawsuits—over non-payment of debts, for instance—the vast majority of the Jewish
and Islamic legal documents that survive were notarized contracts of one sort or another. These
contracts were notarized by sofrim according to the standards of halakhah, or by ‘udūl according
to the standards of the sharī‘a. These strict guidelines were observed precisely so that notarized
documents could be upheld as evidence in court in the event of a lawsuit. 13 In Morocco,
individuals were technically required to have the signatures of the two ‘udūl who had witnessed
a given document legalized by a qāḍī—even if this did not always happen in reality. 14 There is
also some evidence that Moroccan batei din at times similarly required that a rabbi legalize the
signatures of the two sofrim attesting to the document, though most Jewish legal documents only
have the signatures of two (or even one or three) sofrim and none from a rabbi. 15 Although
notaries and judges provided different services, they made up two complementary parts of the
13
On notarized documents in Islamic law generally, see Emile Tyan, Le notariat et le régime de la preuve par écrit
dans la pratique du droit musulman (Harissa: Imprimerie St. Paul, 1945). For an anthropological perspective on the
role of ‘udūl in Moroccan sharī‘a courts, see Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive
Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 190-4.
14
Many of the ‘uqūd from the Assarraf collection (described below) are legalized by a qāḍī, though probably an
even greater number are missing the qāḍī’s signature and have only the signatures of the two ‘udūl. On the
requirement to have legal documents notarized by ‘udūl and legalized by a qāḍī, see, e.g., the discussion in AGA,
Caja M 9, Exp. no. 1 (81/9), Diario del Tribunal Marroquí, p. 4, 23 November 1871 (discussed further in Chapters
Seven and Eight).
15
On the possible requirement that Jewish legal documents be legalized by a rabbi, see, e.g., FO 636/2, p. 17b, 29
July 1858 (in which John Drummond Hay certifies a Hebrew legal document containing the signatures of two
sofrim, as well as that of Rabbi Isaac Bengualid); MAE Nantes, Tanger F 1, 29 January 1891 (which concerns a case
involving documents confirmed by “les sofer (notaires) Israélites de Tanger, dont les signatures ont été légalisées
par le grand Rabbin de cette ville”). Needless to say, if this were, indeed, an accepted practice in Morocco, it would
be interesting to investigate whether Jewish legal practice borrowed from Islamic legal practice in this instance; my
instinct is that this was the case at least to a certain extent.
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