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

Muslims, despite certain inequalities. Moreover, Jews used sharī‘a courts with proficiency;
Shalom Assarraf was even employed by Muslims to represent them in sharī‘a court. The
services of qāḍīs and ‘udūl facilitated Jews’ economic endeavors, especially the commercial
relations that bound them to their Muslim business associates.
Why Go to Court?
Jews engaged the services of qāḍīs and ‘udūl for a variety of reasons. A relatively
complete collection such as that of the Assarrafs gives us a picture of a Jewish family’s use of
the court over a period of more than sixty years. The patterns discernible in the collection tell us
about the legal services for which Jews turned to sharī‘a courts most often. Table 2.1 shows the
distribution of types of entries in the Assarraf collection. The collection includes a total of 1,930
documents. 5 98% of the documents concerned matters in which one or more Jews were involved
with one or more Muslims. 6 Although the documents concerning matters among Jews generally
do not differ in form or content from those concerning Jews and Muslims, I treat these separately
(in the following chapter) and thus have chosen to keep them as a distinct category.
5 I should specify that by 1,930 documents, I mean 1,930 separate entries. At times, a single page has multiple
entries, almost always concerning the same subject. However, I did not count two entries from the same date on a
single document as two separate documents because it was clear that the proceedings happened at the same time and
were simply recorded separately out of compliance with a standard format. I discuss such documents at greater
length in the section on lawsuits. I also did not include a handful of documents which concerned only Muslims and
did not explicitly mention Jews at all; while these documents undoubtedly had some relationship to the Assarraf
family (since they ended up in their personal archive), it is impossible to know exactly how any given intra-Muslim
document related to Jews’ use of sharī‘a courts. Most of these documents are powers of attorney, which
undoubtedly wound up in the Assarrafs’s hands because the family was somehow involved in a lawsuit with the
Muslim being represented. Others concern the settlement of a theft indemnity (from Rajab 1274), a debt owed by
one Muslim to another (13 Jumādā I 1290), etc.
6 I counted 39 entries which concerned only Jews (about 2% of the total).
70