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

Qa‘da 1309 (June 12, 1892), two ‘udūl testified that Ya‘aqov Assarraf had paid al-Ḥājj
Muḥammad b. al-mu‘allim ‘Īsā al-Hajrāwī twenty riyals. In return, Muḥammad promised to
deliver 4 qintārs of wool to Ya‘aqov’s house in the millāḥ of Fez within three months. 71
Despite the large number of notarized bills of debt in the Assarraf collection, the
Assarrafs did not have ‘udūl notarize a contract every time they sold goods on credit or loaned
someone money. The collection also preserves a few informal bills of debt, which to some
extent mirror the form of those legalized before ‘udūl but lack much of the legal terminology
and, of course, the signatures of the ‘udūl themselves. 72 One such informal bill of debt reads:
“The Shaykh Mawlāy al-Ṭayyib b. al-sharīf Mawlāy Arrashīd [sic] al-‘Alāwī [sic] Isma‘īlī owes
the dhimmī Shalom b. Yehudah Assarraf thirty-nine French riyals, [which he must pay within]
twenty-six days.” 73 The Assarrafs clearly had a choice about whether to have their bills of debt
notarized by ‘udūl. It is possible that a qāḍī would have given some credence to an informal bill
of debt such as that between the shaykh al-Ṭayyib and Shalom, though technically evidence had
to be accompanied by notarization to be upheld in court. 74 Little wonder, then, that the
Assarrafs—like most Moroccans, both Jewish and Muslim—felt more secure bringing their bills
of debt to ‘udūl to ensure that their evidence would be accepted in case of litigation. 75
71
TC, File #10. Among the 166 bills of debt analyzed in detail I found no more than four which concerned salam
loans.
72
I found a total of eight such unofficial bills of debt in the entire Assarraf collection.
73
TC, File #4, no date.
74
For more on this requirement, see the discussion of the Mixed Court in 1871-2 in Chapter Eight.
75
In writing about the Jews of Demnat, however, Pierre Flamand noted that Jews loaning money or selling goods on
credit to Muslims rarely obtained documental records of their transactions (Pierre Flamand, Un mellah en pays
berbère : Demnate (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1952), 142). Yet Flamand himself
includes a facsimile of a notarized document in which a Jew sells a Muslim twenty raṭls of tea for ten douros and
two pesetas, dated 11 Ṣafar 1310/ 4 September 1892 (ibid., 143): Flamand, however, interprets this documentation
as confirmation of his theory that debts were usually made “sans papiers” because “le papier ne porte pas le mot
‘prêt’, il ne mentionne pas d’intérêts. Le prêt y est en quelque sorte camouflé en vente” (ibid., 142, fn 2). Needless
to say, Flamand seems to have misunderstood the nature of Islamic law and legal documentation. (This is not
surprising given Flamand’s lack of Arabic or Hebrew; on the context in which he wrote his study, see Schroeter,
“Views from the Edge,” 177-8.) One could argue that individuals in rural areas were less likely to notarize their
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