Acknowledgment of Debt (Bāmiyān, Khurāsān)

This legal document was written in Early New Persian and was found among documents that were preserved in an eleventh-century Jewish family archive, the acquisition and provenance of which has been controversial. The document acknowledges a debt of seven shiyānī, likely the term for a silver dirham; ‘adlī indicates they are high-quality coins. The other side of the document briefly describes its contents in Judeo-Persian, as the page was folded for easy storage. It follows the Islamic legal formula, is dated according to the Muslim calendar (Shawwāl is the tenth month in the Muslim lunar calendar), and is perhaps the earliest Jewish legal text in Early New Persian. Superscript indicates words written above the line.