Deed of Sale for a Sugar Factory (Minyat Zifta, Egypt)

Unknown

1140

About This Entry

This fragmentary deed, written on parchment, records the sale of half of a sugar factory in Minyat Zifta, in Lower Egypt. The ownership of the factory was jointly held between a Jew, referred to as son of Rav (the full name is lost), and a Muslim qāḍī (judge) named ‘Alī ibn Qāsm. The owners sell half of the factory to Abū l-Marja Salim. The document notes, tangentially, that Jews and Muslims shared a number of other properties surrounding this facility. The deed is in the hand of Nathan ben Samuel. Ellipses indicate lacunae in the manuscript.

. . . it will be upon him as a [legal contract] and a proof from this day onwards that I [attest before you using the most certain and perfect] expressions of affirmation, in my good health and freedom of will, willingly, with neither duress nor force nor compulsion, [with neither negligence nor error, nor defect of illness within me, nor anything of the like from] all the factors that nullify testimony, that I have received and taken from him, in cash, good Egyptian [coins . . . such and such] weighted, good and correct Egyptian dinars. And all this arrived to me completely [and totally . . . ] half of the property which is known as the sugar factory, which is located in Minyat Zifta, in the neighbourhood . . . and its lower parts and upper parts, its visible parts and hidden parts and every legal right [derived from it] external . . . in its possession from this day onwards, and he shall fence the aforementioned sugar factory, and will define it and circle it . . . will reach to the street which is open in front of the property of Husayn ibn Ibrahim al-Ma’ari’s heir, . . . and the [house known] [to belong] to the heirs of the Rabbi’s son who is the partner of the qadi Ali ibn al-Qasm, and the third part . . . Salim ibn al-Ashqar, and the fourth part, the western one, will reach to the street which is open . . . all the half part which I gave in possession, from the aforementioned sugar factory, to the Sheikh Abu al-Marja Salim the aforementioned, in one . . . and its rights, a complete, effective and total sale . . . to him and his heirs after him from this time onwards, and all this aforementioned half . . . Salim, he and his soil, walls, ceiling, woods, mud, brick . . . from the bottom of the ground to the top of the sky as a possession from this day onwards . . . of any type of transactions in destruction or built, in residence or emptiness, in sale or gift . . . and to hide . . .

Source: CUL T-S 8.4.

Translated by Amir Ashur and Benjamin M. Outhwaite.

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Notes

Words in brackets appear in the original translation.

Credits

Unknown, Deed of Sale for a Sugar Factory (Minyat Zifta, Egypt), trans. Amir Ashur and Benjamin M. Outhwaite, in Benjamin M. Outhwaite, Melonie Schmierer-Lee, and Cayley M. Burgess, “A Muslim-Jewish Business,” from Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Library, 2017), 23. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.