A chrono-spatial survey of Arabic legal documents in CALD

Historians love sources and base their studies on them. Historians of Islamic societies are probably no exception. Historical studies are always limited in time and space, something that also applies to “world history studies”. The documents in the CALD database are a first step towards creating a corpus of sources for the study of the practice of Muslim courts, spanning the 8th to 16th centuries from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula. This wide dispersion of legal documents,

as well as other general sources on “Islamic law”, make them not very attractive for historians; these sources are quite difficult to evaluate unless you can connect them with particular historical situations. The following text provides specific information on which documents from what regions and periods are contained in the database and how they can be found. In addition to such searches based on origin, CALD also enables a detailed comparison between Arabic legal documents from different regions and periods.

The term “legal document” refers to a specific kind of documentation: the notarization of individual persons’ rights and obligations by either the cadi court of law or, by Muslim notaries. Such a focus on documenting “subjective rights” according to the Muslim jurists’ law excludes other documentary sources, like those being issued by other actors of law for a general purpose, such as decrees or administrative reporting and accounts. This limitation is justified by the research focus, which is studying the interconnection between notarial practices and Muslim legal thinking (fiqh) as it was developed and practised by Muslim jurists over the centuries.

Each specimen treated in CALD is an authentic relic of the legal practice in a specific place and time and, as such, it reflects the functioning of that specific legal system it was issued for and within. In the course of Islamic history, the legal systems also changed. When using this kind of source for research, numbers do not count – one specimen may suffice to attest for a phenomenon -, what is important is how to contextualize the documents’ specific information.

This historical survey aims at guiding historians through the corpus of “legal documents” in CALD by providing basic information on its spread and availability in space and time and shows how to find them by their short inventory number (SIN) which refers to the collections holding documents. In our efforts to make CALD-database public, we did not yet fully edit all the collections as our team already studied them, but now we refer to them in this survey that will be updated regularly.

1) Documents from Central Islamic lands (Egypt and Syria).

a) Egypt

2^nd-4^th/8^th-10^th centuries (and beyond)

Among the Arabic papyri from Egypt, only less than a 10% are legal documents (according to our definition), most of them fragmentary and therefore difficult to analyse for their legal value. It is well known that many Arabic papyri remain in Egypt, but a big amount of them were sold out from the country from the 19^th century on and can be found in many Museums and Libraries all over the world. In CALD we included the most important collection of complete pieces of Arabic papyri still in the National Library of Egypt (search for: CaiN_), but also in other big collections from Europe, mainly Vienna (Vie_), Berlin (Ber ), Paris (ParL_) and Prague (PraVa_). CALD also includes some smaller collections of Arabic legal documents written on papyri dispersed all over the world, -but not all of them are yet available in CALD- as in Oxford (OxfA_), Philadelphia (PhiPe_), Princeton (Pri_), New York (New_), Yale (Yal_), Salt Lake City (SalM_), Cambridge (CamMb_) or London (LonBo_).

4^th-6^th/10^th-12^th centuries

The well-known Cairo-Genizah from the Ben Ezra-Synagogue in Fusṭāṭ contained – among many Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic literary and documentary pieces-, a good number of legal documents in Arabic, mainly from the Fatimid period (973-1171). Most of those publicly available in CALD are in Cambridge (CamTa_) and Oxford (OxfB_).

Further Arabic legal documents on paper for this period are mainly held in the Egyptian National Library under the section “ta’rīḫ” (CaiNt_), some at the Cairo Islamic Museum (CaiM_); others are spread in different collections all over the world. You may find quite a few of them analysed in CALD; see, among others, Berlin (Ber_), Heidelberg (Hei_), London (LonBo_) or Vienna (VieAc_).

7^th-9^th/13^th-15^th centuries – Mamluk documents from Egypt

Most long scroll documents from that period concern the legal transactions in connection with waqf-foundations by the Mamluk sultans, particularly those of the last sultan Qanṣūh al-Ġawrī (d. 1516). They are kept in the Waqf-Ministry (CaiW_) and in the Egyptian National Archive (CaiA_).

The St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai holds an important corpus of Mamluk (and Ottoman) legal documents from the 15^th and 16^th centuries (Sin_), only a few of them are publicly available in CALD.

Ottoman Egypt (10^th-12^th/16^th-18^th centuries)

Although, the Ottoman documents available are beyond CALD’s scope, we included some exceptional collections, as for example, the 23 documents from the oasis Qaṣr al-Dāḫilī (CaiAd_), which are not yet fully available in CALD. We intend to include more collections in the near future, like the one from Qaṣr Ibrīm, now Sudan (CaiM_).

b) Syria

4^th-7^th/10^th-13^th centuries

The pieces from the old depository (Qubbat al-Ḫazna) in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus were transferred to Istanbul after the fire of 1893 and are now in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art. Presently, CALD includes and analyses 23 documents from this collection (IstM_).

8^th/14^th The Ḥaram al-Šarīf documents of Jerusalem

This collection of some 900 papers and few parchments were found in the Islamic Museum next to the Aqṣā-Mosque. They belong to various ongoing procedures, its majority in connection with one corrupt judge. Thus, the Ḥaram-papers provide a unique insight into the procedures of judicial administration in Mamluk time. They constitute the core and most important part in CALD (see JerH_).

2) Islamicate East: Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

a) Khurasan

2^nd/8^th century

An important group of early Arabic legal documents (84 in CALD) are kept in the private Khalili Family Trust collection (see KhaP_).

b) Azerbaijan

6^th-8^th/12^th-14^th centuries (pre-Mongol period)

The Arabic and (mostly later) Persian documents from the Ṣafawid shrine in Ardabil are encoded in CALD from Gronke’s editions based on microfilms taken in the city (ArdS_). Today, they are held in the Teheran National Archive.

c) Central Asia

Yarkand (today’s China, province of Xinjiang)

5^th-6^th/11^th-12^th centuries

Five documents in Arabic come from Yarkand and were send by the British colonial administration to the then British India with unknown whereabouts. They are all analysed in CALD, and photos are kept in the School of Oriental and African Studies (see LonSy_).

Most of the preserved waqf-documents form Central Asia are not written in Arabic, but in Persian. CALD includes the Arabic version of a 13^th century waqfiyya from Buchara, nowadays in Tashkent (see BuḫT_).

3) Anatolia

13^th-14^th century (pre-ottoman)

Three documents under Rum-Seljukide and Timuride rule from Anatolia which are now held in Erevan are included in CALD (EreA_). Other documents are preserved within the Jerusalemite Ḥaram-Corpus (not yet available).

4) The Maghreb

You may find two legal documents from the 15^th century ḥafṣide-period, one preserved in the Bardo Museum (TunB_), the other in Kairawan (KaiR_).

Just one Almohad legal document is conserved in Pisa (PisA_) Italy, analysed also in CALD.

5) Norman Sicily

12^th-century

Arabic legal documents of Norman Sicily are held by various institutions of Palermo. Some 17 of them in the Archivio di Stato (only one published in CALD, see PalAc_), three in the Archivio Storico and another four documents in the Biblioteca Centrale della Regione. They are all included in CALD, but not yet publicly available.

6) Iberian Peninsula

a) Out of Granada

11^th -12^th centuries

Preserved for centuries in the Toledo Cathedral, 724 Arabic documents were issued by the Christian Arabized community, mostly property titles, under the Christian rule. A part of this collection was later moved to the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid. This collection is not yet available in CALD (MadAm_).

12^th-13^th centuries

Several collections of documents were preserved in different cities of Iberia, around the conquest by the Christians, many of which are in CALD. For example, the document written ten years before the conquest of Valencia (see Val_) or the ten documents from Huesca, written still in Arabic by the Mudejar community a century after the fall of the city (see HueC_).

b) 15^th century Granada

The last 50 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula left the most important and coherent specimens of Arabic legal documents issued in al-Andalus. Although there is a big collection of 157 documents now preserved in the University of Granada (see GraU_), most of the Granadan documents are disseminated all over the city and its surroundings in different Christian institutions and private hands. Most of them are edited and included in CALD (see GraCh_, GraM_, GraH_, GraA_, GraSp_, GraCs_, GraE_ and GraMa_).

After the take-over of the city in 897/1492 the Muslim administration still used legal documents, written in the same way as before. In most of the mentioned collections around 10% of documents were written after the year 1492. We have no Arabic legal document dated after 1500.

Not available yet are the documents issued in Granada’s surroundings, the oldest being from the end of the 12^th century and updated also in the 15^th century, then transported to Toledo’s section of the National Historical Archive (TolNc_).

This historical survey points to the diverse places of origin of the legal documents, but also shows glaring gaps. The general course of history and special circumstances prevented a uniform preservation of written relics of Islamic court practice across the Muslim world. But, as we said, it is not the numbers that count when researching this phenomenon.

 

 

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