² See the discussion of sources in E. Strauss (Ash tor) Toledot ha-yehudim be-miṣrayim we-suria taḥat shilḥon ha-mamlukim (The history of the Jews in Egypt and Syria under Mamlūk rule), I (Jerusalem, 1944), i–xvi; II, (Jerusalem, 1951), i–xvii

³ Some historical documents can be found in other volumes. See for instance TS AS 157.231 and 232, ed. Moshe Gil, Ha-tustarim: Ha-mishpaḥa weha-kat (The Tustaris: family and sect) (Tel Aviv, 1981), appendix no. 6

⁴ Ashtor, , Toledot,II, 100–4Google Scholar. Also mentioned briefly in the same author's ‘L'inquisition dans l'état mamlouk’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 25, 1950, 23Google Scholar. The incident is mentioned by Antoine, Fattal, Le statut légal des non-Musulmans en pays d'Islam (Beirut, 1958), 123Google Scholar. citing Al-Sakhāwī (see next note), 36. The author gave the date incorrectly as 335 A. H. = A. D. 946

⁵ I consulted (at the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem), a photograph of the manuscript of Ibn Hajar's Inbā' al-ghumr bi-inbā' (or: abnā') al-'umr utilized by Ashtor (Istanbul MS Yeni Cami 814; narrative occurs on fols. 282a, 283b, and 284a), as well as the printed Hyderabad edition of the chronicle, edited by Muḥammad 'Abd al-Mu'īd Khan. 9 vols.(Hyderabad, 1967–76), IX. 169–70, 182–6. The fourth and final volume of the Cairo edition, edited by Ḥasan Ḥabashi (3 vols., Cairo, 1969–72), containing the relevant years, was not published. Neither of the printed editions employs the Yeni Cami manuscript

⁶ Amikam Elad kindly called to my attention that Ibn Iyās (1448–1524) also has a version of the events of 1442 in his Badā'i' al-ẓuhūr fī waqā'ī' al-duhūr (Die Chronik des Ibn Ijas), ed. Mohammed, Mostafa, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden, 1972), 22Google Scholar (not cited by Ashtor). This is limited to two brief statements. The first consists of a slight modification of the passage about al-Aqṣarā'ī found in al-Sakhāwī and in Ibn Ḥajar al-'Asqalānī. ‘In that year (845 A. H.) the shaykh Amin al-Din [Yahyā] al-Aqṣarā'ī the Ḥanafite undertook the destruction (hadm) of some of the houses of worship of the Jews and the Christians. He closed a number of those houses of worship and turned some of them into mosques. Because of that, certain things happened which it would take too long to explain.’ The mention of ‘destruction’ instead of ‘inspection’ and the detail about converting some houses of worship into mosques are not present in the contemporary chroniclers Ibn Ḥajar and al-Sakhāwī. We are probably justified in preferring the Ibn Ḥajar-al- Sakhāwī version to that of the later writer, Ibn Iyās, but the variants still need explanation. The verb translated here as ‘undertook’ (qāmi fī) can be taken to mean: ‘he went with the intention of (destroying)’. Since destruction of Christian and Jewish houses of worship was a regular event in these instances, Ibn Iyās may simply have substituted the words ‘destruction’ for ‘inspection’ out of habit. The same may be said for the statement about the conversion of houses of worship into mosques. The second statement in Ibn Iyās concerning the crisis of 1442 (same page in the edition cited above, but separated from the previous report by one short, unrelated item), reads: ‘In it (the year 845) the Sultan ordered the four qāḍīs to go to Qaṣr al-Sham' to inspect (!) the houses of worship there. So they went there and inspected. Then something happened between al-Shihāb ibn Ḥajar and al-Sa'd al-Dayrī which would take too long to explain.’ Al-Sa'd al-Dayrī (Sa'd al-Dīn Sa'd ibn Muḥammad al-'Absī al-Dayrī, 1367–1463) was the Ḥanafite chief qāḍī at the time of the investigations of the dhimmī houses of worship in 1442; see Ibn, Hajar's biographical sketch of him in Raf' al-iṣr 'an quḍāt miṣr, ed. Ḥamid'Abd, al-Majīd etal. (Cairo, 1957), 245–6Google Scholar. Ibn Iyās evidently alludes to the disagreement in 1442 between Ibn Ḥajar and his Ḥanafite colleague over the punishment due the Jews of the Rabbanite synagogue, which is reported in al-Sakhāwi's chronicle (p. 20; see above). Al-Dayrī is mentioned several times in the Arabic document preserved by the Karaites concerning the investigation of 1456 (see below, n. 11; the editor, Gottheil, incorrectly transcribes ‘al-'Abbāsī’)

⁷ The text reads instead of. For the correct name see Ashtor, , Toledot, II, 102Google Scholar. Regrettably the chronicle of the patriarchs of the Coptic church, Ta'rīkh baṭārikat al-kanīsa al-miṣriyya (History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church), begun by Sawīrus ibn al-Muqaffa', has only two sentences about the reign of Patriarch Yu'annis, and nothing at all about the persecution of 1442. See vol. 3, part 3, ed. and tr. by Antoine Khater and O.H.E. KHS-Burmester (Cairo, 1970), 158 (Arabic), 272 (English)

⁸ Scholars have been puzzled by the fact that the text of the Pact of ‘Umar begins: 'we asked you for safe-conduct for ourselves ⃛ and we undertook the following obligations toward you’. This strange phenomenon of a defeated people dictating its own disabilities to the Muslim conquerors is one of the peculiarities that led Tritton and those who followed him to cast doubts on the authenticity of the pact. See A. S. Tritton, The caliphs and their non-Muslim subjects: a critical study of the Covenant of 'Umar (1930; repr. London, 1970), 8, and Antoine Fattal. Le statut légal des non-Musulmans en pays d'Islam, 66. Actually, the language introducing the Pact of 'Umar is not peculiar at all. It merely reflects what I believe to be the Sitz im Leben of the document. It was conceived of as a petition from the dhimmīs to their Muslim overlords. In a petition the terms of the desired decree were spelled out by the petitioners themselves, and the authority to whom the petition was presented then issued a decree, incorporating in it the language of the request. In our instance, the qāḍi Ibn Ḥajar made the dhimmīs go through the ceremonial formality of ‘requesting’ their safe-conduct decree. I hope to discuss some aspects of the Pact of 'Umar in another paper currently in preparation

⁹ Al-Sakhāwī, 124–6

¹⁰ ibid., 145

¹¹ Richard, J. H Gottheil, ‘Dhimmis and Moslems in Egypt’, in Old Testament and Semitic Studies in Memory of William Rainey Harper (Chicago, 1908), II, 353–414Google Scholar. Gottheil (pp. 368–9) mentions the two earlier incidents, but incorrectly dates the second in 851/1447. D. S. Richards saw this document in Cairo in 1969 among a cache of documents in the possession of the Karaite ommunity, and described it briefly in his article, ‘Arabic documents from the Karaite community in Cairo’, JESHO, 15, 1972, 120–1Google Scholar. Of Gottheil's edition he writes: ‘The published version has a number of errors, and Gottheil's understanding of the document was rather faulty. My intention is to republish the whole in due course.’

¹² Gottheil, art. cit., 409 (Arabic), 384 (English). Several different 'Abd al-Laṭīfs from the 15th century, including an 'Abd al-Laṭīf ibn Ibrāhīm (a Karaite), appear in the documents surveyed by D. S. Richards (see n. 11). Evidently this was a popular Jewish name at the time

¹³ Symbols: [ ] = lacuna in the text. ⃛ = writing visible but difficult to decipher. [[ [[ = writing crossed out. // // = written above the line. a dot under a letter indicates that its reading is not clear

¹⁴ Stern, S. M., ‘Three petitions of the Fatimid period’, Oriens, 15, 1962, 172–209Google Scholar; ‘A petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir concerning a conflict within the Jewish community’, Revue des Études Juives, 128, 1969, 203–22Google Scholar; ‘Petitions from the Ayyubid period’, BSOAS, XXVII, 1, 1964, 1–32Google Scholar; ‘Petitions from the Mamlūk period (notes on the Mamlūk documents from Sinai)’, BSOAS, XXIX, 2, 1966, 233–76Google Scholar

¹⁵ Stern, , ‘Petitions from the Ayyubid period’, 1–10Google Scholar

¹⁶ As in the Geniza petition analysed by Stern, ‘A petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir’, 220

¹⁷ Ashtor, , Toledot, II, 86–7Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Goitein, S. D., A Mediterranean society, II (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1971)Google Scholar, according to these names in the index, and Mark, R. Cohen, Jewish self-government in medieval Egypt: the origins of the office of Head of the Jews, ca. 1065–1126 (Princeton, 1980)Google Scholar, which deals specifically with the period of the House of Mevorakh b. Saadya

¹⁹ Massa' Meshullam mi-volterra (The itinerary of Meshullam of Volterra), ed. Yaari, A. (Jerusalem, 1948), 57Google Scholar; Ashtor, , Toledot, II, 87Google Scholar; Assaf, S., ‘New documents regarding the last Negidim in Egypt’ (in Hebrew), Zion, 6, 1940–1941, 114, 116Google Scholar

²⁰ Gottheil, ‘Dhimmis and Moslems’, 389 (Arabic), 373 (English)

²¹ Ibn, Ḥajar, Inbā', ed. Hyderabad, IX, p. 185, 1. 1Google Scholar. MS Yeni Cami 814, fol. 284a, 1. 7, has an unintelligible word in place of; MS Bibliothèque Nationale Arabe 1602 of the chronicle (fol. 263a, 1. 11), has, unpointed

²² Al-Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ al-a'shā (Cairo, 1913–1918), XI, 385, 387Google Scholar; cf. Bosworth, C. E., ‘Christian and Jewish religious dignitaries in Mamlūk Egypt and Syria: Qalqashandī's information on their hierarchy, titulature, and appointment’, IJMES, 3, 1972, 211–13Google Scholar. Gottheil recognized this difficulty; ‘Dhimmis and Moslems’, p. 373, n. 100

²³ Possibly the Karaite community of Cairo, during the administration of the controversial ra'īs 'Abd al-Laṭīf, was temporarily granted self-jurisdiction under its own ra'īs al-yahūd al-qarā'iyyīn, and this is reflected in the sources cited above, nn. 20–1

²⁴ See Ḥasan, al-Bashā, Al-alqāb al-islāmiyya fī 'l-ta'rikh wa 'l-wathā' iq wa 'l-āthār(Cairo, 1957), 484–6Google Scholar. Cf. also Gottheil, ‘Dhimmis and Moslems’, p. 399, 1. 1 (referring to Mamlūk Sulṭān Īnāl). Compare with the variant, al-mawqif al-sharīf, referring to a Fāṭimid Caliph; Mark R. Cohen, 'New light on the conflict over the Palestinian Gaonate, 1038–42, and on Daniel, B. ‘Azarya: a pair of letters to the Nagid of Qayrawan’, AJS Review, 1, 1976, p. 2, n. 1Google Scholar

²⁵ Ira, M. Lapidus, Muslim cities in the later middle ages (Cambridge, Mass, 1967), 136–7Google Scholar

²⁶ On the term ‘minbar’ and the identity of the synagogue see the appendix

²⁷ Al-Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ al-a'shā, XI, 391Google Scholar, quoting from Faḍlallāh, al-'Umarī, Al-ta'rīf bi'l-muṣṭalaḥ al-slarīf (Cairo, 1895), 134Google Scholar. Cf. translation in Norman Stillman, A., The Jews of Arab lands (Philadelphia, 1979), 270Google Scholar

²⁸ Al-ṣārim, al-maslūl 'alā shātim al-rasūl, ed. Muḥammad, Muhyī '1-Dīn al-Ḥamīd (Cairo 1960)Google Scholar; also Fattal, , Le statut légal, 122Google Scholar

²⁹ The possibility exists that there was no blasphemous inscription at all, but only some scratchings that appeared to the qāḍīs to be the names of the Prophet. I rather doubt this hypothesis since, were it the case, the petitioners would have had no grounds for alleging that 'Abd al-Laṭīf had done something wrong by ascending the minbar

³⁰ Al-Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ al-a'shā, XI, 390Google Scholar, quoting Ibn, Faḍlallāh al-'Umarī, Ta'rīf, 142Google Scholar

³¹ Bernard, Chapira ‘Lettre du Gaon Hai à Sahlān b. Abraham de Fostat’, Revue des Études Juives, 82, 1926, 328 (Mosseri Ia, 5)Google Scholar

³² Goitein, S. D. ‘New documents from the Cario Geniza’. in Homenjae a Millás-Vallicrosa, I (Barcelona, 1954), 707–12, 717–18Google Scholar (TS Arabic Box 51, fol. 111)

³³ Ibn, al-FuwaṭīAl-ḥawādith al-jami'a, ed. Muṣṭafā, (Baghdad, 1932), 248 and cf. 218Google Scholar; English translation in Stillman, Jews of Arab lands, 181–2

³⁴ Cohen, ‘New Light’, 30 (Arabic), 34 (English) (TS 18 J 4, fol. 16)

³⁵ ULC or 1080 J 45, 1. 16: cf. Goitein, , Mediterranean society, II, 318Google Scholar; cf. also p. 16

³6 Moshe, GilDocuments of the Jewish pious foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden, 1976), 73–4Google Scholar; cf. also p. 476, I. 1. 5. On advanced payment (ta'jīl) at cash discount in business transactions, generally, see Goitein, Mediterranean society, I (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 199and449, n. 35Google Scholar, and on ta'jīl in the case of rents (for 1 or 2 years, only) see ibid., II, pp. 115 and 545, n. 8; 432, no. 161

³⁷ Gil, Documents, 147–9 (ULC Add. 3358). The lease stipulated that after the twenty-year period, during which the lessee was to repair the ruined house and to receive reimbursement from the community for materials purchased, he would ‘rent this ruin from the people of the synagogue for a full price, like anybody who rents compounds or houses, according to the value of its rent every year’

³⁸ ibid., p. 335, 1. 9 (TS Box J 2, fol. 63c-d)

³⁹ ibid., p. 348, 11. 13–14 (TS 8 J 11, fol. 7a-b)

⁴⁰ ibid., 361–2 (Bodl. MS Heb. f 56, fol. 43d, section 2) and cf. also Goitein, , Mediterranean society, II, 419, no. 37Google Scholar

⁴¹ ibid., 152–4

⁴² ibid., 358–63

⁴³ Hassanein, Rabie, The financial system of Egypt A.H. 564–741/A.D. 1169/1341 (London, 1972), 121–7Google Scholar; Lapidus, Muslim cities, index, s.v. ‘confiscations’

⁴⁴ Bodl. MS Heb. d 66, fol. 10v, 1. 10; cf. Cohen, Jewish self-government, 59Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For some discussion of the ‘young men’ in Jewish political affairs, see Goitein, Mediterranean society, II, 61–3Google Scholar, and Cohen, ‘New light’, 15–16

⁴⁶ Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. ‘aḥdāh’ (Claude Cahen); Lapidus, Muslim cities, 153–63, 173–7

⁴⁷ Cohen, ‘New light’, 29 (Arabic), 30 (English)

⁴⁸ The picture of the ‘ṣibyān auxiliaries’ in the service of the head of the Jews, 'Abd al-Laṭif, bears a remarkable similarity to Lapidus's description of the zu'ar, or youth gangs, of fifteenth-century Damascus and Cairo: ‘The zu'ar were enrolled and paid as Mamluk auxiliaries and clienteles. If the government could neither crush them nor buy their acquiescence, it chose a middle ground to permit the zu'ar to prey on the rest of civil war for the gangs was to hire them selves out as auxiliaries of the Mamluk factions in time of civil war for the sake of gifts and above all for a free hand to plunder the quarters and markets of Cairo’ (ibid., 173–4). The word in our Geniza document rendered ‘auxiliaries’ is 'awāniyya. Lane (Arabic-English lexicon. London, 1874, I⁵, 2203) brings a meaning of ‘armed attendant’ for the world 'awāniyy. I have hesitated to employ the attribute ‘armed’ in my translation, though there may actually be some justification for its use. A passage in Elijah Capsali's Hebrew chronicle of Ottoman and Venetian history, describing the tense atmosphere in Egypt at the time when the Ottomans were arrayed for their assault on Raydāniyya (near Cairo), mentions that the ‘young Jewish men’ (baḥurei yisrael) took up arms to fend off local Muslim attackers who suspected the Jewish community of aiding and abetting the invading Turks. Seder Eliyahu Zuta, I. ed. Shmuelevitz, Aryeh (Jerusalem, 1975), 341Google Scholar, The baḥurim/baḥurei yisrael appear elsewhere in this chronicle, e. g., in connexion with Constantinople, where are depicted as young mischief-markers in league with the Janissaries, who are suppressed by the Jewish ‘establishment’, namely, Rabbi Moses Capsali; ibid., 83, 129. A comparative during the late middle ages (Egypt, Turkey, Italy) might turn up some interesting findings

⁴⁹ Goitein, Mediterranean society, II, 121–6Google Scholar; Ashtor, E., ‘Some Features of the Jewish Communities in Medieval Egypt’ (in Hebrew, Zion), 30, 1965. 133Google Scholar

⁵⁰ David B. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, She'elot u-teshuvot ha-RaD BaZ, no. 622

⁵¹ Ashtor, Toledot, II, 86. I have checked the manuscript used by Ashtor, Istanbul MS Carullah 1591, fol. 817b

⁵² It is, of course, tempting to speculate that he is identical with the unpopular ra'is who had been deposed on demand of the community in the summer of 1438. If this speculation could be proved true it would provide, incidentally, a reasonable explanation for 'Abd al-Laṭīf's mistreatment of his Jewish subjects

⁵³ We have no way of knowing whether the petition was ever presented to the Mamlūk authorities, and hence. We are in the dark about 'Abd al-Laṭīf's fate. In fact, our sources—Jewish and non-Jewish—are vitually silent regarding the immediately subsequent history of the office of head of the Jews. The next ra'īs al-yahūd of whom we hear is the physician Joseph Nagid, but the fragmentary Geniza legal document dated 1458 which mentions him by name supplies to information about his regime; TS 8.195, mentioned by Assaf. ‘New documents’, 114, and by Ashtor, toledot, II, 87. Cf. also above, at n. 19. Another legal document mentioning Joseph Nagid has its date unfortunately partly effaced; cf. Ashtor, Toledot, III (Jerusalem, 1970), 109–10Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cohen, Jewish self-government, passim

⁵⁵ The state of scholarship on the position of the Jews in Mamlūk Egypt is accurately summarized by Stillman. Jews of Arab lands, 67–75

⁵⁶ I do not wish to glose over the passage in the Geniza documents that states: ‘Since the day when the minbars (manābir) were destroyed …' (verso, 1.4). The Arabic chronicles mention only one minbar. If my hypotheses about the two raised platforms in the synagogue has validity (see above, n. 26), then perhaps we should understand the passage to mean that the qāḍīs ordered both of these structures to be torn down

⁵⁷ Ashtor noted a certain moderation in Mamlūk treatment of the Jews during the latter part of the fifteenth century, especially during the reign of Sulṭān Qā'itbāy (1468–96); cf. Ashtor, , Toledot, II, 398–416 and 421–2Google Scholar, and see also Ben-Zeev, Y., ‘Documents pertaining to the ancient Jewish cemetery of Cairo’ (in Hebrew), Sefunot, I, 1956, 12–24Google Scholar. Ashtor attributes this in large measure to the diminished size of the Jewish community in the fifteenth century which led, he argues, to a corresponding diminution in ‘social hostility’ (as distinguished from theological hostility). Ashtor emphasizes, however, that this remission from oppression during Qā'itbāy's reign did not reverse the long-term trend of decline in Jewish life during the Mamlūk period. It has not been our intention here to revise the accepted picture of depressed Jewish existence in fifteenth-century Egypt, but rather to suggest some new ways of looking at a specific crisis in Mamlūk-Jewish relations. A thorough restudy of the many sources describing other Mamlūk persecutions of the Jews (and Christians), in the light of the findings occasioned by our analysis of the new Geniza document, might uncover some nuances previously undetected