Judeo-Arabic Manuals for Judges: A Lost Meta-Halakic Genre Discovered in the Cairo Genizah

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session: Rabbinic Literature and Culture

Abstract

The Geonim were the prominent Jewish leaders of the Babylonian diaspora from the 7th to the 11th centuries. A sharp shift characterizes and distinguishes the late Geonim of Babylonia (10th-11th centuries) from their predecessors. The successors of Se’adyah Gaon (882–942) specialized in the composition of individual legal-halakhic codices. Known as “late monographic works,” these works contrast with the collective oral traditions that comprised the earlier geonic corpus.
This paper explores a previously unknown, unexplored genre extracted from Genizah documents: geonic legal monographs, especially comprehensive professional manuals for judges on jurisprudential themes (e.g., principles of law, court procedures, the character of the judge, prohibitions against bribery). No study has yet been devoted to this genre, mainly because the scientific research tools currently at our disposal were hitherto not available to the scholarly community.
My current research has reconstructed a sub-genre of late geonic literature: I identified some sixty scattered fragments from two almost unknown geonic works belonging to this genre (a, b) and a third, previously unknown work (c):
a) 'כתאב לַוַאזם אלחֻכַּאם' (Book of Judges’ Ethics) by Rav Samuel Ibn Hofni Gaon (Sura; c. 997–1013)
b) 'כתאב אדַבּ אלקצ̇א' (Book of Judges’ Duties) by Rav Hai Gaon (Pumbedita; 998–1038)
c) 'פאצל פי אדב אלדיינים' (A Chapter in Judges’ Duties) by Rav Yosef, son of Yehuda Ibn Aknin al-Barceloni
Based on these works this paper characterizes the functioning of the courts and the legal infrastructure of Jews in Islamic lands in the medieval Maghreb, thereby filling a lacuna in our Genizah-based picture of Jewish life in the Middle Ages. The lecture is a case study of how a small fraction of the colorful medieval Jewish library can still be uncovered and suggests that the extant literature is only the tip of the iceberg of medieval rabbinic productivity. New findings from this previously unknown genre not only have significant ramifications for our understanding of the development of court procedures in Jewish civil and criminal law, but also shed light on the character and ethics of Jewish judges and their juristic duties from late antiquity to the present.

Author

• Neri Yeshayahu Ariel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem