The Courts, the Qadi, and the ‘People’: Resolving Mercantile Disputes in the Medieval Islamic Mediterranean

Abstract

Goldberg The Cairo Geniza contains very few records of lawsuits between Jewish merchants in the eleventh twelfth centuries. And by very few, I mean there is only solid evidence of five such full-blown mercantile lawsuits coming before the Jewish court in the period 990–1150. Such a small number of cases is perhaps surprising – letters, the source of information have from represented in disputes because that and smaller towns Fatimid Ayyubid Egypt and maintained communal ratified, recorded not handle cross-confessional disputes, and