New Genizah Responsa Revealed: Another Glimpse into Medieval Jewish Family Life (T-S Misc. 28.186)
Paradoxically, Responsa literature serves as a primary source for understanding Jewish history and culture during the 8th to 11th centuries.1 The Islamic conquest unified most Jews under one political regime, enabling a central rabbinic authority through two academies in Baghdad, led by the Geonim (plural of Gaon).2 These collections of inquiries sent to Jewish authorities provide a wealth of information despite their seemingly narrow focus. This FOTM highlights the discovery of an unpublished responsum about a quarrel in a 10th-century Jewish family in the Maghreb.
In general, the range of inquiries is broad: some are academic, seeking clarification on Talmudic texts; others are theological, and most address legal issues.3 Local disputes that could not be resolved were escalated to these academies, the highest legal authorities, in a mamer akin to the common law system where proceedings create precedents. These precedents were later compiled into books and became legal texts for Jewish jurists. Each responsum includes a detailed question about real-life challenges faced by the inquirers, followed by a legal response from the academies. Often, the questions include extensive details because inquirers were typically unsure which aspects were crucial, or they aimed to present the story from a certain perspective to support their narrative and secure the desired response. Consequently, despite their primary legal focus, the responsa provide a vivid portrayal of the diverse aspects of Jewish society and culture.
Throughout the Middle Ages, thousands of these questions and answers from Islamic lands were compiled into collections, which later became foundational study materials for Jewish law. However, until the discovery of the Genizah, Responsa literature primarily reached us through codices copied in Europe and preserved in institutions such as the University Library in Cambridge. Originally, jurists studying law preserved these responses, often omitting non-legal details, including the origin of the questions and sometimes the questions themselves.4 The Genizah's discovery has unveiled these questions in their unedited forms, with scholars now publishing complete files of answers. Each discovery adds a piece to the jigsaw puzzle, clarifying the context behind the questions and contributing essential details for understanding the history and culture of various communities.
I'm excited to share this responsum from the Genizah, which will appear in a soon-to-be-published volume of newly discovered responsa. This is a joint venture between the Genizah Research Unit and Machon Yerushalayim, by my colleague Dr Amir Ashur and myself. The responsum is found in T-S Misc. 28.186. The story unfolds in two acts: first in Algeria, then in Morocco, with the Jewish academy in Iraq playing a pivotal role.
Act One:
The narrative centres on a Jewish family in Masīla (now M’sila, Algeria) in the 10th century.5 The father, a trader, often left his wife to manage their household and three children. Seeking to secure her daughter's future, the mother arranged an early marriage during her husband's absence. In this society, as documented in Genizah records, social advancement could be pursued through wealth accumulation, scholarly recognition, or strategic marriages.6 With her husband absent, the mother saw an opportunity to secure the young daughter's future through a well-placed marriage, despite the girl being below the marital age of 12.5 years according to Jewish law.
Genizah documents reveal that among Jewish communities in North Africa, it was common to arrange marriages early to ensure young girls' futures,7 though legally, only fathers could sanctify such unions.8The marriage was intended to remain unconsummated until the daughter reached maturity, at which point she could choose to accept or refuse the union. In our case, the mother proceeded with a marriage arrangement during her husband's absence, risking potential legal and social repercussions. Her decision was apparently driven by the potential benefits of the match or perhaps out of fear that no better match would come, or a flaw in her family's lineage might emerge later. Her justification likely included the uncertainty of her husband’s return, given the perilous nature of his travels.9
Upon his return, the father embraced the decision, proudly integrating the groom into the family business. However, tensions soon escalated into a legal dispute when the father and groom's relationship deteriorated, leading the father to claim that he never officially consented to the marriage.10 This brings into question the legality of the marriage, as it was arranged without his explicit authorisation. This dispute led to legal conflict over its validity, requiring intervention from Rav Sherira Gaon, head of the Pumbedita Jewish Academy in Baghdad. Rav Sherira Gaon sent back an official response, backed with learned Talmudic references.
Act Two:
Less than a year later, a fundamentally similar case occurred a thousand kilometres away, in the city of Fez in Morocco. The local court sent the issue to the Jewish Academy in Baghdad for a legal opinion. The Gaon recalled that there was already a precedent for this question and asked the clerk to attach to his answer to Morocco an extract of his opinion sent to Algeria. This answer with the extract was preserved in a manuscript now in the library of the University of Toronto,11 Canada, and was published in 1934 by Prof. Simcha Assaf.12
Thanks to the new Genizah fragment, we now have the full case. Comparing the extract to the source reveals important insights into the nature of the archives and the procedure for saving and editing the Responsa in the main Jewish academies, and about the method of distributing the answers, which I will expand on in the full publication of the new answers.
For historians and Jewish law scholars, this story illustrates the legal and social dynamics of medieval Jewish communities and the crucial role of Responsa in documenting Jewish history. Stay tuned for the full publication, which will delve deeper into these historical insights.
T-S Misc. 28.186, fol. 5r.
15 וששאלתם
16 קטנה שקידשה אמה ואחיה שלא לדעת אביה [ובא אביה] ממדינת
17 הים ולא מיחה על ידם ונשתתף אביה עם חתנו ואמ' לו
18 אתה בני וכל מי שישאל אותו עליו אומ' לו חתני הוא ובעל
19 בתי והיה עמו כמו שנה לאחר כך היתה ביניהן קטטה אמ' לו
20 אין לך אצלי אשה בתי עדיין קטנה היא והיא ברשותי ולא
21 קיבלתי מידך קידושין שכך אמרו חכמ' אביה מקבל קידושיה13
22 ואביה מקבל גיטה14 אמ' לו והלא יש לי עמך <היום> שנה ולא מחיתה על [...]
You have asked:
A little girl was married off by her mother and brother without her father's knowledge, and her father returned from abroad and did not protest. The father took the bridegroom as a (business) partner and said to him: 'You are my son.' And anyone who asks him about him says to him: 'He is my son-in-law and the husband of my daughter.'
They stayed this way for about a year.15 After that, there was a dispute between them.
He (the father) said to him: 'You don't have a wife with me, my daughter is still underaged, and so, she is under my authority. I did not accept a betrothal for her from you, as the Talmudic sages said: "Her father receives her marriage" and "Her father receives her divorce".
He (the groom) said to him: 'Haven't I been with you for a year, and you did not consent?'
Footnotes
1 See Jacob Mann, The Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a source of Jewish history, New York 1973.I would like to thank my colleagues Dr. Amir Ashur and Dr Oded Zinger of their remarks.
2 See Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture, 35–53. Yale University Press, 1998. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkrdt.10.
3 See Y. Zvi Stampfer, "Responsa", In Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Online, (Brill, 2010) doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/1878-9781_ejiw_COM_0018400
4 See: Y. Zvi Stampfer, "From Responsa to Monograph: On the Modification of Rav Saadia Gaon's Responsum." In Sidra, 23 (2023), pp. 229–264. [Online version available at https://biupress.org/index.php/sidra] [in Hebrew].
5 On Masīla see: Dachraoui, F. "Masīla". In P. Bearman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition Online (EI-2 English), (Brill, 2012) doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5014. On the Jewish community there see: Gil, Moshe. Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 25 Mar. 2004) doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047413165, p. 168.
6 See: Marina Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, pp. 240–241.
7 See Eve Krakowski, Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture, Princeton, NJ, 2017, pp. 127–128.
8 According to local customs, even mature daughters sometimes needed their father's agreement for marriage. Interestingly, Maimonides, who lived nearly two centuries after Rav Sherira, was asked about a mature girl whose father was absent on a business trip, and she wanted to be betrothed. The local court wanted to know if such betrothals were valid without the father's consent (T-S 8J22.29, published by M.A. Friedman, Geniza Studies and Maimonidean Research, in Maimonides and the Cairo Geniza ed. By M.A. Friedman, Jerusalem 2023, pp. 89–92 [Hebrew]).
9 For historical background on the Maghribi trades and their long journeys see: Jessica Goldberg, "Individual geographies of trade". In: Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and Their Business World, Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series. Cambridge University Press; 2012, pp. 247–295
10 This is not an uncommon situation. For similar cases where the father and son-in-law became business partners, followed by family/business disputes, see: Oded Zinger, Living with the Law: Gender and Community Among the Jews of Medieval Egypt, Pennsylvania, 2023, pp. 27–28 and p. 168, n. 89.
11 Ms. FR 3-011 (formerly Sasoon collection, Ms. 593. This codex was copied in the 16th–17th century.
12 Ginzei Qedem, 5 (1934), pp. 108–123.
13 BT, Ketubot 66b; Kiddushin 3b.
14 M Ketubot 4:4.
15 The text is ambiguous; it does not clearly specify whether the groom remained as a business partner for a year or lived with his future wife's family in what could be considered a matrimonial arrangement during that period. The groom's remark at the end of this passage, "Haven't I been with you for a year?" may support the latter interpretation. However, Jewish law prohibits betrothed couples from living in the same house before their marriage, as outlined in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, Ishut, 10:1. For further insight into matrilocal (and patrilocal) households as evidenced in the Cairo Genizah, see: Eve Krakowski's Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt, particularly pages 52, 267–268.
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