An Aramaic Bill of Sale for the Enslaved Nubian Woman "Equation missing"

Abstract

This essay analyzes a bill of sale for the enslaved Nubian woman . In Cairo during the year 1108 CE, the Jewish woman Sitt al-Aqrān sold to another Jew, Sitt al-Munā, who was the widow of the prominent Geniza merchant Nahray b. . Bills of sale are the most common form of Geniza evidence for the history of slavery and the slave trade. While scribes composed most bills of sale in Judeo-Arabic, the majority of this document is in Aramaic. This scribe’s use of Aramaic legal formulas reflects his reliance on a (defective) copy of the Babylonian Talmud and on a manual of gaonic legal formularies compiled by Hai Gaon, the head of the Pumbedita yeshiva.