The Haram al-Sharīf collection of Arabic legal documents in Jerusalem: a Mamlūk court archive?

Abstract

This article analyses the corpus of 900 documents in the Mamluk Haramal-Sarif collection from the angle of archival storage. The vastmajority of these documents are linked to the Jerusalem judge Sarafal-Din, Isa b. Ganim and to his period in office between the years793/1391 and 797/1395. The sample of surviving documents, primarilyestate inventories but also a few documents from other areas of the lawwithin the qadi's competence, contradicts the assumption that the Haramcorpus is a systematically compiled archive of qadi records. Courtcertifications of real-estate sales and further transactions that arepreserved for other periods within the Haram corpus are totally absentfor this particular period. There is, moreover, an abundant number ofdocuments concerning financial transactions in institutions over whichthe judge had jurisdiction.The necrology of the contemporary chronicler Ibn Higgi (d. 816/1413)opens an interesting perspective to explain the selection of documentsrelating to Saraf al-Din, who was involved in a massive corruption case.