Negotiating Travel in the Shadow of the Law in Medieval Egypt

This study will examine arrangements made before travel of husbands in documents from the Cairo Geniza. Absence of husbands for a prolonged period of time due to commerce, study, pilgrimage and wanderlust was ubiquitous in medieval Egyptian Jewish communities. Geographical separation put the couple under financial, legal and emotional strains. Families tried to alleviate these strains by making arrangements before the husband`s departure. These arrangements offer an occasion to study the tension between private ordering and legal agreements. Since the husband will soon travel far away, it was often difficult, if not impossible, to enforce these arrangements. Thus, this is an extreme case study for the ability of individuals, families and legal institutions to exert control at a moment of transition.

I plan to collect evidence for such arrangements and then explore how common they were and whether they were made through legal institutions or private agreements. I will then explore what topics were addressed in such arrangements (wife`s maintenance, the time of the husbands` return, the wife`s legal status in case the husband return is delayed, etc.). The question who was given a management role while the husband is away (the wife, her male kin, the husband`s brothers or business partners, his mother or sister) will be of special concern. I will conclude by examining one or two cases of subsequent marital dispute to see how the re-negotiation of married life took place in what sociologists call the shadow of the law.