Contractual Partnerships in the Geniza and the Relationship between Islamic Law and Practice

It is the consensus of scholars that Jewish merchants in the medieval Islamic world struc- tured their economic relationships according to the norms of a broad, "Islamic" market- place. Legal agreements found in the Cairo Geniza show that, on the contrary, these merchants adhered to the norms of Jewish law. I discuss the implications of this finding for the study of Jewish and Islamic social, economic, and legal history, for which the Geniza documents are an important direct witness.