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Variety of Legal cases heard by the judge in Isfahan Names that appear in court cases Isfahan’s city scape Inscriptions on reading and collecting Dates - Hands of owners Transcription Translation
As we turn to folio 6 recto [pin # 1] of the judge’s anthology we can imagine the cases he heard and settled concerning ownership of property in Isfahan. His notes begin with a template of a sales contract where generic names of two guarantors, Muhammad Nazar and Mirza Muhammad [pin #2], are recorded. Two Muslim male witnesses certify the sale of a portion (three-sixths) of a storefront (dukkān) in accordance with Islamic law (shari’a). The judge records the legal formula which he must have evoked daily to certify the ownership of plaintiffs: “The rights of owners (mallāk) to their property is amongst their rights.” That the date of this settlement is left blank to be filled out according to the month (such-and-such) of judgement, signals the frequency of such formulaic cases the judge carried out.
A case of inheritance follows the verification of property ownership creating a legal connection between sales and inheritance. The judge records in red ink spelling out the genre as a copy of an ownership contract of objects. [pin #3] We hear the invocation of praise to the prophet Muhammad and his family as we are introduced to what seems to be a historical case. No longer recorded in terms of a template, the judge gives us the name of the deceased Muhammad Zaman Birinjī [rice producer/seller], the son of Qasim, who has passed away. His inheritors are his three sons, Muhammad Qulī, Zāhid, and Rasūl, and his wife, Shuhrih Bānū, the mother of his sons [pin#4]. The name of his wife, Shuhrih Bānū, is further identified as the daughter of Muhammad Husayn.