“This Sijill is a Hujja!” Mass-producing Legal Documents in Ottoman Cairo
“This Sijill is a Hujja!” Mass-producing Legal Documents in Ottoman Cairo
In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, written legal documents were transformed from a privilege of the elite to an everyday necessity. Marriages, divorces, tax records, and inheritance settlements all came to be routinely documented in writing. A professional class of scribes and witnesses grew up to support the demand for legal documentation. The traditional preference for the oral testimony of eyewitnesses to a contract, in the event of a later dispute, eventually disappeared in favor of suitably witnessed written documents safeguarded in an official repository.
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