142 r Mark S. Wagner
The documents relating on the case of the Kuhlānī Synagogue constituted a portion
of a much larger corpus of hundreds of legal documents that R. al-Jamal collected be-
fore emigrating to Palestine in 1944. After a career in the Israeli Ministry of Religions,
al-Jamal founded the “Shalom Institute for the Tribes of Yeshurun.” He published several
collections of the Muslim legal documents that he had collected in Yemen, along with
Hebrew transliterations, translations, and commentaries. Bernard Haykel has drawn at-
tention to the historical value of these documents in a paper delivered at the Judaism
and Islam in Yemen workshop held at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School
on October 27, 2002.
- In the Talmud, heqdesh referred to property donated for the upkeep of the Temple
in Jerusalem. R. Isaac Alfasi (d. 1103) applied the rules of heqdesh to synagogues, an in-
novation that was upheld by his successors among the Sephardic rabbis, most notably
Maimonides. David Fink, “The Corporate Status of Hekdesh in Early Sefardic Responsa,”
in The Touro Conference Volume, ed. Bernard S. Jackson (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press,
1985), 17–24, see 20–22. Queries to Maimonides in Judeo-Arabic concerning consecrated
property used the terms heqdesh or waq f and the Arabic verb awqafa. Maimonides,
Teshuvot ha-rambam, ed. Joshua Blau (Jerusalem: Mekise nirdamim: Jerusalem: 1985),
2:363, 371, 477. In response to a question concerning a heqdesh, Maimonides used the
Hebrew term heqdesh and the Arabic terms waq f and mūqif interchangeably. Ibid., 2:363.
In Yemen, the identification between the halakhic concept of heqdesh and the concept of
a waq f was even more marked. The clearest illustration of this point is the fact that a Jew
who wanted to establish such an endowment needed to have a pious intention (qurbah).
Nahshon, Hanhagat ha-qehilah, 242–43; Piamenta, Dictionary, 389. - See the appendix: “The Problem of the Synagogue Waq f.”
- The Talmud specifies that synagogues in cities (krakhin) were public property
that could not be sold (BT Megilah 26), a position affirmed by Maimonides (Mishneh
Torah, Sefer Ha-Ahavah, Hilkhot tefilah 11:16). See also Israel Poleyeff, “The Sale of a
Synagogue,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 2, no. 1 (1982): 19–34. - Muhammad Fārūq al- ̔Akkām, “Des fondements de la propriété dans la jurispru-
dence musulmane: la mainmise sur les biens vacants (al-istilā ̔alā al-mubāh),” Revue des
Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditeranée 79–80 (1996): 25–41. - Gamliel, Bate hakneset, 2:34–35. Islamic law concerning synagogues, wrote Rich-
ard Gottheil, “occasioned much pious fraud on the part of the Jews themselves.” Rich-
ard Gottheil, “An Eleventh-Century Document Concerning a Cairo Synagogue,” Jewish
Quarterly Review (original series) 19 (1907): 467–539, see 490. - The Zaydī imām al-Murtadā (1363–1437) says that the Imām should destroy syna-
gogues unless there is a benefit (maslahah) that justifies their continued existence (Bahr
al-zakhkhār, 5:462–63). Dhimmīs cannot rebuild what has been destroyed in places other
than those where they were considered to have lived at the time of the Islamic con-
quests. (Yemen is not one of them.) The nineteenth-century jurist Muhammad b. ̔Alī
al-Shawkānī took the same position. Nayl al-awtār, ed. Tāhā ̔Abd al-Ra’ūf Sa ̔d and
Mustafā Muhammad al-Hawārī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhirah, 1978), 9:318. On the matter
of whether or not they may rebuild synagogues that have been destroyed, a commentator
on the fifteenth-century Sharh al-azhār wrote that dhimmīs are allowed to do so, “even