The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

The Case of the Kuhlānī Synagogue in San ̔ā’, 1933–1944 r 145

Zohar ̔Amar and Hananel Serri [Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2001], 117–31,
see 125.

51. Gamliel, Bate hakneset, 2:69, 3:86, 307–308.


52. Ibid., 3:309n16.


53. Al-Jamal calls this place “al-Qāriyah.” Ibid., 2:338. In his Insiqlopediyah le-hakhme
    teman (Encyclopedia of the Sages of Yemen) (Bene Beraq: Makhon le-heqer hakhme
    teman, 2001) (sub Moshe Madmūn), Moshe Gavra explains that this place was the vil-
    lage of “al-Qārrah” south of San ̔ā’, which was a vacation spot for prominent rabbis from
    San ̔ā’, including R. al-Jamal. The village contained two synagogues: one belonged to the
    ̔Uzayrī clan, and the other was “public” (sibori) (352–53).


54. Gamliel, Bate hakneset, 2:338.


55. Libson, Jewish and Islamic Law, 172.


56. See Mark S. Wagner, “Jewish Mysticism on Trial in a Muslim Court: A Fatwā on
    the Zohar—Yemen 1914,” Die Welt des Islams 47, no. 2 (2007): 207–31.


57. Serjeant and Lewcock, San ̔ā’, 93–96.


58. Gamliel, Bate hakneset, 2:72.


59. Haim Gerber, “Ha-Yehudim ve-mosad ha-heqdesh ha-muslimi (waq f) bi-imperi-
    yah ha- ̔othmanit,” Sefunot 17 (new series 2) (1983): 105–31; Ron Shaham, “Christian and
    Jewish ‘waq f’ in Palestine during the Late Ottoman Period,” Bulletin of the School of
    Oriental and African Studies 54, no. 3 (1991): 460–72; Miriam Hoexter, “Waq f Studies in
    the Twentieth Century: The State of the Art,” Journal of the Economic and Social History
    of the Orient 4 (1998): 474–95.


60. Al-Subkī’s treatise on the construction and repair of churches and synagogues
    was apparently prompted by a dream he had in which a shaykh brought up the troubling
    issue of property made waq f for the support of a non-Muslim house of prayer. Seth
    Ward, “Construction and Repair of Churches and Synagogues in Islamic Law: A Treatise
    by Taqī al-Dīn ̔Alī b. ̔Abd al-Kāfī al-Subkī” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1984), 118–19n7;
    Moshe Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden: E.
    J. Brill, 1976), 8–9; Antoine Fattal, Les Statut Légal des Non-Musulmans en Pays d’Islam
    (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958), 143; Muhammad Qadrī Bāshā, Du Wakf (Cairo:
    Imprimerie Nationale, 1896), 49–53.


61. Sharh al-azhār, 8:173–4. A commentary adds: “Even if [he is an unbeliever] by
    incorrect interpretation” (wa-law ta’wīlan), meaning that Shāfi ̔īs and other non-Zaydīs
    are also forbidden to establish waq fs.


62. Ahmad b. al-Qāsim al- ̔Ansī adopted the same position in his twentieth-century
    manual of Zaydī law. Al-Tāj al-mudhhab, 3:282. Al-Jamal commented on this statement
    in Bate hakneset, 2:367.


63. Bah r al-zakhkhār, 4:153.


64. Muhammad b. ̔Alī al-Shawkānī, al-Sayl al-jarrār al-mutadāffiq ̔alā hadā’iq al-
    azhār, ed. Muhammad Sabhī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 2000), 3:50.


65. Virtually the same argument is made by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah in his Ahkām
    ahl al-dhimmah, ed. Subhī al-Sālih (Beirut: Dār al- ̔ilm li l-malāyīn, 1981), 1:301: “If [the
    unbelievers] establish a waq f among themselves and do not appeal to us for legal deci-
    sions or ask us for rulings on its legality there is no objection—its legality is the same as