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Description

We, the undersigned to this deed, were present on Sunday, 8 Kislev 1321 to the dating of deeds according to which the date is written in Fustat. Siba' bt. Isaac, the dyer, said: "Make the symbolic purchase from me, as of now, and write, sign and witness for me that I received my bill of divorce from Husayn b. Abraham, my husband. I released him from my delayed marriage gift and any trousseau that I had in my Ketubba. No dinar, no dirham, no claim whatsoever, no oath and no ban remain for me with this Husayn. I have undertaken the maintenance of his child, Aaron, his provisions and all his affairs. No claim whatsoever, no harassment, no legal suit nor contention remains for me against him except his release." We, the witnesses [...] gave the deed to this Husayn according to the command of Sibā', his divorcée, so it will be in his hand a true and established proof.

On the 27th of November, 1009, in the Egyptian city of Fustat, Sibā' the dyer divorced her husband. Two witnesses, Samuel b. Jacob and Mundhir b. Shabbat, recorded her statement and provided her ex-husband Husayn with a copy. Sibā' herself was probably illiterate in Hebrew letters, so she relied on the two scribes of the court to make sure her words were committed to writing. They represented the court at the local synagogue which presided over all matters of Jewish marriage contracts. When a Jewish couple married, they were issued a ketubba, a contract which spelled out the couple's obligations to each other. One important part of the ketubba was the me'uhar, the delayed marriage gift. Husbands promised to pay the me'uhar upon divorce or widowhood. It served as a form of insurance for a woman whose economic situation would become precarious if she found herself without a husband to support her. But if Husayn owed Sibā' a me'uhar upon their divorce, why did she forfeit her right to it?

Sibā's get, or bill of divorce, was preserved in an archive known as the Cairo Geniza. This collection of papers from a synagogue of Fustat, or Old Cairo, chronicles centuries of Jewish history in the city. Many of them date to the period of the Fatimid caliphate, who made Fustat the capital of their empire, but they present the era from a Jewish perspective instead of an Islamic one. No other papers concerning Sibā' or her husband or son survive in the Geniza. Some divorce cases left letters or court deliberations behind, but Sibā's story is preserved only in this single document. It represents the end of what was probably a long and stressful process which saw Sibā' give up all her monetary rights in order to divorce her husband and retain custody of her son. Her husband should have paid her a me'uhar, and he owed child support for any son under the age of six. Sibā' also gave up her trousseau, a collection of clothing and household items that formed the wealth she brought with her into the marriage and were supposed to remain hers according to the terms of the ketubba.

As a dyer, Sibā' was not a wealthy woman to begin with. Jewish workers dominated the dyeing trade in medieval Islamic cities. Textiles were one of the most precious and portable forms of wealth in the Mediterranean. Women worked at all stages of the trade as spinners, weavers and dyers. There was a district for dyers in Fustat where Sibā' probably lived. Although clients paid exorbitant prices for dyed silk cloth, only a fraction of that money went to paying the dyers' wages. An 11th century receipt from the Cairo Geniza shows that for an order of 63 lbs of dyed silk cloth, the wages for the dyers was only 20 dinars out of a total 474 - only 4% of the total cost. The dyes alone cost four times more than it cost to pay the dyers for all their labour. Because of their poor wages, dyers were frequent recipients of charity at the synagogue. Lists of the poor would be distributed to the bakers in town, who would divide the responsibilities so that as many people as possible could be offered bread. Dyers and divorcées often made that list.

In spite of how poorly Sibā' was paid for her trade, working as a dyer was a specialized task that took years of training. Customers demanded a huge variety of colours for their clothing. Many different types of dyestuffs were needed to suit their tastes. Dyers often ended up specializing in a single colour because the process for dyeing varied so much depending on what substance formed the core of the dye. Sibā' must have worked hard for years to become a professional dyer. While we don't know what colour she specialized in, I chose to draw her carrying out the process for dyeing cloth with indigo. Monitoring the acidity and temperature of the dye bath was essential for getting the right colour. While the dye made the cloth look green in the vat, once it made contact with the oxygen in the air, it would turn a rich shade of blue. An inexperienced dyer would end up with clothes that would stay green or fail to hold their colour. Sibā' may have learned the trade from her parents. Her father Isaac and her unknown mother gave her an Arabic name, which was common for girls since they were unlikely to learn Hebrew. Hers meant "charm." She may have become literate in Arabic in order to make business contracts, but even that was not guaranteed for a woman of low social status.

So what would cause a poor, hard-working mother like Sibā' to give up all the financial stability her husband owed her in a divorce? Unfortunately, Sibā's story is a common one in the divorce records of the Cairo Geniza. Husbands who neglected their wives or treated them poorly often refused to grant a woman a divorce unless she released him from his debts to her. When women came to the courts looking for a divorce, the all-male judges often exerted strong pressures on them to compromise with their husbands. The men of the synagogue impressed upon these women their religious duty of self-sacrifice, a rhetoric they are never recorded using with male litigants. While husbands were often well-connected to their peers in the synagogue's court, wives were much less likely to have supporters there. The goal of the court was often to keep the peace of the community, and that meant putting undue pressure on women to submit to a husband's demands. Many women were willing to go to great lengths to preserve their marriages, forfeiting financial rights from their ketubba even before they sought a divorce. A divorce that forced her to relinquish all the financial security she'd been promised at her marriage was a last resort. It was not an uncommon one, however - the remarriage rate for Jewish communities in medieval Egypt is thought to be between 60% and 80%. Many, maybe even most, Jewish women ended up with far less than they had been promised in their ketubba. Only very wealthy and well-connected women managed to hold on to everything in the face of divorce or widowhood.

Knowing that she would be left in such a difficult financial position after their divorce, it may seem odd that Sibā' would also release Husayn from having to pay child support for their son Aaron. Divorced Jewish mothers automatically retained custody of their daughters, but fathers had a chance at custody for their sons. If they declined custody, they were supposed to pay child support until the boy was six years old. A divorced woman, meanwhile, needed to be able to rely on her sons to support her financially in the future, now that she had no husband looking after her interests. Because keeping Aaron was so important to Sibā's future security, Husayn was able to use child support as a powerful bargaining chip. Like many other divorced men in the Geniza records, he probably threatened to take Aaron away from Sibā' unless she agreed to waive his debts of child support. She was left with no choice but to agree to support her son on her own.

We don't know if in the year 1000 Sibā' had married Husayn yet. While their son Aaron had not yet been born, it's possible they had older daughters who wouldn't have been named in the get. Given how intensive the training for a dyer was, she was most likely working in the year 1000 whether she was married or not. While she never could have afforded a full outfit made from the silk she dyed for her customers, a few scraps of blue and green cloth she gathered throughout the years were fashioned into her veil and headband. She had to concentrate on her work, knowing that her wealthy customer would reject the product if it wasn't the exact shade of blue that was ordered. The ketubba of wealthier women show us that medieval Jewish brides were very particular about the colours they wanted, requesting shades of cloud grey or pistachio green. Still, this was what Sibā' had trained for: Watching the colour of the bath and the heat of the flames, she ensured that the cloth would come out looking exactly how she wanted it. After the divorce, when she was left to fend for herself and her son, she would rely on these skills to supplement the income of charity and feed her small family.

It's great to finally draw a woman from the Cairo Geniza. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's an incredible cache of hundreds of thousands of documents that were kept in a synagogue in Cairo. They span over a thousand years of Jewish history. Because so many of the documents are legal and economic, as well as letters, they tell us so much about everyday life for the Jewish community in Cairo and beyond. It's always important to me to try to represent the lives of non-elites in this project, since so much of the historical and archaeological record is dominated by the wealthy. This was the first Jewish woman I've drawn since including Bonna five years ago, so it was good to expand the project's Jewish representation. This picture also marks a return to Cairo from a very different perspective than that of Sitt al-Mulk .

I couldn't find a reconstruction of what Cairo looked like in this period (let me know if you have one!) so I rather cheekily used art from Assassin's Creed to help me figure out what the streets might look like. This illustration feels a bit like entries earlier in the series, as I didn't try out any new artistic techniques for it. My mom's experiments with different types of homemade dye the past year or two made it really fun to draw a dyer and talk about it with her.

Learn more on the website: womenof1000ad.weebly.com/sib25…

Others in the series include...

Bharima (Bangladesh)
Gunnborga (Sweden)
The Parrot Keepers of Wind Mountain (New Mexico)
The Rice Keepers of Yamashiro (Japan)
The Riders of Holda (Germany)
The Initiate of Schroda (South Africa)
The Traveller of Moxos (Bolivia)
The Maize Farmer of the Illinois River Valley (Illinois)

Prana (Cambodia)

The Woman in the Window (Uzbekistan)

Description

We, the undersigned to this deed, were present on Sunday, 8 Kislev 1321 to the dating of deeds according to which the date is written in Fustat. Siba' bt. Isaac, the dyer, said: "Make the symbolic purchase from me, as of now, and write, sign and witness for me that I received my bill of divorce from Husayn b. Abraham, my husband. I released him from my delayed marriage gift and any trousseau that I had in my Ketubba. No dinar, no dirham, no claim whatsoever, no oath and no ban remain for me with this Husayn. I have undertaken the maintenance of his child, Aaron, his provisions and all his affairs. No claim whatsoever, no harassment, no legal suit nor contention remains for me against him except his release." We, the witnesses [...] gave the deed to this Husayn according to the command of Sibā', his divorcée, so it will be in his hand a true and established proof.

On the 27th of November, 1009, in the Egyptian city of Fustat, Sibā' the dyer divorced her husband. Two witnesses, Samuel b. Jacob and Mundhir b. Shabbat, recorded her statement and provided her ex-husband Husayn with a copy. Sibā' herself was probably illiterate in Hebrew letters, so she relied on the two scribes of the court to make sure her words were committed to writing. They represented the court at the local synagogue which presided over all matters of Jewish marriage contracts. When a Jewish couple married, they were issued a ketubba, a contract which spelled out the couple's obligations to each other. One important part of the ketubba was the me'uhar, the delayed marriage gift. Husbands promised to pay the me'uhar upon divorce or widowhood. It served as a form of insurance for a woman whose economic situation would become precarious if she found herself without a husband to support her. But if Husayn owed Sibā' a me'uhar upon their divorce, why did she forfeit her right to it?

Sibā's get, or bill of divorce, was preserved in an archive known as the Cairo Geniza. This collection of papers from a synagogue of Fustat, or Old Cairo, chronicles centuries of Jewish history in the city. Many of them date to the period of the Fatimid caliphate, who made Fustat the capital of their empire, but they present the era from a Jewish perspective instead of an Islamic one. No other papers concerning Sibā' or her husband or son survive in the Geniza. Some divorce cases left letters or court deliberations behind, but Sibā's story is preserved only in this single document. It represents the end of what was probably a long and stressful process which saw Sibā' give up all her monetary rights in order to divorce her husband and retain custody of her son. Her husband should have paid her a me'uhar, and he owed child support for any son under the age of six. Sibā' also gave up her trousseau, a collection of clothing and household items that formed the wealth she brought with her into the marriage and were supposed to remain hers according to the terms of the ketubba.

As a dyer, Sibā' was not a wealthy woman to begin with. Jewish workers dominated the dyeing trade in medieval Islamic cities. Textiles were one of the most precious and portable forms of wealth in the Mediterranean. Women worked at all stages of the trade as spinners, weavers and dyers. There was a district for dyers in Fustat where Sibā' probably lived. Although clients paid exorbitant prices for dyed silk cloth, only a fraction of that money went to paying the dyers' wages. An 11th century receipt from the Cairo Geniza shows that for an order of 63 lbs of dyed silk cloth, the wages for the dyers was only 20 dinars out of a total 474 - only 4% of the total cost. The dyes alone cost four times more than it cost to pay the dyers for all their labour. Because of their poor wages, dyers were frequent recipients of charity at the synagogue. Lists of the poor would be distributed to the bakers in town, who would divide the responsibilities so that as many people as possible could be offered bread. Dyers and divorcées often made that list.

In spite of how poorly Sibā' was paid for her trade, working as a dyer was a specialized task that took years of training. Customers demanded a huge variety of colours for their clothing. Many different types of dyestuffs were needed to suit their tastes. Dyers often ended up specializing in a single colour because the process for dyeing varied so much depending on what substance formed the core of the dye. Sibā' must have worked hard for years to become a professional dyer. While we don't know what colour she specialized in, I chose to draw her carrying out the process for dyeing cloth with indigo. Monitoring the acidity and temperature of the dye bath was essential for getting the right colour. While the dye made the cloth look green in the vat, once it made contact with the oxygen in the air, it would turn a rich shade of blue. An inexperienced dyer would end up with clothes that would stay green or fail to hold their colour. Sibā' may have learned the trade from her parents. Her father Isaac and her unknown mother gave her an Arabic name, which was common for girls since they were unlikely to learn Hebrew. Hers meant "charm." She may have become literate in Arabic in order to make business contracts, but even that was not guaranteed for a woman of low social status.

So what would cause a poor, hard-working mother like Sibā' to give up all the financial stability her husband owed her in a divorce? Unfortunately, Sibā's story is a common one in the divorce records of the Cairo Geniza. Husbands who neglected their wives or treated them poorly often refused to grant a woman a divorce unless she released him from his debts to her. When women came to the courts looking for a divorce, the all-male judges often exerted strong pressures on them to compromise with their husbands. The men of the synagogue impressed upon these women their religious duty of self-sacrifice, a rhetoric they are never recorded using with male litigants. While husbands were often well-connected to their peers in the synagogue's court, wives were much less likely to have supporters there. The goal of the court was often to keep the peace of the community, and that meant putting undue pressure on women to submit to a husband's demands. Many women were willing to go to great lengths to preserve their marriages, forfeiting financial rights from their ketubba even before they sought a divorce. A divorce that forced her to relinquish all the financial security she'd been promised at her marriage was a last resort. It was not an uncommon one, however - the remarriage rate for Jewish communities in medieval Egypt is thought to be between 60% and 80%. Many, maybe even most, Jewish women ended up with far less than they had been promised in their ketubba. Only very wealthy and well-connected women managed to hold on to everything in the face of divorce or widowhood.

Knowing that she would be left in such a difficult financial position after their divorce, it may seem odd that Sibā' would also release Husayn from having to pay child support for their son Aaron. Divorced Jewish mothers automatically retained custody of their daughters, but fathers had a chance at custody for their sons. If they declined custody, they were supposed to pay child support until the boy was six years old. A divorced woman, meanwhile, needed to be able to rely on her sons to support her financially in the future, now that she had no husband looking after her interests. Because keeping Aaron was so important to Sibā's future security, Husayn was able to use child support as a powerful bargaining chip. Like many other divorced men in the Geniza records, he probably threatened to take Aaron away from Sibā' unless she agreed to waive his debts of child support. She was left with no choice but to agree to support her son on her own.

We don't know if in the year 1000 Sibā' had married Husayn yet. While their son Aaron had not yet been born, it's possible they had older daughters who wouldn't have been named in the get. Given how intensive the training for a dyer was, she was most likely working in the year 1000 whether she was married or not. While she never could have afforded a full outfit made from the silk she dyed for her customers, a few scraps of blue and green cloth she gathered throughout the years were fashioned into her veil and headband. She had to concentrate on her work, knowing that her wealthy customer would reject the product if it wasn't the exact shade of blue that was ordered. The ketubba of wealthier women show us that medieval Jewish brides were very particular about the colours they wanted, requesting shades of cloud grey or pistachio green. Still, this was what Sibā' had trained for: Watching the colour of the bath and the heat of the flames, she ensured that the cloth would come out looking exactly how she wanted it. After the divorce, when she was left to fend for herself and her son, she would rely on these skills to supplement the income of charity and feed her small family.

It's great to finally draw a woman from the Cairo Geniza. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's an incredible cache of hundreds of thousands of documents that were kept in a synagogue in Cairo. They span over a thousand years of Jewish history. Because so many of the documents are legal and economic, as well as letters, they tell us so much about everyday life for the Jewish community in Cairo and beyond. It's always important to me to try to represent the lives of non-elites in this project, since so much of the historical and archaeological record is dominated by the wealthy. This was the first Jewish woman I've drawn since including Bonna five years ago, so it was good to expand the project's Jewish representation. This picture also marks a return to Cairo from a very different perspective than that of Sitt al-Mulk .

I couldn't find a reconstruction of what Cairo looked like in this period (let me know if you have one!) so I rather cheekily used art from Assassin's Creed to help me figure out what the streets might look like. This illustration feels a bit like entries earlier in the series, as I didn't try out any new artistic techniques for it. My mom's experiments with different types of homemade dye the past year or two made it really fun to draw a dyer and talk about it with her.

Learn more on the website: womenof1000ad.weebly.com/sib25…

Others in the series include...

Bharima (Bangladesh)
Gunnborga (Sweden)
The Parrot Keepers of Wind Mountain (New Mexico)
The Rice Keepers of Yamashiro (Japan)
The Riders of Holda (Germany)
The Initiate of Schroda (South Africa)
The Traveller of Moxos (Bolivia)
The Maize Farmer of the Illinois River Valley (Illinois)

Prana (Cambodia)

The Woman in the Window (Uzbekistan)