Marriage contracts and items of dowry among the Karaims in Eastern Europe
ENThe Jewish maniage contract, the ketubba, represents a very ancient type of document; early forms of ketubbot have been found among the discoveries from Elephantine and Wadi Murabba'at. Although ketubba is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, it nevertheless constituted a part of the marriage ceremony and awarded marital status, as it did among the Karaites from the mediaeval period on; the discoveries of the Cairo Geniza include a high number of Karaites ketubbot. [...] In this paper, dedicated to the memory of my colleague and dear friend, Professor Karl-Johan Illman (1936-2002), I wish to draw attention to the contents of these nedunyot, a forgotten source of the Karaim material culture. They reflect the general multi-ethnic and multi-cultural atmosphere of the (former) Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the adaptation of Western and Central European influences to both the Karaim tradition and the Hebrew language used by Karaims as their vehicle of literary expression. First, however, the documentary context of these lists is deserving of some description. [...] [Extract, p. 61-62].
