ABSTRACT
Ours is a relatively new field of research. As with the documentary fragments in general, little attention was paid to those manuscripts dealing with marriage and the family during the first decades of Geniza research. This situation was reversed by the epoch-making studies of S. D. Goitein. Goitein writes in the preface to his A Mediterranean Society, Volume III (The Family), that he attempted to keep references to Jewish law to a reasonable minimum. But that book is a veritable treasure of source material and scholarship specifically for the student of Jewish law concerning marriage and the family. 2 Furthermore, Goitein deals with the subject of our lecture, viz. developments in marriage and family law and their possible relationships to Islamic law in his illuminating article “The Interplay of Jewish and Islamic Laws.” 3 I shall discuss here certain particular issues concerning methodology and substance within this framework.
