Marriage Contract

Marriage is one of the most important mitzvot, or commandments, in Judaism, and scriptures are replete with verses encouraging the union of man and woman. One of the essential elements of a Jewish wedding ceremony is the writing and transfer of a marriage contract, or ketubbah (plural, ketubbot). Originally formulated to protect a woman’s rights in marriage, the ketubbah establishes the financial obligations of the groom toward his bride in case of divorce or death. Since the contract was to be a practical document understood by all parties, it was written in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the ancient world. Only the date was written in Hebrew. Although Aramaic has fallen into disuse, it continues to be the language of traditional ketubbot to this day. Most ketubbot are based on a traditional text; however, the terms of engagement and the decoration of the contract offer a glimpse into the lives of various communities as well as the socioeconomic status of particular families.
Ketubbot produced in the Near Fast are usually written on paper, and their decoration is strongly influenced by Islamic art in their lack of figures and the use of aniconic motifs. Persia was the main center of ketubbah illumination in the Islamic world. Moreover, since Muslim law also requires a contract in order to legalize a marriage, it was customary for Muslims in Persia to decorate marriage contracts. Persian Jews thus seem to have modeled their marriage contracts on those of the Muslims. While in Western centers of ketubbah illumination, such as Italy and Holland, decorated ketubbot were often elaborate and expensive documents written on parchment and mainly commissioned by affluent community members, in Persia and other Eastern Jewish communities illustrated marriage contracts were used by most Jews, regardless of their position in society. In fact, Jews in Persia were usually members of the lower social strata: metalsmiths, weavers, dyers, and petty merchants.
One of the two earliest decorated examples known from Persia, this contract is dated 1647 in Isfahan, home to one of the country’s oldest Jewish communities. A second ketubbah from the same year, a humble example from the Kurdish town of Maragheh, in northwest Iran, belongs to a different decorative tradition, featuring a simple frame in black ink (the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, no. 145). The scarcity of Persian ketubbot from this period might be explained by the harsh policies of Shah ‘Abbas II (1642-66), who persecuted Jews and other minorities, including Armenians and Zoroastrians, with vehemence. Threatened with expulsion, many Jews were forced to convert to Islam. It has been remarked, however, that despite the hostile conditions, Jewish culture managed to survive, and at times even to thrive, with a number of fine illustrated Judeo-Persian manuscripts extant from the seventeenth century.
This ketubbah celebrates the union of the bride, Esther, daughter of Mashiah son of Kadadad, and the groom, Mordecai, son of Judah son of Nasr. The text of the contract occupies the center of the page, while biblical verses form the inner and outer frames, including excerpts from the Book of Ruth (4:11), Isaiah (61:9-10), Proverbs (5:18; 31:10-12), and Psalms (128:3-6). Additional verses, part of a wedding poem often featured in more complete form in later ketubbot from Persia and Afghanistan, are inscribed above the main text. The design of early Persian ketubbot with verses inscribed in large, painted letters, has been traced back to fragments of medieval decorated ketubbot found in the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo (a genizah is a repository of worn Hebrew texts that are “hidden” to prevent their profanation).
Unlike most later Persian ketubbot, which are usually painted, the decoration of this contract was created by a repeat of stamped patterns, a technique also used in a later ketubbah from Isfahan dated 1781 (Klau Library, Hebrew Union College, no. 702 ) and in some later examples produced in the Persian city of Hamadan. In this ketubbah, the outer decorative frame features a repetition of hunting motifs: above, a gazelle leaps toward the left; below, a powerful beast attacks a gazelle. Popular during the Safavid period, hunting became a beloved motif in the arts of Persia, from textiles to ceramic tiles. Konstanze Bachmann, paper conservator at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, has pointed out that repeated stamped decoration, usually by means of carved wood blocks, is also found in Persian textiles from the medieval period onward.