From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

“From a Sacred Source” Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval Fondées par George Vajda Dirigées par Paul B. Fenton TOME X...

Author: Ben Outhwaite | Siam Bhayro

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“From a Sacred Source”

Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval Fondées par

George Vajda Dirigées par

Paul B. Fenton

TOME XLII

Cambridge Genizah Studies Series Edited by

Siam Bhayro, University of Exeter Geoffrey Khan, University of Cambridge Ben Outhwaite, Cambridge University Library

VOLUME 1

“From a Sacred Source” Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif

Edited by

Ben Outhwaite and Siam Bhayro

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data “From a sacred source” : genizah studies in honour of Stefan C. Reif / edited by Ben Outhwaite and Siam Bhayro. p. cm. — (Etudes sur le Judaisme medieval ; tome XLII) (Cambridge genizah studies series ; v. 1) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-19058-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Judaism—History—Medieval and early modern period, 425–1789—Sources. 2. Jews—History—70–1789—Sources. 3. Cairo Genizah. 4. Manuscripts, Hebrew— England—Cambridge—History. 5. Cambridge University Library. Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. I. Outhwaite, Ben. II. Bhayro, Siam. III. Reif, Stefan C., 1944– IV. Title. V. Series. BM180.F76 2010 296.09’02—dc22 2010027811

ISSN 0169-815X ISBN 978 90 04 19058 0 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Hazel and John Alexander, two people who knew the value of letter writing, daily letters to each other describing their love, their dreams, their plans, weekly letters relating everyday occurrences and news to distant parents and friends. Their children grew up with this song: Mayn kind, mayn kind du forst avek in a vaytn land farges nit di brivele tsu der mamen This was the source of their excitement regarding the research into the Cairo Genizah and the reason for their active support during their lifetime. Hazel Alexander (1912–1999) John Alexander (1910–1994)

CONTENTS

Contributors ....................................................................................... Preface .................................................................................................

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Stefan C. Reif: An Appreciation ...................................................... Ben M. Outhwaite

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Professor Stefan C. Reif: List of Publications ............................... xxiii Legal Writing in Medieval Cairo: “Copy” or “Likeness” in Jewish Documentary Formulae ................................................... Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman The Paper and Textile Industry in the Land of Israel and Its Raw Materials in Light of an Analysis of the Cairo Genizah Documents ...................................................................... Zohar Amar, Azriel Gorski, and Izhar Neumann Is “The Cairo Genizah” a Proper Name or a Generic Noun? On the Relationship between the Genizot of the Ben Ezra and the Dār Simḥa Synagogues .................................................. Haggai Ben-Shammai Towards a Catalogue of the Magical, Astrological, Divinatory, and Alchemical Fragments from the Cambridge Genizah Collections ...................................................................................... Gideon Bohak The Law of Power of Attorney in Maimonides’ Code of Jewish Law ...................................................................................... Mark R. Cohen The Role of Egyptian Jews in Sixteenth-Century International Trade with Europe: A Chapter in Social-Economic Integration in the Middle East .................................................... Abraham David

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25

43

53

81

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The Contribution of Genizah Texts to the Study of Siddur Rabbi Solomon ben Nathan ......................................................... Uri Ehrlich Genizah Documents as Literary Products ..................................... Miriam Frenkel Judah ha-Levi on Writing the Kuzari: Responding to a Heretic .......................................................................................... Mordechai A. Friedman The Cairo Genizah Unearthed: The Excavations Conducted by the Count d’Hulst on Behalf of the Bodleian Library and Their Significance for Genizah History ..................................... Rebecca J.W. Jefferson Vocalised Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah .... Geoffrey Khan

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139

157

171

201

Early Karaite Grammatical Thought as Reflected in a Commentary on Hosea ................................................................ Friedrich Niessen ‫ז״ל‬

219

An Early Palimpsest Scroll of the Book of Kings from the Cairo Genizah ................................................................................ Judith Olszowy-Schlanger

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Compositional Technique in Qillirian Piyyuṭim for Rain and Dew .......................................................................................... Michael Rand

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The Genizah and Jewish Communal History ............................... Marina Rustow Persian-Arabic Bilingualism in the Cairo Genizah Documents ...................................................................................... Shaul Shaked

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contents Orders of Payment, Orders of Supply, Instructions for Payment, and Statements of Credit in the Genizah and Other Collections at Cambridge University ............................. Avihai Shivtiel

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The Weakening of the Bourgeoisie: Social Changes Mirrored in the Language of the Genizah Letters .................................... Esther-Miriam Wagner

343

Eretz–Israel Maḥzorim in the Genizah: From Palaeography to Liturgy ........................................................................................ Joseph Yahalom

357

“Consigned to the Genizah—But for Only a Third of a Century” ...................................................................................... Stefan C. Reif

377

Index of Subject ................................................................................. Index of Sources ................................................................................ Plates ....................................................................................................

389 399 407

CONTRIBUTORS

Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman (Vanderbilt University) Zohar Amar (Bar Ilan University) Haggai Ben-Shammai (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Gideon Bohak (Tel Aviv University) Mark R. Cohen (Princeton) Abraham David (The National Library of Israel) Uri Ehrlich (Ben-Gurion University) Miriam Frenkel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Ben Zvi Institute) Mordechai A. Friedman (Tel Aviv University) Azriel Gorski (University of New Haven) Rebecca J.W. Jefferson (University of Florida) Geoffrey Khan (University of Cambridge) Friedrich Niessen ‫( ז״ל‬University of Cambridge) Izhar Neumann Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (EPHE-Sorbonne) Ben M. Outhwaite (University of Cambridge) Michael Rand (Academy of the Hebrew Language) Marina Rustow (Johns Hopkins University) Shaul Shaked (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Avihai Shivtiel (University of Leeds) Esther-Miriam Wagner (University of Cambridge) Joseph Yahalom (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

PREFACE

The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection, housed in Cambridge University Library, contains over 190,000 items that were recovered from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo). For about 1,000 years, between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, the synagogue’s genizah was the repository for unwanted documents, making the recovered archive the most important source for both Mediterranean and medieval studies across many fields. The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, also housed in Cambridge University Library, conducts and coordinates research into this priceless archive. In August of 2007, scholars from the world of Genizah studies assembled in Cambridge for a conference organised by the TaylorSchechter Genizah Research Unit. The conference was held to mark the retirement, in March of the previous year, of Stefan Reif, Professor of Medieval Hebrew at the University of Cambridge and, for the previous thirty-three years, Director of the Unit and a veritable champion of Genizah research in the United Kingdom and around the world. Held jointly at the University Library and Westminster College, Cambridge, the conference marked Stefan Reif ’s achievements by demonstrating the tremendous breadth and vitality of Genizah Studies today—a vitality that owes much to Reif ’s shrewd, vigorous and unstinting efforts over the period of his directorship. Notable Genizah scholars from the UK, Europe, Israel and the United States were invited to present papers on any aspect of Genizah manuscripts, from the codicological to the historical, the philological to the literarycritical. Westminster College was chosen as the main venue for the conference due to its association with the benefactors Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, the two intrepid Scottish ladies whose delivery of a fragment of the lost Hebrew text of the book of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) to the Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter led to the modern rediscovery of the treasures of the Cairo Genizah. The story of the discovery of the manuscripts in the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat is one that Stefan Reif has often told in his quest to bring this unique collection to the world’s attention. For his own conference, however, the organisers allowed him to

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roam more widely, and the result was one of the essential highlights of the three days, as Reif’s after-dinner talk reminisced over his three decades in academe, in a typically humorous and pointed manner. This memorable address is imprinted on the minds of those who had the privilege to hear it, but in order that it should be preserved for posterity, it is reproduced as the final paper in this volume, albeit in a slightly expurgated form so as not to invite the interest of members of the legal profession. Among the contributions to this volume is one in the name of our late—and much missed—colleague at the Genizah Research Unit, Dr Friedrich Niessen. Friedrich died in 2009 after a stalwart struggle against cancer. Though he had given a paper at the conference, his illness prevented him from submitting a written version for publication. We are extremely grateful to our colleague Dr Nadia Vidro, who used Friedrich’s notes to produce for this volume a fascinating study of a unique Genizah manuscript. This is the first volume in a new series—Cambridge Genizah Studies—that will showcase the vibrancy and vigour of the field of Genizah research. It is fitting, therefore, that the series commences with a tribute to the one responsible for the good health in which the field finds itself—Professor Stefan Reif. We are grateful to the publishers, E. J. Brill, in particular Jennifer Pavelko and Katelyn Chin, for their enthusiastic support from the first moment this series was conceived. Thanks are also due to Rebecca Jefferson, as co-convenor of the conference, Daniel Davies, Esther-Miriam Wagner and Sarah Sykes, for their assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication, and Tanya Silas, for her assistance in translating one of the articles. We are grateful to the Syndics of Cambridge University Library for permission to reproduce images of, and to quote from, manuscripts in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection. This collection of studies is warmly dedicated to Stefan, from his friends and colleagues in the field of Genizah Studies. The title of this book is taken from a recently-published anthology of medieval Hebrew poetry.1 It seems fitting to quote it in context—

1 P. Cole, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950–1492 (Princeton, 2007), p. 185.

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I praise you with a heart that’s pure, from deep within my prison: You fashion souls from a sacred source, a place of brilliance and wisdom.

Ben Outhwaite Siam Bhayro

STEFAN C. REIF: AN APPRECIATION

It is a commonplace among Genizah scholars that the collection of manuscripts known as the Cairo Genizah has been discovered many times. Periodically, its tattered fragments have been disturbed, rummaged through, looted and relocated—in whole and in part—many times since they were first deposited in the Genizah chamber of the Ben Ezra Synagogue. The greatest part now sits in Cambridge University Library as the Taylor-Schechter Collection, the single largest and most important collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts in the world. The name very clearly marks the achievement of two nineteenth-century Cambridge scholars, Charles Taylor and Solomon Schechter, in bringing the manuscripts to Cambridge, though those in the know—and Stefan Reif has done his best to bring the whole story to the widest attention—recognise the essential roles played by the Jerusalem Rabbi Solomon Wertheimer and the indefatigable, and indispensable, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson. Its move to Cambridge was not the last time it would be discovered, however. After the initial excitement of the early finds—Ben Sira, the Zadokite Fragment, the Greek palimpsests—scholars moved on, and the Library, institutionally conservative, consigned the great majority of the manuscripts to storage, unconserved and still in their original packing cases. In the 1960s, the Collection was ripe for rediscovery. Spurred by an awakening interest in the importance of the documentary Genizah as a source for economic and social history, the Library appointed a new librarian over the Collection, with the aim of conserving and cataloguing the neglected remainder (probably 80,000 fragments). Dr Henry Knopf began the work, arranging for fragments to be cleaned and repaired and for a catalogue to be prepared, but he lasted only a few years before moving on. And so arrived Stefan Reif, a name now inseparably connected with the modern rediscovery of the Cairo Genizah. Appointed in 1973 as a relatively junior librarian, he grasped quickly the unique promise of the Collection and came up with a ten-year plan—which he successfully negotiated through an initially reluctant Library hierarchy—to complete the conservation of the Collection and institute a research programme to catalogue and exploit—in the best possible way—the

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medieval fragments. So convincing was Reif ’s plan, and so thorough the groundwork, that the University Library inaugurated the TaylorSchechter Genizah Research Unit the following year, with Stefan Reif as its first Director. Reif himself had had little experience of academic librarianship before being appointed as an Assistant Under Librarian at Cambridge University Library. Brought up in Edinburgh, he took a degree in Hebrew and Aramaic at Jews’ College and University College London, before completing his PhD on Shabbethai Sofer’s prayer-book. His first jobs were lecturing posts in Glasgow and Dropsie College, Philadelphia (itself blessed with a collection of Genizah manuscripts). His early training, heavy in rabbinic texts and traditional Jewish scholarship, had prepared him well for the task of tackling the disparate fragments of the Genizah, however. Furthermore, his lack of a background in librarianship probably allowed him more freedom to think and plan ambitiously for the Collection than might otherwise have been the case: from early on he recognised the importance of publicity, fund-raising and, most importantly, visible results—in the form of fragments conserved, microfilms produced and catalogues printed. He knew that success would best be measured by concrete achievements, not promise. Accessibility, too, was his watchword: as fragments were conserved, they were made available for general consultation; microfilms were produced and circulated; the bibliography and the catalogues became indispensable scholarly aids; latterly Stefan Reif was one of the first scholars in Cambridge to recognise the importance of digitisation and the potential of the internet for the future of Genizah research. While this energetic approach initially disconcerted some of his more measured colleagues, over time the Library cherished the importance of the work that Reif was doing and recognised the extent to which this relied upon a rare combination of talents. In 1982, the Library’s governing body, the Syndicate, singled him out to remark ‘The importance of the considerable personal contribution of the Director cannot be overstated. His fund-raising ability complements in an unusual way the scholarship which he has brought to bear on this exceptionally important and for long neglected collection’.1 Over his thirty years in charge of the Genizah Research Unit, Reif raised more than one and a half million pounds towards the costs of

1

Cambridge University Reporter, 7 April 1982, vol. CXII, Special No. 14, p. 38.

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conservation, cataloguing and research, a colossal sum, much of it collected before fund-raising became a fashionable—and essential—part of the academic profession. Organisationally, Reif instituted a programme of research that continues to this day, with the production of catalogues (now online, rather than printed), the compiling of an essential bibliography of the Collection and the comprehensive imaging of the manuscripts (microfilm having been overtaken by the power of digital photography), all 193,000 of them. Reif’s fundraising skills, his gift for publicity and public-speaking, and his exceptional organisational talents are strings to his bow, but at heart Reif is and always has been a scholar, blessed with a quick and incisive mind, a robust debating style, and a deep knowledge of a multitude of fields, from philology to codicology, evidenced by a prodigious number of significant publications across a broad range of subjects, but concentrating in particular on the field of prayer. As a pioneer in the diachronic study of Jewish liturgy, establishing from a close reading of manuscripts how textual changes reflect the wider historical development of liturgical theory and practice, Reif has written the essential text on the evoluton of rabbinic tefilla, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer (1993). This was followed by a volume of collected papers, Problems with Prayers (2006), which summarises much of Reif’s more recent work on liturgy. In all, Reif ’s output amounts to well over two hundred scholarly publications in addition to over one hundred more popular pieces. Reif’s contribution to the academic study of Hebrew and Judaism was recognised by his appointment as Professor of Medieval Hebrew in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, as then was, in Cambridge University. Beyond his activities at the Unit and Faculty, Reif was also actively involved at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he remains a Fellow, and with whom he has enjoyed many productive collaborations. Beyond Cambridge, Reif is a founder-member of the British Association for Jewish Studies and was President of the Jewish Historical Society of England—no mean achievement for a Scot! Over and above his many accomplishments as a scholar, administrator and fundraiser, it is possible that Reif will be remembered most of all as an enabler—someone who facilitated the participation of numerous scholars in first-hand and vigorous Genizah research. Since the earliest days of the establishment of the Unit, Reif was eager to bring scholars into the Library to work directly upon the manuscripts themselves, assisting scholars of international repute and specialist

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expertise to find and explore the hitherto mostly inaccessible material. Moreover, throughout his thirty-three years as Director, he was keen to foster and instruct a succession of talented young scholars, initiating them into the recondite arts of Jewish manuscript studies. Alumni of the Unit, who honed their interpretative skills on semilegible, torn and stained fragments, are now scattered across the globe—a new generation of scholars brought up on the importance of close textual analysis. Those initiated under Reif ’s careful watch include Simon Hopkins, Geoffrey Khan, Meira Polliack, Paul Fenton and the current Unit Head, to name just a few. Genizah scholarship would not be as vibrant, instructive and pervasive were it not for the efforts of Stefan Reif over the last three decades. His personal example at Cambridge revitalised the field as a whole, as institutions worldwide came to realise the importance of their own Genizah collections and sought to emulate his achievements. No summation of Stefan Reif’s time at Cambridge University Library would be complete without paying tribute to his late wife Shulamit, who died earlier this year. Shulie began to work with Stefan in the Unit in 1976, and thereafter continued to work alongside her husband until his retirement in 2006. Hired as an editorial assistant, principally on the Genizah Series of catalogues, she in fact performed many roles, from bibliographer to translator, thus being the epitome of the ‘fitting helper for him’ (Genesis 2:18). The great S. D. Goitein, in summarising the first stage of Genizah studies, wrote: It was a happy coincidence that the Genizah was discovered near the turn of the century when Oriental and Jewish studies had reached an unprecedented peak. First-rate scholars used their unique knowledge to identify, or put into their historical context, the literary pieces that came to light, as well as to fix the sequence and mutual relationship in which unknown or little-known personalities or institutions stood to each other.2

As Marina Rustow remarks in her contribution to the present volume, the next stage moved beyond the literary and concentrated more on the documentary pieces. It was yet another happy coincidence that

2 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. I, p. 23.

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this generation of scholars who arrived in Cambridge to wrestle with the Genizah fragments was greeted by a man of Reif ’s vision, range of skills and determination. This collection of studies seems an almost inadequate expression of gratitude, but it is nonetheless presented as a token of the esteem in which Reif is held. Ben M. Outhwaite Cambridge 2010

PROFESSOR STEFAN C. REIF: LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

A. Books and Booklets Written and Edited 1. A Guide to the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection, Cambridge University Library, 1973 (reprinted 1979), pp. vi + 17 + 9 plates; 2. Cambridge University Library Genizah Series, Cambridge University Press for Cambridge University Library, 1978–2006, involving initiation, commissioning, direction of research, planning of structure and content, and overseeing the process of publication. The following volumes have appeared: a. A Miscellany of Literary Pieces from the Cambridge Genizah Collections by Simon Hopkins, 1978, pp. x + 110 + 110 plates; b. Hebrew Bible Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections i. Taylor-Schechter Old Series and other Genizah Collections in Cambridge University Library by M. C. Davis and H. Knopf, 1978, pp. xiv + 384 + 19 plates; ii. Taylor-Schechter New Series and Westminster College Cambridge Collection by M. C. Davis, 1980, pp. x + 478 + 19 plates; iii. Taylor-Schechter Additional Series by M. C. Davis and Ben Outhwaite, xiii + 500 + 16 plates; iv. Taylor-Schechter Additional Series by M. C. Davis and Ben Outhwaite, xi + 553 + 16 plates; c. Vocalised Talmudic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: i. Taylor-Schechter Old Series by Shelomo Morag, 1988, pp. xii + 56 + 10 plates; d. Published Material from the Cambridge Genizah Collections: a Bibliography 1896–1980 by S. C. Reif, 1989, pp. xv + 608; e. Karaite Bible Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah, by Geoffrey Khan, 1990, pp. xv + 186 + 17 plates; f. Targumic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, by M. L. Klein, 1992, pp. xii + 120 + 24 plates; g. Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections by Geoffrey Khan, 1993, pp. xviii + 567 + 24 plates;

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3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

professor stefan c. reif: list of publications h. Medical and Para-Medical Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, by H. D. Isaacs and C. F. Baker, 1994, pp. xx + 144 + 20 plates; i. Palestinian Vocalised Piyyut Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, by J. Yahalom, 1997, pp. 90 + 16 plates; j. A Hand-list of Rabbinic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, by R. Brody, 1998, pp. xi + 352 + 24 plates; k. Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, Old Series, by C. F. Baker and M. Polliack, 2001, xxii + 616 + 24 plates; l. The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. xiv + 239 + 22 plates; m. Published Material from the Cambridge Genizah Collections: a Bibliography 1981–1997, by R. J. W. Jefferson and E. C. D. Hunter, 2004; n. Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, New Series, by A. Shivtiel and F. Niessen, 2006; Shabbethai Sofer and his Prayer-book, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. xiv + 379 + 5 plates; Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honour of E. I. J. Rosenthal (edited with J. A. Emerton), Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. xv + 319 + 7 plates; Genizah Research after Ninety Years (edited with Joshua Blau), Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. xi + 176 + 1 plate; Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History, Cambridge University Press, 1993 (paperback edition, 1995), pp. xiii + 437; Ten Centuries of Hispano-Jewish Culture: An Exhibition (edited with E. Gutwirth), Cambridge University Library, 1992, pp. ii + 29 + 5 plates; Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library: A Description and Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. xx + 626 + 32 plates; A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection, Curzon Press, 2000, pp. xx + 277 + 60 plates; Why Medieval Hebrew Studies: An Inaugural Lecture, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 53 + 4 plates;

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11. Genizah Fragments of Hebrew Prayer as a Reflection of Jewish Religious Ideology: The Twenty-Seventh Annual Feinberg Memorial Lecture (University of Cincinnati, 2005), 31 pages; 12. Problems with Prayers: Studies in the Textual History of Early Rabbinic Liturgy, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 2006, pp. xi + 375 + 4 plates; 13. Charles Taylor and the Genizah Collection: A Centenary Seminar and Exhibition, St John’s College, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 82 + 28 plates;

B. Articles and Reviews Published and Accepted for Publication in Major Scientific Periodicals and Collections 1. ‘A Disputed Liturgical Vocalisation’, Journal of Jewish Studies XX (1969), 5–24; 2. ‘A Note on a Neglected Connotation of NTN’, Vetus Testamentum XX (1970), 114–16; 3. ‘What enraged Phinehas?—A Study of Num. 25:8’, Journal of Biblical Literature XC (1971), 200–6; 4. ‘The Vocalization of a Piyyut in Ms. Günzburg 1041’, Jewish Quarterly Review LXII (1971), 12–19; 5. ‘A Note on G‘R’, Vetus Testamentum XXI (1971), 241–44; 6. ‘Again the Musical Title Page’, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore X (1971/72), 57–61; 7. ‘Dedicated to HNKH’, Vetus Testamentum XXII (1972), 495–501; 8. Review of Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism by A. Altmann, Journal of Semitic Studies XVII (1972), 274–76; 9. Review of Die Vorstellung vom heiligen Geist by P. Schäfer, Journal of Semitic Studies XVII (1973), 156–62; 10. ‘Review of Terumot by E. Güting, Journal of Semitic Studies XVIII (1973), 162–65; 11. ‘Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School’ (review essay), Jewish Quarterly Review LXIII (1973), 272–76; 12. ‘Poets, Prophets and Sages’ (review essay), Jewish Quarterly Review LXIV (1973), 180–3; 13. ‘A Defence of David Qimhi’, Hebrew Union College Annual XLIV (1973), 211–26; 14. ‘World History of the Jewish People’ (review essay), Jewish Quarterly Review LXIV (1974), 261–63;

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15. Review of Einführung in die Mischna by C. Albeck, Journal of Semitic Studies XIX (1974), 112–18; 16. ‘A Mission to the Holy Land’, Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society XXIV (1974), 1–13; 17. ‘Facsimile Editions: Problems and a Proposal’, Newsletter of the Association for Jewish Studies no. 11 (1974), 18–19; 18. Review of Jesus and the Pharisees by J. Bowker, Journal of Semitic Studies XIX (1974), 301–5; 19. Review of Vermes-Millar edition of History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ by E. Schürer, Journal of Semitic Studies XIX (1974), 296–300; 20. Review of The Rabbinic Enumeration of Scriptural Examples by W. S. Towner, Journal of Semitic Studies XX (1975), 260–64; 21. ‘On the text of the ʿAleinu Prayer’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz XLIV (1975), 202–3; 22. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1976), 84, 89, 97–98, 101; 23. ‘Botterweck and Ringgren’s New Dictionary’ (review essay), Jewish Quarterly Review LXVII (1977), 154–59; 24. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1977), 7, 13, 109, 113–15; 25. Brief note (Hebrew) in Sinai 80/5–6 (1977), 288; 26. Review of Jewish Exegesis of the Book of Ruth by D. R. G. Beattie, Vetus Testamentum XXVIII (1978), 369–71; 27. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1978), 19, 117–19, 121, 130; 28. Review of edition of Seder Rav Amram by T. Kronholm, Journal of Semitic Studies XXIII (1978), 119–22; 29. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1979), 13, 46, 48, 95, 99, 104, 124, 138; 30. ‘Genizah Collections at Cambridge University Library’ (Hebrew), in Teʿuda 1: Cairo Genizah Studies (Tel Aviv, 1980), 201–6; 31. Review of the Traditions of Eleazar ben Azariah by Tzvee Zahavy, Journal of the American Oriental Society 100 (1980), 359–60; 32. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1980), 43–45, 119–20, 127, 129, 134; 33. ‘Response to Professor Allony’ in Yad Lakore 19/4 (1980), 239–46; 34. ‘Liturgical Difficulties and Genizah Manuscripts’, Studies in Judaism and Islam (Jerusalem, 1981), 99–122;

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35. Review of Maimonides’ Book of Agriculture, ed. I. Klein, Journal of Semitic Studies XXVI (1981), 134–46; 36. Review of Kohelet by C. P. Whitley, Vetus Testamentum XXXI (1981), 120–26; 37. Review of A Mediterranean Society III by S. D. Goitein, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1981), 72–73; 38. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1981), 21, 43, 45, 57, 112–13, 117, 119; 39. ‘Some Issues in Jewish Liturgical Research’ (Hebrew), Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies 1981 (Jerusalem, 1982), Division C, 175–82; 40. ‘Response to Dr Whitley’, Vetus Testamentum XXXII (1982), 346–48; 41. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1982), 12, 33, 100, 103, 120; 42. ‘Erwin I. J. Rosenthal: a Biographical Appreciation’, in Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: Essays in honour of E. I. J. Rosenthal eds Emerton and Reif (Cambridge, 1982), 1–15; 43. ‘A Midrashic Anthology from the Genizah’, in Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: Essays in honour of E. I. J. Rosenthal eds Emerton and Reif (Cambridge, 1982), 179–225; 44. Review of Rabbi Tarfon: the Tradition, the Man, and Early Rabbinic Judaism by J. Gereboff, Journal of Theological Studies XXXIII (1982), 537–38; 45. ‘Some Liturgical Issues in the Talmudic Sources’, Studia Liturgica 15 (1982–83), 188–206; 46. Review of Introduction to the Code of Maimonides by I. Twersky, Journal of Semitic Studies XXVIII (1983), 172–173; 47. Review of Piety and Society by Ivan G. Marcus, Journal of Theological Studies XXXIV (1983), 327–28; 48. Review of five volumes of The Tosefta translated from the Hebrew by Jacob Neusner, Journal of Biblical Literature CII (1983), 660–63; 49. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1983), 40, 117, 118, 119, and 122; 50. ‘Jewish Liturgical Research: Past, Present and Future’, Journal of Jewish Studies XXXIV (1983), 161–70; 51. ‘A Root to look up? A Study of the Hebrew ns’ ʿyn’, in Congress Volume (of the International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament) Salamanca 1983 (Leiden, 1985), 230–44;

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52. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1984), 7–9, 13, 35–36, 121–22, 128; 53. Various short notices in Vetus Testamentum XXXIV (1984), 124, 382, 384; 54. ‘Ibn Ezra on Ps. I 1–2’, Vetus Testamentum XXXIV (1984), 232–36; 55. ‘Genizah Material at Cambridge University Library’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica Year Book (1983–85), 170–71; 56. Review of The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch by Michael L. Klein, Journal of Semitic Studies XXX (1985), 117–18; 57. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist, (1985), 8, 61, 65, 123–25, 147; 58. ‘Festive Titles in Liturgical Terminology’ (Hebrew) in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies 1985 (Jerusalem, 1986), Division C, 63–70; 59. ‘Some Observations on Solomon Luria’s Prayer-Book’, in Tradition and Transition: Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Sir Immanuel Jakobovits to celebrate twenty years in office, ed. J. Sacks (London, 1986), 245–57; 60. Review of Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. B. D. Cooperman, Journal of Semitic Studies XXXI (1986), 111–12; 61. Review of Rabbinische legende und früpharisäische Geschichte. Schimeon b. Schetach und die achzig Hexen von Askalon by M. Hengel, Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986), 506–8; 62. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1986), 16–17, 60, 119–20, 122, 133–34; 63. Various short notices in Vetus Testamentum XXXV 117–25, XXXVI 511, XXXVIII 125–26, 380, 507, XXXIX 248–49, 255; 64. Review of M-H Prévost Memorial Volume, ed. M. Humbert, Journal of Semitic Studies XXXII (1987), 369–70; 65. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1987), 8, 17–18, 101, 103–4, 116–17; 66 Review of Essays in Jewish Theology by S. S. Cohon, Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988), 552–54; 67. Review of Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch by M. L. Klein, Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988), 187–90; 68. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1988), 7–8, 13, 130, 144;

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69. Review of The Human Will in Judaism by H. Eilberg-Schwartz, Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988), 192–94; 70. Review of Understanding Seeking Faith by Jacob Neusner, Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988), 358–59; 71. ‘David Goldstein’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England XXX (1989), xv–xvii; 72. ‘Aspects of Mediaeval Jewish Literacy’, in The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1990), 134–55; 73. ‘Genizah’, in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, eds R. Coggins and L. Holden (London, 1990), 255–56; 74. ‘The Emergence of Judaic Liturgy’, in The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship, eds P. F. Bradshaw and L. A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, London, 1991), 109–36; 75. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1989), 8, 28, 75, 129–30, 136, 148–49; 76. ‘Cairo Genizah Material at Cambridge University Library’, Bulletin of the Israel Academic Center in Cairo 12 (1989), 29–34; 77. ‘Ibn Ezra on Canticles’, in Abraham Ibn Ezra and his Age: Proceedings of the International Symposium, ed. F. Diaz Esteban (Madrid, 1990), 241–49. 78. Review of Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation?, ed. B. Safran, Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990), 812; 79. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1990), 19, 128, 142–43; 80. Review of Occident and Orient, ed. R. Dan, Bibliotheca Orientalis 48 (1991), 960–61; 81. ‘Hebrew collections in CUL’, in Hebrew Studies: Colloquium on Hebraica in Europe, eds D. R. Smith and P. S. Salinger (British Library, 1991), 26–34; 82. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1991), 21–22, 79, 142, 147; 83. ‘On the Earliest Development of Jewish Prayer’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz LX (1991), 677–81; 84. Review of Structure and Form in the Babylonian Talmud by Louis Jacobs, Journal of Theological Studies 43 (1992), 817; 85. ‘Jenkinson and Schechter at Cambridge: an Expanded and Updated Assessment’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England XXXII (1992), 279–316;

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86. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1992), 10–11, 53–54, 74, 126, 128; 87. ‘Semitic Scholarship at Cambridge’, in Genizah Research after Ninety Years, eds Blau and Reif (Cambridge, 1992), 1–4; 88. Various short notices in the SOTS Booklist, (1993), 23, 130–31, 139–40, 143; 89. Review of Baraita de-Melekhet ha-Mishkan by Robert Kirschner, Journal of Theological Studies 44 (1993), 816–17; 90. ‘Rashi and Proto-Ashkenazi Liturgy’, in Rashi 1040–1990: Papers of the Fourth EAJS Congress (Paris, 1993), 445–54; 91. Various short notices in Vetus Testamentum XL 122–23, 244, 246, 250, 252, 376–77, 510; 92. ‘Codicological Aspects of Jewish Liturgical History’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75/3 (1993), 117–31; 93. ‘We-ʾilu Finu. A Poetic Aramaic Version’ (Hebrew), in Knesset ʿEzra . . . Studies Presented to Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem, 1994), 269–83; 94. Review of Sobre la Vida y Obra de Maimonides, ed. Jesus Pelaez del Rosal, Journal of Semitic Studies 39 (1994), 123–25; 95. ‘The Cairo Genizah and its Treasures, with special reference to biblical studies’, in The Aramaic Bible, eds D. R. G. Beattie and M. J. McNamara (Sheffield, 1994), 30–50; 96. Various short notices in Vetus Testamentum XLI 510, XLII 278, 432, 568, XLIII 130, 144, 281–82, 431, XLIV 422–23, 425, 574, XLV 420–21, XLVI, 563, XLIX, 268; 97. ‘Jewish Liturgy in the Second Temple Period: Some Methodological Considerations’, Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies 1993 (Jerusalem, 1994), 1–8; 98. Review of Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible by E. Tov, Journal of Theological Studies 45 (1994), 194–98; 99. Review of Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations I, ed. R. L. Nettler, Journal of Semitic Studies 40 (1995), 181–83; 100. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (1994), 8–10, 50, 58–59, 78, 103, 149, 165; 101. Review of From Christianity to Judaism—The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro, by Y. Kaplan, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England XXXIII (1995), 272–73; 102. ‘William Robertson Smith in relation to Hebraists and Jews at Christ’s College Cambridge’, in William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment, ed. W. Johnstone (Sheffield, 1995), 210–24;

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103. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (1995), 8, 11, 64, 142, 147–48, 153, 158–59, 162–63, 171; 104. Review of Sabbath and Synagogue by Heather McKay, Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1995), 610–12; 105. ‘One Hundred Years of Genizah Research at Cambridge’, Jewish Book Annual 53 (1995–96), 7–28; 106. ‘The Classical Jewish Commentators on Exodus 2’, in Studies in Hebrew and Jewish Languages presented to Shelomo Morag (Jerusalem, 1996), 73–112; 107. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (1996), 63–64, 95, 152; 108. ‘Solomon Schechter’ in Encyclopedia of Hasidism, ed. T. M. Rabinowicz (Northvale, NJ, and London, 1996), 427; 109. Review of The Yemenite Weekly Prayer: Text and Language by Isaac Gluska, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 60/3 (1997), 545–6; 110. Review of Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Supplement by M. Beit Arié and R. A. May, Journal of Semitic Studies 42 (1997), 165–67; 111. ‘The Discovery of the Ben Sira Fragments’, in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research. Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference 1996, ed. P. C. Beentjes (Berlin, 1997), 1–21; 112. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (1997), 11–12, 16–18, 70; 113. ‘The Genizah Fragments. A Unique Archive?’, in Cambridge University Library: the great collections, ed. P. K. Fox (Cambridge, 1998), 54–64; 114. ‘Jerusalem in Jewish Liturgy’, in Jerusalem. Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. L. I. Levine (New York, 1998), 424–37; 115. ‘A Jewish Usurper among Christian Hebraists?’, in Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehudah, ed. W. Horbury (Edinburgh, 1999), 277–90; 116 ‘Aspects of the Jewish Contribution to Biblical Interpretation’, in Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. J. Barton (Cambridge, 1998), 143–59; 117. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (1998), 108, 116, 196, 204, 218; 118. ‘The Early Liturgy of the Synagogue’ in The Cambridge History of Judaism III (Cambridge, 1999), 326–57; 119. ‘The Cambridge Genizah Story: Some Unfamiliar Aspects’ (Hebrew), in Teʾuda 15, ed. M. A. Friedman (Tel Aviv, 1999), 413–28;

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120. ‘The Genizah and Jewish Liturgy’, Medieval Encounters 5.1 (1999), 29–45; 121. ‘The Impact on Jewish Studies of a Century of Genizah Research’, in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the 20th Century, eds J. T. Borrás and A. Saenz-Badillos (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 1999), 577–608; 122. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (1999), 52–53, 68–69, 129, 144, 164, 186; 123. ‘Written Prayers from the Genizah; Their Physical Aspect and its Relationship to their Content’ (Hebrew), in From Qumran to Cairo: Studies in the History of Prayer, ed. J. Tabory (Jerusalem, 1999), 121–130; 124. ‘Cairo Genizah’, in Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, eds L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam (Oxford and New York, 2000), vol. 1, 105–8; 125. ‘The Damascus Document from the Cairo Genizah’, in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery, eds J. M. Baumgarten, E. Chazon and A. Pinnick (Leiden, 2000), 109–131; 126. Review of The Fathers of Piyyut by Shalom Spiegel, ed. M. Schmelzer, Journal of Semitic Studies 45, (2000), 196–98; 127. Review of The Formation of Jewish Liturgy in the East and the West by Naphtali Wieder, Journal of Jewish Studies 51, (2000), 165–67; 128. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2000), 151, 155, 200–01; 129. Review of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry by Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, Journal of Jewish Studies 51, (2000), 341–42; 130. ‘Some Notions of Restoration in Early Rabbinic Prayer’, in Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish and Christian Conceptions, ed. J. Scott (Leiden, 2001), 281–304; 131. Review of To Worship God Properly by Ruth Langer, Journal of Semitic Studies 46, (2001), 344–47; 132. ‘The Role of Genizah Texts in Jewish Liturgical Research’ (Hebrew), in Kenishta, ed. J. Tabory (Ramat Gan, 2001), 43–52; 133. Review of The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture by Robert Brody, Journal of Semitic Studies 46, (2001), 175–77; 134. Articles on ‘Gebet: Judentum’, ‘Gebetbücher: Judentum’, ‘Geniza’ and ‘Gottesdienst: Judentum’, in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 3 (2001), 504–6, 510–12, 673–4 and 1177–1181;

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135. ‘A Scholar’s Scholar: Naphtali Wieder, 1905–2001’, Le’ela 51 (2001), 67–78; 136. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2001), 9–10, 21–22, 32–33, 64–65 and 111; 137. ‘Some Recent Developments in the Study of Medieval Jewish Liturgy’, in Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World, ed. N. de Lange (Cambridge, 2001), 60–73; 138. ‘Some Changing Trends in the Jewish Literary Expression of the Byzantine World’, in Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond, eds C. Holmes and J. Waring (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2002), 81–110; 139. Articles on ‘Liturgie: Judentum’ and ‘Machzor’, in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4 (2002), 442–43 and 5 (2002), 639–40; 140. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2002), 68, 38–39, 202, 206, 231–32; 141. ‘A Centennial Assessment of Genizah Studies’, in The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance, ed. S. C. Reif (Cambridge, 2002), 1–35; 142. ‘The Cairo Genizah’ in The Biblical World, ed. John Barton (London, 2002), 287–304; 143. ‘Prayer in Ben Sira, Qumran and Second Temple Judaism’, in Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Conference, Durham, Ushaw College, 2001, ed. R. Egger-Wenzel (Berlin and New York, 2002), 321–41; 144. ‘Jews, Hebraists and ‘Old Testament’ Studies’, in Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Biblical Prophecy, Ideology and Reception in Tribute to Robert Carroll, eds A. G. Hunter and P. R. Davies (Sheffield, 2002), 224–45; 145. ‘Professor Naphtali Wieder: Rabbinic Scholar, Teacher and Liturgical Researcher’, Peʿamim 96 (Hebrew, 2003), 163–75; 146. Review of Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds by Donald Harman Akenson, Journal of Theological Studies 54 (2003), 199–203; 147. ‘The Second Temple Period, Qumran Research and Rabbinic Liturgy: Some Contextual and Linguistic Comparisons’, in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, eds E. Chazon and A. Pinnick (Leiden, 2003), 133–349; 148. Review of J. Lassner’s abridgement of Goitein’s Mediterranean Society, Journal of Semitic Studies 48 (2003), 194–96;

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149. Review of Transmitting Jewish Traditions eds Y. Elman and I. Gershoni and Torah in the Mouth by M. S. Jaffee, Journal of Jewish Studies 54 (2003), 343–45; 150. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2003), 18 and 170; 151. Review of The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study by Anders Runesson, Journal of Theological Studies 54 (2003), 657–660; 152. ‘Solomon Schechter’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), 49, 207–210; 153. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2004), 81, 130–31, 163; 154. Review of The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, ed. Martin Goodman, Journal of Theological Studies 55 (2004), 693–94; 155. ‘Jewish Prayers and their Cultural Contexts in the Roman and Byzantine Periods’, in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christuian Palestine, ed. L. I. Levine (Hebrew, Jerusalem, 2004), 389–401; 156. ‘The Bible in Jewish Liturgy’, in The Jewish Reading Bible, eds A. Berlin and M. Z. Brettler (Oxford and New York, 2004), 1937–48; 157. ‘Giblews, Jews and Genizah Views’, in A Centennial Tribute to Lewis and Gibson, Journal of Jewish Studies 55 (2004), 332–46; 158. Review of Revelation Restored by David Weiss Halivni, Journal of Theological Studies 55 (2004), 305–09; 159. ‘Prayer in Early Judaism’, in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, Yearbook 2004, Prayer from Tobit to Qumran, eds R. Egger-Wenzel and J. Corley (Berlin and New York, 2004), 439–64; 160. ‘From Manuscript Codex to Printed Volume: a Jewish Liturgical Transition?’, in Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue, eds R. Langer and S. Fine (Winona Lake, Indiana, 2005), 95–108; 161. Seven articles in Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations, eds E. Kessler and N. Wenborn (Cambridge, 2005), 71, 120–21, 175, 319, 325–26, 362–63, 446–47; 162. ‘Ein Genisa-Fragment des Tischdank’, in Liturgie als Theologie: Das Gebet als Zentrum im judischen Denken, ed. W. Homolka (Berlin, 2005), 11–29; 163. ‘Approaches to Sacrifice in Early Jewish Prayer’, in Studies in Jewish Prayer, eds R. Hayward and B. Embry (Oxford, 2005), 135–50;

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164. Review of The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Journal of Theological Studies 56 (2005), 624–28; 165. Review of Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking by Michael Fishbane, Journal of Theological Studies 56 (2005), 638–42; 166. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2005), 6, 22, 93; 197, 206; 167. ‘A Fresh Set of Genizah Texts’ in SBL Forum 4/8 (October, 2006), electronic format; 168. ‘The Function of History in Early Rabbinic Liturgy’, in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, Yearbook 2005: How Israel’s Later Authors Viewed Its Earlier History, eds N. CalduchBenages and J. Liesen (Berlin and New York, 2006), 321–39; 169. ‘The Meaning of the Cairo Genizah for the Study of Jewish and Christian Liturgy’, in Jewish & Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into its History and Interaction, eds Albert Gerhards & Clemens Leonard (Leiden, 2007), 43–62; 170. Review of Avodah: an Anthology of Ancient Poetry for Yom Kippur, eds M. D. Swartz and J. Yahalom, Journal of Semitic Studies 52 (2007), 401–3; 171. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2007), 69, 246; 172. ‘Shinnuyey Nushaʾot shel Tefillot Ha-Qevaʿ Lefi Qitʿey HaGenizah’, in Essays and Studies in Memory of Dov Rappel, ed. S. Glick (Jerusalem, 2007), 473–88; 173. Reviews of Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy by I. Kalimi, Vetus Testamentum 57 (2007), 570; The Temple Mount: Where is the Holy of Holies by A. S. Kaufman, 570–71; and Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah by A. Samely, 573–74; 174. Articles on ‘Shemaʿ: Mittelalter und Neuzeit’, in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 7 (Tubingen, 2007), 1278; 175. ‘The ‘Amidah Benediction on Forgiveness: Links between its Theology and its Textual Evolution’, in Seeking the Favour of God: Volume 3: The Impact of Penitential Prayer beyond Second Temple Judaism, eds M. J. Boda, D. K. Falk and R. A. Werline (Atlanta, 2008), 85–98; 176. ‘Liturgy’ in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (New York, 2008); 177. Review of Samuel David Luzzatto: Prolegomena to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language, ed. and trans. A. D. Rubin, Journal of Semitic Studies 53 (2008), 363–65;

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178. Review of Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding by Fred Astren, Journal of Jewish Studies 59 (2008), 148–50; 179. Review of Undercurrents of Jewish Prayer by Jeremy Schonfield, Journal of Jewish Studies 59 (2008), 152–54; 180. Review of Birkat haMinim by Yaakov Y. Teppler, Journal of Jewish Studies 59 (2008), 326–27; 181. Various short notices in SOTS Booklist (2008), 212, 221, 225, 232; 182. ‘Early Rabbinic Exegesis of Genesis 38’, in The Exegetical Encounter between Christians and Jews in Late Antiquity, eds E. Grypeou and H. Spurling (Leiden, 2009), 221–43; 183. ‘Qetạ ‘ Genizah shel Birkat Ha-Mazon’, in Mas’at Aharon: Festschrift for Professor Aron Dotan, eds M. Bar-Asher and H. Cohen (Hebrew, Jerusalem, 2009), 201–17; 184. ‘The Figure of David in Early Jewish Prayer’, in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, Yearbook 2008: Figures in Biblical and Cognate Literature, eds H. Lichtenberger and U. MittmannRichert (Berlin, New York, 2009), 509–46; 185. ‘Maimonides on the Prayers’, in Traditions of Maimonideanism, ed. Carlos Fraenkel (Leiden, Boston, 2009), 73–100; 186. Reviews of Orthodox Judaism in Britain since 1913 by M. J. FreudKandel and Faith Against Reason by M. Persoff, Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009), 160–62; 187. Short notice (on Japhet essays) in SOTS Book List (2009), 14–15; 188. Reviews of Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange, eds N. B. Dohrmann and D. Stern, and Shai le-Sarah Japhet, eds M. Bar-Asher et al., Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009), 328; 189. Review of How to Read the Jewish Bible by M. Z. Brettler, Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009), 358–59; 190. Review of Jewish Cultural Nationalism by David Aberbach, Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009), 159–60; 191. Review of India Traders of the Middle Ages by S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009), 353; 192. ‘Prayer and Liturgy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. C. Hezser (Oxford, 2010), 545–65; 193. ‘Cairo Geniza’, in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. N. A. Stillman (Leiden, 2010), 90–95; 194. ‘Prayer and Liturgy (including Andalus)’, in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. N. A. Stillman (Leiden, 1010), 302–8;

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195. Review of JPS Commentary on the Haggadah: Historical Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Joseph Tabory, Journal of Jewish Studies 61 (2010), 162–164; 196. Review of Becoming Hebrew. The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine by A. B. Saposnik, Journal of Jewish Studies 61 (2010), 168–169; 197. Review of Rabbinic Culture and its Critics, eds D. Frank and M. Goldish, Journal of Jewish Studies 61 (2010), 166–168; 198. Short notice (on Flusser essays) in SOTS Book List (2010). 199. ‘Psalm 93: An Historical and Comparative Survey of its Jewish Interpretations’, in Genesis, Isaiah and Psalms: a Festschrift to Honour Professor John Emerton for his Eightieth Birthday, eds K. Dell, G. Davies and Y. V. Koh (forthcoming); 200. ‘Shabbethai Sofer of Przemysl on the text of Mah Nishtanah’ in Menahem Schmelzer Festschrift (forthcoming); 201. ‘Another Glance at a Gifted Grammarian: More on Shabbethai Sofer of Przemysl’, in Hebrew Linguistic Thought and its Transmission in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, eds J. Olszowy-Schlanger and I. Zwiep (forthcoming); 202. Entries on ‘Book: Judaism’ and ‘Bible: Cairo Genizah’ for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, eds H. J. Klauck et al. (forthcoming); 203. Article ‘Genizah’ for Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture ed. D. Diner et al. (forthcoming); 204. ‘Peace in Early Jewish Prayer’ in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, Yearbook 2010: Figures in Biblical and Cognate Literature, ed. P. C. Beentjes (forthcoming); 205. ‘Liturgy’ in The Cambridge History of Judaism: vol. 5, The Medieval Era: The Islamic World, eds R. Chazan and M. Rustow (forthcoming); 206. ‘Liturgy’ in The Cambridge History of Judaism: vol. 6, The Medieval Era: The Christian World, eds R. Chazan and M. Rustow (forthcoming); 207. ‘Sources’ in The Cambridge History of Judaism: vol. 5, The Medieval Era: The Islamic World, eds R. Chazan and M. Rustow (forthcoming); 208. Review of Anglo-Jewry since 1066: Place, Locality and Memory by T. Kushner, Journal of Jewish Studies (forthcoming); 209. ‘Remarkable Aspects of the Cairo Geniza Story’, Bulletin of the Israel Academic Center in Cairo (forthcoming);

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210. ‘The Genizah and the Dead Sea Scrolls: How Important and Direct is the Connection’ in Proceedings of a Conference on ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context’ held in Vienna, February 2008, (forthcoming); 211. ‘Reviewing the Links between Qumran and the Cairo Genizah’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, eds T. H. Lim and J. J. Collins (forthcoming); 212. Articles on ‘Amram ben Sheshna’ and ‘Genizah’ in The Cambridge Dictionary of Jewish History, Religion and Culture, ed. J. R. Baskin (forthcoming); 213. ‘Early Jewish Worship’ in New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. K. D. Sakenfeld (forthcoming); 214. ‘The Early Textual History of the ʿAl Ha-Nissim Prayer’ in Essays in Honour of Colette Sirat, eds J. Olszowy-Schlanger (forthcoming);

C. Articles and Reviews Published in Other Serials, Plus Miscellaneous Publications 1. Glasgow Hebrew College Educational Workshop 1970/71: A Report, Glasgow, 1971; 2. ‘Social Values’ (review), Jewish Echo (January, 1972); 3. ‘The Citation Game’, Jewish Echo (May, 1972); 4. ‘Conservation Mahzor a Happy Synthesis’ (review), Jewish Bookland (April, 1973); 5. ‘Quaker City Digs Israel’ (translation of Z. Vilnay), Jewish Exponent Literary Supplement (May, 1973); 6. ‘Isaiah: Modern and Traditional Views’ (review), Jewish Bookland (October, 1973); 7. ‘The Origins of Chanucah’, Jewish Echo (December, 1973); 8. ‘Jewish Hiding Place: Material from the Cairo Genizah’, Jewish Chronicle Literary Supplement (December, 1973); 9. Review of B. D. Weinryb’s The Jews of Poland, Jewish Bookland (May, 1974); 10. ‘Cambridge Treasure’, Jewish Chronicle (October, 1974); 11. Review of V. E. Reichert’s Tahkemoni ii, Jewish Bookland (Feb-ruary, 1975); 12. Review of M. Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism, Epworth Review (1975); 13. Review of L. Jacobs’ Theology in the Responsa, Jewish Chronicle (November, 1975);

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14. Review of A. Momigliano’s Alien Wisdom, Jewish Chronicle (February, 1976); 15. Review of The Jewish Year by I. Shachar, Epworth Review (1976); 16. Review of John Eaton’s Kingship in the Psalms, Epworth Review (1977); 17. Review of Polack and Lawrence’s Cup of Life: a Short History of Post-biblical Judaism, Epworth Review (1977); 18. ‘Cant or Cantor’ in Manna 1977 (CUJS Annual Magazine); 19. ‘BBC is not BCE’, Jewish Chronicle (March, 1977); 20. ‘Genizah Fragments at Cambridge’, L’eylah 1/4 (1977); 21. Review of A. Oppenheimer’s The ʿAm Ha-Aretz: a Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period, Epworth Review (1979); 22. ‘Is Christianity Credible?’, Epworth Review (1978), now reprinted in a volume of essays with the same title edited by David Stacey (1981); 23. A Priceless Collection. The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Fragments. The Facts (written with Raphael Levy), Cambridge, 1978, second edition 1979, third edition 1983, fourth edition 1986, fifth edition 1992; 24. ‘Jews’ College in Crisis’, Jewish Chronicle (November, 1979); 25. ‘Everyday Life in Genizah Times’ in Jewish Chronicle Colour Magazine (September, 1980); 26. Review of The Night-Sky of the Lord by A. Ecclestone, Epworth Review (1980); 27. ‘The ʿAl Het Prayer’, Jewish Chronicle Supplement (September, 1980); 28. Obituary for Jacob Leveen in The Times (8 August 1980); 29. (Ed.) Genizah Fragments (Newsletter of Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit) 1–51 (April, 1981–April, 2006); 30. ‘The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit’ in Newsletter of the World Union of Jewish Studies, Summer, 1981; 31. Review of Archaeology, the Rabbis and Early Christianity by Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange, Epworth Review (1982); 32. ‘1898 Preserved in Letter and Spirit’, Cambridge Review (January, 1982); 33. ‘An Orthodox response to Reform’, Jewish Chronicle (July, 1982); 34. Review of This Year in Jerusalem by Kenneth Cragg, Epworth Review (1982); 35. ‘Genizah Treasures (1)’, Jewish Chronicle (August, 1982);

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36. ‘Genizah Treasures (2): The Discovery of a Lifetime’, Jewish Chronicle (November, 1982); 37. ‘Genizah Treasures (3)’, Jewish Chronicle (January, 1983); 38. Review of Rashi; The Man and his World by Esra Shereshevsky, Jewish Chronicle (February, 1983); 39. Review of Neveh Yaʿakov: Jubilee Volume Presented to Dr Jaap Meijer eds L. Dasberg and J. N. Cohen, Jewish Chronicle (April, 1983); 40. ‘Genizah Treasures (4)’, Jewish Chronicle (June, 1983); 41. ‘Genizah Treasures (5)’, Jewish Chronicle (October, 1983); 42. ‘Prelude for a Sextet’, Bookmark (March, 1984); 43. ‘The Nash Papyrus’, Cambridge (published by The Cambridge Society) 15 (1984); 44. Obituaries for Professor S. D. Goitein in The Times (15 February 1985) and the Jewish Chronicle (22 February 1985); 45. ‘Explaining the Talmudic Paradox’, Jewish Chronicle (May, 1985); 46. Review of Short Digest of Jewish Literature in the Middle Ages by Armin Krausz, Jewish Chronicle (November, 1985); 47. Review of Niv Hamidrashia 18–19, ed. A. Carlebach, Jewish Chronicle (April, 1986); 48. Review of Ages of Man by L. Gubbay and A. Levy, Epworth Review (1986); 49. ‘Belated Honour for Cinderella Siddur’, Jewish Chronicle (January, 1987); 50. Review of The Jewish People in the First Century, eds S. Safrai and M. Stern, and Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, eds M. E. Stone, L’eylah (Autumn, 1987); 51. Review of Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism, ed. Z. Garber, Jewish Chronicle (July, 1987); 52. ‘Ninety Years of the Genizah’, Jewish Chronicle (August, 1987); 53. ‘Kiddush Hashem in Berlin’s Mausoleum’, Jewish Chronicle (December, 1987); 54. Review of various volumes of Bible exegesis in L’eylah (Spring, 1988); 55. Review of The Ruling Class of Judaea by M. Goodman and Dead Sea Scrolls in English by G. Vermes, Jewish Chronicle (March, 1988); 56. Review of various volumes in Jewish history and liturgy in L’eylah (Autumn, 1988); 57. Review of Approaches to Auschwitz by R. L. Rubenstein and J. K. Roth, Epworth Review (1988);

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58. ‘Introduction to Islamic Material in the Cambridge University Library’, The Maghreb Review 13 (1988); 59. Review of The World’s Religions, eds S. Sutherland et al., Jewish Chronicle (September, 1988); 60. Review of various volumes in Jewish history and literature in L’eylah (Spring, 1989); 61. ‘Revelation’ a review essay on Helping with Inquiries, by Louis Jacobs, Jewish Chronicle (June, 1989); 62. Review of A Sign and a Witness: 2,000 Years of Hebrew Books by L. S. Gold, L’eylah (Spring, 1990); 63. Review of Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society by A. J. Saldarini, Epworth Review (1990); 64. Review of The Talmud ed. A. Steinsaltz in Times Literary Supplement (20–26, April, 1990); 65. Review of Gown and Tallith ed. W. Frankel, L’eylah (Autumn, 1990); 66. Review of Goitein’s Mediterranean Society, L’eylah (Spring, 1991); 67. ‘A Singer with a New Song’ (Essay on Singer’s Prayer Book), L’eylah (Autumn, 1991); 68. Obituaries for Dr Erwin Rosenthal in The Independent (8 June 1991) and in the Jewish Chronicle (14 June 1991); 69. Review of various volumes on Jewish Bible commentary, L’eylah (Spring, 1992); 70. ‘Scholars organising a medieval revolution’, Jewish Chronicle (July, 1992); 71. Review of Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE by E. P. Sanders, Epworth Review (1993); 72. ‘The Seder as a Learning Experience’ in L’eylah (Spring, 1993); 73. Reviews of various volumes in L’eylah (Spring, 1993); 74. ‘New Insights into the World’s Oldest Story’, Jewish Chronicle (March, 1993); 75. Review of One People by Jonathan Sacks, Jewish Chronicle (April, 1993); 76. Obituary for Abe Rabstaff in The Edinburgh Star (May, 1993); 77. ‘William Robertson Smith and Christ’s College’, Christ’s College Magazine 219 (1994), 23–25; 78. Review of Interpretation of Difficult Passages in Rashi by P. Doron in Le’ela (Autumn, 1994); 79. ‘Tradition Supports Women’s Role’, Jewish Chronicle (October, 1994);

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80. Obituary for Haskell Isaacs in Jewish Chronicle (December, 1994); 81. Obituary for Edmund Stekel in Jewish Chronicle (April, 1995); 82. Review of Hebräische Handschriften, eds E. Roth and L. Prijs, Le’ela (Spring, 1995); 83. Review essay on Fortifications and the Synagogue, ed. P. Lambert, Le’ela (Autumn, 1996); 84. Review essay on The Kaddish by D. Telsner and Tefillin by M. S. Emanuel, Jewish Chronicle (November, 1996); 85. ‘History in Fragments’, Israelal 75 (September/October, 1997); 86. ‘Jerusalem in Jewish Liturgy’, Judaism 46/2 (1997); 87. ‘Fragments of Anglo-Jewry?’, The Jewish Year Book (1998); 88. History in Fragments: A Genizah Centenary Exhibition, with Shulie Reif (Cambridge, 1998); 89. ‘Genizah Unit at Cambridge Celebrates Centenary’, Jewish Chronicle (January, 1998); 90. ‘The Hebraist Benjamin of Cantabrigia’, Jewish Chronicle (October, 1998); 91. ‘Best Books of 1998’, Judaism Today (Winter, 1998/99); 92. Obituary for E. J. Wiesenberg in The Times, unattributed (17 February, 2000); 93. Review of The Ancient Synagogue by L. I. Levine, Times Literary Supplement, (25 August 2000); 94. ‘The Genesis of A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo’, Cambridge University Library Readers’ Newsletter 16 (October, 2000). 95. ‘A Medieval Mediterranean Deposit and a Modern Cambridge Archive’, IFLA Journal 27/1 (January, 2001); 96. ‘Writing for a Popular Audience’, AJS Perspectives 2/1 (2001); 97. Preface to a new edition of Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes (2001); 98. Obituary for N. Wieder in The Times, unattributed (6 April, 2001); 99. ‘Cairo Geniza’ in Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Religion, eds J. F. A. Sawyer and J. M. Y. Simpson (2001); 100. ‘The Cairo Genizah’, Libraries and Culture 37/2 (2002); 101. Review (with Peter Linehan) of Meshal Haqadmoni, ed. R. Loewe, The Eagle 106 (2004); 102. ‘Tafqidam shel Ha-Genizah Ha-Qahirit Be-Heqer Toledot Ha-Tefillah’ in Mitokh Ohalah Shel Torah, eds G. Patinkin, I. Gal-Dor and H. Fine (Hebrew: Bet Shemesh, 2005);

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103. ‘Rabbi Cohen’s 90th Birthday Celebration’, The Edinburgh Star 52 (2005); 104. Review of The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4 ed. Steven T. Katz, in Times Literary Supplement (23 February, 2007); 105. Appreciation of Ezra Fleischer in Genizah Fragments 53 (April, 2007); 106. ‘Those Days, This Time’ in Genizah Fragments 53 (April, 2007); 107. ‘Some Thoughts on Living in Two Worlds’, CTJC Bulletin, Purim/Pesach 5768; 108. ‘Passover Fragments’, Genizah Fragments 55 (April, 2008); 109. ‘Cairo Celebrations’, Genizah Fragments 55 (April, 2008); 110. Review of M. Alpert, Secret Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition, and M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, Times Literary Supplement (February 20 2009); 111. ‘David in early Jewish Liturgy’, Genizah Fragments 57 (April, 2009); 112. Review of G. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, Times Literary Supplement (25 September 2009); 113. ‘The Achievements of Charles Taylor—A Century after his Death’, The Eagle 111 (2009).

LEGAL WRITING IN MEDIEVAL CAIRO: “COPY” OR “LIKENESS” IN JEWISH DOCUMENTARY FORMULAE Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman

The nineteenth-century Karaite chronicle The Story of Our Master Joseph, a midrashic retelling of the Biblical and Qurʾānic story of Joseph,1 recounts the narratives from the Bible and Qurʾān and then adds an important wrinkle: cast by his brothers into a pit, Joseph is discovered by a travelling merchant who lets a pail down into the pit to draw water.2 The brothers appear and agree to sell Joseph to the merchant for a trivial price.3 Here the midrashic retelling expands on scripture: the merchant hesitates, expressing reservations with the transaction and saying, O sons of Jacob, I am afraid that there will come a time when you’ll regret selling your lad. I insist that you write a deed for me and place it in my hand. And every one of you will put his signature on it so that you will not reconsider and regret the sale of this lad.4

The chronicle proceeds to reproduce the text of a brief sale formula, which one of the brothers records with pen and ink, identifying both the parties to the transaction. The chronicle then notes that ‘not one of [Joseph’s brothers] looked at his comrade because of the paltriness of [Joseph’s] price.’5 Although Marc Bernstein’s insightful analysis of this chronicle seems to read this statement as the omniscient narrator’s comment on the attitude of the sellers elucidated by their actions, it is equally likely that this last sentence is actually part of the text of the legal document itself.6 The inclusion of the latter clause in the

1 This chronicle is translated and analysed in detail by M. S. Bernstein in Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations between Judaism and Islam (Detroit, 2006). 2 Genesis 37:28; Qurʾān 12:19. 3 See Genesis 37:28, which lists the price as ‘twenty pieces of silver’, while Qurʾān 12:20 explains ‘for a paltry price, a few dirhams’. 4 Bernstein, Stories of Joseph, p. 70. 5 Bernstein, Stories of Joseph, p. 70. 6 Directly following this statement is a sentence fragment, ‘And that is all’, which Bernstein explains, ‘mark[s] a transition of sorts within the story or its recital’; M. S. Bernstein, ‘The Story of Our Master Joseph’: Intertextuality in Judaism and Islam (Berkeley, 1992), p. 31 n. 122. Yet this fragment would instead seem to mark the

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phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

document, then, alluding to the paltriness of the price, is instructive because it would suggest an evidentiary role for the document in insulating the buyer from the claim that he took unfair advantage of the sellers and paid an unfair price. Since it is the buyer who insists on the writing of the deed of sale, it is reasonable to assume that the document would have remained in his possession instead of the possession of the sellers—indeed, the Karaite chronicle states this explicitly.7 The language of the document, then, anticipates the future claim of ‫אונאה‬, ‘overreaching’ or ‘unfair advantage’,8 on the part of the buyer,9 and parries the claim by explaining that the sellers were well aware that the price was below market yet they nonetheless agreed to the sale. It would seem, then, that the buyer has asked for the document to be written and to be kept in his possession in order to present it as formal evidence, or at least to jog the memory of the sellers, should a subsequent controversy arise in which the sellers wished to render null and void their sale of Joseph into slavery. This paper will examine the story of another slave whose sale was recorded in Judeo-Arabic documents, though from the court of Abraham Maimonides (r. 1204–1237) rather than from the midrashic corpus of the Karaite community of the nineteenth century.10 Despite Goitein’s statement that ‘there is in the Geniza, as far as I have read it, not a single reference to slave trade by Jews’,11 Goitein himself admits end of the document text itself, akin to the phrase seen throughout Jewish literature ‫עד כאן לשונו‬. That the very next sentence in the narrative describes the brothers as signing the document supports this reading. 7 Bernstein, Stories of Joseph, p. 71. 8 ‫אונאה‬: Mishnah Bava Meṣiʿa 4:3; BT Bava Meṣiʿa 39b. 9 See Mishnah Bava Meṣiʿa 4:4, ‘Both the purchaser and the seller can be guilty of overreaching . . .’ 10 Bernstein notes that abundant manuscripts of the Karaite chronicle date between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries (Bernstein, Stories of Joseph, p. 267 n. 11), though it seems that the story had a reception history spanning several centuries (cf. ibid., pp. 40ff ). 11 S. D. Goitein, ‘The Cairo Geniza as a Source for the History of Muslim Civilisation’, Studia Islamica 3 (1955), pp. 71–91 (82). Goitein’s statement notwithstanding, a responsum by Naḥshon Gaon (r. 865–873 in Sura) published in Šaʿare Ṣedeq (Nissim b. Hayyim Modai, Shaare Tzedeq: Teshuvot ha-Geonim (Jerusalem, 1966), 3:6:27, p. 60) suggests that Jews were indeed involved in the slave trade, perhaps even over certain objections from Geonic authorities (cf. ibid., 3:6:37, in a responsum of Naṭronai Gaon). Maimonides’ allusions to the slave trade in Hilk̠ot Mek̠ira of the Mishneh Torah (see, for example, 13:11 and 15:3) certainly suggest that the purchase and sale of slaves was not out of the ordinary (as is the evidence of the formularies: S. Assaf (ed.), Sefer ha-Šeṭarot (Jerusalem, 1930), p. 27; Judah ben Barzillai, Sefer ha-Šeṭarot, edited by S. J. Halberstam (Jerusalem, 1966), pp. 68–69; Isaac ben Abba

legal writing in medieval cairo

3

of the economic importance of slaves in the Jewish society from which the Genizah emerged,12 and the Princeton Geniza Browser reveals a number of legal documents recording transactions in slaves.13 What makes the sale of this particular slave interesting is that the Genizah yields two documents14 related to a single transaction rather than one document. Although the boon of finding two documents related to the same transaction yields the benefit that ‘one of the documents renders otherwise nearly illegible words in the other decipherable’15 because of similarities in legal phraseology and transactional details, a close reading of these two documents will also question Goitein’s statement that one of the documents is ‘an incomplete, but signed copy’, while the other is ‘a complete, but unsigned copy of the same contract’.16 Rather than seeing the two documents as copies of one another, the two documents will be seen as two distinct versions of the same agreement, each designed to respond to a different set of legal claims and therefore likely to have had a different Sitz im Leben or social role as a legal document. The emerging fact that two different versions of a single legal agreement were produced at the time of a single transaction will be examined in light of other known details from scribal practice from the period, and will be used to sketch out some conclusions for the role of legal documents in Genizah society. Mari, Sefer ha-ʿIṭtụ r (Vilna, 1955), I:134; Simḥa b. Samuel of Vitry, Maḥ zor Viṭri, edited by S. Hurvitz (Nierenberg, 1923), §559), though the existence of a legal formula for the sale of a slave is not necessarily evidence that Jews took part in the slave trade per se as traders rather than as end users. 12 Cf. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. I, pp. 130ff. 13 For example: T-S 16.20, T-S 16.188, T-S 6J1.32, T-S 10J11.31, T-S 18J1.16, T-S 18J1.17, T-S 18J1.19, T-S 18J1.30 (the latter four also all mentioned in N. Golb, ‘Legal Documents from the Cairo Genizah’, Jewish Social Studies 20 (1958), pp. 17–46), T-S AS 147.8, and T-S NS 320.29. 14 One of these documents consists of the union of two fragments, T-S 13J4.2 and T-S 6J1.7; the other consists of CUL Or.1080 J273. For the sake of convenience, the document formed by the union of T-S 13J4.2 and T-S 6J1.7 will be called ‘Document A’ in this paper, and Or.1080 J273 will be called ‘Document B’. Note that scholars seem to have been heretofore unaware of the union between T-S 13J4.2 and T-S 6J1.7. 15 M. R. Cohen, ‘A Partnership Gone Bad: a Letter and a Power of Attorney from the Cairo Geniza, 1085’, in Sasson Somekh Festschrift (forthcoming), p. 1, in which Cohen utilises a letter and a power of attorney mentioned in that same letter to describe in detail ‘a partnership gone bad’. 16 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 433 n. 49. E. Ashtor, Histoire Des Prix Et Des Salaires Dans L’orient Médiéval (Paris, 1969), p. 210, also mentions that both documents refer to the same transaction.

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phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

That scribes recorded agreements in duplicate is well known and widely-attested throughout the Genizah; among other genres of legal documents, partnership agreements and releases alike often record that the witnesses ‘wrote and signed two copies’ and frequently explain that one of these copies was given to each of the parties to the agreement. Indeed, T-S 16.21, a partnership agreement from circa 1140, is specific that the copies were written ‫תרי נוסחי אות באות ומילה במילה‬, ‘two copies letter for letter and word for word’.17 In a similar case, T-S 16.138 notes that the copies are ‫‘( מתקאבלתין‬two corresponding to each other’)18 and T-S Misc.25.132r reveals ‫‘( מתפקתין‬two identical to’ or ‘agreeing with’ each other). As to the purpose of such copies, T-S 24.20, a partnership release document, explains that copies were written ‘in order that each of [the erstwhile partners] would have in his hand a title of right and proof before his fellow.’ That is, that the function of the document was not simply to record the details of the transaction, but also to serve as legal evidence should one of the parties challenge the other in the future.19 Rather than setting the bounds of a relationship defined by the transaction at hand, the legal document served to manage potential future conflict by providing the parties with the protection from legal challenge, a social role also filled by release documents, rife within the Genizah.20

17 Note that this phrase is written with Aramaic orthography and not JudaeoArabic orthography, which writes the word nusaḥ with a kaf, perhaps suggesting the formulaic nature of the phrase. 18 Cf. R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, reprinted (2 vols; Leiden, 1967), vol. II, p. 312, ‘symétriser’. Note that J. Blau, Dictionary of Medieval JudaeoArabic texts (Jerusalem, 2006), does not have the verb qbl in form VI, though one may speculate that this verb was influenced by the Hebrew ‫מקביל‬, ‘corresponding’ or ‘parallel’. 19 Pace Wakin, who writes concerning the role of documents in early medieval Islamic society, citing Ṭ aḥāwī, that ‘the principle (sic.) function of documents was “to eliminate distrust and forgetfulness”, that is, to reduce the possibility of conflict between the parties’; J. A. Wakin, ‘Written Documents in Islamic Law’, in Actas do IV Congresso de Estudos Arabes e Islâmicos (Leiden, 1971), pp. 347–354 (350). Particularly where a document records a transaction that has already been completed, the explanation of Wakin/Ṭ aḥāwī seems less compelling than that of protecting the parties from litigation in the future asserting that the transaction was not actually completed. 20 Note that the role ascribed to legal documents here radically differs from the depiction of Stewart Macaulay and other proponents of the ‘sociology of law’ school; see, for instance, S. Macaulay, ‘Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study’, American Sociological Review 28 (1963), pp. 55–67. Although Macaulay’s findings provide a useful framework for understanding the management of contractual relationships, they do not explain the prevalence of release documents within the Genizah. Instead, the role of these documents can be seen in support of Hallaq’s asser-

legal writing in medieval cairo

5

The specific transaction to which the two documents under discussion refer took place on Tuesday, 31 March 1226; according to both documents, the slave, a female by the name of Ḍ iyāʾ (‘Brightness’), was sold by one Yešuʿa b. Hillel Ibn Zikr to one Hillel b. Berak̠ot for twenty-five dinars. Both documents also record that delivery was to take place by means of the former’s agent, one Isaac b. Judah Ibn al-Maššāt ̣.21 A transcription and translation of both documents follow in an appendix to this paper. Given the examples from the Genizah corpus mentioned above, it would be reasonable enough to assume that the two copies of the agreement acknowledging the sale of the slave Ḍ iyāʾ were destined for the buyer and the seller, respectively. However, a closer examination of the text of these two documents leads to a more complex picture of scribal practice seen through this single transaction. Unlike the aforementioned agreements and releases which refer to the writing of documents in duplicate, the documents under discussion actually leave off any mention that copies were made, suggesting that the practice of producing documents to be given to the various parties to a transaction was perhaps not restricted to those agreement-forms which explicitly mention that the documents were indeed copied and handed over to the counterparties, but also extended to other transactions, perhaps particularly those transactions which were more complex, as when a third party (in this case, an agent) was involved. Although both documents concern the same transaction and closely mirror each other in language, they are certainly not ‫תרי נוסחי אות‬ ‫באות ומילה במילה‬. Rather, a close reading of these documents will suggest a scribal practice of subtly transforming the language of each copy of the agreement to meet the specific legal needs of the holder of that copy. This finding may have implications for the scholarly understanding of the Sitz im Leben of formularies in the Jewish community of medieval Egypt. Further, it suggests that at least some of the time when Goitein alludes to a ‘copy’ of a particular document, the

tion that ‘the science of formularies arose, in the first place, in order to enhance rights and preempt disputes in the implementation of substantive law’; see W. B. Hallaq, ‘Model Shurut Works and the Dialectic of Doctrine and Practice’, Islamic Law and Society 2 (1995), pp. 109–134 (133). That is, these documents had an evidentiary role rather than a role in defining a relationship that would be managed primarily (indeed, in Macaulay’s view, almost exclusively) outside the court system. 21 See footnote 46 for a brief discussion of a controversy among modern scholars surrounding this name.

6

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

reader should understand this to refer not to a ‘facsimile’, suggesting an improvement on a first draft or a clean copy of the original document made either for one of the counterparties or for court archives, but rather to a ‘likeness’ or ‘alternate version’, which suggests a document containing the same primary detail concerning the case at hand yet reflecting a subtle transformation of legal phraseology. That two ‘corresponding’ or ‘identical’ copies of a single document recording the transaction under discussion would not be sufficient to meet the legal needs of the parties to the transaction may have emerged because of the transaction’s complexity, specifically the introduction of the seller’s agent Isaac b. Judah Ibn al-Maššāt ̣ as a party to the transaction. Yet whatever the reason, that the two versions of the document are significantly different from one another is noticeable even to the casual observer, for Document A contains half again as many words as Document B.22 From the first few lines, differences between the texts become clear: Document A records that Isaac b. Judah announced to the court that ‘my brother-in-law (ṣihrī) appointed me as an agent to sell her and to receive her price’ (A, l. 5), while Document B simply records simply that ‘Isaac b. Judah the agent of Yešuʿa b. Hillel came to the court’ (B, ll. 4–7). Although both documents are written in the subjective voice, from the perspective of Isaac b. Judah, the mention of ‘my brother-in-law’ suggests a closer proximity to the agent Isaac in Document A than in Document B; this familial relationship would certainly not have been of interest to the buyer, yet it is undoubtedly important to the agent. Furthermore, that Document A records both in these lines that Yešuʿa b. Hillel ‫געלני שליח פי ביעהא וצאמן‬ ‫אלדרך ענהא‬, ‘appointed me as an agent in her sale and guarantor against a flaw in the sale’ (A, l. 6), and, later on, that Yešuʿa ‫געלני‬ ‫שליח לביעהא וקבץ תמנהא‬, ‘appointed me as an agent to sell her and to receive her price’ (A, l. 12), strengthens the attachment of the document to the agent. On the other hand, while Document B notes only that Yešuʿa ‫אמרני אן אביעהא‬, ‘commanded me to sell her’ (B, ll. 8–9), Document A explains that Isaac not only has a document recording his appointment as an agent, but that he brought this very document to the court (A, ll. 6–7). Document A explains that the agency appointment was executed by two proper witnesses and that the text therein

22 Oddly, it is the shorter text (Document B) which Goitein calls ‘a complete, but unsigned copy’; see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 433 n. 49.

legal writing in medieval cairo

7

demonstrates that the agent has been retained for the specific transaction under discussion. Document A even paraphrases the agency appointment document, explaining that Isaac may sell the slave-girl ‫למן יראה הדא אלשליח‬, ‘to whomever this agent sees fit’ (A, l. 8). Thus, the agency appointment not only describes the appointment of Isaac as the agent, but details explicitly that he has the discretion to transact with whomever he would like. Maimonides makes it clear in his Laws of Agents and Partners that the erroneous transaction of an agent is to be nullified in the case of the sale of a slave;23 by detailing the discretion granted the agent in the transaction, the seller indemnifies the agent against such a claim, giving force to the agent’s discretionary powers. Document A alone records this protection granted the agent. On the other hand, Document B simply describes Isaac b. Judah as a ‫וכיל‬, or ‘agent’ (B, l. 7), mentioning in terse language only that Isaac has been retained to sell the slave-girl (B, ll. 8–9), but leaving off any further detail of his actual appointment as an agent or of the discretion accorded him as such. Document A explains the transfer of the slave-girl ‫עלי ידה לרבהא‬, ‘by means of him to her [new] master’ (l. 17), emphasising that the agent has completed his task; this is more explicit than the language in Document B, which leaves off ‫לרבהא‬. Both versions of the document record that Isaac b. Judah received the selling price, but the theme of the agent’s completion of his task is much clearer in Document A, which records that the slave-girl ‫צארת תחת חוזה ומלכיתה‬, ‘came into [the buyer’s] possession and ownership’ (A, l. 21), that is, that the agent fulfilled his commission. No such phrase appears in Document B, probably because the buyer would not have been concerned with the agent’s role so much as the delivery of the goods and the agent’s receipt of their price. Indeed, his actual possession of the slave girl would make such a phrase recording her delivery prima facie otiose.24

23

Mishneh Torah, Hilk̠ot Šeluḥ in ve-Šutafin 1:2. Indeed, Wakin notes that Ṭ aḥāwī often calls for parsimoniousness in legal phraseology to avoid potential future challenges to the validity of documents; for instance, Ṭ aḥāwī recommends that the seller’s ownership be left out of the document entirely; see Wakin, ‘Written Documents in Islamic Law’, pp. 351–352. If Document B were indeed a copy destined for the buyer, an attestation that delivery was completed would never serve his own interests (in fact, it would vitiate any future possible claim that delivery was not completed), and it would therefore be logical for a scribe to avoid such an attestation in a copy of a document destined for the buyer, perhaps in favour of a document that stipulated only that the buyer had made full payment of the price. 24

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phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

The repeated allusions to the agency appointment and to the fulfillment of the role of Isaac as agent provide strong evidence that Document A was given over to the agent himself, because the assertions of the document could respond to the legal challenges that Isaac might face at a later date. These challenges would include the accusation that he was not in fact Yešuʿa’s duly-appointed agent; that he had in fact been retained by Yešuʿa, but for some purpose other than the delivery of the slave-girl; that he had been retained to deliver the slave-girl, but not had been retained to receive its price for remittance to the seller; or that he had not fulfilled his agency and delivered the slave-girl to the buyer. Although the primary purpose of Document A seems to be to record the sale transaction, and although the document does indeed allude to a separate agency appointment document, it would seem that this document could be used if necessary as a proxy for the agency appointment. Towards the end of Document A, the act of qinyan initiated by Hillel b. Berak̠ot and affirmed by the witnesses establishes that the slave-girl was taken into the possession of the buyer, demonstrating to Yešuʿa that his agent had indeed fulfilled his agency. While Document A was clearly written to be handed over to the agent, Isaac b. Judah, it is not entirely clear whether Document B was written for the seller or for the buyer, though it seems likely that it was written for the latter. First, as mentioned, the discussion of the appointment of Isaac as the agent of Yešuʿa is somewhat truncated in this text, avoiding the mention of the particulars of the agent’s discretion seen in the other two documents. Further, the language of šeliḥ ut is absent from the document. Rather, at the opening of the document and towards the end, Isaac is identified as the agent, and when the slave-girl is sold ‘as is’, that is, with the buyer Hillel b. Berak̠ot taking upon himself responsibility for any flaw which might surface in the slave-girl at any point, Isaac simply explains that he has been appointed to do exactly this—‫( ווכלני בה‬B, l. 14). Knowing that Yešuʿa had in fact appointed Isaac would have been sufficient proof to protect Hillel from the possible claim that he transacted with someone who actually lacked the power to do so;25 the details of that appointment

25 As mentioned (see n. 23 above), Maimonides explains that when an agent errs (in this case, acting without appropriate power to do so) the transaction is invalidated; the explicit statement that the agent was retained for the sale under discussion would be

legal writing in medieval cairo

9

and the discretion, if any, granted Isaac would have been of no interest to Hillel. Thus, the brief allusions to the agency appointment in Document B suggest that this document responds more closely to the legal needs of the buyer. Further to this point, the fact that the slavegirl is described three times in Document A, the agent’s copy of the document, as ‫מוולדה אלגנס‬, ‘born into slavery’, yet such a description appears only twice in Document B, is instructive: the slave-girl’s genealogy is a relevant admission for the seller to protect himself from the claim at some later date that the merchandise was not as agreed. However, the establishment of this detail does not protect the buyer, who would have been more concerned with making good delivery of the twenty-five dinars for which he was responsible. Interestingly, Document A adds descriptors to the twenty-five dinars, one revealing ‫אלמחקק אלמנתקד‬, ‘weighed and counted’, and later simply ‫אלמנתקד‬, ‘counted’, though Document B contains no such descriptors. On the other hand, both documents mention that the agent explicitly released the buyer from the obligation of verifying the weight and coinage of the payment. While one might expect that an attestation in the document that the monies were in fact weighed or counted would have responded to the legal needs of the buyer, the omission of this particular detail (in Document B) and the mention that the agent released the buyer from such a demand (in both documents) actually protects the buyer from a subsequent claim that his twenty-five dinars were in fact not of full weight. This gives further weight to the conjecture that Document B was tailored to meet the legal needs of the buyer. On the other hand, once the buyer paid the price, the agent would also want to have a record that the price was received in full, in order to reflect that he, the agent, did not skim off the top, should the amount handed over by the agent to the seller not quite make full weight. Although the agent was likely following the specific instructions of seller in releasing the buyer from verifying the weight and coinage of the payment, in the event of a challenge, Jewish law subjects the agent to an oath that he delivered the entire amount which was paid to him.26 Indeed, it is clear that the act of weighing and counting

sufficient information to insulate the buyer. Further detail about the agency appointment would not interest him. 26 See Mishneh Torah, Hilk̠ot Šeluḥ in ve-Šutafin 1:9.

10

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

the money is irrelevant to the seller-buyer relationship, since the seller/agent has explicitly released the buyer from this requirement. Recording that the received amount was precisely twenty-five dinars (as seen in Document A alone) is the concern of the seller-agent relationship alone, and therefore the extra detail that the dinars were weighed and counted—perhaps even a supererogatory act on the part of the agent to demonstrate his good faith—is found in the copies of the agent’s copy of the document rather than in the copy written for the buyer. Goitein’s contention that Document A is incomplete while Document B is ‘complete, but unsigned’ is striking, since Document A actually adds to the phraseology seen in Document B; that Document A was executed by witnesses while Document B was not is also somewhat surprising. The Genizah provides some evidence of scribal notes and of preliminary drafts of documents, and at times modern scholars have even located the documents which were subsequently written in full form by the scribe using those notes.27 However, these scribal notes are usually no more than a few lines in total, containing pertinent detail that could later be redacted with legal phraseology into a documentary formula;28 as Goitein points out, paper was expensive. Additionally, scribes were paid for their work on a per-document basis.29 This begs another explanation for the discovery of these two documents, that proposed by this paper. The possibility that these documents represent materially different versions of the record of the same transaction, rather than a simple reordering of the phraseology on the part of the scribe for the sake of clarity or some other reason, raises at least two questions: first, what role did legal documents as a whole play in the Genizah community? And, second, what role did formularies play in scribal practice? That different documents were written to record a single transaction challenges Gershon Weiss’s statement that ‘[t]he recording of the

27 See, for instance, T-S NS J268 (scribal notes) and T-S 8J6.9 (a partnership agreement containing detail seen in the notes). See also Goitein’s discussion of scribal notes in Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, pp. 235ff. 28 T-S NS J268 contains some five lines; T-S NS 320.29, described in G. Weiss, Legal Documents Written by the Court Clerk Halfon Ben Manasse (Dated 1100–1138) (unpubl. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970), doc. 197, contains six lines. 29 Thanks to Judith Olzsowy-Schlanger for pointing out this fact. Further evidence of this phenomenon can be found in T-S 13J20.17, a letter specifying the fees charged by one scribe in the last part of the eleventh century.

legal writing in medieval cairo

11

instrument, šeṭar, itself was to serve as a reminder only as to what was agreed upon.’30 On the contrary, the documents presented in this paper suggest an evidentiary function for documents in general which demanded a precision in language and phrase that led to the production of customised ‘likenesses’ rather than ‘facsimiles’. As mentioned, partnership agreements and releases often contained the statement that copies of the document were made for each of the partners; such documents often explain that this is done in order that the partners would have ‘a title of right and proof ’. Jeanette Wakin has shown that, while initially rejected as a form of proof by Islamic jurists, documentary evidence eventually gained currency with Muslim courts which led to the development of a formulary literature in which the Ḥ anafī school particularly excelled as early as the ninth century.31 Certainly from the tenth century, Jewish formularies refer to the evidentiary role of documents; Hai Gaon mentions no less than eleven times in his Sefer ha-Šeṭarot the aforementioned phrase that the document is to act as ‘a title of right and proof’. Yet it is not entirely clear from his formulary whether copies of the document were given to each of the parties to the agreement, nor whether these copies varied in their wording. However, the twelfth-century Sefer ha-ʿIṭtụ r of Isaac b. Abba Mari of Marseilles does stipulate in a number of cases, from sharecropping agreements to arbitration agreements, that documents are to be written in duplicate and given to each of the parties. Although the detail presented in this paper is insufficient to draw an historical trajectory like that adduced by Wakin, it does suggest that scribes devoted a great deal of attention to those specific phrases that they included in the documents that they produced. This supports the work of Joseph Rivlin, who has explained that Talmudic sources do not permit otiose or meaningless phrases in documentary formulae;32 these documents from the court of Abraham Maimonides suggest a resonance with the Talmudic sources in scribal practice. Indeed, while Rivlin’s work describes the attitude of Talmudic sources to documentary practice, the current study vindicates those sources by bringing to light

30 G. Weiss, Documents Written by Hillel Ben Eli, a Study in the Diplomatics of the Cairo Geniza Documents (unpubl. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1967), p. 64. 31 J. A. Wakin (ed.), The function of documents in Islamic law: the chapters on sales from Ṭ aḥ āwī’s Kitāb al-Shurūṭ al-Kabīr (Albany, 1972). 32 J. Rivlin, ‘The Formularies in Jewish Documents—Ethics and Law’, Jewish Law Association Studies VII: The Paris Conference Volume (1994), pp. 211–220.

12

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

the customisation of formulae on the part of scribes in the writing of actual documents. This detailed exploration of phrases has allowed for a depiction of the ‘dialectic of doctrine and practice’ among Jewish sources, a dialectic corresponding to that described by Wael Hallaq in his seminal work on Islamic legal formularies.33 The presence of variations among copies of a document describing a single transaction calls for amending the traditional depiction of scribes relying upon formularies, whether those known to have been produced as distinct literary works with a single author such as the Kitāb al-Šahādāt wa-ʾl-Wat̠āʾīq of Saʿadya Gaon or the Sefer ha-Šeṭarot of Hai Gaon; or the documentary compilations assembled by Gershon Weiss in an effort to reproduce the formularies of the scribes Hillel b. Eli and Ḥ alfon b. Manasseh.34 Indeed, the documents under discussion reveal not only divergences in text but also a fluidity in the placement of phrases, where those phrases appear in more than one of the documents, which suggests that they were not produced from a single archetype, whether that archetype was written in a formulary and subsequently copied or committed to memory by the scribe himself. The variability in phrase extends beyond the ‘predilection for variety’ understood by Goitein to be the rule among scribes.35 Indeed, the systematic inclusion of phrases in Document A concerning the role of the agent in the transaction suggests that it is anything but variety which is in the mind of the scribe. Rather than seen as templates for the scribal art, formularies may be understood to have been handbooks for scribal education, alerting the scribe as to those legal issues which are germane to the particular type of document to be written. To this end, the Sefer ha-Šeṭarot of Judah b. Barzillai introduces each of his exemplars with a discussion of pertinent legal issues and a description of the conditions under which the formula could be used. In a few cases, Hai Gaon begins

33 Hallaq, ‘Model Shurut Works and the Dialectic of Doctrine and Practice’, explores the connection between classical Islamic fiqh compendia and the formulary literature, but the current study has the advantage of extending the dialectic between doctrine (seen in classical Jewish legal sources) and the formulary literature to the domain of actual practice. 34 Weiss’s work can be seen in his MA thesis, Documents Written by Hillel Ben Eli, and his PhD dissertation, Legal Documents Written by the Court Clerk Halfon Ben Manasse; both attempt to aggregate and reconstruct formularies of key Jewish court clerks in the eleventh–twelfth century. 35 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 237.

legal writing in medieval cairo

13

his formulae with a similar, albeit very brief, discussion. Yet even if their own formula handbooks did not contain such an analysis of the issues, scribes may have relied upon their knowledge of the legal issues highlighted in the formulae themselves in order to write documents which approximated the paradigms in the formularies yet did not follow their models to the letter. That a more complex explanation of the relationship between formularies and scribal practice is in order is supported further by Donald Little’s exploration of fourteenth-century purchase deeds for slaves from the documents of al-Ḥ aram al-Šarīf.36 Little compares the text of these deeds with the requirements for such formulae in works such as the fifteenth-century Jawāhir al-ʿUqūd of Asyūṭī,37 and finds a widespread correspondence between the two. Interestingly, a comparison of Islamic scribal manuals and the Genizah documents under discussion allows for the further explication of legal phrases that are absent from Jewish formularies and other Jewish legal sources. Strikingly, all twelve items listed by Asyūṭī as essential to a bill of sale for a slave can be found in both Document A and Document B,38 with the possible exception of the ‘physical separation of the parties in mutual satisfaction or stipulation of the right of withdrawal’.39 Thus, the presence of clauses such as the guarantee against a flaw in the sale (‫)צמן אלדרך‬, which do not appear in the Jewish formularies, can be explained instead by the influence of Islamic law and practice. So written, documents might even be able to hold up to subsequent challenge in Islamic courts.40 36 D. P. Little, ‘Six Fourteenth Century Purchase Deeds for Slaves from Al-Haram As-Sharif ’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131 (1981), pp. 297–337. 37 Little focuses on three formulary manuals from the Mamlūk period, ‘the fullest and most useful of which’ is that of Asyūt ̣ī (ibid., p. 300). 38 These twelve items are recounted by Little (ibid., pp. 300–301). 39 Ibid., p. 301. However, it is possible that the attestation that the buyer accepted the slave-girl with ‘any possible flaw she might have, whether hidden or apparent’ (A, l.21; B, l.13) would constitute a waiver of the right of withdrawal on the part of the buyer. Though the Islamic institution of k̠iyār al-majlis is an unlimited right of withdrawal extending until the parties have physically separated from one another, the phrase here would certainly have addressed the relevant Islamic institution of k̠iyār al-ʿayb. On the other hand, it is important to note that the Jewish formularies and codificatory literature discuss the waiver of claims on the part of the buyer related to flaws in the slave (cf. Mishneh Torah, Hilk̠ot Mek̠ira 15:6; as well as šeṭarot of Hai Gaon and Barzillai, and Sefer ha-ʿIṭtụ r). 40 It bears mention here that, while the two documents under discussion are written primarily in Judaeo-Arabic, the efflorescence of the court of Abraham Maimonides did see the reemergence of Hebrew in many legal documents; this fact gives further

14

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

That scribes might write documents which would be considered valid in courts other than their own is considered by Wakin, who explains that However, a written contract could appear to be free of fault both in outward form and inner content, and yet the transaction might still be jeopardized. This risk was a consequence of the ik̠tilāf, the diversity of views among the legal scholars on details of positive law.41

Thus, difference of opinion among Islamic scholars led Ṭ aḥāwī to turn to the principle of iḥ tiyāt (‘precaution’) in his formulary, recommending and outlining formulae that would be resistant to such challenges. It is possible that the Jewish scribes writing the documents discussed in this paper employed similar precaution, composing formulae that would remain valid not only in the court of Abraham Maimonides but also in contemporary Islamic courts. This extends the ‘dialectic of doctrine and practice’ envisioned by Hallaq in his discussion of Islamic scribal practice to include both Jewish and Islamic doctrine in the practice of Jewish document-writing in the Genizah period. This examination of fluidity within the legal formulae brought to light by the Genizah is still in an early stage, yet it is sufficient to suggest at an absolute minimum that at least some of what Goitein refers to as ‘copies’ of documents can and should be seen as distinct witnesses to the same event. Thus, although Maimonides explains in his comment to M. Giṭtị n 3:2 that one may generally write ṭofse de-šeṭare, legal documents with spaces left for the names of the counterparties, and subsequently fill in the blanks, the case at hand seems to have eschewed the pro forma in favour of highly-customised documents that could subsequently be presented as evidence that the bearer of that specific copy of the document met his individual legal commitments. In the Karaite chronicle with which I began this paper, Joseph the slave eventually gains his freedom and rises to great prominence in biblical Egypt. When he is reunited with his brothers, he produces the original document to prove his identity. Although at present we are unable to tell what happened to the slave-girl Ḍ iyāʾ in thirteenth-

support to the suggestion that these documents were actually written to be able to withstand challenge in an Islamic court as well. 41 J. A. Wakin, The function of documents in Islamic law, p. 32.

legal writing in medieval cairo

15

century Egypt, the evidentiary role of documents is clear in both narratives. Hopefully, the fortuitous discovery of two substantively-distinct versions of a single document relating to the same transaction has provided some insight into scribal practice in general, beginning to address the distinction between facsimile and likeness as such groupings of documents continue to come to light.

‫‪16‬‬

‫‪phillip i. ackerman-lieberman‬‬ ‫‪Appendix‬‬ ‫;‪Transcription of Document A (T-S 6J1.7 and T-S 13J4.2‬‬ ‫)‪see plates 1–2‬‬ ‫‪.1‬‬ ‫‪.2‬‬ ‫‪.3‬‬ ‫‪.4‬‬ ‫‪.5‬‬ ‫‪.6‬‬ ‫‪.7‬‬ ‫‪.8‬‬ ‫‪.9‬‬ ‫‪.10‬‬ ‫‪.11‬‬ ‫‪.12‬‬ ‫‪.13‬‬ ‫‪.14‬‬ ‫‪.15‬‬ ‫‪.16‬‬

‫למא כאן פי יום אלתלתא ר|אש חדש ניסן דשנת אלפא וחמש‬ ‫מאה ותלתין ושבע שנין לשטרות‬ ‫בפסטאט מצרים דעל| נילוס נהרא מותב]ה[ רשותיה דאדוננו‬ ‫נגידנו אברהם הרב המב‬ ‫יחיד הדור ופלאו הנ|גיד הגדול ירום הודו חצר אלינא נחן אלש־‬ ‫הוד אלכאתמון באכר הדא‬ ‫אלמסטור במא יאתי בי|אנה פיה מר ור יצחק בר מר ור יהודה‬ ‫הזקן ידיע באבן אלמשאט וקאל‬ ‫אעלמכם אן צהרי כגק| מר ור ישועה הזקן הנכבד בר כגק מר‬ ‫ור הלל הזקן נע סייר עלי ידי גאריה‬ ‫אסמהא ציא מוולדה אלג|נס וגעלני שליח פי ביעהא וצאמן‬ ‫אלדרך ענה פי דלך ואצהר מן ידה‬ ‫מסטור בשהאדה שני ע|דים כשרים יתצמן אנה שלוחו ואמר לה‬ ‫בביע הדה אלגאריה אלמדכורה‬ ‫למן יראה הדא אלשליח וא|כתארה ואלאן אשה]דו ע[לי ואקנו‬ ‫מני קנין שלם בלפט מעכשיו אנני‬ ‫קד תסלמת וצאר אלי גהתי מן| כגק מר ור הלל בר כגק מר ור‬ ‫ברכות הזקן הנכבד נע מן אלעין‬ ‫אלגייד אלואזן אלמצרי אלמנתקד כמס|ה ועשרין דינ מצריה‬ ‫ואבריתה מן נקדהא ווזנהא ואלימין‬ ‫עליהא ואבעתה בהא גמיע אלגארי|ה אלמדכורה אלמסיירה עלי‬ ‫ידי אלמסמאה ציא אלמוולדה‬ ‫אלגנס אלתי הי מלכא למ ישועה ברב| הלל הנזכר נע וגעלני‬ ‫שליח לביעהא וקבץ תמנהא ודלך באלבראה‬ ‫מן סאיר אלעיוב כמא פווץ‪ 42‬לי ווכ|לה לפעלה פאקנינא מן מ‬ ‫יצחק בר יהודה הנזכר לעיל קנין‬ ‫גמור חמור בכלי ה|כשר לקנות ב|ו בלשון מעכש]יו[ ברצונו בלי‬ ‫אונס כלל בביטול כל מודעין‬ ‫ותנאין אנה תסלם מן מר |ה|לל ברבי ברכות הנזכר נע אלמבלג‬ ‫אלמדכור אעלאה והו מן אלעין‬ ‫אלגייד אלואזן אלמחקק אלמנתקד כמסה ועשרין דינ מצריה‬ ‫ואבראה מן נקדהא ווזנהא ואלימין עליהא‬

‫‪: plene spelling of a form II verb.‬פווץ‬

‫‪42‬‬

‫‪17‬‬

‫‪legal writing in medieval cairo‬‬

‫‪.17‬‬

‫ואבאעה בהא גמיע אלגאריה אלמדכורה אלמסמאה ציא אלמ־‬ ‫וולדה אלגנס אלמסיירה עלי ידה‪ 43‬לרבהא‬ ‫מווכלה אלמדכור ואנה צמן לה אלדרך פי ביע הדה אלגאריה‬ ‫אלמדכורה חית אלא יבקא למאלכהא‬ ‫מ ישועה הנזכר תעלק ולא טלב אלבתה פלמא נפד אלקנין‬ ‫אלמדכור מן מ יצחק אלבאיע בדלך אקנינא איצא‬ ‫מן מר הלל בר ברכות הנזכר נע אנה אשתרי אלגאריה אלמד־‬ ‫כורה באלמבלג אלמדכור ואנה תסלמהא‬ ‫וצארת תחת חוזה ומלכייתה ואנה רצא בכל עיב עסאה יכון‬ ‫פיהא באטן או טאהר ודלך קנין גמור חמור‬ ‫]בכל[י הכשר לקנות בו מעכשיו ברצונו בלי אונס כלל בביטול‬ ‫כל מודעין ותנאין פלמא נפד אלקנין מנהמא‬ ‫]גמיעא[ בגמיע מא נסב אליהמא פי הדא אלשטר כתבנא וחת־‬ ‫מנא ויהבנא ליד מ הלל הנזכר למהוי‬ ‫לזכו ולראיה וקאל מצלח ודין קיומיהון והכל‬ ‫שריר ובריר ומוחזק וקיים‬ ‫אלעזר כהן שהדת וכתב יפת בר אדונים סט‬ ‫שהדת וכתבת ‪ . . . . .‬בר שמחה‬ ‫וכתב שמ‪ . . .‬בר יפת כהן סט‬

‫‪.18‬‬ ‫‪.19‬‬ ‫‪.20‬‬ ‫‪.21‬‬ ‫‪.22‬‬ ‫‪.23‬‬ ‫‪.24‬‬ ‫‪.25‬‬ ‫‪.26‬‬ ‫‪.27‬‬ ‫‪.28‬‬

‫‪43‬‬ ‫‪; however, in light of Document‬עלי רבה ‪Goitein’s transcription of this phrase is‬‬ ‫‪ should be preferred; this reading also‬עלי ידה ‪B, l. 18, it would seem that a reading of‬‬ ‫‪seems to fit the scribe’s handwriting better.‬‬

18

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman Translation of Document A (T-S 6J1.7 and T-S 13J4.2)

1. On Tuesday, the beginning of the month of Nisan of the year one thousand five hundred and thirty-seven years (of the Era) of Documents44 2. in Fustạ̄ ṭ Egypt, situate[d] on the Nile River, the jurisdiction of our lord, our Nagid Abraham45 the rabbi, the out(standing,) 3. inimitable in his generation and its wonder, the great Nagid, may (God) raise up his glory and enhance his honour; (our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Isaac b. (our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Judah the Elder, known as Ibn al-Maššāṭ,46 came before us—we, the witnesses whose signature appears at the bottom of this 4. document, concerning what was clarified therein, and he said, 5. ‘I (hereby) inform you that my kinsman,47 (his) h(onour,) g(reatness, and) h(oliness, our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Yešuʿa the honoured Elder b. (his) h(onour,) g(reatness, and) h(oliness, our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Hillel the Elder, (who) r(ests in) E(den), sent through me a slave-girl 6. named Ḍ iyāʾ,48 born into slavery,49 and he appointed me an agent in her sale and guarantor of good delivery’.50 And he produced51 from his hand

44

Corresponding to 31 March 1226. That is, Abraham Maimonides. 46 Although Friedman (S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden, 2008), p. 90 n. 5) and Goitein (A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 428 n. 66) suggest al-Maššāš for the family name of Isaac b. Judah—indeed, Friedman notes that ‘the manuscript clearly reads “al-Mashshāsh” ’—the fact that this individual’s name is so clear in Document B, l. 6 that even the limited palaeographical skills of the present writer allow for the reading there of ‘al-Maššāṭ’ suggests that the latter is the correct reading here as well (the principle of lectio difficilior potior notwithstanding). Unfortunately, it is not possible to locate this individual on the genealogy of the Ibn al-Amšātị̄ family as prepared by Friedman (India Traders of the Middle Ages, p. 120); this is likely the reason Friedman suggests the reading of ‘Ibn al-Mashshāsh’. 47 ‫צהרי‬, likely ‘brother-in-law’. Thanks are due to Mordechai A. Friedman for pointing this out. 48 That is, ‘Brightness’. 49 ‫מוולדה‬: born into slavery, cf. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 138. 50 ‫צאמן אלדרך‬: ‘guarantor against a defect in ownership’, cf. Wakin, The function of documents in Islamic law, pp. 60–62. 51 ‫אצהר‬: to produce, reveal; note that the scribe uses the ‫ צ‬to indicate ‫ﻅ‬. 45

legal writing in medieval cairo

19

7. a document executed by two proper witnesses stating that he was his agent, and instructing him in the sale of the aforementioned slave-girl 8. to whomever this agent might see fit and choose. ‘Now, testi[fy concerning] me and effect a complete qinyan on my behalf, orally, from now on, that I 9. have received from (his) h(onour,) g(reatness and) h(oliness, our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Hillel b. (his) h(onour,) g(reatness, and) h(oliness, our) tea(cher) and r(abbi) Berak̠ot, the honoured Elder, (who) r(ests in) E(den,) 10. twenty-five good din(ars,) in specie weighed according to the Egyptian scale, and it came into my possession, I have absolved him (from the obligation) of examining them and weighing them, and from (taking) an oath 11. concerning them. I have sold to him with this amount the aforementioned slave-girl sent by me named Ḍ iyāʾ, born into slavery 12. who was the (complete) property of the aforementioned m(aster) Yešuʿa b. Hillel (who) r(ests in) E(den), and he appointed me an agent for her sale and for receiving the funds, thereby releasing 13. (Yešuʿa b. Hillel, the seller) from any (responsibility for any) blemish (in the slave) as he charged me and appointed me for its performance.’ Then we effected a qinyan between the aforementioned M(r) Isaac b. Judah, a 14. complete and weighty qinyan, with an implement suitable for doing so, orally, from now [on], in accordance with his will, without any duress whatsoever, nullifying all secret dispositions 15. and conditions, that he received the aforementioned amount from the aforementioned Mr. Hillel b. master Berak̠ot (who) r(ests in) E(den), which was 16. twenty-five Egyptian din(ars) in good specie, precisely-weighed and examined; he has absolved him (from the obligation) of examining them and weighing them, and from (taking) an oath (as to their value). 17. He sold therewith to him the entire aforementioned slave-girl52 named Ḍ iyāʾ, born into slavery, who was sent by his hand to her (new) master,

52

That is, a full interest and not a partial interest in the slave girl.

20

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

18. (on behalf of )53 his aforementioned mandator (that is, Yešuʿa b. Hillel, the seller). He (Isaac b. Judah, the agent) has guaranteed for him (that is, Hillel b. Berak̠ot, the buyer) against a defect in ownership of this slave-girl to the point where her (current) owner 19. the aforementioned M(r) Yešuʿa would have no further connection or claim whatsoever (upon her). When the aforementioned qinyan was effected with M(r) Isaac the seller, we also effected a qinyan 20. from the aforementioned Mr Hillel b. Berak̠ot (who) r(ests in) E(den), that he purchased the aforementioned slave-girl with the aforementioned sum, and that he received her 21. and she came into his possession and ownership, and that he accepted any possible flaw which she might have, whether hidden or apparent; this was a complete (and) weighty qinyan, 22. [effected with an impleme]nt suitable for doing so, from now on, in accordance with his intention, without any duress whatsoever, nullifying all secret dispositions and claims. When this qinyan was effected between the two of them 23. [together] concerning everything ascribable to the two of them in this document, we wrote and signed (it), and gave it to the aforementioned M(r) Hillel in order that he would have 24. a title of right and proof. And he said, ‘Correct.’ And this is their confirmation. Everything 25. is proper and clear and durable and enduring. 26. Eleazar Kohen, ‘I witnessed.’ And Japeth b. Adoniyam (may his) e(nd be) g(ood) wrote 27. I witnessed and I wrote . . . b. Simḥa 28. and Shm . . . b. Japeth Kohen (may his) e(nd be) g(ood)

Transcription of Document B (CUL Or.1080 J273; see plate 3)

‫ למא כאן פי יום אלתלתא ראש חדש ניסן משנת אלפא וחמש‬.1 ‫מאה ותלתין‬ ‫ ושבע שנין לשטרות בפסטאט מצרים דעל נילוס נהרא מותבה‬.2 ‫רשותיה‬

53 Document B, l. 18 shows ‫ למווכלה‬instead of ‫מווכלה‬, seen here. I have read the text here in light of the other document.

‫‪21‬‬ ‫‪.3‬‬ ‫‪.4‬‬ ‫‪.5‬‬ ‫‪.6‬‬ ‫‪.7‬‬ ‫‪.8‬‬ ‫‪.9‬‬ ‫‪.10‬‬ ‫‪.11‬‬ ‫‪.12‬‬ ‫‪.13‬‬ ‫‪.14‬‬ ‫‪.15‬‬ ‫‪.16‬‬ ‫‪.17‬‬ ‫‪.18‬‬ ‫‪.19‬‬ ‫‪.20‬‬ ‫‪.21‬‬ ‫‪.22‬‬ ‫‪.23‬‬

‫‪legal writing in medieval cairo‬‬

‫דאדוננו נגידנו אברהם הרב הגדול המובהק הנגיד יחיד הדור‬ ‫ופלאו ירום הודו ויגדל לנצח כבודו חצר אלינא נחן אלשהוד‬ ‫אלכאתמון‬ ‫באכרה במא יאתי ביאנה פיה אלשיך אסחק כגק מר ור יצחק‬ ‫הבחור‬ ‫היקר בר כגק מר ור יהודה הזקן הנכבד ידיע באבן אלמשאט נע‬ ‫וכיל מ ישועה בר הלל ידיע באבן זכר נע וקאל לנא אעלמכם אן‬ ‫בידי‬ ‫גאריה אסמהא ציא מוולדה אלגנס מסיירה אלי מצר ואמרני אן‬ ‫אביעהא ואלאן אשהדו עלי ואקנו מני קנין שלם בלפט מעכשיו‬ ‫אנני תסלמת מן מ הלל הזקן היקר בר מר ברכות הזקן הנכבד‬ ‫נע‬ ‫מן אלעין אלגייד אלואזן אלמצרי כמסה ועשרין דינארא מצרייה‬ ‫וצארת‬ ‫אלי גהתי ואבריתה מן נקדהא ווזנהא ואבעתה בהא גמיע‬ ‫אלגאריה‬ ‫אלמדכורה באלבראה מן סאיר אלעיוב במא פווץ לי מאלכהא‬ ‫אלמדכור‬ ‫ווכלני בה פאקנינא מן מ יצחק אלמדכור בדלך קנין גמור חמור‬ ‫בכלי הכשר לקנות בו מעכשיו ברצונו בלי אונס כלל בביטול כל‬ ‫מודעי‬ ‫ותנאי אנה תסלם מן מ הלל הנזכר אלמבלג אלמדכור והו‬ ‫כמסה ועשרין‬ ‫דינארא מצריה ואבאעה גמיע אלגאריה אלמסמאה ציא אלמ־‬ ‫וולדה‬ ‫אלגנס אלמסיירה עלי ידה למווכלה אלמדכור ואנה צמן לה‬ ‫אלדרך פי‬ ‫דלך ואקנינא מן מ הלל בר ברכות הנזכר אנה אשתרי אלגאריה‬ ‫אלמדכורה‬ ‫ותסלמהא ודכל עלי כל עיב עסאה יכון פיהא באטן או טאהר‬ ‫פלמא‬ ‫נפד אלקנין מן אתנינהמא בגמיע מא נסב אליהמא פיה אלכ־‬ ‫אמל אלשרוט‬ ‫בלפט מעכשיו כתבנא וחתמנא ויהבנא למהוי לזכו ולראיה והכל‬ ‫שריר‬ ‫ובריר ומהימן ומוחזק וקיים‬

22

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman Translation of Document B (CUL Or.1080 J273)

1. On Tuesday, the beginning of the month of Nisan of the year one thousand and five hundred and thirty2. seven years (of the Era) of Documents, in Fusṭāṭ Egypt, situated on the Nile River, the jurisdiction 3. of our lord, our Nagid Abraham, the great rabbi, the outstanding, the Nagid, inimitable in his generation 4. and its wonder, may (God) raise up his glory and enhance his honor for eternity; the Elder Isḥaq (his) h(onour,) g(reatness, and) h(oliness, our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Isaac the beloved Youth, 5. b. (his) h(onour,) g(reatness, and) h(oliness, our) tea(cher) and m(aster) Judah, the honoured Elder, known as Ibn al-Maššāt ̣ (who) r(ests in) E(den,) 6. the agent of M(r) Yešuʿa b. Hillel, known as Ibn Zikr, (who) r(ests in) E(den), came before us— 7. we, the witnesses whose signature appears at the end, concerning what was clarified therein—and he said to us, ‘I (hereby) inform you that I presently hold 8. a slave-girl named Ḍ iyāʾ, born into slavery, sent to Fusṭāṭ,54 and he instructed me 9. to sell her. Now, testify concerning me and effect a complete qinyan on my behalf, orally, from now on, 10. that I have received from M(r) Hillel the beloved Elder b. Mr Berak̠ot the honored Elder (who) r(ests in) E(den) 11. twenty-five good Egyptian dinars in specie, weighed according to the Egyptian scale, which 12. into my possession, and I have absolved him (from the obligation) of examining them and weighing them. With this amount, I have sold him the aforementioned slave-girl, 13. releasing (the seller) from any (responsibility for any) flaws in accordance with what her current owner, the aforementioned, has charged me 14. and appointed me therein.’ We then effected a qinyan therein between the aforementioned M(r) Isaac; this was a complete and weighty qinyan,

54

That is, ‘sent to Miṣr’.

legal writing in medieval cairo

23

15. effected with an implement suitable for doing so, from now on, in accordance with his will, without any duress whatsoever, nullifying all secret dispositions 16. and conditions, that he received the aforementioned amount from the aforementioned M(r) Hillel, which was twenty-five 17. Egyptian dinars. He sold the entire slave-girl Ḍ iyāʾ, born into slavery, 18. who was sent by his hand on behalf of his aforementioned mandator. He has guaranteed for him the completion (of the sale) 19. therein. We effected a qinyan from the aforementioned M(r) Hillel b. Berak̠ot that he purchased the aforementioned slave-girl 20. and received her and accepted any possible flaw which she might have, whether hidden or apparent. When 21. this qinyan was effected between the two of them concerning everything ascribable to the two of them concerning the totality of the stipulations,55 22. orally, from now on, we wrote and signed (it), and gave it (to him) in order that he would have a title of right and proof. Everything is proper 23. and clear and trustworthy and durable and enduring.

Bibliography E. Ashtor, Histoire Des Prix Et Des Salaires Dans L’orient Médiéval (Paris, 1969). S. Assaf (ed.), Sefer ha-Šeṭarot (Jerusalem, 1930). M. S. Bernstein, Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations between Judaism and Islam (Detroit, 2006). ——, ‘The Story of Our Master Joseph’: Intertextuality in Judaism and Islam (Berkeley, 1992). J. Blau, A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1961). ——, Dictionary of Medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts (Jerusalem, 2006). M. R. Cohen, ‘A Partnership Gone Bad: a Letter and a Power of Attorney from the Cairo Geniza, 1085’, in Sasson Somekh Festschrift (forthcoming). R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, reprinted (2 vols; Leiden, 1967). S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden, 2008).

55 ‫אלכאמל אלשרוט‬: ‘the totality of the stipulations’. As an idiom, ‫כאמל אלשרוט‬ seems periodically to receive the definite article; see J. Blau, A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1961), p. 159. In other Genizah documents, the phrase appears both with and without the definite article on the first element of the construct: with def. art.: T-S 16.172 verso, l. 33; T-S 13J4.5, l. 8; T-S 8J8.16, l. 11; without def. art.: T-S 18J1.33, l. 23; T-S 12.231 verso, l. 13.

24

phillip i. ackerman-lieberman

S. D. Goitein, ‘The Cairo Geniza as a Source for the History of Muslim Civilisation’, Studia Islamica 3 (1955), pp. 71–91. ——, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). N. Golb, ‘Legal Documents from the Cairo Genizah’, Jewish Social Studies 20 (1958), pp. 17–46. W. B. Hallaq, ‘Model Shurut Works and the Dialectic of Doctrine and Practice’, Islamic Law and Society 2 (1995), pp. 109–134. Isaac ben Abba Mari, Sefer ha-ʿIṭtụ r (Vilna, 1955). Judah ben Barzillai, Sefer ha-Šeṭarot, edited by S. J. Halberstam (Jerusalem, 1966). D. P. Little, ‘Six Fourteenth Century Purchase Deeds for Slaves from Al-Haram As-Sharif ’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131 (1981), pp. 297–337. S. Macaulay, ‘Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study’, American Sociological Review 28 (1963), pp. 55–67. Nissim b. Hayyim Modai, Shaare Tzedeq: Teshuvot ha-Geonim (Jerusalem, 1966). J. Rivlin, ‘The Formularies in Jewish Documents—Ethics and Law’, Jewish Law Association Studies VII: The Paris Conference Volume (1994), pp. 211–220. Simḥa b. Samuel of Vitry, Maḥ zor Viṭri, edited by Sh. Hurvitz (Nierenberg, 1923). J. A. Wakin, ‘Written Documents in Islamic Law’, in Actas do IV Congresso de Estudos Arabes e Islâmicos (Leiden, 1971), pp. 347–354. —— (ed.), The function of documents in Islamic law: the chapters on sales from Ṭ aḥ āwī’s Kitāb al-Shurūṭ al-Kabīr (Albany, 1972). G. Weiss, Documents Written by Hillel Ben Eli, a Study in the Diplomatics of the Cairo Geniza Documents (unpubl. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1967). ——, Legal Documents Written by the Court Clerk Halfon Ben Manasse (Dated 1100– 1138) (unpubl. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970).

THE PAPER AND TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND ITS RAW MATERIALS IN LIGHT OF AN ANALYSIS OF THE CAIRO GENIZAH DOCUMENTS Zohar Amar, Azriel Gorski, and Izhar Neumann

Introduction The Arab conquest was followed in al-Šām1 by several changes in agriculture and agriculture-based industry as part of an adaptation to the new conditions that were created in the region that had newly come under Islamic control.2 It appears that the most significant change took place in the textile industry, as emerges from an analysis of many written sources.3 The cultivation of flax, which had characterised the land of Israel in the Roman-Byzantine period, gradually disappeared. Although linen cloth continued to be the most popular apparel in the Middle Ages, it was imported mainly from Egypt. In contrast there was an increase in the production of more expensive textiles, such as silk and especially cotton. The growing of cotton, which had typically been cultivated in the land of Israel in the Byzantine period only to a limited extent, developed and took over more extensive areas after the Islamic conquest. One of the characteristics of the new situation was the development of local fields of expertise. Thus, for example, the cities of Ramla and Ashkelon specialized in the manufacture of fine cloth.4 An examination of many textiles found in various archaeological sites throughout the land of Israel corroborates and corresponds to the description that emerges from the historical sources regarding 1 This area includes today Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. In Jewish sources the term al-Šām was a name for the land of Israel. The documents that were examined for this study were written in the land of Israel but the discussion refers to the entire al-Šām region, so that the geographical terminology that we use in the article is contextdependent. 2 A. M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (London, 1983); Z. Amar, Agricultural Produce in the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 2000). 3 Z. Amar, ‘The Revolution in Textiles in Eretz Israel and Syria in the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 87 (1998), pp. 37–60. 4 Ibid., pp. 54–56.

26

zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann

the change in the textile industry and clothing fashions.5 This ‘textile revolution’ also had many ramifications for the production of various by-products such as the paper and dye industries. We have shown elsewhere that there was a connection between the paper industry and the cotton industry. To illustrate this point, the Hula Valley region, whose inhabitants had previously raised flax for cloth and papyrus for papermaking, turned to the cultivation of cotton and began to manufacture the new paper which was based on the local textile industry.6 We wish to examine this account, which is strongly supported by an analysis of the historical sources, by analysing the composition of the paper taken from documents from the land of Israel in the Middle Ages which were found in the Cairo Genizah.

The Paper Industry The principles of the earliest technique for manufacturing paper were known in China but for a long period the secret of its discovery stayed within the borders of the Chinese Empire.7 It was only in the wake of the Islamic conquests that the paper industry expanded, first to the Near East, and later reaching Europe.8 Arabic literature notes the date of the discovery of the secret of paper (kāḡad) as 751, and this was according to a tradition whereby the technique was learned from Chinese

5

Ibid., pp. 51–53. Z. Amar, ‘The Paper Industry in al-Šām in the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 98 (2000), pp. 73–96. For an abridged version in English, see Z. Amar, ‘The History of the Paper Industry in al-Sham in the Middle Ages’, in Y. Lev (ed.), Towns and Material Culture in the Medieval Middle East (Leiden, 2002), pp. 119–133. 7 T. H. Tsien, Paper and Printing in J. Needham (ed.), Science and Civilisation in China (7 vols; Cambridge, 1954–1998), vol. V:I. 8 Of the many studies written on the history of the early papermaking industry in China and its development in the Middle Ages, we will mention here the most prominent and significant: J. von Karabacek, ‘Das arabische Papier’, in Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer (Vienna, 1887), vol. II–III, pp. 87–178; A. Grohmann, From the World of Arabic Papyri (Cairo, 1952); C. Singer et al., (eds), A History of Technology (8 vols; Oxford, 1954–1984), vol. II, pp. 411–416; D. Hunter, Papermaking: the History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (New York, 1943); D. Hunter, Papermaking Through Eighteen Centuries, reprinted (New York, 1971); A. Grohmann, Arabische Palaographie (2 vols; Vienna, 1967–1971), vol. I, pp. 98–105; A. Y. Hassan and D. R. Hill, Islamic Technology: an Illustrated History (London & New York, 1986); M. A. Doizy and P. Fulacher, Papiers et Moulins des Origines A Nos Jours (Paris, 1989); J. M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: the History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven & London, 2001). 6

the paper and textile industry in the land of israel

27

captives who were taken with the fall of the city of Samarkand.9 In any event, it is agreed that the Moslems learned about paper production from the people of Central Asia, who had already begun using rags as a source for their paper centuries before the coming of Islam and the use of paper became widespread by the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth centuries, during the rule of the Abbasid dynasty. The new paper displaced the use of parchment and Egyptian papyrus, making them almost obsolete. The industry gathered momentum as time went by and spread widely.10 In the tenth century Samarkand still maintained its status as the centre for the papermaking industry, unrivalled in the quality of its product.11 However, from this period onward, additional centres of papermaking arose which demonstrated a high level of technological proficiency: in Damascus, Tripoli, Yemen, Egypt (c. 1040) and Morocco (c. 1100). It is not completely clear by what route and at what time the paper industry reached Europe, and according to several theories, it was via Italy or Muslim Spain, perhaps by way of the Crusaders who discovered its existence in the land of Israel.12 Whatever the case may be, the industry spread over time to France, Germany, Italy and England. At the end of the fifteenth century there were papermaking plants throughout the countries of Europe and the use of parchment had ceased almost entirely.13

Date of Introduction of Paper and Its Manufacture in al-Šām The sources do not state the precise date that the new paper reached al-Šām. The paper industry based on papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) was known in the Hula Sea region during the Roman and Byzantine

9 There are scholars who believe that the actual date was earlier. For a range of opinions, see A. F. R. Hoernle, ‘Who was the Inventor of Rag-Paper?’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 43 (1903), pp. 663–684 (668–671); K. Jahn, ‘Das Iranische Papiergeld’ in Archiv Orientální 10 (1938), pp. 308–340 (333); H. Beveridge, ‘The Paper-Mills of Samarkand’, Asiatic Quarterly Review 30 (1910), pp. 160–164. 10 K. ʿAwād, ‘al-Waraq aw al-Kāḡad: Ṣināʿatuhū fī-ʾl-ʿuṣūr al-Islāmiyya’, in Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī bi-Dimašq 23 (1948), pp. 409–438. 11 Ibn Ḥ awqal, Kitāb al-Masālik wa-ʾl-Mamālik, edited by M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1870), p. 465. 12 Amar, Paper, pp. 93–95. 13 For a comprehensive summary of the milestones in the spread of paper, see, for example, Cl. Huart & A. Grohmann in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1978), vol. IV, pp. 419–420, s.v. ‘KĀGHAD’; Tsien, Paper and Printing, pp. 296–303.

28

zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann

periods.14 When referring to the members of the tribe of Naphtali who settled on the banks of this sea and engaged in the craft of papyrusmaking, the rabbinical sages commented: ‘The sons of Naphtali are called such because they are twisted over seventy-two shafts, that is how they would produce the paper’.15 In other words, they would knit together the strips produced by cutting the core of the papyrus reed and would thus create large sheets of paper. The paper made of papyrus was replaced during the Arab period by a new writing material made of cotton, which also grew in that region.16 The first historical record, and the most reliable, to mention the papermaking industry in the Land of Israel is that of al-Muqaddasī, a Jerusalem-born Moslem geographer who completed the writing of his book in 985. According to this account, the kāḡad was exported from Damascus and Tiberias.17 One may assume that this industry had arrived in these places even earlier. We also hypothesise that the local paper industry required time to become adept at the new manufacturing techniques until it had achieved a level that enabled it to become not just a manufacturing centre but a centre for export as well.18 In any case, in the tenth century the use of paper in al-Šām was so common that Bar Bahlul, the Syrian linguist of that period, translated qirtạ̄ s (which in the past had been translated as ‘made of papyrus’) as ‘kāḡad’.19 And, indeed, in later Arabic sources, the term qirṭās appears only in the sense of sheets of paper produced by the new technique. Nāṣer-e Khosraw (11th c.) noted that in Tripoli an excellent quality of paper 14 In a description of the papyrus-based paper industry, Pliny also mentions the growing of papyrus in Syria. See Pliny, Natural History, translated by H. Rackham (10 vols; London, 1938–1963), XIII, 73, (vol. IV, p. 143). 15 GenR 94:8. See J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (eds), Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 1180; S. Klein, ‘Paper and its Manufacture in the Land of Israel’, in S. Yeivin (ed.), Trade, Industry and Crafts in Ancient Israel (Jerusalem, 1937), pp. 61–84 (72–74). 16 Amar, ‘Revolution’, pp. 58–60. Al-Muqaddasī states explicitly that the Hula Lake was ‘the source of cotton’, see al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm, edited by M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1906), p. 160. 17 Al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan, pp. 180–181. 18 In the National Library in Damascus there is a book by Ibn Ḥ anbal (d. 855) that was copied in 879. The Syrian historian Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī mentions the conjecture that it was made of al-Šām paper, and in his time it was considered the earliest manuscript written in al-Šām; see M. Kurd ʿAlī, K̠iṭaṭ al-Šām (6 vols; Damascus, 1925–1928), vol. IV, p. 243. 19 R. Duval, Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule voces syriacas græcasque cum glossis syriacis et arabicis complectens (Paris, 1881–1901), vol. II, p. 920; Bloom, Paper, p. 47.

the paper and textile industry in the land of israel

29

(kāḡad) was produced, like that in Samarkand and even finer.20 From the documents of merchants in the Genizah dated 1052–1058 we learn of a widespread trade in paper in Tripoli, Damascus, Tyre, Jerusalem and Ramla. The enormous quantities of paper produced in al-Šām went mostly to Egypt.21 This attests to the poor quality of Egyptian paper since at this date the papermaking industry in Egypt was not sufficiently developed to meet the demanding needs of the government bureaucracy.22 Syrian paper was also exported to Byzantium.23 In his book on commerce, Pegolotti mentions the Damascene paper (carte) which could be purchased in the coastal cities of the land of Israel during the reign of the Crusaders (until 1291).24 A Mamluk inscription from 1296 found in Jerusalem refers to a papermaking factory in Nablus.25 According to al-Qalqašandī, government–owned paper factories were operating in all of the provinces of al-Šām during the first centuries of Muslim rule as well as in the Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods, in Damascus, Aleppo, Tripoli, Hama, Karak and Safed.26 It is possible that some of the papermaking factories were not operating necessarily in the cities of the provinces themselves but in districts that were subject to them. An important factor in the location of paperproduction plants is proximity to supplies of fresh water, which was essential for beating the fibre and forming the sheets. In this sense Tiberias, Damascus and the coastal cities of Tyre and Tripoli were suitable locations. In any case, the information cited by al-Qalqašandī

20 W. M. Thackston (transl.), Nāṣer-e Khosraw’s Book of Travels (Safarnāma) (New York, 1986), p. 13. 21 M. Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1983), vol. II, doc. 371, pp. 687–688; vol. III, doc. 480, p. 165; doc. 514, p. 294; doc. 516, p. 298; doc. 517, pp. 301–304; M. Gil, ‘Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099). Additions, Notes and Corrections’ (Hebrew), Teʿuda 7 (1991), pp. 281–345 (329); S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. I, pp. 81 and 112. 22 M. D. Yusuf, Economic Survey of Syria during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Berlin, 1985), p. 129. 23 M. Lombard, The Golden Age of Islam, translated by J. Spencer (Amsterdam, 1975), p. 190. 24 F. B. Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, edited by A. Evans (Cambridge, Mass, 1936), p. 294. 25 M. van Berchem et al., Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum (4 parts; Cairo, 1894–1985), vol. II, p. 214. 26 Al-Qalqashandī, Ḍ awʿ al-Ṣubḥ al-Musaffar: abridgement of Ṣubḥ al-Aʿašā, edited by M. Salāmah (Cairo, 1906), pp. 415–416.

30

zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann

and the other sources regarding the thriving Syrian paper industry reflect the situation until the end of the fourteenth century. The sources also provide several interesting details about the manner in which paper was manufactured and its qualities. In al-Šām, kāḡadī (a manufacturer or seller of paper) was recognised as a profession.27 In a commercial document from the Genizah dated 1057, there is mention of the ‘ʿalāma of Ibn Imām’, which was the trademark of the paper manufacturer named Ibn Imām who apparently resided in Damascus.28 In Sefer ha-Miṣvot of the Karaite Levi b. Yefet, a resident of Jerusalem, which was written in Arabic at the beginning of the eleventh century, another interesting allusion is made to the process of papermaking in the region. In reference to the prohibition against eating any leavened product on Passover, mention is made of clothes and paper (kāḡad) which are bleached. This is further reinforced by the translator H. Ben-Shammai who adds the word našāʾ which means ‘starch’.29 Starch made out of wheat was used in the Arabic paper industry for sizing.30

Raw Materials in the Papermaking Industry One of the revolutionary changes that took place in the papermaking industry following the Islamic conquests is connected with the raw materials used. The major raw material used in the Chinese papermaking industry was taken from the bark of the Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) and other trees.31 Analytical tests made of five Chinese documents from 768–787 showed that they were made of

27

M. Shatzmiller, Labour in the Medieval Islamic World (Leiden, 1994), p. 117. S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1973), p. 90; Gil, Palestine, vol. III, doc. 514, p. 294. The reference is probably to a stamp by the manufacturer, similar to that which had been used in the papyrus making industry; see Grohmann, World, pp. 32–34. This does not refer (contra Gil, Palestine, vol. I, p. 194) to a watermark. 29 H. Ben-Shammai, ‘A new fragment from the original Arabic version of Sefer ha-Miṣvot of the Karaite Levi b. Yefet’ (Hebrew), in Šenaton ha-Mišpat ̣ ha-ʿIvri 11–12 (1984–1986), pp. 99–133 (111–112). 30 Hassan and Hill, Islamic Technology, p. 195. 31 For more about plants that were used in the paper industry in the Far East, see Hunter, Papermaking History, p. 32; Hunter, Papermaking through Eighteen Centuries, pp. 155–156; Tsien, Paper and Printing, p. 53. 28

the paper and textile industry in the land of israel

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different plants as well as scraps of woollen cloth and hemp.32 However, it seems that these materials were not available in Samarkand, and therefore the Arabs were forced to use flax as a substitute. Other tests carried out on paper used for letters written in Arabic, dated 874–909, have shown that they were made almost entirely of a linen base, either plants that had been processed or scraps of cloth. It is certain that neither raw nor spun cotton were in use industrially in the earliest period of the eastern papermaking industry.33 The use of cotton came later, probably during the ninth or tenth centuries and was one of the most important changes introduced by the Arabs to this industry. As stated, this crop later entered the agriculture of al-Šām, and by the Middle Ages al-Šām was the principal cotton exporter to Europe.34 Like the soap-making industry, which was closely connected to the thriving cultivation of olives in the land of Israel, both in its location and in raw materials, the paper industry also began to make use of the cotton industry’s by-products.35 All of the manufacturing and marketing centres of paper specifically referred to in the records also served as cotton centres.36 Cotton could be used as a raw material both from the field or from worn-out clothes made of cotton and other substances. There are several accounts of this in the halakhic literature and Jewish commentaries written in the Middle Ages. For example, the term neyar meḥaqa (BT Megilla 19a), R. Simḥa, one of Rashi’s students, wrote ‘And in the responsa of the Geʾonim I have found that they make it of cotton, which is called qīṭōn (in Arabic), where remnants from the land of Ishmael are wrapped around, and it is still new. The ink adheres to it and the writing lasts many days, and it is called kāḡad’.37 This source suggests the introduction into France of the new papermaking technology, which originated in the Middle East. In any case, we see from this source that the major raw material used in the papermaking industry 32 Hoernle, ‘Who was the Inventor’, pp. 672–675; for similar findings relating to Chinese documents from the third to the tenth centuries, see Tsien, Paper and Printing, p. 54. 33 See Hoernle, ‘Who was the Inventor’, p. 665; Hunter, Papermaking through Eighteen Centuries, p. 156; Hassan and Hill, Islamic Technology, p. 195. 34 E. Ashtor, ‘The Venetian Cotton Trade in Syria in the Later Middle Ages’, Studi Medievali 17 (1976), pp. 675–715. 35 See Amar, ‘Revolution’, pp. 40–43. 36 Amar, Paper, p. 85. 37 S. Hurwitz, Maḥzor Vit ̣ri of Rabbenu Simḥa (Hebrew; Berlin, 1893), p. 532.

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zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann

was cotton. For this purpose they used scraps that came ‘from the land of Ishmael’, in other words, the waste product of cotton textiles or rags, which was the primary raw material in papermaking.38 This is supported by the Arab historian Kurd ʿAlī, who states that al-Šāmī paper was made of cotton, old rags and even silk.39

The Art of Copying and the Paper Trade in Light of the Genizah Documents An additional explanation of the fact that the paper industry was integrated relatively quickly into the local material culture is related to the craft of manuscript copying, which was an important economic and cultural activity among the Jews of al-Šām. It is no coincidence that Tiberias became a centre for the paper trade, as a major Jewish spiritual centre as well as a centre of masoretic activity, the book-copying industry was well-developed there.40 In the eleventh century most writing was done on paper.41 Proof of this is the fact, for example, that most of the Cairo Genizah documents originating in the land of Israel are made of paper, with only a few on parchment.42 The writing material itself demonstrates the prevalence of paper in that period. However, the use, trade and marketplaces for this writing material are mentioned more than once in the same traders’ letters that were found in the Genizah. In a letter sent from Dalton, Israel, to Tiberias in 1030, Solomon ha-Kohen b. Joseph mentioned his work as a copyist of books made of paper. In this letter he also noted that

38 R. I. Burns, ‘The Paper Revolution in Europe: Crusader Valencia’s Paper Industry: a Technological and Behavioral Breakthrough’, Pacific Historical Review 50 (1981), pp. 1–30 (27–28). 39 Kurd ʿAlī, K̠it ̣ṭat, vol. IV, p. 243. 40 See Gil, Palestine, vol. I, pp. 147–150. On the craft of manuscript copying, see also pp. 191–194; N. Allony, The Tiberian School of Hebrew Grammar (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 17–24. 41 On the use of paper (kāḡad) for copying old books, there are many references in the Genizah; see N. Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah, edited by M. Frenkel and H. Ben-Shammai (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 12, 38. 42 In particular, note the following documents from Eretz Israel, which are all written on paper: Gil, Palestine, vol. II, docs 17–18 (p. 22–24), 24–25 (pp. 37–41), and the letters on behalf of the ‘lepers of Tiberias’ from the first half of the 11th century, docs 252–267 (pp. 457–475).

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‘I sent a gold coin to Kadesh’.43 This may be a reference to payment for paper purchased in Kadesh. It would seem that the papermaking industry itself was concentrated in the city of Kadesh, while the marketing centres were in Tiberias and Damascus.44 From the correspondence conducted by Moses (Mūsā) b. Yaʿqūb between 1057 and 1058, we learn about an extensive trade in paper in Damascus and Tyre. His commercial documents also itemize the transport costs for the shipment of paper by camel.45 He reported in one document, ‘I transported twenty or more sacks of paper to Ramla and the shipment arrived safely’.46 Daniel b. ʿAzarya also mentioned these places in connection with the purchase of paper, ‘I have already sent to Tyre regarding the purchase of sheets of paper (because there is no) fine paper here… Regarding the paper, in Ramla the trade in paper is more as desired’.47 Israel b. Nathan from Gush Halav, in one of his letters to Egypt in 1060, asked that paper be purchased for him for the copying of books.48 A year later he confirms the transfer to Egypt of eleven bales of paper that he had in Jerusalem.49 In another letter Daniel b. ʿAzarya asked ʿEli b. ʿAmram, who was living in Fustat, to copy for him pamphlets of geonic responsa, ‘Seek out an agile scribe and buy good paper, not Egyptian, but rather Spanish or from Tripoli’.50 While in most cases the Genizah documents do not explicitly note the site of paper production, there are clear references to Tyre and Tripoli, as the historical sources also attest. Another important centre of scribal activity in the late Middle Ages was Jerusalem.51 Although there are accounts from earlier periods of a lively trade in paper, there is still no clear-cut information about a local papermaking industry.

43 Gil, Palestine, vol. II, doc. 250, p. 454–455. See also J. Braslavsky, Studies of our Land, its Past and Relics (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1954), pp. 69–70. 44 See Amar, ‘Revolution’, p. 60. 45 Goitein, Society, vol. I, p. 81; Gil, Palestine, vol. III, doc. 514 (p. 294); doc. 516– 517 (p. 298–304); see also vol. I, p. 194. 46 Gil, Palestine, vol. III, doc. 517, p. 303, line 7. 47 Gil, ‘Additions’, p. 329. 48 Gil, Palestine, vol. III, doc. 474, p. 151. 49 Gil, Palestine, vol. III, doc. 480, p. 165. 50 Gil, Palestine, vol. II, doc. 371, pp. 687–688. 51 M. Beit-Arie, ‘Hebrew Manuscripts Copied in Jerusalem before the Ottoman Conquest’, in B. Z. Kedar (ed.), Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 244–278.

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zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann Raw materials in light of an analysis of the Genizah documents

Until now only isolated studies have been published on the composition of early paper.52 The purpose of this study is to examine and reassess the conclusions that we reached in earlier studies—based on an analysis of the historical sources—through a scientific analysis of the paper manufactured in the land of Israel in the Middle Ages. The research questions that we posed are: 1. Which raw materials were used in paper originating in al-Šām? 2. Was this a first-time use of the materials, or were the fibres recycled from worn-out clothing or rags? 3. Can we learn more about the techniques of paper production at the time, especially the use of auxiliary materials?

Research Methods In this study, we examined twenty-one documents (see Table 1) written in various locations in the land of Israel during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.53 Our working hypothesis is that the paper of the documents was also manufactured in the land of Israel, an important centre for paper production. Many Genizah documents make reference to a lively trade and export of paper from many locations, such as Tiberias and Ramla. In these cases, it is the paper of the document itself that bears witness to the process and product that it is documenting. However, even if there is no certainty that all of the paper examined for this study was produced in al-Šām, there is still great importance for the study of early paper used in the Middle East, its raw materials and an understanding of its manufacturing techniques.

52 Hoernle, ‘Who was the Inventor’, p. 669; J. M. Bloom, ‘Paper in Fatimid Egypt’ in M. Barrucand (ed.), L’Egypte Fatimide son Art et son Histoire (Paris, 2002), pp. 395–401. 53 All of the documents are from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The first research results were presented in the Papers of the 27th International Congress of Paper Historians, 3–10 September 2004, Duszniki Zdrój, Poland.

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Table 1. Paper Fragments Used in This Study Sample number

Signature

Dated

Place

Sample number

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ENA 2804, f.8 ENA 4020, f.42 ENA 2804, f.12 ENA 2804, f.13 ENA 2804, f.19 ENA 2804, f.17 ENA 2804, f.18 ENA 4020, f.6 ENA 4020, f.48 ENA NS 17, f.8

1025 1025 1028 1028 1030 1043 1048 1039 1030 ca. 1035

Jerusalem Jerusalem Ramla Ramla Ramla Jerusalem Jerusalem Ramla Jerusalem Tiberias

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

11

ENA 2804, f.4

ca. 1050 Tiberias

Signature ENA 3765, f.4 ENA 2722, f.1 ENA 2804, f.7 ENA 4010, f.32 ENA NS1, f.40 ENA 4010, f.8 ENA 4100, f.53 ENA 2806, f.8 ENA 2727, f.35 ENA 2567, f.150

Dated

Place

ca. 1055 1057 1055 1030 1060 1065 1076 1112 1130 Early 12th century

Jerusalem Jerusalem Jerusalem Jerusalem Gush Halav Jerusalem Ramla Ashkelon Ashkelon Banias

Figure 1. Genizah paper fragment, sample 2 (scale bar = 0.5 mm).

The samples were examined and photographed using microscopy (see Figure 1). Under a stereomicroscope, four separate fibres were removed from each paper fragment. Polarized Light Microscopy was used to characterise the fibres as to birefringence, extinction, and determination (using a ruby plate) of their direction of twist in the ‘dry twist test’. The identification was done by comparison to known modern and ancient samples of fibres. A degradation scale was created (see Table 2), consisting of a description of the fibre and a rating for its degradation, as a subjective scale to rank and compare the principal characteristics of the fibres studied. In the results section (below, see Table 3), each identified fibre type is followed by its degradation rating in parentheses.

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zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann Table 2. Relative Degradation Scale

Description

Grade

No degradation Slight degradation or discoloration Degraded Heavily degraded Degraded beyond identification—whole fibre Degraded beyond identification—fibre fragments

5 4 3 2 1 0

Results The results of the analyses detailed in Table 3 demonstrate that cotton is the main fibre type present (see Figure 2). Table 3. Types of Fibres and Degrees of Degradation Sample number

‘Fibre’ 1

‘Fibre’ 2 Cotton (4)

‘Fibre’ 3 Flax (4)

‘Fibre’ 4

1

Wool (5)

Mix

2 3

Not Not Cotton (3) identified (1) identified (0) Cotton (4) Cotton (2) Cotton (3)

4

Cotton (3)

Cotton (4)

5 6

Cotton (3) Cotton (5)

Flax (4) Mix

Not identified (4) Cotton (5) Cotton (3) Cotton (4) Cotton (5)

7 8

Cotton (3) Mix

Cotton (4) Cotton (5)

Cotton (4) Cotton (3)

Cotton (3) Cotton (3)

9 10 11

Cotton (4) Cotton (4) Flax (5)

Cotton (3) Flax (3) Cotton (2)

Cotton (3) Cotton (2) Mix

Cotton (5) Flax (4) Cotton (3)

12 13 14 15

Flax (4) Cotton (3) Cotton (3) Cotton (4)

Cotton (3) Cotton (2) Cotton (2) Cotton (2)

Cotton (4) Cotton (2) Cotton (3) Cotton (4)

Cotton (5) Cotton (2) Cotton (4) Mix

16 17

Cotton (2) Cotton (4) Not Cotton (3) identified (3)

Cotton (2) Cotton (4)

Cotton (2) Cotton (2)

Comment The mix is mostly flax (3) with cotton (3) as a minor constituent.

Flax (3) Not Identified (1) Cotton (3) The mix is cotton (5) and flax (4). The mix is cotton (5), rabbit hair (3), unidentified hair (1). ‘Fibre’ 3 also contains a synthetic fibre contaminant. The mix is flax (2) and cotton (4).

The mix is cotton (5) with flax (4) as a minor component. Paper fragment is laminated.

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Table 3 (cont.) Sample number

‘Fibre’ 1

‘Fibre’ 2

‘Fibre’ 3

18

Cotton (2)

Cotton (2)

19 20 21

Cotton (2) Flax (3) Flax (4)

Cotton (2) Cotton (2) Flax (4)

‘Fibre’ 4

Comment

Flax (4)

Cotton (5)

Flax ultimates of ‘Fibre’ 3 are still in bundle.

Flax (4) Cotton (3) Cotton (5)

Cotton (3) Cotton (2) Cotton (2)

Flax ultimates of ‘Fibre’ 2 are still in bundle. Paper fragment is laminated.

Discussion and Conclusions 1. Raw Materials The results clearly show that the principal raw material used in our paper samples was cotton (≈73%) with flax being only a secondary constituent (≈14%). Other fibre types represent only 13% of the fibres present. The results concur with the historical sources on the agricultural innovations of the Arabs during the Middle Ages (and the resulting ‘textile revolution’ in al-Šām). Cotton began to be cultivated instead of flax, and thus it became more common in the manufacture of textiles. Unidentified 6% Mix 6% Wool 1%

Flax 14%

Cotton 73%

Figure 2. Relative percentages of fibre types

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zohar amar, azriel gorski, and izhar neumann 2. The Source of the Raw Material

Most of the fibres used in our paper fragments were not originally intended for papermaking. This, in conjunction with the historical sources, indicates that papermaking was based on a secondary use of material, namely worn-out clothing and rags, which underwent a process whereby it was broken down into its constituent fibres. These fibres were then used for the manufacture of paper. This conclusion is supported by the state of preservation of the fibres. Thus Loveday, who studied many Egyptian papers from the same period, stated ‘Analysis of the papers themselves suggest that the fibres were generally not used in their raw state, but were extracted in their processed state from textiles, rope, and cordage’.54 In 68% of the paper fragments different degrees of preservation of the same fibre type were found. This difference in degradation was especially apparent in cases where there are two or more fibres of the same fibre type attached to each other and with the individual fibres having a different state of degradation (Sample 6, Fibre 2; Sample 8, Fibre 1; Sample 11, Fibre 3). The most likely explanation is that the fibres used for paper production came from different sources. In five documents the raw material is a combination of cotton and flax fibres. This supports the hypothesis that these materials are remnants of different pieces of clothing that had been broken down into fibres that were later combined in the papermaking process. The finding of the dyed wool fibres in Sample 1, if not a contaminate, would also support a used-clothing hypothesis. It was not accepted practice to use dyed fibres in the papermaking process. The conclusion that the source of the raw material is worn-out clothing has implications not only for the history of the paper industry. It also provides a method to identify the raw materials used in the textile industry in al-Šām, and throughout the Middle East in general during that period.55 Rabbit hair was found together with other raw materials in a document from the city of Ramla (Sample 8). One could claim that this

54

H. Loveday, Islamic Paper (London, 2001), p. 32. In two samples (out of twelve) of flax material, the flax ultimates are still in a bundle, indicating that the quality of the flax processing was not good and the fibres were not properly separated from the stalk. Subsequent work will target how typical this phenomenon was through an analysis of ancient linen garments. 55

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is a marginal and non-representative finding that somehow found its way into the paper. However, the historical sources suggest that there was a unique industry producing clothes from rabbit hair in the land of Israel at that time. References to ‘rabbity wool’ are found in Jewish halakhic sources from the Mishnah and Talmud, where it is mentioned together with camel wool and other raw materials used in the textile industry.56 A direct and important source documenting this industry is by the Muslim writer Mahmūd ibn ʿUmar Zamak̠šarī (d. 1144) who wrote explicitly that in al-Šām clothes were manufactured from rabbit pelts.57 It is worth emphasising that we are not maintaining that rabbit hair (or silk, as the historical sources note) was the main source of raw material for the paper industry, but rather that it was likely to appear in a blend of cotton or linen as part of the composite of fibres from which clothes at that time were made. 3. Techniques of Papermaking and Auxiliary Materials Our findings can be related to three points connected with the papermaking process. 1) There were differences in the structural integrity of the different paper fragments. Some were very flat and held together as a unit. Others were thicker, looser and came apart easily into two layers or into separate masses of fibres. This difference in paper integrity may reflect different modes of production. It may also represent different centres of paper production that utilised different manufacturing processes. 2) One document came apart into two layers. The fibres of the two layers appeared on stereomicroscopic examination to be different (Sample 17). One layer was stiff with a yellowish surface in which the fibres were not distinct. The other layer was a loose mesh of distinct individual fibres. A comparison with hand papermaking today may explain the above. Thick paper is achieved by dipping a screen through the pulp in the vat to form a layer that is couched off (removed from) the screen to

56 Tosefta Kilayim 5, 11 and Šabbat 9, 3, 201, see M. S. Zuckermandel (ed.), Tosefta, Mischna und Boraitha, reprinted (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 80 and 121. See also BT Menaḥot 39b; GenR 20 (Theodor and Albeck, Midrash, p. 197), which state that Adam’s clothes were made of camel hair and rabbit hair. 57 Mahmūd ibn ʿUmar Zamak̠šarī, Asās al-Balāḡa (Cairo, 1922), p. 375.

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a felt (an absorbent surface); then another layer is formed by dipping the screen and lying it down upon the first. This procedure can be repeated two or three times. The resultant two or three layers are then pressed and dried to form a thick sheet of paper. 3) Some researchers postulate that the use of wheat starch for sizing was introduced to the papermaking industry by the Arabs. Starch is very visible in polarised light microscopy. No starch was found in any of the samples examined, and thus disputes this hypothesis.

Summary This study is a multidisciplinary combination of history and natural science, and it may constitute a significant breakthrough in understanding the technology of the early paper industry. By testing and comparing different samples of paper that were produced in different papermaking centres during the Middle Ages, it may be possible to draw up a typology of the various types of early paper. This will allow the identification of manufacturing centres and a means for dating paper according to its composition. Further, this work demonstrates the possibility of studying medieval textiles through the analysis of early paper. This is just the first stage of the study; examining additional documents from al-Šām and comparing them with documents from other centres such as Egypt, Iraq and North Africa can offer a more extensive and in-depth evaluation of the results of the study.

Acknowledgements All the documents come from the collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. We sincerely thank Mayer Rabinowitz, the former Director of the JTS Library, the JTS Library’s Conservation Department, and Nellie Stavisky, a paper conservator, who allowed us to examine these documents and without whose help the study could never have been accomplished.

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Bibliography N. Allony, The Tiberian School of Hebrew Grammar (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 17–24. ——, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah, edited by M. Frenkel and H. Ben-Shammai (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006). Z. Amar, ‘The Revolution in Textiles in Eretz Israel and Syria in the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 87 (1998), pp. 37–60. ——, Agricultural Produce in the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 2000). ——, ‘The Paper Industry in al-Šām in the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 98 (2000), pp. 73–96. ——, ‘The History of the Paper Industry in al-Sham in the Middle Ages’, in Y. Lev (ed.), Towns and Material Culture in the Medieval Middle East (Leiden, 2002), pp. 119–133. E. Ashtor, ‘The Venetian Cotton Trade in Syria in the Later Middle Ages’, Studi Medievali 17 (1976), pp. 675–715. K. ʿAwād, ‘al-Waraq aw al-Kāḡad: Ṣināʿatuhū fī-ʾl-ʿuṣūr al-Islāmiyya’ in Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī bi-Dimašq 23 (1948), pp. 409–438. H. Ben-Shammai, ‘A new fragment from the original Arabic version of Sefer ha-Miṣvot of the Karaite Levi b. Yefet’ (Hebrew), in Šenaton ha-Mišpat ̣ ha-ʿIvri 11–12 (1984– 1986), pp. 99–133. M. Beit-Arie, ‘Hebrew Manuscripts Copied in Jerusalem before the Ottoman Conquest’ in B. Z. Kedar (ed.), Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 244–278. M. van Berchem et al., Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum (4 parts; Cairo, 1894–1985). H. Beveridge, ‘The Paper-Mills of Samarkand’ in Asiatic Quarterly Review 30 (1910), pp. 160–164. J. M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: the History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven & London, 2001). ——, ‘Paper in Fatimid Egypt’ in M. Barrucand (ed.), L’Egypte Fatimide son Art et son Histoire (Paris, 2002), pp. 395–401. J. Braslavsky, Studies of our Land, its Past and Relics (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1954). R. I. Burns, ‘The Paper Revolution in Europe: Crusader Valencia’s Paper Industry: a Technological and Behavioral Breakthrough’, Pacific Historical Review 50 (1981), pp. 1–30. M. A. Doizy and P. Fulacher, Papiers et Moulins des Origines A Nos Jours (Paris, 1989). R. Duval, Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule voces syriacas græcasque cum glossis syriacis et arabicis complectens (Paris, 1881–1901). M. Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel Aviv, 1983). ——, ‘Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099). Additions, Notes and Corrections’ (Hebrew), Teʿuda 7 (1991), pp. 281–345. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). ——, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1973). A. Grohmann, From the World of Arabic Papyri (Cairo, 1952). ——, Arabische Palaographie (2 vols; Vienna, 1967–1971). A. Y. Hassan and D. R. Hill, Islamic Technology: an Illustrated History (London & New York, 1986). A. F. R. Hoernle, ‘Who was the Inventor of Rag-Paper?’, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 43 (1903), pp. 663–684. S. Hurwitz, Maḥzor Vitṛ i of Rabbenu Simḥa (Hebrew; Berlin, 1893).

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D. Hunter, Papermaking: the History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (New York, 1943). ——, Papermaking Through Eighteen Centuries, reprinted (New York, 1971). C. Huart & A. Grohmann in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1978), vol. IV, pp. 419–420, s.v. ‘KĀGHAD’. Ibn Ḥ awqal, Kitāb al-Masālik wa-ʾl-Mamālik, edited by M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1870). K. Jahn, ‘Das Iranische Papiergeld’, Archiv Orientální 10 (1938), pp. 308–340. J. von Karabacek, ‘Das arabische Papier’, in Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer (Vienna, 1887), vol. II–III, pp. 87–178. S. Klein, ‘Paper and its Manufacture in the Land of Israel’, in S. Yeivin (ed.), Trade, Industry and Crafts in Ancient Israel (Jerusalem, 1937), pp. 61–84. M. Kurd ʿAlī, K̠it ̣at ̣ al-Šām (6 vols; Damascus, 1925–1928). M. Lombard, The Golden Age of Islam, translated by J. Spencer (Amsterdam, Oxford & New York, 1975). H. Loveday, Islamic Paper (London, 2001). Al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm, edited by M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1906). F. B. Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, edited by A. Evans (Cambridge, Mass, 1936). Pliny, Natural History, translated by H. Rackham (10 vols; London & Cambridge, Mass., 1938–1963). Al-Qalqašandī, Ḍ awʿ al-Ṣubḥ al-Musaffar: abridgement of Ṣubḥ al-Aʿašā, edited by M. Salāmah (Cairo, 1906). M. Shatzmiller, Labour in the Medieval Islamic World (Leiden, 1994). C. Singer et al. (eds), A History of Technology (8 vols; Oxford, 1954–1984). W. M. Thackston (transl.), Nāṣer-e Khosraw’s Book of Travels (Safarnāma) (New York, 1986). J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (eds), Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Editions with Notes and Commentary, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1965). T. H. Tsien, Paper and Printing, in J. Needham (ed.), Science and Civilisation in China (7 vols; Cambridge, 1954–1998), vol. V:I. A. M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (London & New York, 1983). M. D. Yusuf, Economic Survey of Syria during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Berlin, 1985). Mahmūd ibn ʿUmar Zamak̠šarī, Asās al-Balāḡa (Cairo, 1922). M. S. Zuckermandel (ed.), Tosefta, Mischna und Boraitha, reprinted (Jerusalem, 1970).

IS “THE CAIRO GENIZAH” A PROPER NAME OR A GENERIC NOUN? ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GENIZOT OF THE BEN EZRA AND THE DĀR SIMḤ A SYNAGOGUES Haggai Ben-Shammai

I feel privileged and honoured to speak at this conference, and I am therefore grateful to the organisers for the opportunity to speak here. This conference is no doubt a tribute to the accomplishments of Stefan Reif in the advancement of Genizah studies. It is also a tribute to scholarship, and especially to scholarly cooperation and friendship. In this context I cannot avoid noting that my presence here together in the United Kingdom with several colleagues from Israel as a tribute to scholarly cooperation and friendship is an appropriate response to the voices, or shall we say noises of unscholarly resentment and hatred, that have been coming from certain quarters in this country. I therefore thank the organisers for their laudable initiative and hospitality. For over a century now the phrase ‘The Cairo Genizah’ has been widely used to designate Jewish historical documents and fragments of literary contents that had been transferred from the Levant, mainly from the Arabic-speaking countries on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, to various libraries in Europe and the United States. While the phrase had been originally used to indicate materials coming from the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), the transfer of materials from this particular deposit, most notably to Cambridge University Library, made such an impact and received such publicity, that materials from similar deposits, and even of unidentified provenance, came to be considered as originating from the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue. The phrase ‘The Cairo Genizah’ has thus become identical, both in the minds of many scholars and in their publications with the documents, historical or literary, from the Ben Ezra Synagogue. Now, it is almost superfluous to mention here that genizot have been a regular feature or architectural element, if you wish, in synagogues everywhere. In arid or semi-arid areas of the eastern Mediterranean the chances of documents deposited in such genizot to survive for long periods had been quite good, provided they were not subject to

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periodic ceremonial burial. Even when buried in the ground, in such areas they had a good chance of survival.1 In this respect Cairo is not unique. Complete manuscripts or fragments of various sizes that had been acquired over centuries by European collectors (from owners or dealers on the market place) ended up in European libraries, such as the collections called after Pococke (in Oxford), Antonin (in St Petersburg) or Gaster (in London and Manchester) that are known to have originated in such genizot.2 Having made these generalisations, I wish to turn now to another specific genizah in Cairo, namely the one that was housed in the Karaite synagogue Dār Simḥa.3 This synagogue, situated in the Karaite quarter (Ḥ ārat al-Yahūd al-Qarrāʾīn) in the neighbourhood of al-Gamāliyya in Cairo, not far from Khān al-Khalīlī market, appears in Karaite documents from at least the beginning of the sixteenth century. In documents from the second half of that century it features as the seat of the Karaite court.4 It

1 A famous case that is connected with the Ben Ezra Genizah is the burial of several thousand fragments in the Jewish cemetery of Basātīn in Cairo. It was excavated between 1910 and 1912, on the initiative of Mr Jacques Mosseri; see J. Mosseri, ‘A New Hoard of Jewish Mss in Cairo’, The Jewish Review 4 (1913–1914), pp. 31–44 (the author refers throughout the entire article to ‘Genizot’ in the plural; as it turns out he has in mind the Ben Ezra Synagogue and the Basātīn cemetery; he does not mention at all the Karaite Genizah); M. Cohen and Y. Stillman, ‘The Cairo Genizah and the Custom of Genizah among Oriental Jewry—An Historical and Ethnographic Study’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 24 (1985) pp. 3–35 (13–14, 28). This discovery has been known since then as the Mosseri Collection. 2 See the statements of Abraham Firkovich, Avne Zikkaron (Hebrew; Vilno, 1872), p. 2, mentioning the manuscripts which he ‘brought to light’ from the darkness of the genizah of the Karaite synagogue in Jerusalem during his visit there in 1830 (quoted also by Z. Elkin and M. Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich and the Cairo Genizahs in the Light of his Personal Archive’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 90 (2002), pp. 51–95 (55 n.12)). 3 In recent publications by Karaite and other authors it is called the Rav/Rabbi Simḥa Synagogue; see J. Beinin, ‘The Karaites in Modern Egypt’, in M. Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: a Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003), pp. 418– 423; J. Algamil, ‘Ha-Yehudim ha-Qaraʾim be-Miṣrayim 1517–1918’, in J. M. Landau (ed.), The Jews in Ottoman Egypt (1517–1914) (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 513–556 (550ff); Elkin and Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich’, pp. 67–71 (including a map of the Jewish quarter indicating the exact location of the synagogue and a picture of the bima and the ark). 4 See H. Ben-Shammai, ‘New Sources for the History of the Karaites in SixteenthCentury Egypt (A Preliminary Description)’ (Hebrew), Ginzei Qedem 2 (2006), pp. 9–26 (14); Elkin and Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich’, p. 71; to the sources quoted there in note 62, add E. Ashtor, Toldot ha-Yehudim be-Miṣrayim ve-Surya taḥ at Šilṭon ha-Mamlukim (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970), vol. II, pp. 101–102, and cf. vol. I, pp. 223–245, with references to sources from the Mamluk period (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries).

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was thus the communal centre of the Karaites in Cairo. It served as the main Karaite synagogue in the city until 1931. A huge deposit of books and documents was housed in this synagogue for many centuries. A large part of it was in Judaeo-Arabic. Now it forms a large section of the collection of Jewish manuscripts at the Russian National Library5 in St Petersburg. Elkin and Ben-Sasson have shown, on the basis of previous studies by other scholars and new, unpublished documents from the personal archive of Abraham Firkovich, the Polish-Crimean Karaite communal leader, collector and scholar, that he did not acquire any documents directly from the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue. Several documents authored by him clearly indicate that he did indeed plan to do so, and had made practical preparations for carrying out such plans, which he did not manage eventually to accomplish. It may be that he acquired from dealers on the street or elsewhere a few documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue.6 He did however haul an unprecedentedly huge number of manuscripts from the Dār Simḥa Synagogue. As is indicated by Elkin and Ben-Sasson and other scholars, Firkovich did not exhaust the Dār Simḥa Genizah. It seems that the number of manuscripts and fragments that Firkovich had left there was quite large, and that these served as a source for several collectors and dealers in subsequent decades (including Schechter).7 Comparisons between the Firkovich Collections in the Russian National Library8 on the one hand, and different collections, on the other hand, that are known to originate almost exclusively from the 5 This is the current name of the library. It has changed its name several times during the twentieth century. Before the Bolshevik revolution it was known as the Public Imperial Library; then the adjective ‘Imperial’ was dropped; then, at Stalin’s ‘suggestion/request/order’ it was named after the Russian novelist and satirist (Mikhail E.) Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–1889). The last change occurred in 1993. 6 See S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000), pp. 15–16, and H. BenShammai, ‘On the Study of Karaites in the Context of Jewish Communities in the East’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 89 (2002), pp. 5–18 (9–10); H. Ben-Shammai, ‘On the History of the Scholarly Study of Karaism: 19th–20th centuries’, in M. Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: a Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003), pp. 8–24 (13–14). 7 The Dār Simḥa Genizah was probably the source for acquisitions of Karaite manuscripts by European scholars before Firkovich, at least from the time of Solomon Munk, who in 1840 brought with him from Cairo a rather large number of Karaite manuscripts to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; see D. Sklare, ‘A Guide to Collections of Karaite Manuscripts’, in M. Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: a Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003), pp. 893–924 (894). 8 See Sklare, ‘A Guide’, pp. 905–909.

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Ben Ezra Synagogue—notably the Taylor-Schechter collection—should start from the fact of their differing origins. Before turning to such a comparison I would like to mention that in various publications one finds remarks about the Karaite leaning of the material preserved in the Dār Simḥa Genizah. But then this is after all a Karaite synagogue, and such leaning should be expected there. Does anybody argue that the material from the Ben Ezra Synagogue leans towards Rabbanite Judaism? I cannot recall coming across such an argument, probably because this is considered ‘normal’. In the actual circumstances it is as normal as the Karaite leaning of the Dār Simḥa Genizah. It may be considered astounding regarding both cases, certainly for those whose approach is conditioned by an East European rabbinic (or Karaite!) background of the last two centuries, and therefore see the Rabbanite-Karaite relationship in terms of an unbridgeable schism, that both collections contain a relatively high proportion of literary sources and documents that belong to the other party. Since this is taken for granted regarding the Ben Ezra Genizah,9 I will mention a few notable examples of important Rabbanite works or fragments from the Firkovich Collection: numerous fragments of works by Saʿadya Gaon, including the oldest and most important almost-complete copy of his theological summa, the Book of Beliefs and Convictions,10 and the oldest and most reliable incomplete manuscript of his Judaeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch;11 important collections of Geonic responsa;12 important halakhic monographs by late Geonim;13 numerous fragments of halakhic works by Maimonides; many works on Hebrew linguistics by Rabbanite authors; rare exemplars of exegetical works by Rabbanite authors;14 important philosophical

9 I.e. that despite its imagined Rabbanite leanings it contains many Karaite fragments; cf. Sklare, ‘A Guide’, pp. 898–899. 10 Ms. St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Evr-Arab. I:127. 11 Ibid., Evr II C 001–002; see J. Blau, ‘Saʿadya Gaon’s Pentateuch Translation in Light of an Eleventh-Century Egyptian Manuscript’ (Hebrew), Lešonenu 61 (1998), pp. 111–130. 12 See, e.g., A. Harkavy, Responsen der Geonim (Hebrew; Berlin, 1887), introduction, pp. vii–viii. 13 E.g., Ms. St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Evr-Arab. I:1467, a collection of monographs by Samuel b. Ḥ ofni; see D. Sklare, Samuel ben Hofni Gaon and his Cultural World (Leiden, 1996), p. 1 n. 2 and passim. 14 E.g., three fragments of Saʿadya’s commentary on Exodus of considerable size, each containing about 70 leaves: Mss. St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Evr I:243, Evr-Arab. I:4132, Evr-Arab. I:129; the first two will be included in my

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works by Moses ibn Ezra;15 numerous treatises dealing with asceticism and mystical experiences, authored by members of the Maimonidean family and others. Most of these works are written in Judaeo-Arabic.16 Let us turn now to the main similarities and differences between the two collections.17 The most important similarity between these two genizot regarding the literary material is that they preserved works and other cultural artifacts18 that have been beyond the boundaries of a recognised or accepted or widely spread corpus, labelled ‘canonical’ or otherwise. This is true regarding the areas of religious literature (e.g. biblical exegesis, Rabbinics, law) as well as scientific and literary works. Accordingly, the texts hidden in these genizot and uncovered by their nineteenth-century discoverers changed the face of Jewish Rabbinic and Medieval literature as it had been known to early modern scholars of Jewish studies. With respect to historical documents it is evident that these deposits preserved unprecedented and unparalleled information about personalities, communities, events and processes that could not have been known from any other source. There is a difference though with respect to documents, which I shall mention further below. Firkovich was perhaps one of the first to grasp the potential importance of such deposits. Yet his political or sectarian motivations overshadowed his scholarly ones, and so it was left mainly to Schechter to uncover that potential in its fullest.19

edition of Saʿadya’s commentary on Exodus 1–20; the third is included in Y. Ratzaby, Rav Saadya’s Commentary on Exodus (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1998). 15 Several important fragments of his Maqālat al-ḥ adīqa; see P. Fenton, Philosophie et exégése dans Le jardin de la méthaphore de Moïse Ibn ’Ezra (Leiden, 1997), pp. 40–47. According to Fenton’s description the provenance of all fragments (in Jerusalem [=Sassoon], Oxford and St Petersburg) is ‘la genizah’. It is not clear to me whether he means by this designation the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in particular or a generic term. 16 Cf. M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008), pp. xix–xxiv. 17 Cf. Elkin and Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich’, p. 76. 18 I use this term here to cover items that do not fall under the categories of literary works or historical documents, such as magical and astrological texts. 19 His Documents of Jewish Sectaries edited from Hebrew manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah collection now in the possession of the University library (Cambridge, 1910) is a magnificent and most significant illustration to the magnitude of the importance of genizot. Vol. I, Fragments of a Zadokite Work, brought to the attention of the world a work that fifty years later turned out to be the Qumranic work known as the Damascus Document; vol. II consists of Fragments of the Book of the Commandments of Anan. A further work, Saadyana: Genizah fragments of writings of R. Saadya Gaon and others (Cambridge, 1903), is also a very convincing illustration, in a different sense.

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I would like to draw attention at this point to another example of Genizah material that is not usually counted as such. Volumes in the British Library that include fragments of different works and had been purchased from Moses William Shapira (in the 1870s and 1880s),20 and even later from Samuel Raffalovich (in the 1890s), are quite similar to such volumes in Genizah collections, or, for that matter, to many boxes in the second Judaeo-Arabic Series in the Russian National Library (formerly in the second collection of Firkovich). They most probably hail from the Karaite Dār Simḥa Genizah, and perhaps also from another genizah in the town of Hīt, which was the seat of the last Karaite community in Iraq.21 The fact that they are recorded and described in detail in Margoliouth’s Catalogue among the so-called ‘regular’ or ‘standard’ manuscripts does not make them such.22 This is typical Genizah material. There are many more examples of this sort in numerous collections. A major difference between literary fragments in the Ben Ezra Genizah and the Dār Simḥa Genizah relates to the format and size of the fragments. While the Ben Ezra fragments are mostly small ones with respect to numbers of leaves,23 the Dār Simḥa ones are sometimes very long and may contain as many as several hundred leaves. In fact many books that originate from that Genizah are complete, or almost complete. This difference has been pointed out by many scholars who suggested various explanations for it. It seems that this difference results from the different functions of the two genizot and their place in their respective communities. I do not think that one needs to elaborate on the purpose and function of the Ben Ezra Genizah. I would only mention the fact that it served all the members of the community as 20

See Sklare, ‘A Guide’, pp. 899–900. See R. Hoerning, Descriptions and Collation of Six Karaite Manuscripts of Portions of the Hebrew Bible in Arabic Characters (London, 1889), p. v; Firkovich dreamed for years of going to Hīt and made plans towards this end. However he was never able to realise his dreams; see Elkin and Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich’, pp. 59–62. 22 See also H. Ben-Shammai, ‘Some Judaeo-Arabic Karaite Fragments in the British Museum Collection’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975), pp. 126–132. 23 It should be noted that this was not necessarily the situation with the fragments when Schechter brought them to Cambridge, when perhaps there had been in the Collection some long fragments, which had been removed later to other collections in Cambridge. At present the longest single fragment in the Taylor-Schechter Collection is T-S Ar.51.86b, which consists of 22 folios; see C. F. Baker and M. Polliack, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Arabic Old Series (Cambridge, 2001), p. 522. 21

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a repository for all their worn books and personal documents. The function of the Dār Simḥa Genizah, though, may need some elaboration. It was related to communal institutions, first and foremost the synagogue and its library, as well as the leadership institutions, mainly the court and the lay leaders (parnasim).24 I do not know how organised it was, but from various testimonies it seems that the material was accessible, and that there was not a clear distinction or division between the books and documents that had been in use and those that had been obsolete.25 Moreover, and this is a substantial characteristic of the Dār Simḥa Genizah, it seems to have grown out of the library of the synagogue. Evidence to this effect can be gathered from numerous inscriptions of dedication. In fact this synagogue inherited libraries of older synagogues. First and foremost of them was the library of the Karaite synagogue in pre-Crusader Jerusalem, after which the Cairo synagogue library may have been modelled. The last communal Karaite library to have been transferred to Cairo was apparently that of Damascus in the early nineteenth century.26 I have pointed out elsewhere27 that these inscriptions on books that belong to a wide range of genres testify to the existence of developed public libraries in Arabicspeaking Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. The relatively scant information that is found on this subject in book lists preserved in the Ben Ezra Genizah28 is corroborated on a magnificent scale in the Dār Simḥa Genizah. The many inscriptions of dedication found there and elsewhere demonstrate that, even though Jewish communities in the east did not initiate the establishment of public libraries for communal-educational purposes, once they possessed the donated books they devised mechanisms that would secure their uninterrupted ownership

24

See H. Ben-Shammai, ‘New Sources’. The term genizah occurs in colophons of manuscripts copied by Moses b. Abraham ha-Levi (see on him Elkin and Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich’, p. 65) in Cairo. He describes himself sitting in the genizah copying; see, e.g., G. Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan manuscripts in the British Museum (3 vols; London, 1899–1935), vol. II, p. 188a. 26 See J. Mann, Texts and Studies, vol. II (Cincinnati, 1935), p. 202. 27 H. Ben-Shammai, ‘Notes of the Peregrinations of the Aleppo Codex’, in Y. T. Assis and M. Frenkel (eds), Aleppo Studies: the Jews of Aleppo, their History and Culture, vol. I (Jerusalem, 2009), pp. 139–154. 28 N. Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah, edited by M. Frenkel and H. Ben-Shammai (Jerusalem, 2006). 25

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of the books, and would make sure that the original purposes stipulated by the donors be kept strictly.29 Another important difference relates to the documents in the Dār Simḥa Genizah: because of its communal character the majority of the documents there were not private ones. More generally, it seems that with respect to the quantity of historical documents, communal or private, the Ben Ezra Genizah is indeed unparalleled. To conclude, the difference between the various genizot in the format and size of the fragments and documents, instructive as it may be for the cultural history of the relevant communities, is technical with respect to the contents of the fragments. The important aspect is the contents, which in most genizot, whether known to us or not, uncovered for us worlds that had been doomed to oblivion, as it were, by scholars and printers of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, or simply by the passage of time and lack of historical interest of previous generations. In this sense ‘The Cairo Genizah’ is not a proper noun, but a generic noun. Finally, I started with a personal note and I wish to conclude with another one. There is another difference between the Ben Ezra Genizah and the Dār Simḥa Genizah that I have not mentioned. While the latter had been seriously studied only during the early stage of its sojourn in St Petersburg, and had become subsequently inaccessible for the majority of scholars outside the Soviet Union for almost 70 years, during which it also suffered from very low standards of preservation, the collections that hail from the Ben Ezra Genizah, notably the one in Cambridge University Library, had become the Mecca of Genizah studies. During the last thirty-something years, the Cambridge Collection underwent a profound face-lift with respect to maintenance and conservation, which was accompanied by an impressive project of cataloguing and publication. I think that I may speak on behalf of

29 This is a topic that deserves to be studied in detail. I elaborated on it in a talk delivered at the Summer Colloquium of the European Association of Jewish Studies, convened in Oxford, July 2009, which I hope to publish elsewhere. For an interesting inscription of dedication from a remote Rabbanite community see the fragment published by H. Hirschfeld, ‘The Arabic Portion of the Cairo Genizah at Cambridge’, Jewish Quarterly Review 16 (1903–1904), pp. 290–299 (293–4, English translation, 298, text); Mann, Texts and Studies, pp. 1464–1465, and my remarks in H. Ben-Shammai, ‘New and Old: Saʿadya’s Two Introductions to his Translation of the Pentateuch’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 69 (2000), pp. 199–210 (204 n. 34).

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the entire Genizah community by saying that for all this we are all of course deeply grateful to Stefan Reif.

Bibliography J. Algamil, ‘Ha-Yehudim ha-Qara’im be-Miṣrayim 1517–1918’, in J. M. Landau (ed.), The Jews in Ottoman Egypt (1517–1914) (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 513–556. N. Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah, edited by M. Frenkel and H. Ben-Shammai (Jerusalem, 2006). E. Ashtor, Toldot ha-Yehudim be-Miṣrayim ve-Surya taḥ at Šilṭon ha-Mamlukim (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970). C. F. Baker and M. Polliack, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Arabic Old Series (Cambridge, 2001). J. Beinin, ‘The Karaites in Modern Egypt’, in M. Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: a Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003), pp. 418–423. H. Ben-Shammai, ‘Some Judaeo-Arabic Karaite Fragments in the British Museum Collection’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975), pp. 126–132. ——, ‘New and Old: Saʿadya’s Two Introductions to his Translation of the Pentateuch’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 69 (2000), pp. 199–210. ——, ‘On the Study of Karaites in the Context of Jewish Communities in the East’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 89 (2002), pp. 5–18. ——, ‘On the History of the Scholarly Study of Karaism: 19th–20th centuries’, in M. Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: a Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003), pp. 8–24. ——, ‘New Sources for the History of the Karaites in Sixteenth-Century Egypt (A Preliminary Description)’ (Hebrew), Ginzei Qedem 2 (2006), pp. 9–26. ——, ‘Notes of the Peregrinations of the Aleppo Codex’, in Y. T. Assis and M. Frenkel (eds), Aleppo Studies: the Jews of Aleppo, their History and Culture, vol. I (Jerusalem, 2009), pp. 139–154. J. Blau, ‘Saʿadya Gaon’s Pentateuch Translation in Light of an Eleventh-Century Egyptian Manuscript’ (Hebrew), Lešonenu 61 (1998), pp. 111–130. M. Cohen and Y. Stillman, ‘The Cairo Genizah and the Custom of Genizah among Oriental Jewry—An Historical and Ethnographic Study’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 24 (1985) pp. 3–35. Z. Elkin and M. Ben-Sasson, ‘Abraham Firkovich and the Cairo Genizahs in the Light of his Personal Archive’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 90 (2002), pp. 51–95. P. Fenton, Philosophie et exégése dans Le jardin de la méthaphore de Moïse Ibn ’Ezra (Leiden, 1997). A. Firkovich, Avne Zikkaron (Hebrew; Vilno, 1872). A. Harkavy, Responsen der Geonim (Hebrew; Berlin, 1887). H. Hirschfeld, ‘The Arabic Portion of the Cairo Genizah at Cambridge’, Jewish Quarterly Review 16 (1903–1904), pp. 290–299. R. Hoerning, Descriptions and Collation of Six Karaite Manuscripts of Portions of the Hebrew Bible in Arabic Characters (London, 1889). J. Mann, Texts and Studies, vol. II (Cincinnati, 1935). G. Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan manuscripts in the British Museum (3 vols; London, 1899–1935). J. Mosseri, ‘A New Hoard of Jewish Mss in Cairo’, The Jewish Review 4 (1913–1914), pp. 31–44. Y. Ratzaby, Rav Saadya’s Commentary on Exodus (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1998).

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S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000). M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008). S. Schechter, Saadyana: Genizah fragments of writings of R. Saadya Gaon and others (Cambridge, 1903). ——, Documents of Jewish Sectaries edited from Hebrew manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah collection now in the possession of the University library (Cambridge, 1910). D. Sklare, Samuel ben Hofni Gaon and his Cultural World (Leiden, 1996). ——, ‘A Guide to Collections of Karaite Manuscripts’, in M. Polliack (ed.), Karaite Judaism: a Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, 2003), pp. 893–924.

TOWARDS A CATALOGUE OF THE MAGICAL, ASTROLOGICAL, DIVINATORY, AND ALCHEMICAL FRAGMENTS FROM THE CAMBRIDGE GENIZAH COLLECTIONS1 Gideon Bohak

As every Genizah scholar knows, no one has ever catalogued the entire Genizah, nor even produced a preliminary handlist of the general contents of each Genizah fragment. Moreover, the production of Genizah catalogues and handlists was mostly carried out by specialists in one specific field, who went to Cambridge and other Genizah collections and identified those fragments which interested them most, essentially neglecting all the other fragments.2 Within this scheme of scholarly production, those fragments that relate to magic, divination, and the so-called ‘occult sciences’ fared the worst, and were unduly neglected by all Genizah scholars until very recently. This neglect of all fragments dealing with magic, astrology, divination and alchemy (henceforth MADA) was not due to the paucity of such fragments, which are quite numerous by any standard, but to Genizah scholars’ disdain of ‘the fool (and) his amulet’.3 Only in 1966, with Margalioth’s groundbreaking publication of Sefer ha-Razim, a late-antique Jewish book of magic that he reconstructed from a dozen Genizah fragments and

1 The research for the present paper was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 725/03); during my sabbatical in Cambridge I received funding from TelAviv University, from the Genizah Research Unit of Cambridge University Library, and from the Friedberg Genizah Foundation. I would also like to thank Stefan Reif, Ben Outhwaite, and the entire staff at the Genizah Research Unit for making my year in Cambridge both productive and enjoyable. 2 See, for example, most of the catalogues in the Cambridge University Library Genizah Series edited by Stefan Reif. Unpublished handlists and databases include those of Ezra Fleischer and his team (piyyuṭ), Yaacov Sussmann and his team (rabbinics) and Efraim Lev (medicine) and Uri Ehrlich (liturgy). For a rare attempt to catalogue a whole ‘series’ of Genizah fragments, of widely differing contents, see C. F. Baker and M. Polliack (eds), Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Arabic Old Series (T-S Ar.1a–54) (Cambridge, 2001). 3 For Schechter’s famous words, see S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000), p. 85.

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some non-Genizah manuscripts, was the study of the Genizah magical texts begun in earnest, and only in the mid-1980s was an attempt made, by Professor Shaul Shaked, to prepare a preliminary handlist of all magic-related Genizah fragments.4 This list, which he kindly put at my disposal, now serves as the basis for my own work, which began in 2003 and will continue for several years to come. My own efforts included four years of working on these fragments from their microfilm copies found at Tel-Aviv University, and a year-long stay in Cambridge (from September 2007 to August 2008), during which I prepared a complete list of all the MADA fragments in the CUL Or. and Taylor-Schechter collections, a list that I am now turning into a more detailed catalogue of all these fragments. In the present paper, which is dedicated to Stefan Reif in gratitude for his enormous contributions to Genizah studies in general and to my own research in particular, I shall present a basic description of the catalogue and its aims, a brief discussion of some of the problems involved in producing it, and a preliminary survey of the different types of MADA fragments in the Cambridge Genizah collections, and of the current state of their study.

The Catalogue, Its Aims, and Its Basic Features Like every other catalogue of Genizah fragments, the main aim of the MADA catalogue is to make the materials it covers available, and appealing, to other scholars, and thus to facilitate much further research. I stress this point, because one of my premises in working on the Genizah fragments is that each one of them deserves much careful attention, and that such attention, especially by experts in the many sub-fields and specialisations included under the rubric of ‘Magic, Astrology, Divination and Alchemy’, will lead to many accurate identifications of the specific contents of individual fragments, to the discovery of joins between fragments of similar content that once formed part of a single quire or even a single folio, and to the elucidation of the role and place of such texts and practices within Jewish society 4

M. Margalioth, Sepher Ha-Razim: a Newly Recovered Book of Magic from the Talmudic Period (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1966); for subsequent publications, see below. For Shaked’s search for such fragments, see his brief notes in Genizah Fragments 8 (October 1984) and 9 (April 1985).

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in the Middle Ages. However, the planned catalogue will not seek to reach this end-point, nor can it ever pretend to do so, given the wide gaps in my own knowledge and the limited time that may be alloted to each fragment. Rather, its aim is to provide a basic set of data for all the fragments it contains, and some more specific descriptions in those sub-fields in which I happen to have some expertise. If other scholars find it a useful starting point for the survey of those sub-fields in which their expertise is much greater than mine, and if they then use it to study these fragments and describe them in much greater detail, the catalogue will have achieved its goal.5 To do so, it must be as comprehensive and as accurate as possible, but on both parameters perfection is a priori impossible, since while sifting through 140,000 fragments over nine long months I am bound to have missed some relevant fragments, and since even the most careful analysis of the exact nature of many of the fragments that Shaked and I already identified is bound to lead to some erroneous descriptions and classifications, especially for those fragments that are less well preserved or in those fields and sub-fields where I have less knowledge and less familiarity with the sources. And yet, I believe that including those MADA fragments whose exact nature still eludes me, and providing a basic description of their contents, is a far more effective way of dealing with those fragments than simply ignoring them, even if it exposes me to charges of ignorance and dilettantism.6 One obvious reason for my ignorance of the exact nature of many of these fragments is the fragmentary nature of the evidence itself. Like all Genizah texts, the MADA fragments are old and fragile, and are merely the tattered or torn remains of the rotuli, folios, bifolia

5 For the wider context of my own research, see also G. Bohak, ‘Prolegomena to the Study of the Jewish Magical Tradition’, Currents in Biblical Research 8 (2009), pp. 107–150. 6 As a sad example of such charges, I note how a scholar who dared to edit two astrological fragments from the Cairo Genizah while admitting his own ignorance of the topic (R. Gottheil, ‘A Fragment on Astrology from the Genizah’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 47 (1927), pp. 302–310; Gottheil, ‘A Further Fragment on Astrology from the Genizah’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 49 (1929), pp. 291–302), was dealt the harsh verdict that ‘One of the few correct statements in these two articles (is) “I know absolutely nothing about astrology” ’—B. R. Goldstein and D. Pingree, ‘Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 36 (1977), pp. 113–144 (113 n. 2). One wonders, however, whether the latter writers would have known about the very existence of these specific fragments without the former publications.

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and quires to which they once belonged. Thus, a typical Genizah text begins and ends in medias res, and presents no information about the title or author of the text in which it once belonged, or even whether that text ever had a fixed title or was attributed to a specific author. In fact, the only information about the nature of each fragment is provided by its contents, and these too often are not so easy to make out. Thus, one aim of my catalogue is to identify as many joins as possible between different fragments, in Cambridge and in other Genizah collections, which originally belonged to the same manuscripts, but had since been dismembered—either deliberately or through natural processes of disintegration—and subsequently dispersed. This aspect of my research is especially important since in many cases the individual fragments are so small as to be almost useless, hence the need to join them with their long-lost siblings and form larger textual units.7 A second reason for my ignorance is that the general rubric of MADA in fact covers a whole range of highly specific sub-fields, from palmomancy (twitch-divination, or the foretelling of future events in a person’s life from the involuntary twitchings of different parts of his body) to erotic magic, from late-antique Jewish exorcisms to medieval Muslim rituals for the summoning of demons, from horologia and hemerologia (i.e., catalogues of which angels or demons ‘rule’ over specific days and hours, and/or which action may or may not be carried out on certain days and hours) to Pseudo-Aristotelian books of alchemy, from amulets for quick childbirth given to women in labour to elaborate discussions of the powers and influences of the different planets, from manuals of dream interpretation (oneiromancy) to detailed instructions as to where and how to dig for ancient treasures, and so on. There probably is no single scholar who is well acquainted with all these different medieval technologies and spheres of knowledge, and I myself would certainly admit to knowing very little about alchemy and astrology, and to having many gaps even in my knowledge of the magical texts, which I have spent quite a few years studying. And yet, as many of these different spheres of knowledge are interrelated, or were seen as such by those who practiced them, it seems unjustifiable to go over the entire Genizah in search of just a

7 For some pertinent examples, see G. Bohak, ‘Reconstructing Jewish Magical Recipe Books from the Cairo Genizah’, Ginzei Qedem 1 (2005), pp. 9–29.

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few types of magical texts—those which happen to interest me most— and simply ignore all the rest. Finally, a third reason for my ignorance of the exact content of many of these fragments is that the study of the magic-related fragments from the Cairo Genizah still lags far behind that of most other types of Genizah fragments. These materials were shunned, and with much disdain, by Solomon Schechter, by Shlomo Dov Goitein, and by almost all other Genizah scholars, who often insisted that the Jews of medieval Cairo were devout rationalists who avoided all ‘superstitions’.8 And in more recent times, there has been an upsurge in the study of Jewish magic, and of the Genizah magical texts, and some progress in the study of the Jewish astrological tradition, but the study of Jewish divination and alchemy still lags far behind the study of most other aspects of Jewish culture, and even today, many studies of Jewish magic, divination and alchemy tend to focus more on Ashkenazi Jews, and mostly ignore the relevant Genizah fragments.9 And even now, when certain types of magical and astrological texts from the Cairo Genizah already received some attention, there are many types of texts that are amply represented among the Genizah MADA fragments but remain completely unstudied. Thus, to give one obvious example, rather than waiting for scholars working on medieval alchemy to take note of the alchemical fragments from the Cairo Genizah, and only then include these in a catalogue, I have decided to include in the catalogue all the alchemical fragments I could find, in the hope that it would thus enable scholars of alchemy to study their contents and contexts. However, while noting some of the alchemical fragments and their thematic and stylistic sub-divisions, I also showed some preliminary transcriptions—produced by my research assistants and corrected by myself—to students of Jewish and Arabic alchemy, who provided me with some useful hints, and even specific identifications, of their actual contents. In the future, I hope to involve as

8 For a useful survey of these attitudes, see M. Frenkel, ‘Writing the History of the Jews of the Lands of Islam in the Middle Ages: Milestones and Prospects’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 92 (2002), pp. 23–61, esp. pp. 52–55. 9 For a classic example, see J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: a Study in Folk Religion, reprinted with a Forward by M. Idel (Philadelphia, 2004); for more recent ones, see E. Kanarfogel, ‘Peering Through the Lattices’: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, 2000); M. Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists, translated by N. Ratchkovsky (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006).

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many specific experts as possible in the study of the different types of Genizah MADA fragments. This process of identifying the relevant fragments, preparing preliminary transcriptions of the most interesting ones, and gradually improving them as my knowledge of these materials increases (and as I have greater access to the original fragments), has proved immensely useful in many other ways as well.10 Most importantly, I now have a large collection of some 830 transcriptions (of which 600 are of Cambridge fragments, 230 of non-Cambridge ones), in which to search for words found in unidentified or doubtful fragments, thus aiding both the classification of mutilated fragments and the search for parallel texts and for fragments that may actually have come from a single quire or bifolium. Moreover, by filing each of these transcriptions together with a photograph—usually a low-quality copy of the microfilm image from which we transcribed the text but in some cases a high-quality digital image—I am able to compare in a relatively quick manner the handwritings and scribal habits manifested by fragments whose contents seem similar, and this has led to the identification of dozens of joins between different fragments. I must stress, however, that most of my attention was devoted to the magical texts (and especially magical recipes and recipe books, amulets, exorcisms, and angelic and demonic adjurations), and most of the transcriptions I now have therefore are of magical fragments, with a much smaller number of transcriptions of astrological, alchemical and divinatory fragments. In the future, I hope to transcribe more of these texts, so as to get a better sense of their contents and scribal features. I must also stress that the production of these transcriptions is not intended to prepare these fragments for publication (although I do hope to publish the most interesting fragments by myself or in cooperation with other scholars, and to make my other transcriptions available to scholars who could find them useful), but to help me classify each fragment as accurately as possible and sort out the chaotic mass of fragments by identifying joins between different fragments, and finding parallel texts both inside and outside the Genizah. This process also yields many interesting results with regards to such questions as the ultimate sources of these medi10 And I would like to use this opportunity to thank my research assistants—Irena Lerman, Karina Shalem, and especially Shani Levy—for their painstaking work in transcribing these fragments from their microfilm copies.

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eval Jewish texts (including texts that clearly stem from the ‘pagan’, Christian, and especially the Muslim world), their relative popularity within the Cairo Jewish community, and their diffusion throughout the Jewish world in general.11 Interesting as all this research is, it often is hard to incorporate all its results into the straightjacket of a catalogue format; on the other hand, ignoring this format would result in the detailed study of one fourth or one third of the fragments, and the total neglect of all the rest. To prevent such an imbalance, and to cover all the relevant fragments and not only those which I happen to know best, I have decided to include in the catalogue entry for each MADA fragment a basic classification into one of the four main fields, and a brief description of the fragment itself (size, material, format, state of preservation, and number of lines per page), the language(s) in which it is written and the type of vocalisation, and whether or not it had already been published. This will be followed by a description of any scribal peculiarities (images and designs, magic signs, methods of rubrication, the use of special ciphers, and so on), and by a longer description of the fragment’s actual contents—either by way of a precise identification or by way of a general description of the text’s main contents, along with some keywords, personal names, place names, citations of earlier sources, joins with other fragments and any other clues that might help other scholars identify the fragment more precisely.

MADA Fragments—Genres and Statistics In order to highlight the different genres of magic-related texts in the Cairo Genizah, and their relative frequency, I have prepared a table listing the different types of texts and the different languages in which they are written (see Appendix A). However, before we deduce any broader conclusions from this table, several caveats must be borne in mind. The first, and most obvious, has to do with the provisional nature of this table, which is based on the Shaked-Bohak list of MADA

11 And see, for example, G. Bohak, ‘Greek, Coptic, and Jewish Magic in the Cairo Genizah’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 36 (1999), pp. 27–44, and Bohak, ‘Catching a Thief: the Jewish Trials of a Christian Ordeal’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006), pp. 344–362.

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fragments as it currently stands. In the future, and as I prepare a fuller catalogue entry for each of the items on the list, many identifications are likely to be corrected or improved; this also applies to those fields about which I am most ignorant, and especially astrology and alchemy, where specialists will no doubt be able to turn the ‘unclassified’ items into specific identifications of sub-categories, authors, and texts. Moreover, it must be noted that the list covers only the Cambridge Genizah collections, which contain c. 70% of all Genizah fragments. Thus, conclusions about the absence of certain types of texts must remain tentative, since these texts may not have been properly identified, or may be better represented in other Genizah collections. A second caveat has to do with the fragmentary nature of the evidence itself, which means that many fragments are very hard to classify accurately, and also means that if a single folio disintegrated into ten small fragments, it would appear in the table as ten different fragments, whereas a well-preserved booklet with twenty consecutive pages would appear as a single fragment; moreover, as some of these texts tended to be much longer than others (for example, astrological compendia as opposed to amulets), the former are a priori likely to leave us more fragments than the latter. Thus, any statistical claims about the relative frequencies of different types of fragments must be taken cum granu salis. Finally, a third caveat has to do with the ‘fuzzy borders’ separating some of these disciplines and sub-disciplines from each other and from non-MADA fields of knowledge. In most cases, the classification of specific fragments into magic, astrology, divination or alchemy is easy enough, and even when a quire or a folio contains more than one type of text, it keeps them separate—for example, a hemerologion followed by a set of magical recipes, or an astrological text followed by a manual of dream interpretation, or a magical text written on the verso, the margins, or the blank pages of a non-magical text. In all these cases, there is no real problem of classification, since it is clear that two distinct texts were copied one after the other or one besides the other, by a single hand or by different ones. But in some cases the classification and separation of the different genres of texts becomes much more problematic, and the most problematic borderlines are those separating magic from medicine (hence my inclusion of a category of ‘Medico-magical recipes’), and from mysticism (hence my inclusion of the categories of ‘Magical prayers’ and of ‘Angelic adjurations’ for fragments which are mostly related to the Hekhalot literature,

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and of ‘Kabbalistic-magical texts’ for those that seem to be influenced by Lurianic Kabbalah). Even the borders between magic and religion are not always clear, as may be noted, for example, in the case of the many curse formulae found in the Cairo Genizah, some of which are found on the colophons or versos of biblical manuscripts, and some of which may have been used as excommunication formulae uttered in the synagogue on behalf of the entire community (and thus probably belong in the realm of ‘religion’ rather than ‘magic’).12 Other problematic borders include those separating astronomy from astrology (and in some cases I was not sure if a fragment is astrological, astronomical, or even calendrical in nature), and those separating alchemical recipes from other types of instructions for the manipulation of various substances (and especially the preparation of foodstuffs and complex medicines). In some cases, I suspect that even the greatest experts in each of these sub-fields would find themselves disagreeing on the exact classification of a specific fragment. With all these caveats in mind, we may look at the table itself, which in spite of all these deficiencies is accurate enough to provide a general impression of the quantities of materials involved, and even allows some more specific historical conclusions about specific sub-fields. The first, and most general, point that can be made is that in going over all of the 140,000 fragments in Cambridge University Library I found about 1,800 MADA fragments (including some doubtful cases), and that the total number of items in the catalogue is likely to be between 1,700 and 1,800 fragments. This is a bit more than 1%, and I believe that this gives a fair impression of the place of these kinds of texts within medieval Egyptian Jewish society. On the one hand, there is no doubt that biblical, rabbinic, halakhic and liturgical manuscripts, and even business documents and letters are far more common in the Cairo Genizah than those relating to magic or the occult sciences. Medieval Jewish society certainly was not infatuated with magic to the exclusion of other spheres of interest, nor was it a magic- or witchcraft-society in any sense of this term. On the other hand, there is no

12 For a published curse at the colophon of a biblical manuscript, see MSF, G20, and note Goitein’s verdict (S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. V, p. 599 n. 33): ‘. . . This formulary belongs to the world of magic rather than of religion’; and cf. the fragments discussed by G. Weiss, ‘Shetar Herem—Excommunication Formulary: Five Documents from the Cairo Geniza’, Gratz College Annual of Jewish Studies 6 (1977), pp. 98–120.

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doubt that magic-related activities were quite common and popular in the Jewish community of medieval Cairo, and were in no way limited to some illiterate mob or a clandestine group of heretics and outsiders. The fact that all these magical texts were deposited in the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue certainly proves their wide acceptance and legitimacy in medieval Jewish society, and the fragments themselves display a wide range of scribal expertise and financial investment, from the crude scribbling of magical recipes on low-quality or used pieces of paper to the almost-deluxe editions produced by professional scribes who made use of good quality vellum. In some cases, it might even be possible to identify the scribes who produced specific magical texts, since the same scribes also produced marriage contracts, business documents, letters, and so on, but the work of identifying these hands in the MADA fragments has only just begun.13 A second general conclusion is far more obvious, and involves the preponderance of Judaeo-Arabic materials in our MADA catalogue. Looking at the table, we note that the linguistic breakdown of the fragments is far from random, and certainly depends on the specific field of knowledge involved, a point to which we shall soon return. But looking at the list as a whole, we note that Judaeo-Arabic is the commonest language for the MADA fragments, a sure reflection of the provenance of all these fragments in the genizah of a synagogue that was active in a Muslim, Arabic-speaking city for a thousand years; for the Jews of Cairo, Arabic was the lingua franca, and its favoured written use was in Hebrew letters. Moreover, when we examine the Judaeo-Arabic MADA fragments more closely (and this is something that we cannot fully do from the table in Appendix A, only from the actual fragments), we note their very mixed nature: some of these texts are translations, probably made by the Jews themselves, of Aramaic and Hebrew texts (and the clearest example is Sefer ha-Razim, which circulated both in its Hebrew original and in a Judaeo-Arabic version);

13 I note, for example, Goitein’s identification of some of the astrological fragments as written by Ḥ alfon ben Manasseh (Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. V, p. 625 n. 28), and of a goralot handbook written by Hillel ben Eli (ibid., p. 292 and 588 n. 98); note also Esther-Miriam Wagner’s identification of the palmomantic text in T-S AS 157.50 as written by Ḥalfon ben Manasseh (see http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/TaylorSchechter/fotm/april-2008), an identification confirmed for me by Mordechai Akiva Friedman. And cf. M. D. Swartz, ‘Scribal Magic and Its Rhetoric: Formal Patterns in Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah’, Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990), pp. 163–180.

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many others are the mere transliterations of texts which were nonJewish in origins, and which the Jews received from their Muslim (and Christian) neighbours in Arabic and merely copied in Hebrew letters (and this is true, for example, of the fragments of Thabit ibn Qurra, of Pseudo-Teucros, and of most if not all of the demonic adjurations, astrological almanacs and treatises, and alchemical manuals). Thus, the Judaeo-Arabic fragments are mostly ‘derivative’ in nature, with only a handful of original Jewish compositions written in Judaeo-Arabic rather than in Hebrew.14 With Hebrew, the second most popular language of the MADA fragments (especially when we note that many of the ‘mixed language’ fragments contain some Hebrew), we are again confronted with a very mixed bag—some of these are copies of much older texts (such as Sefer ha-Razim), others are original Jewish compositions of the Middle Ages (including, for example, such works as Sefer ha-Yašar, or the astrological works of Ibn Ezra), others are translations or adaptations of older Aramaic texts, and an even larger number are translations or adaptations of Arabic texts or text-types (for example, Sefer ha-Qeviṣa clearly is based on the demonic adjurations, which also are attested in numerous Judaeo-Arabic and some Arabic fragments). Only with the Aramaic fragments can we generally use linguistic criteria as a basis for assessing a text’s ultimate provenance, since Aramaic generally went out of use somewhere around the eleventh century, and since many of the Aramaic fragments can be classified—on the basis of their dialectic features—as either Palestinian or Babylonian in origin. Finally, a handful of fragments were written in more ‘exotic’ languages, including 3 fragments in Coptic (one of which has already been published, and the other two will be published by Jacques van der Vliet, to whom I have passed all the Genizah Coptic fragments known to me), 2 fragments in Judaeo-Persian (one of which has already been published by Shaul Shaked), and 2 fragments in Judaeo-Spanish which

14 For the ‘derivative’ nature of the Judaeo-Arabic Genizah fragments in general, see also M. Polliack, ‘The Types of Judaeo-Arabic Literature in the Cairo Genizah’, in J. Tobi (ed.), ʾEver and ʿArav: Contacts between Arabic Literature and Jewish Literature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times (Hebrew; 3 vols; Afikim, 1998–2004), vol. I, pp. 9–26 (22–25). For the shift from Aramaic to Judaeo-Arabic visible in some of the MADA fragments see also R. Leicht, ‘Some Observations on the Diffusion of Jewish Magical Texts from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and Ashkenaz’, in S. Shaked (ed.), Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity (Leiden, 2005), pp. 213–231.

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were partly edited by Eliezer Gutwirth (but there are several more such fragments in the JTS Genizah collections in New York).15 In addition to these general observations, we may note some more specific conclusions that may be drawn with regards to each of these specific sub-fields, and in so doing we should also highlight the kind of work that has been done upon these fragments thus far. Looking at the alchemical fragments, we note that there are 68 of them, which makes this by far the smallest of these textual groups, and probably shows that alchemy was of secondary interest to medieval Egyptian Jews. Moreover, the absence of Aramaic alchemical texts (and I have found no such fragments in the other Genizah collections as well, though they may perhaps turn up one day), and the paucity of Hebrew ones, probably shows that this field of knowledge entered the Jewish world only after the rise of Islam, and at a time when Arabic had completely replaced Aramaic as the Jews’ vernacular language. Thus, alchemy’s textual basis was made up of Arabic texts that were read in the Arabic originals, or—more commonly—transliterated in the Hebrew alphabet. Unfortunately, so far no one has really looked into these fragments, which were mostly ignored by Raphael Patai, and only briefly mentioned by Paul Fenton.16 I already showed the two Zosimus fragments to Bink Hallum, who immediately identified one of them as Ps.-Aristotle’s De Lapidibus, and directed me to the Latin text of this work, which closely parallels the Judaeo-Arabic fragment; I showed a few other alchemical fragments to Gabriele Ferrario, who noted that they consisted mostly of practical alchemical recipes, but could offer no specific identifications yet; within these fragments, one occasionally finds sayings attributed to Abu Bakr, presumably al-Razi, but I have made no attempt to verify any of these attributions or even collect them all. I have no doubt that further research by competent experts would lead to a much clearer understanding of the types of alchemical

15 For the published Coptic fragment, see M. Meyer & R. Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco, 1994), pp. 197–199, with further bibliography; for the Judaeo-Persian fragment, see S. Shaked, ‘An Early Geniza Fragment in an Unknown Iranian Dialect’, in A Green Leaf: Papers in Honour of Professor Jes P. Asmussen, Acta Iranica 28 = Hommages et Opera Minora 12 (Leiden, 1988), pp. 219–235; for the Ladino fragments, see E. Gutwirth, ‘Judeo-Spanish Fragments from Cairo’, Anuario de Filología 9 (1983), pp. 219–223. 16 See R. Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: a History and Source Book (Princeton, 1994), pp. 370–371; P. B. Fenton (Y. Yinnon), ‘Rabbi Makhluf Amsalem—A Moroccan Alchemist and Kabbalist’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 55 (1993), pp. 92–123 (93 n. 3).

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texts that were read and used by the Jews of Cairo, and their place in the history of Jewish alchemy as a whole. One conclusion that seems to suggest itself even at this early stage, but which will have to be verified by subsequent studies, is that there is no real continuity between the Jewish alchemical tradition of late antiquity—as represented especially by the figure of Maria the Jewess—and that of the Middle Ages, which seems to make no reference to earlier Jewish alchemical texts and to focus on other issues than those that interested the earliest Jewish alchemists.17 Turning from alchemy to astrology, we note a much larger body of texts, with 349 fragments. Here too, most of the material is in JudaeoArabic, and some of it is in Arabic, but there are also some Aramaic fragments, whose texts probably date from before the Muslim conquest, and thus provide an interesting point of entry into the Jewish recourse to astrology in late antiquity. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about astrology to classify the astrological fragments in an appropriate manner (which is why most of them are listed as ‘unclassified’ on my table), but some of the Judaeo-Arabic astrological fragments have been published, or at least discussed, by Bernard Goldstein and David Pingree, as well as by Paul Fenton, and some of the Aramaic ones were published by Jonas Greenfield and Michael Sokoloff and by Shaul Shaked, and were surveyed by Reimund Leicht, thus providing some points of entry into these extremely rich materials.18 But once again, what has already been done is dwarfed by the task of sifting 17 For Maria the Jewess, see Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, chs 5–6; N. Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians (London, 2001), ch. 4; P. W. van der Horst, ‘Maria Alchemista, the First Female Jewish Author’, Zutot 1 (2001), pp. 44–47. 18 For the most pertinent publications, see Goldstein and Pingree, ‘Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza’, pp. 113–144; Goldstein and Pingree, ‘The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwarizmi in a Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Text’, JAOS 98 (1978), pp. 96–99; Goldstein and Pingree, ‘Astrological Almanacs from the Cairo Geniza’, JNES 38 (1979), pp. 153–175, 231–256; Goldstein and Pingree, ‘More Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125 (1981), pp. 155– 189; Goldstein and Pingree, ‘Additional Astrological Almanacs from the Cairo Geniza’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983), pp. 673–690; J. C. Greenfield and M. Sokoloff, ‘Astrological and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 48 (1989), pp. 201–214; S. Shaked, ‘A Palestinian Jewish Aramaic Hemerologion’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15 (1992), pp. 28–42; J. Tobi, Poetry, Judeo-Arabic Literature, and the Geniza (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 2006), pp. 51–55; R. Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen, 2006), esp. ch. 3. The only broader survey of the Genizah astrological fragments is P. Fenton, ‘Les Manuscripts Astrologiques

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through all these astrological fragments, classifying them into genres and text-types, publishing the most important fragments and assessing their textual and historical significance. Turning to those fragments that deal with divination, we move to a terrain that is much more familiar to me, and much easier to survey (hence the much smaller number of ‘unclassified’ items). Here we have 247 fragments, with a majority of the fragments belonging in two specific sub-disciplines, namely books of goralot (sortes) and manuals of dream interpretation. The evidence might be slightly skewed by the fact that both types of manuals tend to be quite long, and thus break up into numerous small fragments, but the preponderance of these two divinatory technologies seems quite clear. Moreover, whereas the presence of two Aramaic fragments of oneirocritical manuals proves that this technique was used by Jews before the Muslim conquest (and its use also is amply demonstrated by rabbinic literature),19 it seems that the use of systematic manuals of goralot was mostly borrowed by the Jews from their Muslim neighbours.20 This certainly is true of geomancy, which was unknown to the Jews of late antiquity, but it is not true, for example, of twitch divination, which is represented in my table only by Hebrew and Arabic fragments, since I have found two Aramaic fragments of palmomancy in the Bodleian Genizah collection. All these fragments deserve many fuller studies, but so far only a fraction of the relevant fragments have been published or studied in any detail.21 And yet, access into the world of medieval Jewish divination

de la Guénizah du Caire’, in J. Halbronn (ed.), Le monde juif et l’astrologie (Milan, 1985), pp. iii–xvii. 19 See esp. P. S. Alexander, ‘Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b: the Talmudic Dreambook in Context’, Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995), pp. 230–248, and H. Weiss, The Role of Dreams in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew; unpubl. diss.; Hebrew University, 2006). 20 I must note, however, that whereas the Cambridge Genizah collections contain no goralot books in Aramaic, I have found one such text in the Bodleian library, and others may be discovered in the future. 21 For the divinatory fragments from the Cairo Genizah, see I. Friedländer, ‘A Muhammedan Book on Augury in Hebrew Characters’, Jewish Quarterly Review 19 (1907), pp. 84–103; G. Scholem, ‘Hakarat Panim ve-Sidre Sirtụ ṭin’, in M. D. Cassuto, J. Klausner and J. Guttmann (eds), Sefer Assaf (Jerusalem, 1953), pp. 459–495; I. Gruenwald, ‘Further Jewish Physiognomic and Chiromantic Fragments’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 40 (1970–1971), pp. 301–319; S. Hopkins, A Miscellany of Literary Pieces from the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 67–71 (palmomancy); S. Shaked, ‘An Early Magic Fragment from the Cairo Geniza’, in Occident and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of A. Scheiber (Budapest, 1988), pp. 361–371 (goralot); M. Meerson, ‘Book is a Territory: a Hebrew Book of Fortune in Context’, JSQ 13

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is made much easier by the fact that these texts tend to be relatively straightforward and self-explanatory, and by the fact that most of these divinatory techniques are still in use among Muslims and Jews today, and therefore available even in popular printed editions. Thus, I assume that a study of the Genizah fragments of goralot handbooks, oneirocritical manuals, and other divinatory texts should not be confined solely to the Genizah, but should begin with the better-preserved non-Genizah (and even non-Jewish) manuscripts and then turn to the Genizah fragments and see which of their divinatory texts and techniques are well-represented outside the Genizah as well and which are far rarer.22 And when we turn to the manuals for finding treasures, which are entirely borrowed from Muslim (Egyptian) sources, it probably is preferable to begin with the non-Jewish evidence and then turn to the Genizah fragments, which were briefly discussed by Norman Golb but ignored by all other scholars.23 With the fourth category of texts, the magical fragments, we move to the area I am most interested in and know most about (hence the absence of any ‘unclassified’ fragments), and where there is a relative abundance of publications and studies of specific fragments.24 Here (2006), pp. 388–411 (404–407); a few more fragments are slated for publication in the fourth volume of Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza. 22 For non-Genizah books of goralot, see M. Steinschneider, Hebräische Bibliographie 6 (1863), pp. 120–123; E. Burkhardt, ‘Hebräische Losbuchhandschriften: Zur Typologie einer jüdischen Divinationsmethode’, in K. Herrmann, M. Schlüter and G. Veltri (eds), Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines/Judaistik Zwischen den Disziplinen: Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Leiden, 2003), pp. 95–148. 23 See N. Golb, ‘The Esoteric Practices of the Jews of Fatimid Egypt’, American Philosophical Society Yearbook, 1965, pp. 533–535; Golb, ‘Aspects of the Historical Background of Jewish Life in Medieval Egypt’, in A. Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 1–18 (12–18). 24 For the Genizah magical texts, see esp. J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem,1985) [=AMB]; Naveh and Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem, 1993) [=MSF]; L. H. Schiffman and M. D. Swartz, Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 (Sheffield, 1992); P. Schäfer and S. Shaked, Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza (3 vols; Tübingen, 1994–1999; vol. IV, forthcoming) [=MTKG]; O.-P. Saar, ‘Success, Protection and Grace: Three Fragments of a Personalized Magical Handbook’, Ginzei Qedem 3 (2007), pp. 101–135; for block-printed amulets from the Cairo Genizah, see K. R. Schaefer, Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums (Leiden, 2006) (with 4 Genizah amulets). For broader surveys of the evidence, see S. Shaked, ‘The Jewish magical Literature in the Lands of Islam: Notes and Examples’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 15 (1983), pp. 15–28; Shaked, ‘Medieval Jewish Magic in Relation to Islam: Theoretical Attitudes and Genres’, in B. H.

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we find more than a thousand fragments, a number larger than those for the other three subjects combined, and while this might be slightly misleading (because both Shaked and myself were least likely to miss the magical fragments, with which we are most familiar, and because many of the magical fragments are easily identifiable by virtue of the magic signs and symbols they so gleefully display), it also is a reflection of the popularity of magical texts and practices among the Jews of medieval Cairo. Moreover, here the linguistic breakdown of the fragments is much more even, with many Aramaic and Hebrew texts besides those in Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic, and an even greater abundance of mixed-language fragments, often shifting from Hebrew to Aramaic to Judaeo-Arabic or even Arabic within a single sentence. This is clear testimony of the massive Jewish recourse to magic already in pre-Muslim times, and of the uninterrupted transmission of many late-antique magical texts into the Middle Ages.25 Such processes can also be documented by looking at the transmission of some older texts both in the original languages and in their Judaeo-Arabic translations— and as we already mentioned the example of Sefer ha-Razim, we may now note how Šimmuš Tehillim, which tells you which Psalm is good for which magical purpose, circulated both in its original Aramaic version and in several Judaeo-Arabic translations and adaptations. Other texts, such as the Ḥarba de-Moše (The Sword of Moses) and the Pišra de-Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa (The Spell-Loosening of Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa), seem to have been much less popular, and to have circulated only in their original Aramaic versions, but future research might turn up their Judaeo-Arabic versions as well. Looking at the linguistic breakdown of specific types of magical texts, we again note that these figures are far from random. This is

Hary, J. L. Hayes and F. Astren (eds), Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication and Interaction (Essays in Honor of William M. Brinner) (Leiden, 2000), pp. 97–109; P. Schäfer, ‘Jewish Magic Literature in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, Journal of Jewish Studies 41 (1990), pp. 75–91; S. M. Wasserstrom, ‘The Magical Texts in the Cairo Genizah’, in J. Blau and S. C. Reif (eds), Genizah Research after Ninety Years: the Case of Judaeo-Arabic (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 160–166; Wasserstrom, ‘The Unwritten Chapter: Notes Towards a Social and Religious History of Geniza Magic’, in S. Shaked (ed.), Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity (Leiden, 2005), pp. 269–293. For ancient Jewish magic, including its Genizah remains, see G. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: a History (Cambridge, 2008). 25 For these processes, see also G. Bohak, ‘The Jewish Magical Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Cairo Genizah’, in H. M. Cotton, D. Wasserstein, J. J. Price and R. Hoyland (eds), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 321–339.

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especially true of the many amulets—mostly for named individuals, but some of a more ‘generic’ variety—which are strewn throughout the Genizah. As the table makes very clear, more than half of these amulets were written in Hebrew, which clearly was the preferred language for writing this kind of text (and many of the ‘mixed language’ amulets also contain large sections in Hebrew). Some amulets were written in Aramaic, and some were written in different mixtures of Hebrew, Aramaic, and even Judaeo-Arabic; but none was written entirely in Judaeo-Arabic, which apparently was deemed inappropriate for amuletic texts, though entirely appropriate for other types of magical texts. And in the same vein, we may note how in many of the ‘mixed language’ recipe books the titles and ritual instructions are given in Arabic or (far more commonly) Judaeo-Arabic, but the spells to be recited or written as part of the magical praxis are given in Hebrew or (far more commonly) Aramaic. This must be because during the shift from Aramaic to Arabic as the lingua franca of the Jews of Islam it was felt that the technical instructions would lose nothing in translation but the adjurations, spells and prayers are better left in their original languages.26 Here too, we see a close correlation between contents and language, a correlation that was deeply influenced by the texts’ transmission history. Another feature of the Genizah magical texts that emerges from our table is the great diversity of these fragments, and the many different ways in which these materials were transmitted and utilised by medieval and later Jews. By far the commonest type of Genizah magical texts are the recipe books, which served as the central vehicle for the transmission and use of magical technologies; structureless and formless, these conglomerations of individual recipes—for apotropaic and medical purposes, for aggressive and erotic aims, and for every other conceivable human need—were utilised by professionals and amateurs alike, and were passed on from one generation to the next in a seamless procession often stretching from late antiquity to the twenty-first century. Side-by-side with these recipe-books, we also find individual recipes, written on loose sheets of parchment and paper, on the margins of non-magical texts, or on the backs and margins of old docu-

26 In this, the magical recipe-books closely parallel other Genizah fragments, including the many prayer-books, haggadot, etc., in which the instructions are given in Judaeo-Arabic (or Judaeo-Persian, or Judaeo-Greek), but the prayers and blessings are written and recited in Hebrew.

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ments. These recipes often were scribbled by, or for, persons who did not specialise in such arcane practices, but merely needed a quick fix to one specific problem, and in a few cases we even find the name of the addressee to whom a magical recipe or a collection of such recipes was sent. And side-by-side with the magical recipes, we also find many of the ‘finished products’ produced in line with these recipes’ instructions. These include numerous amulets—for protection against illness or evil, to facilitate childbirth, to keep scorpions at bay, to pacify a crying baby, and so on—some of which were ‘generic’ and even ‘mass produced’ in advance and distributed to potential users, while others were tailor-made for specific clients to address their specific needs.27 But they also include some erotic and aggressive magical texts produced for or against specific individuals (and such texts are extremely useful in illuminating the social and gender tensions and anxieties of medieval Jewish society), and a few dream requests produced for or by named users.28 And in some cases, a single amulet covers many different needs—for example, when it seeks to protect person X from all demons, afflictions and illnesses, and from the evil words of person Y, whom the amulet seeks to muzzle and silence and stop harming person X. In addition to these recipes and ‘finished products’, we also find more structured books of Jewish magic, including the ubiquitous Šimmuš Tehillim, and such ‘literary’ books of magic as Sefer ha-Razim, Ḥarba de-Moše, the Pišra de-Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa, Sefer ha-Yašar, Sefer ha-Malbuš, and so on. Some of these fragments have already been published, but most still await a full scientific edition and a detailed comparison of their texts with those of non-Genizah manuscripts of the same books.29 Such studies would also lead to a far better understanding of the complex history of the materials embedded in Sefer

27 See G. Bohak, ‘Some “Mass Produced” Scorpion-Amulets from the Cairo Genizah’, in Z. Rodgers, M. Daly-Denton and A. Fitzpatrick McKinley (eds), A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honor of Seán Freyne (Leiden, 2009), pp. 35–49. 28 Some erotic magical fragments are published and analyzed by O.-P. Saar, Jewish Love Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Hebrew; unpubl. diss., Tel-Aviv University, 2008). For an interesting dream-request, written in a special cipher, see G. Bohak, ‘Cracking the Code and Finding the Gold: a Dream Request from the Cairo Genizah’, in S. T. Tovar, J. A. Alvarez-Pedrosa and A. Zomeño (eds), volume forthcoming. 29 For published Genizah fragments of these books, see B. Rebiger and P. Schäfer, Sefer ha-Razim I und II: das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II, vol. I (Tübingen, 2009); Y. Harari, Ḥarba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses): a New Edition and a Study (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 153–156; Hopkins, A Miscellany, pp. 74–77 (Ḥarba de-Moshe); I. Wandrey, ‘Das Buch des Gewandes’ und ‘Das Buch des Aufrechten’: Dokumente eines magischen spätantiken Rituals, ediert, kommentiert und übersetzt (Tübingen, 2004),

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Raziʾel (printed in 1701), arguably the best-known book of Jewish magic of all times.30 While these types of Genizah fragments are relatively well known, others remain entirely unstudied. This is especially true of a small but interesting group of fragments dealing with talismanic magic, some of which clearly come from a single manuscript. When I showed one of these fragments to Charles Burnett, he quickly identified it as containing the (Judaeo-)Arabic text of Thabit ibn Qurra’s De imaginibus, a work of which two Latin versions are known, but no copy of the Arabic original had hitherto been discovered.31 Another type of text that has not received the attention it deserves is the elaborate rituals for the adjurations of demons, one very long version of which may be pieced together from several Genizah fragments and involves the summoning of different troupes of demons, the offering of incense, and the preparation of special seals, all in an attempt to make the demons subservient to the practitioner. These materials—for which there are many Muslim/Arabic precedents and parallels—circulated in JudaeoArabic and in Hebrew translations and adaptations (including Sefer ha-Qeviṣa), and deserve many fuller studies of their transmission history and their wider impact on the Jewish magical tradition as a whole.32

Summary In the preparation of a list of all the magical, astrological, divinatory and alchemical fragments from the Cambridge Genizah collections, Shaul Shaked and I had relatively little difficulty in identifying fragments as belonging to one of these categories, or, of course, as not

pp. 22, 284–314. See also B. Rebiger, Sefer Shimmush Tehillim: Buch vom magischen Gebrauch der Psalmen: Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Tübingen, forthcoming). 30 And cf. the important groundwork laid by Leicht, Astrologumena, ch. 5; B. Rebiger, ‘Zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Sefer Raziʾel ha-Malʾakh’, Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 32 (2005), pp. 1–22. 31 See C. Burnett, ‘Thābit ibn Qurra the Harrānian on Talismans and the Spirits of the Planets’, La Corónica 36 (2007), pp. 13–40. In the future, we hope to edit this text and the other bits of talismanic magic found in the same manuscript. 32 For this kind of literature, see esp. G. Scholem, ‘Some Sources of Jewish-Arabic Demonology’, Journal of Jewish Studies 16 (1965), pp. 1–13 (reprinted in E. Liebes (ed.), Demons, Ghosts and Souls: Studies in Demonology by Gershom Scholem (Jerusalem, 2004), pp. 103–115); R. Patai, ‘The Love Factor in a Hebrew-Arabic Conjuration’, Jewish Quarterly Review 70 (1980), pp. 239–253. See also Golb, ‘Aspects’, p. 14.

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belonging there, and this resulted in a list of some 1,800 fragments, whose breakdown into more specific subfields was outlined above. In the forthcoming catalogue, each of these items will receive a brief entry, describing its physical features and providing a general sense of its contents, and, where possible, a more precise identification of its exact nature. However, the catalogue will not aim to be the final word on these matters, only the starting point for further inquiry and a goad to scholars of Jewish Studies to incorporate these materials too into their picture of medieval Judaism and to scholars of medieval magic, divination, and the occult sciences to take the Cairo Genizah much more seriously as a source of precious knowledge about the circulation of such texts in medieval Cairo and beyond. Moreover, the catalogue is bound to include some fragments which lie on the fuzzy borders which sometimes separate the MADA and non-MADA fragments, thus leaving much room for further study of these important fragments and their wider implications for the different fields of knowledge in medieval Jewish society in the Arabic-speaking world.

Appendix A. Magic, Astrology, Divination, and Alchemy in the Cambridge Genizah Collections333435

Type of text Magic Recipe books Single recipes Medico-magical recipes

Hebrew Aramaic J.-Arabic Arabic Mixed34 Other35 114 17 6

51 7

125 14 12

57 7 3

186 11

2 1

Totals 535 57 21

33 The following table was compiled in September 2008, and is based the ShakedBohak list of MADA fragments in the CUL Or. and T-S Collections, which at that stage contained 1,802 fragments (of which 1,059 were included in Shaul Shaked’s original list, and 783 were added by me). More than a hundred fragments, whose classification remains in doubt (and which may not be included in the catalogue), were not incorporated in the table, but fragments containing two different MADA texts were counted in both rubrics, hence the slight discrepancy in the total number of fragments. 34 Mixed languages refers to cases where the text moves freely between two or more languages and/or writing systems. 35 This category includes 3 fragments in Coptic (2 erotic/aggressive spells and 1 single recipe), 2 fragments in Judaeo-Persian (a recipe book and a goralot text), and 2 in Ladino (astrology and a recipe book).

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Appendix A (cont.) Type of text Amulets Erotic/aggressive spells36 Dream requests37 Curses/excommunications Tricks/deceptions Theoretic disc’s38 Alphabets of angels Demonic adjur’s Angelic adjur’s Talismanic magic Šimmuš Tehillim Sefer ha-Razim Ḥarba de-Moše Pišra de-Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa39 Ševaʿ Maʿalot Havdala de-Rabbi Akiva40 Sefer ha-Yašar, Malbuš, Adam41 Sefer ha-Qeviṣa

36

Hebrew Aramaic J.-Arabic Arabic 89 6

10 2

4 15

1

17

Totals

29 4

2

145 14

2 6

1

6 23 1 5 2

18

6

6 35

1

3

26 1

Other

1 1

4 2

2

Mixed

12

1 1 2

12

25 4 7 51 38 5 5

4 5 2

20

1

5

1

2 1

1

27

7

By erotic and aggressive spells I am referring to magical texts prepared in order to make one named individual love or hate another named individual, or in order to curse or harm a named individual. In some cases, an amulet for a named individual also spells out the names of his or her opponents, who must be harmed or silenced. 37 By dream requests I refer to actual requests for a dream-revelation for named individuals, and not to recipes for this practice, of which there are many more examples. 38 By theoretical discussions I refer to texts such as the arbaʿa yesodot (see MTKG I, 3 and 4 and MTKG III, 55), which seeks to sort out the magical practices which are permitted or forbidden by Jewish law. 39 For the Pišra, see the edition of F. M. Tocci, ‘Note e documenti di letterature religiosa e parareligiosa giudaica’, Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 46 (1986), pp. 101–108, which I hope to replace in the near future. 40 For the Havdala, see G. Scholem, ‘Havdala de-Rabbi Aqiva—a Source for the Tradition of Jewish Magic During the Geonic Period’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 50 (1980– 1981), pp. 243–281. 41 The reason for the inclusion of these three books together is that I have not yet sorted out which fragment belongs to which of these books, or to some early versions of Sefer Raziʾel.

7

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Appendix A (cont.) Type of text Magical prayers Mezuzot with magic. additions42 KabbalisticMagical texts Sefer Berit Menuḥ a Magic—totals Astrology Unclassified Theoretical disc’s Treat. of Shem43 Hemerologia Horologia Brontologia EclipsePrognostications Ast. almanacs / Tables Horoscopes TekufotPrognostications WeatherPrognostications Hermes, Tuluʾ al-Šiʾra

Hebrew Aramaic J.-Arabic Arabic 21 2

1

2

Mixed

Other

1

Totals 25 2

16

16

2

2

357

95

231

93

245

5

1026

8 5

2 1 2 2 2

134 11 14 13 3 2 4

52

4

1

2 1 1

1

201 17 18 24 12 5 9

22

11

33

5 8

1

6 9

8 5 3

5

1 2

2 6

42 For such mezuzot, see V. Aptowitzer, ‘Les Noms de Dieu et des Anges dans la Mezouza’, REJ 60 (1910), pp. 39–52 and 65 (1913), pp. 54–60; E.-M. Jansson, ‘The Magic of the Mezuzah in Rabbinic Literature’, in U. Haxen et al. (eds), Jewish Studies in a New Europe (Copenhagen, 1998), pp. 415–425 (421–423); A. Ravitzky, ‘Maimonides and His Disciples on Linguistic Magic and “the Madness of the Writers of Amulets” ’ (Hebrew) in A. Sagi and N. Ilan (eds), Jewish Culture in the Eye of the Storm: a Jubilee Book in Honour of Yosef Ahituv (Tel-Aviv, 2002), pp. 431–458 (444–446); G. Bohak, ‘Mezuzoth with Magical Additions from the Cairo Genizah’ (Hebrew), Dinei Israel: Studies in Halakha and in Jewish Law 26–27 (2009–2010) (Festschrift for Mordechai Akiva Friedman), pp. 387–403. 43 For the Treatise of Shem (also known as Kitāb Qansar), see J. H. Charlesworth, ‘Treatise of Shem’, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. I (Garden City, 1983), pp. 473–486; Leicht, Astrologumena, pp. 45–55, with further bibliography; K. Atkinson, ‘Astrology and History in the Treatise of Shem: Two Astrological Pseudepigrapha and their Relevance for Understanding the Astrological Dead Sea Scrolls’, Qumran Chronicle 14 (2006), pp. 37–55.

6

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Appendix A (cont.) Type of text Pseudo-Teucros44 Abu Maʿšar Maša Allah Abraham Zakut Abraham Ibn Ezra Astrology—totals Divination Unclassified Goralot (sortes) Oneiromancy45 Geomancy Onomamancy Physiognomy Palmomancy46 Treasure-finding Divination—totals Alchemy Unclassified Catalogues of alchemical texts Ibn ʿUmayl, Ma al-Waraqi Al-Razi Zosimus Al-Ghazzali, Kimia al-Saʿda Alchemy—totals MADA—totals

Hebrew Aramaic J.-Arabic Arabic

Mixed

Other

Totals

3

3 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 30

53 10 3

17

3

7 1 74

3

5

4 68 49 15 1 2 8 7 154 45 3

5 466

227

115

69

5

1

1

1 5

1

2 1 9

6

1

7

3

4 1

349 5 128 62 22 2 9 11 8 247 60 3

1

1

1 2 1

1 2 1

53

7

3

665

178

259

68 7

1690

44 I have thus far identified 4 fragments of a single manuscript (3 in Cambridge and 1 in the British Library) that deals with the Decans and their images and is identified in the colophon as Kitāb al-Suwar lil-Daraj min Burūj al-Falak li-Tankalus. 45 Among the oneiromantic fragments, several texts are attributed to specific authors, and especially to Ibn Sirin, but I have not yet verified these attributions, and so did not list them here. 46 For a brief listing of the palmomantic fragments from the Cairo Genizah, see the web-page mentioned in n. 13 above.

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gideon bohak Bibliography

P. S. Alexander, ‘Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b: the Talmudic Dreambook in Context’, Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995), pp. 230–248. V. Aptowitzer, ‘Les Noms de Dieu et des Anges dans la Mezouza’, Revue des Études Juives 60 (1910), pp. 39–52 and 65 (1913), pp. 54–60. K. Atkinson, ‘Astrology and History in the Treatise of Shem: Two Astrological Pseudepigrapha and their Relevance for Understanding the Astrological Dead Sea Scrolls’, Qumran Chronicle 14 (2006), pp. 37–55. C. F. Baker and M. Polliack (eds), Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Arabic Old Series (T-S Ar.1a–54) (Cambridge, 2001). G. Bohak, ‘Greek, Coptic, and Jewish Magic in the Cairo Genizah’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 36 (1999), pp. 27–44. ——, ‘Reconstructing Jewish Magical Recipe Books from the Cairo Genizah’, Ginzei Qedem 1 (2005), pp. 9–29. ——, ‘Catching a Thief: the Jewish Trials of a Christian Ordeal’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006), pp. 344–362. ——, ‘Prolegomena to the Study of the Jewish Magical Tradition’, Currents in Biblical Research 8 (2009), pp. 107–150. ——, Ancient Jewish Magic: a History (Cambridge, 2008). ——, ‘Cracking the Code and Finding the Gold: a Dream Request from the Cairo Genizah’, in S. T. Tovar, J. A. Alvarez-Pedrosa and A. Zomeño (eds), volume forthcoming. ——, ‘The Jewish Magical Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Cairo Genizah’, in H. M. Cotton, D. Wasserstein, J. J. Price and R. Hoyland (eds), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 321–339. ——, ‘Some “Mass Produced” Scorpion-Amulets from the Cairo Genizah’, in Z. Rodgers, M. Daly-Denton and A. Fitzpatrick McKinley (eds), A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honor of Seán Freyne (Leiden, 2009), pp. 35–49. ——, ‘Mezuzoth with Magical Additions from the Cairo Genizah’ (Hebrew), Dinei Israel: Studies in Halakha and in Jewish Law 26–27 (2009–2010) (Festschrift for Mordechai Akiva Friedman), pp. 387–403. E. Burkhardt, ‘Hebräische Losbuchhandschriften: Zur Typologie einer jüdischen Divinationsmethode’, in K. Herrmann, M. Schlüter and G. Veltri (eds), Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines/Judaistik Zwischen den Disziplinen: Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Leiden, 2003), pp. 95–148. C. Burnett, ‘Thābit ibn Qurra the Harrānian on Talismans and the Spirits of the Planets’, La Corónica 36 (2007), pp. 13–40. J. H. Charlesworth, ‘Treatise of Shem’, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. I (Garden City, 1983), pp. 473–486. P. B. Fenton, ‘Les Manuscripts Astrologiques de la Guénizah du Caire’, in J. Halbronn (ed.), Le monde juif et l’astrologie (Milan, 1985). —— (Y. Yinnon), ‘Rabbi Makhluf Amsalem—A Moroccan Alchemist and Kabbalist’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 55 (1993), pp. 92–123. M. Frenkel, ‘Writing the History of the Jews of the Lands of Islam in the Middle Ages: Milestones and Prospects’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 92 (2002), pp. 23–61. I. Friedländer, ‘A Muhammedan Book on Augury in Hebrew Characters’, Jewish Quarterly Review 19 (1907), pp. 84–103. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993).

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N. Golb, ‘The Esoteric Practices of the Jews of Fatimid Egypt’, American Philosophical Society Yearbook, 1965, pp. 533–535. ——, ‘Aspects of the Historical Background of Jewish Life in Medieval Egypt’, in A. Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 1–18. B. R. Goldstein and D. Pingree, ‘Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 36 (1977), pp. 113–144. ——, ‘The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwarizmi in a Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Text’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 98 (1978), pp. 96–99. ——, ‘Astrological Almanacs from the Cairo Geniza’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 38 (1979), pp. 153–175, 231–256. ——, ‘More Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125 (1981), pp. 155–189. ——, ‘Additional Astrological Almanacs from the Cairo Geniza’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983), pp. 673–690. R. Gottheil, ‘A Fragment on Astrology from the Genizah’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 47 (1927), pp. 302–310. ——, ‘A Further Fragment on Astrology from the Genizah’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 49 (1929), pp. 291–302. J. C. Greenfield and M. Sokoloff, ‘Astrological and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 48 (1989), pp. 201–214. I. Gruenwald, ‘Further Jewish Physiognomic and Chiromantic Fragments’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 40 (1970–1971), pp. 301–319. E. Gutwirth, ‘Judeo-Spanish Fragments from Cairo’, Anuario de Filología 9 (1983), pp. 219–223. Y. Harari, Ḥarba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses): a New Edition and a Study (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997). S. Hopkins, A Miscellany of Literary Pieces from the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1978). M. Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists, translated by N. Ratchkovsky (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006). N. Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians (London, 2001). E.-M. Jansson, ‘The Magic of the Mezuzah in Rabbinic Literature’, in U. Haxen et al. (eds), Jewish Studies in a New Europe (Copenhagen, 1998), pp. 415–425. E. Kanarfogel, ‘Peering Through the Lattices’: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, 2000). R. Leicht, ‘Some Observations on the Diffusion of Jewish Magical Texts from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and Ashkenaz’, in S. Shaked (ed.), Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity (Leiden, 2005), pp. 213–231. ——, Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen, 2006). M. Margalioth, Sepher Ha-Razim: a Newly Recovered Book of Magic from the Talmudic Period (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1966). M. Meerson, ‘Book is a Territory: A Hebrew Book of Fortune in Context’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006), pp. 388–411. M. Meyer & R. Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco, 1994). J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem, 1985). ——, Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem, 1993). R. Patai, ‘The Love Factor in a Hebrew-Arabic Conjuration’, Jewish Quarterly Review 70 (1980), pp. 239–253.

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——, The Jewish Alchemists: a History and Source Book (Princeton, 1994). M. Polliack, ‘The Types of Judaeo-Arabic Literature in the Cairo Genizah’, in J. Tobi (ed.), ʾEver and ʿArav: Contacts between Arabic Literature and Jewish Literature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times (Hebrew; 3 vols; Afikim, 1998–2004), vol. I, pp. 9–26. A. Ravitzky, ‘Maimonides and His Disciples on Linguistic Magic and “the Madness of the Writers of Amulets” ’ (Hebrew) in A. Sagi and N. Ilan (eds), Jewish Culture in the Eye of the Storm: a Jubilee Book in Honour of Yosef Ahituv (Tel-Aviv, 2002), pp. 431–458. B. Rebiger, ‘Zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Sefer Raziʾel ha-Malʾakh’, Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 32 (2005), pp. 1–22. ——, Sefer Shimmush Tehillim: Buch vom magischen Gebrauch der Psalmen: Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Tübingen, forthcoming). B. Rebiger and P. Schäfer, Sefer ha-Razim I und II: das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II, vol. I (Tübingen, 2009). S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000). O.-P. Saar, ‘Success, Protection and Grace: Three Fragments of a Personalized Magical Handbook’, Ginzei Qedem 3 (2007), pp. 101–135. ——, Jewish Love Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Hebrew; unpubl. diss., Tel-Aviv University, 2008). P. Schäfer, ‘Jewish Magic Literature in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, Journal of Jewish Studies 41 (1990), pp. 75–91. P. Schäfer and S. Shaked, Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza (3 vols; Tübingen, 1994–1999; vol. IV, forthcoming). K. R. Schaefer, Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums (Leiden, 2006). L. H. Schiffman and M. D. Swartz, Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 (Sheffield, 1992). G. Scholem, ‘Hakarat Panim ve-Sidre Sirt ̣ut ̣in’, in M. D. Cassuto, J. Klausner and J. Guttmann (eds), Sefer Assaf (Jerusalem, 1953), pp. 459–495. ——, ‘Havdala de-Rabbi Aqiva—a Source for the Tradition of Jewish Magic During the Geonic Period’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 50 (1980–1981), pp. 243–281. ——, ‘Some Sources of Jewish-Arabic Demonology’, Journal of Jewish Studies 16 (1965), pp. 1–13 (reprinted in E. Liebes (ed.), Demons, Ghosts and Souls: Studies in Demonology by Gershom Scholem (Jerusalem, 2004), pp. 103–115). S. Shaked, ‘The Jewish magical Literature in the Lands of Islam: Notes and Examples’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 15 (1983), pp. 15–28. ——, Genizah Fragmensts 8 (October 1984) and 9 (April 1985). ——, ‘An Early Geniza Fragment in an Unknown Iranian Dialect’, in A Green Leaf: Papers in Honour of Professor Jes P. Asmussen, Acta Iranica 28 = Hommages et Opera Minora 12 (Leiden, 1988), pp. 219–235. ——, ‘An Early Magic Fragment from the Cairo Geniza’, in Occident and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of A. Scheiber (Budapest, 1988), pp. 361–371. ——, ‘A Palestinian Jewish Aramaic Hemerologion’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15 (1992), pp. 28–42. ——, ‘Medieval Jewish Magic in Relation to Islam: Theoretical Attitudes and Genres’, in B. H. Hary, J. L. Hayes and F. Astren (eds), Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication and Interaction (Essays in Honor of William M. Brinner) (Leiden, 2000), pp. 97–109. M. Steinschneider, Hebräische Bibliographie 6 (1863), pp. 120–123. M. D. Swartz, ‘Scribal Magic and Its Rhetoric: Formal Patterns in Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah’, Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990), pp. 163–180.

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J. Tobi, Poetry, Judeo-Arabic Literature, and the Geniza (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 2006). F. M. Tocci, ‘Note e documenti di letterature religiosa e parareligiosa giudaica’, Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 46 (1986), pp. 101–108. J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: a Study in Folk Religion, reprinted with a Forward by M. Idel (Philadelphia, 2004). P. W. van der Horst, ‘Maria Alchemista, the First Female Jewish Author’, Zutot 1 (2001), pp. 44–47. I. Wandrey, ‘Das Buch des Gewandes’ und ‘Das Buch des Aufrechten’: Dokumente eines magischen spätantiken Rituals, ediert, kommentiert und übersetzt (Tübingen, 2004). S. M. Wasserstrom, ‘The Magical Texts in the Cairo Genizah’, in J. Blau and S. C. Reif (eds), Genizah Research after Ninety Years: the Case of Judaeo-Arabic (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 160–166. ——, ‘The Unwritten Chapter: Notes Towards a Social and Religious History of Geniza Magic’, in S. Shaked (ed.), Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity, (Leiden, 2005), pp. 269–293. G. Weiss, ‘Shetar Herem—Excommunication Formulary: Five Documents from the Cairo Geniza’, Gratz College Annual of Jewish Studies 6 (1977), pp. 98–120. H. Weiss, The Role of Dreams in Rabbinic Literature (unpubl. diss., Hebrew; Hebrew University, 2006).

THE LAW OF POWER OF ATTORNEY IN MAIMONIDES’ CODE OF JEWISH LAW Mark Cohen

Discussing an agenda for the future study of Maimonides’ Code, Gerald Blidstein, the noted authority on the Mishneh Torah, writes: ‘Though law is a notoriously conservative aspect of culture, legal systems do reflect changing economic and social realities. This is certainly true in the sense that law responds to these realities in order to regulate them; and it is probably true in more subtle senses as well. To what degree does Maimonides’ work consciously respond to its time? And to what degree is it shaped, willy-nilly, by its historical context? The economy of the medieval East was, in certain ways, a continuation of that dominant in Talmudic times; but certain realities had of course changed. The Muslim East was urban and mercantile. Does Maimonidean law reflect this shift? Or does it—the responsa aside— remain firmly fixed within the Talmudic reality, both in its resources, rulings, and attitudes? Do we find extrapolations from Talmudic law to the new situation—or perhaps more than that, or less’?1 Another agenda, regarding ‘society and legal change’, is put forward by the eminent legal historian Alan Watson, writing about Roman and English law. In his 1977 book by that title, Watson points to what he calls the ‘inertia’ of private law, its tendency to resist change. ‘The argument of this book’, he writes, ‘is that in the West, rules of private law have been and are in large measure out of step with the needs and desires of society and even of its ruling elite; to an extent which renders implausible the existing theories of legal development and of the relationship between law and society’.2 In the Conclusion he asks, further, ‘[c]an codification [by which he means new codification] remove the significant divergence between law and society and [can] it abolish legal scaffolding’, by which he means an encrustation of legal

1 G. J. Blidstein, ‘Where do We Stand in the Study of Maimonidean Halakhah?’ in I. Twersky (ed.), Studies in Maimonides (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 1–30 (27). 2 A. Watson, Society and Legal Change, reprinted (Philadelphia, 2001), p. xviii.

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rules meant to modify the existing laws but which in fact make them more complex than otherwise would be necessary.3 The present paper, part of a much larger work in progress, attempts to address the issues about Maimonides’ Code raised by Blidstein as well as the more theoretical question regarding legal change raised by Alan Watson. One way to approach Blidstein’s agenda while at the same time dealing with Watson’s hypothesis about codification and legal change is to examine the Mishneh Torah in the light of social and economic realities of the Islamic world, as revealed in the documentary treasures of the Cairo Genizah. These unmediated sources are our best witness to how life was lived ‘on the ground’. To the best of my knowledge, this methodology has not been applied to Mishneh Torah criticism.4 It differs from the approach of legal scholars like Gideon Libson, who investigates the influence of Islamic law on Maimonides (as well as on other legists of the Islamic period) without reference to the documentary material, though the two approaches complement one another.5 Supported by evidence from the Genizah, the texts I shall discuss here, and many more like them, show that Maimonides was, in Blidstein’s words, responding to his times, especially the new economic realities of the post-Talmudic world, though much of this is invisible to the naked eye. Only with the aid of the Genizah manuscripts are we able to lift the veil on this hitherto undocumented feature of the Code. Further, the evidence provides an answer to legal historian Alan Watson’s question and illustrates how codification could be used to ‘remove the significant divergence between law and society’.

3

Watson, Society and Legal Change, pp. 136–137, and ch. 8, ‘Legal Scaffolding’. The interesting article by H. Ben-Menahem, ‘The Second Canonization of the Talmud’, Cardozo Law Review 28 (2006), pp. 37–51, deals with discrepancies between the responsa of Maimonides and the Code but not with the subject at hand. Some of the articles in N. Rakover (ed.), Maimonides as Codifier of Jewish Law (Jerusalem, 1987), touch on historical reality behind the Code, but none of them use the Genizah documents. 5 See the list of Libson’s publications in the bibliography of his Jewish and Islamic Law: a Comparative Study of Custom during the Geonic Period (Cambridge, MA, 2003). Of particular relevance to the present study are his ‘Parallels between Maimonides and Islamic Law’, in I. Robinson, et al. (eds), The Thought of Maimonides: Philosophical and Legal Studies (Lewiston, NY, 1990), pp. 209–248, and ‘Maimonides’ Connection to Islamic Law against the Background of his Period’, in A. Ravitzki (ed.), Maimonides: Conservatism, Originality, Revolution (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2008), vol. I, pp. 247–294. See also Z. Stampfer, Sefer ha-Gerušin (Kitāb al-Ṭ alāq) le-Rav Šemuʾel ben Ḥofni Geʾon Sura (Jerusalem, 2008). 4

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Maimonides, himself, would have us believe, as he wrote in his Introduction, that his Code, the ‘companion’ or ‘second’ to the Torah, as he called it, contained nothing new—that it was merely a compendium (he often referred to it as his ḥ ibbur, ‘compilation’) of binding rulings from earlier rabbinic sources: from the Mishnah (and its parallel code, the Tosefta), Sifra and Sifre (the two most legalistic of the socalled halakhic midrashim), the two Talmuds, and the legal writings of the post-Talmudic Geonim. There was no need, however, to quote his sources or to rehearse the dialectics of the rabbis of the Talmud. His would be a streamlined Code, written in the lucid Hebrew of the Mishnah rather than the abbreviated and difficult Aramaic style of the Talmud that complicated the task of deducing the exact law. Maimonides’ approach left many readers perplexed and put him on the defensive. When challenged by his contemporary, Pinḥas ben Mešullam, the judge of Alexandria, to explain halaḵot in the Code that were accompanied by no substantiation from rabbinic sources, Maimonides asserted sharply that he had not deviated from the tradition and chastised his correspondent for failing to locate the relevant sources on his own. If here and there he had ‘originated’ a ruling, he said, he had marked it clearly.6 Though not without precedents in the history of Jewish codification—the Babylonian Geonim compiled dozens of legal monographs

6

‘As for your (critical) statement that you found in my composition certain matters which appear unclear (hidden) because they are without proof, and that your own mind is not deep enough to comprehend (them), it would have been correct for you to make this criticism if there were indeed matters in my composition which I myself had deduced on the basis of my sharp reasoning (pilpul) and my own opinion, and then recorded them unqualifiedly, without giving proof or reason for them. However, I have never done this. Let your own reason reveal them, and know that every unqualified statement which I made in my composition is based upon an explicit unqualified statement either in the Babylonian Talmud or in the Palestinian one, is drawn from Sifra of Sifre, or from an explicit unqualified statement in the Mishnah or in the Tosefta. If I derived a law from the responsa of the Geonim, I explicitly introduced it with the remark, “The Geonim have taught”, “This is an ordinance of the later Rabbis”, or a similar note. And anything which I myself originated (from my sharp reasoning), I introduced with the note “It appears to me that the matter is as follows”; this is the proof, inasmuch as I had announced in the introduction to the work that all the material in it is drawn from the Babylonian or Palestinian Talmuds, Sifra, Sifre, or Tosefta’, in I. Shailat (ed.), Iggerot ha-Rambam (2 vols; Maaleh Adumim, 1988), vol. II, p. 445, passage translated in I. Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven, 1980), pp. 35–36. Twersky (pp. 20–47) cites seven statements by Maimonides, including this one, about the purpose of his Code.

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on specific subjects7—the Code resembles the kind of compilation envisioned by Watson, insofar as it constituted the first comprehensive code of all of Jewish law, a new codificatory project superseding all other more limited attempts to systematize the precepts of Judaism accumulated since the Torah. It exceeded by far the scope of the Mishnah, compiled in Roman Palestine around 200 C.E. It broke the halaḵa down into discrete units and classified them in a rational way that liberated the law from some of the complexity that Watson found in the ‘legal scaffolding’ of Roman and English law. Also original, it included laws that would only come into practice at the time of the Messiah, as well as a revolutionary philosophical introduction. Most important in terms of its originality, it purported to represent a new canon of the halaḵa.8 Whatever claims Maimonides may have had for his Code and for its faithfulness to the ancient law, he did not live his life cloistered in a rabbinic academy, divorced from current Jewish practice. He was a jurisconsult, writing hundreds of responsa to legal questions arising from everyday affairs. He was intimately involved with society as a public figure, a ‘man of action’, to borrow the title of one of S. D. Goitein’s famous essays.9 He was fully aware of the gulf that separated the world of the Talmuds, the Palestinian Talmud, compiled around 400 C.E. and the Babylonian Talmud, compiled around a century later, from his own surroundings. In particular, he was completely attuned to the new economy, an economy not envisioned by the Talmud and barely taken into consideration in its halaḵa. Through a careful reading of the Code in the light of the Genizah documents, we are able to identify places where, despite the disclaimer in his letter to the Alexandrian

7 See, for instance, the catalogue of halakhic monographs in D. E. Sklare, Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon and his Cultural World: Texts and Studies (Leiden, 1996), pp. 19–24. 8 M. Halbertal discusses Maimonides’ intention in ‘What is the Mishneh Torah? On Codification and Ambivalence’, in J. M. Harris (ed.), Maimonides after 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and his Influence (Cambridge, MA, 2007), pp. 81–111. I am persuaded by his argument in favour of what he calls the ‘radical meaning’ of the work: that, despite the ambivalence present in his various statements about the work, Maimonides meant the Mishneh Torah to be ‘the halaḵa’, rather than merely a ‘representation’ of the earlier halaḵa. It was to be a new canon replacing all previous works on Jewish law. 9 ‘Maimonides, Man of Action: A Revision of the Master’s Biography in Light of the Geniza Documents’, in G. Nahon and C. Touati (eds.), Hommage à Georges Vajda (Louvain, 1980), pp. 155–167. See also J. Kraemer, Maimonides: the Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York, 2008), ch. 16 ‘Communal Affairs’.

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judge, Maimonides used codification to, in Watson’s words, ‘remove significant divergence between law and society’, the Islamic society in which he lived. The Babylonian Geonim (Iraq, seventh–eleventh centuries), for their part, were not immune to changing times. They, too, wrote responsa, answering queries about problems arising from quotidian practice, and, in the process, often accommodated law to reality. As stated, they composed legal monographs on specific halakhic topics, sometimes showing the influence of Islamic law. But no Gaon compiled a systematic and comprehensive code like Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah.10 Sometimes (though rarely, it now seems)11 they issued ‘new laws’ (taqqanot) to account for social and particularly economic circumstances not foreseen by the Talmud. They also recognized local customs (minhagim) as having the force of law.12 Some of Maimonides’ modifications of Talmudic law in the Code are, as he says in his Introduction, adopted from post-Talmudic rulings and interpretations of the Geonim—sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not—though in general, he does not seem to have been very much influenced by their legal writings. He was more influenced, as is to be expected, by his more immediate predecessors in his native Spain, the great Andalusian halakhists R. Isaac Alfasi and R. Joseph ibn Megas, his father’s teacher.13

10

See note 7 above, and the work of Libson and Stampfer in note 5. R. Brody, ‘Were the Geonim Legislators’?, Šenaton ha-Mišpaṭ ha-ʿIvri 11–12 (1984–1986), pp. 279–315 (Hebrew). 12 G. Libson, ‘Halakhah and Reality in the Gaonic Period: Taqqanah, Minhag, Tradition and Consensus: Some Observations’, in D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity (London, 1995), pp. 67–99, and his Jewish and Islamic Law. 13 Regarding Maimonides’ dependency on his Andalusian and Geonic predecessors, Twersky writes: ‘This rich but not very extensive literary inheritance (the referent is the legacy of Maimonides’ forerunners in al-Andalus, R. Joseph Ibn Megas and R. Isaac Alfasi), which he truly esteems, lavishly praises, and helps transmit, is quite naturally combined with Maimonides’ own interpretations, and this use of available sources together with his own resourcefulness is particularly crucial for appreciating the originality, value, and character of the Mishneh Torah. The silence concerning the Geonim in this context—they are, to be sure, mentioned summarily, almost ritualistically, in the maqāma-style introduction to the entire work, and there is a lean, bare-boned enumeration of book titles before the paean to R. Isaac Alfasi (i.e., in his introduction to the Commentary on the Mishna)—suggests the difference between their methods and accomplishments and his own’, Twersky, Introduction, p. 9. On the apparent minimal Geonic influence on Maimonides’ Code, using the example of Saʿadya Gaon, see R. Brody, ‘Saadia’s Halakhic Monographs and the Mishneh Torah’, in J. M. Harris (ed.), Maimonides after 800 Years, pp. 19–32. See also M. Havatselet, Ha-Rambam ve-ha-Geonim (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 34–35. 11

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Other modifications in the Code, however, are quite original, even though they might not be marked as clearly as he told the judge of Alexandria. I made a start in addressing the question that underlies this paper in my Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt.14 That book, with its companion volume, The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: an Anthology of Documents from the Cairo Geniza, published simultaneously, is based on hundreds of first-hand Genizah documents from everyday life—letters of appeal from the poor, letters written on their behalf, alms lists, registers of donors’ gifts for the poor, and wills. Among other things, I also compared the section on the ‘Laws of Charity’ (Hilḵot mattenot ʿaniyyim) in the Mishneh Torah with the quotidian evidence of the practice of charity. Carefully reading Maimonides’ laws through a social-historical lens, I found that the structure of some of his chapters and halaḵot, some of his emphases, and especially some un-Talmudic anomalies that caused consternation to medieval and early modern commentators, could be explained by the daily practice of charity in Maimonides’ Egypt as reflected in documents from the Genizah.15 My findings suggested that this methodology could be applied to other subjects covered in the Code as well. In what follows I present an example of a Talmudic law that had been modified by the Geonim in the light of the economic realities of the early Islamic period and modified again by Maimonides in the context of his halakhic reservations and in the light of the economic realities of his own time.

Power of Attorney: Laws of Agents and Partners 3:7 In the Talmudic period, a power of attorney (Heb. haršaʾa; Aram. adraḵta, alt. oraḵta) would be assigned to an agent to carry out claims against another party. The agent acquired temporary ownership of the property or the item on deposit in the latter’s hands, which he could

14

Princeton, 2005. See the Index s.v. ‘Mishneh Torah’. See also M. R. Cohen, ‘Maimonides and Charity in the Light of the Genizah Documents’, in G. Tamer (ed.), The Trias of Maimonides/Die Trias des Maimonides (Berlin, 2005), pp. 65–81. 15

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then claim on behalf of the owner. As proxy, he acted with the owner’s complete authority, his every act considered as if it were being performed by the principal himself. A problem arose when cash, especially a loan, was involved, for rabbinic law stipulates that one cannot sell or transfer something that is given with the expectation that it will be expended (le-hoṣaʾa nittena), hence lacks a physical existence (ʿen adam maqne davar še-lo ba’ la-ʿolam). Thus, a legal procedure was instituted in the Talmud whereby money on deposit—though not intangibles such as loans— could be conveyed as an adjunct of a land transfer (agav qarqaʿ).16 In the predominantly agrarian Jewish community of Talmudic Babylonia, this was sufficient. However, to accommodate the new monetary-based, commercial and urban economy of the Islamic world and to avoid situations in which people might incur financial loss if they could not lay claim to money that was in the hands of others, the early Geonim instituted a further innovation, called a ‘taqqana’ in Maimonides’ Code and in other Andalusian sources,17 extending the Talmudic procedure for power of attorney (Arab. wakāla) to claims involving cash, including debts. In cases where the creditor did not own real property for the adjunct transfer he could assign the proxy agent, as a gift, the symbolic ‘four cubits of land’ owned by every Jew in the Land of Israel.18

16 See BK 38–39; 73a; 104b. See N. Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa ba-Mišpaṭ ha-ʿIvri (Jerusalem, 1972), pp. 253–254. 17 Whether Maimonides meant by ‘taqqana’ a formal ordinance, or ‘new law’, like the Talmudic taqqanot, or used the term in a looser sense to mean ‘recommended custom’, is debated. The Geonic sources themselves seem to suggest that it was a custom. See Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa, pp. 254–269. On the question of Geonic taqqanot in general see Brody, ‘Were the Geonim Legislators’? pp. 279–315, and his comments there on recommended custom (hanhaga), pp. 283–286; also his The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven, 1998), pp. 62–64. 18 H. Tykocinski, Taqqanot ha-Geʾonim, trans. M. Havatselet (Tel-Aviv, 1960), pp. 81–89; M. Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, translated by B. Auerbach and M. J. Sykes (4 vols; Philadelphia, 1994), vol. II, pp. 649–651; Libson, Jewish and Islamic Law, pp. 39–40. I. Schepansky, in his four-volume study Ha-Taqqanot be-Yisraʾel (4 vols; Jerusalem, 1991–1993), vol. III, pp. 228–230, sees two distinct taqqanot here. The first taqqana permitted assigning a power of attorney for debts (presumably as an adjunct of land) and the second allowed this even when the party appointing the agent did not personally own any land. He claims that Maimonides’ language, ‘they have further ordained’, in passage [c] below, proves this.

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Maimonides knew this innovation very well. By his own time it was in constant use throughout the Mediterranean, both for moveable commodities, including money on deposit, which the Talmud allowed, and for loans, which, as noted, it did not. The device served an economy in which credit served as an even more essential instrument of trade than it had in the earlier period, when the innovation was first introduced.19 The Genizah documents, plentiful from the beginning of the eleventh century, bear ample witness to this. Maimonides, however, was not wholly at peace with this deviation from the law of the Talmud. He insisted that there be actual property in the agency arrangement, as the Talmud required, and frowned upon collection of debts by proxy altogether, again in keeping with the Talmudic limitation. In this case, therefore, Maimonides, as codifier, appears as a legal conservative, out of pace with society and its economic realities, and thus confirming Alan Watson’s main thesis about the inertia of private law. The Code states (Hilḵot Šeluḥ in ve-Šutafin, ‘Laws of Agents and Partners’ 3:7; the subdivisions are my own): [a] If one has money deposited with another and he wishes to authorise a proxy agent (le-haršot šaliaḥ ) to obtain it for him, then ratification by a qinyan (a symbolic transfer of right, similar to a handshake) is of no avail here, because current coin cannot be acquired by symbolic barter. What then does he do? He gives the agent a piece of land of the smallest dimensions and he transfers title to the money by dint of the land, in order that he may obtain the money with this power of attorney. He then goes and takes the man to court in order to get the money. [b] If one has a loan with another he cannot write a power of attorney for it, even if the debt is supported by a deed, because a loan is given with the expectation that it will be expended and one cannot transfer title to a thing that lacks a physical existence. He therefore has no other way by which to transfer title to his loan unless it was

19 A. L. Udovitch, ‘Credit as a Means of Investment in Medieval Islamic Trade’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 87 (1967), pp. 260–264, and Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton, 1970), pp. 77–86. See also S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. I, pp. 197–200.

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done in the presence of all three parties, which is a law without a (legal) reason, as we have already explained, or by transferring the deed of the indebtedness itself by writing it and handing it over, because he thus transfers the lien that is in the deed. Such is the rule as it seems to me from the Gemara. In passage [a], Maimonides summarizes the Talmudic principle. Property can be transferred through a power of attorney if it is linked to transfer of ownership of a piece of land, even a tiny plot. In the second passage, the codifier repeats the Talmudic rule that proxy transfer does not apply to loans, because it is expected that a loan will be expended and, lacking a physical existence, it cannot be transferred. Next, in passage [c], Maimonides cites the Geonic innovation, giving their rationale about the adverse impact that the inability to collect loans from borrowers located in a remote place would have on the economy, but dismisses the ruling as ‘tenuous and weak’. [c] The Geonim, however, have ordained (tiqqenu) that we do permit a power of attorney even for a loan, lest everyone take the other’s money and go to another country. They have further ordained that if one designates a power of attorney to obtain the money that he has with another or to sue the other for a loan, and he has no land (by dint of which to transfer ownership of this debt to the agent), he can transfer to him four cubits of land from his share in the Land of Israel, and transfer title to the money to him by dint of that land. These enactments are tenuous and weak, for who can say he has a share in the Land of Israel? Even if he is entitled to such a share, it is not in his possession. Maimonides shows full awareness here of the economic realities motivating the Geonic innovation, namely, the prevalence of longdistance commerce. Why, then, does he frown upon the device, which in his own day served such an important function in Jewish trade? One of the Ashkenazic glossators on the Mishneh Torah, R. Meʾir b. Yekutiʾel ha-Kohen of Rothenburg (1260–1298), the student of his namesake, the famous R. Meʾir of Rothenberg, was evidently unsettled by Maimonides’ apparent rejection of the Geonic instrument. In his Haggahot Maymuniyyot, printed in the margins of the standard edition of the Code, he sought precedents for Maimonides’ statement that the land ‘is not in his possession’, pointing to cases in the Talmud

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where the possibility of non-ownership of land comes into play. But this justification of Maimonides’ statement begs the main question, for the cases in the Talmud adduced by Haggahot Maymuniyyot envision land ownership that was real, as opposed to the fictional artifice of the Geonim. Unsurprisingly, with attentiveness to the social and economic realities of his own Christian milieu, Haggahot Maymuniyyot says nothing about Jewish ownership of land in Ashkenaz, because it was quite rare, owing to the nature of feudal agricultural holdings, with its required Christian oath of fealty, or because ownership of urban property was difficult for Jews, if not impossible. Another explanation for Maimonides’ seemingly stubborn stance suggests itself, one that, like the Geonic innovation, is itself rooted in the social and economic realities of the Islamic milieu which he inhabited. By the beginning of the Genizah period (eleventh century), as the documents abundantly show, Jewish ownership of land, particularly urban real estate, was common.20 This is reflected in Maimonides’ responsa as well. Questions mentioning houses or parts of houses possessed by Jews, as well as stores, sometimes shared with Muslim business partners, are abundant.21 They attest that Jews frequently rented apartments in courtyard-houses, to or from other Jews, and even rented to Muslims, though the latter was frowned upon.22 Sales of urban property are similarly documented in the responsa, as they are in the Genizah.23

20 One large chapter in volume IV of Goitein’s A Mediterranean Society, based on a large volume of data from Genizah documents, is devoted to ‘the home’, and includes discussion of sales and gifts of houses (pp. 86–90) and renting of premises in houses owned by Jews (pp. 90–97). 21 One example from among many of Jews owning houses or parts of houses (dār in Arabic); J. Blau (ed.), Tešuvot ha-Rambam (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1957–1961), vol. I, p. 8, no. 6; share in a house by a Jew and a Muslim (goy): Blau, Tešuvot, vol. I, p. 12, no. 9; p. 145, no. 90; Jewish perfumery store: Blau, Tešuvot, p. 174, no. 104; share in a store by Jews and Muslims: Blau, Tešuvot, vol. II, p. 360, no. 204; cf. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 365; two stores, a cooperative in silk, one in alMahalla and the other in Fustat: Blau, Tešuvot, vol. I, pp. 177–178, no. 105; cf. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 88. 22 Blau, Tešuvot, vol. I, p. 151, no. 92. The same responsum and many others mention opposition to renting to Muslims. It was often a cause of inconvenience arising from the clash of Jewish and Islamic religious laws and customs. 23 This might appear in a legal question when a Jewish partner wished to sell his part of a house to a Muslim, which Maimonides sought to discourage. Blau, Tešuvot, vol. II, p. 672, no. 394.

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Jews bequeathed and inherited apartments and donated entire houses to the community as pious trusts, heqdeš or qodeš in Hebrew, similar to waqf bequests in the Islamic community (the Jews used the Arabic word as well). Moshe Gil’s book on the Jewish pious trusts in the Genizah shows that rents from these properties served various communal needs, such as upkeep of the synagogue, salaries of communal officials and teachers of orphans, payments to Muslim officials, and charity.24 In short, in Maimonides’ world, actual Jewish ownership of real property made the Geonic artifice unnecessary. What do we find ‘on the ground’ in the Genizah documents? The Genizah contains dozens of actual powers of attorney,25 for claims of both tangible commodities and cash, the latter including proceeds from partnership enterprises, which could be considered debts owed by the active agent to the sedentary partner. But the vast majority of them, following the Geonim, invoke the fictional four cubits of land in the Land of Israel. Only a few (even if they are representative of a larger number than the ones preserved) refer to actual, owned urban property, in keeping with the Talmud. They employ the phrase, ‘four cubits of my land’, or ‘four cubits of land from my compound in Fustat, Egypt’26 or ‘in my courtyard’.27 One of these comes from 1085.28 In other words, by the eleventh century, the Geonic device was firmly entrenched in local usage, despite the widespread ownership of urban real estate. The predominance of proxy documents using the Geonic artifice might be explained by the fact that many who actually owned property used the formula ‘four cubits of land from my share in the Land of Israel’ either out of the habit of scribes, or to avoid the possibility that an unscrupulous agent might actually claim permanent

24 M. Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden, 1976), part IV (Use of Revenue). Cf. M. R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, 2005), pp. 200–204. On the Muslim waqf see A. Singer, Charity in Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 92–114 and passim. 25 Goitein writes: ‘powers of attorney constitute the type of documents found most frequently in the Geniza’; A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 335. 26 E.g., Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 28.11, line 23, (ed. and trans. by M. R. Cohen) in Sasson Somekh Festschrift, M. Ghanaim (ed.), forthcoming; also M. Gil, Be-Malḵut Yišmaʿel bi-Tequfat ha-Geʾonim (Tel Aviv, 1997), vol. IV, pp. 63–66, no. 623. 27 E.g., T-S 10J21.1. This last formula also appears in the work of the German Tosafist of the twelfth century, R. Elazar b. Nathan; see Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-haHaršaʾa, p. 275. 28 See note 25.

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ownership of their property if they stipulated real rather than ‘fictional’ property, since the halaḵa stipulated that the piece of land be given to the agent as a gift.29 Whatever the reason this was the practice that confronted Maimonides when he arrived in Egypt—and which he sought to ‘correct’, bringing reality, in this case, the reality of Jewish ownership of urban real estate in the Mediterranean Islamic world, into conformity with law, in this case, the law of the Talmud. Maimonides’ reservations about the Geonic innovation were rooted, further, in the reality of his land of origins, agriculturally rich Spain, where Jews still commonly possessed arable land. Powers of attorney from Spain reveal such a context for his ruling against the Geonic device.30 His seeming reversal of the Geonic custom (or taqqana) should be seen, therefore, not simply as reluctance to grant that every Jew possessed property in the Land of Israel—his stated rationale. It should be understood, too, as an encouragement to fellow Jews to stick to Talmudic principle when traditional legal structures adequately served current social or economic realities. In other words, his conservatism in this matter was not ‘inertia,’ in Watson’s words—a resistance to change—but a conscious attempt to make contemporary practice— Jewish property ownership in the world in which he lived—consistent with halaḵa, to bring law and society together. Perhaps, too, Maimonides was concerned about the change in the political status of the Land of Israel following the Crusader conquest in 1099. In his time Palestine, where he and his family stayed for about a year after leaving Almohad Morocco,31 was Christian territory; it would not be reconquered until 1187, some ten years after Maimonides completed the Code. Unlike the Muslim rulers of Palestine, who allowed

29

On the latter possibility see Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa, p. 260. Spanish Jewish legal sources reflect the reality of Maimonides’ Spanish background. The Andalusian formulary book from Lucena published by Joseph Rivlin has two versions of the power of attorney, both with the clause ‘four cubits of land’, mentioning neither real property nor fictional property in the Land of Israel; see Šiṭre Qehillat al-Yusana min ha-Meʾa ha-Aḥ at-ʿEsre (Ramat Gan, 1994), pp. 169–177, nos. 23–24. The formulary of Judah ben Barzilai of Barcelona contains the realistic formula ‘four cubits in my courtyard’; see S. J. Halberstam (ed.), Sefer ha-Šeṭarot (Berlin, 1898), p. 43. See also the discussion in Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa, pp. 271– 273. Even the agency document in R. Hayya Gaon’s book of formularies includes, as an option, the clause ‘four cubits of land in such-and-such a place’; see S. Assaf (ed.), Sefer ha-Šeṭarot (Jerusalem, 1930), pp. 32–33. 31 See Kraemer, Maimonides, pp. 125–141. 30

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Jews to own property, these European invaders hailed from places where Jews normally were not able to own land. Under these circumstances, and despite the rabbinic principle that ‘land cannot be stolen’,32 the universal claim of Jews to ownership of ‘four cubits of land’ in Palestine must have seemed weak—even untenable—so that the Geonic device could not in any event be utilized. This possibility seems to be reflected in the tone of Maimonides’ insistence at the end: ‘Even if he is entitled to such a share, it is not in his possession’.33 If then, on the face of it, the law of power of attorney in the Code shows Maimonides to be a conservative legist, steadfastly adhering to ancient law in the face of social and economic change, and reversing a ‘progressive’ innovation of the Geonim—confirming Alan Watson’s main thesis about legal inertia—this is only partially true. He was in fact quite attentive to social and economic realities—Jewish ownership of land in his Andalusian homeland and in his new home in Egypt, and perhaps also the political reality of Palestine under Crusader rule. The Geonic device, necessary in the early Islamic period in Iraq, when fewer and fewer Jews possessed land (for economic, not legal reasons), was unnecessary for Jewish owners of real property in Maimonides’ time. Social and economic realities had changed and thus, in this case, the Talmud could and should be upheld. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that, at the end of the halakha Maimonides seems to back off from his seemingly categorical rejection of the Geonic innovation. He qualifies it as follows: [d] The Geonim themselves, who enacted this taqqana, declared that we do not say, ‘Let the law cut through the mountain,’ but that it was enacted only to intimidate the party who is sued, that if he consent to argue the case in court and to give the agent the money on the strength of the power of attorney, it will be discharged, because an agent with this weak power of attorney is no worse than an agent who is appointed in the presence of witnesses. If, however, the man sued does not wish to argue the case with him

32 Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa, p. 257. On the debate over whether conquest of the Land of Israel by gentiles transfers ownership, see p. 259 note 42. 33 Kesef Mišne (the sixteenth-century commentary on the Code by Joseph Caro) ad loc. explains this differently, apparently based on a responsum of R. Hayya Gaon, to the effect that the Jew might be a descendant of converts lacking the right to property in the Land of Israel. See Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa, p. 274.

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mark cohen in court he may not be compelled to pay or to swear an oath until his counterparty himself appears. They also ruled that if one has made a loan to another, whether with a note of debt or with a qinyan before witnesses, then even if he denies it in court, a power of attorney can be issued against him, because this is denial of mortgaged property. But if it is a loan made orally that he denies, they did not enact that a power of attorney be issued on it.

After asserting earlier that ‘these enactments are tenuous and weak’, why does Maimonides seem here to leave the door open? I submit that this, too, reflects contemporary realities, namely, the ubiquitous reliance on credit as a means of investment and the frequent long and distant separation of investors from those who did the traveling and the work. Credit thrived in at least three forms of business cooperation, two of them popular in long-distance trade. One was the Talmudic ʿisqa, where the money advanced to the active agent was masked as a free loan, and both profits and losses were shared on an equal basis, all to avoid the appearance of usury between Jews. The second was the Islamic qirāḍ, a form of commenda, which Jews favored because it freed the active agent from responsibility for losses and thus encouraged people to undertake long and arduous journeys in search of profit. It was often called qirāḍ al-goyim (‘qirāḍ of the Muslims’) to distinguish it from the Talmudic variety, which came to be known as qirāḍ be-torat ʿisqa (‘qirāḍ according to the law of ʿisqa’).34 In this latter form, to avoid the appearance of a usurious loan, the rabbis of the Islamic period required the Jewish recipient of credit to assume part of the losses incurred on the entire amount, an effort to assimilate this instrument to the Talmudic ʿisqa and make it halakhicaly acceptable. A third form of credit used by Jews ubiquitously, even in local trade, was deferred payment for a commodity at a higher price, called ṣabr, ‘patience’. Though seemingly a form of veiled interest, Maimonides, again showing realistic attentiveness to contemporary business practices, ruled in a responsum that it should be countenanced because ‘it

34

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 171, and A. L. Udovitch, ‘At the Origins of the Western Commenda: Islam, Israel, Byzantium’, Speculum 37 (1962), pp. 198–207.

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is the custom common in business transactions between people, and without it, most types of livelihood would come to a standstill’.35 Here, then, we seem to have a reasonable explanation for the loophole in the law of power of attorney in the Code. Whether a trade arrangement operated as a true Talmudic ʿisqa or as a Muslim-type qirāḍ, claims against partners requiring a power of attorney arose on a regular basis, especially when the active partner was far away from the sedentary investor. Maimonides was attuned to the reality of an economy dependent upon credit, one that often separated participants in economic cooperation by great distances and for long periods of time. (His brother David traveled to India in search of profit and lost his life in a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean.) It does not seem farfetched to assume that Maimonides left this loophole in the Code to allow the use of the power of attorney, based on the Geonic artifice, provided, as his language suggests, that it was used within limits, as a means of ‘intimidating’ recalcitrant partners to fulfill their obligations voluntarily. This pragmatic approach to the halaḵa of power of attorney shows up in one of Maimonides’ responsa. A creditor wished to reclaim a debt using a power of attorney. Maimonides expresses his principled disapproval: ‘power of attorney is objectionable (maḏmūm)’. An exception could be made, he goes on to say, in case of necessity (ḍarūra), for instance, when the parties were in different cities, or when the claimant was ill. In the absence of such extenuating circumstances, a power of attorney to collect debts was forbidden.36 Here, in a nutshell, lies the reality behind Maimonides’ law of power of attorney in the Code. He objected in theory to the Geonic fiction. But he knew from vast personal experience that in practice (as the Genizah attests) Jews used the device regularly. Both in the responsum and in the Code we are witness to a man who was attentive to social and economic realities of the Islamic world in which he lived and who employed a flexible approach, if not in theory, then in practice, in order to bring law and society together.

35 36

Blau, Tešuvot, vol. 1, p. 83; cf. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 197. Blau, Tešuvot, vol. II, pp. 520–521, no. 272; cf. Kraemer, Maimonides, pp. 308–309.

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The example we have discussed from Maimonides’ Code provides a tentative answer to the issues raised by Blidstein and by Watson. In the halaḵa on power of attorney Maimonides, seemingly confirming Blidstein’s observation and Watson’s main thesis about the conservatism, or (Watson’s term) inertia, of private law, shows a certain conservatism, rejecting, or at least frowning upon, a Geonic innovation meant to take into account changing economic and social realities. At the same time, his ‘loophole’ at the end represents a realistic response to one of the most pervasive economic realities in his world, long-distance commerce and the ubiquitous use of credit. Answering Blidstein’s question, ‘[t]o what degree does Maimonides’ work consciously respond to its time’ and Watson’s query about whether ‘codification [can] remove the significant divergence between law and society’, we may say that Maimonides, responding to his time, employs the Code to account for a significant divergence between Talmudic law and the commercial society in which he lived. If he does not wholly sanction the Geonic innovation, it is because, in his view, in this case, the divergence between the Talmud and contemporary Jewish life was not so great as to require the license granted by his Geonic predecessors in early Islamic Iraq. Elsewhere in the Code, as I hope to show in a subsequent publication, Maimonides exhibits less inertia where circumstances dictated the need for legal change. He updates the halaḵa, adapts it to everyday practice, and uses codification—even if in a subtle and not entirely visible way—as a tool to bring society and law into harmony.

Bibliography S. Assaf (ed.), Sefer ha-Šeṭarot (Jerusalem, 1930). H. Ben-Menahem, ‘The Second Canonization of the Talmud’, Cardozo Law Review 28 (2006), pp. 37–51. J. Blau (ed.), Tešuvot ha-Rambam (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1957–1961). G. J. Blidstein, ‘Where do We Stand in the Study of Maimonidean Halakhah?’ in I. Twersky (ed.), Studies in Maimonides (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 1–30. R. Brody, ‘Were the Geonim Legislators’? (Hebrew), Šenaton ha-Mišpaṭ ha-ʿIvri 11–12 (1984–1986), pp. 279–315. ——, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven, 1998).

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——, ‘Saadia’s Halakhic Monographs and the Mishneh Torah’, in J. M. Harris (ed.), Maimonides after 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and his Influence (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 19–32. M. R. Cohen, ‘Maimonides and Charity in the Light of the Genizah Documents’, in G. Tamer (ed.), The Trias of Maimonides/Die Trias des Maimonides (Berlin, 2005), pp. 65–81. ——, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, 2005). ——, The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo Geniza (Princeton, 2005). ——, ‘A Partnership Gone Bad: a Letter and a Power of Attorney from the Cairo Geniza, 1085’, in M. Ghanaim (ed.), Sasson Somekh Festschrift (forthcoming). M. Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, trans. B. Auerbach and M. J. Sykes (4 vols; Philadelphia, 1994). M. Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden, 1976). ——, Be-Malḵut Yišmaʿel bi-Tequfat ha-Geʾonim (4 vols; Tel Aviv, 1997). S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). ——, ‘Maimonides, Man of Action: a Revision of the Master’s Biography in Light of the Geniza Documents’, in G. Nahon and C. Touati (eds), Hommage à Georges Vajda (Louvain, 1980), pp. 155–167. S. J. Halberstam (ed.), Sefer ha-Šeṭarot (Berlin, 1898). M. Havatselet, Ha-Rambam ve-ha-Geʾonim (Jerusalem, 1967). J. Kraemer, Maimonides: the Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York, 2008). G. Libson, ‘Parallels between Maimonides and Islamic Law’, in I. Robinson, et al. (eds), The Thought of Maimonides: Philosophical and Legal Studies (Lewiston, NY, 1990), pp. 209–248. ——, ‘Halakhah and Reality in the Gaonic Period: Taqqanah, Minhag, Tradition and Consensus: Some Observations’, in D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity (London, 1995), pp. 67–99. ——, Jewish and Islamic Law: a Comparative Study of Custom during the Geonic Period (Cambridge, MA, 2003). ——, ‘Maimonides’ Connection to Islamic Law against the Background of his Period’, in A. Ravitzki (ed.), Maimonides: Conservatism, Originality, Revolution (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2008), vol. I, pp. 247–294. N. Rakover, Ha-Šeliḥ ut ve-ha-Haršaʾa ba-Mišpaṭ ha-ʿIvri (Jerusalem, 1972). ——, (ed.), Maimonides as Codifier of Jewish Law (Jerusalem, 1987). J. Rivlin, Šiṭre Qehillat al-Yusana min ha-Meʾa ha-Aḥ at-ʿEsre (Ramat Gan, 1994). I. Schepansky, Ha-Taqqanot be-Yisrael (4 vols; New York, 1991–1993). I. Shailat (ed.), Iggerot ha-Rambam (2 vols; Maaleh Adumim, 1988). A. Singer, Charity in Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 2008). D. E. Sklare, Samuel ben Ḥ ofni Gaon and his Cultural World: Texts and Studies (Leiden, 1996). Z. Stampfer, Sefer ha-Gerušin (Kitāb al-Ṭ alāq) le-Rav Šemuʾel ben Ḥofni Geʾon Sura (Jerusalem, 2008). I. Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven, 1980). H. Tykocinski, Taqqanot ha-Geʾonim, trans. M. Havatselet (Tel-Aviv, 1960). A. L. Udovitch, ‘At the Origins of the Western Commenda: Islam, Israel, Byzantium’, Speculum 37 (1962), pp. 198–207.

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——, ‘Credit as a Means of Investment in Medieval Islamic Trade’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 87 (1967), pp. 260–264. ——, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton, 1970). A. Watson, Society and Legal Change, reprinted (Philadelphia, 2001).

THE ROLE OF EGYPTIAN JEWS IN SIXTEENTHCENTURY INTERNATIONAL TRADE WITH EUROPE: A CHAPTER IN SOCIALECONOMIC INTEGRATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST Abraham David

In a letter to his father in Italy, written in 1488, R. Obadiah of Bertinoro from Jerusalem described the Egyptian Jews he encountered during his journey to Jerusalem, writing: Among the Jews in Cairo there are moneychangers and merchants, for the country is large, and some branch of industry is open to everyone. For commercial dealing there is no better place in the world than Cairo; it is easy to grow rich; hence one meets there with innumerable foreigners of all nations and languages. You could go out by night as well as by day, for all the streets are well lit with torches. The people even sleep on the ground in front of shops.1

Through the inspection of archives scattered among the commercial centres of the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Europe, the study of Mediterranean trade in the late medieval period has received new impetus. Eliyahu Ashtor, a great scholar, researched this topic for many years and laid the foundations for the study of various aspects of the trade.2 From the early fifteenth century until the discovery of the direct route to India at that century’s end, European commercial powers such as Venice, Genoa, Sicily, Florence and others dominated oriental trade. With the mid-fifteenth-century collapse of local Middle Eastern industry, these powers took advantage of the opportunity to step up their commercial activities. During the first half of the fifteenth century, due to factors operative both in the Orient and in Europe, it

1 M. E. Artom and A. David, From Italy to Jerusalem: the letters of Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro from the Land of Israel (Hebrew; Ramat Gan, 1997), p. 57. The translation is adapted from E. N. Adler from his English edition, Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (New York, 1987), p. 228. 2 For an excellent publication on the general Mediterranean trade in that period, see E. Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 1983). For more items on this topic see also notes 3 and 4.

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was the Venetian Republic that dominated Mediterranean trade. This republic maintained its dominance in two-way occidental-oriental trade until the late sixteenth century.3 During this period, Venetian and other European consuls could be found residing in Alexandria, Egypt’s major port. In addition, the island of Crete (known also as Candia) was under the Venetian Republic’s sphere of influence and served as an important center of mercantile trade with Egypt.4 The major role of Egyptian Jews in medieval trade, as reflected in the Cairo Genizah documents, particularly from the Fatimid period onwards, has received much scholarly attention. It is impossible to proceed without acknowledging Solomon Dov Goitein’s unique contribution to this field, especially his monumental five-volume work, A Mediterranean Society, of which the first volume is devoted exclusively to economic matters.5 In contrast, the study of Egyptian Jewry’s role in fifteenth-century trade is still in its infancy. It seems, however, that Jews engaged more actively in trade than in other branches of the Egyptian economy. This preference can be attributed primarily to the fact that, for Jews, commercial activity provided a more secure economic base. It was not subject to strict regulation by the authorities, and was potentially more profitable as well. Due to recurring economic crises in Egypt, we find

3 On the centrality of Venice in the maritime trade between West and East at that time, see F. C. Lane, Venice: a Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1977). E. Ashtor has dealt extensively with this topic, see Ashtor, Studies on the Levantine Trade in the Middle Ages (London, 1978), ch. VI; Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 200–269, 367–432, 450–479; Ashtor, East-West Trade in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. by B. Z. Kedar (London, 1986), chs VII and IX; Ashtor, ‘Recent Research on Levantine Trade’, Journal of European Economic History 14 (1985), pp. 379–393. See also B. Arbel, ‘Venetian Trade in Fifteenth-Century Acre: the Letters of Francesco Bevilaqua (1471–1472)’, Asian and African Studies 22 (1988), pp. 227–288. More bibliographical references of Ashtor on this subject are listed by Arbel, ‘Venetian Trade’, pp. 227–228, note 2. 4 On the commercial relationship between the Levant and Europe much has been written. For general monographs and collected articles on the Levant trade in the later Middle Ages, see W. Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant Au Moyen-Âge (2 vols; Leipzig, 1885–1886); F. Braudel, Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. S. Reynolds (London. 1981), pp. 543–642; E. Ashtor, The Medieval Near East: Social and Economic History (London, 1978); Ashtor, Studies on the Levantine Trade; Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 200–559; Ashtor, East-West Trade; Ashtor, Technology, industry, and trade: the Levant versus Europe, 1250–1500, edited by B. Z. Kedar (London, 1992). 5 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. I, ‘Economic Foundations’. See also S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: “India Book” Part One (Leiden, 2007).

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that, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, many Jews chose this sphere of economic activity.6 The sixteenth-century Arabic, Turkish, European, and also Jewish, mainly halakhic, sources that were collected and discussed by Eliezer Bashan are insufficient to paint a clear picture of the role Egyptian Jews played in sixteenth-century trade.7 On the other hand, the comparative abundance of Genizah documents relating to aspects of Mediterranean trade, which number in the dozens or perhaps even the hundreds, enables us to more closely examine the role of Egyptian Jews in this branch of economic endeavour. Before proceeding further, I would like to digress briefly in order to make some general comments on the Cairo Genizah and the study of late medieval Egyptian Jewish history. The Genizah fragments reveal many aspects of Jewish culture. The main portion of the collection dates from the Classical Genizah period, the late tenth to mid-thirteenth centuries. A smaller portion dates from the fourteenth century onwards. Since its discovery, research has focused more on the materials from the Classical period, with less attention paid to the later period. Consequently, the historiographical issues related to the fourteenth century onwards are less well known. I would also like to note that the Genizah texts reflect changes in the Egyptian-Jewish community. During the Classical period and up to the end of the fifteenth century, the language of Egyptian Jewry was Arabic. With the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century’s last decade, Spanish Jews made their way to the East. Many settled in Egypt, and from the early sixteenth century they dominated the Egyptian Jewish community, making their mark in the intellectual and social realm. As a result, Hebrew and Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) displaced Arabic. The Genizah texts reflect this shift. Most of the later materials are in Hebrew, with a smaller proportion

6 See E. Strauss (Ashtor), Toldot ha-Yehudim be-Miṣrayim u-ve-Suria taḥ at Šilṭon ha-Mamlukim (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970), vol. II, pp. 157–172; Ashtor, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, 10th–15th Centuries (London, 1983), chs VII–VIII; Ashtor, Technology, Industry and Trade, ch. IX; B. Arbel, Trading Nations, Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean (Leiden, 1995), pp. 29–54. 7 See E. Bashan, ‘Economic Life from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century’ (Hebrew), in J. M. Landau (ed.), The Jews in Ottoman Egypt (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 63–89.

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in Arabic. It is these documents that shed new light on Jewish life in late medieval Egypt.8 To return to the topic at hand, first let me observe that Egypt’s role as an important East-West trade junction led those Jews who were involved in commerce to settle in coastal cities. This state of affairs is reflected in the responsa of R. David ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz), the leading Jewish authority in sixteenth-century Egypt, who, in general, provides significant data on Egyptian Jewry. Regarding the port city of Damietta, he wrote the following: Jews reside there primarily because it is on the coast. Note how many cities there are in Egypt that are not on the sea coast, where no Jews reside.9

The responsum continues with the observation that Jews ‘come to settle there because it is near the sea [and convenient] for trading with incoming ships’. Genizah documents and halakhic literature reflect a similar picture regarding a number of port cities, including Rosetta,10 Damietta,11 and Alexandria.12 Cairo served as the central junction and distribution point for land and sea trade, and is referred to in Hebrew sources as Miṣrayim. Incidentally, evidence of commercial activity by Jews in Cairo’s famed Khan al-Khalili market, a major international trading centre from the late fourteenth century to the present, is found in a sixteenth-century Genizah document.13 Alexandria was from antiquity already Egypt’s most important port.14

8 A short discussion on the significance of Jewish life in Egypt and the Land of Israel in the late Middle Ages as reflected in the Cairo Genizah documents is A. David, ‘The Genizah Sources and the Study of the Jews of Egypt and the Land of Israel at the End of the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Zmanim 38 (1991), pp. 62–69. 9 David b. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, Responsa Radbaz (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1972), number 182. 10 In Hebrew and Arabic: ‫רשיד‬. On this town as reflected in the Cairo Genizah documents, see Ashtor, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, ch. IIIb, pp. 7–8; A. David, ‘Jewish Settlement from the Sixteenth Century to the Eighteenth Century’ (Hebrew), in J. M. Landau (ed.), The Jews in Ottoman Egypt (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 13–26 (26). 11 On this town as reflected in the Cairo Genizah documents, see Ashtor, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, ch. IIIb, pp. 2–3; David, ‘Jewish Settlement’, p. 19. 12 On this town as reflected in the Cairo Genizah documents, see Ashtor, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, ch. IIIb, pp. 8–12; David, ‘Jewish Settlement’, p. 16. 13 Parts of a business letter from 1550, Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 214.40. 14 On the centrality of Alexandria in Egypt as a trade centre, see G. Guratola, ‘Venetian merchants and travellers in Alexandria’, in A. Hirst and M. Silk (eds), Alexandria, Real and Imagined (London, 2004), pp. 185–198; A. Wolff, ‘Merchants,

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From Alexandria, which is not on the Nile, goods were moved east via sea or land to the nearby port of Rosetta, which was in close proximity to one of its tributaries. Via Rosetta, cargo was shipped to commercial centers in the Nile Delta, and from there overland to the Middle East, Central Asia, or points south. Jews were deeply involved in local commerce. They dealt in a broad range of commodities, textiles and food in particular, as well as other consumer goods imported to Egypt from the Orient and/or Europe. However, as we shall see, Jews played no less a role in international commerce. Many Jewish merchants employed agents who acted on their behalf. These agents resided in trade centers both in Egypt and abroad. Known in our earliest sources as ‫( ואכיל אלתוגר‬wakil al-tujjar) or in Hebrew ‫( פקיד הסוחרים‬peqid ha-soḥ arim), that is, ‘the merchant’s clerk’,15 in the sixteenth century they were referred to as fattore (from Italian).16 Genizah documents provide many examples of exchanges of letters between merchants and agents. In these letters, instructions regarding purchases and sales have survived, as well as reports sent by agents to their employers regarding the successful or unsuccessful conclusion of business deals, or difficulties encountered on the job. Naturally they also contain fascinating details regarding local and foreign trade in Egypt during that period. In addition, many deeds of sale have been preserved in the Genizah documents. This also indicates a high degree of Egyptian-Jewish involvement in commercial activity. Genizah documents acquaint us as well with Jewish commercial ties with foreign traders or mercantile centres on the Mediterranean and the Adriatic as well as with the east. These centres included: Italy (besides Venice): Ancona, Florence, Genoa and Leghorn; Ragusa

pilgrims, naturalists: Alexandria through European eyes from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century’, in Hirst and Silk (eds), Alexandria, pp. 199–225. The history of Medieval Alexandria is widely scattered, see Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1978), vol. IV, pp. 132–137 (s.v. al-Iskandariyya). 15 See Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, pp. 186–192 and vol. VI (index), s.v. Representative of the Merchants. 16 See Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 403ff; H. Gerber, ‘Enterprise and International Commerce in the Economic Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Zion 43 (1978), pp. 38–67 (54–55); M. Rozen, ‘The Fattoria: a Chapter in the History of Mediterranean Commerce in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Miqqedem Umiyyam 1 (1981), pp. 101–131. This term is mentioned in at least three Genizah documents: T-S NS 99.25; ENA 3794.11 and ENA NS 30.10 (dated 1570).

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(present-day Dubrovnik) on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, as well as Corfu; Greece: Salonika and Methone, Morea, Rhodes; Crete; Sicily: Messina; Turkey: Istanbul and Bursa; Syria: Damascus, Aleppo and Tripoli; India: Calcutta and Surat; Yemen: Aden and Mocha; Somalia: Berbera, and of course, Eretz-Israel: Gaza and Safed.17 During the fifteenth century and the first four decades of the sixteenth century, as a result of restrictions imposed by the Venetian Senate on Jews under its jurisdiction, Venetian Jews were scarcely involved in Mediterranean trade. In the lands of the Mediterranean basin however, Jews were not barred from engaging in trade, as attested by a substantial number of documents that have survived in various archives. Indeed, Jews under Byzantine or Muslim hegemony were heavily involved in trade with Venice and other Mediterranean lands despite the official Venetian decree barring Levantine Jews from trading with Venice.18 Levantine Jews continued to trade with Venice in the sixteenth century, especially after June 1541, when the Venetian regime granted

17 Ancona: T-S Misc.28.258; T-S 6J4.31–32; Florence: ENA NS 47.22; Genoa and Leghorn: Or.1080 5.6; Ragusa: T-S 10J16.25; Or.1080 5.6; Corfu: Westminster College Misc.30; Salonika: T-S 18J3.25; T-S 8J15.32; ENA NS 35.25; Halper 420; Methone: T-S 10J16.32; Morea: Kaufmann 36/v; Rhodes: Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.18; T-S AS 209.226; Crete: Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 214.40 (dated 1550); T-S Ar.30.232; Or.1080 5.6; Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.10; Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.14; JTS Mic. 9160.2 (dated 1514); ENA NS 39.14 (dated 1614); Kaufmann 36ar, 36r; JNUL 40 577/4, 102; Messina: Or.1080 5.6; Or.1080 3.4; T-S Misc.28.258; Istanbul: Gaster A428; Bursa: T-S NS 320.122 & Gaster 1861.8 (dated 1544); Or.1081 1.72; Damascus: T-S 13J34.7; T-S 18J5.7; ENA NS 35.12; ENA 3307.12; Halper 416; Gaster A428; Freer 47; Aleppo: Freer 47; Tripoli: T-S Misc.28.143; ENA NS 35.6; Calcutta and Surat: Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24; Aden: Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24; Mocha: BL Or.12315 (dated 1611); Berbera: Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24; Gaza: Mosseri IIIa.9 & CUL T-S AS 214.40 (dated 1550); Halper 420; T-S NS 320.122 & Gaster 1861.8 (dated 1544); Freer 47; Safed: Gaster A428; T-S AS 145.117; T-S 10J31.11; T-S 16.295. 18 Over the last four decades some important studies on this point have been published, such as Ashtor, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, ch. VIII; D. Jacoby, ‘Les Juifs á Venise du XIV au milieu du XVI siecle’, in H. G. Beck, M. Manoussacas and A. Pertusi (eds), Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV–XVI): aspetti e problemi, I (Florence, 1977), pp. 163–216; D. Jacoby, Studies on the Crusader States and on Venetian Expansion (London, 1989), ch. X; B. D. Cooperman, ‘Venetian Policy Towards Levantine Jews in its Broader Italian Context’, in G. Cozzi (ed.), Gli Ebrei e Venezia secoli XIV–XVIII (Milano, 1987), pp. 65–94; B. Arbel, Trading Nations: Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean (Leiden, 1995); Arbel, ‘Jews in International Trade: the Emergence of the Levantines and Ponentines’, in R. C. Davis and B. Ravid (eds), The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 73–96, 264–271.

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permission for Jewish traders from the Orient to take up temporary residence in Venice in pursuit of their business dealings. Many of these merchants originated from the large commercial centers in Turkey and especially in Istanbul.19 Their numbers included many exiles banished from Spain or their descendants, as well as conversos from Portugal, who had returned to Judaism upon reaching lands under Muslim dominion.20 The role of Egyptian Jews in commercial ties between Egypt and Venice during the sixteenth century has only recently come to light with the uncovering of numerous Genizah documents. From these documents, of which only a few have seen publication, it appears that Jewish traders of Levantine or Italian origin, but mainly Jews of Spanish origin who arrived in Egypt in the years following the expulsion from Spain in 1492, maintained commercial ties with the major Italian trade centres.21 These ties were either direct, or through Jewish and non-Jewish agents. Especially close ties were maintained with those traders from Genoa, Florence, Sicily, Leghorn and France who reached Egypt. Yet we must bear in mind that the majority of Egypt’s Mediterranean trade proceeded through the agency of Venetian traders, who were largely represented by consuls. Of these consuls, some, known by name, resided in Alexandria.22 We can surmise on this basis that additional consuls also resided in other commercial centres. Genizah documents shed light on important and interesting details regarding the nature of the goods traded between Egypt and the

19 See B. Ravid, ‘The establishment of the Ghetto Vecchio of Venice 1541’, in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. II (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 153–167; Ravid, ‘The first charter of the Jewish merchants of Venice, 1589’, AJS Review 1 (1976), pp. 187–192; Ravid, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth Century Venice (Jerusalem, 1978), pp. 25–30; Ravid, ‘New light on the Ghetti of Venice’, in Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume: Studies on the History of the Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Period (Tel-Aviv, 1993), pp. 149–176; Cooperman, ‘Venetian Policy’; Arbel, ‘Jews in International Trade’, pp. 79–96. 20 See Jacoby, Studies on the Crusaders States, ch. X; B. Arbel, ‘Venice and the Jewish merchants of Istanbul in the sixteenth century’, in A. Toaff and S. Schwarzfuchs (eds), The Mediterranean and the Jews, Banking, Finance and International Trade (XVI– XVIII Centuries), vol. I (Ramat Gan, 1989), pp. 39–56; Arbel, Trading Nations; Arbel, ‘Jews in International Trade’, pp. 73–96. 21 Spanish Jewish traders in sixteenth-century Egypt are mentioned several times in Genizah documents. 22 In the Genizah we can find references to Venetian consuls and merchants who formally dealt with Jewish traders in Egypt; see David, ‘Venice’, pp. 1–29.

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above-mentioned commercial centres. It is essential, however, to note the random nature of the information provided both by Genizah documents and rabbinic responsa as far as trade with Venice and other lands is concerned. Although they certainly provide only a partial picture of the role of Egyptian Jews in Mediterranean trade, nonetheless, they do impart clear evidence of a trend towards massive Jewish involvement in Mediterranean commerce. I shall now specify some of the commodities imported to Egypt from overseas as reflected in Genizah documents. 1. Agricultural produce: we do not have a lot of information about the import of agricultural produce, but we are almost certain that wheat was imported to Egypt from Venice,23 especially during periods of drought and low yield.24 Moreover, it is likely that ‫כרכום‬, ‫זעפראן‬, crocus and its by-product saffron, were imported to Egypt by European traders.25 Some kinds of merchandise were exported to Egypt from Candia (Crete), such as: ‫יין‬, wine, which was prohibited for Moslems but was used by Jews and Christians for religious purposes. In the Genizah there are documents that refer to the manufacture of wine,26 and to wine exported from Candia.27 ‫גבינה‬, cheese, was also exported from Candia to the East.28 ‫צוקר‬ ‫קאנדייה‬, Candian sugar, was exported to the East as well,29 even 23 During the Mamluk period, wheat was commonly imported from Europe into Egypt; see E. Ashtor, East–West Trade in the Medieval Mediterranean (London, 1986), ch. IX; Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 11, 16, 21, 41, 222, 239, 242, 465, 482, 503, 505. 24 There are several Genizah documents that refer to the wheat trade. Some of them probably refer to the wheat that was imported to the Near East, e.g., ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2; ENA 3307.12; ENA NS 31.12; JNUL Heb. 40 577/4, 102; T-S Misc.26.21; Or.1080 J134; T-S 10J16.25; T-S 16.260; T-S 10J17.33 (datable to after 1580). 25 See Ashtor, Levant Trade, index, s.v. Saffron. Mosseri II.188 (‫ ;)כרכום‬ENA 3307.12 (‫ ;)זעפראן‬T-S 8J16.16 (‫)זעפראן‬. 26 T-S AS 305.168; T-S 8J8.11. 27 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.14 (dated 1484); JTS Mic. 9160.2 (dated 1514); T-S NS 338.51; T-S 8J6.20; Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 214.40 (dated 1550). For more details on the linkage between these countries in the trade of wine, see M. Litman, ‘The relationship between Egypt and Candia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Sinai 88 (1980), pp. 48–59 (51). 28 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.14; JTS Mic. 9160.2 (dated 1514); T-S 10J24.3 & Or.1080 J174, which has been published by David, ‘Later Nagids’, pp. 303–311. 29 T-S Ar.30.232; T-S NS 83.19; T-S AS 214.40 & Mosseri IIIa.9 (dated 1550). Sugar was exported in the fifteenth century from Cyprus, Spain, and Sicily to the East; see Ashtor, Levant Trade, p. 208. Until the beginning of the fifteenth century, sugar planting was flourishing in Egypt and it was exported to Europe and elsewhere. However, production in the Levant significantly declined from the fifteenth century onwards.

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though ‫סוכר‬, sugar cane, was cultivated in Egypt.30 ‫צמוקים‬, raisins, were also commonly exported from the Land of Israel and Syria to Egypt, but also from Europe,31 as mentioned in some Genizah fragments.32 2. Textiles: textiles included ‫משי‬, silk,33 as well as ‫צמר‬, woollen dry goods, which were exported to the East,34 from Spain, Sicily and England, especially ‫קריזיאש‬, kersey,35 a cloth that originated in England, and from those countries the wool was imported to the Orient by Venetian and other traders.36 Additional sources indicate that this cloth also made its way to Safed where it was tailored. The finished garments were then marketed to Egypt and to Venice.37 In one Genizah document we find ‫צמר שאלוניקי‬, Salonica wool, as

See E. Ashtor, ‘Levantine Sugar Industry in the Late Middle Ages’, in A. L. Udovitch (ed.), The Islamic Middle East 700–1900: Studies in Economic and Social History (Princeton, 1981), pp. 91–132. On the other hand, we will see below that sugar cane was still planted and imported to Europe from Egypt in the sixteenth century, but the trade was not as significant as it was in the earlier Middle Ages. 30 On the production and export of sugar from the East to Europe, see Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 15, 23, 30, 32, 43, 68, 184, 188, 206ff, 278, 323; Z. Amar, Agricultural produce in the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 300– 325. See also below. 31 Amar, Agricultural produce, pp. 112–113; Ashtor, ‘Levant Trade’, pp. 245, 268, 336, 482. 32 Mosseri VII.16.2; ENA NS 31.12; ENA 4101.6a (dated 1489); ENA NS 35.15; T-S NS 323.28 (dated 1525); T-S AS 153.214; Bodleian MS. Heb. b. 13.45. 33 In the Genizah there are references to particular kinds of silk or silken cloth that were produced in Western Europe or in the East, such as: Kaufmann 36v; Halper 420; Mosseri III.9a; Mosseri IV.93; ENA 2727.24a; ENA 2727.45 (dated 1558); ENA 2738.21; ENA 4101.6a (dated 1489); T-S 8J15.32; T-S NS 264.64 (dated 1516); T-S Misc.10.80; T-S Misc.28.143. In one document we find: ‫חריר פנז'ל‬, T-S NS 320.137, ḥ arir being an Arabic term for silk. However, there are two references to the silk cloth that was exported from Florence ‫משי פלורנטין‬, ‫בגדי' משי פירנטין‬, ENA 2727.45 and Halper 420. In another document from Cambridge, T-S Misc.28.168, we find '‫בגדי‬ ‫אוזיה דפרנצה‬. On Florentine silk being exported to the East in the late Middle Ages, see Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 350–352. On the export of silk from the Far East, see Ashtor, Levant Trade, index, s.v : silk. 34 Halper 420; Mosseri IV.93 (dated 1558). 35 Mosseri II.188. 36 See Ashtor, ‘Die Verbreitung des englischen Wolltuches in den Mittelmeerländern im Spätmittelalter’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 71 (1984), pp. 1–29; Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 17, 152, 366; B. Braude, ‘International Competition and Domestic Cloth in the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1650: a Study in Undevelopment’, Review 2 (1979), pp. 437–451. 37 See S. Avitsur, ‘Safed: centre for the manufacture of woven woollens in the fifteenth [sixteenth] century’ (Hebrew), Sefunot 6 (1962), pp. 41–69.

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well.38 Salonica at that time was a centre of industrial and commercial wool.39 Certain kinds of clothes were also exported to Egypt.40 3. Metal Ores: including ‫זהב‬, gold,41 ‫נחשת‬, copper,42 ‫בדיל‬, tin,43 and ‫עופרת‬, lead,44 were exported from Europe to Egypt by Venetian traders and others45 for the purpose of minting coins. ‫גופרית‬, sulphur,46 used for refining gold, was imported as well.47 Several Genizah documents indicate that, in addition, there was trade in ‫ דונג‬,‫שעוה‬, wax,48 and external sources show Venetian involvement in its importation.49 Also imported from Venice to Egypt were: ‫אלפי׳ חרבות מויניציאה‬, ‘thousands of Venetian swords’, which were exchanged for sugarcane,50 a major Egyptian crop.51 On the other hand, Genizah documents also reflect the commercial traffic in exports from Egypt to Europe. These exports consisted mainly of local goods produced in Egypt and the surrounding area. However, due to Egypt’s above-mentioned role as a crossroads between Occident and Orient, Egyptian Jews also played a role as middlemen in the marketing of Far Eastern goods meant for Europe. I shall now proceed to briefly survey some of the commodities exported from Egypt.

38 39

‫צמר שאלוניקי‬, Mosseri V.392.

See S. Avitsur, ‘The woollen textile industry in Saloniki’ (Hebrew), Sefunot 12 (1971–1978), pp. 145–168. 40 Mosseri IV.93 (dated 1558); T-S 16.295. 41 T-S AS 145.85; Freer 41. 42 Mosseri IV.93; ENA 1066.1–10; Bodl. Ms. Heb. C. 13.24. 43 T-S Misc.22.6 & T-S AS 150.154; T-S Misc.10.238 & T-S Misc.22.5; T-S 18J3.25; ENA NS 31.11; Kaufmann 36v. 44 Freer 41. 45 Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 10, 126, 136, 144, 156, 363, also index, s. v. gold, copper, lead and tin. 46 T-S NS 264.64; Bodleian MS. Heb. b. 13.45. 47 Ashtor, ‘Levant Trade’, p. 133. 48 ENA 4101.6a; ENA 3307.12; ENA 3191.8; Kaufman 36r. 49 Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 247, 316, 482. However, we find in a sixteenth-century source that in Tripoli (Syria) a white wax was produced there; see A. David (ed.), In Zion and Jerusalem: the Itinerary of Rabbi Moses Basola (1521–1523) (Jerusalem, 1999), p. 56. 50 Freer 41. On the export of weapons from Venice and elsewhere to the East, see Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 18, 20, 23, 27, 29, 42, 349. 51 On sugarcane from Egypt and the Land of Israel being exported to Europe, see Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 15, 23, 30, 32, 43, 68, 184, 188, 206ff, 323; Amar, ‘Agricultural Produce’, pp. 300–325.

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1. Agricultural products: these included foodstuffs, medicinal products, and luxury items. Among these goods, which were produced both in Egypt and the Orient, we should note: ‫ פולים‬,‫פול‬, beans,52 ‫שקדים‬, almonds,53 ‫סוכר‬, sugarcane,54 ‫אורז‬, rice,55 ‫צמר גפן‬, cotton,56 and ‫פשתן‬, flax.57 It appears that the majority of these commodities was produced in Egypt. In addition, luxury items, some of which were produced in the Far East, were marketed to Venice and elsewhere via Egypt. Among these items, we should note, for example, ‫בשמים‬, scents,58 including ‫לבאן לובן‬, frankincense,59 and ,‫צאבון‬, ‫ בורית‬soap manufactured in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus,60 which were exported from Egypt to Europe.61 Spices were exported as well, including: ‫פלפלין‬, pepper,62 ‫זינזר‬, ‫גנזביל‬, ‫זנגביל‬, zenzero,63 ‫בלידי‬, a type of ginger,64 ‫קירפא‬, canella, cinnamon,65 and ‫קרנפל‬, Dianthus,66 ‫כיאר שינבר‬, which has been identified as Cassia fistula,67

52 Mosseri III.231 (dated to 1524 or 1525); T-S AS 83.15; T-S Misc.28.168; ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2. 53 BL Or.10110.23; ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2. 54 T-S AS 145.313; Freer 41; ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2. 55 ENA 3191.8; ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2. 56 ENA NS 31.12; ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2. 57 T-S 10J16.25; T-S 18J3.25; Or.1080 5.6; ENA NS 41.21. 58 Or.1080 5.6; T-S 10J31.11; T-S 10J16.25; Westminster College Misc.30; Cincinnati, HUC 1034 (dated 1558); ENA 1178.46; ENA NS 47.22; Gaster B2162; Bodleian Ms. C. 72.11. 59 ENA NS 41.21; T-S Misc.28.143. See also Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 30, 183, 282, 334, 470, 483. This is identified as Boswellia carteri. 60 See A. Cohen, Economic Life in Ottoman Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 61–97, 140–145, 152, 160–163: Amar, ‘Agricultural Produce’, pp. 151–153. 61 Kaufmann 36r; Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.15; ENA NS 35.15; Freer 47. 62 T-S 10J31.11; T-S 13J24.25; T-S 18J3.25; T-S Misc.22.6 & T-S AS 150.154; T-S 12.589 (dated 1554); T-S Misc.28.168; Or.1080 5.6; Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24; Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 214.40; Halper 420. 63 Gaster 1861.8 & T-S NS 320.122 (dated 1544); T-S 10J16.32; T-S 13J24.25; T-S Misc.28.143; Or.1080 5.6; T-S AS 214.40 & Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 212.55; T-S Ar.30.232; ENA NS I.71 (L 107); Cincinnati, HUC 1034. See Ashtor, Levant Trade, index. 64 T-S Misc.28.143; Gaster B2162. This is mentioned many times in Italian documents, see: F. B. Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, edited by A. Evans (Cambridge, MA, 1936), pp. 206, 295, 305, 360; Heyd, Commerce, vol. II, pp. 619–620. 65 Gaster B2162. See Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 32, 146, 165, 183, 241, 334, 339, 451, 501, 502; M. Gil, Palestine during the first Muslim period (634–1099) (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1983), vol. III, p. 181. 66 Bodleian MS Heb. C. 72.12; ENA 3617.1–9; ENA NS 41.21. See Gil, Palestine, vol. III , p. 181. 67 See Z. Amar, ‘The Use of Cassia Fistula in the Land of Israel and in Syria during the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Korot 11 (1995), pp. 56–64.

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3.

4.

5.

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a fruit tree whose dominant range was in Egypt,68 and ‫אשקמונאה‬, scammony, a medicinal plant69 native to Turkey, Syria and EretzIsrael.70 As we have seen, various textiles were exported from Europe to the Orient, including Egypt. On the other hand, certain textiles manufactured in the Orient made their way to Europe via Egypt. A letter concerning commerce, dating from the latter half of the sixteenth century, attests to the fact that ‫משי‬, ‫חריר‬, silk manufactured in Safed, was in great demand in Venice,71 as were ‫עורות‬, ‘cattle skins’, most probably skins of the water buffalo found in the Egyptian marshes. Genizah documents indicate that these buffalo skins were marketed to Venice and Ancona.72 ‫נוצה‬, Ostrich feathers, were commonly used for decorative purposes in Europe and the Orient. Late medieval and modern sources alike relate to an oriental trade in feathers of the ostriches native to the Middle East and Africa. Letters extant in the Genizah also indicate that ostrich feathers were exported to Europe.73 ‫ניל‬, ‫אנייר‬, Indigotin, an organic blue dye derived from the indigo plant. Generally exported from India to oriental markets, this plant was also cultivated in Eretz-Israel. From the Orient, this dye also found its way to European markets.74 Gemstones: Egyptian Jews also dealt in gemstones, both directly and as middlemen. Among the precious stones traded were: ‫קוראל‬, coral,75

68 Or.1080 5.6, published by David, ‘Venice’, pp. 15–18, 22–26; T-S 6J4.32, published by Shohetman, ‘Ha-Ari’, pp. 56–64; ENA 1178.46, published by David, ‘Castro Family’, pp. 119–122; ENA 2738.21, published by Benayahu, ‘Ha-Ari’, pp. 141–142; ENA NS 41.21. 69 T-S 10J31.11, published by David, ‘The integration of the Jews’, pp. 19–28. 70 See Heyd, Commerce, vol. II, pp. 669–670. 71 T-S 10J31.11; T-S AS 145.117. On the evidence of the latter document we can assume that silk (ḥ arir) from Safed was probably exported from Egypt to Europe. 72 Or.1080 5.6; T-S 6J4.31–32; T-S 8J8.13; T-S 10J16.25; T-S 13J24.25; T-S Misc.22.6 & T-S AS 150.154; ENA 4101.6a (dated 1489); Mosseri III.231. 73 Or.1080 J133; ENA NS I.56; Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 214.40; Mosseri IV.93; Cincinnati, HUC 1034; ENA 2727.45. 74 Cincinnati, HUC 1034; T-S Misc.28.168; T-S AS 145.313; JNUL 40 577/4, 102. See Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 50, 183, 282, 483. 75 Mosseri IV.93; Mosseri IIIa.9 & T-S AS 214.40. See Ashtor, Levant Trade, index.

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‫כרזה‬, beads,76 ‫ רובין‬,‫רוביניש‬, rubies, red stone,77 and ‫מרג'אן‬, ‫מרגליות‬, pearls.78 Most of these gems originated in the Far East or Central Asia, and made their way to European markets via Egypt. Incidentally, Genizah documents reflect the involvement of R. Joseph Caro in the pearl trade.79 This renowned scholar of Safed lived in Egypt in the second decade of the sixteenth century and apparently engaged in commerce during that time. While we are on the subject, Genizah documents also provide authentic evidence that other prominent halakhic scholars in Egypt engaged in domestic and international trade, including R. Jacob Berab,80 R. David ibn Abi Zimra,81 R. Isaac Luria (the ARI),82 R. Jacob Castro83 among others. Their involvement in business, as opposed to drawing a salary from the community, probably stemmed from their adherence to Maimonides’ halakhic decision that ‘it is forbidden to derive any temporal advantage from the words of the Torah’ (Mishneh Torah, Talmud Torah 3:10). Dozens of contemporary Genizah documents contain references to Venetian coins, which were in circulation in Egypt. Those named in the Genizah texts include: ‫דוקאטי‬, ducats, and ‫דוקטי ויניצייני‬, Venetian ducats, as well as ‫ציקיני‬, zecchinos, known in Hebrew as ‫פרחים זהב‬ ‫ ויניצייא‬or '‫ ויניצי‬or ‫ ויניסיי‬or ‫ביניסיי‬, that is Venetian gold florins. In Spanish these florins were called ‫ויניצייאנוש‬, and in Arabic ‫בנאדקה‬ (al-Banādiqa or al-Bunduqīya is the Arabic name for Venice). This latter name for a Venetian coin is frequently found in contemporary Genizah documents in various forms and orthography: ‫בונדוקי‬, ‫בנאדקה‬

76 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24; T-S NS 324.37 & T-S 13J5.6 (dated 1560); T-S NS J124. See H. Shy, ‘Terms for Goldsmithing, Metals and Minerals in Medieval JudaeoArabic’ (Hebrew), Sefunot 21 (1993), pp. 199–253 (235). 77 Mosseri Va.13; ENA NS 77.6. In Arabic: yāqūt aḥ mar, See Shy, ‘Terms’, pp. 236–237. 78 Moserri VII.41.2; Or.1080 5.6, which has been published by David, ‘Venice’, pp. 15–18, 22–26; T-S NS J124; T-S AS 145.87; ENA NS 61.3; ENA 3817.4. See Ashtor, Levant Trade, pp. 64, 68, 184, 482; Shy, ‘Terms’, p. 240. 79 T-S Misc.10.80. 80 T-S NS 323.28; Freer 47. 81 Mosseri III.231; ENA I.56. 82 There are several Genizah documents referring to Ha-Ari’s involvement in merchandise, and most of them have been published more than once; see Benayahu, ‘Ha-Ari’, pp. 225–253; A. David, ‘Halakhah and Commerce in the Biography of Isaac Luria’ (Hebrew), Meḥ qere Yerušalayim be-Maḥ ševet Israʾel 10 (1992), pp. 287–297. 83 T-S 13J4.21 (dated 1588).

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‫בנדקי‬, and ‫פרחים זהב‬.84 This widespread use of Venetian coins in Egypt at that time clearly indicates Venice’s massive involvement in Egyptian commercial life on the one hand, while the references in the Genizah documents indicate the integration of Jews into the trade with Venice on the other. Spanish coinage also came into use in Egypt at that time, for example: ‫קורונש‬, coronas.85 To sum up, based on my remarks above, we can determine that, during the Middle Ages, Egypt served as a crossroads for trade between the Occident and the Orient. The data found in Genizah documents and in responsa literature regarding trade with Venice is of a random nature and certainly does not reflect the full role of Egyptian Jews in Mediterranean trade in general, and with Venice in particular. Nonetheless, as we have seen, it does indicate massive Jewish involvement in Mediterranean trade. Through just this brief examination of the extant material, we can see that documents from the Cairo Genizah dating from the Classical Genizah period onwards shed a bright light on the manifold developments and changes in Egyptian economic life.

T-S 10J31.11 (see plate 4) A letter from a Fattore to his employer Joseph Naftali, second half of the sixteenth century.86 [Col. 1] 1 Shalom. As I am uncertain as to whether or not your honour is there [at present], I have written these brief lines to inform my master how I have already written to your honour in the past regarding various commodities that are in demand in Venice. Among other things, I wrote 84

For Venetian coins in Genizah documents, see David, ‘Venice’, p. 20. Halper 420; Bodleian MS. Heb. b. 13.45.; ENA NS 47.22; T-S 6J4.31–32; T-S 10J31.11; T-S Misc.28.168; T-S AS 145.87. Ferdinand I, the Aragonese king, issued this coin (1458–1498). A very similar coin was issued by his successor Alfonso II. This coin was in wide use in Egypt, demonstrating that Spanish traders were active in commerce there. 86 Hebrew text published by David, ‘The Integration of the Jews’, pp. 23–28. 85

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87 88 89

113

to my master about the top-grade scammony,87 which is expensive there in Venice [about which] you inquired whether it arrived with the caravan that came from Safed, may it be speedily rebuilt. I know that there is some there of top-grade quality, close to a talent.88 I expect that [. . .] in the hands of a reputable Jew named Rabbi Moses Deleiria89 who served as an official [cantor?] in the holy Turkish congregation.90 The very same day I went and spoke to Marco Cappello91 telling him that the honourable Joseph Naftali92 wishes to negotiate for two Egyptian talents of top-grade scammony, but he awaits your reply. The aforementioned non-Jew bid me: ‘Write to him, to R. Joseph, that I rejoice in his good fortune, and that if the scammony is of good quality, even up to the amount of three talents, he should under no circumstances sell it for any amount, even for a high price, and in turn I will give him ten percent of the profits’. I took him at his word concerning this matter. Therefore my master will please take the trouble to find a reputable Jewish merchant from Safed who will inspect it to make certain it is unadulterated, for when they harvest it they often mix it with a similar substance. I heard that he purchased it for three great florins per raṭl,93 which I estimate as four Egyptian or more. Perhaps your honour will purchase it

On this material, see above.

‫ ;ככר‬the rate of one talent was at that time: 85–100 kg; see S. Avitsur, ‘Safed’, p. 56. ‫משה דלריאה‬, a renowned Egyptian sage, Kabbalist and trader, who was active

in Safed in the second half of the sixteenth century; see: David, ‘The Integration of the Jews’, p. 23. 90 We do not know anything about the Turkish congregation at this time in his town of residence, Safed. 91 A Venetian trader. 92 ‫ ;יוסף נפתלי‬he is also mentioned in a business letter written by an Italian Jew in Cairo who dealt with Venetian traders: T-S Misc.28.168; see David, ‘Venice’, p. 7. 93 ‫רטל‬, a measurement of weight. In each country in the East it had a different value. For the raṭl in Egypt and Jerusalem, see W. Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, Umgerechnet ins metrische System (Leiden, 1955), pp. 28–30.

114 25

30

abraham david from him for three-and-a-half or less; I only ask that your honour negotiate with him concerning the silk from Safed which he brought to give him. And then, by the by, introduce the scammony, in order to ascertain whether or not he has sold it to some other Jew and you can make inquiries [concerning its purchase] from this other Jew, and if he has goods in exchange do not set hard terms, and undoubtedly, with God’s help we will do business with Marco in the sum of two coronas94 or more per raṭl through me, so that your honour will earn the blessing of God.

[Col. 2] 1

5

10

94 95

Regarding the spices, let my master not be alarmed when he hears there from the non-Jews that their prices are rising steadily. While this is true for pepper, but all kinds of . . .[?] are increasing greatly in price, without a shadow of a doubt and by My life, may God preserve me! . . .[?] [They charged] more than thirty-seven and a half here, and Jamal’s servant [agent?] Suleiman was not willing to take even one piaster less than thirty-eight. Therefore the non-Jew purchased it from R. Judah Masʿūd95 for thirty-seven. And there is a non-Jew here [by the name of] Porestro[?] who wants twelve talents of it, and I keep putting him off. May God blessed be He recompense me, for I believe that I lost [the opportunity] to earn more than two hundred florins in the knife bazaar. I reached an agreement with the non-Jew to sell him up to ten talents of pepper, and the best knives, that is the large ones for two Venetian96 and the small ones [for the price of] two for one, and the middle-sized ones for one-and-a-half. The total value of the deal was

On this Spanish coin, see above.

‫יהודה משעוד‬, an Egyptian sage, Kabbalist and trader, who went to the Land of

Israel and died there. He is mentioned in two other Genizah documents: Halper 420; ENA 2727.42; see David, ‘The Integration of the Jews’, p. 24, no. 63. 96 Venetian florin.

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eight thousand Turkish as I have informed your honour in ten letters, to which I received nary a reply. If only your honour had replied that I should wait a month before getting involved with them. I approached Suleiman to go into partnership for them [the knives, etc.], for the non-Jew and I did not see eye-to-eye. And he would not listen to me, for he feared that what happened to him with R. Kalonymus would happen with me. Therefore the coal monger took them at a greater profit . . . It has been a long time since I received any letters from you, and indeed what will they add, except to inform me of your good health and condition. And more than once I have appealed to your honour, in my many letters, that I have attempted to borrow thirty-six Venetian from R. Jacob Albo,97 may God preserve and protect him, or from someone else, as I have written to your honour at length in each and every letter, without receiving a reply. The courier Kesari returned and brought me no letter. Nor did Suleiman bring me even a line or two. And if your honour claims that it was for lack of time, if he found spare time to write to Calipha he had time to write to me. Peace be with you. Sunday, 29 Adar. Mosseri IV.93 (see plate 5)

A letter from Abraham Colon to his employer Joseph Ardea in Cairo, written in 1557.98 1 [To] the wise exalted notable, the illustrious rabbi, may God preserve and protect him, greetings! I write these few lines to inform him that I have truly written to his honour by means of Giaromo Bivisca to inform [him] that the galleys arrived today, but remain outside [the harbour] due 97 ‫יעקב אלבו‬, an Egyptian Jewish trader; see David, ‘The Integration of the Jews’, p. 24, no. 63. 98 The Hebrew text has been published by David, ‘Avraham Colon’, pp. 113–114, 119.

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5 to unfavourable conditions. The non-Jew told me to deliver the cloth and with God’s help I will take the payment and send it with the earliest [carrier] to his honour. On the galleys there are many commodities aside from money: there are those who say there are two hundred thousand florins; others say there are seventy-four cases of coral and fifty-four cases of coal[?] and one thousand talents of 10 copper ingots and four hundred talents of copper ore and sixty cases of hats and sixty cases of silk cloth, and one hundred bales of cloth. There is but little cloth. And let his honour not be disturbed that we sold the [ostrich] feathers before the galleys arrived. For with God’s help we will sustain but a small loss for the cloth. 15 I received a letter from his honour [relating] how R. Eliezer told him that I owe him three gold florins. Please give them to him. As for the illustrious R. Moses Loḥmit,99 may God preserve him, I have yet to see him although to the best of my recollection he has been saying for over a year that he wishes to come here. Please give my best regards to R. 20 Jacob Levi, may God preserve and protect him. Remind him to ask Francesco Grisolin for the money he owes us which is almost three-hundred gold florins; his honour has the policy. With God’s help when the galleys enter [the harbour] I will write to his honour with the news. Greetings [Margin]99 from the young man Abraham Colon.100 Thursday, 12 Kislev. And peace. [Verso] To the wise exalted notable R. Joseph Ardea101 may God protect and preserve him . . .

99 ‫ ;משה לוחמית‬he is mentioned in another business letter T-S Misc.28.258, discussed by David, ‘Venice’, p. 13. 100 ‫אברהם קולון‬, probably a resident of Alexandria. On him, see David, ‘Avraham Colon’, pp. 112ff. 101 ‫יוסף ארדיעה‬, who resided in Cairo.

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117

CUL Or.1080 J133 (see plate 6) A Partnership Agreement between Judah Castro and Namer Varioti, written in 1553–1554.102 1 As I, the undersigned, sent a qafas [qafīz]103 of [ostrich] feathers to Venice weighing one hundred and four raṭls104 in the sum of one hundred and sixteen Venetian gold florins and twenty-four muʾayyadī105 exclusive of the expenses and duties from here to Venice, accordingly, 5 I, the undersigned, stipulate that with regard to any and all profit which God, blessed be He, bestows as a result of this sale, three parts are to be mine and one part R. Namer Varioti’s.106 The same applies to any losses or liabilities. Following its sale said R. Namer Varioti has no share in either the profit or the liability. This was [agreed] on Thursday, the 10th of Kislev 5314 years to the creation [16 November 1553]. 10 Regarding all the above terms I hereby attest that I have obligated myself by qinyan sudar [acquisition by symbolic barter] to uphold all the above terms. Judah Castro.107 15 I too the undersigned have agreed to all that has been written above and to the above-mentioned terms and have obligated myself to uphold them by qinyan sudar on the date written above. Namer Varioti. As I the undersigned borrowed some time ago from the notable

102 103

The Hebrew text has been published by David, ‘Castro Family’, pp. 125–126.

‫ ;קפאס‬this is a volume measurement used in the East; see Hinz, Islamische

Masse und Gewichte, pp. 49–50. 104 On this weight measurement, see n. 93 above. 105 ‫מידי‬, an Egyptian coin, in use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, named after the Mamluk Sultan al-Muʾayyad Šayḵ; see P. Balog, The Coinage of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria (New York, 1964), pp. 299–306. 106 ‫ ;נמר וריוטי‬he is mentioned as an addressee in a Genizah letter, T-S Misc.22.191. 107 ‫ ;יהודה קשטרו‬he is mentioned in various other business letters, such as ENA NS 45.16 & ENA 2808.2, as an agent of Benjamin Castro; ENA NS 54.7; T-S NS 304.1, which has been published, ibid., pp. 126–127; T-S NS 320.127; T-S K15.82.

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20 R. Judah Castro, may God preserve and protect him, the sum of one hundred florins in [exchange for] a promissory note, six and seventy Venetian florins and twenty-five muʾayyadī,108 purchasing with them a qafas of [ostrich] feathers, I now stipulate that I the undersigned have agreed and granted permission to the above-mentioned notable R. Judah Castro to send the aforementioned qafas to Venice with whomever he sees fit. Of any and all profit that 25 God, blessed be He, bestows from its sale there after the deduction of all necessary expenses and duties from here until [it reaches] Venice itself, the aforementioned notable will receive three parts and I one. The same is true for any loss or liability [incurred], God forbid! Once it is sold I have no share either in the profit or the liability. I hereby attest that this has been ratified by qinyan sudar and applies to all that is written 30 above. This was on Monday, the 26th of Shevat 5314 years of the Creation [30 January 1554] here in Cairo. All the terms are binding. Namer Varioti.

Primary Sources, with Principal Publication Where Applicable Budapest, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Kaufmann 36ar Kaufmann 36r Kaufmann 36v Bodleian Library, Oxford Bodleian MS. Heb. b. 13.45 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24 See: S. Assaf, Mekorot u-Meḥ karim be-Toldot Israel (Jerusalem, 1946), pp. 258–261; M. M. Weinstein, ‘A letter of 1510? Some comments and calculations’, East and Maghreb VI (1995), pp. v–xxx.

108

On this Egyptian coin, see above.

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Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.10 See: M. Benayahu, ‘Book trade between Candia and Egypt’ (Hebrew), in Z. Malachi (ed.) Yad le-Heiman: A. M. Habermann Memorial Volume (Lod, 1983), pp. 255–266. Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.11 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.12 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.14 See: M. Benayahu, ‘Book trade’, pp. 255– 266. Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.15 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.18 British Library BL Or.10110.23 See: M. Benayahu, ‘The major sources for the history of Jerusalem in the time of Ibn Farukh’s edicts’ (Hebrew), Asufot 7 (1993), pp. 303–314. BL Or.12315 See: E. Shochetman (ed.), Šeʾelot u-Tešuvot Rabbenu Meʾir Gavison, vol. I (Jerusalem, 1985), no. 14. Cambridge University Library T-S 12.589 See: E. J. Worman, ‘Un document concernant Isaak Louria’, Revue des Études Juives 57 (1909), pp. 281–282 and Benayahu, ‘Ha-Ari’, p. 235. T-S 16.260 See: A. David, ‘The involvement of the Later Nagids of Egypt in the Affairs of the Jewish Community in Eretz-Israel’ (Hebrew), Teuʿda 15 (1999), pp. 293–332 (325–332). T-S 16.295 See: A. David, ‘New Genizah documents: Egyptian Jewry’s ties with Eretz-Israel in the sixteenth century’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 59 (1991), pp. 19–55 (52–53). T-S 6J4.31–32 See: E. Shochetman, ‘New Sources from the Genizah on the Economic Activity of R. Isaac Luria in Egypt’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 16 (1983), pp. 56–64. T-S 8J6.20 T-S 8J8.11 T-S 8J8.13 T-S 8J15.32 T-S 8J16.16 T-S 10J16.25 T-S 10J16.32 T-S 10J17.33 See: David, ‘Egyptian Jewry’s ties with Eretz-Israel’, pp. 47–51.

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T-S 10J24.3 See: David, ‘Later Nagids’, pp. 303–311. T-S 10J31.11 See: A. David, ‘The integration of the Jews of the Land of Israel in Mediterranean trade in the early Ottoman period’ (Hebrew), in A. Toaff and S. Schwarzfuchs (eds), The Mediterranean and the Jews, Banking, Finance and International Trade (XVI–XVIII Centuries), vol. I (Ramat Gan, 1989), pp. 15–28 (23–28). T-S 13J5.6 T-S 13J4.21 See: E. Shochetman, ‘Additional Information on the Life of R. Abraham Castro’, Zion 48 (1983), pp. 387–405 (404–405). T-S 13J24.25 T-S 13J34.7 T-S 18J3.25 T-S 18J5.7 See: A. David, ‘On the History of the Sholal Family in Egypt and Eretz-Israel at the End of the Mamluk Period and the Beginning of the Ottoman Period, in the Light of New Documents from the Genizah’ (Hebrew), in A. Mirsky, A. Grossman and Y. Kaplan (eds), Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People, Presented to Professor H. Beinart (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 374– 414 (387, 402–403). T-S Ar.30.232 T-S AS 83.15 T-S AS 145.85 T-S AS 145.87 T-S AS 145.117 See: A. David, ‘Jewish Involvement in the Economic Life of Eretz-Israel during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Judea and Samaria Research Studies 7 (1998), pp. 265– 277 (274–275). T-S AS 145.313 T-S AS 150.154 T-S AS 153.214 T-S AS 209.226 T-S AS 212.55 T-S AS 214.40 See: David, ‘Venice’, p. 15. T-S AS 305.168 T-S K15.82 T-S Misc.10.80 See: A. David, ‘The Character of Jewish Society in Egypt after the Spanish Expulsion’ (Hebrew), in M. Abitbol, Y. Assis and G. Hasan-Rokem (eds), Hispano-Jewish Civilisation after 1492 (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 59–77 (75–76).

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T-S Misc.10.238 T-S Misc.22.5 T-S Misc.22.6 T-S Misc.22.191 T-S Misc.26.21 See: S. Assaf, Mekorot u-Meḥ karim, pp. 191–192, 195–196. T-S Misc.28.143 T-S Misc.28.168 See: David, ‘Venice’, p. 7. T-S Misc.28.258 T-S NS 83.19 T-S NS 99.25 T-S NS 264.64 T-S NS 304.1 See: A. David, ‘Documents from the Genizah on the Castro Family in Egypt in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 54 (1993), pp. 117–132 (126–127). T-S NS 320.122 See: A. David, ‘Gaza as a Mercantile Centre between Egypt and the Land of Israel in the Sixteenth Century’ (Hebrew), Mahanayim 2 (1992), pp. 184–191 (189–191). T-S NS 320.127 T-S NS 320.137 T-S NS 323.28 See: David, ‘Sholal’, pp. 389–390, 408–409. T-S NS 324.37 T-S NS 338.51 T-S NS J124 Or.1080 3.4 Or.1080 5.6 See: A. David, ‘The involvement of Egyptian Jews in Venice trade in the sixteenth century as reflected from the Cairo Genizah documents and other sources’ (Hebrew), Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research LX (1994), pp. 1–29 (15–18, 22–26). Or.1080 J133 See: David, ‘Castro Family’, pp. 125–126. Or.1080 J134 Or.1080 J174 See: David, ‘Later Nagids’, pp. 303–311. Or.1081 1.72 Cincinnati HUC 1034 See: A. David, ‘The Mercantile Activity of Avraham Colon in Sixteenth-Century Egypt’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 51 (1992), pp. 107–123 (115–116, 120).

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Jacques Mosseri Genizah Collection Mosseri II.188 See: David, ‘Venice’, pp. 13–14. Mosseri III.231 See: Assaf, Mekorot u-Meḥ karim, pp. 199–203. Mosseri IIIa.9 See: David, ‘Venice’, p. 15. Mosseri IV.93 See: David, ‘Avraham Colon’, p. 115, 119. Mosseri V.392 Mosseri Va.13 Mosseri VII.16.2 Mosseri VII.41.2 Jerusalem, National Library of Israel JNUL 40 577/4, 102 Jewish Theological Seminary ENA 1066.1–10 ENA 1178.46 See: David, ‘Castro Family’, pp. 119–122. ENA 2727.24a ENA 2727.42 See: David, ‘Sholal’, pp. 411–412 ENA 2727.45 See: David, ‘Avraham Colon’, pp. 114–115, 117–118. ENA 2738.21 See: Benayahu, ‘Ha-Ari’, p. 241. ENA 2808.2 See: David, ‘Castro Family’, pp. 123–125. ENA 3191.8 ENA 3307.12 See: David, ‘Sholal’, pp. 387–388, 403–405. ENA 3617.1–9 ENA 3794.11 ENA 3817.4 ENA 4101.6a See: J. Mann, ‘A second supplement to The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs’, HUCA 3 (1926), pp. 257–310 (306–308). ENA NS I.56 See: A. David, ‘More on the Commercial Activities of R. David ibn Zimra, according to an Unknown Document from the Cairo Genizah’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 32 (1987), pp. 131–134. ENA NS I.71 (L 107) ENA NS 30.10 ENA NS 31.11 ENA NS 31.12 ENA NS 35.6 ENA NS 35.12 See: David, ‘The annals of Abraham Talmid ha-Sefaradi, one of Egyptian Jewry’s Leaders in the Early Sixteenth Century,

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according to New Genizah Documents’ (Hebrew), in Y. Dishhon and E. Ḥ azan (eds), Studies in Hebrew Literature and Yemenite culture, Jubilee Volume Presented to Yehuda Ratzaby (Ramat-Gan, 1991), pp. 221–227 (223–224, 226–227). ENA NS 35.15 ENA NS 35.25 ENA NS 39.14 ENA NS 41.21 ENA NS 45.16 See: David, ‘Castro Family’, pp. 123–125. ENA NS 47.22 See: M. Benayahu, ‘Genizah documents on the commercial business of Ha-Ari and on his family members in Egypt’ (Hebrew), in M. Benayahu (ed.), Sefer Zikkaron le-ha-Rav Isaac Nissim, volume 4 (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 225–253 (231–232, 242–247). ENA NS 54.7: See: Shochetman, Šeʾelot u-Tešuvot, p. 333. ENA NS 61.3 ENA NS 77.6 JTS Mic. 9160.2 John Rylands University Library Gaster 1861.8 See: David, ‘Gaza as a Mercantile Centre’, pp. 189– 191. Gaster A428 Gaster B2162 Smithsonian Institution Freer 41 See: R. Gottheil and W. H. Worrell, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection (New York, 1927), pp. 190– 194. Freer 47 See: Gottheil and Worrell, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah, pp. 228–235. University of Pennsylvania Halper 416 Halper 420 Westminster College, Cambridge Westminster College Misc.30

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E. N. Adler, Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (New York, 1987). Z. Amar, ‘The Use of Cassia Fistula in the Land of Israel and in Syria during the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Korot 11 (1995), pp. 56–64. ——, Agricultural Produce in the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2000). B. Arbel, ‘Venetian Trade in Fifteenth-Century Acre: The Letters of Francesco Bevilaqua (1471–1472)’, Asian and African Studies 22 (1988), pp. 227–288. ——, ‘Venice and the Jewish merchants of Istanbul in the sixteenth century’, in A. Toaff and S. Schwarzfuchs (eds), The Mediterranean and the Jews, Banking, Finance and International Trade (XVI–XVIII Centuries), vol. I (Ramat Gan, 1989), pp. 39–56. ——, Trading Nations, Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean (Leiden, 1995). ——, ‘Jews in International Trade: the Emergence of the Levantines and Ponentines’, in R. C. Davis and B. Ravid (eds), The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 73–96, 264–271. M. E. Artom and A. David, From Italy to Jerusalem: the Letters of Rabbi Obadia of Bertinoro from the Land of Israel (Hebrew; Ramat Gan, 1997). E. Ashtor, Studies on the Levantine Trade in the Middle Ages (London, 1978). ——, The Medieval Near East: Social and Economic History (London, 1978). ——, ‘Levantine Sugar Industry in the Late Middle Ages’, in A. L. Udovitch (ed.), The Islamic Middle East 700–1900: Studies in Economic and Social History (Princeton, 1981), pp. 91–132. ——, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 1983). ——, The Jews and the Mediterranean Economy, 10th–15th Centuries (London, 1983). ——, ‘Die Verbreitung des englischen Wolltuches in den Mittelmeerländern im Spätmittelalter’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 71 (1984), pp. 1–29. ——, ‘Recent Research on Levantine Trade’, Journal of European Economic History 14 (1985), pp. 379–393. ——, East-West Trade in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. by B. Z. Kedar (London, 1986). ——, Technology, Industry and Trade, The Levant versus Europe, 1250–1500, ed. by B. Z. Kedar (London, 1992). S. Assaf, Mekorot u-Meḥ karim Be-Toldot Israel (Jerusalem, 1946). S. Avitsur, ‘Safed: Centre of the Manufacture of Woven Woollens in the Fifteenth [Sixteenth] Century’ (Hebrew), Sefunot 6 (1962), pp. 41–69. ——, ‘The Woollen Textile Industry in Saloniki’ (Hebrew), Sefunot 12 (1971–1978), pp. 145–168. P. Balog, The Coinage of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria (New York, 1964). E. Bashan, ‘Economic Life from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century’ (Hebrew), in J. M. Landau (ed.), The Jews in Ottoman Egypt (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 63–89. M. Benayahu, ‘Book Trade between Candia and Egypt’ (Hebrew), in Z. Malachi (ed.) Yad le-Heiman: A. M. Habermann Memorial Volume (Lod, 1984), pp. 255–266. ——, ‘Genizah documents on the commercial business of Ha-Ari and on his family members in Egypt’ (Hebrew), in M. Benayahu (ed.), Sefer Zikkaron le-ha-Rav Isaac Nissim, volume 4 (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 225–253. ——, ‘The major sources for the history of Jerusalem in the time of Ibn Farukh’s edicts (Hebrew), Asufot 7 (1993), pp. 303–314. B. Braude, ‘International Competition and Domestic Cloth in the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1650: a Study in Undevelopment’, Review 2 (1979), pp. 437–451. F. Braudel, Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds (2 vols; London, 1981).

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B. D. Cooperman, ‘Venetian Policy Towards Levantine Jews in its Broader Italian Context’, in G. Cozzi (ed.), Gli Ebrei e Venezia secoli XIV–XVIII (Milano, 1987), pp. 65–94. A. David, ‘More on the Commercial Activities of R. David ibn Zimra, according to an Unknown Document from the Cairo Genizah’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 32 (1987), pp. 131–134. ——, ‘Jewish Settlement from the Sixteenth Century to the Eighteenth Century’ (Hebrew), in J. M. Landau (ed.), The Jews in Ottoman Egypt (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 13–26. ——, ‘On the History of the Sholal Family in Egypt and Eretz-Israel at the End of the Mamluk Period and the Beginning of the Ottoman Period, in the Light of New Documents from the Genizah’ (Hebrew), in A. Mirsky, A. Grossman and Y. Kaplan (eds), Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People, Presented to Professor H. Beinart (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 374–414. ——, ‘The Integration of the Jews of the Land of Israel in Mediterranean Trade in the Early Ottoman Period’ (Hebrew), in A. Toaff and S. Schwarzfuchs (eds), The Mediterranean and the Jews, Banking, Finance and International Trade (XVI–XVIII Centuries), vol. I (Ramat Gan, 1989), pp. 15–28. ——, ‘New Genizah Documents: Ties of Egyptian Jewry with Eretz-Israel in the Sixteenth Century’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 59 (1991), pp. 19–55. ——, ‘The Annals of Abraham Talmid ha-Sepharadi, one of Egyptian Jewry’s Leaders in the Early 16th Century, According to New Genizah Documents’ (Hebrew), in Y. Dishhon and E. Ḥ azan (eds), Studies in Hebrew Literature and Yemenite culture, Jubilee Volume Presented to Yehuda Ratzaby (Ramat-Gan, 1991), pp. 221–227. ——, ‘The Genizah Sources and the Study of Jews of Egypt and the Land of Israel at the End of the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Zmanim 38 (1991), pp. 62–69. ——, ‘Gaza as a Mercantile Centre between Egypt and the Land of Israel in the Sixteenth Century’ (Hebrew), Mahanayim 2 (1992), pp. 184–191. ——, ‘Halakhah and Commerce in the Biography of Isaac Luria’ (Hebrew), Meḥ qere Yerušalayim be-Maḥ ševet Israel 10 (1992), pp. 287–297. ——, ‘The Mercantile Activity of Avraham Colon in Sixteenth-Century Egypt’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 51 (1992), pp. 107–123. ——, ‘Documents from the Genizah on the Castro Family in Egypt in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 54 (1993), pp. 117–132. ——, ‘The involvement of Egyptian Jews in Venice trade in the sixteenth century as reflected from the Cairo Genizah documents and other sources’ (Hebrew), Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research LX (1994), pp. 1–29. ——, ‘The Character of Jewish Society in Egypt after the Spanish Expulsion’ (Hebrew), in M. Abitbol, Y. Assis and G. Hasan-Rokem (eds), Hispano-Jewish Civilisation after 1492 (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 59–77. ——, ‘Jewish Involvement in the Economic Life of Eretz-Israel during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Judea and Samaria Research Studies 7 (1998), pp. 265–277. ——, (ed.), In Zion and Jerusalem: the itinerary of Rabbi Moses Basola (1521–1523) (Jerusalem, 1999). ——, ‘The Involvement of the Later Nagids of Egypt in the Affairs of the Jewish Community in Eretz-Israel’ (Hebrew), Teuʿda 15 (1999), pp. 293–332. David b. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, Responsa Radbaz (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1972). Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1978). H. Gerber, ‘Enterprise and International Commerce in the Economic Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Zion 43 (1978), pp. 38–67. M. Gil, Palestine during the first Muslim period (634–1099) (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1983). S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993).

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S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: “India Book” Part One (Leiden, 2007). R. Gottheil and W. H. Worrell, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection (New York, 1927). G. Guratola, ‘Venetian merchants and travellers in Alexandria’, in A. Hirst and M. Silk (eds), Alexandria, Real and Imagined (London, 2004), pp. 185–198. W. Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant Au Moyen-Âge (2 vols; Leipzig, 1885– 1886). W. Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, Umgerechnet ins metrische System (Leiden, 1955). D. Jacoby, ‘Les Juifs á Venise du XIV au milieu du XVI siecle’, in H. G. Beck, M. Manoussacas and A. Pertusi (eds), Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV–XVI): aspetti e problemi, I (Florence, 1977), pp. 163–216. ——, Studies on the Crusader States and on Venetian Expansion (London, 1989). F. C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1977). M. Litman, ‘The Relationship between Egypt and Candia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ (Hebrew), Sinai 88 (1980), pp. 48–59. J. Mann, ‘A second supplement to The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs’, HUCA 3 (1926), pp. 257–310. F. B. Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, edited by A. Evans (Cambridge, MA, 1936). B. Ravid, ‘The establishment of the Ghetto Vecchio of Venice 1541’, in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. II (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 153–167. ——, ‘The first charter of the Jewish merchants of Venice, 1589’, AJS Review 1 (1976), pp. 187–192. ——, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth Century Venice (Jerusalem, 1978). ——, ‘New light on the Ghetti of Venice’, in Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume: Studies on the History of the Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Period (TelAviv, 1993), pp. 149–176. M. Rozen, ‘The Fattoria: a Chapter in the History of Mediterranean Commerce in the 16th and 17th Centuries’ (Hebrew), Miqqedem Umiyyam 1 (1981), pp. 101–131. E. Shochetman, ‘Additional Information on the Life of R. Abraham Castro’ (Hebrew), Zion 48 (1983), pp. 404–405. ——, ‘New Sources from the Genizah on the Economic Activity of R. Isaac Luria in Egypt’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 16 (1983), pp. 56–64. —— (ed.), Šeʾelot u-Tešuvot Rabbenu Meʾir Gavison, vol. I (Jerusalem, 1985). H. Shy, ‘Terms for Goldsmithing, Metals and Minerals in Medieval Judaeo-Arabic’ (Hebrew), Sefunot 21 (1993), pp. 199–253. E. Strauss (Ashtor), Toldot ha-Yehudim be-Miṣrayim u-ve-Suria taḥat Šilṭon ha-Mamlukim (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970). M. M. Weinstein, ‘A letter of 1510? Some comments and calculations’, East and Maghreb 6 (1995), pp. v–xxx. A. Wolff, ‘Merchants, pilgrims, naturalists: Alexandria through European eyes from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century’, in A. Hirst and M. Silk (eds), Alexandria Real and Imagined (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 199–225. E. J. Worman, ‘Un document concernant Isaak Louria’, Revue des Études Juives 57 (1909), pp. 281–282.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF GENIZAH TEXTS TO THE STUDY OF SIDDUR RABBI SOLOMON BEN NATHAN Uri Ehrlich

Prayer finds from the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat (old Cairo) constitute a key resource for our knowledge of the early siddur, in particular, prayer rite praxis in the late first, and early second, millennium CE.1 If it were not for the hundreds of pages from worn-out siddurim in the Cairo Genizah, the Palestinian branch of prayer would remain virtually unknown. But Genizah texts also impact significantly on the study of early versions of the better-known Babylonian rite. History favoured the Babylonian rite. Its adoption and constant use over the generations by the majority of Jews throughout the far corners of the Diaspora, guaranteed its preservation to our day. This preservation was, however, accompanied by the introduction of manifold changes. The acceptance of the Babylonian rite also assured the survival of several manuscripts of this ancient rite in various locations worldwide. Cherished by generations of worshipers, and later by collectors, these manuscripts ultimately came into the possession of libraries, primarily in Europe. Among these manuscripts are witnesses to the two main prayer books attesting to the old Babylonian rite: Seder Rav Amram Gaon (SRA), and Siddur Rav Saʿadya Gaon (SRSG). For SRA, several copies dating to circa the fifteenth century from a number of locations are extant. They formed the basis for the printed editions, and later for the

1 The numerous articles on the findings from the Cairo Genizah in general, and regarding prayer in particular, are inconceivable without the outstanding contribution of Professor Stefan C. Reif to the study and preservation of the Cambridge University Library Genizah fragments. I am delighted and honoured to dedicate this article to Professor Reif. I thank Professor Joseph Tabory for his pertinent comments on this article. I also thank Vered Raziel-Kretzmer for her remarks. The article was translated by Dena Ordan. On prayer in the Genizah in general, see S. C. Reif, ‘The Importance of the Cairo Genizah for the Study of the History of Prayer’ (Hebrew), Kenishta (2001), pp. 43–52, and the relevant chapters of Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000).

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critical edition published by Daniel Goldschmidt (1971).2 A complete manuscript of SRSG, copied sometime during the twelfth or thirteenth century—housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford—comprised the basis for the collaborative critical edition by Simha Assaf and others.3 But the preservation of these manuscripts is by no means an unmixed blessing, as anyone involved in the study of the early siddur according to the Babylonian rite is aware. Its wide acceptance fostered the introduction of changes by each generation and in each locale in line with the local praxis of the day and hampers our ability to reconstruct the early Babylonian rite from the late, complete findings. This is well known for the manuscripts of SRA. It can be shown that each manuscript of SRA reflects the prayer rite for a specific place and time.4 And, even the base text for SRSG’s critical edition displays traces of late oriental influence.5 Here the Genizah prayer finds make a vital contribution. Untouched by later scribal hands, thousands of discarded pages from Genizah prayer books, largely belonging to the eastern branches of the Babylonian rite as practiced during the late first, and early second, millennium, reflect early versions of this rite. An identical situation applies to a third extant witness to the Babylonian rite: the siddur of Rabbi Solomon ben Nathan (SBN), which belongs to a later, secondary, eastern branch. Where its compiler, the twelfth-century scholar Solomon ben Nathan, was active remains undetermined. Although briefly noted by the bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider as early as the mid-nineteenth century, nevertheless,

2 D. Goldschmidt, Seder Rav Amram Gaon: Aruḵ u-muge al pi kitve yad u-defusim ʿim hašlamot, šinuye nusḥ aʾot u-mavo (Jerusalem, 1971). For a description of the manuscript, see pp. 11–13. 3 See M. Beit-Arié, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. I (A. Neubauer’s Catalogue), edited by R. A. May (Oxford, 1994), p. 171; I. Davidson, S. Assaf, and B. I. Joel, Siddur R. Saadja Gaon: Kitāb Ġāmi‘ Aṣ-Ṣalawāt Wat-Tasābīh (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1941). For a detailed description of the manuscript, see pp. 42–44. 4 See Goldschmidt, Seder Rav Amram Gaon, pp. 11–19. Louis Ginzberg hit the nail on the head when he commented, “It was used until it was used up”—L. Ginzberg, Geonica, vol. I: the Geonim and their Halakic Writings (New York, 1909), p. 124. 5 In the introduction to Davidson, Assaf and Joel, Siddur, p. 43, Joel notes the differences in nusaḥ between the complete MS Oxford and the nusaḥ of the Genizah fragments. Goldschmidt conjecturally attributes its divergence from the Cairo Genizah fragments to its Aleppine origins; see D. Goldschmidt, ‘The Prayerbook of Rav Saadiah Gaon’ (Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer 18 (1941–1942), pp. 336–342, reprinted in D. Golschmidt (ed.), On Jewish Liturgy: Essays on Prayer and Religious Poetry (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 413–420.

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129

SBN has received relatively little scholarly attention.6 A printed edition of SBN, published by Shmuel Ḥ agi, appeared just over a decade ago.7 Ḥ agi based his edition on two complete manuscripts of SBN, one from the Bodleian Library (MS Oxford Poc 262 [Neubauer 896]), and the other from the Vatican Library (MS Vatican Ebr. 497). Fortunately, the first manuscript was copied from an autograph; it is accordingly considered a sound witness to the text.8 But these manuscripts still do not provide a satisfactory picture of the text. To our good fortune, dozens and perhaps hundreds of Genizah documents have preserved parts of this prayer book and assist restoration of its missing parts and of the original nusaḥ . First and foremost they facilitate the restoration of lacunae in MS Oxford. This manuscript has large gaps in chapter 1, which contains most of the daily prayers, and in chapter 2, the Sabbath prayers. The Ḥ agi edition relies on MS Vatican—the only other non-Genizah witness to these prayers—to restore these missing sections. But MS Vatican is an extremely problematic witness to SBN’s nusaḥ (prayer rite). First of all, it is a relatively late manuscript, dated to the thirteenth/fourteenth century in the Jewish National and University Library catalogue, and to the early sixteenth century by Joseph Tobi.9 If Tobi is correct, this means a three-century gap between MS Vatican and MS Oxford, making MS Vatican even further removed from the original. In addition, the scribal skills of MS Vatican’s copyist leave much to be desired. The many large and small mistakes in the Šemone ʿEsre include the total omission of the Refuʾa (‘Health’) benediction, and the interpolation of the similar wording from the Benedictions after Meals in the Bone Yerušalayim (‘Builder of Jerusalem’) benediction, among others. The language of the Šemone ʿEsre in MS Vatican of SBN compellingly illustrates the changes in wording found in early siddurim in constant 6 M. Steinschneider, ‘Al devar sidduro shel R. Šelomo b. R. Natan al-Sijilmasi’, Kerem Ḥ emed 9 (1856), pp. 37–42; and see J. Tobi, ‘Sidduro šel R. Šelomo ben Natan mi-Sijilmasa: ʿIyyunim Rišonim’, in Z. Malachi (ed.), A.M. Habermann Memorial Volume (Hebrew; Lod, 1983), pp. 345–60; S. Zucker with E. Wust, ‘The Oriental Origin of “Siddur R. Šelomo b. R. Natan” and Its Erroneous Ascription to North Africa’ (Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer 64 (1992–1993), pp. 737–50. 7 S. Ḥ agi, Siddur Rabbenu Šelomo b. R. Natan . . . Av bet din min ha-ʿir Sijilmasa (Jerusalem, 1995). 8 See Tobi, ‘Sidduro šel R. Šelomo ben Natan’, p. 347; Zucker and Wust, ‘The Oriental Origin’, p. 738. 9 Tobi, ‘Sidduro šel R. Šelomo ben Natan’, p. 348.

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use by later generations. As compared to the Genizah witnesses, which exhibit a significant degree of agreement among themselves, the nusaḥ of the Šemone ʿEsre in MS Vatican witnesses manifold differences from the Genizah texts. Closer scrutiny of MS Vatican discloses affinities between its ʿAmida nusaḥ and the Persian rite; for example, the phrase '‫ רם ומשל על כל וכו‬in the Avot (Patriarchs) benediction, and ‫ותחזינה‬ '‫ עיננו עין בעין וכו‬in the ʿAvoda (Temple Service) benediction,10 among many others.11 This last finding is consistent with Tobi’s conjecture that MS Vatican was copied in Akra, Kurdistan.12 As a rule, MS Vatican is not a trustworthy witness to SBN’s prayer rite. The versions of the daily prayers in the printed versions based on this manuscript, the ʿAmida especially, are unreliable. Consultation of the Genizah findings and their use to reconstruct a sounder version of SBN’s ʿAmida is our only recourse. To illustrate the vital contribution of Cairo Genizah fragments to the restoration of SBN’s ʿAmida nusaḥ , I present the versions of two benedictions, Birkat ha-Minim (Benediction against the Sectarians) and Birkat Modim (Thanksgiving). This presentation also highlights the weaknesses of MS Vatican and of the printed edition. The Genizah nusaḥ of SBN found below is based on MS London, British Library Or. 12378.6, which contains the full text of the ʿAmida,13 alongside reliance, where necessary, on other Genizah documents. I begin with a comparative table of the nusaḥ of Birkat ha-Minim:

10 Ḥ agi recorded ‫רב ומושל‬. This is but one of many examples of the inaccurate copying in this edition. 11 Cf. S. Tal, The Persian Jewish Prayer Book: a Fascsimile Edition of MS Adler ENA 23. With Introduction and Notes (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 12, 15. 12 Tobi, ‘Sidduro šel R. Šelomo ben Natan’, p. 347. 13 This manuscript was copied in an oriental semi-cursive hand. Dr Edna Engel of the Hebrew Palaeography Project sets a conjectural thirteenth-to-fourteenth-century date for its copying. A brief description of the manuscript is found in the Jewish National and University Library catalogue, where attention was already drawn to the different wording of Birkat ha-Minim here and in the printed edition. On the other hand, it is necessary to correct the note there regarding exiting backwards at the conclusion of the Prayer. But, with respect to the annotations accompanying the ʿAmida, we must note that MS Vatican is very close to the Genizah texts. For the prayer nusaḥ im, the converse is true. I thank Avi Shmidman for bringing this manuscript to my attention.

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131

3

2

1

JTS ENA 23 (Persian)

Vatican Ebr. 497 (SBN)

London, BL Or. 12378.6 (SBN)

‫למשומדים ולמינים ולזדים‬ ‫למשמודים ולמינים‬ ‫למשומדים‬ ‫ולכופרים ולרשעים‬ ‫ולזידים‬ ‫אל תהי להם תקוה ותאוה‬ ‫אל תהי להם תקוה‬ ‫אל תהי תקוה‬ ‫ומלכות זדון מהרה תעקר ומלכות זדון מהרה תעקר ומלכות זדון במהרה תעקר‬ ‫ותשבר ותכניע ותאביד‬ ‫ותשבר ותכניע ותאביד‬ ‫ותשבר בימינו‬ ‫איבינו במהרה כרגע‬ ‫והנצרים והמינים כרגע‬ ‫יאבדו‬ ‫יאבדו‬ ‫וכל אויבי עמך ישראל‬ ‫והזדים‬ ‫וכל אויבי עמך וצורריהם‬ ‫וצרריהם במהרה יכרתו‬ ‫מהרה יכרתו‬ ‫מהרה יכרתו וישברו‬ ‫ישמדו ויאבדו‬ ‫ואל תתן תקומה לכל ואל תתן תקומה לכל אויבי‬ ‫נפשנו‬ ‫אויבי נפשנו וצררנו‬ ‫בא"י שובר אויבים ומכניע‬ ‫בא"י שובר רשעים‬ ‫בא"י שובר רשעים‬ ‫זדים‬ ‫ומכניע זדים‬ ‫ומכניע זדים‬ The nusaḥ of Birkat ha-Minim as attested by MS London, British Library, found in the right-hand column of the table, has two other Genizah witnesses (Cambridge University Library, T-S AS 103.277 joined with T-S AS 105.103, and New York, JTS, ENA 694.5–6). This threefold testimony indisputably preserves SBN’s nusaḥ of this benediction.14 Many other siddurim from the Genizah share this wording of Birkat ha-Minim and, as compared to contemporary eastern witnesses to the Babylonian rite, SBN’s nusaḥ of the benediction displays no unique features.15 In contrast to the Genizah fragments, the text of MS Vatican, which appears in the middle column, exhibits reworking and textual corruption. In addition to reversing letters in the first word, the copyist

14 Only one copy of SBN from the Genizah, Cambridge University Library, T-S NS 150.17, has different wording:

‫למשומדים אל תהי תקוה והמנים והמלשנים כולם כרגע יאבדו וכל אויבי עמך יכרתון‬ ‫ומלכות זדון תעקר ותשבר ותכניע בימינו )וכל אויבי( ברוך אתה יי שובר רשעים ומכניע‬ ‫זדים‬

However, because the text shows evidence of reworking in several places, this manuscript is not an entirely reliable source for SBN’s nusaḥ . Its erasure of ‫ וכל אויבי‬from the end of the benediction indicates that its scribe had a different nusaḥ in front of him. 15 U. Ehrlich and R. Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts of the Birkat Haminim’, HUCA 76 (2007), pp. 63–112.

1 2 3 4 5 6

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inserted the ‘enemies’ (‫ )אויבים‬from line 4 in the previous line— instead of ‫—הנוצרים והמינים‬and replaced it with ‫והזדים‬. The word ‫ מינים‬has moved to the beginning of the benediction, and ‫ נוצרים‬has disappeared completely. The table also illustrates the relative affinity between MS Vatican’s nusaḥ and the Persian one found in the lefthand column: the addition of further synonyms after ‫ משומדים‬and the word ‫ להם‬in line 1, as well as the addition of ‫ ותכניע ותאביד‬in line 2, and of the entire phrase found in line 5. This similarity supports the above-noted suggestion that MS Vatican was reworked in line with a nusaḥ close to that of the Persian rite.16 According to the Genizah evidence, SBN does not belong to the trend refraining from explicit mention of ‫ נוצרים‬in this benediction, a trend that originated in one of the branches of the early Babylonian rite and intensified in European rites even prior to the implementation of official censorship.17 MS London, British Library, preserves SBN’s original wording for the Modim benediction as well. This is in contrast to MS Vatican, which not only contains an obvious corruption,18 but also reworks the original version into a fairly typical eastern Babylonian nusaḥ . 4

2

1

3

Oxford, Marsh 90 (Aleppo)

Vatican Ebr. 497 (SBN)

British Library Or. 12378.6 (SBN)

Antonin 1005.2–3 (Palestinian rite)

‫מודים אנחנו לך‬ ‫שאתה הוא ייי‬ ‫אלהינו ואלהי‬ ‫אבותינו‬

‫על טובותיך‬ ‫אשר מעולם ועל‬ ‫חסדיך רחמיך‬ ‫אשר מימי קדם‬

No.

‫מודים אנחנו לך מודים אנחנו לך מודים אנחנו לך‬ ‫שאתה הוא ייי‬ ‫אתה הוא יי אלהינו שאתה הוא יי‬ ‫אלהינו ואלהי‬ ‫אלהינו ואלהי‬ ‫ואלהי אבותינו‬ ‫אבותינו לעולם ועד‬ ‫אבותינו‬ ‫על טובותיך‬ ‫אשר מעולם‬ ‫ועל חסדיך‬ ‫ורחמיך אשר‬ ‫מימי קדם‬

‫על טובותיך‬ ‫אשר מעולם ועל‬ ‫חסדיך ורחמיך‬ ‫אשר מימי קדם‬

16 The affinity between MS Vatican and the Persian rite is evident in line 3 as well. Both rites refrain from mention of ‫ הנוצרים‬and add ‫ המינים‬to the list of evildoers in the benediction’s opening. MS Vatican preserves the curse ‫ כרגע יאבדו‬but its subject is now line 4’s enemies (‫ )אויבים‬and not the ‫ נוצרים‬or ‫ מינים‬as in the original. Line 4 contains a reworking of the benediction for which I have no explanation. 17 Ehrlich and Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts’, pp. 72–98. 18 In line 3 the scribe wrote the word ‫ ורחמיך‬twice.

1

2

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‫)‪Table (cont.‬‬ ‫‪No.‬‬

‫‪3‬‬

‫‪1‬‬

‫‪2‬‬

‫‪4‬‬

‫‪Antonin 1005.2–3‬‬ ‫)‪(Palestinian rite‬‬

‫‪British Library‬‬ ‫‪Or. 12378.6‬‬ ‫)‪(SBN‬‬

‫‪Vatican Ebr. 497‬‬ ‫)‪(SBN‬‬

‫‪Oxford, Marsh 90‬‬ ‫)‪(Aleppo‬‬

‫על חיינו המסורים‬ ‫ועל חיינו‬ ‫המסורים בידך בידך על נשמתינו‬ ‫מלכינו הפקודת‬ ‫ועל נשמותינו‬ ‫מלכנו הפקודות לך על נסיך וטוביך‬ ‫ורחמיך וחסדיך‬ ‫לך ועל נסיך‬ ‫ורחמיך‬ ‫וטוביך‬

‫ועל חיינו המסורים‬ ‫בידיך ועל‬ ‫נשמותינו מלכינו‬ ‫הפקודות לך ועל‬ ‫נסיך ונפלאותיך‬ ‫וטוביך ורחמיך‬ ‫וחסדיך‬ ‫שבכל עת ועת ערב‬ ‫ובוקר וצהרים‬ ‫הטוב כי לא כלו‬ ‫רחמיך והמרחם‬ ‫כי לא יתמו חסדיך‬ ‫מעולם‬ ‫ועל כולם יתברך‬ ‫>יתרומם< ישתבח‬ ‫שמך וזכרך מלכינו‬ ‫לעולם ועד‬ ‫כל החיים יודוך‬ ‫סלה באמת‬ ‫ויהללו לשמך כי‬ ‫טוב האל הטוב‬

‫‪3‬‬

‫שבכל עת ערב‬ ‫ובקר‬

‫שבכל יום עת ערב‬ ‫ובקר‬ ‫הטוב כי לא כלו‬ ‫רחמיך והמרחם כי‬ ‫לא תמו חסדיך‬

‫ועל כולם יתברך‬ ‫ויתרומם שמך‬ ‫וזכרך מלכנו‬ ‫לעולם ועד‬ ‫כל החיים יודוך‬ ‫סלה באמת‬ ‫אל ההודיות‬

‫ועל כולם תתברך‬ ‫ותתרמם ותתיחד‬ ‫לעד מלא רחמים‬ ‫רבים‬ ‫וכל החיים יודוך‬ ‫סלה באמת‬ ‫חי העולמים בעל‬ ‫הרחמים כי יחיד‬ ‫אתה ואין זולתך‬

‫‪4‬‬

‫‪5‬‬

‫‪6‬‬

‫אם אמרנו מטה‬ ‫רגלינו חסדך ייי‬ ‫יסעדנו‬ ‫בא"י הטוב לך‬ ‫להודות‬

‫בא"י הטוב שמך‬ ‫ולך נאה להודות‬

‫בא"י הטוב שמך‬ ‫ולך נאה להדות‬

‫בא"י הטוב שמך‬ ‫ולך נאה להודות‬

‫‪As the table illustrates, the nusaḥ of both MS London, British Library,‬‬ ‫‪(col. 1) and MS Vatican (col. 2) is similar for the benediction’s open‬‬‫‪ing (line 1), and for its continuation (from line 3 to the end). Although‬‬ ‫‪they vary slightly in length, both these versions, minus line 2, clearly‬‬ ‫‪belong to the Babylonian rite.19‬‬ ‫‪However, line 2 of MS London, British Library contains an addition‬‬ ‫‪missing from MS Vatican. This addition reflects a typical Palestinian‬‬ ‫‪19‬‬ ‫‪ Y. Luger, The Weekday Amidah in the Cairo Genizah (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001),‬‬ ‫‪p. 186.‬‬

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nusaḥ attested in a number of Palestinian siddurim (MSS St. Petersburg, Evr. III B 1005.2–3; Cambridge, University Library, T-S 8H24.5, T-S NS 154.11, T-S NS 235.58, and T-S NS 235.157a), as well as in the opening of Palestinian piyyuṭim based on the Modim benediction (e.g., Cambridge, University Library, Add.3160.6, Or.1081 1.54, T-S 8H14, T-S Arabic 34.132, T-S H5.2, T-S NS J505).20 Testimony to this wording’s Palestinian provenance comes from comparison of MS London, British Library (col. 1, line 2) to the nusaḥ of this benediction from an important Palestinian siddur published by the late Professor Ezra Fleischer, which appears in the table’s right-hand column (col. 3, line 2).21 Conventional thinking might lead to the erroneous conclusion that MS London, British Library, witnesses a copyist’s chance fusion of the Palestinian and the Babylonian wording. But, this is unquestionably Rabbi Solomon ben Nathan’s nusaḥ , as preserved almost word for word in each of the four additional Genizah fragments of SBN containing this benediction (MS London, British Library, Or. 5557 Z 23–24; Cambridge University Library, T-S 13H1.3, T-S NS 150.44, T-S AS 103.104). It is also attested in MS Oxford, in the New Year evening prayer (fol. 34–35; cf. Ḥ agi 1995, 45), and in the wording of the benediction with the addition of ʿAl ha-Nissim on Hanukkah (fol. 64).22 Actually, like MS Oxford, MS Vatican contains the combined Palestinian-Babylonian nusaḥ in the latter places, albeit with some changes (fols 62, 115–16). This evidence clearly indicates that Rabbi Solomon ben Nathan systematically fixed this unique, mixed version of the Modim benediction. Its Palestinian opening and Babylonian continuation are a factor to be considered in any discussion of where this siddur was created and of what twelfth-century setting might have accommodated the fixing of a mixed nusaḥ by such a prominent scholar. The scholarly consensus generally identifies Sijilmasa, in southern Morocco, as the site of Rabbi Solomon’s activity. But some fifteen years ago, Shlomo Zucker23 challenged the prevailing assumption of this or some other North African

20 E. Fleischer, ‘Studies in the Problems Relating to the Liturgical Function of the Types of Early Piyyuṭ’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 40 (1970–1971), pp. 41–63. 21 E. Fleischer, ‘The “Tetragrammaton Siddur”: a Contribution to the Study of the Šabbat and the Šabbat Roš Ḥ odeš Liturgy of Ereṣ Israel’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 69 (2000), pp. 303–40 (335). 22 Cf. Ḥ agi, Siddur Rabbenu Šelomo b. R. Natan, pp. 73–74. 23 Zucker and Wust, ‘The Oriental Origin’.

the contribution of genizah texts

135

location for the compilation of Rabbi Solomon’s siddur.24 Grounding his argument both in his identification of all the manuscripts of SBN, including MS Oxford—which was copied from an autograph—as eastern, and in some aspects of the siddur’s contents, he suggests that it was composed in the east, or more precisely, in western Persia.25 The Palestinian influence evidenced by the Modim benediction strengthens Zucker’s claim of an eastern origin for this siddur.26 Some of the Palestinian prayer customs transmitted to Diaspora communities in the east outside Babylonia were partially or fully preserved over long periods of time.27 The most profound influence of the Palestinian prayer rite is visible in the Aleppine one: ‘Of all the prayer rites that survived until the age of print, this rite is the largest and most authentic “storehouse” of Palestinian customs, and should be seen as a late representative of the early Palestinian rite’.28 Fleischer noted, for example, the Aleppine rite’s absorption of the Palestinian custom of reciting a special psalm before the Sabbath and holiday evening prayers.29 But the Aleppine rite was not the only one to adopt this custom; it is noted in SBN, where Rabbi Solomon ben Nathan reports that it is practiced

24 Tobi, ‘Sidduro shel R. Shelomo ben Natan’, p. 347. This is also the assumption made by the SBN’s editor in the printed edition (Ḥ agi, Siddur Rabbenu Šelomo b. R. Natan). See also Reif, A Jewish Archive, p. 16 and 348. 25 Zucker and Wust, ‘The Oriental Origin’. Although Mordechai A. Friedman rejects one of Zucker’s main contentions, the rest remain uncontested; see M. A. Friedman, ‘A Note on Where Nathan b. Solomon’s Siddur Was Composed’ (Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer 68 (supplement volume; 1998), pp. 151–54. At the end of his article Friedman writes ‘an addition at the time of proof-reading’ and suggests, on the basis of MS JTS ENA 3063.7, that SBN’s family (but not SBN himself ) comes from Gubail in the north of Beirut. See also M. Ben-Sasson, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800–1057 (Jerusalem, 1996), p. 177, where he leans toward accepting an eastern provenance for SBN. 26 Another example of Palestinian influence, noted by Friedman, is the ketubba by proxy form cited in SBN, chap. 28, which juxtaposes elements typical of both the Palestinian and Babylonian ketubba traditions; see M. A. Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine: a Cairo Geniza Study (2 vols; Tel Aviv, 1981), vol. II, pp. 114–129. 27 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. II, pp. 6ff notes a number of cities in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in which two synagogues operated, one following the rite of the Palestinian yešiva, and the other, of the Babylonian yešivot. In several of these cities, the Palestinian synagogue was the larger of the two until the eleventh century. It is also likely that some prayer rites showed the influence of both rites, both during and after this period. 28 E. Fleischer, Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals: As Portrayed in the Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1988), p. 202 n. 207. 29 Fleishcher, Eretz-Israel Prayer, pp. 202ff.

136

uri ehrlich

in a ‘few places’ or by ‘a few individuals’.30 SBN and the Aleppine minhag also share the same Palestinian wording for the Modim benediction’s opening. A comparison of line 2 in both siddurim (columns 1 and 4) illustrates the striking similarity between the two. Naturally, the partial affinity between SBN and the Aleppine prayer rite suggested here requires further investigation for the siddur in its entirety. It does, however, strengthen somewhat Zucker’s revolutionary proposal calling for recognition of SBN’s attribution to the eastern prayer rite. These two brief examples provide a glimpse of the unmistakable contribution made by Genizah texts to the reconstruction of early prayer rites, in this instance, of SBN. Genizah texts not only shed significant light on the body of the prayer rite found in this siddur, they also facilitate restoration of the portions missing from MS Oxford in particular.

Bibliography M. Beit-Arié, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. I (A. Neubauer’s Catalogue), edited by R. A. May (Oxford, 1994). M. Ben-Sasson, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800–1057 (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1996). I. Davidson, S. Assaf, and B.I. Joel, Siddur R. Saadja Gaon: Kitāb Ġāmi‘ Aṣ-Ṣalawāt Wat-Tasābīh (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1941). U. Ehrlich and R. Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts of the Birkat Haminim’, HUCA 76 (2007), pp. 63–112. E. Fleischer, ‘Studies in the Problems Relating to the Liturgical Function of the Types of Early Piyyuṭ’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 40 (1970–1971), pp. 41–63. ——, Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals: as Portrayed in the Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1988). ——, ‘The “Tetragrammaton Siddur”: a Contribution to the Study of the Šabbat and the Šabbat Rosh Ḥ odeš Liturgy of Ereṣ Israel’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 69 (2000), pp. 303–340. M. A. Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine: a Cairo Geniza Study (2 vols; Tel Aviv, 1981). ——, ‘A Note on Where Nathan b. Solomon’s Siddur Was Composed’ (Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer 68 (supplement volume; 1998), pp. 151–154. L. Ginzberg, Geonica, vol I: the Geonim and Their Halakic Writings (New York, 1909). S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993).

30

Ḥ agi, Siddur Rabbenu Šelomo b. R. Natan, pp. 30, 44, and passim.

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D. Goldschmidt, Seder Rav Amram Gaon: Aruḵ u-muge al pi kitve yad u-defusim im hašlamot, šinuye nusḥ aʾot u-mavo (Jerusalem, 1971). ——, ‘The Prayerbook of Rav Saadiah Gaon’ (Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer 18 (1941–1942), pp. 336–342, reprinted in D. Goldschmidt (ed.), On Jewish Liturgy: Essays on Prayer and Religious Poetry (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 413–20. S. Ḥ agi, Siddur Rabbenu Šelomo b. R. Natan . . . Av bet din min ha-ʿir Sijilmasa (Jerusalem, 1995). Y. Luger, The Weekday Amidah in the Cairo Genizah (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001). S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000). ——, ‘The Importance of the Cairo Genizah for the Study of the History of Prayer’ (Hebrew), Kenishta 1 (2001), pp. 43–52. ——, Problems with Prayers: Studies in the Textual History of Early Rabbinic Literature (Berlin, 2006) M. Steinschneider, ‘ ʿAl devar sidduro šel R. Šelomo b. R. Natan alSijilmasi’, Kerem Ḥ emed 9 (1856), pp. 37–42.

GENIZAH DOCUMENTS AS LITERARY PRODUCTS Miriam Frenkel

The Cairo Genizah offers a rich and variegated collection of writings, which were traditionally classified by Genizah researchers and librarians into several categories, naturally corresponding to modern Western classifications. The main division is between the ‘literary Genizah’ and the ‘documentary Genizah’. The term ‘literary Genizah’ refers to books or to fragments from books, while the ‘documentary Genizah’ sources were sorted according to their function into court depositions, correspondence, bills, inventories, and the like. As with any other classification system, some types fit no rubric and were classified as ‘half documentary and half literary’. These included halakhic responsa and the historical scrolls (megillot).1 Nevertheless, the Genizah people themselves were probably unfamiliar with these categorisations. Furthermore, such methodological distinctions between categories of texts are not justified and may even hinder our efforts to understand the Genizah society. If we hope to understand this society properly and deeply, and especially if we wish to understand the moods and states of mind of its people, we should take into consideration that almost every text is a structured text. In a broader sense, we can view all Genizah material as literature, the product of the intersection of culture, society, ideology, and power. When defined thus, literature comes to encompasses all written texts in a given society. If we approach Genizah documents in this way, if we see them as literary products worthy of literary analysis, no longer will they be mere depositories of information, but they will also reveal social norms and ideological perceptions as well as patterns of culture.

1 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. I, pp. 9–14; E. Ashtor, A History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria Under the Mamluks (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970), vol. III, pp. 9–10 (Hebrew); M. R. Cohen, Jewish Self Government in Medieval Egypt (Princeton, 1980), pp. 44–49.

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In this article, I will use the tools of literary analysis to assess three different types of Genizah documents: a personal letter, a court record, and an historical scroll. My analysis will demonstrate how releasing these texts from their strict categories can help us to understand better the predominant mindsets and world views of this society.

1. Ms. Sassoon 713 Dated January 1148, Ms. Sassoon 713 contains a long letter written by a Jewish merchant, Solomon ben Joseph ha-Sijilmāsī (from Sijilmāsa, in South Morocco), to his father who was returning from India. Solomon wrote in Fustat, Egypt, and recounted the narratives that eyewitnesses of the events of 1145 had told him. The year 1145 was a disastrous one for the Jews of the Maghreb. ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, the legitimate successor to Muḥammad ibn Tūmart, who had been the founding father of the militant fundamentalist movement of Muwaḥḥidun, left his fortress Tinmilal in the Atlas Mountains and embarked on a broad operation of conquest, culminating in his becoming the sole ruler of the vast territories of the Maghreb. This was a rare moment in the history of medieval Islam: under his rule, contrary to the basic Muslim conception of ḏimma, the Jews were no longer allowed to practice their monotheistic religion, but were forced to choose between conversion to Islam or immediate death. Father and son were both of Moroccan origin, as we can deduce from their names. As such, they were familiar with the country and were interested to learn in accurate detail what had happened.2 Personal and familial letters in the Genizah society held crucial importance as means of delivering information. Although convention dictated that letters be written to a particular recipient, they were never intended exclusively for the eyes of the addressee. The writer of the letter understood that his personal letter, generally not placed in an envelope, might be read by many other people along its route before it arrived to the addressee. After delivery, it was expected that the addressee would choose to share it with a range of people from 2 Published by W. H. Z. Hirschberg, ‘The Almohad Persecution and the India Trade’ (Hebrew) in S. Ettinger, S. Baron, B. Dinur and Y. Heilfrin (eds), Itzhaq Baer Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem, 1960), pp. 134–153. Partial English translation by S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. V, pp. 60–61.

genizah documents as literary products

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his social milieu, showing it to anyone who might find it interesting. While not considered a distinct literary genre, these letters frequently contained whole sections of structured literary writing concealed in their text. Sandwiched between segments of unstructured writing about contemporary issues can be found coherent and well-fashioned passages. Such a passage would consciously make use of rhetorical tools and fixed formulas at its start and end, clearly marking it as an independent literary division completely embedded in the letter. Solomon ben Joseph’s letter contains a typical example of such a passage. In the midst of common news about ordinary commercial and family matters, we find a distinct and clear literary section. This section constitutes a reaction to the catastrophic events that occurred a few years before its writing: You certainly wish to know the news from the Maghreb, ‘the ears of all who hear about it will tingle’ [Jeremiah 19:4]. People, distinguished persons as well as common people have arrived, among them Jews, who were present at the battlefield. They reported that ʿAbd al-Muʾmin the Sūsī [from the Sūs region in Western Morocco] attacked the Amir Tāšfīn in Wahrān [Oran], besieged him, killed his soldiers, killed him, and crucified his body. Then ʿAbd al-Muʾmin conquered Tilimsān and killed everyone in the town, except those who apostatised [= afšaʾū]. When the news reached the people of Sijilmāsa, they revolted against their Amir, declared themselves in public as opponents of the Murabīṭun [Almoravids], drove them out of town, and sent messengers to ʿAbd al-Muʾmin surrendering it to him. After ʿAbd al-Muʾmin entered Sijilmāsa, he assembled the Jews and offered them to apostatise [= al-pišʾut]. They were with him for seven months under enticement. During all this time, they fasted and prayed. After this, a commander, one of his commanders, arrived and demanded their conversion. They refused, and a hundred and fifty Jews were killed, sanctifying the name of God. ‘The Rock—his deeds are without blemish and all his ways are justice’ [Deuteronomy 32:4]. ‘Blessed be the true judge, whose judgements are just and true,’ etc. The King’s word has power; who may say to him ‘what are you doing’ [Ecclesiastes 8:4]. The others apostatised. The first of the apostates was Joseph b. ʿImran, the judge of Sijilmāsa, ‘Because of this I lament and wail,’ etc. [Micah 1:8]. Before ʿAbd al-Muʾmin entered Sijilmāsa, when the population rose against the Almoravids, a number of Jews, about two hundred, took refuge in the city’s fortress. Among them were Mar Yaʿqūb and ʿAbbūd, my paternal uncles, Mar Judah ben Farḥūn and his brother. They are now in Derʿa, after everything they had was taken from them. What happened to them afterwards we do not know. Of all the countries of the Almoravids there remained in the hands of all dissenters only Derʿa and Miknasa [Meknes]. As to the congregations of the West, because of our sins, they all perished. There has not

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miriam frenkel remained a single one who bears the name ‘Jew’ between Bejaya [Bougie] and the Gate of Gibraltar. Those who were killed—were killed, and those who apostatised—apostatised. And on the day of this letter news has arrived that Bejaya has been taken and other matters which . . . At ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s conquest of Fez, 100,000 souls were killed, and that of Marrakesh 120,000. I have informed you about this. This is not hearsay, but a report of people who eyewitnessed the events. I have informed you about this. Concerning other issues . . .3

This section of the letter is visibly distinct from its other sections. It opens with a clear declaration about special news [aḵbār] to be reported: ‘You certainly wish to know the news.’ This is a common formula frequently used in Arabic letters to separate the formulaic introductory opening from the informative main text of the letter. Similarly, the letter ends with the appropriate formula: ‘I have informed you about this [= aʿraftūka ḏālika]’. The next line announces the beginning of a new topic—‘concerning other issues [= wa-ammā ḡayr ḏālika]’—and proceeds to discuss totally different matters. Aḵbār, the term used for ‘news,’ can indicate almost any information that may interest the reader, be it the latest currency rate or a recounting of dramatic events. At this stage in the letter, the gradual tension has begun to build. While the reader is anxious to know the news, he has no idea yet what it might be. Only in the next line does the reader begin to grasp the tragic nature of the events. The allusion is made through a biblical citation: ‘the ears of all who hear about it will tingle.’ The literate addressee is expected to know the continuation of Jeremiah’s words: ‘because the people have forsaken me’ [Jeremiah 19:4]. By now, the reader understands that the news concerns a national disaster, as he associates Jeremiah’s words with the verses that discuss the massacre that occurred at Topeth, the ‘Valley of Slaughter’ [Jeremiah 19:6]. Not only does the biblical citation prepare the reader for the tragic news, it also prepares him to accept it serenely as part of divine judgment: ‘because the people have forsaken me.’ Whatever the calamity may be, it is by definition a just punishment for the sins committed by the people who abandoned God. What follows is a detailed description of the events. At first glance, it reads like an informative and dry account, rendering the sequence

3

This is a revised version of Goitein’s translation.

genizah documents as literary products

143

of occurrences in an objective way, with accurate details about personal names, places, quantities, and numbers. While it seems to be an objective report, a cautious deconstruction can reveal its hidden message. The order of accounts is significant. For example, when the writer recounts that ‘ʿAbd al-Muʾmin conquered Tilimsān and killed every one in the town, except those who apostatised [= afšaʾū],’ the main subject is those killed to sanctify the Lord, while the people who saved their own lives by converting to Islam are mentioned only at the end of the sentence in an insignificant and marginal mention. These apostates are introduced as exceptions, ‘except those who apostatised’. What seems to be a realistic style is not just a transparent representation of events, but rather a description loaded with significance in which the writer takes a clear stance. ‘After ʿAbd al-Muʾmin entered Sijilmāsa, he assembled the Jews and offered them to apostatise [= al-pišʾut]. They were with him for seven months under enticement. During all this time, they fasted and prayed.’ In this passage the writer deliberately uses the number seven as a typological number. Seven months represents the liminal period between life and death, between staying Jewish and converting to Islam; it contains an interlude of fasting and prayer in an attempt to revoke the edict. ‘After this, a commander, one of his commanders, arrived and demanded their conversion’. While ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, the chief foe, is mentioned explicitly by name in the larger passage, his name carries no words of restriction, blame, or curse. Moreover, the writer brings into play an anonymous mediator, the commander who actually executed the decree. In this way, he further removes the blame from ʿAbd al-Muʾmin. Although it seems as if there is no one to blame in this story, the elided biblical verses point at the true guilty parties; ‘because of our sins’, says the biblical verse, proclaiming the guilt of the sinning people. Those who died in sanctifying the Lord atoned for their sins. The writer connects the tragedy to verses of theodicy that justify the judgement of God: ‘The Rock—his deeds are without blemish and all his ways are justice;’ ‘Blessed be the true judge, whose judgements are just and true’; ‘The King’s word has power; who may say to him, what are you doing’; and so forth. This horrible account contains within it a message of resolve and acceptance: the catastrophe was a punishment for the sins committed by the people. For seven months the people faltered, but at last they chose the right path: resisting the temptation

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of conversion, they were killed to sanctify the Lord. The biblical verses of theodicy end the story with resolution. It is the numbers, ostensibly neutral elements, which fracture the harmony. The writer reports that 150 men were killed as martyrs for God. But without context, the precise number is actually meaningless. The reader has no idea of the scope of the tragedy. What percentage of the population did this number represent? Are the martyrs a vast majority, or just a small portion of the Jewish population? Although the quantitative meaning is obscure, the symbolic meaning of this number would be obvious to the medieval Jewish reader: it alludes to the great flood, when waters covered the earth for 150 days as a punishment for corruption and violence [Genesis 7:24]. 150 days separated the total destruction of mankind from the salvation of the few survivors in Noah’s ark. In our letter, the survivors are not those whose lives were saved at the cost of their conversion, but rather those 150 killed to sanctify the Lord. It is they whose souls were saved, who atoned for the sins of the people through their courageous deed, thus preventing a cosmic disaster.4 ‘The first of the apostates was Joseph b. ʿImrān, the judge of Sijilmāsa.’ While the commander who executed the killing remained anonymous, the converting judge is identified by full name, title, and function to make his identity unmistakeable. With the judge named and accused, his culpability is bewailed by a biblical verse, ‘because of this I lament and wail.’ When faced with righteous slaughter, the writer chose a phrase of consolation—‘Blessed be the true judge, whose judgements are just and true’—but when faced with conversion, he laments with the words of the prophet Micah. The learned reader easily associates these words with the previous verses in Micah, in which ‘the sins of the house of Israel’ are connected to the expected punishment: ‘I will make Samaria a heap in the open country . . . and all her idols I will lay waste; for from the hire of a harlot she gathered them, and to the hire of a harlot they shall return’ [Micah 1:1–7]. The referenced prostitutes are no doubt the apostates and the judge who showed them the way. ‘As to congregations of the West, because of our sins, they all perished. There has not remained a single one who bears the name “Jew”

4 It was Gershon Cohen who first understood the symbolic role of numerals in Jewish medieval literature. G. D. Cohen, ‘The Story of the Four Captives’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 29 (1960–1961), pp. 51–131.

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between Bijaya and the Gate of Gibraltar. Those who were killed— were killed and those who apostatised—apostatised.’ The news of the slaughter ended with comforting phrases of condolence, while the news of the apostasy is rendered in disrespectful and abrasive tones. The laconic dry report neither consoles nor calms; rather, it amplifies the horror of the tragedy of mass conversion. Although seemingly recounted as a minor report, a subsidiary event to the slaughter, the letter’s writer actually views the conversion to Islam as the main disaster, the more significant loss of life. Through discursive deconstruction of the text, we have seen that what initially seemed to be merely an informative and terse news account actually contained significant hidden messages. Through careful syntax, biblical citations and allusions, and symbolic numbers, all of which his readers presumably understood, Solomon ha-Kohen disclosed the attitude of his generation towards the new crypto-Jews. His message: those apostates who betrayed their original faith are guilty of defiling the collective Jewish identity and thus weakening communal solidarity. As such, they are directly responsible for the tragic fate of the Jewish communities in the Maghreb. Their decreed punishment is to be spiritually excised from the community, an eradication worse than physical death. The death of the martyrs who rejected conversion will bring about salvation, while the apostasy of the new renegades (pišʾut) will delay the redemption and thus cause a transcendental catastrophe. Such a mindset indicates only one attitude towards the apostates: complete negation and exclusion. Most scholars who study these particular events or research the more general attitude of Jews in Muslim lands towards the forcefully converted Jews [= anusim] tend to assume Maimonides’ tolerant and positive approach as typical of Jewish ideology.5 In his paradigmatic article Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sefardim, Gershon Cohen treats the seemingly different attitudes that European and Eastern Jews held toward anusim as indicating an essential disparity between these two streams of Judaism.6 S. D. Goitein mentions cases of

5 Maimonides, ‘The Epistle on the Sanctification of the Name’ (Hebrew), in Y. Shailat (ed.), Maimonidean Epistles (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 57–58. 6 G. D. Cohen, ‘Messianic postures of Ashkenazim and Sefardim (Prior to Shabbethai Zvi)’ in M. Kreutzberger (ed.), Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute (New York, 1967), pp. 117–156.

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converts to Islam who were employed by Jewish employees, emphasising the absence of any curses or derogatory remarks about renegades in the whole Genizah corpus.7 A literary analysis of this Genizah document indicates an opposing approach: a total rejection of the apostates and an inflexible denunciation of their contradictory way of life.

2. T-S 13J27.5 + T-S 13J13.13 These two Genizah fragments together form one legal document, a court transcript called a record of testimony8 [= ziḵron ʿedut], written in Jerusalem in the year 1030.9 Court records, many of which were found in the Genizah collection, are written evidences of legal validity submitted at the court [= bet din]. They were intended to document and preserve legal cases brought to court.10 Sometimes, as with this document, they recorded events and deeds considered of cardinal importance and thus meriting documentation and dissemination. Suzanne Fleischman has argued that in a medieval context, any written composition considered by its society to be worthy of preservation and dissemination can be studied as literature, the criterion not necessarily being its absolute linguistic or artistic merit, but rather its importance within its originating society.11 According to this broad definition, testimonies presented in court, recorded, and sometimes even read aloud in public ceremonies should be considered a literary monument that may reflect the society’s outlook. The following court record was recorded to document and announce a calamity that nearly happened but was ultimately averted. This testimony should be read in both synagogues Commemorative testimony Testimony of commemoration In the name of God

7

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, pp. 299–303. These documents are also called maʿase še-haya be-fanenu [= report of what has happened in our presence]. The Arabic term maḥ ḍar is also used. See Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 600, note 1. 9 The two separate fragments were rejoined and published by M. Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099) (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel Aviv, 1983), vol. II, no. 313. 10 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, pp. 19–37. 11 S. Fleischman, ‘Philology, Linguistics and the discourse of the Medieval Text’, Speculum 65 (1996), pp. 19–37. 8

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The chief judge, Joseph al-Sijilmāsī, while in Jerusalem, saw in his dream himself walking in the old cemetery in Ramla and meeting three persons standing with three Torah scrolls on which there were black cloths. He passed over them and went on. Then he returned to them, greeted them and said: ‘Who are you?’ They told him: ‘We are Moses, Aaron and Samuel.’ He prostrated in front of them and bowed because indeed he was full of fright and horror. They told him: ‘Arise and go down to Ramla and tell them to announce a verdict that within twelve days they should return to God, otherwise, awful disasters will befell upon them.’ He woke up, dressed and went to pray at the gate of Judah. His father joined him and they prayed together. When they finished their prayer, Joseph told his father about the dream he had. His father told him: ‘This is exactly the dream I had’ and he swore about it. They both went to Solomon ben Judah, the Head of the Jerusalem Yeshiva and told him about the dream. He told them: ‘For three consecutive nights I have seen this same dream.’ The chief judge, Joseph al-Sijilmāsī, went to Ramla and stayed at the synagogue of the Palestinians. He summoned the public and told them about the dream and ordered them to fast on the second day of the week and on the fifth day of the week. He sent Bišr, the cantor, to the synagogue of our colleagues, the Qaraites, and he told them about the dream. Then, this event, from which God has saved them, happened in Ramla. Let us hope that God will grant us a good ending. He will do it by his grace and his benevolence.

This document was supposed to record an important event, which was believed to be of paramount national significance, worthy of dissemination and preservation. For these purposes it was officially registered by court and obtained a status of legal testimony. Actually it tells about a miraculous dream. The dream was revealed simultaneously to several people warning them about imminent disaster, as a consequence of which they called the people to repent, thus saving them from what could be a terrible catastrophe. Not only does the story in this record recount a dream, but it uses dreamlike language and images to imitate the dynamic of dreams. Joseph al-Sijilmāsī walked in his dream. He encountered three mysterious figures, but ignored them and kept walking. Only at the end of the day, after leaving the figures behind, did Joseph return to examine the figures closely and discover who they really were. Then did he recognize the figures and listened to their message. The repressed message surfaces and becomes clear only after taking a long circular course, just like the dynamics of a dream. Another key image of the dream is the cemetery where the revelation takes place. The cemetery is a liminal area in which encounters between the living and the dead were believed to be possible. It

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is significant that the dream’s cemetery is described as being the old cemetery in the community. If one believes that the spirits of the dead inhabit the tombs where their bodies lie, then it is more suitable for the ancient dead, like Moses, Aaron and Samuel, to be seen in the old cemetery rather than in the new one. The document is replete with numbers: three mystical figures, three Torah scrolls, two and then three dreamers, three nights, two synagogues, and fasts on the second and fifth days. The numbers provide the text with credibility and confer a sense of authenticity. Moreover, the numbers mentioned are all arithmetically related: two, three, and their sum, five. This turns the story into a holistic harmony, in which each number and each detail is significantly related to the other to create a synchronized construction. While we can analyse the document’s symbols and hints, it remains an enigmatic piece of literature. What is most striking in this testimony may be the fact that it records an event that did not occur. Its goal was to perpetuate the miracle of prophetic revelation through dreams, rather than recounting any concrete historical event. Indeed, the main part of the text is dedicated to describing the dream itself and the way it appeared simultaneously to three different people. We know nothing about the real-world threatening event that almost happened, or anything about the circumstances of its annulment. The historical circumstances of the story are extremely vague and the testimony leaves many questions unanswered. Who and what threatened the peace of the Jewish communities? How was the threat removed? Did the danger disappear permanently or just temporarily? Did the disaster vanish entirely, or did it only partially vanish, on a smaller scale? In the narrative structure of the document, the calamity itself is placed to the side while the miraculous dream appears in the forefront. No doubt the modern reader finds it difficult to understand what function this text had in its society.12

12 Marina Rustow refers to this event in her recent book: M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008), pp. 292– 293. She identifies the event as ‘Ramla’s deliverance’ from the earthquake that shook Palestine in 1033. But, if this is the case, it is strange that the earthquake is not mentioned in the document at all. Nevertheless, the earthquake affected vast areas all over Palestine and not only Ramla, not to mention the fact that it actually caused many casualties and much destruction. Gil, Palestine, vol. I, pp. 329–330, and the Arabic sources he mentions there.

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I would like to suggest that the processes of telling, writing, reading, and disseminating of this story were designed to manage public feelings of fear and worry. Indeed, it reflects an interesting communal practice through which eleventh century Palestinian Jews would cope with mass phenomena of fear. We cannot deduce from the document whether the fear arose as the consequence of some concrete event or whether it was chronic societal fear, whether it was a constructed phobia or an historical phobia, to use Dominick La Capra’s terminology.13 What we do witness in this document is a ritual reconstruction of the narrative of miraculous salvation; the tranquil community is suddenly threatened by a menacing calamity. Through revelation, the leaders of the community are warned about it and inform the whole community. The community performs a series of atoning and mourning rites which succeed in annulling the threat. This is an adaptive reconstruction of the classical Jewish narrative of salvation, seen in the book of Esther, among other places.14 The ritual dimension of the narrative lies not only in the rites of fasting and praying, but also in re-enacting the narrative. Through retelling the well-known story, the community is given the opportunity to relive it once again. We can better understand this seemingly peculiar practice if we view it as a manifestation of a ‘repetition compulsion,’ an involuntary need, typical of trauma victims, to replay the traumatic scene over and over again.15 In this case, the compulsion to re-enact the trauma was manifested in a ritual repetition of the narrative of salvation.16

13

D. La Capra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, 2001). H. Y. Yerushalmi, Zakhor (Seattle, 1982), pp. 46–48. 15 J. L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery: the Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (London, 1994), pp. 41–42; S. Freud, ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ in J. Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols; London, 1953–1974), vol. XVIII, London 1955, pp. 7–64. 16 Marina Rustow interprets it as a ‘ritual setting that inverted the excommunication [of the Qaraites] drama four years earlier’. She understands the message of the document to be that ‘because the three congregations in Ramla: the Babylonians (of which Joseph al-Sijilmāsī was a prominent member), the Palestinians and the Qaraites joined together in penitential fasting . . . they survived the earthquake unharmed.’ Besides being a call for solidarity among the three congregations, Rustow understands the document also as serving particular political purposes of Joseph al-Sijilmāsī, who had attempted a few years earlier to secede from the authority of the Jerusalem Gaon. Rustow, Heresy, pp. 292–293. While I disagree with Rustow’s identification of the event with the earthquake of 1030, communal solidarity and personal political ambitions, as described and analysed by Rustow are for sure additional aspects included 14

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In his article, ‘What is Metaphysics?’ Martin Heidegger discusses the elusiveness of the experience of angst, describing it as an objectless fear, ‘Angst is indeed angst in the face of . . ., but not in the face of this or that thing’. La Capra has shown that an effective way to cope with this amorphous angst is by naming a definite object of fear, which makes it possible to control the emotions.17 This naming is precisely the mechanism used by the Jewish community in the story above. The community captured emotions of fear, either based in historical fact or societally constructed, and enclosed them in a narrative which it recounted and enacted. They attempted to capture the haunting spirits through revitalising a well-known plot, one maintained for generations as a narrative of salvation. Constructing such a narrative can be seen as a sort of general rehearsal in which the traditional defensive equipment could be tested. Traditional rites of atonement and mourning were checked in order to assess and prove their efficiency. By placing the monster of terror within well-defined boundaries, it could take concrete form and thus be vanquished in the recognised old ways. This record shows us that prophetic revelation through dreams was widely accepted in the Genizah society as a reliable source for knowing future events and coping with them. All the actors in this narrative were from the higher echelon—a Gaon, a chief judge, and a cantor— showing that belief in the authenticity of dreams was not merely folk culture of the common people, but rather was a pervasive deep-seated worldview common in all sections of society. We need not assume that this narrative was a cynical manipulation employed by the communal leaders. Although the dissemination of this court record probably served certain political interests, it had to rely on the deep conviction of all parties as to the validity of dreams.18

in this piece of literature. They should not exclude the more general interpretation offered here. 17 La Capra, Writing History, p. 57. 18 Moshe Gil’s assumption that ‘the Gaon certainly did not believe in miracles or dreams, but he nevertheless thought it proper to tell Joseph that he, too, had had this very dream for three nights’, i.e., so as not to offend him, does not seem to be plausible. M. Gil, A History of Palestine 634–1099 (Cambridge, 1992), §863, p. 680.

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3. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Heb. 2821, fol. 13–19 These four non-consecutive double folios contain the last parts of a long account of dramatic events, as related to the Jews of Baghdad in the first decades of the twelfth century. S. D. Goitein, who was the first to publish these fragments, defined the text as ‘a report,’ while Moshe Gil, who republished it later on, preferred to consider it ‘a copy of a story.’19 Since the beginning of the text is missing, we cannot learn from the title how the author may have perceived his work. We do have evidence from the closing words ‘and peace’ [= ve-šalom], a regular formula used in letters and epistles, that the text may have been written as some kind of epistle. However, the text is longer than any other known epistle. Its rhetoric more resembles that of an historical scroll: including many dialogues, it often employs direct speech in a way that suggests that it was meant to be read aloud publicly in a synagogue or in another public space. Since the text itself is too long and fragmentary to be cited in full in this article, I will provide a comprehensive summary. The work presents a drama with many figures and with a knotty plot. The plot itself seems somewhat circular, since its primary purpose is to explain the beginnings of the present situation. ‘The roots of this tribulation began with a bad man by the name of Abū l-Šujāʿ, cursed be he, and may the names of all villains be cursed.’20 It tells about a messianic vision revealed to a local girl, known only as ‘the daughter of Joseph, the doctor’: When she descended on a Thursday and announced that she had seen in her dream our Lord, Elijah, blessed be his name, and he told her,‘Go down to these people and tell them in my name that God the exalted has already made the salvation near and there is only . . . . left’.21

When hearing of this prophecy, the Sultan becomes infuriated that ‘the Jews go around and say: our kingdom has arrived, after it we will not permit any other kingdom.’22 He gives an order to gather all Jews and threatens to kill them ‘unless their prophet will be revealed or 19 S. D. Goitein, ‘A Report on Messianic Troubles in Baghdad in 1120–1121’, Jewish Quarterly Review 43 (1952), pp. 57–76; M. Gil, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Hebrew; 4 vols; Tel Aviv, 1997), vol. II, no. 87, pp. 228–236. 20 Goitein, ‘A Report’, p. 73 (f. 13b, lines 1–5). 21 Ibid., p. 74 (f. 14a, lines 10–15). 22 Ibid., p. 74 (f. 15b, lines 6–11).

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they will convert to Islam.’23 He also threatens to ‘burn the woman and to permit the slaughter of all Jews.’24 A certain Qadi plays a central role in the drama by trying to protect the Jews and prevent the Sultan from executing his plans. Other central figures include a villain named Abū l-Šujāʿ (literally ‘the brave one’); the Head of the Diaspora; the Nasi, Daniel ben David; a particular Jew who was jailed and then freed; and the prophet Elijah, who appeared to the Sultan himself.25 At the end of the complex plot, not only are the decrees annulled, but the poll tax [= jizya] for the Jews is also abolished by the Sultan. Despite its abolition, the Jews of the story decide to pay the tax. They chose to hand the money to: the viziers and to the heads of the leading families by way of a bribe, in order to avoid the expected attack by the Muslims when they would hear about the abolition of the tax, because they believed that paying the jizya is good for the Jews and if it is abolished they will encounter hardship.26

With the repeal of the taxes, the storyline comes to a particularly triumphant note; indeed, the Jews were not able to tolerate such good fortune. After this hyperbolic peak comes the moderating reaction of their taxpaying initiative, which restores the balance. The story ends where it started: order is re-established, life returns to its banal routine. The plot as described above conveys a clear anti-messianic approach: the messianic uprising in the story causes significant trouble for the Jews. It was only by the divine interference of the prophet Elijah that the Jews were rescued from the annihilation that was a potential consequence of this movement. The story’s moral is that Jews should endeavour to maintain their present ḏimmī status and to pay their jizya tax in order to maintain their secure lives. Any attempt to change their status would necessarily bring about hardship and calamity. This event, just like the two others mentioned above, is adapted from the familiar pattern of miracle and salvation, this continual retelling of the story of Esther.

23

Ibid., p. 75 (f. 16a, lines 7–8). Ibid., p. 76 (f. 18a, lines 6–7). 25 Gil has identified him as the son of the Wazir Rabib al-Dawlah Abu Mansur alHusain Ibn Abi Shuja’a (died 1119); Gil, In the Kingdom, vol. I, p. 419. 26 Goitein, ‘A Report’, p. 76 (f. 19a, lines 3–11). 24

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The aforementioned profusion of dialogues comes with many descriptions of physical gestures: . . . The head of Diaspora was in his house with his mother and with his disciples . . . there were ashes under their feet and they were standing in prayer, bending in fast crying and asking God the exalted to save Israel. He knocked on the door and they went out to meet him. When our Lord saw that he was saved, he prostrated down to earth and thanked God the exalted. He cried and so did every one that was with him. He raised his arms up to the sky and thanked God, the exalted: that you are saved yourself and that our salvation is near, if God wills . . . 27 . . . When the Caliph saw Elijah, he came up, but bended out of fear and respect . . . 28

The many dialogues and bodily gestures suggest that the story could have been recited in front of live audiences. It contains dramatic moments, such as the moment of salvation cited above. It also contains comic moments: when the self-contented Sultan ridicules the girl’s dream and orders her burned at the stake, the prophet Elijah, surrounded by flames, appears on the Sultan’s head like a naughty acrobat, while the Qadi stands stunned and deafened by astonishment. When read or recited aloud, these comic situations probably helped reduce tension and bring about relief and catharsis. The story is clearly crafted to give the Jewish reader a sense of empowerment. The reader is empowered when the weak succeeds in beating the strong and powerful (such as the aptly named Abū l-Šujāʿ’s), or when Elijah, the defender and patron of the Jews, ridicules the almighty Sultan and makes him seem helpless and frivolous. Scholars have debated whether this text testifies to a messianic movement among the early-twelfth-century Jews of Baghdad, as claimed by Goitein, or to a local event in which restrictions imposed on the Jews by the Muslim government were annulled, as understood by Gil.29 But a literary examination of the text discloses the clear anti-messianic message within it. It was likely recorded and disseminated not only to commemorate a historical event but more primarily to convey reservations against any messianic tendencies. Since messianic expectations were probably deeply rooted in the Jews of the time, this wariness could not be taught through a total negation of the revelation itself.

27 28 29

Ibid., p. 75 (f. 17a, lines 1–2; f. 17b, lines 1–10). Ibid., p. 76 (f. 18a, lines 13–14). See above n. 19.

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This is why the girl is portrayed in a favourable way and her visions are accepted as true and authentic. Nevertheless, this text delivers its anti-messianic message through the same strategy used in the former two cases: by shaping the story to fit the canonical narrative of disaster and salvation.

Conclusion When we analyse these three different texts using literary tools, we understand some crucial features of the Genizah society and the way it chose to cope with national calamities and crises. Joseph al-Sijilmāsī’s letter discloses a favourable attitude towards martyrdom and a determined repudiation of the forced converts; the court record offers a glimpse into the depth of endemic existential anxiety experienced by Mediterranean Jews; and the last document manifests anti-messianic sympathies. All three texts are contextualised within their culture. All are closely connected to canonical and familiar texts, mainly to biblical narrations and verses. Indeed, they are each constructed as links in a chain of ancient texts, all forming part of a collective memory. They each convey similar religious philosophies, echoing the biblical theology of sin and punishment, God’s wrath and his mercy. And they all prescribe similar ways of conduct: atonement, prayer, mourning, and fasting. Seeing the texts in their literary milieu enables the reader to enter a well-known semantic space and to identify meaningful patterns. When viewed in context, the given texts not only show prevalent worldviews; they also reveal key information on the state of literacy in their society. Context and intertextuality are comprehensible only in a literate society. On the other hand, the texts themselves testify that the written text was not the sole means of communication. Joseph al-Sijilmāsī’s letter mentions that oral rumours and reports preceded the written account. The court record was intended to be read aloud in several public places, and the third document contains many performative aspects and was likely recited in public. All three texts testify that orality and textuality are not necessarily consecutive stages in a society’s evolution, but are rather two parallel and complementary ways of communication and expression.

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Bibliography E. Ashtor, A History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria Under the Mamluks (Hebrew; 3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970). G. D. Cohen, ‘The Story of the Four Captives’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 29 (1960–1961), pp. 51–131. ——, ‘Messianic postures of Ashkenazim and Sefardim (Prior to Shabbethai Zvi)’ in M. Kreutzberger (ed.), Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute (New York, 1967), pp. 117–156. M. R. Cohen, Jewish Self Government in Medieval Egypt (Princeton, 1980). S. Fleischman, ‘Philology, Linguistics and the discourse of the Medieval Text’, Speculum 65 (1996), pp. 19–37. S. Freud, ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ in J. Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols; London, 1953–1974). M. Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099) (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel Aviv, 1983). ——, A History of Palestine 634–1099 (Cambridge, 1992). ——, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Hebrew; 4 vols; Tel Aviv, 1997). S. D. Goitein, ‘A Report on Messianic Troubles in Baghdad in 1120–1121’, Jewish Quarterly Review 43 (1952), pp. 57–76. ——, A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). J. L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery: the Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (London, 1994). D. La Capra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, 2001). M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008). Y. Shailat (ed.), Maimonidean Epistles (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1988). H. Y. Yerushalmi, Zakhor (Seattle, 1982).

JUDAH HALEVI ON WRITING THE KUZARI: RESPONDING TO A HERETIC Mordechai A. Friedman

A Genizah letter (ENA NS 1.5, see plate 7) written in Judaeo-Arabic by Judah ha-Levi contains unique information on the writing of his famous theological opus, the Kuzari, which he calls the ‘Khazarī Book’.1 Ha-Levi also wrote in the letter about his plans to leave Spain and travel to Eretz Israel. The text has been examined and discussed repeatedly since Goitein discovered and published it in 1956.2 Because of ha-Levi’s hyperbolically cursive handwriting and elusive language, the decipherment and interpretation of his letter have stubbornly challenged two generations of scholars. Through a new reading and analysis of the Kuzari passage, I attempt to shed light on ha-Levi’s tolerance towards heretics, among other things. To put his mind-set in perspective, I further consider revisions made by Maimonides in his writings on heretics and a variant known from Genizah manuscripts in the text of Birkat ha-Minin, the malediction of the heretics in the daily Jewish liturgy. The letter was addressed to Ḥ alfon ha-Levi b. Nethanel, an international Egyptian Jewish trader, whose extensive travels took him from India to Spain. The fragments from his archive thus became an important part of Goitein’s ‘India Book’ collection, his incomplete study of hundreds of Genizah documents, mainly from the late-eleventh to the

1 That is, the book that deals with the Khazars. On the name of the book, see D. Z. Baneth, ‘Some Remarks on the Autographs of Yehudah Hallevi and the Genesis of the Kuzari’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 26 (1957), pp. 289–303 (297 n. 3); M. Gil and E. Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi and his Circle: 55 Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001), p. 182 n. 43; N. Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages, edited by M. Frenkel and H. Ben-Shammai (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 152–153, 346, and the literature cited in these studies. This article is based on the paper I delivered at the Genizah Conference in honour of Professor Stefan Reif, Cambridge, 20th–22nd August, 2007, with minor revisions. The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 815/02-1) and by the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Chair in Jewish Culture in Muslim Lands and Cairo Geniza Studies, Tel Aviv University. 2 S. D. Goitein, ‘Autographs of Yehuda Halevi’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 25 (1956), pp. 393–412 (408–412).

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mid-twelfth centuries, that deal with the India trade and India traders, which I have been editing and supplementing for many years. Ḥ alfon’s papers form the fourth ‘chapter’ in the India Book. His archive is scheduled to be published in a multi-voluminous study, whose writing I have recently completed.3 The present paper is a by-product of this research. Ḥ alfon was an intellectual, and wherever he travelled he supported men of letters and cultivated contacts with the Jewish elite. In Spain he developed a close association with Judah ha-Levi. All of ha-Levi’s known holographs have been preserved thanks to Ḥ alfon’s archive and Goitein’s India Book research. None of the letters are signed, but the Kuzari passage leaves no doubt as to the author. Neither are any of the letters dated. Due to various considerations, Goitein intermittently assigned this letter to 1129 or 1139. In their recent study, Moshe Gil and Ezra Fleischer concluded that it was written in 1129. For reasons that need not be repeated here, I have dated it to 1139.4 The question is of some relevance to this study, as the passage analyzed below concerns writing the Kuzari, and the date of this composition is obviously a matter of interest for ha-Levi’s biography. In his 1956 publication, Goitein transcribed the relevant passage as follows:5

‫אלאגל אלחכם‬ ̇ ‫אלכזרי מן גמלה נעם אלחכים‬ ̇ ‫ואלכתאב‬ ‫סכאפה‬ ̇ ‫ור יוסף בן ברזל עליّ באלתנא עלי מא יצדר עני מן‬ ̇ ‫מר‬ ̇ ‫אלאכמל‬ ‫ערצה עליך וכאן סבבה טלבה אחד מנתחלי אלמינות‬ ̇ ‫ואלא תחירת מן‬ ‫אגראץ פארסלתה אליה‬ ̇ ‫בבלאד אלרום סאלני פי‬ ‫גחדתה ובאלאגתמאע תראה אנת‬ ̈ ‫תם‬

1 2 3 4 5

3 These volumes are presently scheduled to appear in Hebrew. The reader’s attention is called to S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden, 2008); Goitein and Friedman, India Book I: Joseph Lebdī. Prominent India Trader, Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2009); Goitein and Friedman, India Book II: Maḍmūn Nagid of Yemen and the India Trade, Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2010); Goitein and Friedman, India Book III: Abraham Ben Yijū. India Trader and Manufacturer, Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2010). 4 See M. A. Friedman, ‘On Judah ha-Levi and the Martyrdom of a Head of the Jews: A Letter by Ḥ alfon ha-Levi b. Nethanel’, in Y. T. Langermann and J. Stern (eds), Adaptations and Innovations: Studies on the Interaction of Jewish and Islamic Thought and Literature from the early Middle Ages to the Late Twentieth Century Dedicated to Professor Joel L. Kraemer (Louvain, 2007), pp. 83–108. 5 ENA NS 1.5, margin, ll. 1–5. S. D. Goitein, ‘Autographs’, p. 409.

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Goitein’s original translation (in Hebrew) was slightly altered in his 1974 (English) study,6 reproduced here: As for the Khazarī book, it was the usual kindness of the illustrious philosopher and accomplished scholar Joseph b. Barzel7 to praise me for a trivial thing. I personally would have refrained8 from submitting it to you. The reason for writing it was a challenge by one of our heretics,9 living in the land of the Romans,10 who questioned me concerning certain problems, in reply to which I sent him that book. Later on, I repudiated it. You will see it when we meet.

It is hardly satisfactory to say that Ibn Barzel’s praise of the book is what convinced ha-Levi to show the Kuzari to Ḥ alfon. On the contrary, the poet discounted the former’s praise of every nonsensical thing he wrote. The reading and translation of two phrases in the passage require ̇ ‫( ואלא תחירת מן‬line 3), translated further elucidation. (1) ‫ערצה עליך‬ by Goitein: ‘otherwise I would have hesitated presenting it to you’ or ‘I personally would have refrained’, etc.11 This suggests that ha-Levi had already shown the Kuzari to Ḥ alfon. But if so, why does the poet promise Ḥ alfon that he will see the book when they meet?12 Goitein commented that the decipherment of ‫ ואלא תחירת‬was uncertain and that perhaps it would be clarified with the assistance of a special-effects photograph. Baneth noted that rather than ‫תחירת‬, the word could be

6 S. D. Goitein, ‘Judaeo-Arabic Letters from Spain (early twelfth century)’, in J. M. Barral (ed.), Orientalia Hispanica sive studia F. M. Pareja octogenario dicata (2 vols; Leiden, 1974) vol. I, pp. 331–350 (338), reprinted in id., A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. V, p. 465. 7 A Spanish-Jewish intellectual and poet. See Gil and Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi, p. 127. 8 Goitein’s original translation was ‫ואלמלי כן היססתי‬, ‘otherwise, I would have hesitated’. 9 Goitein’s original translation was (‫בקשתו של אחד ממחזיקי המינות )קראי‬, ‘the request of one of those who uphold heresy (a Karaite)’. 10 Originally modified, in parentheses, by ‫בספרד הנוצרית‬, ‘in Christian Spain’. 11 The latter translation is followed by Gil and Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi, p. 326: ‫הייתי נשמר מלהראותו לך‬. 12 R. P. Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimage (Oxford, 2008), p. 108, apparently attempts to avoid this pitfall by translating ‘I would hesitate to show it to you’, rather than ‘I would have hesitated’, etc. But even so, the syntax of the Arabic is suspect (one would have expected something like: ‫[ תחירת‬. . .] ‫)לולא נעם‬, and there is a long interruption before ‘when we are together, you, too, will see it’ (Scheindlin’s translation).

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read ‫תחיית‬, meaning ‘I recoiled’ (‫)נרתעתי‬, similar to ‫אסתחיית‬, the tenth form of ‫חיי‬, though the fifth form (‫ )תחיית‬was not known to be used this way in Medieval Arabic.13 He did not comment on the strange ‫ואלא‬, ‘otherwise’. As suspected by Goitein, a high-quality digital photograph suggests a superior reading of the text.14

The letter before the tav in ‫( תחיית‬Baneth’s alternate reading), in the word

deciphered as ‫ואלא‬, is not alef but rather sameḵ. It

in line 4. The preceding is comparable to the sameḵ in ‫סאלני‬ letter, little of which is preserved, can be read alef rather than aleflamed. Accordingly, instead of two words, ‫( ואלא תחיית‬with Baneth), I suggest reading one: ‫ואסתחיית‬. It follows that the entire phrase should be translated: ‘I was embarrassed to show it to you’. (2). Ha-Levi commented that he composed the Kuzari in response to the request/demand15 of ‫אחד מנתחלי אלמינות‬. At first he miswrote . Goitein and Baneth the word ‫ מנתחלי‬then corrected it both read ‫מנתחלי‬, and translated the phrase ‫אחד ממחזיקי המינות‬, 13

Baneth, ‘Autographs’, p. 297 n. 3*. ENA NS 1.5, margin. Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. 15 Arabic ‫טלבה‬, which could be translated both ways. In his 1956 edition, Goitein translated ‫בקשתו של‬, ‘the request of ’ and in his 1974 translation ‘challenge by’ (which suggests a dispute; see below). 14

judah ha-levi on writing the kuzari

161

‘one of those who uphold heresy’. But, if so, the word ‫ מנתחלי‬would be superfluous. One could expect ha-Levi to have written simply ‫אחד‬ ‫אלמינים‬, ‘one of the heretics’—which, in fact is how Goitein translated the phrase in English (‘one of our heretics’).16 Gil, on the other hand, read ‫מתנקלי‬, and translated the phrase ‫אחד‬ ‫מן הנתפסים למינות‬.17 In my opinion, both this reading and translation are untenable. In reverse order: the phrase ‫ נתפס למינות‬is a Talmudic expression, which means ‘jailed because of heresy’. This obviously was not the intention here, and I assume that the Hebrew phrase was used as if meant ‘caught’ on heresy, in the sense of captivated, entrapped or lured to. The word ‫( אתנקל‬which is used with the preposition ‫)אלי‬, however, means ‘be transferred, change residence (to)’, etc., and as far as I know is not attested in any meaning that would fit the context here. Moreover, an examination of the corrected letters in the word shows that they bear no similarity to ‫תק‬

as in the word

‫אלמתקדמה‬, margin, line 1, but do resemble ‫תח‬ as in ‫ואסתחיית‬, in line 3. Subsequently, the reading ‫מנתחלי‬, in my opinion, is without doubt correct. The verb ‫ נחל( אנתחל‬in the VIIIth form, which unlike ‫אנתקל‬ does take a direct object), means to embrace or adopt a faith or religion.18 The entire clause ‫ וכאן סבבה טלבה אחד מנתחלי אלמינות‬can now be translated: ‘It was in response19 to the request/demand of one of those who embraced heresy’. Our translation of the entire passage has slight revisions of earlier renditions:

16 J. Schirmann, Studies in the History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama, (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1979), vol. I, p. 322, renders it with the somewhat clumsy ‫אחד‬ ‫מאנשי המינות‬, ‘one of the men of heresy’. 17 Gil and Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi, pp. 325–326. 18 See F. Corriente, A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (Leiden, 1997), p. 523; J. G. Hava, Arabic-English Dictionary (Beirut, 1970), p. 756; H. Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J. M. Cowan (Ithaca, 1966), p. 947; A. Sharoni, The Comprehensive Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary (Tel-Aviv, 1987), p. 191 (there also: make pretense of, which does not fit the context here); cf. R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, reprinted (2 vols; Leiden, 1967), vol. II, p. 646. J. Blau, A Dictionary of Mediaevel Judaeo-Arabic Texts (Jerusalem, 2006), pp. 683–684, besides ‘acquire’ translates the word ‘inherit’; but I do not believe this fits the context of our letter. 19 Arabic ‫סבבה‬, literally ‘its cause’, i.e., the reason for writing it. See Baneth, ‘Autographs’, p. 298.

162

mordechai a. friedman As for the Khazarī book, this is of the many kindnesses of the illustrious scholar20 and perfect sage our master and lord Joseph b. Barzel with me to praise every nonsensical thing from my hand. I was embarrassed to show it to you. It was in response to a request by one of those who embraced heresy in the land of Rūm. He questioned me concerning certain matters; accordingly, I sent it to him. Later on, I repudiated it. You will see it, when we meet.

Which heresy had that man embraced? Ha-Levi, like Maimonides, sometimes designated deviations from Rabbanite Judaism other than Karaism minut, but he usually used the term to refer to that sect. Goitein accordingly described the heretic mentioned by ha-Levi in his letter as a Karaite.21 Baneth suggested that he was a Karaite philosopher, whose theological questions dealt with matters beyond the regular Karaite-Rabbanite discourse.22 The Karaite identity of ha-Levi’s heretical interlocutor is the predominant view among scholars and will be our working hypothesis in the continuation. Tzvi Langermann’s analysis of the Kuzari’s content has induced him to persuasively suggest that the heretic followed a universal-philosophical doctrine such as Ismāʿīlism.23 However, the opus, which ha-Levi left for posterity, is much more complex than would be expected had it been sent as a response to the heretic’s questions. As Goitein already suggested, ha-Levi presumably sent to his interlocutor a first draft or edition of the Kuzari, which the author subsequently revised and supplemented. This assumption further explains ha-Levi’s original embarrassment to show the book to Ḥ alfon and his willingness to present it to him when they later meet.24 We do not know exactly where ‘in the land of Rūm’ the heretic with whom ha-Levi corresponded lived. Goitein defined Rūm as ‘originally designating Byzantium, but used regularly for Christian Europe and

20

For ḥ akīm, see the literature cited in Friedman, ‘Ha-Levi and Martyrdom’, p. 99 n. 63. 21 Goitein, ‘Autographs’, p. 411. The eleventh-century Spanish Muslim scholar Ibn Ḥ azm likewise commented that the Jews call ʿAnānites ‘Karaites or sectarians’, al-Qaraʾīn wal-mīnīn. See C. Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible (Leiden, 1996), p. 95 n. 117. 22 Baneth, ‘Autographs’, pp. 298–299. 23 Y. T. Langermann, ‘Science and the Kuzari’, Science and Context 10 (1997), pp. 495–522. Cf. Gil and Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi, pp. 182–183. 24 See Goitein, ‘Autographs’, p. 402; S. D. Goitein, ‘The Biography of Rabbi Judah haLevi in the Light of the Cairo Geniza Documents’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 28 (1959), pp. 41–56 (46–47); Baneth, ‘Autographs’, p. 299.

judah ha-levi on writing the kuzari

163

its peoples in general well into the twelfth century’.25 It could refer to a wide geographical expanse or, depending on time and place, to a more specific area.26 In his 1956 publication, Goitein identified Rūm in ha-Levi’s letter as Christian Spain.27 Baneth further concluded that, when ha-Levi wrote the letter, he resided in Muslim Spain.28 It stands to reason that the heretic was in fact in Christian Spain, rather than another country ‘in the land of Rūm’, since the Kuzarī is written in Arabic, rather than Hebrew, though Jews in some other places in Christian Europe knew Arabic, so this possibility cannot be ruled out categorically. Ha-Levi was evidently merely describing the facts without embellishments when he identified the heretic as from the land of Rūm. But this information is not without interest for the history of Spanish Jewry. Samuel ha-Nagid Ibn Naghrilla of Spain had written: Spain is a place of Torah study [. . .] and there was never any heresy (minut) there, other than a few villages adjacent to the Land of Edom,29 concerning which there are rumors that they have some secret heresy, but they deny it. Our ancestors flogged some of them, who had been judged capable of withstanding a certain number of lashes30 but who died from the flogging.31

Ibn Naghrilla’s Muslim contemporary Ibn Ḥ azm similarly located the Spanish Karaites in Talavera and Toledo, cities near ‘the Land of Edom’.32 Also Maimonides claimed that heretics (Karaites) were not to be found in Muslim Spain: ‘in our cities/land polluted water, I mean

25

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 43. See Goitein and Friedman, India Traders, p. 274 n. 4. 27 Goitein, ‘Autographs’, p. 410; cf. Goitein, ‘Biography’, p. 46. 28 Baneth, ‘Autographs’, p. 299. 29 The Hebrew equivalent of Arabic Rūm. 30 This translates ‫ ;שאמדום למלקיות‬cf. Mishnah Makkot 3:11. These words caused some difficulties in scholarly literature. See M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008), p. 350 n. 7. 31 Judah b. Barzilay al-Barcelonī, Sefer ha-ʿIttim, edited by J. Shorr (Cracow, 1903), p. 267. 32 See Adang, Muslim Writers, p. 96. See the important discussions on Karaism in Spain in S. D. Cohen, A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-Qabbalah) by Abraham Ibn Daud (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. XLVI–L; Rustow, Heresy, pp. 349–355 (on p. 351 n. 8, she calls attention to the whereabouts of the heretic mentioned in ha-Levi’s letter in this context, a point I also made in my aforementioned lecture). 26

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heresy (minut), does not gush forth’.33 Ha-Levi’s description of the heretic, to whom he sent the Kuzari, as residing ‘in the land of Rūm’ thus confirms the testimony of the Nagid, Ibn Ḥ azm and Maimonides. Ha-Levi’s response to the heretic’s questions conflicts with Maimonides’ ruling: [. . .] ‫והמינים ואסור לספר עמהן ולהשיב עליהן‬ ‫תשובה‬, ‘It is forbidden to converse with the heretics and to respond to them with a refutation’.34 Moreover, our conclusion that ha-Levi wrote his Kuzari as a response to a newly professed heretic rather than one born and bred to heresy is not merely a question of philological precision. An examination of some of Maimonides’ writings suggests that the distinction between the two was of some consequence. In his Mishnah Commentary to Ḥ ullin 1:2 Maimonides wrote that, due to the threat they presented to Judaism, even contemporary heretics could be killed. Moreover, he claimed that several heretics had been executed in the Maghreb (which could include Spain as well as North Africa).35 His testimony is supported by that of Samuel haNagid, quoted above, according to whom, however, the heretics died from corporal punishment, but it had not been the intention to execute them. Maimonides later made insertions in the margins of the text to clarify that a second generation heretic should not be put to death.36 The following translation graphically demonstrates the revision: Original text Sadducees and Boethusians are the two sects, who began denying tradition [. . .]. Contemporaries simply call them ‘heretics’ (‫)מינים‬, even though they are not ‘heretics’ by faith. Nevertheless, they are condemned to the death penalty

Marginal addition

I mean whoever contrives this doctrine (maḏhab) first, from his false reasoning

33 Maimonides, Mishnah ʿīm Perush Moshe b. Maymūn, edited by J. Qāfiḥ (6 vols; Jerusalem, 1963–1969), vol. III, pp. 152–153. See the discussion in M. A. Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2002), p. 65 n. 79. 34 Mishneh Torah, ʿAvoda Zara, 2:5. 35 See J. Blau, ‘Maimonides’ “At Our Place in al-Andalus” Revisited’, in C. del Valle, S. García-Jalón and J. P. Monferrer (eds), Maimónides y su época (Madrid, 2007), pp. 327–339 (328). 36 Maimonides, Commentary to Mishnah, vol. V, p. 176; see there, nn. 32, 33.

judah ha-levi on writing the kuzari

165

(Cont.)

Original text

Marginal addition

like the heretics, that is to say, it is permissible to kill them in this period of exile, because they open the way to real heresy. You should know that we have a tradition from our fathers, transmitted from one group to the next, that in this period of exile, while the death penalty is not enacted in the case of a Jew, who committed a capital offence, the heretics, Sadducees and Boethusians, including their various schools of thought whoever contrived this notion first are to be deliberately killed, so that they not corrupt Jews and the religion not be ((destroyed)) ruined.37 This rule was put into practice with many people in all the lands of the Maghreb. But those born and bred to these concepts are like those coerced (‫ ;)אלאנוסים‬the rule for them is the same as an infant taken captive by Gentiles, all of whose transgressions are unintentional, as we have explained. However, the first contriver is a wilful sinner, not an inadvertent transgressor.

Maimonides’ marginal revisions are somewhat ambiguous. He clearly excludes from the death sentence second generation heretics and includes the initiator of the heretic faith, but it is not entirely clear what the master’s ruling would be for a newly professed heretic. In what appears to be a qualification (the second paragraph) added to his ruling in Mishneh Torah, Maimonides seems to redefine the category of those who deserve to be killed as including all newly professed heretics:

37

The word ‫ ויהלך‬was corrected to ‫ויתלף‬.

166

mordechai a. friedman Whoever does not believe in the Oral Torah [. . .] is one of the ‘heretics’ (‫)מינים‬, to be killed by any person [. . .] lowered but not raised [. . .]38 This concerns only one who denies the Oral Torah by his own thought and perception and follows his careless ideas and stubbornness and denies the Oral Torah initially and all who follow him. But the children and descendents of those deviants, whose parents misled them, who were born and raised on heresy, are like an infant taken captive by Gentiles, who raised him in their faith, and he acts under coercion [. . .] Subsequently, it is proper to induce them to repent, to appeal to them peaceably, until they return to the true Torah. One should not rush to kill them.39

Judah ha-Levi’s tolerant attitude to the newly professed heretic and his willingness to engage him in discourse, which engendered the Kuzari, one of the great achievements of Spanish Jewry, thus diametrically opposes the ruling of Maimonides. While Maimonides mentioned a (Spanish) tradition, transmitted generation to generation, I assume that the qualifications that he added, excluding the heretic born and bred in his faith from the death penalty but including the newly professed heretic, was not part of this tradition but his independent decision.40 In ameliorating the harsh Talmudic ruling, Maimonides too was motivated by tolerance, his explicit desire to induce the heretic to repent, by appealing to him peaceably. Maimonides explained his rationale in excluding from the death sentence one born and bred to heresy: Since this heretic was raised on heterodoxy and did not profess it through his own loss of faith, one could hope to reason with him and induce him to embrace Rabbanite

38 They should be lowered into a pit, where they would perish, their plea to be rescued ignored. 39 Mishneh Torah, Mamrim, 3:1–3. See Mishneh Torah, edited by J. Qāfiḥ, vol. XXIII (Qiryat Ono, 1996), p. 31 n. 2, where the second paragraph is identified as an addition. For variant readings in the text, see Mishneh Torah, edited by S. Frankel, vol. XXIII (Jerusalem, 1998), p. 649 (note that the last sentence is missing in some early editions). Cf. Friedman, Yemenite Messiah, pp. 64–65, and literature cited there in n. 79; G. J. Blidstein, ‘The “Other” in Maimonidean Law’, Jewish History 18 (2004), pp. 173– 195; D. J. Lasker, ‘Maimonides and the Karaites: From Critic to Cultural Hero’, in del Valle et al. (eds), Maimónides y su época, pp. 311–25. 40 G. Libson, ‘Maimonides’ Halakhic Writing against the Background of Muslim Law and Jurisprudence of the Period’ (Hebrew), in A. Ravitzky (ed.), Maimonides: Conservativism, Originality, Revolution (Jerusalem, 2008), pp. 247–294 (293), suggests that Maimonides’ change in attitude towards the punishment of Karaites might have resulted from his immigrating from the sphere of influence of the Mālikī School of Islamic law in Spain to that of the Shāfiʿī School in Egypt. Ha-Levi’s attitude, of course, does not fit this paradigm.

judah ha-levi on writing the kuzari

167

Judaism. Ha-Levi may have advanced a rationale for tolerance towards the newly professed heretic, evidenced in his letter, contrary to Maimonides’ logic: the new adherent to heterodoxy perhaps was still struggling with his faith and receptive to discourse, unlike one born and bred to heresy, who was set in his ways. Evidence for such an approach can be adduced from some Genizah variants of Birkat ha-Minin, the malediction of the heretics in the daily liturgy. As Uri Ehrlich and Ruth Langer have documented in their recent study, seven variant traditions of the malediction are represented in ancient Genizah manuscripts, two following the rite of Eretz Israel and five of Babylonia. All seven begin with the same phrase, ‫למשומדים‬ ‫אל תהי תקוה‬, ‘may the apostates have no future (to hope for)’.41 But Eretz Israel rite (1) adds a qualification: ‫אם לא ישובו לתורתך‬, ‘unless they return to your Torah’. This was obviously intended ‘to modify the harsh curse with which the blessing opens’.42 By definition, apostates are not second generation heretics but those who themselves embrace the heterodoxy. It was they whom the author of the restrictive clause hoped to induce to repent. Besides his letter to Ḥ alfon, other echoes of Judah ha-Levi’s relative moderation towards Karaites can be identified in his writings. Some of his poems reflect a tolerant and respectful attitude towards the Karaites, but these innuendoes were obscured in the authoritative anthology of his poetry.43 In light of the Genizah variant of the Birkat ha-Minin, ha-Levi’s exclusion of the Karaites from that malediction is especially noteworthy: After him were Judah b. Tabbai and Simeon b. Shetah and their associates. In their time the school of the Karaites took root [. . .] A root of the Karaites took hold among people who oppose the Oral Torah and adduce proofs for ruses, as you see them do today. The Sadducees and Boethusians are the ‘heretics’ (‫ )מינים‬cursed in the Prayer [. . .] The Karaites use independent judgment (ijtihād) in interpreting the fundamental principles; they use arbitrary judgment in elaborating the derived law. Sometimes the corruption extends to the fundamental principles, but this is done out of ignorance, not intentionally.44

The word ‫ תקוה‬is equivalent here to ‫ אחרית‬in my opinion. U. Ehrlich and R. Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts of Birkat Haminim’, Hebrew Union College Annual 76 (2005), pp. 63–112 (72). 43 See Y. Yahalom, Judah Halevi: a Life of Poetry (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2008), pp. 48–49. 44 My translation from Judah ha-Levi, Kitāb al-Radd wa-ʾl-Dalīl fī ʾl-Dīn al-Ḏ alīl (al-Kitāb al-Khazarī), edited by D. H. Baneth (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 138–139. 41 42

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In summary, our survey has covered a trilogy of relative tolerance towards Jewish heretics, evidenced in the writings of the two great luminaries of medieval Spanish Jewry and the ancient liturgy of Eretz Israel, known from the Genizah. Judah ha-Levi engaged a newly professed heretic in dialogue, composed the Kuzari in response to his questions or challenges and excluded the Karaites from the liturgical malediction. Maimonides modified the Talmudic death sentence for heretics so as to exclude second generation heretics, to whom one should appeal peaceably. The ancient Eretz Israel rite (1) of Birkat ha-Minim was qualified to exclude penitent apostates from the malediction. In all three cases, hope was extended to reconcile heretics through peaceful means.

Bibliography C. Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible (Leiden, 1996). N. Allony, The Jewish Library in the Middle Ages, edited by M. Frenkel and H. BenShammai (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006). D. Z. Baneth, ‘Some Remarks on the Autographs of Yehudah Hallevi and the Genesis of the Kuzari’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 26 (1957), pp. 289–303. J. Blau, A Dictionary of Mediaevel Judaeo-Arabic Texts (Jerusalem, 2006). ——, ‘Maimonides’ “At Our Place in al-Andalus” Revisited’, in C. del Valle, S. GarcíaJalón and J. P. Monferrer (eds), Maimónides y su época (Madrid, 2007), pp. 327–339. G. J. Blidstein, ‘The “Other” in Maimonidean Law’, Jewish History 18 (2004), pp. 173–195. S. D. Cohen, A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-Qabbalah) by Abraham Ibn Daud (Philadelphia, 1967). F. Corriente, A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (Leiden, 1997). R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, reprinted (2 vols; Leiden, 1967). U. Ehrlich and R. Langer, ‘The Earliest Texts of Birkat Haminim’, Hebrew Union College Annual 76 (2005), pp. 63–112. M. A. Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2002). ——, ‘On Judah ha-Levi and the Martyrdom of a Head of the Jews: A Letter by Ḥ alfon ha-Levi b. Nethanel,’ in Y. T. Langermann and J. Stern (eds), Adaptations and Innovations: Studies on the Interaction of Jewish and Islamic Thought and Literature from the early Middle Ages to the Late Twentieth Century Dedicated to Professor Joel L. Kraemer (Louvain, 2007), pp. 83–108. M. Gil and E. Fleischer, Yehuda ha-Levi and his Circle: 55 Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001). S. D. Goitein, ‘Autographs of Yehuda Halevi’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 25 (1956), pp. 393–412. ——, ‘The Biography of Rabbi Judah ha-Levi in the Light of the Cairo Geniza Documents’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 28 (1959), pp. 41–56. ——, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993).

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——, ‘Judaeo-Arabic Letters from Spain (early twelfth century)’, in J. M. Barral (ed.), Orientalia Hispanica sive studia F. M. Pareja octogenario dicata (2 vols; Leiden, 1974) vol. I, pp. 331–350. S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden, 2008). ——, India Book I: Joseph Lebdī. Prominent India Trader, Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2009). ——, India Book II: Maḍmūn Nagid of Yemen and the India Trade, Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2010). ——, India Book III: Abraham Ben Yijū. India Trader and Manufacturer, Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2010). J. G. Hava, Arabic-English Dictionary (Beirut, 1970). Judah b. Barzilay al-Barcelonī, Sefer ha-ʿIttim, edited by J. Shorr (Cracow, 1903). Judah ha-Levi, Kitāb al-Radd wa-ʾl-Dalīl fī ʾl-Dīn al-Ḏ alīl (al-Kitāb al-Khazarī), edited by D. H. Baneth (Jerusalem, 1977). Y. T. Langermann, ‘Science and the Kuzari’, Science and Context 10 (1997), pp. 495–522. D. J. Lasker, ‘Maimonides and the Karaites: From Critic to Cultural Hero’, in C. del Valle, S. García-Jalón and J. P. Monferrer (eds), Maimónides y su época (Madrid, 2007), pp. 311–325. G. Libson, ‘Maimonides’ Halakhic Writing against the Background of Muslim Law and Jurisprudence of the Period’ (Hebrew), in A. Ravitzky (ed.), Maimonides: Conservativism, Originality, Revolution (Jerusalem, 2008), pp. 247–294. Maimonides, Mishnah ʿīm Perush Moshe b. Maymūn, edited by J. Qāfiḥ (Jerusalem, 1963–69). ——, Mishne Torah, edited by J. Qāfiḥ, vol. XXIII (Qiryat Ono, 1996). ——, Mishne Torah, edited by S. Frankel, vol. XII (Jerusalem, 1998). M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008). R. P. Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimage (Oxford, 2008). J. Schirmann, Studies in the History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1979). A. Sharoni, The Comprehensive Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary (Tel-Aviv, 1987). H. Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J. M. Cowan (Ithaca, 1966). J. Yahalom, Judah Halevi: A Life of Poetry (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2008).

THE CAIRO GENIZAH UNEARTHED: THE EXCAVATIONS CONDUCTED BY THE COUNT D’HULST ON BEHALF OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR GENIZAH HISTORY Rebecca J.W. Jefferson

The rich collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts at the Bodleian Library was once described as ‘the greatest Hebrew library in the world’,1 yet little is known about the history of the Genizah fragments that constitute such an important part of the Bodleian’s holdings.2 Not only are details about its acknowledged suppliers sparse, but the story of Count Riamo d’Hulst, the elusive excavator and antiquarian who gathered material for the Bodleian intermittently over a period of nine years was, until recently, completely unknown.3 Furthermore, the mysterious whereabouts of the ‘great many sacks’ of Genizah material (possibly 10,000–15,000 manuscript leaves) that d’Hulst excavated in 1898 and referred to only in an addendum to the Bodleian’s Hebrew Catalogue4 remains to be addressed. The following article will provide a reconstruction of this history, showing how the Bodleian came to acquire its unique, handpicked Genizah collection and revealing where d’Hulst’s missing fragments have gone. Such an investigation will shed new light on the discovery of the Cairo Genizah manuscripts in the late nineteenth century, on 1 E. N. Adler, ‘The Hebrew treasures of England: Presidential address delivered on February 9, 1914’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 8–9 (1915–1917), pp. 1–18 (8). 2 For a summary of the importance of this collection, see the article by the Bodleian’s Hebraica and Judaica curator, Dr Piet van Boxel, ‘The Hebrew Collections in Oxford: a Treasure Grove for Jewish Studies’, European Judaism: a Journal for the New Europe 41 (2008), pp. 56–66. Van Boxel points out that the ‘acquisition policy of the Bodleian Librarians’ has made the Oxford Genizah collection ‘a unique resource for the study of rabbinic texts and Jewish history’ (p. 62). 3 See R. J. W. Jefferson, ‘A Genizah Secret: the Count d’Hulst and letters revealing the race to recover the lost leaves of the original Ecclesiasticus’, Journal of the History of Collections 21 (2009), pp. 125–142. 4 See A. Neubauer and A. E. Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the college libraries of Oxford (Oxford, 1906), vol. II (Hereafter: Hebrew Catalogue).

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their perceived value, and the ways in which they were subsequently dispersed around the world. By the spring of 1889, the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo) had declined into such a state of disrepair that the leaders of the Jewish community decided that it should be dismantled and rebuilt.5 During this process, manuscripts that had been hidden away for over a millennium in the Ben Ezra’s Genizah chamber were suddenly revealed. Many of these fragments were, according to an anonymous source, removed and left lying around the synagogue yard: The workmen on tearing down the roof dumped all the contents of this attic into the courtyard, and there the MSS were lying for several weeks in the open. During these weeks many dealers could obtain bundles of leaves for nominal sums.6

The first two known Europeans to see this newly exposed material were the British collector Greville John Chester (1831–1892)7 and the German excavator Count Riamo d’Hulst (c. 1855–1920).8 D’Hulst, acting as an officer of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF), had been redeployed at the end of the archaeological season (October 1889) to explore the rubbish mounds of Old Cairo in the hope of recovering pottery from the Fatimid period.9 Some of d’Hulst’s excavations

5 For further information on the rebuilding, see C. Le Quesne, ‘The Synagogue’ in P. Lambert (ed.), Fortifications and the Synagogue: the Fortress of Babylon and the Ben Ezra synagogue, Cairo (London, 1994), pp. 79–97. 6 R. Gottheil and W. H. Worrel (eds), Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection (New York, 1927), p. xiii. 7 For biographical details see M. L. Bierbrier, Who was Who in Egyptology, 3rd rev. edn (London, 1995), pp. 96–97. Chester’s life is the subject of a doctoral thesis by Gertrud Seidmann (Wolfson College, Oxford). Seidmann has also written a number of short articles about Chester for the Wolfson College magazine Romulus. 8 Very little is known about the Count D’Hulst, including his date of birth and death, which can only be surmised from his possible involvement in the FrancoPrussian war of 1870–71 and from details in his wife’s letters. Of his character, Amelia Edwards, a co-founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund, once wrote that the Count was ‘a most energetic, enthusiastic and accomplished man—archaeologist, traveller, linguist, photographer, Arabist, critic etc’ (quoted in ‘Egyptian Exploration’, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 12 February 1898, p. 15). For more details about his life, see Jefferson, ‘A Genizah Secret’, pp. 125–142, as well as some of the additional facts uncovered by Simone Weny in ‘L’Archictecte de l’État Charles Arendt (1825–1910) et la restauration de la chapelle du château d’Esch-sur-Sûre (Luxembourg)’, Hémecht: Zeitschrift für Luxemburger Geschichte Revue d’Histoire Luxemourgeoise 55 (2003), pp. 483–523. 9 See the Egypt Exploration Fund committee meeting minutes of 25 July 1889 in the archives of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES).

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were conducted near and around the Roman fortress close to the Ben Ezra synagogue,10 and he later recalled that ‘big heaps of rubbish’ had been thrown out from the synagogue and that he had ‘gathered some of the fragments they had cast out as worthless’.11 According to his own testimony, D’Hulst sent the fragments in a box to the EEF and requested instructions with regard to the rest: As to the Keniseh MSS . . . they seemed to me valuable but I was not sufficiently Hebrew scholar to decide, so forwarded to the authorities of the EEF . . . a sample box, bought with my own money . . . This box of MSS was handed over to the Bodleian, unhappily after some delay; my report and request for instructions was not answered.12

Apart from the private letters in which he reported his finds to the co-founder of the EEF,13 there is no mention of d’Hulst’s manuscripts in the EEF records or distribution lists. The proof of their acquisition is found in the Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library for 1890 which announced that ‘The committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund presented a large number of Hebrew and Arabic fragments found in Egypt; which were formed into 7 volumes’.14 The Bodleian’s Hebrew Catalogue reveals that these volumes comprised 93 manuscripts (212 folios or leaves).15 A few months before d’Hulst had dispatched his manuscripts to London, an English traveller and collector had also been on the scene.

10 The Roman fortress and gateway are mentioned by d’Hulst in letters from January and February 1890 (EES archives Box III.j.66 & Box III.j.73). 11 See BLR d.1084, document 5 (Cairo: 17 March 1898). D’Hulst’s request for instructions has not yet come to light. 12 BLR d.1084, documents 46–47 (undated postcards sent in 1915 from d’Hulst to Falconer Madan). 13 See the letters from d’Hulst to R. S. Poole dated 6 January 1890 (EES Box III.j.66) and 16 February 1890 (EES Box III.j.73). 14 ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, May 5, 1891’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXI (1890–1891), pp. 440–449 (442). 15 The numbers cited in this paper are based entirely on the information provided by Neubauer & Cowley’s Hebrew Catalogue. Each shelfmark refers to a volume of manuscripts, which in turn are individually numbered and described. The total number of folios (or leaves) is provided at the end of the descriptions. Basing my calculations on these data, I have noted the number of manuscripts sent by each supplier, and I have calculated the total amount of Genizah manuscripts purchased between 1889 and 1899 to be 2,556 manuscripts with a total of 9,766 folios. An additional 2,384 items purchased after 1899 are described in a handlist compiled by A. E. Cowley in 1929 (see A. E. Cowley, Additional Genizah Fragments, i.e. fragments not recorded in A. Neubauer’s Catalogue of the Hebrew manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford 1886–1906, Oxford, c. 1929).

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The Reverend Greville John Chester was very familiar with Cairo, visiting it regularly from the 1870s in search of ‘anticas’.16 On one such visit in December 1889, he saw the old synagogue as it was being demolished and, according to the following letter, it seems that he gained access to the still-standing Genizah chamber: Since I sent off the Hebrew MSS fragments this morning I have obtained a quantity more, amongst which are one or two complete ones. The matter must not be talked about at present, but I tell you they come from the oldest synagogue at Misr El Ateekah—Old Cairo—once the Ch. of S. Michael . . . These wretches have demolished the most curious & interesting old building & are building a new one at the same site . . . A room has been laid open whose floor is literally covered with fragments of MSS & early printed Hebrew books & MSS of leather . . . From these I have selected what I have got, & I thought I bought the best I could find, there are doubtless numbers of others worth having, I only fear the lot will be destroyed or perhaps buried, & I could not get the people to say what will be done with them . . .17

In the course of the next two years, while the synagogue was being rebuilt, Chester sent a steady supply of Genizah fragments to the Bodleian. During the winter season (1889–90), he sent off in instalments the manuscripts that he had found in the Genizah chamber.18 But the following winter (1890–91), Chester’s letters to the Bodleian imply that the manuscripts were being sent to him from someone in Cairo, perhaps a local dealer who had collected them while they still lay ‘for

16 Chester’s methods of collecting antiquities are recalled in E. A. Wallis Budge, By Nile and Tigris: a Narrative of Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on Behalf of the British Museum Between the Years 1886 and 1913, vol. I (London, 1920), pp. 84–85. His great familiarity with Cairo is apparent in an article describing the Coptic churches of Old Cairo (including the Ben Ezra synagogue believed to have once been the Coptic church of St Michael) (see ‘Notes on the ancient Christian churches of Musr el Ateekah, or old Cairo, and its neighbourhood’, The Archaeological Journal 29 (1872), pp. 120–134), and in a series of travel tales for children (see ‘Donkey rides around Cairo’, Aunt Judy’s Magazine (London), issue nos 153–158 (1879)). 17 Bodleian Library Records (BLR) e.479 (20 December 1889). I am extremely grateful to Peter Cole and Adina Hoffman (authors of the forthcoming book on the Cairo Genizah for Schocken/Nextbook) for their generosity in sharing their discovery of the Chester archive with me and for their valuable comments about many aspects of this article. I would also like to thank the Bodleian Library for allowing me to quote from library records and archives. 18 In the same letter (20 December 1889), Chester promised that he would ‘sort the MSS, clean out the filth, try to straighten them out & send them to you by Parcel Post from time to time’.

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several weeks in the open’19 or maybe from someone who knew where the manuscripts had been temporarily relocated. In December 1890, for example, he informed Bodley’s Librarian, E. W. B. Nicholson, that he had ‘received another instalment of Hebr. MSS’.20 and in January 1891 he thought that he might ‘perhaps receive some more MSS’ when he returned to Cairo the following month.21 Chester’s letters also suggest that his supply of Genizah manuscripts dried up in 1892. In February of that year he warned Nicholson ‘there may be one more batch in a few weeks’ time; that will be the last’. He had certainly been to visit the synagogue early in 1892 as he had written a scathing report about the new building for the Academy on 19 March.22 But by May, at the age of 62 and after more than 30 years of travel, Chester died of a protracted illness,23 and the steady flow of interesting items arriving at the Bodleian was brought to an end. Chester had sold a total of 991 Genizah manuscripts (4802 folios) to the Bodleian, 85% of which were either biblical, rabbinical or liturgical and, according to the Curators’ Annual Report, included rare finds such as the oldest dated copy of the Babylonian Talmud, an almost complete prayerbook according to the Egyptian rite, and a liturgical manuscript on papyrus.24 With Chester’s death, knowledge of the manuscripts’ current whereabouts as well as his links to the local dealers were lost. Anxious to reestablish the supply of Genizah manuscripts, Bodleian sub-librarian

19

See Gottheil and Worrel (eds), Fragments from the Cairo Genizah, p. xiii. BLR e.479 (14 December 1890). 21 BLR e.479 (16 January 1891). 22 See a copy of Chester’s complaint in A. L. Frothingham, Jr., ‘Archaeological News’, The American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts 8 (1893), pp. 91–151 (99). 23 G. Seidmann, ‘The Rev. Greville Chester Aims to be the New Perpetuum Mobile’, Romulus (Wolfson College, Oxford, 2007), p. 29, identifies Chester’s illness as emphysema. Certainly, in his letters to the Bodleian, Chester often mentions his bad cough (see BLR e.479). Yet Chester’s friend, the artist Henry Wallis, described his complaint as ‘angina pectoris’ (see the letter dated 16 April 1892 in the collection of ‘Letters to A. W. Franks’ held in the archives of the Department of Prehistory and Europe in the British Museum). 24 ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, May 5, 1891’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXI (1890–1891), pp. 440–449 (443). 20

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Adolf Neubauer25 asked his colleague, Archibald Henry Sayce26 if, during one of his winter excursions in Egypt, he could help locate them. Sayce contacted d’Hulst who lived and worked in Cairo and who he probably knew through his involvement with the Egypt Exploration Fund.27 D’Hulst himself believed that he was approached because: ‘I had originally discovered them [the Genizah manuscripts] when in 1889 carrying on excavations for the Egypt Exploration Fund at Old Cairo; and because I was the only person who knew all about them.’28 Even so, the location of the manuscripts had altered since d’Hulst had last seen them three years earlier in 1889. By the time that he went looking for them, the Genizah manuscripts were no longer piled up in the synagogue yard. Some of them had been thrown out and mixed up with the rubbish heaps outside of the synagogue enclosure. Many of them had been buried in the ground around the synagogue. This ground then formed part of the synagogue’s new garden, while buildings were freshly constructed over another part, and a third section was dug up to construct a public road.29 Other manuscripts may have been transferred to the Jewish cemetery near al-Basatin which was also used by the Jewish community as a place to bury worn-out šemot (but 25 Adolf Neubauer (1832–1907): Reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University and a Bodleian sub-Librarian. The most detailed account of his life and scholarly achievements to date was provided in the lecture by S. C. Reif, ‘A Fresh Look at Adolf Neubauer as Scholar, Librarian and Jewish Personality’ delivered to the Jewish Historical Society of England (publication forthcoming). 26 Archibald Henry Sayce (1845–1993) Professor of Assyriology, Egyptologist, and collector (see Bierbrier, Who was Who, p. 375). Sayce sent a letter summarising his connection with the Genizah to the historian and collector, Elkan Nathan Adler (1861–1946) in 1903, which was quoted in ‘The Cairo Genizah: how it was found’, Jewish Chronicle, 5 May 1933, p. 34. Sayce related to Adler that he had first shown Hebrew manuscripts to Neubauer in 1888 when they were discovered by a German sinking a well ‘in the neighbourhood of the Fostat Synagogue’. 27 For example, the minutes of the EEF Committee Meeting for 26 November 1889 show that Sayce attended the meeting, and a grant of £35 was allocated for d’Hulst’s excavations at Old Cairo. 28 BLR d.1084, document 38 (Cairo: 24 December 1914). D’Hulst also mistakenly believed that Chester had had very little to do with the Genizah. In the same letter, he relates that ‘I know from the Revd. Greville Chester himself that he had none of the Old Cairo MSS.’ But Chester’s insistence that Nicholson keep the details about the Genizah manuscripts a secret (see Chester’s letter dated 18 January 1890 in BLR e.479, for example) probably means that he lied to d’Hulst in order to maintain exclusive access to the manuscripts or else to protect his source. It is also possible that when Chester spoke to d’Hulst about the manuscripts (which must have been early in 1892), he meant to convey that he did not know where they were. 29 This information is based on Sayce’s letter to Adler in 1903 (see Adler, ‘The Cairo Genizah’, p. 34).

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the route of several miles along the Nile to reach it probably mitigated against its widespread use as a Genizah).30 The largest proportion of the fragments, it seems, was returned to the Genizah chamber of the newly reconstructed synagogue. The location of the Genizah chamber does not appear to have been altered, but its entrance was now placed above head height in the wall on the second storey.31 This opening was high enough (fourteen feet above the gallery floor according to Agnes Smith Lewis’s estimation)32 to deter those who might otherwise help themselves to the newly discovered material, but easier to reach than the previous entrance in the roof and more readily retrievable if and when needed. Perhaps, having recently discovered their worth, the community saw in them the means of maintaining a steady income through the gradual supply to collectors and dealers.33 A local dealer was probably the source of the manuscripts bought and sold by another early collector, the Jerusalem-based scholar, Rabbi Solomon Wertheimer.34 Wertheimer took a personal academic interest in the manuscripts he first purchased in the 1890s and it was only

30 Adler was informed in 1888 that the community occasionally buried manuscripts in the Basatin cemetery (see E. N. Adler, ‘An Eleventh Century Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: Being a Fragment from the Sepher ha-Ittim of Rabbi Judah ben Barzilai of Barcelona’, Jewish Quarterly Review 9 (1897), pp. 669–716 (672). For the difficulties facing the Jewish community in reaching the cemetery, see M. Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule 1517–1798 (London, 1992), p. 217. 31 Access to the Genizah prior to the 1892 rebuild was through the roof (see Jacob Saphir’s description of his foray into the Genizah in Even Sapir (Hebrew; Lyck, 1866), p. 20). Saphir also provided important testimony about the original amount of material stored in the Genizah chamber before it was torn down, which he wrote was meleʾa gova šte qomot va-ḥeṣi ‘full to the height of two and a half men’ (Saphir’s use of the word qoma is taken from Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:4 and is not a reference to ‘storeys’ as previously suggested). Nevertheless, the depth of the chamber was unusual (due perhaps to the similarity in design between the synagogue and the local Coptic churches) and probably accounts for the fact that it was never emptied. 32 A. S. Lewis and M. D. Gibson (eds), Palestinian Syriac Texts: From Palimpsest Fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Collection (London, 1900), p. viii. Based on Jacob Saphir’s estimation that the height of the synagogue was 20 cubits, then the height of the second floor was probably 4.1m or approximately 14 feet (see Le Quesne, ‘The Synagogue’, p. 87). 33 Sayce claims to have experienced a further difficulty in getting the locals to cooperate with him: ‘as soon as any money is paid to the old Rabbi & his colleagues they immediately get dead drunk upon it, & nothing can be done with them until their funds are exhausted’ (Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. d. 69, f. 70; Luxor: 6 February 1896). 34 Some biographical details of Wertheimer’s life are provided by his son in an introduction to the new edition of S. A. Wertheimer, Beʾur Šemot ha-Nirdafim še-baTanaḵ (New York, 1953).

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financial need that caused him to sell his Genizah collection on to Universities and institutions in Europe, primarily the Bodleian and Cambridge University Library.35 Cambridge purchased at least sixtytwo items from Wertheimer, including interesting liturgical, documentary and epistolary texts from the Classical Genizah period (tenth to thirteenth centuries).36 Oxford purchased 239 items (1,560 folios), of which the largest proportion (43%) was liturgical. Wertheimer sold his first instalment of manuscripts to the Bodleian in November 1892, but they were not recorded in the Curators’ Annual Report until 1894 where they were simply described as ‘Hebrew MSS. from Egypt (through Jerusalem)’.37 The Bodleian accounts, however, register nineteen payments to Wertheimer between 1892 and 1897 amounting to over £80 with the largest amount of material being sent in 1895.38 In November 1892, as Wertheimer’s first manuscripts were arriving at the Bodleian, d’Hulst was probably spending time at the end of the archaeological season trying to locate the ‘missing’ Genizah manuscripts. D’Hulst presumably used his knowledge of Arabic and his familiarity with the Cairo locals in order to discover their new location.39 Once he had learnt about the existence of a Genizah chamber in the Ben Ezra synagogue, he must have told Sayce, for Sayce recalled first hearing about the Genizah in either 1892 or 1893.40 According to the Bodleian’s accounts, a payment to Sayce for £10 was made in June 35 S. C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library: a description and introduction (Cambridge, 1997), p. 30. 36 S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the history of Cambridge University’s Genizah collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000), pp. 71–72. This figure refers to the manuscripts supplied by Wertheimer that now form part of the Library’s Oriental ‘Add.’ Collection. The exact number of manuscripts that Wertheimer supplied is still unclear (it is believed that some of the Library’s Or.1080 and Or.1081 collection were also purchased from Wertheimer, but there do not appear to be any library records to indicate which ones). 37 See the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, 8 May 1894’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXIV (1893–1894), pp. 444–453 (408) and 19 March 1895, vol. XXV (1894–1895), pp. 407–414 (445). 38 See the ledger (Bodleian Library Records, c. 59) under the ‘Payment for MSS.’ Grateful thanks are due to Dr Linda Needham, the Records Manager of the Special Collections & Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, for her kind help in locating this record and the other relevant Bodleian archives. 39 Writing about his personal interest in drawing architectural plans of Arab houses, d’Hulst divulged that it was his knowledge of local culture that had enabled him to gain access to their private interiors (see the letter in EES Box III.j.66: Cairo: 6 January 1890). 40 See Adler, ‘The Cairo Genizah’, p. 34. Sayce’s testimony is a bit confusing here for it sounds as though he heard of the Genizah, paid a visit to it and offered to purchase

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1893,41 which was ‘remitted to the Jewish community in Cairo as the price of fragments acquired through Count d’Hulst’.42 Even if the location of the manuscripts was known to him by 1893, it appears that d’Hulst did not gain access to the Genizah chamber until March 189543 when Sayce first informed Neubauer that: my Cairo friend (d’Hulst) . . . has succeeded in discovering & entering the old subterranean place from which the Hebrew MSS have all come. It is still filled with MSS & books, the lower & more accessible of which have been torn to pieces in order to sell the paper[s] which have come to Europe. The Jews in charge of the place have offered to sell the whole collection for £50 with £5 bakshish.44

Eight months later, in November 1895, Sayce was able to report to Neubauer that his manuscripts would be soon dispatched: Now, a big box, more than a metre in length, half a metre broad & nearly a metre high is being packed with the MSS, which are pressed down so as to occupy as little space as possible. Among them are several portions of books, as well as one or two of the large printed books of which I told you. This box shall start for Oxford in a few days. I fancy that at least

it for £50 in 1892 or 1893 when, in fact, his letter relating d’Hulst’s discovery of the chamber is not until 1895. 41 See BLR c. 59. D’Hulst also confirmed that he had sent ‘through Sayce’ to the Bodleian ‘a small lot of MSS.’ in 1893; BLR d.1084, document 23 (27 April 1910). Yet if the Bodleian received material from d’Hulst and Sayce at this point, it was certainly not recorded in the Hebrew Catalogue. The Curators reported that 22 volumes of Hebrew manuscripts were purchased in 1893. 18 volumes were from Wertheimer and the other four volumes were not given any provenance. See the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, 8 May 1894’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXIV (1893–1894), pp. 444–453 (445–446). 42 This additional detail is supplied in a Library report from 1932 (see BLR d. 1084, document 70). 43 It is not clear what delayed them. Sayce recalls that he had a busy time during the winter season of 1893–1894, conducting archaeological explorations between the First and Second Cataracts. He may not have been in Cairo at all (see A. H. Sayce, Reminiscences (London, 1923), p. 287). D’Hulst was dismissed from the EEF in March 1893 and perhaps spent the following year establishing himself as a dealer in antiquities. 44 BLR d.1084, document 1 (Aswan: 26 March 1895). Further examination of this letter has enabled me to improve upon the transcription first rendered in Jefferson, ‘A Genizah Secret’, p. 129. The name ‘d’Hulst’ was added in a faint script and enclosed in brackets above the third line of the letter. The phrase ‘the lower & more accessible of which’ is an improved reading of ‘the larger & more accessible of which’ (even though it is harder to understand why Sayce would describe the ‘lower’ fragments as more accessible).

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The Bodleian catalogue lists 1,068 manuscripts (2,769 folios) ‘bought through the Rev. Prof. Sayce’ in 1896. Yet it does not seem possible that it took four ‘big’ boxes to transport a few thousand fragments. Curiously, having carefully enumerated previous purchases of Genizah manuscripts, the Curators’ Annual Report barely mentions the consignment apart from indirectly in the cataloguing section: ‘a large number of Hebrew fragments newly acquired were catalogued by Dr. Neubauer and Mr. Cowley.’46 The exact number of these fragments, however, was never supplied implying that they were far too numerous to count. Assuming that four boxes of a similar size were dispatched, one can derive an estimate of the amount contained in them by taking the known contents and volume of a box of manuscripts and comparing it to the volume of the box described in Sayce’s letter. Sayce recorded that the dimensions of the box sent by d’Hulst were 1m × 0.5m × 1m: a volume of 0.5m3. The volume of a box of Mosseri manuscripts (Xa.1–2) recently acquired on loan at Cambridge University Library is 0.08m3 (0.4m × 0.3m × 0.07m).47 The Mosseri box holds around 384 folios.48 Four boxes of the size sent by d’Hulst, therefore, would amount to 9,600 folios.49

45 BLR d.1084, document 2 (Cairo: 29 November 1895). D’Hulst also subsequently confirmed that he had dispatched to Oxford in 1895 ‘a number of very large boxes’; see BLR d.1084, document 23 (Cairo: 27 April 1910). 46 See the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, May 10, 1898’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXVIII (1897–1898), pp. 463–470 (467). Indeed, the list of volumes purchased that year is accompanied by an additional note stating that the list is ‘a numerical record of the volumes of MSS. bought (not including unbound fragments)’. 47 The Mosseri manuscripts were excavated by the Cairo businessman and amateur antiquarian, Jacques Mosseri (and others) from around Old Cairo between 1909–1912 (for futher details, see Mosseri’s own account in ‘A New Hoard of Hebrew MSS’, The Jewish Review 4/19–24 (May 1913–March 1914), pp. 208–16). This Genizah Collection was privately owned by the Mosseri family who entrusted it to Cambridge University Library on long-term loan in 2006. 48 This figure is based on the fact that the Mosseri box currently holds 166 folios enclosed between 109 thin paper bifolia. These bifolia are divided into four thick folders and there are three centimetres of space between the top of the pile and the top of the box. It is not unreasonable therefore to posit a conservative figure of 384 (166 + 109 + 109) for the number of possible folios in the Mosseri box. 49 The calculation is based on the following formula: 0.5/0.08 × 384 = 2400 × 4 = 9,600.

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In January 1896, just as the boxes of Genizah manuscripts were reaching the Bodleian, the collector Elkan Nathan Adler50 paid a visit to the Ben Ezra synagogue and was allowed to remove from the Genizah chamber a ‘sack’ full of manuscripts. But Adler’s acquisition did not seem to make a great impression upon the Oxford scholars. According to Sayce, Neubauer later commented that Adler had brought back ‘a lot of worthless rubbish’ for which he paid high prices.51 Neubauer’s tendency to regard certain of the Genizah manuscripts as ‘worthless’ is also reflected in a decision to reject some of the hoard sent by d’Hulst and Sayce as reported in the minutes of 9 May 1896: It was agreed to authorize the giving away exchange or sale of unbound fragments of Hebrew writing recently purchased or in future to be purchased which Dr. Neubauer (with the [concurrence] of the Reg. Professor of Hebrew) may report to be not worth adding to the collection of Hebrew MSS.52

Seven days later, an announcement appeared in the Athenaeum that the Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter53 had discovered a leaf containing a medieval copy of the original Hebrew text of the book of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) that had been purchased in the Near East by the twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson.54 Rather than sorting through for material to keep or reject, Neubauer and his assistant, Arthur Ernest Cowley,55 now went over their collection of Genizah manuscripts searching for copies of Ben Sira. Within 50

Elkan Nathan Adler (1861–1946): Anglo-Jewish lawyer, bibliophile, collector and author; see C. Roth, ‘Adler, Elkan Nathan’ in M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. I, 2nd edn (Detroit, 2007), p. 396. For the story of his visit to the Ben Ezra synagogue, see Adler’s own account in ‘An Eleventh Century Introduction to the Hebrew Bible’, pp. 671–673. 51 BLR d.1084, document 52 (a quote from a letter dated 29 November 1896 that was sent in a letter from d’Hulst on 20 May 1915). 52 BLR d.14. 53 Solomon Schechter (c.1847–1915): Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature at Cambridge University and curator of the Oriental Department of Cambridge University Library. Further biographical details can be found in S. C. Reif, ‘Solomon Schechter’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). 54 Mrs Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Mrs Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843– 1920); a detailed account of their relationship with Schechter is found in S. C. Reif, ‘Giblews, Jews and Genizah Views’, JJS 55 (2004), pp. 332–346. Lewis and Gibson’s under-appreciated role in recovering Genizah material is explored in R. J. W. Jefferson, ‘Sisters of Semitics: a fresh appreciation of the scholarship of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson’, Medieval Feminist Forum 45 (2009), pp. 23–49. 55 Sir Arthur Ernest Cowley (1861–1931): Semitist, assistant sub-librarian and coeditor of the Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts (for further biographical details, see

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six weeks they announced that they had found nine more leaves—the continuation of Schechter’s fragment. A race was ignited: from this point on, both Schechter and Neubauer became obsessed with finding the rest of this medieval version and each set about trying to recover it from Egypt.56 Neubauer already knew the exact source of his manuscripts, but Sayce and his Cairo contact, d’Hulst, were having difficulties negotiating their purchase. Schechter, whose interest in the fragments had only been recently sparked, quickly slotted the pieces of the puzzle together and set off for Cairo as soon as he could in December 1896. The following month, Schechter was able to report back that he had been allowed into the Genizah chamber and permitted to remove as much of the material as he liked.57 The wealth of Schechter’s Jewish learning and his vibrant personality endeared him to the Chief Rabbi and to the community and thus he had more success than d’Hulst and Sayce. With the private backing of the Master of St John’s College, Charles Taylor, Schechter was also able to offer a good price for the manuscripts (around £300 according to Sayce), an amount far exceeding Sayce’s earlier offer of £50.58 Having no time to sort through the papers in the Genizah chamber and to select the best of them, Schechter simply gathered as many as he could.59 At the same time that Schechter was busy in Cairo, Neubauer and Cowley had decided which of their Genizah manuscripts to sell. The sole record of the sale is found in the accounts section of the Curators’ Annual Report where the amount of £5 for the ‘sale of useless Hebrew MSS’ appears in the receipts column.60 The name of the buyer is not mentioned; only on a page entitled ‘sale of waste’ in the Bodleian’s receipts ledger next to the date 25 January 1897 and the note ‘sale of

Steven Tomlinson, ‘Cowley, Sir Arthur Ernest (1861–1931)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). 56 For an in-depth account of this race, see Jefferson, ‘A Genizah Secret’, pp. 125–142. 57 CUL MS Add.6463(E).3418 (Cairo: 12 January 1897). I am grateful to the Syndics of Cambridge University Library for permission to quote from their archives and manuscripts. 58 See the letter from Sayce to Nicholson in BLR d.1084, document 10 (Cairo: 22 April 1898). 59 See his letter to Francis Jenkinson: CUL MS Add.6463(E).3418 (Cairo: 12 January 1897). 60 See the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, May 10, 1898’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXVIII (1897–1898), pp. 463–470 (469).

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useless Hebrew MS fragments’, is the name Mr E. N. Adler revealed.61 It is unknown how many of the Genizah fragments Adler bought from the Bodleian in 1897, but if the estimation that d’Hulst and Sayce sent around 9,600 folios in 1896 is correct, then it is possible that Adler acquired in the region of 6,000 folios.62 After Schechter returned to England with his massive hoard of manuscripts (possibly in the region of 200,000 folios),63 it soon became apparent that he had indeed retrieved more leaves of the original Ben Sira, but the edition was still not complete and there were clearly pages missing.64 Neubauer arranged with Sayce and d’Hulst to see if anything remained in the synagogue. D’Hulst had informed them about the manuscripts discarded as waste or buried at the same time that they rebuilt the chamber; Neubauer therefore engaged him to conduct

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BLR c.37: receipts ledger (1890–1916). Recalling his manuscript collecting activities that year, Adler wrote: ‘it was 1897, and I was full of Apocrypha’ and on his method of collecting, he observed: ‘the cheapest method is to buy the lot, nor must you let it appear which is the book you really want, when you make the purchase’; E. N. Adler, ‘The Humours of Hebrew MSS.’, About Hebrew Manuscripts (London, 1905), pp. 103–112 (110). Indeed, Adler was inexhaustible in his attempts to buy manuscripts that year; during a trip to Bukhara, he even conducted house-to-house searches; see E. N. Adler, ‘The Persian Jews: Their Books and Their Ritual’, Jewish Quarterly Review 10 (1898), pp. 584–625 (584). 63 An inventory of Cambridge University Library’s Genizah collections (including the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection and the Library’s own Genizah collections) was completed in 2007 as part of a joint project between the Genizah Research Unit and the Friedberg Genizah Project. The results of this inventory revealed that, at the time of counting, the Library’s Genizah collections amounted to 193,654 fragments (= the number of physical items, either a single leaf or bifolium) or 225,141 folios (= the number of leaves or pages), of which the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection comprised 190,526 fragments or 220,982 folios. Yet letters held in the University Library archives (CUL ULIB 6/6/1/2) reveal that a proportion of the Taylor-Schechter Collection (six sacks and three bags full) were sold to the Library by Schechter’s friend in Cairo, Reginald Q. Henriques. Henrique’s manuscripts were merged with Schechter’s hoard and thus it will probably never be known exactly how much he and Schechter each supplied. It is conceivable that six sacks and three bags full of manuscript fragments could contain as much as 10,000 folios and perhaps even more, especially when one considers that, like d’Hulst, Henrique had mostly recovered small scraps. Further details of Henriques’ manuscripts are discussed in R. J. W. Jefferson, ‘The Historical Significance of the Cambridge Genizah Inventory Project’ in N. Dershowitz and E. Nissan (eds), Language, Culture, Computation: Studies in Honour of Yaacov Choueka (Berlin, forthcoming). 64 D’Hulst quotes a letter from Neubauer (dated 29 October 1897): ‘From Schechter’s statements in Paris I understand that he has some 10 or 12 leaves of Ecclesiasticus. If you find the rest, your name will be mentioned as the finder . . .’ (BLR d.1084, document 52: Cairo: 20 May 1915). 62

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secret excavations around the synagogue area in the hope of finding material that Schechter did not.65 D’Hulst first sent Neubauer a package of manuscripts randomly selected from a ‘pile of rubbish’ in order to give him an idea of what was there.66 Neubauer wrote that, as far as the dark winter (and probably his failing eyesight) allowed, he thought that, ‘although not containing any startling discovery’, they were on the whole worth the money.67 Reporting back on his initial findings, d’Hulst described the rubbish heaps and estimated the time it would take to ‘turn’ them: It appears that I only saw them throw out the last remains of their rubbish, that which I have turned now. Some months before I began the work for the Egypt Exploration Fund they had thrown out another big heap of rubbish, which I have found. I have examined this heap; it contains papers of the same nature . . . as those I sent you & in the same proportion. Of course I do not know whether under this heap may be buried refuse of another provenience, but assuming the entire heap to come from the synagogue, it would take about six weeks to turn it.68

D’Hulst had also regained entry to the Genizah chamber and communicated to Oxford how much material remained: There are at present about ten sacs [sic] of papers there (the eight bags I send you to form one . . . ); but as far as I could examine it about 9/10 is printed, the remainder manuscript, but nearly exclusively on paper, parchments are hardly there. I suspect that they have carried & carry all sorts of rubbish paper together, to mix them up . . . with what was left with a view to selling them.69

65 Sayce wrote to d’Hulst (4 December 1897): ‘Neubauer wishes to say that money would be forthcoming from Oxford to dig up the [things]’ (quoted in BLR d.1084, document 52). 66 BLR d.1084, document 3 (Cairo: 6 January 1898). 67 A letter from Neubauer (dated 18 January 1898) quoted in BLR d.1084, document 52. 68 BLR d.1084, document 4 (Cairo: 17 February 1898). 69 BLR d.1084, document 4. Israel Abrahams also saw the Genizah in March 1898 and told his wife that: ‘there is a great deal left. I should not wonder that there is as much again as Schechter took’ (18 March 1898) and ‘it is a real sell Schechter pretending that he had brought away everything’ (19 March 1898). Abrahams letters are published in P. Abrahams, ‘The Letters of Israel Abrahams from Egypt and Palestine in 1898’, The Jewish Historical Society of England: Transactions, Sessions 1970–1973, 24 (1975), pp. 1–23 [8–9].

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Neubauer replied that he should not bother with the remaining manuscripts in the synagogue because Schechter had not deemed them worthwhile taking either.70 After another two months, D’Hulst reported on the success of his excavations: My work at Old Cairo is going on successfully & if chance keeps on like at present, I shall with my present work more than double the quantity of Egyptian fragments at the Bodleian. I have already recovered more than two big grain sacks full & an unusual large quantity of these papers are manuscripts; there is also a larger amount of parchment amongst them.71

In the immediate vicinity of the synagogue, d’Hulst noticed that ‘a large part of the courtyard of the synagogue has been covered about one meter high with the same papers’.72 That material was also buried next to the synagogue is confirmed in a letter from Sayce to the Bodleian Librarian, E. W. B. Nicholson, concerning d’Hulst’s excavations: Mr Cattaui tells him that he will be able in the course of the summer to excavate in the garden of the synagogue itself where, it seems, no end of MSS are buried. A box of MSS (not books) has just been packed for you. There are more MSS under the ground than we had anticipated.73

At the end of his excavations, which took fifty-five working days, d’Hulst claimed to have filled ‘sixteen big grain sacs [sic] full of fragments’, which he sent in ‘four big wooden packing cases’.74 The dimensions of these cases are not provided. The Bodleian records, however, describe the shipment as ‘four large cases of fragments’ and they report that their accounts show:

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A letter from Neubauer (dated 31 March 1898) quoted in BLR d. 1084, document 52. BLR d.1084, document 8 (Cairo: 8 April 1898). 72 BLR d.1084, document 8. 73 BLR d.1084, document 10 (Cairo: 22 April 1898). The large amount of Genizah material left after Schechter’s visit is also confirmed by an entry in Jenkinson’s diary for 24 July 1898: ‘. . . had not been long at work when pebbles at the windows announced the . . . Walter Crums . . . I showed them the Cairo Collection, which interested them as they had had five sacks of fragments from the Genizah offered them at Cairo, but were warned that Schechter had taken all that was worth anything, rather a hasty assumption’ (CUL MS Add.7421 (1898). In December 1898, Reginald Q. Henriques reported to Schechter that another eight or nine sacks had been dug up (CUL ULIB 6/6/1/2) in addition to the sacks that d’Hulst had organized on behalf of the Bodleian. Most of Jacques Mosseri’s Genizah Collection was also found buried around the synagogue (see Mosseri, ‘A New Hoard’, p. 209). 74 BLR d.1084, document 11 (Cairo: 12 May 1898). 71

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rebecca j.w. jefferson Payments amounting to £32. 2s. 2d. made to Count d’Hulst for his outof-pocket expenses (wages of workmen and freight charges) in connexion with the excavation and dispatch of a large consignment of fragments from the Geniza.75

The Bodleian likewise preserves the receipt for the cost of freight from Henry Johnson & Sons for £5.13.11.76 This is a little over a quarter of the amount (£19.5.3) paid for Schechter’s eight boxes (or tea-chests) containing around 180,000+ fragments (200,000+ folios) and sent fifteen months earlier by the shipping firm Sutton & Co.77 Again, even if one takes into account price fluctuation and differences between shipping companies, it can only be assumed that d’Hulst had sent another large consignment of manuscripts, similar to those sent in 1896, possibly between ten and fifteen thousand folios. The University sent d’Hulst a vote of thanks. Neubauer retired from his post and Cowley was left with the responsibility of cataloguing most of the Bodleian’s Genizah collection and preparing the catalogue for publication. Plans to excavate the manuscripts in the synagogue garden were abandoned; nothing more was heard of d’Hulst’s excavations and the four cases of fragments that had resulted from them.78 Neubauer and Cowley’s Hebrew Catalogue only records 36 manuscripts (55 folios) procured through Sayce in 1898 and 78 manuscripts (156 folios) simply described as ‘from the Geniza’ in 1899. When d’Hulst contacted the Bodleian Library in 1909 to find out why his work recovering manuscripts for the Bodleian had not been acknowledged in the recently published Hebrew Catalogue, Nicholson wrote various excuses to him; he also wrote and then deleted the following paragraph:

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BLR d.1084, document 70. BLR d.1084, document 13 (16 June 1898). 77 CUL MS Add.7420 (2 March 1897). Both consignments were sent through the forwarding agent Large & Co. 78 It appears from Henriques’ letters in CUL ULIB 6/6/1/2 that d’Hulst continued to take a personal interest in the fragments even after the Bodleian had ceased to be involved. Writing to Jenkinson in 1899, Henriques reported that: “I have delayed replying to your last letter . . . in the hope of having some definite news to communicate re further consignments of M.S.S. which as you seem anxious to secure I am doing my utmost to procure. As you know there are still several people scheming to obtain whatever is brought to light especially an Austrian whose name I communicated to Professor Schechter some time ago . . . I send you by this post a manuscript found in the same place & for which the Austrian Count offered £2 please have it examined without delay . . .” (Cairo, 12 May 1899). 76

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If you knew the contents of the many parcels we had received from Mr. Chester through a number of years, you would know that the fragments dug up for us, under your kind supervision turned out to be of very little value indeed by comparison; in fact, had they been offered to us for the same money they cost to recover . . . I don’t think we should have ever dreamt of giving it. That, however, you could not anticipate or help: there might have been priceless treasures among them, and in any case your good will and labour were the same.79

In March 1899, the Librarian asked the curators ‘for leave to sell for £20 a quantity of MS fragments from Egypt put aside by Dr. Neubauer and Mr. Cowley as not worth retention’.80 The reason for this decision was also explained in the finance section of the Curators’ annual report of 1899: In 1898 the cost of certain excavations in Egypt, and of the carriage of the proceeds to Oxford, was paid for from the Trinity Grant. It was found that a very large proportion of the manuscript scraps dug up were quite without value to a Library so extremely rich in Hebrew MSS. as the Bodleian . . .81

Again, the identity of the buyer was concealed and simply referred to in the report as ‘a private collector of well-known position’. The money raised by the sale was used to repay the Trinity grant. Given the intense interest in Genizah manuscripts today, it seems incredible that both consignments were considered ‘quite without value’ to the Bodleian. Yet account must be taken of nineteenth century attitudes towards manuscripts, particularly in terms of their age. This attitude is summarised by Schechter’s friend and Cambridge successor, Israel Abrahams, who once wrote: Old manuscripts certainly have their charm, but they must have been written at least before the invention of printing. Otherwise a manuscript is an anachronism—it recalls too readily the editorial ‘declined with thanks’.82

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BLR d.1084, document 19 (Oxford; 25 November 1909). BLR d.18: Minutes of Curators’ Meetings 1897–1902, 11 March 1899. 81 See the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, May 15, 1900’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXX (1899–1900), pp. 541–549 (547). 82 See I. Abrahams, The Book of Delight: and Other Papers (Philadelphia, 1912), pp. 109–110. In the same work, Abrahams also recalled Neubauer’s attitude towards manuscripts: ‘Dr. Neubauer once said to me, “I take no interest in a girl who has seen more than seventeen years, nor in a manuscript that has seen less than seven hundred” ’. 80

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Prior to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, both Neubauer and Schechter had been keen to acquire important Hebrew manuscripts for their respective institutions. Early in 1894, Neubauer proudly announced that the Bodleian’s collection of Genizah manuscripts rivalled those of the St Petersburg Hebrew Collection ‘if not in quantity, certainly in quality’.83 Schechter was concerned about the ‘quality’ of the manuscripts too. That same year, checking a list of ninety-five items sent by Wertheimer to Cambridge, he marked four as ‘worthless’, ten as ‘not wanted’, and one (five leaves of Targum) as ‘not wanted at all’.84 Even when Schechter had been given unlimited access to the Genizah, he had confided in his friend, Herbert Bentwich, that ‘by buying from them [the dealers] I get what is most valuable.’85 Back in Cambridge, Schechter went through his eight crates and sorted most of the material into items of importance and those of less interest.86 The rejected items were labelled as either ‘second selection’ or ‘residue’.87 The Bodleian’s Hebrew Catalogue reveals that the manuscripts ‘bought through the Rev. Prof. Sayce’ in 1896 were a mixed batch with a larger percentage of miscellaneous items (27%) and a smaller percentage of rabbinic material (9%) than those provided by earlier suppliers. Sayce’s manuscripts were more fragmentary than those in previous consignments with an average of 2.5 leaves per item compared with Wertheimer’s average of 6.5 leaves per item. It is also probable that a good proportion of the shipments in 1896 and 1898 were unremarkable copies of the Bible or rabbinic literature, or fragments pertaining to commonplace matters such as communal or personal

83 A. Neubauer, ‘Review: Grammatical and Lexicographical Literature’, Jewish Quarterly Review 6 (1894), pp. 567–570 (567–568). 84 See the letters and the list preserved in CUL MS Or.1080 13 (volume I). It seems that Schechter may have sold on some of the fragments to the Bodleian because the Bodleian accounts ledger (Bodleian Library Records, c. 59) under ‘Payment for MSS.’ shows a remittance to Schechter on 27 April 1894 for £10. 85 N. Bentwich, Solomon Schechter: a Biography (Cambridge, 1938), p. 130. 86 See the ‘Report of the Library Syndicate for the year ending December 31, 1902’, Cambridge University Reporter, June 23, 1903, No. 1463, Vol. XXXIII, No. 48, pp. 1066–1067. Schechter’s selection of manuscripts, which are now part of the T-S Old Series, were in better shape and far less fragmentary than the manuscripts that would form the other parts of the Collection; namely, the New and Additional Series. 87 See the ‘Appendix II: Report on the Taylor-Schechter Collection’ in ‘Report of the Library Syndicate for the year ended 31 December 1905’, Cambridge University Reporter, 2 June 1906, No. 1609, Vol. XXXVI, No. 40, pp. 1008-1012 [Hereafter: ‘Library Annual Report, 1906’]. For further details about the historical classification of the T-S Collection, see Jefferson, ‘The Historical Significance’.

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affairs (the rich potential of this material was only realised after the 1950s when the great historian of the Genizah, Shelomo Dov Goitein (1900–1985) began his wide-ranging research into the ‘Mediterranean society’).88 Furthermore, it is likely that, given their origin in the ‘rubbish heaps’ outside the synagogue grounds, a proportion of d’Hulst’s 1898 collection may have been late medieval and early modern papers like many of the manuscripts excavated between 1909–1912 by Jacques Mosseri. A memo summarising the history of d’Hulst’s dealings with the Bodleian and the manuscripts he supplied in 1898 contains the observation that: ‘the fragments, though some are quite early, are mostly of the 11th & 12th centuries and later’.89 D’Hulst’s shipments no doubt comprised many poorly-preserved, tiny scraps of paper, similar to those in the Cambridge T-S Additional Series (the so-called ‘residue’ of the T-S Collection).90 Indeed, the physical condition of parts of these consignments and the problem of how best to preserve them may have been a great factor in their rejection. Schechter, in his famous description of the Genizah chamber, described many of the manuscripts as ‘big unshapely lumps, which even with the aid of chemical appliances can no longer be separated without serious damage to their constituents’.91 Agnes Smith Lewis also provided a graphic description of the state of the Genizah manuscripts that she and her sister had acquired in Cairo in 1897: I found each little bundle of heterogeneous leaves glued together, some loosely, through having been dried after immersion in water; some tightly, by a treacle-like sticky substance formed out of their own decay. Sometimes a handful which I supposed to consist of three leaves would

88 See S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). Yet Goitein himself rejected parts of the T-S Collection when sorting through Schechter’s ‘residue’ to form the New Series. Goitein’s rejected material would eventually form the T-S Additional Series (see Jefferson, ‘The Historical Significance’). Even today, with the greater emphasis shifted to the social and historical aspects of the Genizah, the scholarly community still tends to focus its attention on the Classical Genizah period, largely overlooking the material from the late-medieval and early-modern periods. 89 BLR d.1084, document 34 (Oxford; 22 October 1914). 90 Approximately 104,000 fragments of the T-S Collection were stored in thirty-two crates until the 1970s. With the appointment of Stefan Reif to care for the Collection in 1974, this material was finally conserved and sorted into an ‘Additional Series’. Its many treasures (such as two fragments from MS B of Ben Sira) are still coming to light. 91 S. Schechter, ‘A Hoard of Hebrew Mss.’, The Times (3 August 1897), p. 13.

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rebecca j.w. jefferson be found to conceal a dozen, each differing in character from its neighbours, and amongst the dust which covered them I discovered not a few very tiny insects.92

As to d’Hulst’s hoard, his wife declared that ‘when I helped to cleanse & sew down the fragments in sacks, their odour was anything but sanitary’.93 A local Oxford bookbinder, Alfred Maltby & Son, was responsible for cleaning and binding the Bodleian Genizah manuscripts. For example, in March 1899, a bill from this bookbinder reads: ‘26 Hebrew fragments cleaned & pressed [6] hours 4s 6d’.94 In the previous year, the Curators’ Annual Report shows that the Bodleian expended a total of £182 2s 11d on binding manuscripts.95 One can only imagine the amount of time and money that would have been needed to take care of many thousands of Genizah manuscripts in this manner.96 Furthermore, the Bodleian did not have the space to store large amounts of Genizah manuscripts.97 It was only in Nicholson’s day that the library’s badly-needed expansion got under way, but space was still wanting, in part due to Nicholson’s ‘omnivorous appetite for every form of publication’.98 Nicholson was not a good financier and, according to the later Librarian, Sir Edmund Craster, partly to blame for the large expenditure that resulted in the absence of reserve funds and ‘the increasing poverty which beset the library’.99 To store

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Lewis and Gibson, Palestinian Syriac Texts, p. viii. BLR d. 1084, document 58 (Cairo: 11 December 1915). 94 See BLR b.73 (March 1899). 95 See the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library, May 9, 1899’, Oxford University Gazette, vol. XXIX (1898–1899), pp. 493–499 (469). 96 Eight years after they had been donated to Cambridge University Library, a total of 34,335 fragments had been treated (approximately 20% of the T-S collection) at a cost of £577 5s 11d defrayed out of the General Library Fund (‘Library Annual Report, 1906’). 97 That Cambridge University Library undertook to house all of Schechter’s fragments was due in part to Jenkinson’s ‘affection for oddments’; see A. Freeman ‘Everyman and Others, Part I: Some Fragments of Early English Printing, and their Preservers’, Library 9 (2008), pp. 267–305 (330). Nevertheless, most of the manuscripts were put away in storage: firstly, in a basement under the old Library’s map room in 1912, then off-site in the Arts School on Bene’t Street after the Library moved in 1934, and then on the University’s Sidgwick Site after the 1950s. The material was brought back into the Library in the early 1970s where it was still stored in crates in the Library’s tower (for more details about this, see Jefferson, ‘Historical Significance’). 98 H. H. E. Craster, History of the Bodleian Library, 1845–1945 (Oxford, 1952), p. 244. 99 Craster, History of the Bodleian Library, p. 244. 93

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and conserve a large amount of poorly-preserved manuscripts of little scholarly interest would have been an expensive and seemingly redundant undertaking. In short, the content, age, and physical state of d’Hulst’s Genizah manuscripts, together with the cost and problem of storage, all contributed to the decision by the Bodleian’s curators to sell them. The buyer, according to the Bodleian Library’s receipts ledger, was again that ardent collector of Hebrew manuscripts, the bibliophile, Elkan Nathan Adler.100 The number of fragments sold is not recorded, but the amount paid for them by Adler was £20 7s. Since this was close to the original cost of the manuscripts, it seems likely that Adler purchased almost everything that d’Hulst had excavated. Thus, a good proportion (perhaps more than half) of Adler’s Genizah collection of 26,886 fragments101 now held at the Jewish Theological Seminary owes its original discovery to the exertions of the Count d’Hulst.102 Unfortunately, parts of Adler’s collection were largely ignored until the late twentieth century. In 1996, an examination of some of his neglected boxes revealed ‘more than one thousand small, crumpled fragments that had never been fully sorted or conserved, or assigned library shelfmarks, let alone studied’.103 Among other invaluable items were forty-five new historical documents, some measuring ‘only a few centimetres in each dimension’.104 It was the race to recover leaves of Ben Sira that had motivated d’Hulst’s excavations. But the absence of any further leaves in the resulting four boxes was probably another reason why they were rejected. Yet, in an interesting twist of fate, it is highly likely that d’Hulst had

100 See the receipts ledger ‘sale of waste’ and the entry for 25 March 1899 (BLR c.37). For more on Adler’s collecting history and his varied collections, see his own account in ‘The Hebrew treasures of England’, pp. 1–18. 101 I am grateful to Professor Yaacov Choueka and Ruth Gintzler at the Friedberg Genizah Project for supplying me with the latest inventory results for the number of fragments in the ENA Genizah Collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary. 102 Cambridge University Library may also owe a part of its T-S Collection to d’Hulst’s excavations as it seems that the material sold to the Library by Henriques was material originally dug up by d’Hulst. In his letter to Schechter dated 8 December 1898, Henriques reported that ‘some German or Austrian’ had ‘succeeded in digging up at least 20 to 25 bags of manuscripts’ and he wrote that, in order to stop another interested buyer, he had ‘stepped in & [collared] what was already dug up which is 5 sacks full’ (CUL ULIB 6/6/1/2). 103 M. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (New Jersey, 2005), pp. 14–15. 104 Cohen, Poverty and Charity, p. 15.

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recovered some Ben Sira fragments after all. After Schechter had brought back most of the contents of the Genizah to Cambridge in 1897, he found two pairs of leaves from another manuscript version. Schechter first published this new version (called MS A) in 1899.105 He also published leaves that he had found from a third manuscript version (MS C) in 1900 at the same time that other leaves from MS C were found and published by Israel Lévi (from Genizah fragments in Paris)106 and by Moses Gaster (from his own private collection).107 Lévi also found a further version (MS D). Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, it was apparent that there were at least four different manuscript versions of Ben Sira copied in the Middle Ages. Today, there are six known Genizah versions (designated MSS A–F).108 Yet the fact that there existed several different Genizah manuscript versions of Ben Sira was not known to Neubauer and Cowley when they first commissioned d’Hulst to look for further leaves of their version (MS B). Indeed, Neubauer sent d’Hulst a copy of his recently published critical edition of the Bodleian Ben Sira fragments in order to help him identify them.109 When Neubauer and Cowley subsequently searched through d’Hulst’s excavated manuscripts, they did not find any more leaves of the same manuscript (MS B is easily recognizable by its distinctive stichometric arrangement) and, not knowing that they existed, it is possible that they overlooked leaves from other versions of the text. In 1900, having seen the leaves of Ben Sira that the French scholar Israel Lévi had recently acquired from W. S. Raffalovich,110 Adler

105 S. Schechter and C. Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book Ecclesiasticus from Hebrew Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah Collection presented to the University of Cambridge by the Editors (Cambridge, 1899). 106 I. Lévi, ‘Fragments de deux nouveaux manuscripts hébreux de l’Ecclésiastique’, Revue des Études Juives 40 (1900), pp. 1–30. 107 M. Gaster, ‘A New Fragment of Ben Sira’, Jewish Quarterly Review 12 (1900), pp. 688–702. 108 See the list of all known manuscripts in P. C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: a Text Edition of all Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of all Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts (Leiden, 1997). The latest copy of Ben Sira to be discovered, another version of MS C, came to light in a private collection (provenance unknown) and was recently published by S. Elizur, ‘A New Hebrew Fragment of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 76 (2006–2007), pp. 17–28. 109 See the quote from a letter dated 21 June 1897 in BLR d.1084, document 52 (20 May 1915). 110 Raffalovich was another known dealer of Genizah manuscripts. He supplied Cambridge University Library with several thousand folios of Genizah mate-

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went back to have another look at his boxes, which, he admitted, still awaited examination. There in the unopened boxes he discovered two more Ben Sira fragments, which turned out to be part of Schechter’s MS A.111 When he published the leaves that same year, Adler wrote that they came from ‘among the numerous fragments which I brought away with me in January 1896, and which I have since acquired’.112 But it is unlikely that these MS A fragments were part of the hoard that he had personally removed from the Ben Ezra synagogue as he had gone through this material and shown its contents to Schechter and Neubauer late in 1896.113 It is more probable that the unopened boxes were those that Adler had purchased only a year or two earlier from the Bodleian. Not only that, but he testified that the fragments were in too poor a state for immediate recognition: ‘Lévi’s was an ordinary octavo leaf, and I got some clerks in my office to arrange leaves like it, clean and press them out, and then I went through a bundle, and it turned out to be what we were looking for’.114 Furthermore, Adler’s collection also contained a prosodic version of Ben Sira (now called MS E), which was discovered in the 1930s by Joseph Marcus.115 This leaf is likewise in very poor condition, which again suggests that it might have originated from the boxes of ‘useless Hebrew fragments’ excavated on behalf of the Bodleian and later rejected. There may also have been a connection between d’Hulst’s excavations and the Ben Sira manuscripts at Cambridge University Library.

rial between 1897–1898. Much of his material was declared ‘a very rubbishy lot’ by Jenkinson (for more pronouncements on Raffalovich’s hoard, see Jenkinson’s diary entries for 1898, CUL MS Add.7421: 1898). Most of Cambridge University Library’s Or.1080 and Or.1081 is believed to be material purchased from Raffalovich. The fact that Lévi’s source was Raffalovich is testified to by Adler in ‘Ecclesiasticus’, The Jewish Chronicle (11 March 1904), p. 29. 111 E. N. Adler, ‘Some Missing Chapters of Ben Sira’, Jewish Quarterly Review 12 (1900), pp. 466–480. Adler first thought that they were parts of Lévi’s MS C. 112 Adler, ‘Some Missing Chapters’, p. 466. 113 Adler relates how he showed his sack of treasures to Schechter and Neubauer in ‘Ecclesiasticus’, p. 29. A letter from Schechter to Adler (Jewish Theological Seminary, Solomon Schechter Collection, Box 1/15) confirms that this took place in either October or November 1896. Presumably, Adler would have also checked the sack in order to look for copies of MS B. 114 Adler, ‘Ecclesiasticus’, p. 29. 115 See J. Marcus, ‘A Fifth MS. of Ben Sira’, Jewish Quarterly Review NS 23 (1931), pp. 223–240. Marcus provides a facsimile of the manuscript at the end of the article.

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In 1957, a version of MS B was found in the T-S Collection by Jefim Schirmann among the manuscript ‘residue’ that later formed the T-S New Series. This manuscript (now T-S NS 38a.1) was selected by Schirmann from a crate marked as ‘Genizah Lib. coll. Not T/S’.116 Although it is now impossible to track down exactly which parts of the T-S Collection were acquired from the aforementioned Reginald Q. Henriques, this crate may have contained some of the manuscript fragments that Henriques sent to Schechter and Cambridge University Library in 1899; material that he admits he had ‘collared’ from sacks that had already been dug up.117 This might also explain why Schechter himself did not spot this copy of MS B; for in the same way that Neubauer had rejected d’Hulst’s excavated fragments, Schechter had rejected the fragments sent by Henriques (now known to have come from the same source). The sale of unwanted Genizah material was not the end of the Bodleian’s connection to the Genizah. Just four years later in 1903, it appears that d’Hulst wrote to Cowley to inform him about a Samaritan Pentateuch for sale in Cairo and Cowley’s reply included the query: ‘Is there any prospect of any more fragments Hebrew or otherwise, such as we got some time ago?’118 If this query was accurately copied, then it is incredible to think that having discarded the many thousands of fragments unearthed by d’Hulst in 1898, Cowley now wondered if he could find any more. One can only assume that the recent publication of new versions of Ben Sira had made Cowley realise that there were more leaves to discover and his interest in Genizah material was reawakened. Indeed, in 1906, the Bodleian purchased 917 manuscripts from the Genizah through the collector Joseph Offord.119 It is unclear exactly how many manuscripts Offord had originally shipped over, as part of his hoard were designated as ‘useless Hebrew fragments’ and

116 Lists of these crates and their contents are held in the T-S Unit departmental records. 117 See Henriques’ letters in CUL ULIB 6/6/1/2. 118 BLR d.1084, document 68 (a quote from a letter dated 28 February 1903 within a letter from 16 October 1932). 119 See Cowley, Additional Genizah Fragments, who lists the provenance of every volume of manuscripts included in the handlist. I have counted the entries listed as Offord’s and calculate that he supplied 917 manuscripts of an as yet unknown number of folios. Some sparse biographical details of Offord are provided in the brief obituary by S. Reinach, ‘Joseph Offord’, Revue Archéologique 13 (5th series) (1921), pp. 152–153.

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they too were sold to Adler in March 1907 for the price of one pound and ten shillings.120 As we have seen, the Bodleian shaped its Genizah collection according to the collecting values of its Victorian curators who placed great emphasis on monumental finds and rare versions of important works, particularly biblical and rabbinic texts.121 The curators did not see any potential in ephemera like shopping lists and amulets, or even in fragmentary copies of the Bible, nor were they interested in material from a later period and as a result designated such manuscripts as ‘useless’. Moreover, they certainly did not have the capacity to store large amounts of dilapidated manuscripts in case of future interest. Yet, it is notable that, when Cowley came to write the preface to the catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts in 1906, he speculated about the great potential for social history offered by the Genizah and stressed the importance of joining small private collections to the larger ones held in the major institutions.122 It is clear that a study of the history of the Bodleian collection is immensely important for the history of the Genizah itself. Through the letters, records, and receipts meticulously preserved in the Bodleian archives, we are able to learn more about how and when the Genizah was first re-discovered. We are now aware that a proportion of the original Genizah was discarded in the nearby rubbish mounds; another part was buried when the old synagogue was demolished, and a large number of these manuscripts was later excavated by the Count d’Hulst in 1898 before the known activities of Jacques Mosseri in 1909. The Bodleian’s records and receipts have also shown how Genizah material was purchased and how it was later dispersed, in addition to revealing important information about the provenance of another major Genizah collection: the Elkan Nathan Adler Collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Furthermore, a comparison between the archives held in the Bodleian Library and those held in Cambridge University Library reveals that some of the manuscripts (perhaps several thousand) in the ‘Taylor-Schechter Genizah 120

See BLR c.37: receipts ledger (1890–1916). Neubauer and Schechter were also students of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement (the ‘science’ of Judaism) and therefore keen to find rare manuscript witnesses to aid their critical studies of important Jewish texts. A new account of Neubauer’s scholarly work is provided by Reif, ‘A fresh look at Adolf Neubauer’ and Schechter’s scholarship is detailed in Bentwich, Solomon Schechter. 122 See Cowely, ‘Preface’ in Hebrew Catalogue, p. iv. 121

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Collection’ may have been excavated by Count Riamo d’Hulst (or those working for him) and seized by Schechter’s supporter in Cairo, Reginald Q. Henriques. Finally, one of d’Hulst’s many interesting letters to the Bodleian offers the enticing possibility that there were more manuscripts than those uncovered by Mosseri in 1912, which were thought to be the last remaining.123 Responding to the decision of a Bodleian committee in 1915 to award him £25 for his past services to the Library, the rather disgruntled d’Hulst wrote: I never have lost sight of these MSS. and only during the last years I have learned that there is still a number of them—possibly and probably as large a quantity as I have excavated—buried. It is a secret which is no longer shared by anyone but myself, and which will die with me. Feeling, rightly as I think, dissatisfied with the manner I have been treated, I decided not to divulge the secret. It goes against my sentiment as a scholar, but I have been treated too badly.124

Were these simply the empty words of an aggrieved man, or might d’Hulst have been referring to the collection of 18th–19th century manuscripts excavated in the 1980s called the ‘new Geniza’?125 Or could it be that indeed there are more undiscovered Genizah manuscripts still waiting to be unearthed?

Bibliography Primary Sources The Athenaeum (London). Brooklyn Daily Eagle [online archive edition]. Cambridge University Library archives: CUL MS Add.7421 (1898), CUL MS ULIB 1/2/4 (1889–1899), CUL MS ULIB 6/4/1/104, CUL MS ULIB 6/6/1/2. Cambridge University Library manuscripts: MS Add.6463(E).3418, MS Add.7420, MS Add.7421, MS Or.1080 13. Cambridge University Reporter, 23 June 1903, No. 1463, Vol. XXXIII, No. 48 & 2 June 1906, No. 1609, Vol. XXXVI, No. 40.

123 In 1906, Joseph Offord reported about his Genizah searches that ‘I saw Count d’Hulst who thinks that the store is quite exhausted’ (Bodleian Library Records, d.1083, 8 January 1906). 124 BLR d.1084, document 52. 125 See M. Cohen, ‘Goitein, the Geniza, and Muslim history’ [http://www.dayan. org/mel/cohen.pdf] (2001).

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Egypt Exploration Fund Archives at the Egypt Exploration Society (London): Committee Meeting Minutes. Egypt Exploration Fund Archives at the Egypt Exploration Society (London): Boxes III. j.66, j.73, III. k.69–123, XV. Jewish Theological Seminary archives, Solomon Schechter Collection, Box 1/15, 4/11. The Jewish Chronicle (London) [online edition]. Letters to A. W. Franks (archives of the Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum). Oxford University, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Misc.d.69, f.70. Oxford University, Bodleian Library Records [BLR] c.37. Oxford University, BLR c.59. Oxford University, BLR d.18. Oxford University, BLR d.1084. Oxford University, BLR e.479. Oxford University Gazette. The Times (London) [online edition]. Secondary Sources I. Abrahams, The Book of Delight: and Other Papers (Philadelphia, 1912). P. Abrahams, ‘The Letters of Israel Abrahams from Egypt and Palestine in 1898’, The Jewish Historical Society of England:Transactions, Sessions 1970–1973, 24 (1975), pp. 1–23. E. N. Adler, ‘An Eleventh Century Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: Being a Fragment from the Sepher ha-Ittim of Rabbi Judah ben Barzilai of Barcelona’, Jewish Quarterly Review 9 (1897), pp. 669–716. ——, ‘The Persian Jews: Their Books and Their Ritual’, Jewish Quarterly Review 10 (1898), pp. 584–625. ——, ‘Some Missing Chapters of Ben Sira’, Jewish Quarterly Review 12 (1900), pp. 466–480. ——, About Hebrew Manuscripts (London, 1905). ——, ‘The Hebrew Treasures of England’, Presidential Address delivered on February 9, 1914, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 8–9 (1915–1917), pp. 1–18. P. C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: a Text Edition of all Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of all Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts (Leiden, 1997). N. Bentwich, Solomon Schechter: a Biography (Cambridge, 1938). M. L. Bierbrier, Who was Who in Egyptology, 3rd rev. edn (London, 1995). G. J. Chester, ‘Notes on the ancient Christian churches of Musr el Ateekah, or old Cairo, and its neighbourhood’, The Archaeological Journal 29 (1872), pp. 120–134. ——, ‘Donkey rides around Cairo’, Aunt Judy’s Magazine (London), issue nos 153–158 (1879). M. R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (New Jersey, 2005). ——, Goitein, the Geniza, and Muslim history [http://www.dayan.org/mel/cohen.pdf] (2001). A. E. Cowley, Additional Genizah Fragments, i.e. fragments not recorded in A. Neubauer’s Catalogue of the Hebrew manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford 1886–1906 (Oxford, c. 1929). Sir H. H. E. Craster, History of the Bodleian Library, 1845–1945 (Oxford, 1952). R. D’Hulst, ‘The Arab House of Egypt’, The Royal Institute of British Architects: Transactions 4 N. S. (1890), pp. 221–227. S. Elizur, ‘A New Hebrew Fragment of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 76 (2006–2007), pp. 17–28.

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A. Freeman, ‘Everyman and Others, Part I: Some Fragments of Early English Printing, and their Preservers’, Library 9 (2008), pp. 267–305. A. L. Frothingham, ‘Archaeological News’, American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts 8 (1893), pp. 91–151. M. Gaster, ‘A New Fragment of Ben Sira’, Jewish Quarterly Review 12 (1900), pp. 688–702. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Geniza (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). R. Gottheil and W. H. Worrel (eds), Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection (New York, 1927). S. Hopkins, ‘The Discovery of the Cairo Geniza’, Bibliophilia Africana IV (Cape Town, 1981), pp. 137–179. R. J. W. Jefferson, ‘Thirty Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit’ in S. D. Reif (ed.), The Written Word Remains; the Archive and the Achievement: Articles in honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 9–27. ——, ‘A Genizah Secret: the Count d’Hulst and letters revealing the race to recover the lost leaves of the original Ecclesiaticus’, Journal of the History of Collections 21 (2009), pp. 125–142. ——, ‘Sisters of Semitics: a fresh appreciation of the scholarship of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson’, Medieval Feminist Forum 45 (2009), pp. 23–49. ——, ‘The Historical Significance of the Cambridge Genizah Inventory Project’, in N. Dershowitz and E. Nissan (eds), Language, Culture, Computation: Studies in Honour of Yaacov Choueka (Berlin, forthcoming). C. Le Quesne, ‘The Synagogue’ in P. Lambert (ed.), Fortifications and the Synagogue: The Fortress of Babylon and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo (Montreal, 1994), pp. 79–97. I. Lévi, ‘Fragments de deux nouveaux manuscripts hébreux de l’Ecclésiastique’, Revue des Études Juives 40 (1900), pp. 1–30. A. S. Lewis and M. D. Gibson (eds), Palestinian Syriac Texts: From Palimpsest Fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Collection (London, 1900). J. Marcus, ‘A Fifth MS. of Ben Sira’, Jewish Quarterly Review NS 23 (1931), pp. 223–240. J. Mosseri, ‘A New Hoard of Jewish MSS. in Cairo’, The Jewish Review 4 (1913–1914), pp. 208–216. A. Neubauer, ‘Review: Grammatical and Lexicographical Literature’, Jewish Quarterly Review 6 (1894), pp. 567–570. A. Neubauer and A. E. Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford, vol. II (Oxford, 1906). S. C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library: a Description and Introduction (Cambridge, 1997). ——, ‘The Discovery of the Cambridge Genizah Fragments of Ben Sira: Scholars and Texts’, in P. C. Beentjes (ed.), The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research: Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference, 28–31 July 1996, Soesterberg, Netherlands (Berlin, 1997), pp. 1–22. ——, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000). ——, ‘Giblews, Jews and Genizah Views’, Journal of Jewish Studies 55 (2004), pp. 332–346. ——, ‘Solomon Schechter’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). ——, ‘A Fresh Look at Adolf Neubauer as Scholar, Librarian and Jewish Personality’ delivered to the Jewish Historical Society of England (publication forthcoming). S. Reinach, ‘Joseph Offord’, Revue Archéologique 13 (5th series) (1921), pp. 152–153. C. Roth, ‘Adler, Elkan Nathan’ in M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. I, 2nd edn (Detroit, 2007), p. 396.

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J. Saphir, Even Sapir (Lyck, 1866). A. H. Sayce, Reminiscences (London, 1923). S. Schechter and C. Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book Ecclesiasticus from Hebrew Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah Collection presented to the University of Cambridge by the Editors (Cambridge, 1899). P. Sheehan, ‘The Roman Fortifications’, in P. Lambert (ed.), Fortifications and the Synagogue: the Fortress of Babylon and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo (Montreal, 1994), pp. 49–63. S. Tomlinson, ‘Cowley, Sir Arthur Ernest (1861–1931)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). P. Van Boxel, ‘The Hebrew Collections in Oxford: a Treasure Grove for Jewish Studies’, European Judaism: a Journal for the New Europe 41 (2008), pp. 56–66. E. A. Wallis Budge, By Nile and Tigris: a Narrative of Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on Behalf of the British Museum Between the Years 1886 and 1913 (London, 1920). S. Weny, ‘L’Archictecte de l’État Charles Arendt (1825–1910) et la restauration de la chapelle du château d’Esch-sur-Sûre (Luxembourg)’, Hémecht: Zeitschrift für Luxemburger Geschichte Revue d’Histoire Luxemourgeoise 55 (2003), pp. 483–523. S. A. Wertheimer, Beʾur Šemot ha-Nirdafim še-ba-Tanaḵ (New York, 1953). M. Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule 1517–1798 (London, 1992).

VOCALISED JUDAEOARABIC MANUSCRIPTS IN THE CAIRO GENIZAH Geoffrey Khan

The Cairo Genizah collections include a number of fragments containing Judaeo-Arabic texts that are vocalised with Hebrew vowel signs. The majority of these are datable to the High Middle Ages, as is the case with the bulk of the Genizah manuscripts. A few vocalised Judaeo-Arabic fragments can be dated to a later period. The purpose of this paper is to examine some aspects of the linguistic background of these texts from the two periods. The corpus will be divided into the medieval texts and the later texts. The late examples of vocalised Judaeo-Arabic can be dated to the Ottoman period, judging by linguistic parallels with other Judaeo-Arabic texts from this period. The following features will be described for each of these groups of manuscripts: (i) the orthography and its relationship to the vocalisation, (ii) the linguistic form of the Arabic reflected by the vocalisation signs, (iii) the linguistic background of the Hebrew vocalisation signs.

1. Medieval Judaeo-Arabic (i) Orthography The vocalised Judaeo-Arabic texts that are datable to the medieval period are written with what has come to be known as ‘Classical Judaeo-Arabic orthography’.1 This is a system of spelling that was the norm in Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts from the tenth century until the Mamluk period; therefore it is the orthography that is found in most Genizah material. It is characterised by a close imitation of the orthography of Classical Arabic (henceforth CA). A conspicuous feature that is taken over from Arabic orthography is the regular spelling of the

1 See J. Blau and S. Hopkins, ‘On Early Judaeo-Arabic Orthography’, Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 12 (1984), pp. 9–27.

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definite article with alef + lamed even before ‘sun’ letters, to which the /l/ of the article is assimilated in pronunciation, e.g.

ֲ ‫‘ ַא‬the heavens’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14r =assamawāt ‫)اﻟﺴﻤﻮات‬ (1) ‫לס ְמוַ אתּ‬ Another distinctive feature is the spelling of ḍād and ẓāʾ by a ṣade and a ṭet with a superscribed dot, in imitation of the Arabic letters ‫ ض‬and ‫ظ‬, e.g.

ֻ ‘you give preference to us’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14r = utufaḍḍilnā (2) ‫וּת ַפֿ ִ֗צ ְלנַ א‬ ‫)وﺗﻔﻀﻠﻨﺎ‬ These features are not found in the earlier Judaeo-Arabic texts, which spell the language phonetically according to a Hebrew and Aramaic type of orthography.2 In these texts, which are unvocalised, the lamed is not written in the article if it is assimilated in pronunciation. The ḍād, furthermore, is represented by dalet, this being felt to be the closest corresponding consonant phonetically, e.g. (3) ‫‘ אשמס‬the sun’ = aššams (‫)اﻟﺸﻤﺲ‬ (4) ‫‘ אלארד‬the ground’ = alʾarḍ (‫)الارض‬ It does not follow that Judaeo-Arabic texts written with an orthography conforming to that of Classical Arabic were read with the phonological form of Classical Arabic. This is clearly demonstrated by the vocalisation of the texts, which reflects numerous non-Classical features. Most of these features are disguised by the orthography and so the vocalised texts are valuable in demonstrating the gap between orthography and pronunciation of medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts. In some cases the dialectal pronunciation conflicts with the orthography. This applies to the 3ms suffix, which is regularly pronounced with its dialectal form—u although it is normally spelt with he in imitation of Classical Arabic, e.g.

ֻ [‫‘ ]ג‬his sitting, his standing and his travelling’ (5) ‫לוּסה וְ ִק ַא ֻמה וְ ַמ ִס ֻירה‬ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14v = julūsu waqiyāmu wamasīru)

2

Ibid.

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203

(6) ‫וּתה‬ ֻ ‫וּב ַﬠד ַמ‬ ַ ‘and after his death’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14v = CA wabaʿda mawtihi) (7) ‫‘ ַמ ֻﬠה‬with him’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 15r = CA maʿahu) In medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts this conflict between orthography and pronunciation of the 3ms suffix is occasionally resolved by spelling it with vav or with a vav combined with the he.3 (ii) Phonological form of the Arabic Reflected by the Vocalisation In many cases the orthography is ambiguous with regard to the phonological form and could in principle be read with that of Classical Arabic or with a phonological form that is characteristic of modern Arabic dialects. The vocalisation signs indeed reflect numerous features characteristic of the dialects. Examples of this include the following. The vocalisation of most texts reflects a reading without the final short vowels of CA, e.g. (8) ‫‘ ַמא ַא ְﬠ ַ֗טם וְ ַא ְכ ַבּר וְ ַאגַ ל ִמנְ ַהא‬what is mightier, greater and more majestic than them’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14r = CA mā ʾaʿẓamu waʾakbaru waʾajallu minhā) In a vocalised Judaeo-Arabic poetic text the lack of final short vowels is also reflected by the quantitative poetic metre, e.g. (9) ‫‘ ַט ְר ֿף‬edge’ (T-S Ar.30.313, scanned as one syllable ṭarf = CA ṭarfa) (10) ‫‘ ַא ְל ֻמ ְשׁ ַתּ ַהר‬famous’ (T-S Ar.30.313, scanned as – – ˘ – almuštahar, = CA almuštaharu) In some cases the occurrence of a final vowel is not marked in the Classical orthography but is indicated in the vocalisation (11) ֵ‫‘ ֻהו‬he’ (T-S Ar.3.1, r = CA huwa)

3 Cf. J. Blau, A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1980), p. 59.

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The pronominal suffixes have dialectal forms, which are invariable for case. In addition to the 3ms suffix -u, which is discussed above, note also: (12) ְ‫‘ ִמן ַמ ְדּ ַחךּ‬of your praise’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 12v = CA min madḥ ika) (13) ‫‘ ִפי ֻמ ְל ַכּךּ‬in your kingdom’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 12v = CA fī mulkika) (14) ‫‘ ִמן יַ ְדּ ֻהם‬from their hand’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 12v = CA min yadihim) There are numerous reflections of the raising of a vowels by the process of ʾimāla. This is found with long /ā/, e.g.

ַ ‫‘ ֲﬠ ֵלי ִﬠ ֵבּ‬on your servants’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 16v = CA ʿalā (15) ‫אדּךּ‬ ʿibādika) ֵ ‫‘ וְ ַא‬and the highest’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 16v = CA walʾaʿlā) (16) ‫לאעלא‬ (17) ‫‘ ַא ְל ֻדנְ יֵ א‬the world’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 15r = CA addunyā) It is also often found with short /a/, e.g. (18) ‫‘ וְ ֵלם‬and not’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 22v = CA wa-lam) It is especially common with the vowel of tāʾ marbūṭa in word final position, which is prone to raising by ʾimāla in various Arabic dialects, e.g. (19) ‫‘ ַא ְל ֲא ִכֿ ֵירה‬final’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 12v = CA alʾaḵīra) (20) ‫‘ ַא ְל ִח ְכּ ִמה‬wisdom’ (T-S Ar.53.12, fol. 1r = CA alḥ ikma) (21) ‫‘ נהאיֵ ה‬end’ (T-S NS 91.12, 1b = CA nihāya) Various other type of vocalism characteristic of dialects are found, e.g., (22) ‫‘ יִ ְרגַ ע‬he returns’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14v = CA yarjiʿu) (23) ‫‘ ַח ֵתּי יִ ְפ ַתח‬until he opens’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 15v = CA ḥ attā yaftaḥ a) The vocalisation also reflects the interpretation of a form as having dialectal morphology where the orthography is ambiguous between the dialectal and the CA form. This applies, for example, to the reading of a CA 4th form verb as a 1st form as in:

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

205

(24) ‫‘ וְ ַת ְח ִסן ְלנַ א‬and you do good to us’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14r = CA watuḥ sinu lanā) It is important to note that the vocalisation of these texts does not systematically reflect a purely dialectal form of Arabic. The extent to which they reflect dialectal features varies across the texts. The vocalisation of some manuscripts reflects features that are unequivocally CA, such as the occurrence of final short inflectional vowels, e.g.

ַ ‫חרץ ראס‬ ֻ [‫‘ ]אל‬covetousness is the root of poverty’ (T-S (25) ‫אלפ ְק ִרי‬ Ar.51.29v = CA alḥ irṣu raʾsu lfaqri) ֻ ‫‘ ַא ַל‬God your Lord’ (T-S Ar.3.1r = CA allāhu rabbuka) (26) ֵ‫לה ַר ֻבּך‬ ַ ‫אלפֿ ַצ ִה‬ ִ ‫‘ ִמן‬of silver and gold’ (T-S Ar.3.1r = CA min (27) ‫ואלֿד ַה ִבּ‬ al-fiḍḍati waḏda̱ habi) It is particularly significant that most texts, including those with a high degree of dialectal features, exhibit pseudo-Classical features in the reading reflected by the vocalisation. A recurrent feature, for example, is the retention of a vowel in an initial syllable with hamzatu al-waṣl after a word ending in a vowel. This vowel is elided not only in dialectal Arabic but also in the standard reading of CA:

ֻ ‫‘ ַפ ֲﬠ ֵלי ֵה ִדיה ַא‬and on these matters’ (T-S Ar.8.3 fol. 14r = CA (28) ‫לאמוּר‬ faʿalā haḏihi lʾumūri) ִ ‫‘ ִפי ַא‬in wisdom’ (T-S Ar.53.12 1v = CA fi lḥ ikmati) (29) ‫לח ְכּ ִמה‬ When case endings are indicated by the vocalisation, they are sometimes not given the correct CA form. In (30), for example, the accusative case is required according to CA after the existential negator (lā linafyi ljins) but the word is vocalised with the nominative: (30) ֻ ‫‘ וְ ֵלא ֻמ ִﬠין‬there is no helper’ (T-S Ar.30.313= CA lā muʿīna) Another phenomenon that may be considered a pseudo-classical feature is the occurrence of an /a/ vowel in a number of contexts where CA has an /i/ without there being any clear dialectal background for the /a/. It appears that the scribe is aware that CA has /a/ in many situations where vernacular dialects have /i/ and in his attempt to give

206

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the language an appearance of CA substitutes /a/ for /i/ by hypercorrection even where /i/ is the norm in CA. Examples: (31) ‫‘ ַאנְ ַמא‬only’ (T-S Ar.8.3 fol. 16v = CA ʾinnamā) (32) ‫‘ ַקד ַאנְ ַכּ ַסר ַק ְל ִבּי‬my heart has been broken’ (T-S Ar.8.3 fol. 16v = CA qad inkasara qalbī) ֗ ‫‘ ַא ְס ַתּ‬I woke up’ (T-S Ar.54.11, fol.1r = CA istayqaẓtu) (33) ‫יקטת‬ (iii) Background of the Hebrew Vocalisation Signs In the medieval texts it is always the Tiberian vocalisation signs that are used. The Tiberian signs became the standard type of vocalisation for Hebrew in the Middle Ages after their creation by the Tiberian Masoretes and they eventually replaced other vocalisation sign systems. It is important, however, to distinguish between the Tiberian sign system and the pronunciation of the Tiberian reading tradition of Hebrew which the signs were originally created to represent. In the time of the Tiberian Masoretes and also for a certain period after their activities ceased, both the Tiberian sign system and the Tiberian reading tradition were regarded as authoritative.4 The Hebrew grammarians in the tenth and eleventh centuries and also other learned scholars followed the Tiberian vocalisation and also adopted the Tiberian pronunciation tradition, which it reflected, so long as teachers of this pronunciation were available.5 As remarked above, the Tiberian vocalisation system 4 Some of the Masoretes were closely associated with the Jewish authorities, e.g. Pinḥas Roš ha-Yešiva (‘Head of the Academy’), who lived in the ninth century. The ‘academy’ (yešiva) was the central body of Jewish communal authority in Palestine. The authoritativeness of the Tiberian reading tradition is also reflected in the fact that the chain of Tiberian Masoretes was traced back to Ezra the Scribe in some medieval sources; cf. J. Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs, 2nd edn (New York, 1970), p. 44. Abū l-Faraj Hārūn also traces the Tiberian reading tradition to Ezra in the introduction to Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ; cf. I. Eldar, The Study of the Art of Correct Reading as Reflected in the Medieval Treatise Hidāyat al-Qāri (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1994), p. 7. 5 Al-Qirqisānī, who was writing in Iraq in the tenth century, for example, states that the Tiberian reading should be followed as the most authoritative, since it was more reliable than the Babylonian pronunciation, which had been influenced by the local vernacular languages (Al-Qirqisāni, Kitāb al-ʾAnwār w-al-Marāqib, edited by L. Nemoy (5 vols; New York, 1939–1943), II.17.6). The Tiberian pronunciation was followed by scholars in North Africa. We learn this from the commentary on Sepher Yeṣira by Dunash ben Tamim (tenth century). He cites Hebrew pronunciation by his teacher Isaac Israeli, whom he describes as ‘an expert on the reading of the Tiberians’ (‫ ;)בקי בקריאת בני טבריה‬cf. M. Schreiner, ‘Zur Geschichte der Aussprache

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

207

soon became the standard one and replaced all other systems in the transmission of the Bible. The transmission of the Tiberian reading tradition, on the other hand, soon came to an end. It is not completely clear why this happened. For one or two generations after the last Masoretes, teachers of the Tiberian reading tradition could still be found in Palestine, but not, it seems in all Jewish communities. The Spanish grammarian Ibn Janāḥ (eleventh century) expressed regret that in Spain there were no traditional readers and teachers (ruwāt waʾaṣḥ āb al-talqīn) with a firsthand knowledge of the Tiberian reading.6 Although the Tiberian pronunciation was regarded as authoritative, it appears not to have been so widely used as the Palestinian and Babylonian pronunciation. We know from al-Qirqisānī, writing in the tenth century, that the Babylonian reading tradition was used over a wide area by Eastern Jewish communities in Iraq, Iran, Byzantium and Arabia.7 The Palestinian type of pronunciation was used not only in Palestine but also in North Africa, Spain, Italy and even in Ashkenaz before the fourteenth century.8 It is the Palestinian pronunciation tradition, moreover, that is the origin of the Sephardi type of pronunciation widely used by Oriental Jewish communities in modern times. The Tiberian pronunciation tradition, which was more restricted in its distribution, may have become extinct through lack of trained teachers. Whereas the signs of the Tiberian vocalisation system could be copied by any scribe in any community, the oral transmission of the reading which depended on a small circle of teachers could not keep abreast of the large expansion of the transmission of the written Tiberian tradition in manuscripts throughout the Jewish world. As a result, the Tiberian vocalisation signs came to be read according to the various local traditions of Hebrew pronunciation, most of them influenced by the vernacular languages of the communities concerned. It is

des Hebräischen’, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 6 (1886), p. 221 (213–259); J. Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature (2 vols; New York, 1972), p. 670 n. 106; L. Dukes, Qunṭres ha-Masoret: ha-meyuḥ as le-Ben-Asher; ve-nilvu elav eze haʿataqot mi-peruš Sefer Yeṣira le-R’ Yaʿqov ben Nissim (Hebrew; Tübingen, 1845–1846), pp. 9, 73; M. Grossberg, Sefer Yeṣirah: ha-meyuḥ as le-ʾAvraham ʾavinu . . . ʿim peruš . . .ʾAbū Sahl Dunaš Ben Tamim (Hebrew; London, 1902), p. 24. 6 Ibn Janāḥ, Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, edited by J. Derenbourg (Paris, 1886), pp. 322–323. 7 Al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-ʾAnwār, vol. II.17.6. 8 I. Eldar, The Hebrew Language Tradition in Medieval Ashkenaz (c. 940–1350 CE), ‘Edah ve-Lashon 4–5 (2 vols; Jerusalem, 1978), pp. 106–107.

208

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only recently, by studying previously neglected medieval sources, that the original Tiberian reading tradition has been reconstructed.9 The status of the Tiberian pronunciation as a standard is reflected by the fact that many manuscripts written with the Babylonian and Palestinian vocalisation systems, which reflect different pronunciation traditions of Hebrew, exhibit various degrees of assimilation to the prestigious Tiberian tradition. There is also some evidence of hypercorrections brought about through the attempts by readers to adhere to the Tiberian standard.10 An examination of the way the medieval vocalised Judaeo-Arabic texts use the Tiberian vowel signs shows that there is a clear tendency in most manuscripts to give them the phonetic realisation that they would have in the standard Tiberian reading tradition. This is reflected by the following features. The šewa sign is used to represent a short /a/ in an open syllable, e.g. (34) (35) (36) (37)

‫אחי‬ ִ ‫‘ ְצ ַל‬my benefit’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 16v = ṣalāḥ ī) ‫‘ ְאנַ א‬I’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 16v = ʾanā) ‫‘ ְמ ִלך‬king’ (T-S Ar.53.12, fol.1v = malik) ‫‘ ְט ִריק ְב ִﬠ ַידה‬distant way’ (T-S NS 163.97r = ṭarīq baʿīda).

The pronunciation of vocalic šewa as a short /a/ was a characteristic of the Tiberian pronunciation tradition of Hebrew. This was the normal phonetic value of the sign, the only exceptions to this being before yod, when it was pronounced as short /i/, or before a guttural, when it was pronounced as a short vowel with the same quality as that of the

9

These sources include (i) Masoretic and grammatical texts, especially the work Hidāyat al-qāriʾ ‘Guide for the Reader’ by the eleventh-century Karaite grammarian Abū l-Faraj Hārūn (Eldar, Art of Correct Reading) and (ii) transcriptions of the Hebrew Bible into Arabic script by Karaite scribes, see G. Khan, Karaite Bible Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah (Cambridge, 1990). For a description of Tiberian pronunciation on the basis of these sources see G. Khan, ‘The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew’, Zeitschrift für Althebraïstik 9 (1996), pp. 1–23; G. Khan, ‘Tiberian Hebrew Phonology’, in A. S. Kaye (ed.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa, vol. I (Winona Lake, 1997), pp. 85–102 (102). 10 Cf. G. Khan, ‘The historical depth of two features of “Sephardi” reading traditions’, in M. Bar-Asher (ed.), Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and Jewish Languages IX–X–XI, Gideon Goldenberg Festschrift (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 91–99 (99).

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

209

guttural.11 In the Palestinian pronunciation tradition vocalic šewa was, by contrast, normally pronounced with the quality /e/, equivalent to that of ṣere. This is attested in medieval Hebrew manuscripts with Palestinian vocalisation.12 It is the pronunciation found in the modern Sephardi tradition of Hebrew and is mentioned already by grammarians from the late Middle Ages.13 In the vocalised Judaeo-Arabic texts the šewa is occasionally used to represent a short /i/ vowel in an open syllable in a phonetic environment where the sign would be pronounced /a/ in the Tiberian tradition, e.g. (38) ‫‘ ְבּ ַדאך‬with that’ (T-S Ar.53.12, fol. 1r = biḏāk) (39) ‫‘ ְבּ ִא ְשׁ ְתגאל‬with usage’ (Bod. Heb. d. 42, fol. 29v = b-ištiġāl) This practice is much rarer than the use of the sign to represent short /a/. It can perhaps be interpreted as the result of interference from the Palestinian pronunciation of the scribe. In the foregoing examples, furthermore, the šewa on the initial Arabic preposition bi- may have been influenced by the vocalisation of the corresponding Hebrew preposition. In the Babylonian tradition of Hebrew pronunciation, at least in the early form of the tradition which is not influenced by the Tiberian tradition, the šewa appears not to have been pronounced as a short /a/ but rather as zero in all positions.14 The use of šewa in the vocalised Judaeo-Arabic texts to represent short /a/ should, therefore, be considered to reflect the use of the signs according to their Tiberian phonetic value. The fact that the šewa sign rather than the pataḥ sign is frequently used to represent short /a/ in an open syllable is likely to result from the fact that in the Tiberian pronounciation tradition a pataḥ in an

11 Cf. S. Morag, The Hebrew Language Tradition of the Yemenite Jews (Jerusalem, 1963), pp. 160–166; I. Yeivin, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah, translated by J. Revell (Missoula, 1980), pp. 281–282; Khan, ‘Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition’, pp. 18–19. 12 Cf. E. J. Revell, ‘Studies in the Palestinian Vocalisation of Hebrew’, in J. W. Wevers and D. B. Redford (ed.), Essays on the Ancient Semitic World (Toronto, 1970), pp. 59–100 (83–90). 13 Cf. K. Levy, Zur Masoretischen Grammatik (Stuttgart, 1936), Introduction; Eldar, Hebrew Language Tradition, p. 73. 14 I. Yeivin, The Hebrew Language Tradition as Reflected in the Babylonian Vocalisation (2 vols; Jerusalem, 1985), p. 399.

210

geoffrey khan

open syllable was pronounced long.15 In some vocalised Judaeo-Arabic texts the use of the šewa to mark short /a/ is extended to closed syllables, e.g. (40) ‫‘ ְלְך‬to you’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 14v = lak) Another feature of the vocalisation of the Judaeo-Arabic texts is that one does not usually find the interchange of pataḥ with qameṣ or the interchange of segol with ṣere. These are characteristic of Hebrew texts with Tiberian vocalisation signs reflecting Palestinian pronunciation, resulting from the merger of the two pairs of vowels. Where qameṣ is used in the vocalised texts, it generally reflects a rounded quality in the region of /ɔ/ characteristic of the Tiberian phonetic value of the sign. It is found, for example, in a syllable closed by vav, where it indicates the rounding of the /a/ to the region of /ɔ/ before the labial glide. This quality of qameṣ in a closed syllable is distinctive of the Tiberian tradition:

ֻ ָ‫‘ י‬his day’ (T-S Ar.8.3 fol. 15r = yɔwmu) (41) ‫ומה‬ (42) ‫‘ נָ וְ ַבּה‬accident’ (T-S Ar.8.3 fol. 17r = nɔwba) (43) ‫‘ וְ ָלו‬and if ’ (T-S Ar.8.3, fol. 18v = walɔw) 2. Late Judaeo-Arabic The following description of the vocalisation of late Judaeo-Arabic is based on the manuscript T-S Ar.54.63, which contains a vocalised text of Qiṣsạ t Ḥ anna ‘The tale of Ḥ anna’. The language of this text exhibits features characteristic of Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts written in Egypt in the Ottoman period.16

15 G. Khan, ‘Vowel length and syllable structure in the Tiberian tradition of Biblical Hebrew’, Journal of Semitic Studies 32 (1987), pp. 23–82. 16 For a description of this type of late Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic see G. Khan, ‘A Linguistic Analysis of the Judaeo-Arabic of Late Genizah Documents and its Comparison with Classical Judaeo-Arabic’, Sefunot 20 (1991), pp. 223–224; Khan, ‘Notes on the Grammar of a Late Judaeo-Arabic Text’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15 (1992), pp. 220–239; Khan, ‘A Judaeo-Arabic Commercial Letter from Early Nineteenth Century Egypt’, Ginzei Qedem 2 (2006), pp. 37*–59*; and B. Hary, Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic: With an Edition, Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll (Leiden, 1992).

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

211

(i) Orthography The orthography of the text retains some of the distinctive features of the Classical Judaeo-Arabic spelling. The lamed of the definite article, for example, is regularly written, even before a following ‘sun’ letter. The letter ḍād, furthermore, is represented by ṣade with a superscribed dot:

ֶ ‫‘ ֵאל ַר‬the fourth one’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2v = irrābiʿ) (1) ‫אבע‬ (2) ‫‘ ֶאנְ ַה ֗ץ‬rise!’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2v = inhaḍ) There is, however, a greater tendency than in Classical Judaeo-Arabic spelling to adapt the orthography to the pronunciation. This is seen, for example, in the dialectal form of the 3ms singular suffix -u, which is always spelt with vav, e.g.

ַ ‘and his shoulder’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = ukatifu) (3) ‫וּכּ ֵתפוּ‬ ַ ‘and his heart’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = uqalbu) (4) ‫וּק ְלבוּ‬ Final vowels in the pronunciation are regularly represented in the orthography with vowel letters even where these are absent in CA and Classical Judaeo-Arabic orthography, e.g. (5) ‫‘ ֵאנְ ֵתה‬you (ms)’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = inte) (6) ‫‘ ֶאנְ ִתי‬you (fs) (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 5r = inti) (7) ‫‘ הוּוֵ א‬it’ (ms) (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = huwwe) The tanwīn of a case ending is spelt with a nūn, e.g.

ָ ִ‫‘ ֶא ְקתוֹלוּ ַק ְת ַל ַתן ַשנ‬kill him with a terrible killing’ (T-S Ar.54.63, (8) ‫יﬠא‬ fol. 3r = iqṭulū qaṭlatan šanīʿa) (ii) Phonological Form of the Arabic Reflected by the Vocalisation The vocalisation reflects numerous dialectal features that are disguised by the orthography. A short high vowel, represented by ṣere, segol or ḥ ireq, occurs in many contexts where CA has /a/, e.g. (9) ‫אלת‬ ֵ ‫‘ ֵאל ָת‬the third one’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2r = CA alṯāliṯ)

212 (10) (11) (12) (13)

geoffrey khan

‫‘ ְיִב ִכי‬he is weeping’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA yabkī) ‫‘ נֵ מוּת‬we shall die’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3r = CA namūt) ‫‘ ֶלהוֹם‬to them’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 5v = CA lahum) ‫‘ ַצנְ ֵﬠת ַאנְ ַסאן‬the craft of mankind’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA

ṣanʿat) ַ ‘and they tortured him’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3v = CA (14) ‫וּﬠ ֶדבוּ‬ ʿaḏda̱ būhu) The vocalisation has a high front vowel in the prefixes of derived verbal forms where CA has /u/, e.g. (15) ‫‘ ִמן יֵ ַאנֵ ס ֵל ַהא‬he who treats her gently’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2r = CA yuʾannis) ֶ ‫‘ ֵמ ַכ‬he opposes my way’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2v = CA (16) ‫אלף ַמ ְד ַה ִבי‬ muḵālif ) (17) ‫‘ וַ ַלא ֵת ִטיע‬do not obey’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA tuṭīʿ) (18) ‫‘ ַלא ֵת ִטיל‬do not prolong’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA tuṭīl) The syllabification is in some cases dialectal rather than the type found in CA, e.g.

ֶ ‘and she is distressed’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3r = titḥ assar) (19) ‫וּת ְת ַח ַסר‬ (20) ‫‘ ֵמ ְתוַ אגֵ ע‬suffering pain’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3v = mitwājiʿ) The pronominal suffixes have dialectal forms, e.g. the invariable 2ms suffix -ak:

ַ ‫‘ ִפי ַכּ ַל‬in your speech’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA fī kalāmika) (21) ‫אמךּ‬ ַ ‫‘ וּגַ ִמיע ַא ְח ַכּ‬and all your judgements’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = (22) ‫אמךּ‬ CA jamīʿ aḥ kāmika) Note also the invariable 2fs suffix -ik in (23), where the /i/ is also marked by the orthography:

ִ ‘take your (fs) son’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 5r = CA waladaki) (23) ‫כוֹדי וַ ַל ֶדיךּ‬ If the pronominal suffix is written with he after a vowel, the he often has a mappiq, indicating that it was pronounced as a consonant:

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

213

(24) ‫‘ ָאכוּהּ‬his brother’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2v = aḵūh) The language of the text does contain a number of clear CA features, e.g. the pronominal suffix form in (25):

ַ ָ‫וּשׁ ַלחוּ ֵתי‬ ַ ‘and they took off his clothes’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v (25) ‫אבהוּ‬ = ušalaḥ ū ṯiyābahu) It should be noted, however, that many forms that appear from the orthography to be CA rather than dialectal in background have a vocalisation that reflects a pronunciation deviating from that of CA, e.g. (26) ‫‘ ֵא ַל ִדּי‬which’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA allaḏī, MEA illi)17 (27) ‫אשׁי‬ ִ ‫‘ ִפ ַצאר ַמ‬and he came walking’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 4r = CA fa-ṣāra) (28) ‫‘ ַל ֵאנַ הוּ‬because he …’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA liʾannahu) (29) ‫‘ גַ אוֵ ַבהוּ‬he answered him’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA jāwabahu, MEA jawbu) We may include here cases such as (30) in which an /a/ vowel that in CA is long and occurs in an open syllable is written with the vowel letter alef, but the vocalisation nevertheless reflects a pronunciation in which it occurs in a closed syllable and was presumably pronounced short, as in MEA. This must be regarded as a case of conservative orthography, which is not adapted to pronunciation:

ְ ‫‘ ֶקצוּר ַﬠ‬lofty palaces’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2v = CA quṣūr ʿāliya, (30) ‫אליְ יַ א‬ MEA quṣūr ʿalya) The existence of a number of hypercorrect features in the pronunciation reflected by the vocalisation indicates that the scribe was aiming at a type of pronunciation that was a higher register than that of the vernacular dialect. This phenomenon can be identified, for example, in the retention of hamzatu alwaṣl after a word ending in a vowel:

17 The abbreviation MEA (Modern Egyptian Arabic) is used in this paper to refer to dialectal features that are characteristic of modern spoken forms of Arabic in Egypt.

214

geoffrey khan

(31) ‫וּא ְס ַמע‬ ֵ ‘and listen’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2r = CA wasmaʿ) ֵ ‫‘ ַה ַדּא ֵאל ַכּ‬this disbeliever’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = CA hāḏa (32) ‫אפר‬ lkāfir) If the alef is not written in the orthography, however, the hamzatu alwaṣl is elided. The two forms are also joined in the orthography, e.g. (33) ‫‘ ֵב ָה ֶדּל ָכ ַלאם‬with this speech’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3v) Another case of hypercorrection appears to be the occasional occurrence of short /a/ where /i/ is found in both CA and MEA, e.g. (34) ‫‘ ַאנְ ַסאן‬person’ (T-S Ar. 54.63, fol. 2r = CA insān) (iii) Background of the Hebrew Vocalisation In this text the signs pataḥ and qameṣ are used interchangeably to represent a vowels, irrespective of their length, e.g. (35) ‫‘ ָﬠ ַדאב‬punishment’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = ʿaḏāb) ַ ‫‘ ָס ָלכוּהּ‬they flayed him and cut off his hands’ (T-S (36) ‫וּק ַטּעוּ יַ ֶדיה‬ Ar.54.63, fol. 2v = salaḵūh uqaṭaʿū yadēh) (37) ‫‘ גַ אבוּ‬they brought’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3fv = ujābū) (38) ‫‘ וּגָ אבוּ‬and they brought’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = ujābū) The signs segol and ṣere are also used interchangeably. They represent either short high vowels (39)–(40) or the long vowel /ē/ (41)–(42): (39) (40) (41) (42)

‫‘ ֶא ְח ֵמ ִלי‬bear!’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v =iḥ milī) ‫‘ ֶוּד ְמ ֵﬠתוּ‬and his tear’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = udimʿitu) ‫‘ ֵﬠינֵ ין‬eyes’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2r = ʿēnēn) ‫‘ יַ א ֶחיף‬what a pity’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3r = yā ḥ ēf )

The šewa sign represents only zero, e.g.

ַ ‫‘ ֵבּ ַא ְח ָכּ‬by your judgements’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3r bi-ʾaḥ kāmak) (43) ‫אמךּ‬ ְ ‘judgement’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3r = ḥ ukm) (44) ‫חוֹכּם‬

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

215

It is used where a vowel occurs in CA but zero in MEA, e.g.

ְ֗ ‫וּהי ַח‬ ִ ‘while she is present’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 3r = ḥ adra) (45) ‫אצ ַרא‬ ְ ‫‘ וּכוּנִ י ַצ‬and be patient’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 1v = ṣabra) (46) ‫אב ַרא‬ ְ ‘and she says’ (T-S Ar.54.63, fol. 2r = utqūl) (47) ‫וּתקוּל‬ These interchanges of pataḥ with qameṣ and of segol with ṣere indicate that the Tiberian vowel signs were not being used with their original Tiberian phonetic values. The reason for this is doubtless that by the period this manuscript was written the original Tiberian pronunciation of the Tiberian vowel signs had been forgotten. The only pronunciation that the scribe could assign to the vocalisation is the Sephardi type reading tradition that had become the exclusive pronunciation of Hebrew in Egypt by the Ottoman period. This Sephardi reading did not make the full range of quality distinctions that were originally represented by the Tiberian signs and this led to the levelling of the pronunciation of pataḥ and qameṣ on the one hand and segol and ṣere on the other.

Conclusion When analysing the Judaeo-Arabic texts with Hebrew vocalisation three levels should be distinguished, viz. (i) the orthography, (ii) the linguistic form of the Arabic reflected by the vocalisation and (iii) the phonetic value of the Hebrew vocalisation signs. In the medieval period the orthography adheres to the standard model of the orthography of CA and resists adaptation to features of pronunciation that conflict with this orthography. In the late period there is a loosening of this rigidity and the orthography is adapted to some extent to reflect non-CA features of pronunciation. There is not, however, a total adaptation and some conservative features conflicting with the non-CA pronunciation are carried over from the Classical Judaeo-Arabic period. In both the medieval and late periods the linguistic form of the Arabic reflected by the vocalisation exhibits many features of the modern vernacular dialects. The occurrence of these is somewhat more systematic in the late period. There is evidence, however, that in both periods the scribes did not intend the pronunciation to conform

216

geoffrey khan

completely to that of the vernacular but aimed at a higher register. This is seen both in a number of distinctive CA features and also in the occurrence of hypercorrections, many of which take the same form in the late period as they do in the medieval period and so may be inherited features. It is clear that the level of this standard register that is aimed at falls far short of CA. It, indeed, falls much shorter of CA than is reflected by the orthographic skeleton of Judaeo-Arabic texts without vocalisation, especially medieval texts written in the Classical Arabic orthography. In the medieval texts it is clear that the scribes regarded it as important to assign the Tiberian vowel signs their original phonetic value, according to the Tiberian pronunciation tradition. We know from numerous Hebrew Bible manuscripts that in the medieval period Bibles vocalised with Tiberian signs were read with a non-Tiberian pronunciation. This is reflected by interchanges of signs that arose under the impact of non-Tiberian vowel systems. It is, indeed, possible that many Bible manuscripts with Tiberian signs that do not exhibit such interchanges, or only sporadic cases, were nevertheless read with a different pronunciation, as became the norm in later periods. The attempt to use the Tiberian signs in the Judaeo-Arabic texts with their original Tiberian phonetic value reflects an aiming for a high register linguistic standard also in this dimension of the texts. The Tiberian pronunciation had a high register status in this period, although it may not have been in such wide use as other pronunciations. By the later period, however, this high register form of pronunciation had been completely lost to knowledge and so scribes could only assign to the signs the phonetic values that they had in the contemporary Sephardi type of reading tradition. We see, therefore, that in all three levels, the orthography, the phonological form of the language and the vocalisation signs, the scribes of the manuscripts aimed at some kind of high register standard. There are differences in each of the three levels between the medieval and late texts. In the orthography and phonological form of the late texts there is an increased shift away from CA, but there are still some features that have been preserved from the medieval period. By contrast, there is no continuity from the medieval to the late period with regard to the phonetic value of the vocalisation signs, since in the late period the Tiberian pronunciation tradition had been lost and only the Sephardi type of pronunciation survived. One possible explanation for

vocalised judaeo-arabic manuscripts

217

this scenario of transmission is that it resulted from different degrees of distribution in the Middle Ages. The orthography, the sub-standard type of reading of Arabic and the Sephardi type pronunciation were widespread in the community whereas the Tiberian pronunciation of the Hebrew, although having the status of a prestigious standard, was evidently only mastered by restricted circles of scholars.

Bibliography Al-Qirqisāni, Kitāb al-ʾ Anwār w-al-Marāqib, edited by L. Nemoy (5 vols; New York, 1939–1943). J. Blau, A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic, 2nd edn (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980). J. Blau, and S. Hopkins, ‘On Early Judaeo-Arabic Orthography’, Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 12 (1984), pp. 9–27. L. Dukes, Qunṭres ha-Masoret: ha-meyuḥ as le-Ben-Asher; ve-nilvu elav ezeh haʿataqot mi-peruš Sefer Yeṣirah le-R’ Yaʿaqov ben Nissim (Hebrew; Tübingen, 1845–1846). I. Eldar, The Hebrew Language Tradition in Medieval Ashkenaz (ca. 940–1350 CE), ʿEdah ve-Lashon 4-5 (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1978). ——, The Study of the Art of Correct Reading as Reflected in the Medieval Treatise Hidāyat al-Qāri (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1994). M. Grossberg, Sefer Yeṣirah: ha-meyuḥ as le-ʾAvraham ʾavinu . . . ʿim peruš . . .ʾAbū Sahl Dunaš Ben Tamim (London, 1902). B. Hary, Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic: With an Edition , Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll (Leiden, 1992). Abū al-Walīd Marwān Ibn Janāḥ, Kitāb al-Lumaʿ. Le livre des parterres fleuris: grammaire hébraïque en arabe d’Abou ’l-Walid Merwan ibn Djanah de Cordoue, edited by J. Derenbourg (Paris, 1886). G. Khan, ‘Vowel length and syllable structure in the Tiberian tradition of Biblical Hebrew’, Journal of Semitic Studies 32 (1987), pp. 23–82. ——, Karaite Bible Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah (Cambridge, 1990). ——, ‘A Linguistic Analysis of the Judaeo-Arabic of Late Genizah Documents and its Comparison with Classical Judaeo-Arabic’, Sefunot 20 (1991), pp. 223–234 (Hebrew). ——, ‘Notes on the Grammar of a Late Judaeo-Arabic Text’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15 (1992), pp. 220–239. ——, ‘The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew’, Zeitschrift fur Althebraïstik 9 (1996), pp. 1–23. ——, ‘The historical depth of two features of “Sephardi” reading traditions’, in Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and Jewish Languages IX–X–XI. Gideon Goldenberg Festschrift, ed. M. Bar-Asher (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 91–99. ——, ‘Tiberian Hebrew Phonology’, in A. S. Kaye (ed.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa, vol. I, (Winona Lake, 1997), pp. 85–102. ——, ‘A Judaeo-Arabic Commercial Letter from Early Nineteenth Century Egypt’, Ginzei Qedem 2 (2006), pp. 37*–59*. K. Levy, Zur Masoretischen Grammatik (Stuttgart, 1936). J. Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fātimid Caliphs, 2nd edn (New York, 1970). ——, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature (2 vols; New York, 1972). S. Morag, The Hebrew Language Tradition of the Yemenite Jews (Jerusalem, 1963).

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E. J. Revell, ‘Studies in the Palestinian Vocalisation of Hebrew’, in J. W. Wevers and D. B. Redford (eds), Essays on the Ancient Semitic World (Toronto, 1970), pp. 59–100. M. Schreiner, ‘Zur Geschichte der Aussprache des Hebräischen’, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 6 (1886), pp. 213–259. I. Yeivin, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah, translated by J. Revell (Missoula, 1980). ——, The Hebrew Language Tradition as Reflected in the Babylonian Vocalisation (2 vols; Jerusalem, 1985)

EARLY KARAITE GRAMMATICAL THOUGHT AS REFLECTED IN A COMMENTARY ON HOSEA Friedrich Niessen ‫ז״ל‬

In their attempt to seek an alternative approach to Bible interpretation, based upon rational research rather than upon traditional Rabbinic authority, the Karaites applied their grammatical ideas to the exegesis of the Bible, in fact, their grammatical theories played an intrinsic part of this approach.1 The key figure of early Karaite grammatical thought, which had developed among the Karaites of Iraq and Iran and was brought to Jerusalem in the tenth century, was the scholar Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf ibn Nūḥ, also known by his Hebrew name Joseph ben Noaḥ.2 Ibn Nūḥ lived in the second half of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh century in Jerusalem, where he established an academy (‫)דאר לאלעלם‬.3 All of the works that have been attributed to this grammarian are in the form of biblical commentaries. His most influential work, the Diqduq, ‘Grammar’, or with its fuller title Nukat Diqduq, ‘Points of Grammar’, is the earliest extant work to reflect the Karaite grammatical tradition.4 Ibn Nūḥ intended the Diqduq to be an aid to the reading of the Bible. Therefore his main concern was the analysis of word structure, phonology and syntax as far as this

1 See G. Khan, ‘Biblical Exegesis and Grammatical Theory’, in G. Khan (ed.), Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts (Oxford, 2001), pp. 127–149. 2 On the history of Karaite grammatical thought in general, and on Ibn Nūḥ in particular, see G. Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought: including a Critical Edition, Translation and Analysis of the Diqduq of Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf Ibn Nūḥ on the Hagiographa (Leiden, 2000), pp. 1–25; G. Khan ‘The Medieval Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammar’, Boletín de la Asociacion Española de Orientalistas 38 (2002), pp. 51–76; G. Khan, M. Á. Gallego and J. Olszowy-Schlanger, The Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought in its Classical Form: a Critical Edition and English Translation of al-Kitāb al-Kāfī fī al-Luġa al-ʿIbrāniyya by Abū al-Farağ Hārūn ibn al-Farağ (2 vols; Leiden, 2003), vol. I, pp. xi–xxxii and the literature cited there. 3 This college is referred to in a letter from the Cairo Genizah (c. 1050) as ‫אלמגלס‬ ֗ ‘the meeting place’ (T-S 8J20.12 recto, l. 5); see M. Gil, Palestine During The First Muslim Period (634–1099) (3 vols; Tel Aviv, 1983), vol. II, pp. 530–532. 4 For an edition and analysis of the Diqduq, see Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition.

220

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was deemed important for elucidating the form of a word.5 Since the Diqduq was widespread among Karaite grammarians before the eleventh century, it is not surprising that close parallels to Ibn Nūḥ’s grammatical teachings can be found in the works of his contemporaries Yefet ben ʿEli and David b. Abraham al-Fāsī.6 Ibn Nūḥ’s influence is furthermore clearly discernible in the anonymous Karaite commentary on Hosea that constitutes the subject of this article. The work introduced here, an anonymous Karaite commentary on Hosea, was reconstructed from Genizah fragments in the New and Additional Series of the Taylor-Schechter Collection.7 This work shows the typical threefold structure of Karaite Bible commentaries: Hebrew incipit, Arabic translation and exegetical commentary.8 It is noteworthy that after the translation and commentary the author adds notes concerned with grammatical issues.9 Like Ibn Nūḥ in the Diqduq, the author comments on selected words and phrases that in his view were problematic or difficult to understand and therefore required particular attention, elucidation and analysis. However, his concern with a problematic grammatical issue in the biblical text is not to be regarded as an isolated grammatical concern, but has to be seen as an intrinsic part of his exegesis, i.e., the grammatical notes are intended to ensure the correct understanding and interpretation of the meaning of the biblical text. In the following I will present the author’s ideas on verbal and nominal morphology, the areas of grammar of main concern for the early Karaite grammarians.10 The second part of the article contains an edition of all the grammatical notes extant in the commentary, together with an English translation.11

5

Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, pp. 11–12. Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 8. 7 The commentary has been reconstructed from 132 fragments scattered throughout the Taylor-Schechter New Series and Additional Series. On the reconstruction and description of this commentary, see F. Niessen, ‘An Anonymous Karaite Commentary on the Book of Hosea’, in G. Khan (ed.), Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts, pp. 77–126. 8 See N. Schur, History of the Karaites (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), pp. 38–41. 9 Sometimes grammatical notes can also be found within the commentary. 10 See also Niessen, ‘An Anonymous Karaite Commentary’, pp. 109–117, 119–120. 11 Geoffrey Khan is currently preparing the late Friedrich Niessen’s complete edition of this anonymous Karaite commentary for publication in the Cambridge Genizah Studies series. 6

early karaite grammatical thought

221

Verbal Morphology For the author of the Hosea commentary, the most primitive form of the verb, i.e., its morphological base (‫אצל‬, aṣl) from which all other verbal forms are derived, is the masculine singular imperative. a) The past form of a verb (‫ ) ָק ַטל‬is derived from the imperative base:

‫( וְ ִר ְדּ ָפה‬Hosea 2:9) (is derived) from (the imperative). ‫( ַר ֵדּף‬page 5b). ‫( וְ ָח ָלה‬Hosea 11:6) is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫חוּל‬, the past tense is ‫ ָחל‬, the feminine is ‫( ָח ָלה‬page 25b). ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫( ָשׂ ָרה ֶאת ֱא‬Hosea 12:4) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫ְשׂ ֵרה‬ (page 28a). b) The imperfect of a verb (‫ )יִ ְקטֹל‬and the so-called narrative (‫)וַ יִּ ְקטֹל‬ are also derived directly from the imperative base by attaching the necessary prefixes and suffixes:

‫( ַאיְ ִס ֵירם‬Hosea 7:12) is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫( ַהיְ ֵסר‬page 16b).

‫( וַ יָּ ָרם‬Hosea 13:6) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫( רוּם‬page 28a). ‫סוֹﬠר‬ ֵ ְ‫( י‬Hosea 13:3) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫סוֹﬠר‬ ֵ (page 28a). The imperfect is said to be derived by adding the letters ‫אינ״ת‬. These are future prefixes presented not by person but according to alphabetical order:

‫( ָשְׂך‬Hosea 2:8) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫שׂוְּך‬. [If you attach] ‫אינ״ת‬, you say ‫ ָאשׂוְּך‬, ‫( יָ שׂוְּך‬page 5b). With verbs in the piʿel, puʿal, hif ʿil, and hufʿal, the participle prefix mem is included in the series according to the alphabetical arrangement ‫אימנ״ת‬:

‫( וַ ָתּ ַﬠד‬Hosea 2:15) is an apocopated form, for it (is derived) from (the imperative).

‫ ַה ְﬠ ֵדּה‬. If you attach ‫ אימנ״ת‬you say ‫ ַא ֲﬠ ֶדה‬, ‫יַ ֲﬠ ֶדה‬, ‫( ַמ ֲﬠ ֶדה ֶבּגֶ ד‬Proverbs 25:20) (page 5b). ‫ ַתּ ְרגֵּ ל‬and when you attach to it [(the prefix letters) ‫ ]אימנ״ת‬you say [‫ ֲא ַת ְרגֵּ ל ] ְמ ַת ְרגֵּ ל‬, [‫יְ ַת ְרגֵּ ]ל‬, (page 24a).

222

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The mnemonics ‫ אינ״ת‬and ‫ אימנ״ת‬can also be found in such early Karaite grammatical works as the Diqduq of Ibn Nūḥ,12 al-Fāsī’s lexicon13 and the treatise on the Hebrew verbs attributed to Saʿīd,14 as well as in Saʿadya’s grammatical writings,15 from where they may originally have spread to the Karaites. In line with early Karaite grammatical works,16 the commentary contains hypothetical passive imperatives proposed for puʿal and huf ʿal forms alongside active imperatives:

‫( ֻר ָח ָמה‬Hosea 2:3) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫רוּחם‬ ֵ ; the past ָ and the feminine ‫רוּח ָמה‬ ָ (page 5b). tense is ‫רוּחם‬ Such imperatives were later refuted by Abū l-Faraj Hārūn as logically impossible.17 Another notion of early Karaite grammarians found in this anonymous commentary on Hosea is ‫‘ אמר בראסה‬an imperative in its primary form’.18 This term refers to a form of an imperative base that is not derived from another imperative pattern, i.e., a more primitive morphological base, by a phonetic process:

‫( וְ ַאט‬Hosea 11:4) . . . is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ַהט‬and is an imperative in its primary form, as ‫ ַצו‬which is an imperative in its primary form according to the opinion of some scholars of the language (page 25a). Thus, the anonymous author regards ‫ וְ ַאט‬as being derived from the primary monosyllabic imperative ‫ ַהט‬.19

12

See Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 85. See S. L. Skoss, The Hebrew-Arabic Dictionary of the Bible Known as Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-Alfāẓ (Agrōn) of David ben Abraham Al-Fāsī the Karaite (Tenth Cent.). Edited from Manuscripts in the State Public Library in Leningrad and in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (2 vols; New Haven, 1936–1945) vol. I, p. 457, l. 8, passim. 14 See G. Khan, Early Karaite Grammatical Texts (Atlanta, 2000), p. 48. 15 See A. Dotan, The Dawn of Hebrew Linguistics: the Book of Elegance of the Language of the Hebrews by Saadia Gaon (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 347, 439, passim. 16 See Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 43. 17 See Khan et al., The Karaite Tradition, p. 189 (I.22.28). 18 See Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 55; Khan, Early Karaite Grammatical Texts, p. 28. 19 As far as ‫ ַצו‬is concerned, Ibn Nūḥ takes the view that this is an imperative with elision of the he. When commenting on Psalms 61:8: ‫ ֶח ֶסד וֶ ֱא ֶמת ַמן יִ נְ ְצ ֻרהוּ‬, he makes the remark: ‘‫ ַמן‬is an imperative with the pattern of ‫ ַצו‬and ‫ ַקו‬which are (in origin) 13

early karaite grammatical thought

223

Following the practice of Ibn Nūḥ 20 the author of the commentary sometimes gives two (or more) possible bases for an inflected verbal form. The alternative opinions are usually presented as traditions attributed to different scholars and typically introduced by phrases such as ‫ ויחתמל‬. . . ‫‘( יחתמל‬possibly . . ., and possibly’), as in:

‫( וְ ַאט‬Hosea 11:4) has possibly its he apocopated and (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ; ַה ֵטּה‬or it is possible that it is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ַהט‬and is an imperative in its primary form (page 25a). Normally the author does not evaluate the alternative options. The generally accepted view of the early Karaite grammarians was that two variant types of inflected form were not to be derived from the same imperative base.21 As a result differences in derivative forms were explained by means of positing a separate, structurally congruent, imperative base for each derivative. Yet, in his effort to demonstrate the regularity in the structure of the imperative bases, Ibn Nūḥ developed the theory that some verbal forms underwent phonetic changes in the process of derivation.22 This theory allowed verbal forms of otherwise differing morphological patterns to be derived from the same imperative base. A common formula employed in the Diqduq in connection with phonetic processes is ‫כאן חקה אן יכון‬, ‘(the form) should be, by rule . . .’. After the formula, Ibn Nūḥ quotes the pattern the form had before the phonetic process. Ibn Nūḥ’s formula can be found in the Hosea commentary. For example, when reflecting upon the derivation of the verb form ‫ וְ ֲא ֳסּ ֵרם‬in Hosea 10:10, the author proposes for it the imperative base ‫סוֹר‬. He comments that if it were derived from ֵ ‫’ ִא‬ this imperative pattern, then ‘according to the rule it should be ‫סּוֹרם‬ (page 25a) as opposed to the attested ‫וְ ֲא ֳסּ ֵרם‬. The author does not explain the reasons for the substitution of the ḥ ireq under the alef by a ḥ aṭef pataḥ , and a ḥ olem after the samek̠ by the qameṣ ḥ aṭuf but states that ‘the Book uses conjoined forms in this way’ (page 25a). The ֵ ‫ ִא‬avoids creating an ad hoc imperative base linking of ‫ וְ ֲא ֳסּ ֵרם‬to ‫סּוֹרם‬

‫ ַצוֵּ ה‬and ‫ ; ַקוֵּ ה‬likewise ‫ ַמן‬is (in origin) ‫ ַמנֵּ ה‬but the he is elided, resulting in the form ‫( ’ ַמן‬Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 279). 20

See Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 60. Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 39; Khan et al., The Karaite Tradition, p. xvii. 22 Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, pp. 45–52. 21

224

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and allows the attested form to be derived from the imperative ‫סוֹר‬ with a regular morphological pattern.

Nominal Morphology The noun base (‫)אצל‬, i.e. the nominal form from which a noun is derived, is said to be the singular, absolute form of the noun without pronominal suffixes or prefixed prepositions. In feminine singular nominal forms the suffix he is usually taken to belong to the base. Yet in some cases the he is construed not as a marker of the feminine but as an added letter, which does not change the gender of the word:

ֵ (Hosea 7:4) [is an added letter and it is in (origin) The he in ‫בּוֹﬠ ָרה‬ ‫בּוֹﬠר‬ ֵ ] masculine. If the he were to belong to the morphological base, it would be feminine and [. . .], like ‫( וְ ַשׁ ֲח ָטה ֵשׂ ִטים‬Hosea 5:2) where the he in it is [. . .], and it is ‫( וְ ַשׁ ֵחט‬page 15b). ֵ defines the The argument here is as follows. Since the form ‫בּוֹﬠ ָרה‬ masculine singular noun ‫( ַתּנּוּר‬Hosea 7:14) it has to be masculine too.23 ֵ should be analysed not as a feminine In this case, the he of ‫בּוֹﬠ ָרה‬ ֵ is seen as parallel to ‫וְ ַשׁ ֲח ָטה‬,24 suffix but as a redundant letter. ‫בּוֹﬠ ָרה‬ which is deemed to be in origin ‫ וְ ַשׁ ֵחט‬with a he added to its end. In the formation of the plural a one-to-one correspondence between the forms of the singular and the plural is required. Consider the following examples: The singular of ‫( ְשׁ ָב ִבים‬Hosea 8:6) should be ‫ ֶשׁ ֶבב‬because the plural ִ ‫( ְשׁ ִב‬page 18b). of ‫( ְשׁ ִביב‬Daniel 3:22) is ‫יבים‬ Here the plural noun with the pattern ‫ ְק ָט ִלים‬, which can be derived from more than one type of singular, including ‫ ְק ָטל‬, ‫ ֶק ֶטל‬, ‫ ָק ָטל‬, is stated to be derived from the singular base ‫ ֶק ֶטל‬.

‫( ִשׁיקּוּי‬Hosea 2:7) is a noun, its plural being ‫ ; ִשׁיקּוּיִ ם‬and [‫ ] ִשׁיקּוּו‬is a different noun, its plural being ‫ ִשׁקּוּוִ ים‬, like ‫וְ ִשׁקּוּוַ י ִבּ ְב ִכי ָמ ָס ְכ ִתּי‬ (Ps. 102:10) (page 5b).

23 Cf. A. E. Cowley, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar as Edited and Enlarged by E. Kautzsch, reprinted (Oxford, 1990), §80k. 24 ‫ ַשׁ ֲח ָטה‬is nowadays understood as a piʿel infinitive (A. E. Cowley, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, §64a).

early karaite grammatical thought

225

In order to explain the differences between the attested ‫ִשׁיקּוּי‬ (Hosea 2:7) and ‫( וְ ִשׁקּוּוַ י‬Psalms 102:10), the author assumes two different bases, one with yod ‫ ִשׁיקּוּי‬and the other with vav ‫ ִשׁיקּוּו‬, and two corresponding plural forms. A substitution of one letter by the other is not considered.25 The plural of ‫ ֻר ֵבּה‬is ‫ ֻר ִבּים‬and the conjoined form of ‫ ֻר ִבּים‬is ‫תוֹר ִתי‬ ָ ‫ֻר ֵבּי‬ (Hosea 8:12), like ‫ ִא ֵשּׁה‬and ‫ ִא ֵשּׁי‬which are the conjoined forms of ‫( ִא ִשּׁים‬page 18b). Here unattested singular forms ‫ ֻר ֵבּה‬and ‫ ִא ֵשּׁה‬are proposed instead of the attested ‫ ר ֹב‬and ‫( ִא ֶשּׁה‬Exodus 29:18, passim). The hypothetical bases are structurally analogous and ensure regularity and conformity in plural formation. Characterising Nouns a) In some cases, the author of the commentary considers it sufficient to state that a certain word belongs to the general morphological category of the noun (‫אסם‬, ism):

‫( ֶא ְתנָ ה‬Hosea 2:14) is a noun (page 5b). b) To give a definition of a noun the author presents it in a phrase consisting of the word ‫ אסם‬followed by the Arabic translation of the ֵ (page 27a), liternoun with the definite article, e.g., ‫מוﬠד אסם אלקודס‬ ֵ is a “noun of sanctuary”’, i.e., a noun meaning ‘sanctuary’. ally ‘‫מוﬠד‬ c) At times the plural is supplied:

‫( ַחגָּ הּ‬Hosea 2:13) is a noun (meaning) ‘festival’. Its plural is ‫ ; ַחגִּ ים‬in the conjoined form it becomes ‫( ַחגָּ הּ‬page 5b.). ‫( ְכּנַ ַﬠן‬Hosea 12:8) is a noun [meaning ‘trader’ . . .] ‫ ; ְכּנַ ֲﬠנִ י‬it may be ‫ ִכּנְ ָﬠן‬, and its plural is ‫[ ִכּנְ ָﬠנִ ים‬. . .] (page 28a). d) In other cases the singular is quoted:

‫אוּבה‬ ָ ‫( ַתּ ְל‬see Hosea 13:5) is the singular of ‫ ַתּ ְלאוּבוֹת‬, a noun meaning ‘deserts’ (page 28a).

25

An identical analysis of these forms is given by Ibn Nūḥ (see Khan, The Early Karaite Tradition, p. 317, on Psalms 102:10).

friedrich niessen ‫ז״ל‬

226

[The singular of] ‫( ְשׁוָ ִרים‬Hosea 12:12) is ‫ ְשׁוָ ר‬, and it (is used) in the place of ‫( שׁוֹר‬page 28a). The singular of ‫( ָה ִריוֹת‬see Hosea 14:1) is ‫ ; ָה ִריָ ה‬it is a noun in the place of ‫( ָה ָרה‬page 28b). e) In one case, the author characterises the noun in question by referring to a noun with an identical pattern:

‫( נַ ְבלוּת‬Hosea 2:12) is a noun like ‫( גַּ ְבהוּת‬Isaiah 2:11, 17) (page 5b). f) In some cases, the author explains certain peculiarities. – an emphatic element -t-, compared with the simple form:

ָ (Hosea 8:7) is an emphatic element, since it is The tav in ‫סוּפ ָתה‬ ‫סוּפה‬ ָ (page 18b). – a metathesis:

‫( ַﬠ ְלוָ ה‬Hosea 10:9) and ‫ ַﬠוְ ָלה‬are identical by metathesis, like ‫ַשׂ ְמ ָלה‬ and ‫( ַשׂ ְל ָמה‬page 25a). – nouns that replace certain similar nouns:

‫( ָבּ ְשׁנָ ה‬Hosea 10:6) is a noun in the place of ‫בּוּשׁה‬ ָ , its plural being ‫( ָבּ ְשׁנוֹת‬page 22a). [The singular of] ‫( ְשׁוָ ִרים‬Hosea 12:12) is ‫ ְשׁוָ ר‬, and it (is used) in the place of ‫( שׁוֹר‬page 28a). ‫( ַא ִחים‬Hosea 13:15) is [a noun] in the place of ‫ ַח ִחים‬, a noun (meaning) ‘thorns’, and ‫ ָאח‬is a noun in the place of ‫[ ָחח‬. . .] ‫ ; ַח ִחים‬it is possible that ‫ ָאח‬stands in the place of ‫( ָאחוּ‬page 28b). The singular of ‫( ָה ִריוֹת‬see Hosea 14:1) is ‫ ; ָה ִריָ ה‬it is a noun in the place of ‫( ָה ָרה‬page 28b). – a pleonastic letter: Some commentators hold that ‫( ַה ְב ָה ַבי‬Hosea 8:13) is a noun and the yod in it [is pleonastic . . .], and the allusion by that (is) to the offerings they used to offer to the idols. [Another opinion is that] ‫ַה ְב ָהב‬ ‘gift’ is derived from ‫( ַהב‬Proverbs 30:15 = Daniel 5:17) and the yod in it could be a gentilic [. . .] he said the offerings which had to be [. . .] and similar cases (page 18b).

early karaite grammatical thought

227

Conclusion The grammatical element of the commentary on Hosea demonstrates that it is closer in a number of respects to the Diqduq of Ibn Nūḥ than to other Karaite grammatical works. Close parallels between the Diqduq and the Hosea commentary are found in the underlying grammatical theory and concepts, in the technical terminology and also in certain aspects of the style of presentation. The understanding of the derivational morphology in the commentary is virtually identical to that reflected in Ibn Nūḥ’s Diqduq: verbs are derived from imperative bases, passive imperatives are proposed for verbs in puʿal and hufʿal, differences in forms are explained by positing differences in their derivational bases, phonetic processes are sometimes allowed to operate between a base and its inflections. The technical terminology draws on that of Ibn Nūḥ as is evident from the terms ‫‘ אמר בראסה‬an imperative in its primary form’ and ‫כאן חקה אן יכון‬, ‘(the form) should be, by rule . . .’.26 In numerous places in the grammatical notes, the author presents a variety of different views rather than asserting one particular opinion, an approach characteristic of Ibn Nūḥ. On the other hand, significant differences in grammatical theory are noticeable between the Hosea commentary and the works of Abū l-Faraj Hārūn ibn al-Faraj, a major representative of the later tradition of Karaite grammatical thought.27 Though Abū l-Faraj adopted many elements of Ibn Nūḥ’s grammatical thought, he developed a number of new ideas as far as method and content are concerned.28 In the present context it is relevant to mention that Abū l-Faraj Hārūn rejected passive imperatives as logically impossible and demanded a less strict structural correspondence between the imperative and its derivatives while relying on phonetic processes to explain variations in verb forms. In addition, he adopted a categorical approach to presenting material with little discussion of alternative views.

26 However, some technical terms used in the commentary belong to the later stages of the development of the Karaite grammatical tradition; see Niessen, ‘An Anonymous Karaite Commentary’, pp. 119–120. 27 On Abū l-Faraj Hārūn, see Khan, ‘The Medieval Karaite Tradition’, pp. 62–65, 68–69; Khan et al., The Karaite Tradition, pp. xi–xiv and the literature cited there. 28 See G. Khan, ‘ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn and the Early Karaite Grammatical Tradition’, Journal of Jewish Studies 48 (1997), pp. 314–334; Khan et al., The Karaite Tradition, pp. xxxvi–xxxix.

228

friedrich niessen ‫ז״ל‬

A comparison of the material in the Hosea commentary with Ibn Nūḥ’s Diqduq and grammatical works by Abū l-Faraj Hārūn makes it clear that the author of the commentary—like David b. Abraham al-Fāsī and Yefet b. ʿEli—belonged to the generation of Ibn Nūḥ, was influenced by early Karaite grammatical teachings and was probably affiliated to Ibn Nūḥ’s centre of studies in Jerusalem.

Text and Translation of the Grammatical Notes29 page 5b:

‫ וירכבה אימנ]ת‬:‫רוחמה‬ ָ ‫רוּחם ואלמונת‬ ָ [‫ואלמאצ]י‬ ֗ ‫וּחם‬ ֵ ‫וח ָמה מן ֻר‬ ָ [‫]ר‬ [‫ נאפוף‬.‫ זְ נֿ וּֽ ן אסם אלטוֿגיאן גמעֿה ]זנונים‬:‫מרוחם‬ ָ ‫ירוחם‬ ָ ‫רוחם‬ ָ ‫תקול[ ֲא‬ ‫ ִשיקוּי אסם גמעֿה ִשיקויִ ם ]שיקו[וֿ אסם ַאכר‬:‫פופים‬ ִ ‫אסם פגור גמעֿה נַ ַא‬ ַֿ ‘‫קוּוים כק‬ ֿ ִ ‫גמעֿה ִש‬ ‫ושקוּוי בבכי מסכתי ָשׂך מן ֽשׂוּך ]פירכ[בה אינת תקול‬ ‫ וְ ִר ְד ָפה מן‬:‫אלד ְהן‬ ַ ‫ונטירהא בסמך לגה‬ ֗ ‫וְך יָ ֽשׂוך והי לגה אלֿתסיִ יג‬ ֿ ‫ָא ֽשׂ‬ ֽ ַ‫ נַ ְבלוּֽ ת אסם מתל ג‬:‫ַרדף פירכב]ה[ אימנת‬ ‫אלחג גמעה‬ ִ ‫ ַחגֵ ה אסם‬:‫בֿהות‬ ֗ ‫ַחגִ ים פענד‬ ‫ אלדיגש אלדי פי אלתיו אסקט‬:‫ ַש ַב ָתה‬:‫אלאצאפה צאר ַחגָ ה‬ :‫ ֶא ְֿתנָ ֿה אסם‬:‫שבת פכאן חקהא שבתתה‬ ָ ‫אלאכר לאן אלאסם‬ ַ ‫אלתיו‬ ‫וַ ַת ַﬠֿד מרכמה הי לאנהא מן ַה ֲﬠ ֵדֿה פאדא רכבהא אימנת תקול ַא ַﬠ ֶדה‬ ‫אלח ְלי מונת ֶח ְלי לאן וַ ַח ִלי ָכ ַתם אלמפרד‬ ַ ‫ ֶח ְליָ ֿה אסם‬:‫יַ ַﬠ ֶדה מעדה בגד‬ :‫מנה ֶח ִלי‬ ‫( ֻר ָח ָמה‬Hosea 2:3) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫רוּחם‬ ֵ ; the past ָ and the feminine ‫רוּח ָמה‬ ָ . If you attach ‫[ אימנ״ת‬you say] tense is ‫רוּחם‬ ‫רוּחם‬ ָ ‫ ֲא‬, ‫רוּחם‬ ָ ְ‫י‬, ‫רוּחם‬ ָ ‫ ְמ‬.—‫( זְ נוּן‬Hosea 2:4) is a noun (meaning) ‘harlotry’, its plural is [‫זְ נוּנִ ים‬.—‫( נַ ֲאפוּף‬Hosea 2:4)] is a noun (meaning) ‘fornicaִ ‫נַ ֲא‬.—‫( ִשׁיקּוּי‬Hosea 2:7) is a noun, its plural tion’, its plural being ‫פוּפים‬ being ‫ ; ִשׁיקּוּיִ ם‬and [‫ ] ִשׁיּקּוּו‬is a different noun, its plural being ‫ ִשׁקּוּוִ ים‬, like ‫( וְ ִשׁקּוּוַ י ִבּ ְב ִכי ָמ ָס ְכ ִתּי‬Psalms 102:10).—‫( ָשְׂך‬Hosea 2:8) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫שׂוְּך‬. [If you attach] ‫אינ״ת‬, you say ‫ יָ שׂוְּך‬,‫ ָאשׂוְּך‬, and it is the lexical class ‘fencing in’; a similar form with samek̠ (i.e. ‫סוְּך‬, belongs to) the lexical class ‘anointing’.—‫( וְ ִר ְדּ ָפה‬Hosea 2:9) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ַר ֵדּף‬, and you may attach to it (the prefix letters) ‫אימנ״ת‬.—‫( נַ ְבלוּת‬Hosea 2:12) is a noun like ‫( גַּ ְבהוּת‬Isaiah

29 For a description of the Genizah fragments of the commentary, see Niessen, ‘An Anonymous Karaite Commentary’, pp. 78–80.

early karaite grammatical thought

229

2:11, 17).—‫( ַחגָּ הּ‬Hosea 2:13) is a noun (meaning) ‘festival’. Its plural is ‫ ; ַחגִּ ים‬in the construct state it becomes ‫ ַחגָּ הּ‬.—‫( ַשׁ ַבּ ָתּהּ‬Hosea 2:13): The dageš in the tav causes the elision of the second tav, for the noun is ‫ ַשׁ ָבּת‬, and the form according to the rule should be ‫ ַשׁ ַבּ ְת ָתּהּ‬.—‫ֶא ְתנָ ה‬ (Hosea 2:14) is a noun.—‫( וַ ָתּ ַﬠד‬Hosea 2:15) is an apocopated form, for it (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ַה ְﬠ ֵדּה‬. If you attach ‫ אימנ״ת‬you say ‫ ַא ֲﬠ ֶדה‬, ‫יַ ֲﬠ ֶדה‬, ‫( ַמ ֲﬠ ֶדה ֶבּגֶ ד‬Proverbs 25:20).—‫( ֶח ְליָ ה‬Hosea 2:15) is a noun (meaning) ‘piece of jewellery’, the feminine form of ‫ ; ֶח ִלי‬for the absolute state of ‫ ָכ ֶתם‬-‫( וַ ֲח ִלי‬Proverbs 25:12) is ‫ ֶח ִלי‬. page 11a:

‫ משתקה מן ַה ְב ַהב פאלאצל ַה ֽבֿ ואלמונ] ֗ת[ ֵה ָבֿה ואלגמע הבֿוּ‬.‫ ֵהבו‬: ‫( ֵהבוּ‬Hosea 4:18) is derived from ‫( ַהב ַהב‬Proverbs 30:15); the morphological base is ‫ ַהב‬, the feminine form being ‫ ֵה ָבה‬and the plural ‫ ֵהבוּ‬. page 13b:

‫ מ[קאם יִ ְכהה ויקאל א]ן ישתק[ מן יטיב גהה יעני‬. . . ] ‫יוקאל פי יגהה‬ ‫ ויקאל אן[ תשתק מן יִ גַ ה יעני יניר יְ ִ֗צי‬. . .]‫[ל א‬. . .‫יוח ִסן ישיר ב]דלך אלי‬ ַ ‫ מזור‬:‫[ אלאצל גְ ֵהה פאדא רכבהא יגעלהא א]גהה‬. . .] ‫וטהוּרה‬ ֗ [. . .]‫[כ‬. . .] :‫אס[ם אלגורח‬ Some say that in ‫( יִ גְ ֶהה‬Hosea 5:13) [. . . in the pl]ace of ‫( יִ ְכ ֶהה‬Isaiah ִ ֵ‫( י‬Proverbs 17:22), 42:4); others say th[at it is derived] from ‫יטיב גֵּ ָהה‬ i.e. he cures, th[us] alluding to [. . .; others say that] it is derived from ‫( יִ גַּ הּ‬Job 18:5), i.e. he illuminates, he shines [. . .] and his appearance [. . .] the morphological base (of the imperative) is ‫גְּ ֵהה‬. If he attaches it, he forms ‫] ֶא]גְ ֶהה‬. [– ‫( ָמזוֹר‬Hosea 5:13) is a nou]n meaning ‘injury’. page 15b:

‫בוﬠ]רה זאיד והו בוער[ ֗דכר ולו כאן אלהי אצלי‬ ֵ ‫אלהי א]לדי[ פי‬ ֵ [...]‫ מתל ושחטה שטים אלדי אלהי פיהא ]מ[ופכ‬:‫[ר‬. . .]‫נת ו‬ ֗ [‫כאן ]מו‬ :‫פהי וְ ַשׁ ֵחט‬ The he in ‫בּוֹﬠ ָרה‬ ֵ (Hosea 7:4) [is an added letter and it is (in origin) ‫בּוֹﬠר‬ ֵ ] masculine. If the he were to belong to the morphological base, it would be feminine and [. . .], like ‫( וְ ַשׁ ֲח ָטה ֵשׂ ִטים‬Hosea 5:2) where the he in it is [. . .], and it is ‫וְ ַשׁ ֵחט‬.

friedrich niessen ‫ז״ל‬

230 page 16b:

‫אלאצאפה‬ ֗ ] ‫אלכ ְמן פענד‬ ַ ‫אוֹרבֿ אסם‬ ֵ :[. . .] ‫יחם יֵ ַחם‬ ַ ‫[ אימנת יגעלה ֵא‬. . .] ‫ ַאיְ [ ִס ֵירם מן ַהיְ ֵסר ]מתל‬. . .] [. . .]‫ והי ל‬:‫התבוֹלל‬ ֵ ‫ יתבול[ל מן‬. . . ‫צאר בארבם‬ ‫[ן לגה אלזיואל‬...] ‫ פאדא רכבה אימנת יגעלה אייסר[ יַ יְ ִסר ַמיְ יֿ ִסיֿ ר‬. . . ‫היצא‬ ‫ ִ◌[ ִ◌יִ ר ואלדליל‬.◌ְ .◌ַ . . .] ‫ ַהיְ ֵס[ר פאדא רכבהא‬...] ‫[בה אימנת יגעלה‬. . .] [. . .] ‫[יקול אן הדה אליוד‬. . .] ‫עלי‬ [‫( יֵ ַחמּוּ‬Hosea 7:7) . . .] (the prefix letters) ‫אימנ״ת‬, it will make it —‫אוֹרב‬ ֵ ‫יחם‬ ַ ‫ ֵא‬, ‫[ יֵ ַחם‬. . .]. (Hosea 7:6) is a noun (meaning) ‘lying in wait’. And ָ ‫—]יִ ְת‬.[. . . ‫( ] ְבּ ָא ְר ָבּם‬Hosea 7:8) is in [the construct it becomes ‫בּוֹלל‬ ֵ ‫ ִה ְת‬, that is [. . .].—‫( ַאיְ ִס ֵירם‬Hosea (derived) from (the imperative) ‫בּוֹלל‬ 7:12) is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫[ ַהיְ ֵסר‬like ‫ ַהיְ ֵצא‬. If you attach (the prefix letters) ‫אימנ״ת‬, you say ‫] ַאייְ ִסר‬, ‫יַ יְ ִסר‬, ‫[ ַמייְ ִסיר‬. . .] of the lexical class ‘abandoning’. [. . . If you attach] (the prefix letters) ‫אימנ״ת‬, it will make it [. . .]. If you attach to them [. . .] and the proof for [. . .] he says that this yod [. . .]. page 17a:

‫יתגוֹררו משתקה מן קו׳ אשר אני מ]תגורר עמה וחקי[קתהא ְתגַ רור‬ ‫גּוֹררוּ‬ ָ ‫( יִ ְת‬Hosea 7:14) is derived from the verse ‫מּהּ‬ ָ ‫גּוֹרר ִﬠ‬ ֵ ‫] ֲא ֶשׁר ֲאנִ י ִמ] ְת‬ (1 Kings 17:20) but its true me[aning] is ‘being neighbours’ [. . .]. page 17b: [‫ אדא כאן ישירו[ בסמך יכון אזאלה ואדא כאן בשין יכון ת]רווס‬. . .] [When ‫( ֵה ִשׂירוּ‬Hosea 8:4) is (written)] with samek̠, it means ‘removing’. When it is (written) with sin, it means ‘a[ppointing for leader’]. page 18b:

‫[ ואלאשאר בדלך‬. . .‫הבהבי אנה אסם ואליוד פי]ה זיאד‬ ַ ‫מנהא יוקאל‬ ‫אלי אלדבאיח אלדי ידבחוהא ללאות]אן יוקאל אן[ ַה ְב ָהב ֲﬠ ַטא משתק‬ ‫[ קאל אלדבאיח אלדי כאן יגב אן‬. . .] ‫מן ַהב ויגוז יכון אליוד פיהא נסב‬ ‫[ת ומא שאכל דלך‬. . .]‫[ל‬. . .]‫תכון ל‬ Some commentators hold that ‫( ַה ְב ָה ַבי‬Hosea 8:13) is a noun and the yod in it [is pleonastic . . .], and the allusion by that (is) to the offerings they used to offer to the idols. [Another opinion is that] ‫‘ ַה ְב ָהב‬gift’ is derived from ‫( ַהב‬Proverbs 30:15 = Daniel 5:17) and the yod in it could be a gentilic [. . .] he said the offerings which had to be [. . .] and similar cases.

early karaite grammatical thought

231

page 18b:

‫אלואחד מן ְש ָב ִבים יגב יכון ֶש ֶבב לאן גמע ְשבִ]יב הו ְש ִבי[ ִבים אלתיו‬ ‫ ִה ְתנוּ מן ַהתנה ואלאצל מנה ֶא ְת׳נָ ה׳‬:‫סופ ָֿתה תפכים ואנמא הו סופה‬ ָ ‫פי‬ ‫ לאן ללגַ ְֿדר אסמין ואחד בנונין וְ אחד בנון ואחד והו את פאלדי בנון‬:‫ֵהמה‬ ‫ואלמצאף מן ֻר ִבים‬ ֗ ‫ואחד הו ֶאתנֿה ואלדי בנונין הו אתנן וגמע ֻר ֵבֿה ֻר ִבים‬ :‫מצאף ִא ִשים‬ ֗ ‫ואשי אלדי הו‬ ֵ ‫אשה‬ ֵ ‫ מתל‬:‫רבי תורתי‬ ֵ The singular of ‫( ְשׁ ָב ִבים‬Hosea 8:6) should be ‫ ֶשׁ ֶבב‬because the plural ִ ‫ ְשׁ ִב‬.—The tav in ‫סוּפ ָתה‬ ָ (Hosea 8:7) is an of ‫( ְשׁ ִביב‬Daniel 3:22) is ‫יבים‬ ָ .—‫( ִה ְתנוּ‬Hosea 8:9) is (derived) from emphatic element, yet it is ‫סוּפה‬ (the imperative) ‫ ; ַה ְתנֵ ה‬its morphological base is ‫( ֶא ְתנָ ה ֵה ָמּה‬Hosea 2:14); for two nouns belong to the root, one with two nuns and one with one nun (only). The one with one nun is ‫( ֶא ְתנָ ה‬Hosea 2:14), and the one with two nuns is ‫( ֶא ְתנָ ן‬Hosea 9:1).—The plural of ‫( ֻר ֵבּה‬Hosea ָ ‫( ֻר ֵבּי‬Hosea 8:12) is ‫ ֻר ִבּים‬and the conjoined form of ‫ ֻר ִבּים‬is ‫תוֹר ִתי‬ 8:12), like ‫ ִא ֵשּׁה‬and ‫ ִא ֵשּׁי‬which is the conjoined form of ‫ ִא ִשּׁים‬. page 20a:

ֵ ‫ וכדלך‬.‫וכתירה‬ ִ ‫וְ ַר ָבה חקיקתהא‬ [:‫משט]מה חקיקתהא מחאקדה‬ ‫( וְ ַר ָבּה‬Hosea 9:7): its basic meaning is ‘and much’.—Likewise ‫ַמ ְשׂ ֵט ָמה‬ (Hosea 9:7): [its basic meaning is ‘hatred’]. page 21a:

‫[ן מכת]ו[ב בשין פאן‬. . . ‫פחצל קו׳ בשורי מהם מקאבל קו׳ נדדוֹ ממ]ני‬ ‫מוצע‬ ִ֗ ‫מוצע א[לסמך ואלסמך‬ ֗ ‫מתלה כתיר ממא תסתכדם אללגה אלש]ין‬ :‫ כד[לך כתיר‬. . . ‫אלשין מתל ְשׂ ָﬠרה בשין וסערה בסמ]ך‬ ִ ‫( ְבּ‬Hosea 9:12) is parallel to the phrase ‫נָ ְדדוּ ִמ ֶמּנִּ י‬ The phrase ‫שׂוּרי ֵמ ֶהם‬ (Hosea 7:13) [. . .]. It has been written with sin and there are a lot of instances where the language uses the si[n instead of] the samek̠, and the samek̠ instead of the sin, like ‫ ְשׂ ָﬠ ָרה‬with sin and ‫ ְס ָﬠ ָרה‬with samek̠ [and many] more examples. page 21b:

ְ ‫אכלהא‬ ַ ‫ מתל ְב ֳﬠ ְב ָרם ומא ַש‬:[‫]כאהבם‬ [. . .]‫ צ ְֹמ ִקים אלואחד מ‬:‫מצ ַדר‬ ִ ‫ואלאצל מנהא ָצמוק הי משתקה מן ִצ‬ : [. . . ‫ימוּקים יעני בה אלגפ]נה‬

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‫‪232‬‬

‫‪ְ (2 Kings 2:9); the infinitive is simi‬כּ ָﬠ ְב ָרם ‪ְ (Hosea 9:10) is like‬כּ ָא ֳה ָבם‬‫‪ (Hosea 9:14): the singular of [it . . .] and its basic form‬צ ְֹמ ִקים—‪lar to it.‬‬ ‫‪ִ , i.e. ‘the gra[pe’ . . .].‬צ ִ‬ ‫ימּוּקים ‪ָ which is derived from‬צמוֹק ‪is‬‬ ‫‪page 22a:‬‬

‫בושה‪ .‬גמעה ֳב ְשנוֹת‬ ‫ָבשנה אסם מקאם ָ‬ ‫בּוּשׁה ‪ָ (Hosea 10:6) is a noun in the place of‬בּ ְשׁנָ ה‬ ‫‪ָ , its plural being‬‬ ‫‪ָ .‬בּ ְשׁנוֹת‬ ‫‪page 22a:‬‬

‫נדמה יחתמל יכון עלי מא קלנא מן לגה אלתשביה‬ ‫קו' ֶ‬ ‫‪ (Hosea 10:7) may, according to what we have said, belong to the‬נִ ְד ֶמה‬ ‫‪lexical class of ‘comparing’.‬‬ ‫‪page 24a:‬‬

‫וקד ]‪ [. . .‬גַ ַס ְסת והו מן אללגה מומתנע ]‪ . . .‬י[עני פמומתנע לאן הדא‬ ‫אלכלאם ]‪ . . .‬אנכ[י תרגלתי הי אלמלאטפה ]‪ [. . .‬אלצבי ויו]רבי ‪[. . .‬ל מנהא‬ ‫ַת ְרגֵ ל פאדא רכבהא ]אימנת[ תקול ֲא ַת ְרגל יִ תרג]ל מתרגל[‬ ‫‪And[. . .] ‘I tested’ and it is from the lexical class ‘abstaining’ [. . .] i.e.‬‬ ‫‪ָ ] (Hosea 11:3) is‬אנ ִֹכי[ ִת ְרגַּ ְל ִתּי ]‪‘and abstaining’, because the words [. . .‬‬ ‫‪ַ and when‬תּ ְרגֵּ ל ‪friendliness [. . .] the boy and he g[rows . . . . . . .] from it‬‬ ‫] ְמ ַת ְרגֵּ ל[ ‪],‬יְ ַת ְרגֵּ ]ל ‪] you say‬אימנ״ת )‪you attach to it [(the prefix letters‬‬ ‫‪ֲ .‬א ַת ְרגֵּ ל‬ ‫‪pages 25a–25b:‬‬

‫ואס ֵרם מן‬ ‫וש ְלמה‪ָ :‬‬ ‫וﬠוְ ָלה ואחד הי מן אלמותבדלה מתל ַשׂ ְמלה ַ‬ ‫ַﬠ ְלוָ ה ַ‬ ‫אאסרם‪ :‬פיכון סוֹֽ ר ַא ְר ֵבט מקאם ֱא ֿסוֹר‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫סוֹֽ ר לאן לו כאן מן ֶא ֶאסוֹר לי]כו[ן‬ ‫אללפט ולא‬ ‫֗‬ ‫ויגוז תוגעל מן לגה אלתאדיב לאנה גיר מומתנע ל]א פי[‬ ‫אלאצאפאת כדי‬ ‫֗‬ ‫פי אלמעני‪ .‬פכאן חקהא עלי הדא תכון ִא ֿס ֵוֹרם ליכן‬ ‫יסתעמלהא אלכתאב‪ :‬עוֹנָ ֿה אסם אלמענייה גמעהא עוֹנֽ וֹת ומתלהא ַמ ֲﬠנָ ה‬ ‫למﬠניִ תם‪:‬‬ ‫ֲ‬ ‫כק' כבחצי מענה גמעהא ַמ ְﬠנות‪ :‬ומתלהא ַמ ֲﬠנִ ית כק' האריכו‬ ‫גמעהא ַמ ֲﬠנִ יתוֹת‪ :‬ויגוז תכון מן אלאסמא אלדי ליס ַת ְת ַכ ַֿתר מתל ָח ְפ ִשׁיֿת‬ ‫ומא שאכלהא‪ :‬וְ ַאט יחתמל יכון מורכם הי פיכון מן ַה ֵטה ויחתמל יכון מן‬ ‫בעץ‬ ‫֗‬ ‫אמר בראסֿה עלי ַר ְאי‬ ‫אמר בראסה‪ :‬מתל ַצ]ו[ אלדי הו ְ‬ ‫ַהט פיכון ְ‬ ‫יוּכֿל ומא שאכלה‪:‬‬ ‫אוֹכֿיל מן הוֹכֿיל משתק מן ַ‬ ‫אלמתכלמין פי אללגה‪ִ :‬‬ ‫אלמאצי ָחל ואלמונת ָח ָלֿה והדה מתל וְ ָש ָבֿה חקיקתה‬ ‫֗‬ ‫וחלֿה מן ֻחוּל‬ ‫ָ‬

early karaite grammatical thought

233

‫תופסר ַכ ְסר משתקה מן אשר‬ ַ :‫ אמגֶ נְ ָך‬:‫פאעלה יעני תחצול מובתדייה‬ :‫ִמגֵ ן ותופסר תסלים‬ ‫( ַﬠ ְלוָ ה‬Hos. 10:9) and ‫ ַﬠוְ ָלה‬are identical by metathesis, like ‫ ַשׂ ְמ ָלה‬and ‫ ַשׂ ְל ָמה‬.—‫( וְ ֱא ֳסּ ֵרם‬Hosea 10:10) is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫סוֹר‬, since if it were (derived) from ‫ ֶא ֱאסוֹר‬, it should be ‫ ; ֶא ֶא ְס ֵרם‬and ‫סוֹר‬ ‘tie up!’ (is used) in the place of ‫ ֱאסוֹר‬. It may be that it is formed from the lexical class ‘discipline’, for it is not impossible neither regarding the linguistic expression nor regarding the meaning. According to ֵ ‫ ; ִא‬however, the Book uses conjoined forms in rule it should be ‫סוֹרם‬ this way.—‫( עוֹנָ ה‬Hosea 10:10) is a noun (meaning) ‘furrow’; its plural being ‫עוֹנוֹת‬. An equivalent for it is ‫ ַמ ֲﬠנָ ה‬as in ‫( ְכּ ַב ֲח ִצי ַמ ֲﬠנָ ה‬1 Samuel 14:14); its plural is ‫ ַמ ֲﬠנוֹת‬. And (another) equivalent for it is ‫ ַמ ֲﬠנִ ית‬as ָ ִ‫( ֶה ֱא ִריכוּ ְל ַמ ֲﬠנ‬Psalms 129:3), its plural being ‫ ַמ ֲﬠנִ יתוֹת‬. It is posin ‫יתם‬ sible that it (belongs to such) nouns which cannot form a plural, as ‫ ָח ְפ ִשׁית‬and similar cases.—‫( וְ ַאט‬Hosea 11:4) has possibly its he apocopated and (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ; ַה ֵטּה‬or it is possible that it is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ַהט‬and is an imperative in its primary form, as ‫ ַצו‬which is an imperative in its primary form ִ according to the opinion of some scholars of the language.—‫אוֹכיל‬ ִ which is derived (Hosea 11:4) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫הוֹכיל‬ ַ and similar cases.—‫( וְ ָח ָלה‬Hosea 11:6) is (derived) from (the from ‫יוּכל‬ imperative) ‫חוּל‬, the past tense is ‫ ָחל‬, the feminine is ‫ ָח ָלה‬. This is like ‫ וְ ָשׁ ָבה‬whose basic meaning is an active participle feminine, i.e. ‘she is beginning’.—‫( ֲא ַמגֶּ נְ ָך‬Hosea 11:8) can be translated with ‘breaking’, if derived from ‫‘ ֲא ֶשׁר ִמגֵּ ן‬Who has delivered’ (Genesis 14:20); it can be translated with ‘handing over’. page 27a:

‫[ ויחתמל יכון ראגע אלי איאם‬. . .]‫[ן שח‬. . . ‫מוﬠד אסם אלקוד]ס‬ ֵ ‫אלאעיאד‬ ‫מוֹﬠד‬ ֵ is a noun (meaning) ‘sanctuary’ [. . .]; or it may refer to the days of the festivals. page 28a:

‫וﬠם קדושים‬ ִ ‫ קו׳‬:‫[ אסתולי‬. . .]‫ָרֿד משתקה מן אמרו עמי רדנו הו ֵרד פיכון ֵר‬ ‫נטיר קול יהושע כי אלהים קדו]שים הוא יקאל[ ענה קדוש ויקאל ענה‬ ֗ :‫[ ָה ֵשׂר משתק מן ֵה ִשׂירו ולא ידעתי‬. . .] ‫ ָש ָרה את א'ים מן ְשׂ ֵרֿה‬:‫קדושים‬

234

friedrich niessen ‫ז״ל‬

[. . .] ‫[ ְכנַ ֲﬠנִ י וקד יכון ִכנְ ָﬠן ויכון גמעה ִכנְ ָﬠנים‬. . . ‫כנען אסם ]אלתאגר‬ ‫[ ֶר ֶטט מקאם ְר ֵֿתת‬. . . ‫ ְר ֵֿתת אסם ]אלרעדה‬:‫ְשוָ ִרים ְשוָ ר והו מקאם שוֹֽ ר‬ ‫ תבון אסם אלבנייה[ גמעה ְתבֿוּנִ ים והו מדכר‬:. . . ‫תלתהא תבדיא בר]עדה‬ ‫לאוב[ה אלואחדה מן תלאובות‬ ָ ]‫ ת‬:‫בוּנם‬ ָ ֿ ‫ַתבֿנִ ית פענד אלא] ֗צ[אפ]ה הו[ ִכ ְת‬ ‫יסוֹﬠר‬ ֵ :‫קל ְבהם‬ ְ ‫ חקיקתהא ַמגְ ַלק‬:‫ ְסגוֹר ִא ְסם‬:‫ וַ יָ ָרם מן רוּם‬:‫אסם ללקפאר‬ :‫יוﬠצף נפסה במא יַ נְ ַח ִמל‬ ַ ‫[ אנה‬.]‫[ל‬. . .] ‫סוֹﬠר והו‬ ֵ ‫מן‬

‫( ָרד‬Hosea 12:1) is derived from ‫( ָא ְמרוּ ַﬠ ִמּי ַר ְדנוּ‬Jeremiah 2:31); it is (derived) from (the imperative) ‫ ֵרד‬, and ‫ ֵרד‬can be [. . .] ‘to get the ִ ‫( וְ ִﬠם ְק‬Hosea 12:1) is like Joshua’s mastery over’.—The phrase ‫דוֹשׁים‬ ִ ‫ֹלהים ְק‬ ִ ‫( ִכּי ֱא‬Joshua 24:19); [you can say] referring words ‫דוֹשׁים הוּא‬ ִ ‫ ְק‬.—‫ָשׂ ָרה ֶאת‬ to Him ‫ ָקדוֹשׁ‬, and you can say referring to Him ‫דוֹשׁים‬ ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫( ֱא‬Hosea 12:4) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫[ ָה ֵשׂר‬. . .] ‫ְשׂ ֵרה‬ is derived from ‫( ֵה ִשׂירוּ וְ לֹא יָ ָד ְﬠ ִתּי‬Hosea 8:4).—‫( ְכּנַ ַﬠן‬Hosea 12:8) is a noun [meaning ‘trader’ . . .] ‫ ; ְכּנַ ֲﬠנִ י‬it may be ‫ ִכּנְ ָﬠן‬, and its plural is ‫ִכּנְ ָﬠנִ ים‬ [. . .].—[The singular of] ‫( ְשׁוָ ִרים‬Hosea 12:12) is ‫ ְשׁוָ ר‬, and it (is used) in the place of ‫שׁוֹר‬.—‫( ְר ֵתת‬Hosea 13:1) is a noun [meaning ‘shudder’ . . .] ‫( ֶר ֶטט‬see Jeremiah 49:24) in the place of ‫ ; ְר ֵתת‬all three of them express (the meaning) ‘tre[mbling’ . . . .—‫( ְתּבוּן‬see Hosea 13:2) is a noun meaning ‘pattern’]; its plural is ‫ ; ְתּבוּנִ ים‬it is the masculine form of ‫; ַתּ ְבנִ ית‬ ָ ‫( ַתּ ְל‬see Hosea 13:5) is the in the conjoined state it is ‫ ִכּ ְתבוּנָ ם‬.—‫אוּבה‬ singular of ‫ ַתּ ְלאוּבוֹת‬, a noun meaning ‘deserts’.—‫( וַ יָּ ָרם‬Hosea 13:6) (is derived) from (the imperative) ‫רוּם‬.—‫( ְסגוֹר‬Hosea 13:8) is a noun; its ֵ ְ‫( י‬Hosea 13:3) (is basic meaning is ‘the enclosure of their heart’.—‫סוֹﬠר‬ ֵ , and it [is possible] that it (means) derived) from (the imperative) ‫סוֹﬠר‬ ‘it blows in a gale itself’ in that it has been instigated. page 28b:

‫ֹֽנחם אסם אלצפח גמעֿה נְ ָח ִמים ַא ִחים ]אסם מ[קאם ַח ִחים אסם ללשוך‬ ‫[ל ַח ִחים ויגוז יכון ָאח מקאם ָאחוּ אסם‬. . .] ‫פיכון ָא]ח[ אסם מקאם ָחח‬ ‫[ פ]אד[א‬. . .] ‫ יפרי[א מן‬. . .]‫[ מ‬. . .]‫ יח[תמל אל‬. . .] ‫[ן‬. . . ‫מעה‬ ֗ ]‫[ ג‬. . .]‫ללב‬ ‫ אלואחדה מ]ן‬:‫[ֿה‬. . .]‫[ש‬. . .] ‫מפרי[א‬ ְ ‫]רכ[בה אי]מנת יגעל[ ַא ְפ ִריא יַ ְפ ִר]א‬ [ ‫הר]ה‬ ָ ‫ והו אסם מקאם‬:‫ָה[ ִריות ָה ִרייָ ה‬ ‫( נ ַֹחם‬Hosea 13:14) is a noun meaning ‘forgiveness’, its plural being ‫נְ ָח ִמים‬.—‫( ַא ִחים‬Hosea 13:15) is [a noun] in the place of ‫ ַח ִחים‬, a noun (meaning) ‘thorns’, and ‫ ָאח‬is a noun in the place of ‫[ ָחח‬. . .] ‫; ַח ִחים‬ it is possible that ‫ ָאח‬stands in the place of ‫ ָאחוּ‬, a noun meaning [. . ., its] plu[ral is . . .]; or it is possible [. . .].—[‫( א[יַ ְפ ִרי‬Hosea 13:15) [is derived] from [(the imperative) ‫ ַה ְפ ֵרא‬. And wh]en [you att]ach (the

early karaite grammatical thought

235

prefix letters) ‫[ אימנ״ת‬it forms] ‫ ַא ְפ ִריא‬, ‫]יַ ְפ ִרי]א‬, ‫] ַמ ְפ ִרי[א‬.—[. . .].—[. . .] The singular of ‫( ָה ִריוֹת‬see Hosea 14:1) is ‫ ; ָה ִריָ ה‬it is a noun in the place of ‫ ָה ָרה‬. page 30b:

‫רוחם‬ ָ [‫ א‬. . .] ‫[ יגי ָק ָט ְבך פתחצל אסר‬. . .] ‫ ָק ָט ְבך‬:‫[ גמע אלעלום‬. . .] ָ [ ְ‫]י‬ :‫[ כמא קלנא כי ַצו‬. . .] ‫רוחם מרוחם נרוחם‬ plural (?) is ‘informations’ (?) ‫( ָק ָט ְבָך‬Hosea 13:14) [. . .] is ‫ ָק ָט ְבָך‬and ָ [‫]א‬, ‫רוחם‬ ָ [ ְ‫( ]י‬Hosea 14:4), ‫מרוחם‬, ‫[ נרוחם‬. . .], as it is [. . .].—[. . .] ‫רוחם‬ we have said ‫( ִכּי ַצו‬Isaiah 28:10).

Bibliography A. E. Cowley, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar as Edited and Enlarged by E. Kautzsch, reprinted (Oxford, 1990). A. Dotan, The Dawn of Hebrew Linguistics: the Book of Elegance of the Language of the Hebrews by Saadia Gaon (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997). M. Gil, Palestine During The First Muslim Period (634–1099), Part II Cairo Genizah Documents (3 vols; Tel Aviv, 1983). G. Khan, ‘ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn and the Early Karaite Grammatical Tradition’, Journal of Jewish Studies 48 (1997), pp. 314–334. ——, The Early Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought: Including a Critical Edition, Translation and Analysis of the Diqduq of Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf Ibn Nūḥ on the Hagiographa (Leiden, 2000). ——, Early Karaite Grammatical Texts (Atlanta, 2000). ——, ‘Biblical Exegesis and Grammatical Theory’, in G. Khan (ed.), Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts (Oxford, 2001), pp. 127–149. ——, ‘The Medieval Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammar’, Boletín de la Asociacion Española de Orientalistas 38 (2002), pp. 51–76. G. Khan, M. Á. Gallego and J. Olszowy-Schlanger, The Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought in its Classical Form: a Critical Edition and English Translation of al-Kitāb al-Kāfī fī al-Luġa al-ʿIbrāniyya by Abū al-Farağ Hārūn ibn al-Farağ (2 vols; Leiden, 2003). F. Niessen, ‘An Anonymous Karaite Commentary on the Book of Hosea’, in G. Khan (ed.), Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts (Oxford, 2001), pp. 77–126. S. L. Skoss, The Hebrew-Arabic Dictionary of the Bible Known as Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-Alfāẓ (Agrōn) of David ben Abraham Al-Fāsī the Karaite (Tenth Cent.). Edited from Manuscripts in the State Public Library in Leningrad and in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (2 vols; New Haven, 1936–1945). N. Schur, History of the Karaites (Frankfurt am Main, 1992).

AN EARLY PALIMPSEST SCROLL OF THE BOOK OF KINGS FROM THE CAIRO GENIZAH Judith Olszowy-Schlanger

In recent years, the contribution of the Cairo Genizah to the history of the Hebrew book and script has been increasingly recognised. Stefan Reif has always been among those who stressed the importance of studying the external physical aspects of manuscripts for better understanding the texts they carried and the context of their production; it is a pleasure to dedicate this paper to him. Since the discovery and, more importantly, the systematic study of the Cairo Genizah, its corpus of dated or datable manuscripts in Hebrew script has been considerably enriched with documents and fragments of codices dating from as early as the ninth and tenth centuries. This evidence is particularly precious: in between the latest of the Judaean Desert documents (second century CE) and the earliest dated codices from the tenth century, dated Hebrew documents and especially Hebrew books are extremely scarce. We know of only twelve explicitly-dated Hebrew books and book fragments from the tenth century.1 Only one medieval document, a marriage contract, bears a date before 900 (870/871).2 It is therefore evident that manuscript specialists watch with great expectation all new discoveries of early

1 Dated codices and book fragments up to 1020 have been described in M. BeitArié, C. Sirat, M. Glatzer, Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerint exhibentes, tome I jusqu’à 1020 (Turnhout, 1997). For an inventory of Hebrew papyri (which are of relatively early date—papyrus being only scarcely used as a writing support after the beginning of the eleventh century), see C. Sirat, Les papyrus en caractères hébraïques trouvés en Egypte (Paris, 1985). 2 Annenberg Institute n° 331 (formerly Dropsie College n° 331), ed. S. D. Goitein, ‘Four old marriage documents from the Cairo Geniza’ (Hebrew), Leshonenu 30 (1965– 1966), pp. 197–216 (199–200). For a list and bibliography of the most ancient dated and datable fragments from the Cairo Genizah, see S. Hopkins, ‘The oldest dated document in the Genizah’, in S. Morag, I. Ben-Ami and N. A. Stillman, Studies in Judaism and Islam presented to Shelomo Dov Goitein on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday by his Students, Colleagues and Friends (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 83–98. See also J. Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘Les plus anciens documents datés de la Guenizah du Caire: lectures et relectures’, Livret-Annuaire de l’EPHE 20 (2004–2005) (Paris, 2006), pp. 47–50.

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manuscripts which could help them reconstruct the still unclear picture of the history of the Hebrew book and script. The Genizah chamber in Ben Ezra synagogue began to function as a receptacle for the worn-out books and documents only some time around 1040. Indeed, this synagogue, probably originally built in the tenth century, was destroyed in 1012 during anti-Jewish (and anti-Christian) persecutions ordered by the Fatimid Caliph al-Ḥ ākim (996–1021), and was rebuilt some thirty years later.3 It is therefore not surprising that the bulk of fragments date from the eleventh century and later. However, a considerable number of manuscripts that found their way to the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue are earlier than the mid-eleventh century. Of course, books and documents had a long life before they were finally deposited in the Genizah where they awaited burial or natural decay. Books could be read dozens of years after they were copied, and the validity of legal contracts often extended beyond one generation. Books formed part of libraries and collections, and documents were kept for years in private family or institutional archives, before they were committed to a genizah. Furthermore, throughout their vicissitudes, worn-out books and documents that lost their actuality and legal relevance were reemployed for other writings. A great number of fragments found in the Cairo Genizah are books, letters, documents or writing exercises written on the blank versos, on the wide margins or even between the lines of other much earlier texts, such as liturgical scrolls (traditionally written only on one side), earlier documents or Arabic official letters or petitions written on particularly large sheets of good quality paper.4

3 S. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000), esp. p. 10. 4 J. Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine (Leiden-New YorkKöln, 1998), pp. 29–31. To quote just a few early eleventh-century texts written on earlier reused manuscripts: T-S H10.167 is a Hebrew liturgy rotulus made from a reused parchment Bible scroll; Oxford Bodleian Or. MS. Heb. a. 2 is another liturgy rotulus whose parchment sheets were cut out from tenth-century legal documents; T-S H5.119 contains another liturgical composition written on the verso of strips cut out of a very large paper document in Arabic script; London, BL Ms. Or 5553 B is a paper codex bifolium containing a personal copy of a grammatical work produced from a large Arabic chancery document (the Judaeo-Arabic grammatical text covers not only the blank verso of the original document, but is also written in the blank spaces between the Arabic letters of the original recto).

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A particularly significant group of Cairo Genizah manuscripts written on reused manuscripts are palimpsests, where the new text was copied on parchment from which the original text had been removed (by washing and/or scraping). The importance of such palimpsests and their potential to yield particularly ancient writings has long been recognised: they have been studied from the beginning of Genizah research more than a century ago. However, what this research has brought to light so far are mostly manuscripts where the lower, i.e. more ancient, text was not a Hebrew work, but a Greek, Latin, Georgian or Christian Aramaic one, which had been reused for an upper Hebrew text.5 That is how the scholarly world had its first glimpse of Origen’s Hexapla, fragments of which were buried under Hebrew liturgical texts.6 Indeed, among some 140 palimpsest fragments from the Cairo Genizah, belonging to 42 different manuscripts, identified and described in the comprehensive study by Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, published in 1978,7 only one text (preserved in 4 fragments)8 was described as a Hebrew upon Hebrew palimpsest: an underlying liturgical composition with a serugin (shorthand) Bible passage as the upper text.9 This near total absence of the manuscripts with lower Hebrew text and script justifiably led some scholars to conclude that Jewish scribes were averse to ‘bury’ one text under another, possibly out of reverence for the Hebrew script.10 However, new evidence from the Genizah indicates that any religious injunction that may have existed was not scrupulously observed, and that the need for cheap writing material was often predominant. Rabbinic literature contains references to palimp-

5 See e.g. F. C. Burkitt, Fragments of the Book of Kings according to the Translation of Aquila (Cambridge, 1897); C. Taylor, Hebrew-Greek Cairo Genizah Palimpsests from the Taylor-Schechter Collection including a Fragment of the Twenty-second Psalm according to Origen’s Hexapla (Cambridge, 1900). For a recent overview, see N. Tchernetska, ‘Greek Oriental palimpsests in Cambridge: problems and prospects’, in C. Holmes and J. Waring (eds), Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (Leiden, 2002), pp. 243–256. For a comprehensive overview and bibliography, see M. Sokoloff and J. Yahalom, ‘Christian palimpsests from the Cairo Geniza’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes 8 (1978), pp. 107–132. 6 See Taylor, Hebrew-Greek Cairo Geniza Palimpsests. 7 Sokoloff and Yahalom, ‘Christian palimpsests’. 8 Sokoloff and Yahalom, ‘Christian palimpsests’, n° XXXIX: T-S NS 172.11, ff. 1–2; T-S NS 249.6, ff. 1–2. 9 The biblical fragment was first studied by M. Dietrich, Neue palästinisch punktiere Bibel-fragmente (Leiden, 1968), pp. 74*–78*. 10 Sokoloff and Yahalom, ‘Christian palimpsests’, p. 109.

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sests that show that the Rabbis were familiar with this means for saving writing material. Moreover, discussions such as those in BT Šabbat 116a, about sanctity and the need to save Torah scrolls from a fire on the Sabbath, may suggest that if a liturgical scroll were already effaced (i.e. ‘eighty five letters such as the section “And it came to pass when the ark set forward” (Numbers 10:35) could not be gathered therein’), it should not be saved in case of a fire on a Sabbath. According to this view, the place where the writing had been is not holy once the writing disappeared, because: ‘when it was sanctified it was on account of the writing; when its writing goes, its sanctity goes’.11 In other words, while it is prohibited to defile a liturgical scroll (including intentionally destroying or effacing its writing), a scroll which is already considered unfit for liturgical use and whose writing is already effaced is not considered holy. Perhaps it could be given a second life as a reused writing material? This free reading of BT Šabbat 116a would seem a little farfetched had not a recently undertaken systematic examination of large portions of Genizah fragments yielded several previously unidentified palimpsests where Hebrew text has indeed been superposed on a reused Jewish book. This is for example the case of the rabbinic texts in T-S K23.1, T-S K23.3 and T-S K23.4, or of a fragment of a Greek-Hebrew glossary of difficult biblical words, probably of the ninth century, overwritten by one of the oldest fragments of the Palestinian Talmud (T-S F17.4).12 These are admittedly non liturgical texts, to which, it could be argued, lesser sanctity would be attributed. However, this is emphatically not the case with the fragment to which I will dedicate some attention in the present paper: a Genizah palimpsest fragment found in the Bodleian Library,13 where the lower erased text is a fragment of a biblical scroll of hafṭarot.14

‫ספר תורה שנמחק אם יש בו ללקט שמנים וחמש אותיות כגון פרשת ויהי בנסע‬ ‫ מקום הכתב לא קמיבעיא לי דכי‬.‫תיפוק ליה משום גיליון דידיה‬. ‫ ואמאי‬.‫הארון מצילין‬ ‫קדוש אגב כתב הוא דקדוש אזל כתב אזלא לה קדושתיה‬. 11

12 See N. Tchernetska, J. Olszowy-Schlanger, N. de Lange, ‘An early Hebrew-Greek biblical glossary from the Cairo Genizah’, Revue des études juives 166 (2007), pp. 91–128. 13 I would like to thank the Bodleian Library and in particular Dr Piet van Boxel for all their help during my research on the manuscript and their kind permission to reproduce it in this paper. 14 The study of medieval scrolls is essential for the history of the Hebrew book and book making techniques, and constitutes a subject in itself. Only a few scrolls from the period before and around the end of the tenth century have been studied so far,

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The collection of Cairo Genizah manuscripts kept at the Bodleian Library includes a small anonymous book of legal formularies (sefer šeṭarot) written in Lucena, Spain, in the first half of the eleventh century (MS Or. Heb. f. 27, ff. 10–22).15 Some of its folios were copied on reused parchment containing Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic texts. We are going to focus on one of the bifolios of this manuscript, a palimpsest fragment of an early scroll with a passage from the book of Kings (1 Kings 19:8–21). Of course, the date of the fragment of the book of Kings, the lower text, is not explicitly indicated. As for the upper text, several blank formularies of documents in this sefer šeṭarot mention a date between 1020 and 1025 CE. However, mentions of dates in formularies of a sefer šeṭarot do not always reflect the date when the manuscript was copied. These dates could have been copied from earlier documents used as models by the compiler of the book. Indeed, in this sefer šeṭarot from Lucena, different dates are quoted in different formularies: 1020–1021 (n° 41, divorce), 1023 (n° 24, donation), 1025 (n° 29, sale of a donkey), suggesting that these dates, or at least the earliest of them, do not correspond to the exact date of the copy of the manuscript of the sefer šeṭarot itself. However, the dating of this book, from the first half of the eleventh century, is corroborated by the palaeographical features of the handwriting of its two scribes. It is very likely that this manuscript was indeed copied not much later than the dates indicated by its formulae. Both handwritings of the sefer šeṭarot are of Sephardi cursive type. Their features are consistent with the eleventh-century cursive scripts as attested in the dated Genizah fragments from North Africa (we lack the evidence of the early dated cursive manuscripts from Southern Spain itself), and lacks the extreme cursiveness and

mostly the Torah scrolls; see C. Sirat, M. Dukan and A. Yardeni, ‘Rouleaux de la Tora antérieurs à l’an mille’, in Comptes rendus de séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (Paris, 1994), pp. 861–887; J. S. Penkower, ‘A Sheet of Parchment from a 10th or 11th century Torah scroll: determining its type among four traditions (Oriental, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Yemenite)’, Textus 21 (2002), pp. 235–264, deals with an oriental fragment, containing Exodus 10:10–16:15, which probably belonged to the Firkovitch collection in St Petersburg and was sold at Christie’s to a private collection. 15 The book of formularies was edited and studied by J. Rivlin, Bills and Contracts from Lucena 1020–1025 CE (Hebrew; Ramat Gan, 1994). The palimpsest’s lower text has not been studied so far.

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large number of ligatures characteristic of the Sephardi cursive from the twelfth century onwards.16 At some point in the eleventh century a number of Jewish clerks from Lucena found themselves short of parchment while copying or composing their sefer šeṭarot. This sefer šeṭarot is the very example of a highly informal work of mediocre quality, a booklet of small dimensions, written on heterogeneous cheap parchment, for practical rather than display purposes. Except for one bifolium, the parchment is thick, dark, with a clear distinction between the brighter flesh and darker hair sides, with marked traces of grain and shaving on the hair side, and probably made of sheep hide. The manuscript of this sefer šeṭarot does not contain pricking or ruling to guide the lines of the writing (except for the bifolium with the palimpsest of the book of Kings, where the ruling was carried out for the lower text). The number of lines tends to vary from page to page. Some of the folios are reused palimpsests, some others are irregular in shape and contain holes. These irregularities existed prior to the writing, and the written text adapts to the unusual shapes of the pages. Folios vary in size: from 110×155 mm for ff. 10 and 16 to 120×159 for f. 23 and 125×155 for f. 20. In its present form, the booklet is incomplete and the folios are not placed in their original order. Lacunae in the text do not allow the reconstruction of the original order with certainty. The sefer šeṭarot contains today three incomplete quires, beginning at f. 10r of the present bound volume of fragments at the Bodleian Library. The first quire was a quaternion, with one folio missing between 14v and 15r, the second quire is composed today of two bifolios, and the third, incomplete—with two bifolios and one additional folio in the middle. Although the order of the folios is disturbed in the present state of the manuscript, the scribes made an effort to keep the correct order: a catchword is found on f. 15v, but it does not correspond to the text on f. 16r, so there is at least one missing folio here. Despite the fact that the order of the pages is disturbed and that many pages are missing, it seems that all the leaves belong to the same original work. This work was copied by two different hands, both using an early Sephardi cursive script as developed in the eleventh century,

16 For a description of Sephardi script and its early history, see M. Beit-Arié and E. Engel, Specimens of Medieval Hebrew Scripts, vol. II: Sephardic Script (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2002), pp. 12–13.

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and each using a different shade of ink. Hand 1, using darker ink, has a more regular and more cursive aspect that hand 2, using brown ink and producing less careful and larger characters. Hand 1 is responsible for quire I and, it seems for some passages in quire III (f. 23, f. 35v and a half a page on f. 22r). The presence of both handwritings on one page shows that the two scribes worked together, on this common project. As already stated, some of the folios of the sefer šeṭarot were copied on reused parchment. The two folios that concern us, ff. 10 and 16, are today the outer bifolium of the first quire of the sefer šeṭarot. It appears then that this bifolium is a long piece cut out from what had been a scroll. The actual dimensions of the piece are 300×110 mm, and it contains one column of the biblical text, incomplete on its right-hand side. The upper text was written perpendicularly to the lower text. Consequently, the letters of the lower text, although washed away, are not entirely covered by the upper text, and some of them are quite clear. 12 mm of the upper margin of the column are preserved (right-hand side of f. 10v) and 23 mm of the lower margin as well (to be precise, I cannot see any traces of the letters on the left margin of 16r). The right-hand side of the column is missing, but the left edge of the column is preserved as well as about 16 mm of the space between the columns. The parchment of this bifolio is of a much better quality than that of the rest of the sefer šeṭarot. It is much softer, made of calf hide, with a marked distinction between flesh and hair sides: the flesh side is whitegrey while the hair-side is yellowish and slightly glossier. No pricking is visible, but there are traces of ruling with a hard point on the flesh side. One vertical line is preserved at the left side of the column; it intersects with the horizontal lines that cross the entire preserved sheet, going into the space between the columns. There are 35 ruled lines and 35 lines of written text. The written line is placed below the corresponding ruled line, the letters hanging from it. There is a regular space of 9.5 mm between the ruled lines. This pattern of ruling reflects oriental (or later Spanish) practice. The ink is a light brown gall-nut based ink. The text is written on the flesh-side. The presence of the text on one side only strongly suggests that we are indeed dealing with a fragment from a scroll rather than from a codex. The same goes for the absence of vowels. It is however interesting to note that in one place the scribe used a device to keep the left margin straight by anticipating the beginning of the next line (l. 24).

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The characters of the lower text are written quite small, about 3–4 mm high, occupying only the upper part of the ruled space between the lines. A characteristic general feature of the lower script are the predominance of sharp angles in the baseline of writing, clearly visible with the letter bet at the beginning of l. 17; its horizontal base descends towards the baseline at a sharp angle, and underlines the following reš (see fig. 1)

Figure 1.

The morphology of the alef is characteristic: it is written with three strokes—the oblique bar, which is unusually high, touching the ruled line close to the headline of writing, the right-hand stroke, which touches the oblique bar near its middle and goes up beyond the headline of writing and ruling, and the left-hand stroke, which descends from the left extremity of the oblique stroke straight towards the baseline, and, in some cases, has a small foot turned inwards.

Figure 2.

The gimel is particularly long and its right downstroke goes below the baseline of writing.

Figure 3.

The downstroke of the lamed is short and rounded, and does not reach the baseline. The ascender is leaning to the left.

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Figure 4.

The downstroke of the ʿayin is long and underlines the following letter.

Figure 5.

The general aspect of the script is square, rather ‘flat’ and compact, some of the characters are wider than they are higher. It lacks decorative elements such as serifs. The script can be defined as oriental square, as used in the eastern part of the Mediterranean around the year 1000 and before. This script, well attested among Cairo Genizah fragments, is different from the square calligraphic oriental script used in monumental Bible codices of the tenth century, from the related square script attested in tenth century legal documents from Tunisia, and is different from the square Sephardi script attested from the second half of the eleventh century onwards.17 What is the possible origin of the original scroll? Of course, the origin of the upper text is quite well established by its script and because its content pertains to the community of Lucena. It would be perfectly logical to assume that recycled parchment in Lucena came

17 Edna Engel defines this type of script as ‘oriental proto-square’. For the definition of the oriental proto-square and its influence on the early European Hebrew scripts, see E. Engel, ‘Evolutionary stages of medieval Hebrew scripts as reflected in the “European Genizah” ’, in M. Perani and C. Ruini (eds), ‘Fragmenta ne pereant’. Recupero e studio dei frammenti di manoscritti medievali e rinasciamentali riutilizzati in ligature (Ravenna, 2002) pp. 89–119 (90). The square script of the earliest dated manuscripts from Muslim Spain has close affinities with the oriental script of tenthand eleventh-century documents from the province of Ifriqiyya (today’s Tunisia), itself reminiscent of the oriental script that originated and spread from Babylonia, and similar to the type of script used in the early oriental calligraphic codices. The earliest datable manuscript from Muslim Spain is probably a letter written in Granada shortly after 1066; see T-S 20.24, ed. E. Ashtor, ‘Documentos españoles de la Genizah’, Sefarad 24 (1964), pp. 41–80 (60–63).

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from local supplies of worn-out manuscripts, especially in the case of a scroll containing the book of Kings, presumably a hafṭarot scroll to be read during synagogue services. But it is equally possible that the scroll was copied elsewhere and brought to Spain. The typology of the script of the lower text itself is not decisive. The script in the fragment of the book of Kings does not display the features of the script of tenth-century Tunisian manuscripts or of its descendent— the Sephardi square script. Its main characteristics, noted above, are rather reminiscent of the so-called oriental proto-square attested in early manuscripts and fragments with a probable origin in Palestine or an area under Palestinian influence, for instance Southern Italy. This would suggest that the scroll reused in the Lucena sefer šeṭarot either originated from elsewhere, or was written prior to the time when the typical Sephardi script had become the norm in al-Andalus. Both solutions are possible, and further research on the early development of Hebrew scripts in Spain is needed. The thesis of a koine proto-square script used at an early stage in Europe, including al-Andalus, has recently received support from the discovery of a funeral inscription during a rescue excavation of the medieval Jewish cemetery in Lucena. An early tombstone with a Hebrew inscription was found reused in a later (twelfth-century) burial. The morphology of the Hebrew letters of this inscription is devoid of the characteristic ‘Sephardi’ features, and is rather reminiscent of the early proto-square script, similar to that of our palimpsest.18

Bibliography E. Ashtor, ‘Documentos españoles de la Genizah’, Sefarad 24 (1964), pp. 41–80. M. Beit-Arié and E. Engel, Specimens of Medieval Hebrew Scripts, vol. II: Sephardic Script (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2002). M. Beit-Arié, C. Sirat, M. Glatzer, Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerint exhibentes, tome I jusqu’à 1020 (Turnhout, 1997).

18 For the excavation, see D. Botella and J. Casanovas, ‘El cementerio judío de Lucena (Córdoba)’, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, Sección Hebreo 58 (2009), pp. 3–25. A similar type of script is attested in the north of Spain in the eleventh century, notably in the funerary inscriptions of León; see J. Castaño and J. L. Avello, ‘Dos nuevos epitafios hebreos de la necropolis del Castro de los Judíos (Puente del Castro, León)’, Sefarad 61 (2001), pp. 229–318. I would like to thank Javier Castaño (CSIC, Madrid) for fruitful discussions concerning the inscriptions and their script.

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D. Botella and J. Casanovas, ‘El cementerio judío de Lucena (Córdoba)’, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, Sección Hebreo 58 (2009), pp. 3–25. F. C. Burkitt, Fragments of the Book of Kings according to the Translation of Aquila (Cambridge, 1897). J. Castaño and J. L. Avello, ‘Dos nuevos epitafios hebreos de la necropolis del Castro de los Judíos (Puente del Castro, León)’, Sefarad 61 (2001), pp. 229–318. M. Dietrich, Neue palästinisch punktiere Bibel-fragmente (Leiden, 1968). S. D. Goitein, ‘Four old marriage documents from the Cairo Geniza’ (Hebrew), Leshonenu 30 (1965–1966), pp. 197–216. E. Engel, ‘Evolutionary stages of medieval Hebrew scripts as reflected in the “European Genizah” ’, in M. Perani and C. Ruini (eds), ‘Fragmenta ne pereant’. Recupero e studio dei frammenti di manoscritti medievali e rinasciamentali riutilizzati in ligature (Ravenna, 2002) pp. 89–119. S. Hopkins, ‘The oldest dated document in the Genizah’, in S. Morag, I. Ben-Ami and N. A. Stillman, Studies in Judaism and Islam presented to Shelomo Dov Goitein on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday by his Students, Colleagues and Friends (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 83–98. J. Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine (Leiden-New York-Köln, 1998). ——, ‘Les plus anciens documents datés de la Guenizah du Caire: lectures et relectures’, Livret-Annuaire de l’EPHE 20 (2004–2005) (Paris, 2006), pp. 47–50. J. S. Penkower, ‘A Sheet of Parchment from a 10th or 11th century Torah scroll: determining its type among four traditions (Oriental, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Yemenite)’, Textus 21 (2002), pp. 235–264. S. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: the History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey, 2000). J. Rivlin, Bills and Contracts from Lucena 1020–1025 CE (Hebrew; Ramat Gan, 1994). C. Sirat, Les papyrus en caractères hébraïques trouvés en Egypte (Paris, 1985). C. Sirat, M. Dukan and A. Yardeni, ‘Rouleaux de la Tora antérieurs à l’an mille’, in Comptes rendus de séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (Paris, 1994), pp. 861–887. M. Sokoloff and J. Yahalom, ‘Christian palimpsests from the Cairo Geniza’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes 8 (1978), pp. 107–132. C. Taylor, Hebrew-Greek Cairo Genizah Palimpsests from the Taylor-Schechter Collection including a Fragment of the Twenty-second Psalm according to Origen’s Hexapla (Cambridge, 1900). N. Tchernetska, ‘Greek Oriental palimpsests in Cambridge: problems and prospects’, in C. Holmes and J. Waring (eds), Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (Leiden, 2002), pp. 243–256. N. Tchernetska, J. Olszowy-Schlanger, N. de Lange, ‘An early Hebrew-Greek biblical glossary from the Cairo Genizah’, Revue des études juives 166 (2007), pp. 91–128.

COMPOSITIONAL TECHNIQUE IN QILLIRIAN PIYYUṬIM FOR RAIN AND DEW Michael Rand

Introduction In his address before the First Congress for Jewish Studies, Menaḥem Zulay had the following to say about the problems facing Genizah researchers, with particular reference to those concentrating on the piyyuṭ literature: ‘Let us take ten exemplars of the two Talmuds, from different editions, and tear them to a thousand pieces. Half of these we will burn with fire, and the other half we will give to one who never studied Talmud in his life, and does not even know the names of the tractates. And we will say to him, “Sit down and examine the material, and tell us its nature and its original form”’.1 In the earlier phases of Genizah-based piyyuṭ research, a purely deductive, reconstructive method could not be adopted, since an adequate blueprint— i.e., a description of the formal properties of the various types of piyyuṭ composition—had not yet been drawn up. The unfettered implementation of an inductive methodology—i.e., the creation of a blueprint on the basis of a proper juxtaposition of the Genizah fragments themselves—was likewise impossible, both because of the dispersal of the material to the various Genizah collections as well as because of the poor state of preservation of many of the fragments. And so, by necessity, scholars proceeded along a middle course, piecing together a temporary blueprint on the basis of partial data, using this blueprint to aid in the recovery and proper interpretation of further fragments, and employing these, in turn, as additional data in the refinement of the blueprint. Along the way, errors of interpretation crept into the description of the formal properties of the piyyuṭ literature as the inevitable consequence of a research method that relied so heavily on

1 M. Zulay, ‘Le-kinnusam šel Piyyuṭe ha-Geniza’, in Zulay, Eretz Israel and its Poetry: Studies in Piyyutim from the Cairo Genizah, edited by E. Hazan (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 34–39 (35). The translation is mine.

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intuition and trial-and-error. Some of these have since been corrected, while others doubtless still await detection. But the most important fact to be noted in this regard is that sixty years after Zulay’s remarks before the Congress, and thanks in large part to the (at least partial) implementation of his plea for the creation of a database of all existing fragments as a necessary foundation for the work of reconstruction, we are now in possession of an impressively solid and reliable body of knowledge on the subject of the formal characteristics of the various piyyuṭ genres. This knowledge is embodied in Ezra Fleischer’s handbook on the subject,2 as well as specialised monographs treating either a specific piyyuṭ genre, or the oeuvre of a particular payṭan (either partial or whole). Following up on Zulay’s metaphor, we might say that being in possession of these fruits of scholarly labour, the current generation of researchers is reasonably well informed not only with regard to the names of the various tractates making up the piyyuṭ-talmud yielded up by the Genizah, but also with regard to the general structure of its sugyot, its peculiar diction, modes of reference to outside corpora, etc. As a result, scholars are increasingly able to shift over to a deductive, blueprint-based research methodology, which has greatly facilitated the process of the recovery and reconstruction of those piyyuṭ compositions that are still to be edited on the basis of the Genizah fragments. Zulay’s address opened with a ‘fantastical vision’ of a future in which the treasures of the Genizah have been assimilated into the corpus of Hebrew literature: ‘I see in my dream a row of 30 volumes or so, which contain the compositions of the payṭanim of all the generations who are stored up in the Genizah, and at their side . . . a dictionary of the payṭanic dialect’.3 We are not yet in a position to announce the imminent arrival of this vision, but neither it quite so ‘fantastical’ any more, having since become a goal whose realisation can reasonably be anticipated within the next few generations. The basic research method that I have described above has introduced a certain bias into the reconstruction of the piyyuṭ literature, a bias that is, in turn, upheld by one of the most outstanding properties of the piyyuṭim themselves. Experience teaches that the application

2 E. Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1975). 3 Zulay, ‘Le-kinnusam šel Piyyut ̣e ha-Geniza’, p. 34.

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251

of the inductive method, and its application on the basis of partial and damaged data all the more so, tends to yield an over-schematised reconstruction. And over-schematisation is all the more likely in the case under discussion, since the piyyuṭ literature is, in many cases, subject to such rigid formal patterning. The result of this combination of factors has been a certain obscuring of the variations—i.e., the deviations (whether deliberate or accidental)—that are encountered within the formal boundaries that the payṭanim imposed upon themselves in their compositions. As critical editions of piyyuṭ continue to be published, we are increasingly in a position to overcome this bias and to begin to appreciate a somewhat surprising aspect of the piyyuṭ literature—its capacity for formal variation. This emergent re-evaluation is possible not only on the comparative/diachronic level, as the emergence of new data enables us to trace the evolution of the various piyyuṭ genres over time (and space), but also at the level of the oeuvres of those of the individual payṭanim who are well-enough attested in the Genizah to make possible a meaningful internal comparison. From the practical point of view, the most convenient method for undertaking such an internal comparison is to do so on the basis of a critical edition of the entire oeuvre of a particular payṭan.4 In the case of the great Classical payṭan Eleazar berabbi Qillir,5 however, the corpus is so extensive and so complex that it is impossible, given the resources currently at the disposal of piyyuṭ scholarship, to gather it between the covers of a single monograph.6 And so, a discussion of the formal variations found within the Qillirian corpus must of necessity be limited to those portions that have already been published in critical editions. The only truly legitimate procedure in this regard is to take as a basis for examination those available sub-sections of the corpus that can reasonably be considered to be self-contained from the point of view of genre and/or liturgical function.7 My purpose in 4 To date, the state-of the-art in the production of such editions is represented by S. Elizur, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2004). 5 For the division of the piyyuṭ literature into Classical and Pre-Classical phases, see Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, pp. 10–13. 6 The tale of the non-publication of the oeuvres complets of Qillir has acquired a certain epic aura among piyyuṭ researchers—cf. S. Elizur’s review of S. Spiegel, Avot ha-Piyyuṭ, Tarbiz 66 (1996), pp. 581–586. 7 This bloc-based approach to the Qillirian corpus is also the one that is most practical from the point of view of publication, and therefore the one that is most likely to eventually lead to the emergence of the whole. It is represented by the following monographs: S. Elizur, Qeduša va-Šir: Qillirite Qeduštaot for the Šabbetot ha-Neḥ ama

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the present article is to present an internal analysis of such a self-contained sub-section—the compositions for Rain and Dew. It is my hope that, when a critical edition of the complete Qillirian oeuvre finally sees the light, the analysis presented here will inform that section of the introduction that will treat of this genre.

The Qillirian Piyyuṭim for Rain and Dew The Jewish liturgical year may be divided into two ‘seasons’ on the basis of the fact that from Šemini Aṣeret until the first day of Passover a short formula requesting rain, ‫משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם‬, is inserted into the second benediction of the ʿamida, whereas during the other portion of the year, a request for dew appears in its place.8 The switch from one season to the other is made in the ʿamida of the Additional (i.e., Musaf) Service of the respective holidays—i.e., one begins the recitation of the formula ‫ משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם‬in the ʿamida of the Additional Service of Šemini ʿAṣeret, and it continues up to, but not including, the ʿamida of the Additional Service of the first day of Passover. In the Palestinian liturgical rite, these ʿamidot were marked by the recitation of special piyyuṭ compositions. According to our present documentation, such compositions reach back into the PreClassical period of piyyuṭ, and are subsequently represented in the corpora of a number of Classical payṭanim. The compositions, which are referred to as ‘Rain šivʿata’ and ‘Dew šivʿata’, respectively, consist of two distinct portions: 1) a šivʿata whose recitation is designed to accompany the seven benedictions of the festival ʿamida, and 2) an internally articulated series of piyyuṭim that is meant to be inserted between the second and third strophes of the šivʿata, i.e., into the body of the second benediction of the ʿamida. The internal articulation of the series of piyyuṭim making up the latter portion was more or less fixed already in the Pre-Classical period, at least insofar as we can

(Jerusalem, 1988); Elizur, Be-Toda va-Šir: Qillirite Šivʿatot for the Four Šabbatot (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991); Elizur, Rabbi Eleazar berabbi Qillir: Qeduštaʾot for the Day of Mattan Tora (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2000). 8 The liturgical rites are divided as to whether or not an actual formula is recited in which dew is mentioned, and many mark the ‘dew season’ by simply omitting a formula altogether. For details regarding the liturgical and structural matters pertaining to the piyyuṭim for Rain and Dew that are discussed in this section, see the introductions to my two articles cited below (n. 10).

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253

judge on the basis of our rather limited data. The kernel of this series, its literary centre of gravity, consists of a pair of piyyuṭim, known as the seder yeṣira and the seder pesuqim. In the present article I examine these two piyyuṭ types. The tradition of reciting Rain and Dew šivʿatot was inherited from the Palestinian rite by the various rites of Europe. The Ashkenazi rite employs two Qillirian compositions for this purpose: the Rain šivʿata ‫אף ברי‬, and the Dew šivʿata ‫בדעתו אביע חידות‬. Knowledge of these two compositions is consequently independent of the Genizah, and they have both been published as part of the critical edition of the Ashkenazi Maḥzor.9 In addition to these compositions, known from the living liturgical tradition, the Genizah has yielded a number of new Qillirian Rain and Dew šivʿatot. These have been critically edited by the present author, and have either already been published or will appear in the future.10 The corpus obtained as a result of the addition of the poetic material recovered from the Genizah shows both a degree of internal consistency as well as a number of significant cases of variation. It is these two aspects, together with their possible implications for the proper understanding of Qillir’s compositional technique in general, that I investigate below. Let me begin with an enumeration of the available material, concentrating, as mentioned above, on the pair ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’. The following is a list of instances of this pair as it appears in Qillirian Rain šivʿatot: • Seder yeṣira: ‫ אקשטה כסל וקרב‬together with ‫ תכנם לארץ וחוצות‬+ seder pesuqim: ‫יפתח ארץ לישע‬. This is the pair attested in the Rain šivʿata ‫אף ברי‬, which appears in the Ashkenazi Maḥzor. • Seder yeṣira: ‫ איפן במעשי אל‬+ seder pesuqim: ‫ מים בעתם‬. . . .11 This pair is published in Rand, ‘Liturgical Compositions’, pp. 87*–96*. According to our documentation, the series of which this pair is a part is not embedded within a festival šivʿata. 9 For ‫אף ברי‬, see D. Goldschmidt, Maḥ zor Sukkot, Šemini ʿAṣeret and Simḥ at Tora (Hebrew; New York, 1991), pp. 403–432; for ‫בדעתו אביע חידות‬, see Y. Frenkel, Maḥ zor Pesaḥ (Hebrew; New York, 1993), pp. 208–242. 10 See M. Rand, ‘Liturgical Compositions for Shemini ‘Atzeret by Eleazar be-rabbi Qillir’, Ginzei Qedem 3 (2007), pp. 9*–99* and M. Rand, ‘Eleazar berabbi Qillir: Šivʿatat Ṭ al Nosefet’ (Hebrew), Qoveṣ al Yad (forthcoming). 11 The words given in lieu of an incipit appear in the (damaged) seventh line of the piyyuṭ.

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• Seder yeṣira: ‫אשא‬12 + seder pesuqim: ‫ארץ שקטה ביום טוב‬. This pair is published in Rand, ‘Liturgical Compositions’, pp. 62*–81*. According to the unique Genizah manuscript in which this pair is attested, the series of which this pair is a part is likewise not embedded within a festival šivʿata. Here is a list of this pair as attested in Qillirian Dew šivʿatot: • Seder yeṣira: ‫ אאגרה בני איש‬together with ‫ תחת אלת עפר‬+ seder pesuqim: ‫אלים ביום מחוסן‬. This is the pair attested in the Dew šivʿata ‫בדעתו אביע חידות‬, which appears in the Ashkenazi Maḥzor. • Seder yeṣira: ‫ אשנן גבורות‬+ seder pesuqim: ‫איילות טל‬. This pair is published in Rand, ‘Šivʿatat Tal Nosefet’ (see note 10). • Seder Yeṣira: ‫אדם‬. . .13 + seder pesuqim: ‫אבן בראובן מיחסן‬. The composition in which this pair is attested has not yet been submitted for publication. My first purpose is to undertake a comparative investigation of these pairs of piyyuṭim on the basis of the data presented in Table I. Analysis of the formal properties of the six ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs attested in the Qillirian corpus allows their division into three groups of two. The first two groups show a high degree of internal homogeneity, and differ amongst themselves mainly with regard to length. The first group consists of the two pairs that are attested in the Ashkenazi Maḥzor: ‫ אקשטה כסל וקרב‬together with ‫ תכנם לארץ וחוצות‬+ ‫ יפתח ארץ לישע‬for Rain,14 and ‫אאגרה בני איש‬

12

The first line of this seder yeṣira is damaged. The word given in lieu of an incipit appears in the (damaged) second line of the piyyut. 14 As shown by A. Mirsky, ‘Piyyut ̣im Maqbilim’, in Mirsky, Ha-Piyyuṭ: Hitpatḥ uto be-Ereṣ Israʾel uva-Gola (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 102–122 (116–122), the section ‫אקשטה‬ ‫ כסל וקרב‬of the Qillirian seder yeṣira is imitated, sometimes by means of rewording on a line-by-line basis, in the seder yeṣira ‫אכוון כליות ולב‬, which is published in I. Davidson, S. Assaf and B.I. Joel (eds), Siddur Rav Saadja Gaon, 6th edn (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. ‫שצט‬-‫ שצח‬as part of a Rain šivʿata by Saʿadya Gaon. (For the end of the seder pesuqim of this Rain šivʿata, see M. Zulay, Ha-Askola ha-Payṭanit šel Rav Saʿadya Gaʾon (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. ‫פג‬-‫)פד‬. This šivʿata is attested in two manuscript copies, in one of which the Pre-Classical seder pesuqim ‫—אל משוך בטלה‬published in S. Elizur, ‘“Visit your land with rain”: Poetic Fragments of Early Šivʿatot for Rain’, Ginzei Qedem 1 (2005), pp. 31–78 (70–78)—appears instead of the seder yeṣira ‫אכוון‬ ‫כליות ולב‬. It is therefore very difficult to be certain about the original context of this seder yeṣira. 13

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together with ‫ תחת אלת עפר‬+ ‫ אלים ביום מחוסן‬for Dew. In both cases, the seder yeṣira is divisible into two discreet sections: a piyyuṭ of eighty-eight lines employing a straight ‫ א"ב‬alphabetic acrostic, followed by a piyyuṭ of forty-four lines in which a ‫ תשר"ק‬acrostic is interdigitated with the signature of the payṭan: ‫אלעזר בירבי קליר‬ ‫מקרית ספר‬. This signature contains twenty-two letters, i.e., a number correspoding exactly to the number of letters in the alphabetic acrostic. The sidre pesuqim in this group both contain a number of strophe-pairs that corresponds to the number of letters in the alphabet; the correspondence is exact in the case of the seder pesuqim for Rain (twenty-two strophe-pairs), and approximate in the case of the seder pesuqim for Dew (twenty-one strophe-pairs). Both of the sidre pesuqim lack an acrostic name-signature, so that the pairs in this group are only signed once, in the sidre yeṣira. Both of the sidre pesuqim employ items from a number of fixed lists. The rhymes in the seder pesuqim for Rain are freely chosen by the payṭan. In the case of the seder pesuqim for Dew, on the other hand, they are freely chosen in the even strophes of the strophe-pairs, but determined by either a month name or a name of a zodiac sign in the odd strophes of the strophe-pairs. From this description, it is clear that, despite the fact that the pair ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ for Rain differs from its counterpart for Dew in a number of details, the two show sufficiently distinctive similarities to justify their being grouped together on formal grounds. The second group consists of the pairs ‫ איפן במעשי‬+ ‫ מים בעתם‬. . . ‫ אל‬for Rain, together with ‫ אשנן גבורות אל‬+ ‫ איילות טל‬for Dew. As mentioned above, it most markedly differs from the first group in the matter of length. As opposed to the sidre yeṣira in the first group, the sidre yeṣira in the second group are not divisible into two sub-units. Rather, they both consist of a number of lines corresponding (roughly) to twice the number of letters in the alphabet: forty-four lines (?) in the seder yeṣira for Rain,15 and forty-eight lines in the seder yeṣira for Dew. The two sidre yeṣira differ with regard to the acrostic signature: none is embedded in the seder yeṣira for Rain, while the ‫ א"ב‬acrostic of the seder yeṣira for Dew is interdigitated with the expected twentytwo-letter formula: ‫אלעזר בירבי קליר מקרית ספר‬. The sidre pesuqim The seder yeṣira ‫ איפן במעשי אל‬for Rain is badly damaged. On the basis of the remaining material, however, it is clear that it contained a straight ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, each letter being repeated twice. The last letter(s) may, however, have been repeated more than twice, thereby adding a few lines to the reconstructed total of 44. 15

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in the second group are, with the exception of minor details, identical. Both consist of twelve strophe-pairs—i.e., they are approximately half the length of the sidre pesuqim in the first group. In both, the first eleven strophe-pairs contain a straight ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, while the last strophe-pair embeds an acrostic signature: ‫ לעזר‬in the case of the seder pesuqim for Rain and ‫ אלעזר‬in the seder pesuqim for Dew. Thus, the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pair for Rain is signed twice, making it unique among the Qillirian pairs in question, while the pair for Dew is signed once. In both sidre pesuqim, all the rhymes are determined either by a month name or a name of a zodiac sign. The two pairs remaining in the Qillirian corpus may be subsumed under a third group. This group, however, differs from the first two in that its members are both outliers, showing unusual formal properties that are not attested in the latter. From the analytical point of view, it would be useful to view the members of this group as representing the two endpoints of a spectrum of subjection to formal strictures, the pair for Rain being the least subject, and the pair for Dew being the most subject, and therefore the most complex. Let us begin with the pair for Rain. All four sidre yeṣira in the first two groups are mono-rhymed: in ‫ ַמיִ ם‬- in the piyyuṭim for Rain and in ‫ ַטל‬- in the piyyuṭim for Dew. The seder yeṣira ‫אשא‬, on the other hand, is divided into four-line strophes, the rhyme of each strophe being freely chosen by the payṭan. This lack of mono-rhyme is coincident with the fact that, as opposed to the other sidre yeṣira, which refer to events from cosmogony or scriptural history that are somehow connected to water or dew, respectively—this being the outstanding thematic feature of the genre—the seder yeṣira ‫ אשא‬makes no such references.16 The latter is therefore free from both

16

The data given in the last column of Table I with regard to the thematic content of the Qillirian sidre yeṣira for Rain and Dew, respectively, highlight a point that, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet been explicitly made in the scholarly literature, viz., that there seems to be a distinction between the two, in that whereas the former concentrate on cosmogony, i.e., the creation and arrangement of the world, especially from the point of view of hydrology (cf. M. Rand, ‘Clouds, Rain and the Upper Waters: From Bereshit Rabbah to the Piyyutim of Eleazar berabbi Qillir’, Aleph 9 (2009), pp. 13–39), the latter stress scriptural history, attempting to somehow connect it, if only by means of the rhyming sound ‫ ַטל‬-, to dew. This thematic distinction is also borne out in Yoḥanan’s seder yeṣira for Dew, the sidre yeṣira of Pinḥas—see the last column of Table II. Oddly enough, this situation is exactly reversed in the case of the two attested Pre-Classical sidre yeṣira, which are discussed below, in the section on ‘Girdle Rhyming’. Whereas the seder yeṣira ‫ אנהם בכל כוח‬for Rain narrates the history of the world from Creation up to the parting of the Sea of Reeds, the seder yeṣira ‫ אזכירה גבורות‬for Dew leaves off its historical narration after the Six Days

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the thematic stricture that is associated with the seder yeṣira genre as well as from the related formal necessity to compose the poetic lines in such a way that they all terminate in the same pre-determined, often semantically meaningful, element. In the case of the seder yeṣira ‫אשא‬, not only is the rhyming element not pre-determined, but the payṭan is compelled to impose any one rhyming element on the four-line strophe only, switching to another rhyme in the following strophe. In the present case, therefore, strophic composition is less restricted than mono-rhyming. As opposed to the matter of strophic composition, the acrostic structure of the seder yeṣira ‫ אשא‬does not go beyond the parameters that have already been established. In this regard our piyyuṭ is identical to the second sections of the two sidre yeṣira in the first group—i.e., it consists of forty-four lines in which a ‫תשר"ק‬ acrostic is interdigitated with the poet’s signature. In the present case, the tail end of the signature is corrupt: [‫]אל[עזר בירבי קלי]ר‬ ‫[ת ספרא‬.]‫מק‬.17 The corruption is somewhat surprising on account of the fact that the ‫ תשר"ק‬series in the lines adjacent to the ones in which it occurs has not suffered similarly. But whatever the proper explanation of this phenomenon, it is entirely reasonable to consider this signature as being directly related to the standard signature found in Qillirian sidre yeṣira. The seder pesuqim ‫ ארץ שקטה ביום טוב‬is likewise markedly free of formal strictures. All of its strophes are rhymed freely by the payṭan—i.e., the rhyme is neither determined by the names of

of Creation, i.e., concentrates on cosmogony—cf. the discussion in Elizur, ‘Poetic Fragments of Early Šivʿatot for Rain’, pp. 40–42. Despite the distinction between the two Pre-Classical sidre yeṣira with regard to how far into history their respective narratives extend, Elizur points out that they share a significant similarity over against their Classical heirs. Whereas the latter, insofar as they give accounts of Creation, concentrate primarily on water-related matters, more or less ignoring its other aspects, the former hew rather close and faithfully to the order of the Six Days as narrated in Genesis 1. In this regard, Elizur notes that the Pre-Classical sidre yeṣira are similar to the sidre ʿavoda for Yom Kippur, and concludes as follows (translation mine): ‘These early piyyuṭim apparently demonstrate that the sidre ʿolam [i.e., sidre yeṣira] in Dew and Rain šivʿatot were originally close to their counterparts in the sidre ʿavoda, and included detailed and sequential reference to the subject of Creation. The exclusive concentration on water-related matters found in the Classical šivʿatot is therefore a secondary process’ (Elizur, ‘Poetic Fragments of Early Šivʿatot for Rain’, p. 41). Both Elizur’s observation and conclusion seem correct, as long as it is kept in mind that in the Classical period the treatments of cosmogony found in the Rain šivʿatot are not followed by accounts of human history. The Dew šivʿatot, on the other hand, concentrate on human history at the expense of cosmogony. 17 For the proper interpretation of the acrostic signature, see M. Rand, ‘A Response to Yehoshua Granat’, Ginzei Qedem 4 (2008), pp. 83*–99* (96*).

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months nor by the names of the zodiac signs. By itself, this latter feature also occurs in the seder pesuqim ‫ יפתח ארץ לישע‬for Rain from the first group. The present case is unique, however, in that starting from the third strophe pair, each of its strophe-pairs shares a rhyme, together with the fact that its strophes do not include any fixed elements whatsoever (such as a fixed word or a framing verse), and do not seriate any items from pre-determined lists. So as with the case of the seder yeṣira, the freedom from stricture observed in the case of the seder pesuqim is both formal and thematic. In stark opposition to the pair just discussed, the pair ‫ אדם‬and ‫ אבן בראובן מיחסן‬for Dew is formally hyper-determined. In this regard, it is one of the most complex and unusual compositions in the Qillirian oeuvre. The feature that is responsible for this complexity is internal rhyme—i.e., not only are the lines rhymed terminally, as expected, but the words within the lines rhyme with one another as well. The result is that all of the words within the poetic line are subject to a rhyme: the words at the ends of the lines to a mono-rhyme or a strophic rhyme, and the words within the lines to an internal rhyme.18 The lines of the seder yeṣira all contain three internally rhymed words, followed by a word rhyming in ‫ ַטל‬-. In other regards, the seder yeṣira falls well within the formal parameters that we have already observed in the sidre yeṣira in the first two groups: it consists of forty-eight mono-rhymed lines, which employ a straight ‫ א"ב‬acrostic without a signature. The strophes of the seder pesuqim are likewise internally rhymed. But whereas the internal rhymes of the seder yeṣira are freely chosen by the payṭan, the internal rhymes of the seder pesuqim are largely pre-determined: in the four-line strophe, the internal rhyme of the first line is determined by the name of a tribe, that of the second line by the name of a zodiac sign, and that of the third by the name of a stone from a list of twelve stones that were embedded in the High Priest’s breastplate. Only in the fourth line of the strophe is the payṭan free to select the internal rhyme. The terminal rhymes of the strophes are determined by the name of a month. As a result, the seder pesuqim under discussion employs the greatest number of fixed lists of any seder pesuqim in the Qillirian corpus: the twelve months, the

18 This formal feature is present not only in the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pair under discussion but also in the strophes of the šivʿata within which the pair is embedded.

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twelve tribes, the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the twelve stones of the High Priest’s breastplate. This is done, moreover, in the smallest number of strophe-pairs of any seder pesuqim in the Qillirian corpus, as the present seder pesuqim consists of only 6 strophe-pairs. In other regards, the strophes of the seder pesuqim under discussion answer to the formal parameters already seen: they employ an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, together with the signature ‫ אלעזר‬in the last strophe-pair, and contain the expected fixed word ‫ טל‬in the third line of every strophe. The synoptic, formal description of the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs encountered in the Qillirian corpus suggests two general observations. First, it should be noted that whereas we do find sidre yeṣira and sidre pesuqim, respectively, that share the exactly the same features (and are therefore formally identical for all intents and purposes), no two ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs are exactly formally alike. These points are underscored if we consider the pairs attested in the corpora of the Classical payṭanim Yoḥanan ha-Kohen and Pinḥas haKohen, which are based on Qillirian models—cf. Table II. Yoḥanan’s pair ‫ גשם אמץ‬+ ‫ מטר תחיש‬for Rain19 resembles Qillir’s pair ‫ אשא‬and ‫ ארץ שקטה ביום טוב‬in a number of important respects. First, in both cases, the seder yeṣira is not mono-rhymed but rather consists of fourline strophes. Furthermore, and very significantly in my view, neither seder yeṣira includes the expected theme of cosmogony. The primary difference between the two consists of the fact that the Qillirian seder yeṣira is based on a ‫ תשר"ק‬acrostic that is interdigitated with an acrostic signature, while Yoḥanan’s is based on a simple ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, and also that the strophes of Yoḥanan’s seder yeṣira employ two fixed elements, while those of Qillir’s do not employ any. The two sidre pesuqim both (apparently) consist of twenty-two strophe-pairs.20

19 Edited in N. Weissenstern, The Liturgical Poetry of Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen berabbi Joshua (unpubl. diss.; Hebrew University, 1983), pp. 163–173. The composition within which this pair is embedded is known from a single manuscript copy. It is attributed to Yoḥanan solely on the basis of the copyist’s note that serves as its header: '‫גשם דר‬ ‫יוחנן‬. This composition is somewhat exceptional with regard to its structure, but I nevertheless believe that the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pair that it contains can be profitably considered in the present context. The difficulty is that instead of employing a šivʿata framework, as would have been expected, the composition begins with the two opening piyyuṭim of a qedušta, i.e., the magen and meḥ aye, which are followed immediately (i.e., without a rešut) by the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pair. 20 In the manuscript, Yoḥanan’s seder pesuqim is cut off after the first ʿayin-strophe, so that the total number of its strophe-pairs is reconstructed on the assumption that in its pristine state, it completed its ‫ תשר"ק‬acrostic. It is, however, possible that after

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In both cases, the rhyme is not determined by items from any fixed lists, and each strophe-pair shares a rhyme, though in the Qillirian seder pesuqim this feature only applies beginning with the third strophe pair. Neither seder pesuqim embeds any pre-determined lists. The main difference, again, consists in the use of fixed elements: Yoḥanan’s strophes each have two, while Qillir’s have none. Yoḥanan’s pair ‫ טל תזיל‬and ‫ אבוא בגבורות אל‬for Dew21 is most similar to the Qillirian pair ‫ מים בעתם‬and ‫איפן במעשי אל‬. The sidre yeṣira differ in that whereas Yoḥanan’s employs every letter of the ‫ א"ב‬acrostic four times (as is the case with the first parts of the sidre yeṣira in the first Qillirian group), Qillir’s does so twice. The sidre pesuqim differ with regard to the order of the alphabetic acrostic: ‫ תשר"ק‬in Yoḥanan’s and ‫ א"ב‬in Qillir’s. Furthermore, Yoḥanan’s strophe-pairs have odd strophes that rhyme in the names of the zodiac signs and freely rhymed even strophes, as opposed to Qillir’s strophe-pairs, whose odd and even strophes are both determined with regard to rhyme. Finally, each of Yoḥanan’s strophes has two fixed elements, as opposed to one fixed element per strophe in Qillir’s strophes. Pinḥas’s pair ‫ אז מאז‬+ ‫יערוף אביבי‬ for Rain22 is likewise most similar to the Qillirian pair ‫מים בעתם‬ and ‫איפן במעשי אל‬. The sidre yeṣira are nearly structurally identical, and the sidre pesuqim differ in that the seder pesuqim of Pinḥas employs freely-rhymed strophes each of which contains two fixed elements, whereas the Qillirian seder pesuqim employs strophes whose rhymes are determined by month names and the names of the zodiac signs and use only one fixed element. Pinḥas’s pair ‫הם אשר נתברכו‬ and ‫ ויתן אות ברכה‬for Dew23 does not match up neatly with any single one of the Qillirian pairs, and its two components must therefore be considered separately. The seder yeṣira is made up of forty-four lines, which integrate a ‫ תשר"ק‬acrostic with a twenty-two-letter signature: ‫( ]פ[ינחס הכ]ה[ן בירב יעקב מכפרא‬note that the number of letters the alphabetic acrostic the seder pesuqim contained an additional strophe-pair that employed an acrostic signature. But even in this case, the comparison being made here would remain substantially intact. 21 Edited in Weissenstern, The Liturgical Poetry of Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen, pp. 3–13. As shown by Weissenstern on pp. ‫שו‬-‫שיב‬, Yoḥanan’s seder yeṣira ‫אבוא בגדורות אל‬ is imitated by the anonymous seder yeṣira ‫ במפעלות אל רם‬. . . ‫א‬, the text of which is given by him there. 22 Published in Elizur, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen, pp. 496– 503. 23 Published in Elizur, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen, pp. 271– 281.

compositional technique

261

in the signature and the syntactic structure of the phrase are clearly derived from the Qillirian model). In this regard it is structurally identical to the second sections of the two sidre yeṣira in the first Qillirian group—i.e., ‫ תכנם לארץ וחוצות‬from the seder yeṣira for Rain, and ‫ תחת אלת עפר‬from the seder yeṣira for Dew.24 Pinḥas’s seder yeṣira is mono-rhymed just like its Qillirian counterparts, but its lines are divisible into units (‘strophes’) of four on the basis of an anadiplotic element that appears at the end of every fourth line and is repeated at the beginning of every fifth line. Pinḥas’s seder pesuqim for Dew is structurally nearly identical to his seder pesuqim for Rain. Its closest counterparts in the Qillirian corpus are the sidre pesuqim from the second group. The second observation is that, given the types of variations that may be observed between them, it is analytically useful to view the piyyuṭim under discussion as being built up out of minimally distinctive building blocks—line types in the case of (most of) the sidre yeṣira and strophe types in the case of the sidre pesuqim—that vary and are combined along certain definable formal parameters. An inventory of these building blocks, together with the relevant principles of combination, would therefore represent the most abstract possible formal analysis of the material under discussion, and may prove useful for purposes of diachronic/historical as well synchronic/corpus-internal comparison. Such an inventory, roughly in order of increasing

24 The sole manuscript copy of Pinḥas’s piyyuṭ is damaged in the beginning, so that the actual transcription begins on the third line (i.e., the line beginning with šin). The fact that the piyyuṭ originally began with two lines that are now missing (i.e., the tav-line from the alphabetic acrostic and the pe-line from the name acrostic) is beyond all doubt. However, because of the structural similarity of our piyyuṭ to the second sections of the two sidre yeṣira in the first Qillirian group, the editor argues, by analogy to the Qillirian material, that in the original composition it must have been preceded by a section employing a straight ‫ א"ב‬acrostic and corresponding to the first sections of the two sidre yeṣira in the first Qillirian group—i.e., that Qillir’s ‫ אאגרה בני איש‬together with ‫ תחת אלת עפר‬for Dew implies the existence of a piyyuṭ analogous to ‫ אאגרה בני איש‬preceding ‫ הם אשר נתברכו בטל‬. . . in the composition by Pinḥas (cf. Elizur, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Pinḥ as, pp. 24–25 n. 13; p. 107 nn. 140, 141). Elizur furthermore buttresses this argument with the observation that, whereas Pinḥas’s piyyuṭ as it is currently attested opens its thematic inventory with a reference to Abraham, one would have expected, on the basis of the analogy to the Qillirian model of ‫ אאגרה בני איש‬together with ‫תחת אלת עפר‬, a treatment of the early history of the world to have preceded it (i.e., from Creation till the Patriarchs). This reasoning is convincing.

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complexity, is presented in Tables III and IV, to a discussion of which we now turn.

The Building Blocks of the Qillirian ‘Seder Yeṣira + Seder Pesuqim’ Pairs The most efficient unit of analysis for the sidre yeṣira, with the exception of the first case, where rhyme-based strophic division applies, is the line type. In the seder yeṣira ‫ אשא‬the lines are grouped into fourline strophes, as exemplified in text sample 1. The lines are not subject to any discernible metre, and the only quantitative description that can be given is that the number of words in the line ranges in most cases from three to five. The lines are subject to an acrostic structure. The piyyut ‫ אשא‬is the only one of the Qillirian sidre yeṣira that employs this line/strophe type. The line type employed in both sidre yeṣira of the first group is the one exemplified in text sample 2. Like the line type described above, it is not subject to a quantitative metrical principle, though on average it is somewhat longer, ranging approximately between five and seven words. The lines are mono-rhymed, and may be divided into either groups (‘strophes’) of four, as in the case of the first sections of both sidre yeṣira, which employ a fourfold ‫ א"ב‬acrostic (i.e., ‫אאאא‬, etc.), or into groups of two, as in the case of the second sections, which employ an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic interdigitated with a signature (i.e., one letter of the alphabet + one letter of the signature). The line type employed in the seder yeṣira ‫אשנן גבורות אל‬, which is exemplified in text sample 3, is likewise mono-rhymed, and the lines may be grouped into units of two on the basis of the two-fold ‫ א"ב‬acrostic. However, into this line type is introduced a quantitative metrical principle, which demands that it contain exactly five words. The line type employed in the seder yeṣira . . . ‫אדם‬, exemplified in text sample 4, is by far the most complex. As with the previous line type, this one is mono-rhymed, and subject to a word-counting metre of four words per line. Also as in the previous case, the lines are paired on the basis of a two-fold ‫ א"ב‬acrostic. The innovation in the present case consists of the introduction of the internal rhyme: the first three words of every line rhyme amongst themselves, while the fourth words are monorhymed in ‫ ַטל‬-. The resulting line type shows a kind of extreme case of girdle rhyming, and will be discussed separately below.

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263

The basic structures employed by Yoḥanan and Pinḥas in their sidre yeṣira fall well within the limits determined by the Qillirian structures analysed here—cf. Table V. The structure attested in Yoḥanan’s seder yeṣira ‫ גשם אמץ‬for Rain (text sample 5) is a four-line strophe that includes fixed words in its odd lines. Including the fixed words, the number of words per line ranges between two and four, and the lines are subject to an acrostic structure. The characteristics of this line/ strophe type make it most similar to the Qillirian type exemplified in text sample 1. The line type in Yoḥanan’s seder yeṣira ‫אבוא בגבורות‬ ‫ אל‬for Dew (text sample 6) consists of between four and seven words. The lines are mono-rhymed and grouped into units of four on the basis of a fourfold ‫ א"ב‬acrostic. This situation is practically identical to that of the Qillirian line type exemplified in text sample 2. The line type attested in Pinḥas’s seder yeṣira ‫ אז מאז‬for Rain (text sample 7) is roughly between four and six words in length, i.e., slightly longer than the Qillirian type in text sample 1 and slightly shorter than the one in text sample 2. The line is mono-rhymed and divisible into groups of two on the basis of the ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, the letters of which appear only in the odd lines. Overall, this type is therefore closest to the Qillirian type exemplified in text sample 2. The line type employed by Pinḥas in his seder yeṣira for Dew (text sample 8) is also not subject to a strict quantitative metre, but it averages between five and seven words in length. The lines are divisible into groups/strophes of four on the basis of a device not encountered in the Qillirian line types: anadiplosis, which is designed in such a way that the anadiplotic element is part of the acrostic series. Once again, the closest Qillirian analogue is the line type exemplified in text sample 2. All the Qillirian sidre pesuqim are composed in four-line strophes, which are combined into pairs. Ab initio, the grouping into pairs is independent of formal poetic factors, as it is accomplished on the basis of the fact that each pair is followed by a scriptural verse. In all cases but the seder pesuqim ‫אבן בראובן מיחסן‬, however, the pairs can also be formally defined. The strophe type attested in the seder pesuqim ‫ ארץ שקטה ביום טוב‬is exemplified in text sample A. It is the simplest possible variant, showing a four-line strophe that is rhymed freely and is not provided with any fixed elements. In this case, the pairing of strophes is aided by means of the device of having all strophe-pairs (starting with the third, which is given in the text sample) share a rhyme. The strophe type attested in the seder pesuqim ‫יפתח ארץ לישע‬,

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exemplified in text sample B, is also freely rhymed, but it includes two fixed elements: a framing verse in the first line and a fixed word in the third line. Pairing is formally implemented by means of embedding different framing verses in the odd and even strophes, and buttressed by means of embedding items from different pre-determined lists in the odd and even strophes. The strophe type attested in the seder pesuqim ‫ אלים ביום מחוסן‬is exemplified in text sample C. It shows only one fixed element: a fixed word in the third line. However it also shows partial rhyme determinism in that, in the pairs, the odd strophes alternate rhyming in month names and zodiac names, while even strophes are rhymed freely. This device also serves as the main formal principle of division into pairs, and is supported by means of the embedding of items from a list of tribes into the even strophes. The strophe type attested in the seder pesuqim ‫ מים בעתם‬. . . is exemplified in text sample D. As above, the only fixed element in the strophe is the fixed word in the third line. The strophe-pairs show total rhyme determinism, in that the odd strophes rhyme in the names of the zodiac signs, while the even strophes rhyme in the names of the months. The strophe type used in the seder pesuqim ‫ אבן בראובן מיחסן‬is exemplified in text sample E. Like the line type attested in the corresponding seder yeṣira, the outstanding feature of this strophe type is its use of internal rhyme. So that again, a girdle-like rhyme structure results. The strophe type employs a fixed word in the third line, and the terminal rhyme is determined by a month name. The internal rhymes of the first three lines are determined by the name of a tribe in the first line, by the name of a zodiac sign in the third line, and by the name of a stone in the third line. Comparing the strophe types attested in the sidre pesuqim of Yoḥanan and Pinḥas, we once again find that they maintain the parameters set by Qillir. The strophe type in Yoḥanan’s seder pesuqim for Rain (text sample F) shows two fixed words, in the first and third lines. The division into pairs is formally implemented by means of having both members of the pair share one rhyme.25 The strophe type in Yoḥanan’s seder pesuqim for Dew (text sample G) shows identical fixed words in the first and third lines. The division into pairs is mainly

25 The rhyme in the first strophe pair, which appears in the text sample, lacks a consonne d’appui, but this is not typical of the seder pesuqim, whose other attested pairs answer to the normal requirements of terminal rhyme.

compositional technique

265

accomplished by means of alternating between odd strophes rhyming in the names of the zodiac signs and freely rhymed even strophes. It is also supported by means of the embedding of items from different fixed lists in the odd and even strophes, respectively. The strophe type of both of Pinḥas’s sidre pesuqim (text sample H) is rhymed freely, and includes two fixed elements: a framing verse in the first line of the odd strophes, and an anadiplotic word (which is chosen so as to fit within the acrostic series, as in the case of his seder yeṣira for Dew) in the first line of the even strophes, together with a fixed word in all strophes. The distinction in the fixed elements between odd and even strophes is the main formal principle of pairing, and it is supported by means of the embedding of items from different lists in the odd and even strophes, respectively.26

Girdle Rhyming One of the most unusual aspects of the Qillirian corpus under investigation here is the use of internal rhyme in the pair ‫ אדם‬and ‫אבן בראובן מיחסן‬. The analysis given above has underscored the point that the odd-looking line and strophe types of the seder yeṣira and the seder pesuqim, respectively, actually result from the imposition of the principle of internal rhyme on otherwise rather unremarkable types: a mono-rhymed line subject to a word-counting metre in the case of the seder yeṣira and a four-line strophe with determined rhymes and one fixed element in the case of the seder pesuqim. The application of the principle yields piyyuṭim that show a double rhyme: one terminal, connecting the lines of the piyyuṭ, and one internal, connecting the words within the line. This type of double rhyming is termed ‘girdle rhyming’, and it is encountered elsewhere in the Qillirian corpus.27 Let

26 In this connection, I should also mention the very badly damaged seder pesuqim for Rain and Šabbat that is published in Rand, ‘Liturgical Compositions for Shemini ʿAtzeret’, 96*-99*. The unique manuscript from which it is known does not provide any of the other components of the Rain šivʿata, so that it is not attested as part of a ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pair. Whatever acrostic signature might have appeared in its last strophe pair is now unrecoverable, so that the attribution of this seder pesuqim to Qillir is doubtful. The strophe type employed in it is very similar to the Qillirian type exemplified in text sample D. 27 See E. Fleischer, ‘Girdle-like Strophic Patterns in the Ancient Piyyuṭ’ (Hebrew), Hasifrut 2 (1969), pp. 194–240.

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us illustrate the point by means of the teqiʿata, which are piyyuṭim designed to be recited in the Additional Service of Roš ha-Šana, as an introduction to and accompaniment for the three sets of scriptural verses that are called malk̠iyyot, zik̠ronot, and šofarot. The teqiʿata of Yose ben Yose, the payṭan whose corpus is considered to be the dividing line between the Pre-Classical and the Classical periods, employ the so-called merubba line type, which consists of four stichs, each containing two stresses. In addition, all of the lines end in a fixed word. In the case of the malk̠iyyot, the fixed word is ‫מלוכה‬. The lines are divided into groups of two by virtue of an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, each of whose letters is repeated twice. The following are the first two lines of the piyyuṭ:28 ‫לוּכה‬ ָ ‫ ֲא ַא ְפּ ֶדנּוּ ְמ‬/ ‫ ֲא ַס ְפּ ָרה ְכבוֹדוֹ‬/ ‫ ָא ִשׁ ָירה ֻﬠזּוֹ‬/ ‫ֹלהי‬ ַ ‫ֲא ַה ְל ָלה ֱא‬ ‫לוּכה‬ ָ ‫ יָ ֲא ָתה ְמ‬/‫ ַאנְ וֵ הוּ ִכּי לוֹ‬/ ‫וּפ ַﬠל‬ ָ ‫ ֲא ֶשׁר ָשׂח‬/ ‫פּוֹﬠל‬ ֵ ‫ֲא ַשׂגֵּ ב ַל‬ Qillir’s teqiʿata are built on the model of those of Yose, though the line type that they employ is more complex. Qillir retains the merubba line, together with a fixed word, which in his case is ‫ימלוך‬. The complexity is introduced by virtue of the fact that, in addition to the rhyme generated by the use of a fixed word at the end of the line, Qillir introduces rhymes at the ends of all of the line-internal stichs. These internal rhymes are common to groups of two lines, whose integrity is likewise maintained by virtue of the ‫ א"ב‬acrostic each of whose letters covers the same two lines. The following are the first to lines of the piyyuṭ:29 ‫ יֶ ְאזֹר עֹז וְ יִ ְמֹלְך‬/ ‫יכי‬ ִ ‫ אָ ְמצוֹ ְבּ ַה ְמ ִל‬/ ‫ ְל ָפנָ יו ְבּ ִה ְת ַה ְלּ ִכי‬/ ‫יכה ַמ ְל ִכּי‬ ָ ‫אַ נְ ִס‬ ‫ יִ ְשׁ ַלח וְ ָאז יִ ְמֹלְך‬/ ‫ ִאישׁ ַמ ְל ָא ִכי‬/ ‫ ִל ְפנֵ י בּוֹא יוֹם ַמ ְל ִכּי‬/ ‫יכי‬ ִ ‫ֱא ִליל ְבּ ַה ְשׁ ִל‬

28 Published in D. Goldschmidt, Maḥ zor le-Yamim ha-Noraʾim (Roš ha-Šana) (New York, 1970), pp. 238–242. 29 Published in Goldschmidt, Maḥ zor le-Yamim ha-Noraʾim, pp. 233–237. The Qillirian piyyuṭim for malk̠iyyot, zik̠ronot and šofarot that are attested in the Ashkenazi Maḥzor are actually the first sections of what were originally doubled piyyuṭim, in a manner analogous to the two Qillirian sidre yeṣira of the first group, each of which is also divisible into two sections. These second sections, into which the actual scriptural verses were embedded, contained the poet’s acrostic signature. The second section continuing Qillir’s piyyuṭ for šofarot is published (on the basis of Genizah manuscripts) in Goldschmidt, Maḥ zor le-Yamim ha-Noraʾim, pp. ‫מו–מז‬. It continues the girdle rhyming pattern of the first section.

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It is clear on the basis of this example that the girdle rhyme is generated by virtue of introducing an internal rhyme into a pre-existing line type. As it happens, the process of introduction of girdle rhyme into the seder yeṣira genre antedates Qillir, and proceeds roughly along the same trajectory that has been sketched in the case of the teqiʿata. We are currently in possession of two compositions dating back to the Pre-Classical period that contain ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs— one for Rain and one for Dew. The composition for Rain is published by Shulamit Elizur.30 Its seder yeṣira is composed in merubba lines that are grouped into units of four by virtue of an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic whose words are also anadiplotic (i.e., the acrostic word is also the last word of the previous line—cf. the similar, though less extensive, use of anadiplosis in the seder yeṣira for Dew by Pinḥas). Here are the first two lines of the piyyuṭ: ַ ‫ וְ ֵאיְך ֶא ֱﬠצֹר‬/ ‫כּוֹח‬ ַ ‫אֶ נְ ַהם ְבּ ָכל‬ ‫ ַצחוֹת ֲא ַמ ֵלּל‬/ ‫ אַ ֲﬠ ִמיק ְל ַד ֵבּר‬/ ‫כּוֹח‬ ‫ ְכּ ָליוֹת ֶא ְחקוֹר‬/ ‫ ֲא ַח ֵפּס ְק ָר ַביִ ים‬/ ‫ ַא ִבּ ַיע ִמ ֵלּב‬/ ‫ֲא ַמ ֵלּל ַבּ ֶפּה‬ This seder yeṣira for Rain does not contain the rhyming element ‫ ַמיִ ם‬that we have come to expect on the basis of the material examined above. This element does appear, however, in an introductory piyyuṭ that immediately precedes the seder yeṣira in the composition in question.31 Like the seder yeṣira, this introductory piyyuṭ is composed in a line type that is divisible into four stichs. The stichs of the latter, however, are notably longer than those of the former, so that the result is a metrically expanded merubba line.32 Here are the two zayin-lines of the piyyuṭ (whose beginning is missing): ָ ‫יוֹד ַע זְ ַמנֵּ י‬ ֵ / ‫זְ ַמנֵּ י ָחרוֹן ִתּ ְמ ֶחה ֶמנּוּ‬ ‫בּוֹרא ַמיִ ם‬ ֵ / ‫ וְ נִ ְדבוֹת ִפּינוּ ַק ֵבּל ֶמנּוּ‬/ ‫עוֹלם‬ ‫ְביַ ְלדוּת ַמיִ ם‬ ‫ וְ ַה ְר ֵאינוּ ְבּנִ ְד ַבת‬/ ‫ זַ ֵכּינוּ ְל ַמ ֲﬠנָ ְך וְ ַה ֲחיֵ ינוּ‬/ ‫ וְ ַחי ְבּ ִלי ָמוֶ ות ַא ָתּה‬/ ‫ַזְך ְבּ ִלי ָﬠוֹן ַא ָתּה‬ ‫ַמיִ ם‬ The difference in metrical structure between the line type of the seder yeṣira and the line type of the introductory piyyuṭ prevents our 30

Elizur, ‘Poetic Fragments of Early Šivʿatot for Rain’, pp. 51–69. For the use of such introductory piyyuṭim before various types of sedarim, attested in Pre-Classical and Classical compositions, see Rand, ‘Liturgical Compositions for Shemini ʿAtzeret’, pp. 12*–14* and M. Rand, ‘The Seder Beriyyot in Byzantine-Era Piyyut’, Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005), pp. 667–683. 32 Cf. Elizur, ‘Poetic Fragments of Early Šivʿatot for Rain’, p. 34. 31

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seeing them as a unit that is divided into two subsections, in a manner analogous to the sidre yeṣira of the first Qillirian group examined above. However, the fact that the two are metrically quite similar, taken together with the fact that the introductory piyyuṭ employs a rhyming element that later becomes a hallmark of the Classical seder yeṣira, implies a close formal relationship between them. The next stage in the developmental series is exemplified in the seder yeṣira ‫ אזכירה גבורות‬from a Pre-Classical composition for Dew published by Ezra Fleischer.33 The line type employed in this seder yeṣira shows a high degree of formal similarity to the one encountered in the Qillirian teqiʿata. It is built in accordance with the standard merubba metre, and terminates in the rhyming element ‫ ַטל‬-, while its first three stichs share an internal rhyme. The lines of the piyyuṭ are furthermore divisible into groups of two, on the basis of an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic. The following are the gimel-lines of the piyyuṭ:34 ‫ ֵמ ֶא ֶרץ ְבּ ֵצאת ַטל‬/ ‫ּוֹﬠ ִשׁים יַ ַﬠל‬ ֲ ‫ ג‬/ ‫בוֹהים ֲא ֶשׁר ְבּ ַמ ַﬠל‬ ִ ְ‫ גּ‬/ ‫ַגּם הוּא ָפּ ַﬠל‬ ‫וּל ַטל‬ ְ ‫חוֹרף‬ ֶ ‫ ְל‬/ ‫ גּ ָוֹרלוֹת וְ ֻחוקּוֹת‬/ ‫ גַּ ֵלּי יָ ם ְל ַה ְקווֹת‬/ ‫ּוֹלה ֲﬠמוּקוֹת‬ ֶ ‫ג‬ Within the context of such a formal series, the line type employed in the Qillirian seder yeṣira . . . ‫ אדם‬may be seen as a kind of terminal point reached in the dynamic evolution that it implies; the four words of its line type, which are specified by the word-counting metre, correspond to the four stichs of the merubba line. And if we take for our basis a merubba line that is provided with a terminal rhyme in its fourth stich as well as internal rhymes in its first three stichs, then we may say that in the line type employed in the seder yeṣira . . . ‫ אדם‬the stichs have not simply been reduced in the metrical sense (i.e., one stich corresponds to one word), but rather they have been specifically reduced to their respective rhyming elements. It is as though the textual material in the sample given above were reduced

33 E. Fleischer, ‘Le-qadmoniyyot Piyyuṭe ha-Ṭ al (ve-ha-Geshem): Qerova QedamYannaʾit li-gevurot ha-Ṭ al’, Qoveṣ al Yad 8 (18) (1975), pp. 93–139 (110–139). For the dating of the composition, see pp. 107–108. 34 The gimel-lines are cited rather than the alef- or bet-lines on account of the fact that the latter show irregularities in their internal rhyme structure that would require a special treatment that is not relevant to our present purpose.

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to the following (with the proviso that an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic be retained at the beginnings of the lines):35 ‫[ ַטל‬---] / ‫[ יַ ַﬠל‬---] / ‫[ ְבּ ַמ ַﬠל‬---] / ‫[ ָפּ ַﬠל‬---] ‫[ ְל ַטל‬---] / ‫[ ֻחוקּוֹת‬---] / ‫[ ְל ַה ְקווֹת‬---] / ‫[ ֲﬠמוּקוֹת‬---] In order to underscore my argument graphically, I cite here the two qof-lines from the Qillirian seder yeṣira in question (cf. Table III, text sample 4): ַ / ‫ ַל ְפּרוּזָ ה‬/ ‫ִקיפּוֹזָ ה‬ ‫ ַטל‬/ ‫וּבגִ יזָּ ה‬ ‫ ַטל‬/ ‫ ְכּ ָשׁ ֳאלוֹ‬/ ‫וּמילּוּלוֹ‬ ִ / ‫קוֹלוֹ‬ The developmental series presented here need not, and most likely does not, imply that the internally rhymed Qillirian line type in question emerged as the product of conscious, deliberate modification of an older type on the part of the payṭan. This point is perhaps confirmed by the fact that no similar developmental series can be generated the endpoint of which would be the internally rhymed strophe type employed in the seder pesuqim ‫אבן בראובן מיחסן‬, which compliments the seder yeṣira in question. Its analytical value rather lies in its ability to highlight the fact that the emergence of a line type that is notably unusual on account of its complexity is the result of the dynamic application of formal principles—in the present case, consisting of metre, rhyme, acrostic—that are already inherent within the system of piyyuṭ poetics.

Formal Variation and the Tendency towards Complexity The analysis presented here depends on our ability to seriate meaningfully similar poetic units—i.e., line and strophe types—in such a way as to have the series tend towards complexity, this being defined as the constellation of formal factors limiting the poet’s ability to freely select words and arrange them within the line. It must be remembered, however, that the series themselves are constructions whose analytical usefulness may not be matched by an ability to uncover

35 It is entirely fortuitous but nevertheless remarkable that the resulting lines actually make sense, both syntactically as well as semantically.

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historical reality. In particular, the natural tendency is to interpret the series uni-directionally, as implying a trend towards greater degrees of complexity (or compositional ‘non-freedom’). In a few cases, such as the comparison between the teqiʿata of Yose and those of Qillir, this tendency is justified by independently valid chronological (i.e., historical) considerations. In other cases, however—and of particular interest at present are those in which an internal analysis of the Qillirian corpus itself is attempted—the order of elements within the analytical construction cannot be confirmed on the basis of an independently established chronology. Put another way, a given series, especially one whose elements are drawn from the corpus of a single payṭan, does not necessarily possess historical/chronological validity. The assumption that in Pre-Classical and Classical piyyuṭ composition complexity increases over time is one of the main methodological mainstays of research in this field both because is an eminently reasonable one, and also because it is supported by those cases in which independent verification is possible.36 However, assuming that the same general rule holds in the case of an internal analysis of the corpus of a particular payṭan may be yet another case of the fallacious argument that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. The problem is that, whereas in the case of the evolution of piyyuṭ as a whole, a reasonably solid scholarly consensus—based not only on the assumption of increasing complexity but also on a (small) number of historical indicators— exists with regard to the relative dating of the material, no such consensus, and no such indicators, exist to guide the researcher in terms of the chronological arrangement of the material within a particular corpus. To use just one example, we know that a high Classical payṭan like Qillir pre-dates a late Classical one like Pinḥas not only on the basis of formal factors, but also because the former makes mention of the Byzantine Christian overlords, whereas the latter speaks of the Muslim Arabs. However, it has up till now been considered more or less impossible for us to know which parts of Qillir’s corpus

36 See, for example, the comment in E. Fleischer, ‘Le-qadmoniyyot ha-Qedušta: Qedušta Qedam-Yannaʾit le-Yom Mattan ha-Tora’, Hasifrut 2 (1970), pp. 390–414 (390 n. 2; translation mine): ‘The view that complex and highly polished poetic structures necessarily bear witness to lengthy periods of development that preceded them, even in those cases in which material witnessing to these developmental stages is lacking, is also taken as being axiomatic in the investigation of the poetries of the various world cultures. In the case of our poetry, the recent discoveries serve as explicit testimony to the correctness of this view’.

compositional technique

271

were composed earlier, and which later. Ezra Fleischer’s words, written in 1970, may be used to illustrate this point (translation mine): ‘Yannai, who is apparently the earliest payṭan in whose poetic corpus we have found entire qeduštaʾot, already builds his compositions in accordance with well-defined, stereotypic rules, from which he does not deviate—unless it be in structural details that are unimportant and few—over the course of hundreds of monumental compositions. The same applies to the rest of the early payṭanim: ‫הדותה‬,37 Shimon berabbi Megas, and Eleazar berabbi Qillir, despite the fact that the qedušta type that is represented in the corpus of each one of them differs with regard to a few details from the type represented in the case of Yannai and from the one that is represented in the case of the others.’38 In the present case, Fleischer is specifically addressing the problem of the qedušta, which is the Classical payṭanic genre par excellence—i.e., the one that is the best represented in terms of numbers of individual compositions. And if in 1970, the impression of structural uniformity in the case of every individual payṭan attached itself to the qedušta, it must, a fortiori, have been the impression with regard to the other, less widespread genres. So that even if differences existed between several known examples of a particular genre in the oeuvre of a particular payṭan, scholars would have been primed to overlook them as ‘structural details that are unimportant and few’. Thus far for the formal analysis of the Classical payṭanic corpora. And since it was felt that there were no real grounds for internal differentiation on the basis of distinctions of form, it followed that internal differentiation on the basis of historical information contained in the piyyuṭim, which is virtually non-existent and in any case most certainly not sufficient for purposes of internal chronology, was entirely out of the question. Of the payṭanim mentioned by Fleischer, only one had received a critical edition worthy of being reckoned a part Zulay’s dream of ‘30 volumes or so’ by 1970: Yannai, edited by Zulay himself.39 In addition,

37 As demonstrated later in E. Fleischer, ‘Haduta—Hadutahu—Ḥedveta: Polmos ve-Šivro’, Tarbiz 53 (1983), pp. 71–96, the name as it appears in the acrostic signature is actually ‫הדותהו‬. Its proper pronunciation is, in any case, unclear. 38 Fleischer, ‘Le-qadmoniyyot ha-Qedušta’, p. 391. 39 M. Zulay, Piyyuṭe Yannai (Berlin, 1938). The corpus of Yannai has since been re-published in Z. M. Rabinovitz, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai according to the Triennial Cycle of the Pentateuch and the Holidays: a Critical Edition (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1985).

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the qeduštaʾot of ‫ הדותהו‬were known as well in 1970 as they are today.40 Since then, a critical edition of Šimon bar Megas has also helped to realise Zulay’s vision,41 without, however, significantly upsetting the judgment passed by Fleischer in 1970. As might have been expected, the truly significant missing piece—the one that was from the beginning the most likely to force scholars to re-open the question of the internal analysis of the Classical payṭanic corpora—is the corpus of Qillir, the brightest and most enigmatic luminary of Classical piyyuṭ. Despite the fact that, as has already been mentioned above (see note 6), a critical edition of the entire Qillirian corpus remains a major desideratum (and one that is not likely to be filled for at least the next two decades or so) it is already clear on the basis of the article- and monograph-length editions that have appeared since 1970 (see note 7), many of them the work of Fleischer himself, that the corpus shows a sufficient degree of internal differentiation to justify a formal analysis of the sort presented above in the case of the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs. In order to support my point, I present below an analysis of materials that have been available for some time: the Qillirian qerovot for the Ninth of Av. As with the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs, this analysis is made possible and legitimate by the fact that all of the relevant compositions are currently available in reasonable scholarly editions. The major challenge, however, will be an analysis of the formal variations in the qedušta, which constitutes the bulk of the Qillirian corpus. It is already clear on the basis of the material that is currently available that there are significant formal variations in the structure of this genre as practiced by Qillir.42 A number of these variations are directly related to the liturgical occasion for which a given qedušta is composed, so that they can be examined as monographs treating qeduštaʾot for specific occasions are produced.43 When, Transcriptions of some of the qeduštaʾot of ‫ הדותהו‬are published in P. Kahle, Masoreten des Westens (Stuttgart, 1927). The remaining qedušta materials are given in M. Zulay, ‘On the History of Piyyuṭ in Eretz Israel’, Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry in Jerusalem 5 (1939), pp. 108–180 (111–120). See also J. Schirmann, New Poems from the Genizah (Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 13–22. Fleischer himself later published an important article on this payṭan (see note 37). 41 J. Yahalom, The Liturgical Poems of Shimʿon bar Megas (Jerusalem, 1984). 42 See, for example, the important study of S. Elizur, ‘ʿAl-Miqqumo u-mivnehu šel ha-Qiqlar ba-Qedušta ha-Qillirit’, Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 3 (1983), pp. 140–155. 43 This is already obviously the case with the Qillirian qeduštaʾot for Šavuʿot, published in Elizur, Qeduštaʾot for the Day of Mattan Tora. In this case, there are very 40

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273

in turn, enough experience and data have been acquired with regard to the formal analysis of the internal variation of the Qillirian corpus, the question of the implication of this analysis for its internal chronology can be properly addressed.44

The Qillirian Qerovot for the Ninth of Av In order to provide an explicit context for the further examination of Qillirian poetic data, it may be helpful to briefly recapitulate the results of our analysis of the ‘seder yeṣira + seder pesuqim’ pairs, viz., that each one of the sedarim can be described on the basis of a minimally distinctive poetic unit, i.e, a line or a strophe, and that in each case, the different instances of these poetic units can be arranged in significant distinctions between the qeduštaʾot ‫ ארץ מטה‬and ‫אפסי חוג‬, which correspond more or less to our expectations with regard to this sub-genre, and the qedushta ‫אאדרה ארוממה‬, which contains numerous deviations, both in terms of the formal properties of the line and strophe types employed, as well as in terms of the internal articulation of the piyyuṭim within the qedušta. This matter is treated by the editor in extenso in the introduction to the texts. I might add here that, in my view, the absence of a seder dibberin from the qedušta ‫—אאדרה ארוממה‬which is entirely unexpected, not only on the basis of the two ‘standard’ Qillirian qeduštaʾot for Šavuʿot but also on the basis of what is known of the pre-Qillirian stages of the genre—is perhaps to be explained in terms of other cases of missing compositional elements: e.g., the absence of a guf from Qillirian Rain and Dew Šivʿatot (cf. Rand, ‘Šivʿatat Ṭ al Nosefet’, §‫)ב‬, or the absence of a piyyuṭ ‫ ד‬from the Qillirian qeduštaʾot for Roš ha-Šana and Yom Kippur (cf. Elizur, ‘ʿAl-Miqqumo u-Mivnehu šel ha-Qiqlar’, p. 143 n. 11). The difference is that, whereas in the latter two cases the element in question is consistently missing, the absence of the seder dibberin is restricted to this one Qillirian qedušta. But it is obvious in any case, on the basis of other formal factors, that this qedušta is an outlier with regard to the others, so that the absence of the seder dibberin may perhaps be seen as a kind of (failed) experiment in composition. It is furthermore to be fully expected that Elizur’s planned edition of the qeduštaʾot for the High Holy Days will contribute significantly to our appreciation of the internal variations in the Qillirian corpus, as would an edition of the qeduštaʾot for Passover (cf. the brief description of an unusual, unpublished Qillirian qedušta for the seventh day of Passover given in Elizur, Qeduštaʾot for the Day of Mattan Tora, p. 39 n. 79). 44 Some few ad hoc observations about the chronology of the Qillirian corpus have already appeared in the scholarly literature. See A. Mirsky, ‘Muqdam u-Meʾuḥar ba-Piyyut ̣e R’ Eleazar ha-Qillir’, in Mirsky, Ha-Piyyuṭ, pp. 136–139. To the material treated there is now to be added the strophe published in E. Fleischer, ‘Qillirian Compositions for the Ninth of Av’, Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974), pp. ‫א–מ‬ (p. ‫ה‬, lines 5–7). See also E. Fleischer, ‘A Fifth Qerova for the Ninth of Av by Eleazar berabbi Qillir’, Sinai 63 (1968), pp. 32–49 (35–36). Fleischer’s notes in ‘A Fifth Qerova’, which pertain to the distinction between the secondary strophes for the first fourteen benedictions of the ʿamida and those for the last four benedictions, are of particular interest in the present context, as their argument is based on a formal analysis.

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formal series that range from lesser to greater degrees of complexity. The more complex end of the spectrum, moreover, is notably extreme. Finally, we observed that complexity in the sidre yeṣira roughly co-varied with complexity in the sidre pesuqim. (This latter point is not particularly relevant to the case of the qerovot for the Ninth of Av, since they are homogenous, i.e., built up on the basis of one strophe type. However, when the time comes for a similar analysis of the structure of the qedušta, it will become much more so.) The aim of examining the qerovot for the Ninth of Av, therefore, is to attempt to show that these results are more generally valid, as well as to lend credence to the notion that an internal analysis of the Qillirian corpus is increasingly becoming a viable possibility. The qerovot for the Ninth of Av are designed to be recited in the Morning Service of the fast day. In the basic Qillirian tradition, the qerova covers the first fourteen benedictions of the ʿamida, at which point special dirges called qinot are inserted. As a result, the standard Qillirian qerova for the Ninth of Av contains fourteen strophe complexes, each complex being composed of a primary and a secondary strophe.45 Five such Qillirian qerovot are attested, two being known from European liturgical rites and three others having been published by Fleischer on the basis of Genizah manuscripts. The following is a list of these five qerovot, in the order in which text samples from them appear in Table VII: • ‫ יעיב בדיאת עיט‬. . . . This qerova is published in Fleischer, ‘A Fifth Qerova’, pp. 37–49. Unlike the others, it was originally written to cover all eighteen benedictions of the ʿamida. However, the secondary strophes of the last four strophe complexes differ somewhat in structure from those of the first fourteen (cf. note 44). • ‫אהלי איכה בשלי‬. This qerova is published in Fleischer, ‘Qillirian Compositions’, pp. ‫ד–יא‬. • ‫זכור איכה אנו שפתינו‬. This qerova is published in D. Goldschmidt, Seder ha-Qinot le-Tišʿa be-ʾAv, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 147– 154. It is known from the Roman and Romaniot rites.

45

For a convenient English-language overview of the Qillirian poetic tradition for the Ninth of Av, see M. Rand, ‘Observations on the Relationship between JPA Poetry and the Hebrew Piyyut Tradition’, in A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard (eds), Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship (Leiden, 2007), pp. 127–144 (130–134).

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• ‫ ברב שרעפי בקרבי‬. . . .46 This qerova is published in Fleischer, ‘Qillirian Compositions’, pp. ‫לא–לג‬. • ‫אאביך ביום מבך‬. This qerova is published in Goldschmidt, Seder ha-Qinot, pp. 154–160. It was once in use in the Ashkenazi rite. As mentioned above, the qerovot are compositionally homogenous, each being built up out of a series of strophe complexes. On the basis of a simple line count, it is immediately apparent that the first three qerovot are to be grouped together as sharing a similar type of strophe complex, which consists of an 8-line primary strophe and a 6-line secondary strophe. The two strophes are, moreover, connected by means of anadipolsis. In all three cases, the last lines of the primary and secondary strophes contain some pre-determined element: in the first case, the last lines consist of scriptural material, in the second case, the last line of the primary strophe also consists of scriptural material, while the last line of the secondary strophe ends in a word from a framing verse, and in the third case the last line of the primary strophe consists of scriptural material, while the last line of the secondary strophe consists of words taken directly form the closing formula of the immediately following benediction. Finally, in all cases, the secondary strophe contains a letter from the poet’s fourteen-letter acrostic signature: ‫אלעזר בירבי קליר‬. The major differences between the three strophe complexes are to be observed in the primary strophes. All employ words from framing verses to one extent or another. In the first case, the first, third and fifth lines begin with a word from a framing verse. In addition, the first seven lines are subject to an alphabetic acrostic. In the second case, there is a great leap forward with regard to the use of framing verses, with which all lines but the sixth and the eighth now begin. (The sixth line, moreover, though freed from a framing verse, must make reference to a name from the list of twenty-four priestly courses). The most interesting formal feature, however, is attested in the first line, which begins with two words, drawn from two different framing verses. This feature, which brings together two words drawn by means of a mechanical principle from two unrelated sources, greatly strains the payṭan’s ability to make the line yield syntactic and semantic sense. The third case is even more

46 The words cited in lieu of an incipit begin a secondary strophe. In the text sample, the first fully attested strophe complex is cited.

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complex, in that in addition to having the same distribution of elements from framing verses, the primary strophe is subject to an ‫א"ב‬ acrostic, one letter of which appears in each of its first seven lines. As a result, the first line not only begins with two words from two different framing verses, but the third word must also begin with a particular letter of the alphabet. The fourth and fifth qerovot constitute a second group that is almost as homogenous as the first. In both cases, the primary strophe is composed of 7 lines. In ‫אאביך ביום מבך‬, the secondary strophe consists of three long lines. In ‫ ברב שרפעי בקרבי‬. . . , on the other hand, the situation is mixed. In its current state, this fragmentary qerova contains seven secondary strophes. Of these, three secondary strophes may be divided into 5 lines each on the basis of rhyme (as is the case with the secondary strophe given in the text sample). In the other four secondary strophes, one long line corresponds to lines 2–3 of the 5-line strophes. This correspondence, taken together with the fact that the lines of the secondary strophes of the qerova ‫ אאביך ביום מבך‬are notably long, makes it quite likely that from a comparative point of view, not only does one long line correspond to lines 2–3 of the 5-line strophes, but also that the third long line of the secondary strophe attested in ‫אאביך‬ ‫ ביום מבך‬corresponds to lines 4–5 of the 5-line strophes. (This correspondence is highlighted by means of the use of the symbol // in the stichometric representation of the secondary strophe of ‫ ברב שרעפי‬. . . ‫ בקרבי‬in Table VII.) If this correspondence is accepted, it becomes clear that the two strophe complexes represent two stages of development in a unified series. This conclusion is also strongly supported by other considerations. In both cases, framing verses are entirely lacking, while the primary strophes are subject to an ‫ א"ב‬acrostic, and the secondary strophes employ the payṭan’s fourteen-letter acrostic signature. Also in both cases, the seventh line consists of a scriptural element that determines the strophic rhyme. In both cases, the secondary strophe is connected to the primary by means of anadiplosis, and terminates either in words taken directly form the closing formula of the immediately following benediction (in ‫ ברב שרעפי בקרבי‬. . .) or in scriptural material (in ‫)אאביך ביום מבך‬. The significant difference between the two strophe complexes lies in the use of the ‫ א"ב‬acrostic in the primary strophes. In the case of ‫ ברב שרעפי בקרבי‬. . . the use is regular, one letter from the acrostic series appearing at the beginning of most of the lines of the primary strophe. In the case of ‫אאביך ביום‬ ‫מבך‬, the acrostic is made more complex by the fact that it covers the

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first two letters of the relevant lines: the first letter is alef throughout the primary strophes of the qerova, while the second letter is drawn from the ‫ א"ב‬series. Once again, we see how the pervasive application of a formal principle along an existing parameter entails an increase in complexity.

Conclusions In the examples discussed here, the three formal principles whose ‘excessive’ application leads to notable degrees of complexity belong to the basic inventory of the poetic devices of piyyuṭ—rhyme in the case of the ‘seder yeṣira + seder persuqim’ pairs, framing verse in the case of the first group of qerovot for the Ninth of Av, and acrostic in the case of the second group of qerovot. In their standard application, all three principles are designed to operate at the level of the strophe, in the sense that in Classical piyyuṭ they are primarily means of strophic organisation. Put another way, these principles are normally applied on a ‘one-per-line’ basis—framing verse and acrostic at the beginning of the line, and rhyme at its end—such that their patterning (i.e., repetition and change) leads to the delineation of strophes. The cases examined here strongly suggest that the primary source of complexity in Classical piyyuṭ is the penetration of these devices from the edges of the poetic line into its body. In most Classical piyyuṭim, the body of the line, if it is regulated by any formal principle at all, is properly the province of metre—i.e., a counting principle that is applied to the number of stresses or to the number of words.47 In the complex cases discussed here, other formal devices penetrate into the province of metre, leading to what might be called the hyper-organisation of the poetic line. When viewed from a historical perspective, the notion of the penetration of an organisational principle into the poetic line and the latter’s consequent increased organisation is actually one of the major dynamic forces driving the evolution of post-biblical poetry. In has already been demonstrated by Aharon Mirsky that, gross modo, the emergence of the merubba line of Pre-Classical piyyuṭ—which is the

47 For the metrical systems operating in Classical piyyuṭ, see E. Fleischer, ‘ʿIyyunim be-Dark̠e ha-Šeqila šel Širat ha-Qodeš ha-Qeduma’, Hasifrut 7 (1977), pp. 70–83.

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Pre-Classical line type par excellence and constitutes the first great innovation in the history of post-biblical poetry—is accomplished by means of introducing the metrical principle into the basic parallelistic biblical line.48 The penetration of the counting principle into the line leads, already in the Pre-Classical period, to the relegation of the biblical principle of parallelismus membrorum from the status of primary organisational device operating in the poetic line to the status of incidental, secondary feature. It has furthermore been demonstrated, this time by Fleischer, that the change from the Pre-Classical to the Classical periods of piyyuṭ composition, which is founded on the introduction of rhyme along with the concomitant introduction of strophe-based (rather than line-based) organisation,49 is at least partially driven by the introduction of the rhyming principle into the Pre-Classical poetic line, and the consequent transformation of the merubba line into a 4-line strophe, etc.50 This factor, in turn, leads to the disintegration of the Pre-Classical line types, i.e., the tetrastich (merubba) and the tristich. In light of these developments, it is not surprising that the Classical period too should witness the continued operation of this apparently pervasive trend. The difference here, in my view, is that in the Classical period, a terminal point was reached such that the trend could no longer continue, for it threatened to ‘lock up’ the verbal material of the entire line such as to render impossible the performance of what is probably the most basic function of language, viz., the creation of syntactic and semantic sense.51

48

See A. Mirsky, Piyyuṭe Yose ben Yose, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 50–55. Fleischer stresses, correctly, that the relationship between the introduction of rhyme and strophic organisation is not necessary, as other poetic traditions, which do not employ rhyme, nevertheless show a perfect ability to organise their material into strophes. In the Hebrew poetic tradition, however, the rise of rhyme, as far as can be ascertained at the moment, is more or less synchronous with the rise of strophism—cf. Fleischer, ‘Dark̠e ha-Šeqila’, pp. 71–72 n. 13. 50 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, p. 122 (translation mine): ‘The long line, consisting of 3 stichs, became a 3-line strophe, and the merubba line became a 4-line strophe. It may, however, be pointed out that in Classical piyyuṭ also the 4-line strophe became the most weighty of all the strophic structures; the most important piyyuṭim were cast, in a manner that is notably preferential, in strophes of this type’. 51 This judgment applies only to the systematic imposition of basic constitutive principles, of the sort that we have come across in this discussion. It does not cover the occasional exaggerated use of some device or other on a non-obligatory basis, as is the case, for instance, with sound orchestration in the by-now legendarily famous Qillirian line ‫אץ קוצץ בן קוצץ‬. 49

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Insofar as the Qillirian corpus is specifically concerned, the conclusions arrived at in the formal analysis given above are rather unsurprising, being in essence a quantification of that which would have been noted in any case, albeit ‘impressionistically’, by any well trained observer. It is important, however, for two major reasons. First, with regard to Qillir himself, it begins to concretise the possibility of an internal analysis of this payṭan’s corpus. The examples examined here are by necessity minor, when compared to the prospect of the internal examination of the Qillirian qedušta, a thorough formal analysis of which is guaranteed to be longer and more intricate than the present one by several orders of magnitude. Such an analysis is one of the great challenges that await Qillirian scholarship in the coming years, looming hand-in-hand with the ongoing project of the publication of the oeuvres complets. And second, with regard to a proper understanding of the development of piyyuṭ forms in general, it situates the seemingly extreme cases within the framework of a dynamically evolving system that apparently tends towards an increasingly forceful expression over time of a number of its inherent formal principles. Seen in this light, the inordinately complex compositions of Qillir, which, it should be pointed out, constitute a minority within his oeuvre, emerge not so much as poetic oddities but rather as the logical endpoints of a formal developmental trajectory. In my view, a firm establishment and quantification of this latter point, when applied to piyyuṭ as a whole, is one of the major shifts in outlook separating the study of piyyuṭ in the early days of Wissenschaft des Judentums from its fully Genizahinformed study since the days of Zulay.52

52

See also M. Rand, Introduction to the Grammar of Hebrew Poetry in Byzantine Palestine (New Jersey, 2006), pp. 3–4, where I make a similar point with regard to the study of piyyuṭ language: ‘In addition to this fundamental obstacle [to the proper appreciation of piyyuṭ language, viz., the preference of linguists for the study of living language] . . . one cannot help but suspect that Zunz himself is also partially to blame, to the extent that the various grammatical/lexical points discussed by him in connection with piyyuṭ are represented as atomized curios, isolated exhibits at a linguistic freak show, with no regard for their position within an integrated linguistic system. For the most part, those students of Wissenschaft des Judentums who have followed his lead have adopted this atomized approach, and the possibility of linguistic investigation along structuralist lines is thereby ignored from the outset’.

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I. Davidson, S. Assaf and B. I. Joel (eds), Siddur Rav Saadja Gaon, 6th edn (Jerusalem, 2000). S. Elizur, ‘ʿAl-Miqqumo u-mivnehu šel ha-Qiqlar be-Qedušta ha-Qillirit’, Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 3 (1983), pp. 140–155. ——, Qeduša va-Šir: Qillirite Qeduštaot for the Šabbetot ha-Neḥ ama (Jerusalem, 1988). ——, Be-Toda va-Šir: Qillirite Šivʿatot for the Four Šabbatot (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991). ——, review of S. Spiegel, Avot ha-Piyyuṭ, Tarbiz 66 (1996), pp. 581–586. ——, Rabbi Eleazar berabbi Qillir: Qeduštaʾot for the Day of Mattan Tora (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2000). ——, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2004). ——, ‘ “Visit your land with rain”: Poetic Fragments of Early Šivʿatot for Rain’, Ginzei Qedem 1 (2005), pp. 31–78. E. Fleischer, ‘A Fifth Qerova for the Ninth of Av by Eleazar berabbi Qillir’, Sinai 63 (1968), pp. 32–49. ——, ‘Girdle-like Strophic Patterns in the Ancient Piyyut’̣ (Hebrew), Hasifrut 2 (1969), pp. 194–240. ——, ‘Le-qadmoniyyot ha-Qedušta: Qedušta Qedem-Yannayit le-Yom Mattan haTora’, Hasifrut 2 (1970), pp. 390–414. ——, ‘Qillirian Compositions for the Ninth of Av’, Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974), pp. 1–40. ——, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1975). ——, ‘Le-qadmoniyyot Piyyut ̣e ha-Ṭ al (ve-ha-Geshem): Qerova Qedem-Yannaʾit ligevurot ha-Ṭ al’, Qoveṣ al Yad 8 (18) (1975), pp. 93–139. ——, ‘ʿIyyunim be-Dark̠e ha-Šeqila šel Širat ha-Qodeš ha-Qeduma’, Hasifrut 7 (1977), pp. 70–83. ——, ‘Haduta—Hadutahu—Ḥedveta: Polmos ve-Šivro’, Tarbiz 53 (1983), pp. 71–96. Y. Frenkel, Maḥ zor Pesaḥ (Hebrew; New York, 1993). D. Goldschmidt, Maḥ zor le-Yamim ha-Noraʾim (Roš ha-Šana) (New York, 1970). ——, Maḥ zor Sukkot, Šemini ʿAṣeret and Simḥ at Tora (Hebrew; New York, 1991). P. Kahle, Masoreten des Westens (Stuttgart, 1927). A. Mirsky, Piyyuṭe Yose ben Yose, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1977). ——, ‘Muqdam u-Meʾuḥar be-Piyyuṭe R’ Eleazar ha-Qillir’, in Mirsky, Ha-Piyyuṭ: Hitpatḥ uto be-Ereṣ Israʾel uva-Gola (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 136–139. ——, ‘Piyyuṭim Maqbilim’, in Mirsky, Ha-Piyyuṭ: Hitpatḥ uto be-Ereṣ Israʾel uva-Gola (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 102–122. Z. M. Rabinovitz, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai according to the Triennial Cycle of the Pentateuch and the Holidays: a Critical Edition (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1985). M. Rand, ‘The Seder Beriyyot in Byzantine-Era Piyyut’, Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005), pp. 667–683. ——, Introduction to the Grammar of Hebrew Poetry in Byzantine Palestine (New Jersey, 2006). ——, ‘Liturgical Compositions for Shemini ʿAtzeret by Eleazar be-rabbi Qillir’, Ginzei Qedem 3 (2007), pp. 9*–99*. ——, ‘Observations on the Relationship between JPA Poetry and the Hebrew Piyyut Tradition’, in A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard (eds), Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship (Leiden, 2007), pp. 127–144. ——, ‘A Response to Yehoshua Granat’, Ginzei Qedem 4 (2008), pp. 83*–99*.

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——, ‘Clouds, Rain and the Upper Waters: From Bereshit Rabbah to the Piyyutim of Eleazar berabbi Qillir’, Aleph 9 (2009), pp. 13–39. ——, ‘Eleazar berabbi Qillir: Šivʿatat Ṭ al Nosefet’ (Hebrew), Qoveṣ al Yad (forthcoming). J. Schirmann, New Poems from the Genizah (Jerusalem, 1965). N. Weissenstern, The Liturgical Poetry of Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen berabbi Joshua (unpubl. diss.; Hebrew University, 1983). J. Yahalom, The Liturgical Poems of Shimʿon bar Megas (Jerusalem, 1984). M. Zulay, Piyyuṭe Yannai (Berlin, 1938). ——, ‘On the History of Piyyut ̣ in Eretz Israel’, Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry in Jerusalem 5 (1939), pp. 108–180. ——, Ha-Askola ha-Payṭanit šel Rav Saʿadya Gaʾon (Jerusalem, 1964). ——, ‘Le-kinnusam šel Piyyutẹ ha-Geniza’, in Zulay, Eretz Israel and its Poetry: Studies in Piyyutim from the Cairo Genizah, edited by E. Hazan (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 34–39.

Group 1

Table I. “Seder yetzira + seder pesuqim” Pairs in the Qillirian Corpus

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Group 3

Table I (cont.) Group 2

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Pinhas ha-Kohen

Table II. “Seder yetzira + seder pesuqim” Pairs in the Corpora of Yohanan ha-Kohen and Pinhas ha-Kohen Yohanan ha-Kohen

284 michael rand

Table IV. Text Samples for the Qillirian Sidrei Pesuqim

Note: Graphic conventions: boldface = acrostic letter; italic = item from list (incl. benediction formula); slash = preceding element fixed (by framing verse or anadiplosis); quote marks = quoted verse-fragment

Table III. Text Samples for the Qillirian Sidrei Yetzira

compositional technique 285

Table VI. Text Samples for the Sidrei Pesuqim of Yohanan ha-Kohen and Pinhas ha-Kohen

Table V. Text Samples for the Sidrei Yetzira of Yohanan ha-Kohen and Pinhas ha-Kohen

286 michael rand

Table VII. Text Samples for the Qillirian Qerovot for the Ninth of Av

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THE GENIZAH AND JEWISH COMMUNAL HISTORY Marina Rustow

Of the total number of documentary sources from the Cairo Genizah, currently estimated at fifteen thousand items, roughly forty percent are now available in published or on-line form.1 Of those, the vast majority

1 I arrived at this total in consultation with Mark R. Cohen, Director of the Princeton Geniza Project. Princeton’s on-line database, which is equipped with a search engine for Hebrew and Arabic characters and includes document descriptions in English, houses more than four thousand documents, of which about half are published editions and half are provisional editions typed by S. D. Goitein and found in his files. The database includes the texts in J. Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fâṭimid Caliphs: a Contribution to their Political and Communal History, Based Chiefly on Genizah Material Hitherto Unpublished (2 vols; New York, 1970); J. Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature (New York, 1972); S. Abramson, In the Centres and the Peripheries during the Geonic Period: the History of the Geonim and Exilarchs in Palestine and Babylonia and the Sages of Egypt and North Africa, based on Genizah Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1965); E. Ashtor, History of the Jews in Egypt and Syria under the Rule of the Mamlûks: Genizah Documents (Hebrew; 3 vols; Jerusalem, 1944–1970); M. Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden, 1976); M. A. Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine: a Cairo Genizah Study (2 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1980); S. D. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in Light of Geniza Documents, edited by J. Hacker (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980) insofar as not published elsewhere; M. Gil, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099) (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1983); S. D. Goitein, The Yemenites: History, Communal Organization, Spiritual Life (Selected Studies), edited by M. Ben-Sasson (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1983); M. A. Friedman, Jewish Polygyny: New Sources from the Cairo Geniza (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1986); E. Bareket, The Jewish Leadership in Fustat in the First Half of the Eleventh Century (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1995); A. Ashur, Engagement and Betrothal Documents from the Cairo Geniza (unpubl. diss.; Tel Aviv University, 2007); the documents from Goitein’s provisional editions that were later edited in M. Ben-Sasson, The Jews of Sicily, 825–1068: Documents and Sources (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991) and M. Gil, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Hebrew; 4 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1997); documents from the first part of S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden, 2008), as checked and corrected by M. A. Friedman and insofar as not otherwise included in the database; and virtually all the documents that Goitein published in articles, with his later corrections. It also includes unpublished texts edited by A. L. Udovitch, M. R. Cohen, and others. There are also numerous published texts not in the database, for instance those in G. Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1993); J. OlszowySchlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza: Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine (Leiden, 1998); and (except for a few previously published or transcribed by Goitein) M. Gil and E. Fleischer, Judah Halevi and His Circle: Fifty-Five Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001).

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have become available in the past thirty years—not coincidentally the period that coincides with Stefan Reif’s tenure as Director of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Unit. But even these impressive statistics do not tell the entire story: knowledge progresses in an exponential rather than linear fashion, and deciphering new texts facilitates the understanding of previously obscure ones. This is particularly true for a dense cache such as the Genizah, in which the majority of the main protagonists during any given period of time knew one another or were connected by one or two degrees of separation. A single new fragment, or even the juxtaposition of two known ones, can yield an entire new world of knowledge that in turn changes the larger picture. Given that, the purpose of this article is to offer the status quaestionis on the problem of Jewish communal organisation in the late tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries in light of the Genizah’s documentary corpus and to offer some comments on the Jewish community’s shape, structure, and functioning. What follows is, then, both historiographic and historical. The historiographic section is intended to follow up on previous articles on the subject by Mark Cohen and Haggai BenShammai.2 The historical section is intended to take stock of the aggregate picture of Jewish communal life, particularly in light of Moshe Gil’s collections of published Genizah documents on the Jews of Palestine and Iraq, and to argue that the models we have inherited from midtwentieth-century historians require some alteration in light of this new material.

Scholarship on the Genizah as a Mirror of Jewish Historiography Since Jacob Mann’s publications of the 1920s, Jewish communal organisation has dominated discussions of the documentary portion of the Cairo Genizah.3 Why is this so? On the one hand, the nature of the Genizah cache itself has both propelled and justified a focus 2 M. R. Cohen, ‘Jewish Communal Organization in Medieval Egypt: Research, Results and Prospects’, Judaeo-Arabic Studies 1 (1997), pp. 73–86 (which incorporates the documents from Gil’s 1983 corpus selectively but not those from his 1997 corpus); H. Ben-Shammai, ‘Medieval History and Religious Thought’, in S. C. Reif (ed.), The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 136–150. 3 Mann, Jews in Egypt and in Palestine.

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on the shape of the community: just as Egyptian rural society might dominate the concerns of a papyrologist working on documents found in the Fayyum, so too the Jewish community of Fustat and especially its Palestinian Rabbanite congregation has occupied centre stage in Genizah studies by mere virtue of the findspot. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the modern study of medieval Jewish history is inconceivable without the Genizah.4 On the other hand, the Jewish community and its organisation were central subjects in nineteenthand twentieth-century Jewish historiography because of concerns central to the modern rather than the medieval period, in particular the problem of Jews’ ‘nationhood’ and their acculturation to the wider European society in which most of them lived in the modern period (while in the Middle Ages the vast majority lived under Islamic rule). These factors suggest that one must be very careful not to impose modern presumptions about the meaning of ‘community’, ‘organisation’, and even the adjective ‘Jewish’ onto medieval material. It is partly for that reason that I felt moved to write on this subject. Much scholarship on late antiquity and the medieval period has presumed either rabbinic authority or (more broadly) the Jews’ devotion to Judaism as a kind of substitute or precursor of the Jewish national will.5 Scholarship on the documentary portion of the Genizah has always been a mirror of the broader concerns of Jewish historiography. The first decades of Genizah research, in the flush of the new finds and in tandem with orientalist and Semitic-language scholarship of the era, focused on producing diplomatic editions of important texts, with little attempt to reconstruct the wider context in which those texts were produced. As a result, the existing historical frameworks inherited from nineteenth-century scholars remained largely intact. In marked contrast, historians of the mid- and late twentieth century produced studies concerned with institutions and leaders, such as Sheraga Abramson’s study of the gaonic period; the second volume of Goitein’s Mediterranean Society; Mark Cohen’s and Elinoar Bareket’s works on

4 Ben-Shammai, ‘Medieval History and Religious Thought’, pp. 137: ‘When one looks back at the evolution of the modern historiography of the Jews in Islamic countries, one realises that this discipline is nowadays unimaginable without the Genizah’. 5 Cf. S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton, 2001), pp. 5–8; S. Schwartz, ‘Historiography on the Jews in the “Talmudic period” (70–630 CE)’, in M. Goodman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford, 2003), pp. 79–114.

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Egyptian communal organisation; and Menahem Ben-Sasson’s studies of Qayrawan and of Jewish communal organisation more broadly.6 The last third of the twentieth century and the first years of the twentyfirst have also witnessed two additional approaches: geographic studies, such as Goitein’s on Palestine and posthumously on the India trade, Gil’s on Palestine and Iraq, Bareket’s on Fustat, Miriam Frenkel’s on Aleppo and Alexandria, Roxani Margariti’s on Aden, and of a slightly different order, Jessica Goldberg’s on meta-geography (which belongs equally well in the next category);7 and problem-based history, including Norman Stillman on trade, Gil on Jewish pious foundations, Mordechai Friedman on marriage and Palestinian rabbinic legal tradition, Judith Olszowy-Schlanger on Qaraite legal tradition, Arnold Franklin on the symbolic leadership of the nesiʾim, Philip Lieberman on legal practice, and my own study of Rabbanite–Qaraite relations.8 6 S. W. Baron, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution (3 vols; Philadelphia, 1942); S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd edn (17 vols; New York, 1957–1980); Abramson, In the Centres and the Peripheries; S. D. Goitein, ‘Congregation versus Community: an Unknown Chapter in the Communal History of Jewish Palestine’, Jewish Quarterly Review 44 (1954), pp. 291–304; S. D. Goitein, ‘The Local Jewish Community in the Light of the Cairo Geniza Records’, Journal of Jewish Studies 12 (1961), pp. 133–158; S. D. Goitein, ‘The Title and Office of the Nagid: a Re-Examination’, Jewish Quarterly Review 53 (1962), pp. 93–119; S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993); M. R. Cohen, Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: the Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews, ca. 1065–1126 (Princeton, 1980); M. R. Cohen, ‘Administrative Relations between Palestinian and Egyptian Jewry during the Fatimid Period’, in A. Cohen and G. Baer (eds), Egypt and Palestine: a Millennium of Association (868–1948) (Jerusalem, 1984); M. Ben-Sasson, ‘Fragmentary Letters from the Geniza: on the History of the Renewed Links between the Babylonian Academies and the West’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 56 (1987), pp. 31–82; M. Ben-Sasson, ‘The Links Between the Maghrib and the Mashriq in the Ninth through Eleventh Centuries’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 38 (1989), pp. 35–48; M. Ben-Sasson, ‘Religious Leadership in Islamic Lands: Forms of Leadership and Sources of Authority’, in J. Wertheimer (ed.), Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality (New York, 2004), pp. 177–209; Bareket, Jewish Leadership; and E. Bareket, Fustat on the Nile: the Jewish Elite in Medieval Egypt (Leiden, 1999). 7 Goitein, Palestinian Jewry; Gil, see above at nn. 1–2; M. Frenkel, Qehillat Yehude Ḥ alab ʿal pi kitve ha-Geniza (unpubl. diss.; Hebrew University, 1990); Bareket, Jewish Leadership; Bareket, Fustat on the Nile; M. Frenkel, ‘The Compassionate and Benevolent’: the Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006); R. E. Margariti, Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Chapel Hill, 2007); J. L. Goldberg, The Geographies of Trade and Traders in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1150: a Geniza Study (unpubl. diss.; Columbia University, 2005). 8 N. A. Stillman, East-West Relations in the Islamic Mediterranean in the Early Eleventh Century: a Study of the Geniza Correspondence of the House of Ibn ʿAwkal (unpubl. diss.; University of Pennsylvania, 1970); Gil, Documents of the Jewish

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Some general patterns are discernable here: above all, a focus on communities, either local ones or the larger Jewish oecumene—even in the dialectic between the absolute empiricism of geographic studies, in which everything from a particular place and time period is germane for study and requires one to approach the material with as few preconceptions as possible, and the modified empiricism of problembased history, which requires one to arm oneself with enough preconceptions to find a particular problem worthy of being solved. Above all, certain models have shaped the field’s collective understanding of the organisation and functioning of the Jewish community. Those models are based on studies of the Jews in Christian Europe, a fact that owes to the legacy of the wider discipline of history, in which studies of medieval Latin Europe and its vast archival resources are centuries older than those of the Near East, whose documentary sources became available to historians only in the late nineteenth century, with the transfer of papyri to Europe, followed closely by documents from the Genizah. This is, of course, perfectly understandable, given that studies of the Latin West practically invented the fields of diplomatic, paleography, and documentary history. But within Genizah studies, reliance on models derived from the medieval west had its own particular aetiology, one related to the towering role of Yitzhak Baer in the historiography of the Jewish people. Baer devoted his career to the study of the Jewish community— rather than communities; the singular reflects his concern with finding a continuous entity despite geographic and temporal differences—in medieval Iberia, medieval Franco-Germany, and over the long period of diaspora extending from the destruction of the second commonwealth in 70 CE to what he viewed as the renaissance of the Jewish people in

Pious Foundations; Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine: a Cairo Genizah Study; Friedman, Jewish Polygyny: New Sources from the Cairo Geniza; Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents; Cohen, Jewish Self-Government; M. Ben-Sasson, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800–1057, 2nd revised edn (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997); A. E. Franklin, Shoots of David: Members of the Exilarchal Dynasty in the Middle Ages (unpubl. diss.; Princeton University, 2001); M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008). Cf. Ben-Shammai, ‘Medieval History and Religious Thought’, pp. 137–140, who periodises Genizah scholarship similarly: an early era of ‘curiosities’ and ‘sensational findings’ followed by works focusing on institutional history and ‘actual persons in flesh and blood’, followed in turn by the global history of Goitein and then by the more specific studies of the generation after him, revolving around ‘geographical foci’, problems in communal organisation, or halakhic problems.

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the Israeli state after 1948. For Baer, the law-bound Jews of medieval Ashkenaz incarnated the authentic soul of the nation, even if the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, whose authenticity he considered corrupted by exposure to Islamic, Christian, and especially rationalist influences, offered the richest base of sources for the study of the autonomous Jewish community. The latter phrase was a technical term by which Baer meant the self-governing Jewish body politic that appointed its own judges and established courts of law, cultivated its own systems of social welfare and institutions of learning, and possessed the power to punish offenders and the prerogative to run its affairs free from the intrusions and interference of the ruling powers.9 Baer’s conception of the autonomous Jewish community, while it highlighted a certain historical problem as worth solving, also rested on a preconception that imposed unnecessary constraints on his source material. Baer’s vision of an autonomous community took it for granted that interference from outside powers was inimical to the collective will and good of the Jewish people. He found ample evidence that rabbinic leaders condemned their followers for seeking justice from Christian courts and appealing to Christian political authorities; but he read that evidence as indicating the Jews’ general reluctance to venture beyond the community for the purposes of seeking justice or exerting power—despite the fact whether that evidence might be read precisely as indicating the frequency with which Jews did so, or community leaders’ concern to defend their interests over those of their followers. Put another way, he read rabbinic condemnations of the Jewish ‘informer’ to the non-Jewish authorities (the malšin) through rabbinic eyes, without considering whether rabbinic leaders made resort to those same authorities themselves.10 To be fair, the distinct demands of interpreting prescriptive and descriptive sources were not always rigorously respected in the German historical school in which Baer was trained; he was hardly alone in mistaking rabbinic ideals for historical reality.11 Recent work has argued convincingly that Baer’s

9 Y. Baer, Galut (Berlin, 1936); Y. Baer, ‘The Origins of Jewish Communal Organization in the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Zion 15 (1950), pp. 1–41; Y. Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, translated by L. Schoffman (2 vols; Philadelphia, 1961). 10 On this see the excellent correctives of U. Simonsohn, ‘Communal Boundaries Reconsidered: Jews and Christians Appealing to Muslim Authorities in the Medieval Near East’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 14 (2007), pp. 328–363. 11 Cf. Marc Bloch’s critique of Hans Schreuer as described in C. Fink, Marc Bloch: a Life in History (Cambridge, 1991), p. 48.

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reading of Jewish history was more rigidly internalist than the sources warranted: while Baer painted the Jews as ‘living in organized communal entities’ from time immemorial, ‘merely exchanging one overlord for another’, such an approach tended to obscure or even deny the horizontal ties the Jews maintained with their neighbours.12 In summarising twentieth-century scholarship on Jewish communal organisation in medieval Egypt, Mark Cohen, too, highlights Baer’s importance: even though Baer’s research never touched on Egypt directly, his model of Jewish communities as essentially self-sufficient formed the basic organising framework of all the foundational discussions of Jews in the world of the Genizah. Cohen also notes that this is odd since, although in general Baer believed that the Jews maintained self-sufficient and autonomous communities, he conceived of the world of the geʾonim to have been the one exception to this rule. For Baer, Near Eastern social systems subjected the Jews to the centralised rule of autocratic leadership offices, especially the gaonate and exilarchate, whose existence eroded the essentially self-reliant, democratic character of the Jewish community and stifled its creativity.13 Goitein took it upon himself to show, contra Baer, that the autonomous Jewish community had in fact remained democratic throughout its existence.14 Hence Goitein’s emphasis on the discovery that Jewish leaders were appointed first by the community, and only then appealed to the state to have their positions confirmed.15 Where Baer had seen top-down, centralised rule, Goitein revealed the complex mixture of top-down and grassroots elements in the dynamics of Jewish leadership.16 In short, Goitein not only endorsed Baer’s view of an autonomous Jewish community but extended it to the one sphere from which Baer had claimed it was missing, the world of the Genizah. Similarly, Goitein seemed to hold a rather orientalising view of autocratic caliphal rule

12

J. Ray, The Sephardic Frontier: the Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Ithaca, 2006), p. 13; J. Ray, ‘Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Our Approach to Medieval Convivencia’, Jewish Social Studies 11 (2005), pp. 1–18. 13 Baer, ‘The Origins of Jewish Communal Organization in the Middle Ages’. 14 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, pp. 402–407. At the introduction of this volume, Goitein also presents ‘juridical autonomy’, in keeping with the classical view, as ‘one of the most essential aspects of Christian and Jewish life in the countries of Islam during the High Middle Ages’ (ibid., vol. II, p. 3). 15 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 404–405. 16 A thesis taken up in Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, where it is placed on a firm documentary foundation.

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while claiming that Jews, with their pre-Islamic heritage, formed an exception to this basically despotic model. Anyone who has worked with the corpus of petitions to the Fatimid chancery discovered in part by Goitein and expanded on magisterially by S. M. Stern and Geoffrey Khan will recognise that the model of caliphal autocracy applied to no regime less than the Fatimids (969–1171), who ruled Egypt during the heyday of the Genizah documents; the Fatimids allowed the Jewish and Christian communities near total latitude in organising their own affairs (except for the years of al-Ḥ ākim’s persecutions). Goitein knew this, but he saw the Fatimids as an exception to the rule.17 Baer, then, was the reason that throughout A Mediterranean Society, and especially in volume 2, Goitein emphasised the ‘democratic’ nature of the Jewish community, an anachronism for which he was famously criticised in a review-essay by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson.18 Goitein wanted to make it clear that what held the Jewish community together was not a single powerful leader such as a gaʾon, an exilarch, or a nagid, but a more complex, imbricated, and varied network of offices, not a stagnantly monolothic political system but one characterised by healthy dissent and competition. Factionalism and dissent were a fundamental part of what he called the ‘party politics inherent in any essentially democratic society’.19 Yet as Cohen notes, for all Goitein’s emphasis on the importance of ‘democratic’ rule and networks of leaders, the basic model of communal organisation on which he relied retained elements of the old top-down model, even if now that model was not 17 S. D. Goitein, ‘Petitions to the Fatimid Caliphs from the Cairo Geniza’, Jewish Quarterly Review 45 (1954), pp. 30–38; S. D. Goitein, ‘A Caliph’s Decree in Favour of the Rabbinite [sic] Jews of Palestine’, Journal of Jewish Studies 5 (1954), pp. 118–125; Goitein, ‘Congregation versus Community’, pp. 291–304; S. M. Stern, ‘Three Petitions of the Fâṭimid Period’, Oriens 15 (1962), pp. 172–209; S. M. Stern, ‘A Petition to the Fât ̣imid Caliph al-Mustanṣir Concerning a Conflict within the Jewish Community’, Revue des études juives 128 (1969), pp. 203–222; G. Khan, ‘Copy of a Decree from the Archives of the Fatimid Chancery’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986), pp. 439–53; G. Khan, ‘The Historical Development of the Structure of Medieval Arabic Petitions’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53 (1990), pp. 8–30; G. Khan, ‘A Petition to the Fatimid Caliph al-Amir’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1990), pp. 44–54; G. Khan, ‘A Document of Appointment of a Jewish Leader in Syria Issued by al-Malik al-Afdal ʿAli in 589 A.H./1193 A.D.’, in Yûsuf Râġib (ed.), Documents de l’Islam médiévale: Nouvelles perspectives de recherche (Cairo: 1991), pp. 97–116; Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents. 18 H. H. Ben-Sasson, ‘A New Way to the World of the Genizah’ (Hebrew), Zion 40 (1975), pp. 1–46. 19 Goitein, ‘The Local Jewish Community in the Light of the Cairo Geniza Records’, pp. 133–158 (150), discussed in Cohen, ‘Jewish Communal Organization’, p. 81.

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tightly pyramidal but polycentric. Thus Goitein first proposed finding the impetus for the origins of the Egyptian nagidate, an office that competed directly with that of the geʾonim of Palestine, among the Jewish leadership rather than the Fatimid caliphs. But as Cohen observes, that argument ‘constituted but a refinement of the entrenched thesis regarding the prevalence of hierocracy in the Jewish communities of the medieval Islamic world’, since ‘it showed that in Egypt centralistic control was simply transferred from one hierocratic body—the Palestinian gaonate—to another, the nagidate’.20 As Cohen goes on to point out, Goitein did insist on the distinction between ‘ecumenical’ or transregional institutions such as the gaonate and exilarchate, which fit into the old, hierocratic model, and ‘territorial’ offices of leadership, especially the negidim in Fustat, Qayrawan, Granada, and the Yemen. But in practice, he argues, the nagidate in Egypt ‘reproduced on a more limited geographical scale the same autocratic political power that the Palestinian gaonate had previously exercised from Jerusalem’.21 For Goitein, the Jewish community blended democratic elements with hierocratic ones.

Local and Transregional Offices of Leadership This thesis was in part a product of Goitein’s focus on the Fatimid realm of Egypt and Syria, which the Genizah documents attest most abundantly, rather than on the entire region from Baghdad to al-Andalus. The question remained how the bigger picture of Jewish leadership might look if it embraced that wider swath of territory. That question had been one of the latent problems in the field ever since Mann discovered that there were geʾonim not merely in Baghdad but in Palestine as well: one of the central features of the period was rivalry between the sacred centres. The rest followed from there, but it would take a long time to tease out the implications. Meanwhile, the basic axis around which the debate turned was whether the Jewish community consisted of a great mass of followers subjected to centralistic

20

Ibid., p. 79. Goitein, ‘Local Jewish Community,’ p. 142, discussed in Cohen, ‘Jewish Communal Organization’, p. 80. 21

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and autocratic rule, of networks of local offices in competition, or of some combination of the two.22 The solution to the problem lay dormant within Goitein’s own work, which as it proceeded, devoted increasing attention to the role of the individual actors. Ben-Shammai has emphasised Goitein’s appreciation of the individual as the building block of society, which had effects both salutary and less so. In the last volume of A Mediterranean Society, Goitein treated issues of religious thought as though they ‘belonged entirely to the world of the individual’, an effect of Goitein’s intellectual and cultural formation in the world of German humanism, in which faith was relegated to the private sphere.23 On the positive side, Goitein’s focus on the individual offset Baer’s romanticist emphasis on the collectivity and loosened the tightly pyramidal model of the Jewish community that he had developed, introducing instead networks of individuals. This was in keeping with trends in American cultural anthropology, which left a deep imprint on Goitein’s work in the last fifteen years of his career. On the negative side, it made it slightly more difficult to understand how the individual could be reconciled with the community, that is, how the two levels might fit together. Did the network at which Goitein hinted merely add up to a large pyramid? Did all this individual jockeying for power admit of discerning some larger structure? Menahem Ben-Sasson has recognised the mark this problem has left on the field, noting that scholarship has tended to present Jewish communal organisation ‘in either a gaonic or a Mediterranean framework’, that is, as a function either of the hierocratic power that the yešivot are presumed to have wielded or else of the social and mercantile networks that operated independently from rabbinic authority.24 Another

22 For examples see ibid., p. 83. For American historians of medieval Jewry, almost all of whose scholarly lineage traces back to Salo Baron, the assumption of a relatively autonomous Jewish community also came from Baron’s influence, though his focus on the Jewish community derived from motives other than Baer’s and Goitein’s. Baron remained acutely aware of the significance of power and the differing interests of the leaders and the led—perhaps more than any other historian of the Jews working on the Middle Ages before or after him; he nevertheless covered the history of the Jews in Islamic lands within a gaonic framework, that is, as a centrally governed oecumine, and described the local communities as loosely organised at best. Baron, Jewish Community; Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 5. 23 Ben-Shammai, ‘Medieval History and Religious Thought’, p. 139. 24 M. Ben-Sasson, ‘Varieties of Inter-Communal Relations in the Geonic Period’, in D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity (Leiden, 1995), pp. 17–31 (18).

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way of putting the problem is that communal history in the gaonic mode presumed the power of the rabbinic elite without attempting to account for how it was sustained, while histories of trade and traders painted their subjects as operating free from the constraints imposed by religious law. As Ben-Sasson has noted explicitly and Gil by implication, separating the two worlds—conducting studies of rabbinic leadership separately from those of economics and mercantile networks—is an artificial way to proceed: even if for heuristic purposes it has yielded benefits, it is a separation entirely foreign to the authors of the Genizah documents themselves. Those worlds were hardly separate: the rabbis vied for the loyalty and financial support of the merchants; the merchants sought the moral and intellectual legitimation the rabbis offered. But how the two worlds meshed has not yet been made entirely clear.25 Nor has the problem been ameliorated by the lopsided state of the evidence and the way it clusters chronologically. Before 1000, the sources are preponderantly the responsa and other works written by the Babylonian geʾonim, many preserved through transmission among European Jews rather than rediscovered in the Genizah. After 1000, the responsa are fewer and the sources include mainly administrative and mercantile correspondence from Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Ifrīqiya and Sicily, with far fewer sources from Iraq. Nonetheless, during a crucial period of overlap in the late tenth and early eleventh century—until the yešivot in Baghdad closed ca. 1040—a large volume of gaonic responsa and rabbinic correspondence on matters administrative, legal and fiscal suggest a solution to the problem. In fact, this period was one of acute tensions between the Babylonian and Palestinian congregations, and it is no accident that it produced a very large volume of rabbinic correspondence: in the struggle for the loyalties of Jews outside the main centres at Baghdad and Jerusalem, leaders exchanges letters abundantly with their colleagues and followers.

25

See M. Gil, ‘Institutions and Events of the Eleventh Century Mirrored in Geniza Letters’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67 (2004), pp. 151– 167, 168–84 (156): ‘One has to remember that these international merchants, mostly Maghribis, were part of the Jewish social elite all over the Mediterranean area: in the Maghrib, in Egypt, in Palestine and in Sicily, and were much involved in community life. Thus we find in their letters information about the involvement of the authorities in matters concerning the Jewish communities, such as the conflicts that occasionally erupted within the Jewish leadership.’ Cf. ibid., p. 157.

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The energetic correspondence of Solomon b. Judah, Gaʾon of the Jerusalem Yešiva from 1025 to 1051, and Ephraim b. Shemariah, head of the Palestinian congregation in Fustat, attests to this: Solomon b. Judah tirelessly defended his office from the encroachments of Iraqis, both those in Baghdad and locally, into what he regarded as his turf in Egypt and Syria. Throughout the 1020s and 1030s, he complained vociferously about Hayya b. Sherira (d. 1038), Gaʾon of Pumbedita, and the leaders of the Iraqi community in Fustat ‘trying to extend their borders. If they could only manage to cast their net over everyone (in their jurisdiction), all the better to increase their profit’.26 In 1029, Solomon b. Judah even excommunicated the Iraqis in Fustat on the pretext of differences over animal slaughter, while in the same year, he refused to excommunicate the Qaraites in Jerusalem, since doing so would have risked alienating the powerful faction that now linked him to the Fatimid court, whose power he needed to reinforce his own. Indeed, around 1030, he tried to block an Iraqi Jewish leader from establishing himself in Palestine, and to do so, petitioned the Fatimid caliph al-Ẓ āhir (1021–1036), whom he beseeched not to let there be ‘two chiefs’ in Palestine.27 The events of those years demonstrate in microcosm the problems of rabbinic power, of rivalry between centres, and of the degree to which resolving them came to involve forces outside the Jewish community. In part, the conundrum of how ecumenical and local leadership meshed was a creation not of lopsided evidence but of the medieval chronicles themselves. Abraham ibn Dāwūd’s Sefer ha-Qabbalah (The Book of Tradition), composed in Christian Iberia in 1160–1161, paints the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean as having adhered to Babylonian gaonic dictates until the decline of the gaonate in the late tenth century, at which point the local Mediterranean Jewish communities asserted their independence while claiming unbroken intellectual descent from the geʾonim themselves.28 It was easy, given the

26 T-S 13J14.8, lines 23–28, Mann, Jews in Egypt and in Palestine, vol. II, pp. 125– 126 (incorrectly listed as T-S 13J14.18); Gil, Palestine, doc. 106. For further examples of Egyptian Jewry’s loyalties toward Pumbedita during this period, see Cohen, ‘Administrative Relations’, pp. 113–135 (129–130). 27 ENA 4020.65, published in Goitein, ‘Congregation versus Community’; for a detailed discussion of this document, see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, ch. 3. 28 G. D. Cohen, A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-qabbalah) (Philadelphia, 1967); G. D. Cohen, ‘The Story of the

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trade letters from the Genizah, to see the sudden boldness of these Mediterranean communities as owing to a precipitous rise of mercantile wealth. Gil and Ben-Sasson have both argued against this narrative of Iraqi decline and sudden Mediterranean independence by documenting the independent existence of non-Iraqi centres before the late tenth century. In the process, they have advanced the cause of integrating the ‘gaonic’ and ‘Mediterranean’ perspectives. In fact, as Ben-Sasson has argued via the example of Qayrawan, the two systems overlapped: Qayrawan’s community was functionally independent from the yešivot in Iraq for administrative leadership and guidance in quotidian legal matters, but it relied on Iraq for something more intangible—legitimacy—as much as the centres relied on the periphery for followers and donations, themselves a form of legitimacy. In a sense, then, whether one sees leadership as top-down or bottom-up also depends on how one sees hierarchy in general. As soon as one admits that those with more power risked losing it by losing their followers, the situation reveals its complexity, and indeed, letters by geʾonim from Baghdad demonstrate the care and deliberateness with which they cultivated their followers. Historians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been more inclined than their predecessors to recognise this, in part because of increased sensitivity to the complexities of power dynamics among historians and social scientists more broadly.29 The history of the medieval Jewish communities is thus finally edging toward a resolution to this problem: within the communities about which the Genizah has offered up the densest information—those of Syria and Egypt—Goitein and his

Four Captives’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 29 (1960), pp. 55–131; Ben-Sasson, Emergence of the Local Jewish Community. Gil’s multivolume documentary publications on the topic are essential to this argument, while his explicit statements on the subject lie within the domain of the classical view promoted by Baer and others. See, for instance, his comments in Palestine, §728, especially his assertion that ‘The separate judicial system, a network of Jewish courts of judgment, was viewed as the buttress and principal focus of the life of the nation’, a statement of the classical theory of judicial (and thus communal) autonomy; and, Baerian in its romantic nationalism, his argument that, though Jews ‘took on the outward signs of Muslim culture by way of language, manners, and even dress, an enormous chasm lay between the two worlds in everything concerning their Weltanschauung and daily customs’. He goes on to claim that the Jews avoided ‘with severity’ using Muslim courts in civil matters, an assertion contradicted by the evidence, on which see my comments in Heresy and the Politics of Community, ch. 3. 29 See, e.g., J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), an extraordinarily influential book on all the social sciences.

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students (including Stillman, Gil, and Cohen) presented a critical mass of evidence suggesting that the ties at work in the community were not merely vertical ones but lateral ones binding the congregation to the world outside it. The discovery and publication of masses of new documents over the past twenty-five years has made it possible to take these arguments even further. To illustrate this point, I should like to offer three examples of important players in Jewish communal politics whose authority derived not from traditional rabbinic means of legitimation—learning and lineage—but from their social rank ( jāh) and collective influence: courtiers, Qaraites, and long-distance traders. I will argue that each of these groups played a central role in the organised rabbinic Jewish community in spite of their rootedness in the world beyond the yešivot—and in some cases precisely because of it. All three groups suggest ways in which one might remap the Jewish community and replace the pyramidal model, once and for all, with the looser network model that Goitein’s work made it possible to imagine. The myriad political struggles within the Jewish community to which Genizah documents attest afford us a detailed understanding of how sources of political legitimacy worked and of whether Jewish leaders in practice derived their authority from within the Jewish community or beyond it. Precisely because of the dense web of ties binding the leaders of the Jewish community to the high politics of the state, those struggles demonstrate some of the weaknesses of Baer’s model of Jewish ‘communal autonomy’.

Courtiers and the Importance of the State Goitein placed courtiers and the relationship of the state to the Jewish community on the agenda of Genizah research in the second volume of his Mediterranean Society.30 But he framed the discussion by positing—incorrectly, as it happens—that the Genizah preserved very little information about the Fatimid and Ayyubid courts in Cairo, since Jewish ‘courtiers and government officials, as well as the richer merchants connected with the court, lived in Cairo’, the royal city, rather than in Fustat, which housed the main residential quarters and the

30

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, pp. 345–407.

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Syro-Palestinian Jewish synagogue that contained the Genizah.31 As he himself went on to demonstrate abundantly, the Genizah in fact preserved large quantities of information about courtiers, the government, and the ways Jews interacted with both.32 It was Cohen who first understood just how central a role courtiers played in the leadership of the Jewish community of Egypt. In his study of the origins of the office of head of the Jews, he noted that the first incumbents of the office in the 1060s–1080s, most of them physicians at the Fatimid court, were able to establish the office of raʾīs al-yahūd in continuity and perpetuity because of their relationships not only with the leaders of the Palestinian Yešiva but with the palace in Cairo. During his second term as head of the Jews, the followers of Mevorakh b. Saʿadiah (ca. 1078–1082 and 1094–1111) even complain that ‘service to the ruler’ (k̠idmat al-sulṭān) had stolen time from their leader’s communal duties.33 Yet ‘service to the ruler’ is also precisely what had restored him to his office after he was ousted from it: he had been the physician to the Fatimid vizier Badr al-Jamālī and his ‘counselor since his days of youth’, as another letter from the Genizah put it, and when al-Afḍal succeeded him as vizier in 1094, Mevorakh b. Saʿadiah was reinstated to office.34 The timing, Cohen has noted, ‘cannot be dismissed as pure coincidence’.35 Indeed, a narrative account of these events by the Palestinian Gaʾon Evyatar b. Elijah, preserved in two copies in Cambridge, offers confirmation of the importance of courtly ties: it attacks Mevorakh for having gained his office through a certain ‘lord’ (adon).36 Similarly, the leader who usurped Mevorakh b. Saʿadiah as raʾīs al-yahūd in 1082, David b. Daniel, cemented his

31

Ibid., vol. II, p. 345. I am currently at work on a study of the connections between Jews and the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk courts, for what they can tell us both about the Jewish community and about the state itself, its methods of rule, and its means of governing minority and other communities. 33 T-S 13J28.10, line 15, still unpublished; discussed in Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, p. 220. 34 CUL Add.3335, discussed in Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, pp. 219–220; published in A. Neubauer, ‘Egyptian Fragments II’, Jewish Quarterly Review O.S. 9 (1896), pp. 24–38. 35 Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, p. 219. 36 T-S 10K7.1 and T-S 12.729, published in S. Schechter, Saadyana: Geniza fragments of writings of R. Saadya Gaon and others (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 83–106 and Gil, Palestine, doc. 559; discussed in Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, p. 219. 32

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claims to leadership by marrying the daughter of a courtier (who happened to be Qaraite). Cohen meanwhile suggested that the ties between caliphal, royal, or princely courts and offices of Jewish self-government were not particular to Egypt but had parallels in Iraq, Palestine, al-Andalus, southern Italy, and the Rhineland.37 Even in Egypt, those links were not specific to the late eleventh century. Over the course of the entire period covered by the Genizah, leaders within the Jewish community rose to importance and achieved communal office because of the support they received from courtiers or because of their own positions at court. The dense network of ties between the Jewish communal leadership and Jewish courtiers had a particularly interesting concrete manifestation in the Genizah: a large number of petitions Jews submitted to individual courtiers and caliphs were preserved there. During the first seven decades of Fatimid rule, for instance, between 969 and 1041, Jews petitioned the caliph and his high-ranking bureaucrats no fewer than nineteen times seeking to bolster a particular leader in some communal power struggle.38 Why did the Jews seek such a proliferation of governmental interventions during this period? First, because the Fatimid chancery expected its religious minorities to take the initiative in their internal governance and developed the genres of petition and rescript to an extent unknown in previous Islamic regimes. Second, the Jews took advantage of this by regularly seeking the intervention of the caliph’s chancery in one of three situations: accession of a new Fatimid caliph to the throne; the rise of a new gaʾon to the cathedra of the Palestinian Yešiva; or political deadlock, when neither of the Jewish factions managed to impose its will upon the other. In cases of conflict, one party or the other sought state intervention in communal affairs not despite any qualms or misgivings about bringing in the hand of the state but because they knew that this was an effective way to resolve internal conflicts. In many of the cases documented during those years, the conflicts were driven by tensions among the Palestinian Rabbanite leadership or between 37

Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, p. 101. For details, see M. Rustow, ‘Fatimid Decrees and Jewish Communal Politics’, in M. Á. Gallego (ed.), Reason and Faith in Medieval Judaism and Islam (Leiden, forthcoming). Only eight of these attempts have been preserved in the form of actual petitions or the decree issued in response to them; the others come to us via references in letters or in other petitions. The flood of petitions may have continued even later, but the research I have conducted thus far has covered this seventy-year period. 38

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the Palestinian and Babylonian Rabbanite or Qaraite congregations. Those tensions ended only when the two rabbinic yešivot in Baghdad closed their doors ca. 1040, after which they abruptly cease. The use of the Fatimid state as an arbiter in internal Jewish political struggles stands in marked contradistinction to Baer’s argument about Jewish communal autonomy: Jewish leaders relied on the power of the state in internal affairs. The underlying principle shaping Jewish politics was that of realpolitik, and leaders used the power of the state in their own interests. Later, during the era of the ruʾasāʾ al-yahūd, the Jewish community routinised these ties to the court in Cairo by regularly choosing as their leader a courtier who would represent their interests there.

The Qaraite Factor In identifying the roles and offices of the organised local Jewish communities, Goitein and Cohen deliberately limited their evidence to rabbinic Jews rather than Qaraite ones on the purely pragmatic grounds that too little was known about the Qaraites’ social and communal history. It seemed quite plausible that Jewish communal life centered on the yešivot and the synagogues, and that the Genizah of a Rabbanite synagogue would hardly have contained a substantial number of Qaraite documents; Goitein explicitly says as much.39 But the corpora Gil later published in his book on the Tustaris and in his History of Palestine demonstrated this to be incorrect: the Genizah contained a substantial quantity of material about Qaraites and even composed by them, a fact that in itself suggests that the two groups cooperated more than the polemical material let on.40 There are not only enough documentary texts from the Genizah to permit a history of Rabbanite– Qaraite relations; if one understands the Qaraites as players in Jewish communal politics, the shape of the community itself and its offices of leadership themselves appear very differently. As early as 1959, Zvi Ankori had argued for closer Rabbanite– Qaraite cooperation than anyone before him, based mainly on the documents published by Mann. The wealth of material brought to light since Ankori’s book, by Goitein and others, suggests that in fact,

39 40

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 8. Gil, Palestine; M. Gil, The Tustaris, Family and Sect (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1981).

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Ankori did not go far enough. Schechter and Mann had discovered evidence that in Jerusalem, Fustat, Tyre, and elsewhere, Rabbanites and Qaraites married one another and arranged for their children to do so, and that they formalised the marriages in contracts that stipulated respect for the religious customs of both bride and groom.41 But it wasn’t until Goitein and subsequent generations of Genizah scholars sketched the wider social context in which all this occurred that it became clear that the marriages represented not the stories of starcrossed lovers, but a pattern of scholastic exogamy comparable with the geographic exogamy that Goitein argued was so common in the world of the Genizah. Not only that, this type of exogamy bore implications in the realm of law: Rabbanite and Qaraite court clerks and judges approved of the marriages and wrote contracts for them, stipulating mutual religious tolerance on pain of heavy fines to the poor of both groups; and Rabbanite clerks wrote marriage documents for Qaraites according to Qaraite specifications.42 More broadly, Rabbanites became Qaraites, Qaraites became Rabbanites, and people frequently altered their scholastic affiliations for reasons other than sheer religious conviction. A Judaeo-Arabic letter housed in Cambridge, first cited by Goitein and published in full by Gil, encapsulates the situation.43 Around 1030, a pharmacist, perfumer (ʿaṭtạ r), and communal leader in Ramla named Solomon b. Ṣemaḥ felt compelled to write to Ephraim b. Shemariah, the head of the Palestinian congregation in Fustat, to warn him against treating his congregants high-handedly. ‘For haven’t we in Palestine received numerous letters, the longest of which contains [the signatures of] thirty-odd witnesses, complaining that you are alienating the congregation with your haughtiness and domineering manner? Because of you and your sonin-law, many people have switched over to the other synagogue’, by which he meant the Babylonian Rabbanite synagogue in Fustat, ‘and to the Qaraite congregations’. Solomon b. Ṣemaḥ notes that rabbinic Jews were as likely to join a Qaraite congregation as another rabbinic one; for Ephraim b. Shemariah’s congregants, the politics of loyalty 41 Z. Ankori, Karaites in Byzantium: the Formative Years, 970–1100 (New York, 1959); Mann, Jews in Egypt and in Palestine; Mann, Texts and Studies; and see also S. Schechter, ‘Genizah Specimens: a Marriage Settlement’, Jewish Quarterly Review O.S. 13 (1901), pp. 218–221. 42 See Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, chs 9 and 10. 43 T-S 10J29.13 (recto, lines 20–23); Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 555 n. 44; Gil, History of Palestine, doc. 205.

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trumped religious ideology. Against this background, the polemical literature on which previous histories of Rabbanite–Qaraite relations had been based appeared to tell only part of the story. Indeed, sources from the Genizah consistently maintain that Qaraism was not a ‘sect’ or a ‘heresy’ but a mad̠hab, a ‘school of law’ encompassing both religious specialists and their loyalists—even rabbinic sources. When they use other terms, such as the Arabic or Judaeo-Arabic ṭāʾifa or the Hebrew kat (‘party’ or ‘group’), they use them to describe the Rabbanites and the Qaraites interchangeably, suggesting their equal legitimacy. The fact that from the tenth century onward, Mediterranean towns of any importance housed not two but three Jewish groups meant that congregational loyalties did not follow geographic origins, as Goitein recognised clearly. Since Jews possessed wide latitude in organising their scholastic loyalties, their leaders were, in turn, acutely conscious of their role in cultivating loyalty. That partly explains the complex system of titulature and ritual pageantry the yešivot used to maintain their own predominance not only over the Qaraites but over each other. Theories about the mechanics and contours of Jewish communal organisation can therefore no longer rest solely on studies of Rabbanite Jews. Shulamit Sela and Elinoar Bareket have argued this for the first century of Fatimid rule; my own examination of the sources has convinced me that any a priori decision to exclude the Qaraites from studies of Jewish communal history risks distorting the resulting picture of how the community actually functioned.44 Strong and durable ties bound the Rabbanite community to non-rabbinic Jews on the one hand and to the world outside the Jewish community on the other. Money, patronage, and politics, not just ideological commitment, dictated the allegiances that bound the Jewish community together. Congregational competition and jockeying for power defined Jewish life, and understanding their motives and contours explains much about the medieval Jewish community.

44 S. Sela, ‘The Head of the Rabbanite, Karaite and Samaritan Jews: on the History of a Title’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 57 (1994), pp. 255– 267; S. Sela, ‘The Headship of the Jews in the Fatimid Empire in Karaite Hands’, in E. Fleischer, M. A. Friedman, and J. Kraemer (eds), Masʾat Moshe: Studies in Jewish and Islamic Culture Dedicated to Moshe Gil (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 256–281; E. Bareket, ‘The Headship of the Jews in Egypt under the Fatimids’ (Hebrew), Zemanim 64 (1998), pp. 34–42; E. Bareket, ‘A Re-examination of the Head of the Jews in Islamic Lands’ (Hebrew), Devarim 3 (2000), pp. 35–48.

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This expanded picture of the Jewish community has to do not just with Qaraites but with courtiers. Beginning in the early 1020s, rabbinic leaders recognised that a group of three Qaraites at the Fatimid court were their surest and shortest route to the chancery, and could provide them with investitures for their own positions and therefore the possibility of political legitimacy within the Jewish community. Over the course of the 1030s, the Qaraite courtiers emerged as kingmakers in a remade Jewish political landscape, and during the next five decades, the broader community accepted the centrality of the Qaraites in rabbinic politics. Three successive contenders for the gaonate of Palestine (Solomon ha-Kohen b. Yehosef in 1025, Solomon ben Judah later the same year, and the pretender Nathan b. Abraham in 1038) made no secret of their appeals for support among Qaraite grandees and ordinary Qaraites alike. The Qaraites emerged as a third party in Jewish politics and became the focus of rabbinic leaders’ attempts to cultivate new alliances and connect themselves more securely with the Fatimid court. Where the leaders had begun, their followers joined them: over the course of the 1020s, Jewish communities all over the Fatimid realm began appealing to Qaraite courtiers for economic aid and intercession before the caliph and the chancery. The Qaraites were instrumental in remaking the structure of the Jewish community, and by the late eleventh century, their very presence as a third congregation that now shared a century of political collaboration with rabbinic institutions hastened the transition from transregional forms of authority to a territorial one centered on Egypt. The result was a Jewish diaspora that now broke apart into discrete units of governance centered on local leaders—much as the Islamic realm itself had fragmented politically in the tenth century. Equating communal authority with rabbinic authority, then, leaves out the important role played by leaders whose power derived from sources outside the Jewish community. This is as true of long-distance traders as it is of courtiers and Qaraites.

Mercantile Networks The importance of mercantile networks in communal politics has been noted before. Gil has recently argued that the mercantile letters are one of our richest sources of information about communal conflicts, a fact that indicates that merchants were deeply involved in communal

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affairs and kept abreast of them.45 The very fact that papers from these merchant houses were deposited in the Genizah also demonstrates that they were involved with the organised Jewish community in some way. But how exactly has still not been studied systematically. What follows is intended as a sketch and a spur to further research. Genizah letters attest to two concrete functions the merchant elite served within the Jewish community. First, their money gave them jāh (honour or social rank), and their jāh allowed them to take on communal responsibilities regardless of their rabbinic credentials or lack of them. Second, the merchants were instrumental in providing logistical support for the flow of responsa from the yešivot in Baghdad and donations to them. But the yešivot’s connections with merchants were not merely instrumental; the geʾonim of Baghdad did their utmost to cultivate these allies in view of the honoured positions they occupied. The merchant house of Yūsuf ibn ʿAwkal (980s–c. 1050), for instance, had its origins in Iraq, though by the time their papers began to accumulate in the Genizah, they had long since migrated west and developed bases in Egypt, doing business principally in the markets there and in Ifrīqiya, in Sicily and in al-Andalus.46 In tandem with his emergence in trade, Yūsuf ibn ʿAwkal began acting as a factor for the Pumbedita Yešiva in Baghdad. Together with a cousin in Sūsa in Ifrīqiya, an agent in Qayrawan, and more relatives in Sicily, Ibn ʿAwkal collected legal queries and donations (the two usually came together) in Ifrīqiya and conveyed them to Fustat, where other partners in the network sent them on to Pumbedita; in the reverse direction, the partners received responsa in quires in Fustat, had them copied there (hence their survival in the Genizah), and carried them back to their original questioners in Ifrīqiya.47 Pumbedita eventually granted Yūsuf the honorific title Roš Kalla (‘head of the assembly’ of students at the

45

See the citations from Gil above, n. 25. A single letter has survived from Persia addressed to the Ibn ʿAwkals in Baghdad, an address otherwise unattested in their archive, and this suggests that they had partners in Baghdad who forwarded mail to them in Fustat: T-S Ar.42.176, discussed in Goldberg, ‘Geographies of Trade and Traders’, p. 292 n. 102. 47 Stillman, East-West Relations, pp. 49–50, citing ENA 2738.10 (contra his n. 6 there, a fragment with that shelf-mark does currently exist in the JTS library); S. D. Goitein, ‘Three Letters from Qayrawan Addressed to Joseph ben Jacob ibn ʿAwkal’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 34 (1965), pp. 162–182; and see Cohen, ‘Administrative Relations’, p. 120, who points out that Ibn ʿAwkal’s ‘position within the Egyptian Jewish community represents one of the most concrete manifestations of the transplantation of Tunisian [i.e., Ifrīqiyan] Jewry’s Babylonian orientation onto Egyptian soil’. 46

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biannual scholarly convention), a title he probably earned through his transport services.48 But Ibn ʿAwkal’s loyalty to Baghdad was hardly exclusive. He also contributed money to the Jerusalem Yešiva via his chief representative in Qayrawan, Abū ʿImrān Mūsā b. al-Majjānī, who was responsible for sending Jerusalem the donations collected in Ifrīqiya.49 This is significant because it suggests that merchant allegiances to the yešivot were hardly exclusive. Indeed, the house of Ibn ʿAwkal was not alone among traders in this period who maintained dual allegiances: the al-Tāhirtī and the Berekhya brothers also helped collect funds in Qayrawan and pass them on to both Baghdad and Jerusalem.50 Nor were multiple allegiances a peculiarity of the traders. Working on behalf of Baghdad while contributing money to Jerusalem is a pattern Ben-Sasson has noted for the communities in Palermo and Qayrawan.51 Congregations in Sicily, Ifrīqiya, and Egypt are attested as soliciting responsa from the geʾonim of Baghdad while donating money to the yešivot in Jerusalem and Baghdad and earning titles anywhere they could. One loyalty did not preclude another. On the contrary: the more Ibn ʿAwkal assumed the role of lynchpin in the diocesan system oriented on Baghdad, the more he moved to the centre of politics in the Palestinian community of Fustat as well. The centres competed over him; he did not feel constrained to choose among them.

Bringing the Three Strands Together Just as the separation between rabbinic figures and other kinds of leaders in the world of the Genizah is artificial, so too in the above I have discussed courtiers, Qaraites, and merchants distinctly only for analytical purposes. In fact the same kinds of multiple loyalties one finds

48 T-S 13J8.14; Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 427, item 4; Gil, Palestine, doc. 326. 49 On Ibn ʿAwkal and the yešiva, see Gil, Palestine, sec. 816. Al-Majjânî: T-S 16.64, in S. D. Goitein, ‘Additional Material from the Ibn ʿAwkal Archives on the Mediterranean Trade around 1000’ (Hebrew) Tarbiz 38 (1969), pp. 18–42 (22–26) and Gil, Ishmael, doc. 145. 50 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. III, p. 19 at nn. 19–20. 51 Ben-Sasson, Emergence of the Local Jewish Community; Ben-Sasson, ‘Religious Leadership in Islamic Lands, pp. 177–209.

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among the merchants hold true for Qaraite merchants and courtiers as well. The merchant house of al-Tustarī, for instance, were Qaraites; by the mid-eleventh century it produced at least one great Qaraite scholar, but in the last decade of the tenth century and the first decade of the eleventh, when the family began to ply luxury wares in Cairo, they emerge as allies of Pumbedita. In fact, they substituted for Yūsuf b. ʿAwkal shortly after 1007 when he had begun to slack off, transporting responsa from Hayya b. Sherira in Baghdad to Fustat and passing them on to the Tāhirtīs, who in turn had them copied before sending them to the Berekhya brothers in Qayrawan. Hayya Gaʾon evidently knew he could turn to the Tustarīs when his other mediators failed him. The paradox of the Babylonian geʾonim turning to Qaraites for help in spreading their responsa—which one might presume to have been the instruments par excellence of rabbinic hegemony and therefore of opposition to the Qaraites—forces one to rethink scholastic ideologies and their limits. Responsa may certainly have been symbols of gaonic hegemony, just as the queries and donations that brought them were symbols of fealty; but that fealty was not exclusive. Pumbedita’s relationship with the Tustarīs lasted well into the 1030s, by which time they were courtiers central to Fatimid politics in Cairo and closely allied with the Jerusalem Yešiva. In December 1037 or January 1038, Hayya wrote to Sahlān b. Abraham, leader of the Iraqi congregation in Fustat to advise him how to conduct himself in light of rumours of a plot against him. To deter the ‘faction [qawm]’ that had ‘risen up against’ Sahlān, Hayya offered to write to Abū Naṣr Faḍl (Ḥ esed) al-Tustarī to ask him ‘to direct his solicitude [ʿināya] toward you’, that is, to extend his patronage over him and reinforce his leadership over the Iraqi Rabbanite community in Fustat.52 Al-Tustarī indeed settled the matter: nine months later, an associate of Sahlān’s, the future Jerusalem Gaʾon Daniel b. ʿAzariah, wrote to express his joy ‘that God granted the resolution [of the affair] through my lord the esteemed, honourable Abū Naṣr (al-Tustarī), may God lengthen his days, may God always appoint him a deliverer (moshiaʿ) and preserve his wealth and his standing for the sake of the collectivity (al-kāffa)’.53 Al-Tustarī did not, as far as we know, object to utilising his influence 52

Mosseri Ia.5, published most recently in Gil, Ishmael, doc. 41. T-S 13J25.3, in Hebrew, published in S. D. Goitein, ‘Daniel b. ʿAzariah, nasi ve-gaʾon: berurim u-mismakhim ḥadashim’, Shalem 2 (1975–76), pp. 41–102 (45–48) and Gil, Palestine, doc. 344. 53

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for the sake of its benefit to the Babylonian Yešiva and its representatives in Fustat. Nor were these alliances with Qaraites specific to Pumbedita. In extending his reach into Egypt, Samuel b. Ḥ ofni, Gaʾon of Sura (998–1013), also relied on the support of Qaraite grandees. In 998, the Gaʾon writes to an unknown correspondent in Fustat (presumably some functionary of the Yešiva) to ask him to thank a Qaraite named Abū Sulaymān David b. Babšād—the son of a Persian Qaraite whose appearance in tenth-century book colophons suggests that he was a wealthy book-collector and patron of Qaraite learning—for his loyalty and for the benefit he conferred upon the Yešiva.54 The second letter, written in 1008 by the Gaʾon’s son Abuʾl-Aʿlāʾ Yisraʾel at his father’s dictation, extends greetings to the same Abū Sulaymān b. Babšād.55 The two families maintained their connection to one another across generations as well as across the distance separating Baghdad and Fustat.

The Jagged Shape of the Jewish Community These letters suggest some solutions to the problem of integrating the ‘gaonic’ and ‘Mediterranean’ perspectives, pointing toward a model of communal organisation that accounts for different sources of authority and recognises that many of them could be active at the same time. By replacing the ‘gaonic’ and ‘Mediterranean’ frameworks with more precise categories, one can track mercantile, religious, and political authority and their interaction. Once these finer categories are in place, the various forms of loyalty they describe combine in ways that flout one’s expectations. Multiple allegiances are nearly impossible to explain using monolithic models of religious loyalty. They are similarly impossible to explain using a centralistic model of rule by the Babylonian geʾonim. When Rabbanite Jews in Qayrawān, Palermo, and Fustat sought ordination from the Palestinian and Babylonian yešivot simultaneously, while soliciting responsa from the latter and sending

54 T-S 8J39.9, in Judaeo-Arabic, published in S. D. Goitein, ‘A Letter of the Gaon Samuel b. Ḥ ofni, Dated 998 and its Implications for the Biography of the Spanish Poet Isaac b. Khalfon’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 49 (1979–1980), pp. 199–201, and Gil, Ishmael, doc 48. 55 Mosseri IV.15.1, in Mann, Texts and Studies, vol. 1, pp. 163–164; Gil, Ishmael, doc. 55 (shelf-mark cited incorrectly as IV 15).

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money to all three, to earlier historians, this represented nothing but the struggle between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic authorities for the loyalties of the outlying centres, a struggle supposed to have originated long before the Islamic conquests. In fact such explanations presume rather than demonstrate that loyalties must be exclusive. In practice, Jews saw no contradiction in offering fealty to more than one institution. Similarly, while the figure of the ‘informer’ (malšin) met with rabbinic condemnation in Egypt and Syria as much as in Baer’s Iberian peninsula, this was only because the rabbinic leaders themselves used the epithet to acquire a monopoly on the legitimate resort to state intervention.56 I put this forward as an admittedly tentative model for future research on the Jewish community. Historians, philologists, and other textual scholars all consciously or unconsciously think with models, even when working on the seemingly narrow problems the Genizah documents raise; the more consciously one holds those models in mind, the more effectively one can change them and devise more refined models as the evidence demands. Ignoring the state, the Qaraites, and the merchants creates an illusion of autonomous rabbinic power that masks the struggles and strategies required to attain that power. Indeed, rabbinic uses of governmental, Qaraite, and mercantile power were not exceptional cases that provoked censure. Rather, they were part of the very structure of Jewish communal authority. That Jewish communal leaders relied on the persuasive power of money and social rank and the coercive power of the state does not mean that the Jewish community in the medieval Near East was centralised or autocratic, as Baer argued. Quite the contrary: it was forced to use the means and methods at its disposal. Because the structure of the Jewish community was both loose and transitional in the eleventh century, and because a very large number of sources have been preserved from this period, they allow us to see the workings of these alternate sources of power. The new model helps make sense of evidence that hitherto seemed exceptional or simply confounding; it also sheds light on the Iraqi yešivot themselves, the very centres of supposedly monolithic rabbinic power, which did 56 See, e.g., the letter in which Solomon b. Judah asks an associate in Fustat to mobilise the Jewish notables (sarim) in Fustat and the amîrs (negidim) of the Fatimid court in Cairo against a certain malšin, CUL Or.1080 J107, published most recently in Gil, Palestine, doc. 119. I am grateful to my graduate student Craig Perry for bringing the significance of this letter to my attention.

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not exert raw power (after all, they lacked a police force, an army, or permission to bear arms) but hegemony, a moral system that encouraged voluntary loyalty through various types of reward. The new model also bears important consequences for the idea of Jewish communal autonomy. It forces one to admit that Jewish leadership was not tightly pyramidal but operated both outside and inside the channels recognised by rabbinic power and even by the state. There were a great many points of contact between Jewish leaders and the Muslim dynasts and bureaucrats who granted them the latitude to govern themselves. The official Jewish leadership drew on sources of authority outside the rabbinic system: Jewish merchants and courtiers in the entourages of amīrs, caliphs, and sulṭāns received honorific titles from the rabbinic academies after they had made a name for themselves in trade or politics. The yešivot were political institutions, even if the type and extent of the sovereignty they enjoyed is still only vaguely understood. Jewish leadership, then, cannot be fully understood when it is stripped of its ties to the world outside the Jewish community.

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H. H. Ben-Sasson, ‘A New Way to the World of the Genizah’ (Hebrew), Zion 40 (1975), pp. 1–46. M. Ben-Sasson, ‘Fragmentary Letters from the Geniza: on the History of the Renewed Links between the Babylonian Academies and the West’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 56 (1987), pp. 31–82. ——, ‘The Links Between the Maghrib and the Mashriq in the Ninth Through Eleventh Centuries’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 38 (1989), pp. 35–48. ——, The Jews of Sicily, 825–1068: Documents and Sources (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991). ——, ‘Varieties of Inter-Communal Relations in the Geonic Period’, in D. Frank (ed.), The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity (Leiden, 1995), pp. 17–31. ——, The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800–1057, 2nd revised edn (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997). ——, ‘Religious Leadership in Islamic Lands: Forms of Leadership and Sources of Authority’, in J. Wertheimer (ed.), Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality (New York, 2004), pp. 177–209. H. Ben-Shammai, ‘Medieval History and Religious Thought’, in S. C. Reif (ed.), The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 136–50. G. D. Cohen, ‘The Story of the Four Captives’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 29 (1960), pp. 55–131. ——, A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-qabbalah) (Philadelphia, 1967). M. R. Cohen, Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: the Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews, ca. 1065–1126 (Princeton, 1980). ——, ‘Administrative Relations between Palestinian and Egyptian Jewry during the Fatimid Period’, in A. Cohen and G. Baer (eds), Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868–1948) (Jerusalem, 1984). ——, ‘Jewish Communal Organization in Medieval Egypt: Research, Results and Prospects’, Judaeo-Arabic Studies 1 (1997), pp. 73–86. C. Fink, Marc Bloch: a Life in History (Cambridge, 1991). A. E. Franklin, Shoots of David: Members of the Exilarchal Dynasty in the Middle Ages (unpubl. diss.; Princeton University, 2001). M. Frenkel, Qehillat Yehude Hòalab ʿal pi kitve ha-Geniza (unpubl. diss.; Hebrew University, 1990). ——, ‘The Compassionate and Benevolent’: the Leading Elite in the Jewish Community of Alexandria in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2006). M. A. Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine: a Cairo Genizah Study (2 vols; TelAviv, 1980). ——, Jewish Polygyny: New Sources from the Cairo Geniza (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1986). M. Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden, 1976). ——, The Tustaris, Family and Sect (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1981). ——, Palestine During the First Muslim Period (634–1099) (Hebrew; 3 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1983). ——, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Hebrew; 4 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1997). ——, ‘Institutions and Events of the Eleventh Century Mirrored in Geniza Letters’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67 (2004), pp. 151–167, 168– 184. M. Gil and E. Fleischer, Judah Halevi and His Circle: Fifty-Five Geniza Documents (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001). S. D. Goitein, ‘A Caliph’s Decree in Favour of the Rabbinite [sic] Jews of Palestine’, Journal of Jewish Studies 5 (1954), pp. 118–125.

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——, ‘Congregation versus Community: an Unknown Chapter in the Communal History of Jewish Palestine’, Jewish Quarterly Review 44 (1954), pp. 291–304. ——, ‘Petitions to the Fatimid Caliphs from the Cairo Geniza’, Jewish Quarterly Review 45 (1954), pp. 30–38. ——, ‘The Local Jewish Community in the Light of the Cairo Geniza Records’, Journal of Jewish Studies 12 (1961), pp. 133–158. ——, ‘The Title and Office of the Nagid: a Re-Examination’, Jewish Quarterly Review 53 (1962), pp. 93–119. ——, ‘Three Letters from Qayrawan Addressed to Joseph ben Jacob ibn ʿAwkal’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 34 (1965), pp. 162–182. ——, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). ——, ‘Additional Material from the Ibn ʿAwkal Archives on the Mediterranean Trade around 1000’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 38 (1969), pp. 18–42. ——, ‘Daniel b. ʿAzariah, nasi ve-gaʾon: berurim u-mismakhim ḥadashim’, Shalem 2 (1975–1976), pp. 41–102. ——, ‘A Letter of the Gaon Samuel b. Ḥ ofni, Dated 998 and its Implications for the Biography of the Spanish Poet Isaac b. Khalfon’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 49 (1979–1980), pp. 199–201. ——, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in Light of Geniza Documents, edited by J. Hacker (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980). ——, The Yemenites: History, Communal Organization, Spiritual Life (Selected Studies), edited by M. Ben-Sasson (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1983). S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden, 2008). J. L. Goldberg, The Geographies of Trade and Traders in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1150: a Geniza Study (unpubl. diss., Columbia University, 2005). G. Khan, ‘Copy of a Decree from the Archives of the Fatimid Chancery’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986), pp. 439–453. ——, ‘A Petition to the Fatimid Caliph al-Amir’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1990), pp. 44–54. ——, ‘The Historical Development of the Structure of Medieval Arabic Petitions’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53 (1990), pp. 8–30. ——, ‘A Document of Appointment of a Jewish Leader in Syria Issued by al-Malik al-Afdal ʿAli in 589 A.H./1193 A.D.’, in Yûsuf Râġib (ed.), Documents de l’Islam médiévale: Nouvelles perspectives de recherche, (Cairo: 1991), pp. 97–116. ——, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1993). J. Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fâṭimid Caliphs: a Contribution to their Political and Communal History, Based Chiefly on Genizah Material Hitherto Unpublished (2 vols; New York, 1970). ——, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature (New York, 1972). R. E. Margariti, Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Chapel Hill, 2007). A. Neubauer, ‘Egyptian Fragments II’, Jewish Quarterly Review O.S. 9 (1896), pp. 24–38. J. Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza: Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine (Leiden, 1998). J. Ray, ‘Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Our Approach to Medieval Convivencia’, Jewish Social Studies 11 (2005), pp. 1–18. ——, The Sephardic Frontier: the Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Ithaca, 2006). M. Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community: the Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca, 2008).

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——, ‘Fatimid Decrees and Jewish Communal Politics’, in M. Á. Gallego (ed.), Reason and Faith in Medieval Judaism and Islam (Leiden, forthcoming). S. Schechter, ‘Genizah Specimens: a Marriage Settlement’, Jewish Quarterly Review O.S. 13 (1901), pp. 218–221. ——, Saadyana: Geniza fragments of writings of R. Saadya Gaon and others (Cambridge, 1903). S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton, 2001). ——, ‘Historiography on the Jews in the “Talmudic period” (70-630 CE)’, in M. Goodman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford, 2003), pp. 79–114. J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990). S. Sela, ‘The Head of the Rabbanite, Karaite and Samaritan Jews: on the History of a Title’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 57 (1994), pp. 255– 267. ——, ‘The Headship of the Jews in the Fatimid Empire in Karaite Hands’, in E. Fleischer, M. A. Friedman, and J. Kraemer (eds), Masʾat Moshe: Studies in Jewish and Islamic Culture Dedicated to Moshe Gil, ed. (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 256–281. U. Simonsohn, ‘Communal Boundaries Reconsidered: Jews and Christians Appealing to Muslim Authorities in the Medieval Near East’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 14 (2007), pp. 328–363. S. M. Stern, ‘Three Petitions of the Fâṭimid Period’, Oriens 15 (1962), pp. 172–209. ——, ‘A Petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir Concerning a Conflict within the Jewish Community’, Revue des études juives 128 (1969), pp. 203–222. N. A. Stillman, East-West Relations in the Islamic Mediterranean in the Early Eleventh Century: A Study of the Geniza Correspondence of the House of Ibn ʿAwkal (unpubl. diss.; University of Pennsylvania, 1970).

PERSIANARABIC BILINGUALISM IN THE CAIRO GENIZAH DOCUMENTS Shaul Shaked

The number of Judaeo-Persian documents deriving from the Cairo Genizah and from other oriental sources of similar antiquity (i.e. roughly tenth to thirteenth centuries CE) is now quite considerable. In my Tentative Bibliography1 only one Judaeo-Persian document is listed. This is a document kept at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and it was published by D. S. Margoliouth in 1899 under the title: ‘A JewishPersian law-report’.2 It remained for a long time the only published Judaeo-Persian document from the Cairo Genizah. Shortly afterwards another very early Judaeo-Persian text was published by the same scholar, the famous Dandan Uiliq letter, found in Chinese Turkestan.3 Very close in time to these two publications, Carl Salemann, a Russian scholar, published a brief notice of the extremely important Tafsir of Ezekiel from the Firkowicz Collection, which certainly derives from an unspecified oriental depot of manuscripts, though clearly not from the famous Cairo Genizah.4 This is about all that was published of early Judaeo-Persian texts for more than sixty years. In 1968 a new era began in the study of the Judaeo-Persian texts, with the publication by D. N. MacKenzie of what he called a ‘Jewish Persian Argument’ from a fragment at the British Library, a very interesting text from the linguistic as well as from the historical and literary points of view. The text is not really an argument;5 it is a portion 1

S. Shaked, A Tentative Bibliography of Geniza Documents (Paris, 1964). D. S. Margoliouth ‘A Jewish-Persian law-report’, Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1899), pp. 671–675. 3 D. S. Margoliouth, ‘An early Judaeo-Persian document from Khotan in the Stein Collection, with other early Persian documents’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1903), pp. 737–760. Another such letter has been discovered recently, and will be published by Zhang Zhan (initially presented at the Sixth European Conference on Iranian Studies, Vienna, September 2007). 4 C. Salemann, ‘Zum mittelpersischen Passiv’, Izvestija Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk série 5, vol. 13:3 (1900), pp. 269–276. 5 When D. N. MacKenzie sent me his offprint, he added the dedication: ‘This is better than a modern Scottish-Israeli argument’, alluding to an exchange of letters between us concerning the Middle Eastern politics of the time. 2

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from a preamble to a Karaite composition dealing systematically with the Jewish precepts, a genre of compositions known as Sefer Miṣvot.6 As is common with such pieces of writing, basic theological issues are discussed, and the tone is sometimes polemical. About the same time I became aware of the existence of several fragments in Judaeo-Persian in the major Genizah collections. The first impetus came from a suggestion made by my teacher S. D. Goitein, who alerted me in the 1960s to the existence of a document in JudaeoPersian in the Mosseri Collection, which had just become accessible in microfilm form about that time.7 I subsequently looked for all JudaeoPersian texts in the various Genizah collections, in Cambridge and elsewhere, with the help of colleagues who were working on other types of Jewish material, such as Judaeo-Arabic documents, piyyuṭ, and similar stuff. The plan to publish a complete corpus of these fragments was formulated, and I have made an effort to draw up a list of all known Judaeo-Persian texts in the accessible manuscript collections and of transcribing and translating the individual texts. Even now, this plan has not yet been carried out. I have benefited over the years from the assistance of a former student, Dr Ronit ShamgarNikolsky, who helped me with the transcriptions. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the study of manuscripts kept in St Petersburg and other Russian collections was made possible. Dr Thamar E. Gindin worked on the Tafsir of Ezekiel from St Petersburg for her Ph.D. thesis, and we are now trying to make ready for publication the rest of the corpus. It is to be hoped that the unpublished material will be ready for publication within a few years. A few words may be in order concerning the term ‘Early JudaeoPersian’. The discovery of the Genizah documents in Judaeo-Persian has made it possible to reach a better understanding of the changes in Judaeo-Persian and of their significance for the history of the Persian language. Most of the fragments which derive from the Cairo Genizah and from other Genizah sources belong to a layer of language that is earlier by some two to four centuries than the earliest Judaeo-Persian literary monuments known to us previously. This has made it necessary to distinguish between two broad chronological corpora of texts

6 Cf. also in S. Shaked, ‘An early Karaite document in Judaeo-Persian’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 41 (1972), pp. 49–58 (49–50, especially n. 5). 7 Ibid.; a new transcription and translation of this document is now necessary.

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in this language. Classical Judaeo-Persian literature is largely a product of the fourteenth century onwards, while the datable documents from the Genizah may be assigned to the period from the tenth up to the mid-thirteenth century. This is not merely a chronological distinction. The watershed in this case is the Mongol invasions of the Persian speaking countries during the first half of the thirteenth century. This turbulent period had a profound influence on the history of the country and its literature. As far as Judaeo-Persian is concerned, both the language used and the literary style and genres were affected. Late Judaeo-Persian literature uses a language that is very close in structure to Classical Persian (although some writings are close to the colloquial variety of Persian). It can be described as an offshoot of Classical Persian, with a few distinctive features: the use of the Hebrew script, and the fact that it contains a sprinkling of Hebrew and Aramaic words and expressions that got into the language of the Jews as part of their religious and cultural life. There are only rare occurrences of non-Classical vocabulary in most of this literature (with the exception of the early Tafsirs, or commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, which should be treated separately). Pre-Mongol Judaeo-Persian, on the other hand, presents a totally different linguistic picture. It is, in the first place, not a homogeneous language. The different texts can be assigned to several different regional varieties of Persian. In at least one case,8 it represents an otherwise unknown variety of Judaeo-Iranian. A ground-breaking contribution to the dialectology of the JudaeoPersian texts was made by Gilbert Lazard in a series of articles, but as the material accumulates we are in a better position to refine the classification of dialects and the assignment of texts to the different regions in which they were created. At this stage in our knowledge, it is possible to assign the different language forms attested in the Early Judaeo-Persian (EJP) texts to five regional types, as I have tried to show in a recent article.9

8 Published in S. Shaked, ‘An early Geniza fragment in an unknown Iranian dialect’, Acta Iranica 28 (FS Prof. J. P. Asmussen; Leiden, 1988), pp. 219–235. 9 Cf. S. Shaked, ‘Classification of linguistic features in Early Judeo-Persian texts’, in W. Sundermann et al. (eds), Exigisti monumenta. Festschrift in honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams (Wiesbaden, 2009), pp. 449–461. It is amusing to note that some tombstones from Afghanistan published recently, the text of which belongs to EJP of the Afghan type, are described in a recent article as written in Hebrew with ‘Persian loan-words’; see E. C. D. Hunter, ‘Hebrew-script tombstones from Jām, Afghanistan’,

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This brings to mind a puzzling feature that is present in some of the Judaeo-Persian letters found in the Genizah. Some of the letters in EJP of the Khuzistan type,10 using as usual the Hebrew script, contain words and phrases written in the Arabic script. These concern usually such stereotypical Arabic formulae of blessing or exclamation as in šāʾa llāh and also pragmatic matters such as personal names, which must have served for addressing people, and besides also the formal address of the letters, to be used by the messengers carrying them. From these instances it may be assumed that the writers of the letters treated Judaeo-Persian as a Jewish language, to be written in Hebrew characters, while the phrases in Arabic script were considered to be quotations from the predominant non-Jewish language, namely Arabic. According to this explanation a distinction exists between Persian-speaking Jews, for whom (Judaeo-) Persian is a mother tongue, hence a Jewish language, and Arabic-speaking Jews, for whom Arabic fulfilled the same function. The latter did not feel the need to use Arabic characters, because their language was (Judeao-) Arabic, a Jewish language, naturally written in the Hebrew script.11 These observations would normally apply only to Persian Jews living in an Arabspeaking environment, not to those who lived at home in Iran, where this dichotomy of script does not apply and where it is never attested to my knowledge. Another type of bilingualism in commercial correspondence is afforded by a letter (T-S 8J19.28) written in Judaeo-Arabic perhaps from Morocco or Spain, and with references to the India trade, but containing a generous sprinkling of phrases in Judaeo-Persian (JP). Only the bottom part of the letter is preserved. Here is what can be read (see plate 8): [---] ‫ ובאקי אלכף עלי מא תרך מולאנא‬.1 ‫ טו̇ אלטאיב ̇תו̇ ̇ב ̇גו יא סרי בפרושי מן אמת וטוב‬. ̇ 2 ‫ דו̇ ̇צ ̇ד ז̇ ̇ר ̇פי̇ ̇לי̇ ̇א ̇מי̇ אן שא אללה ̇ב ̇פ ̇רו̇ ש‬. ̇ 3

Journal of Jewish Studies 61 (2010), pp. 72–87 (72); Hunter, ‘A Jewish inscription from Jām, Afghanistan’, in W. Sundermann et al. (eds), Exegisti monumenta. Festschrift in honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams (Wiesbaden, 2009), pp. 191–196. Needless to say, Judaeo-Persian is not Hebrew but Persian, and the Persian vocabulary is an essential constituent within it. 10 For a description of this type of language, cf. Shaked, ‘Classification of linguistic features’. 11 The terms Judaeo-Arabic and Judaeo-Persian are of course modern, and are not attested in the pre-modern period.

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‫ ב ̇דו̇ ̇צ ̇ד ז̇ ̇ר ̇פי̇ ̇לי̇ ̇אי̇ ̇מי̇ ̇ש ̇ת נאכודה אלמריה‬. ̇ 4 ‫ א ̇מי̇ ̇ב ̇גו̇ ̇ב ̇ס ̇ת ̇אן̇ אבריסם ̇ב ̇צ ̇ד וִ נִ י̇ ̇ם‬. ̇ 5 ̇‫ באבה ̇פנ̇ ̇ג אלוזנה ̇אי̇ ן̇ ̇ד ̇ג ̇ל נ̇ י̇ ̇ם ̇צ ̇ד ̇פי̇ ̇לי‬.6 ‫ ב ̇ס ̇ת ̇אן̇ באבה סרא סרא ונחן יא סידנא‬. ̇ 7 ‫ אעזך אללה מן יום כתאבנא אליך הדא‬.8 ‫חד ̊ש‬ ̊ ‫אלכ ̊תאב קבל ראש‬ ̊ ‫שבט וכאן‬ ̊ ‫ ראש חדש‬.9 ‫ ביומין‬.10

In the margin: ‫ לאגל‬.11 ‫ תאכר אלרפקה‬.12 ‫ א ̇מי̇ אן שא אללה ̇ב ̇פ ̇רו̇ ̇ש‬. ̇ 13 ‫ושלום וטוב מא סאהל אללה‬ ̇ ‫אמת‬ ̊ ‫ מן‬.14 ̇‫]צ ̇ד[ ̇פי̇ ̇לי‬ ̇ ̇‫ או̇ ̇ל ̇ב ̇אז̇ ̇ר ̇גן̇ ̇כי̇ ̇ש ̇ת אלמריה בסתאן ̇דו‬. ̇ 15 ‫אברי̇ סם‬ ̇ ̇‫ מי̇ ̇ש ̇ת ̇ב ̇ס ̇ת ̇אן̇ נאכודה אי ̇ב ̇ס ̇ת ̇אן‬. ̇ 16 ‫ ]אדא כ[אן למולאנא מן חאגה ישרפנא בהא‬.17 ‫[ עלינא פי אמר אתתכאלנא‬---] .18 ‫[ם מע מן תרסל‬---] .19 ‫ א[בתאנת‬---] .20 TRANSLATION 1. and the rest of the light merchandise12 according to what our lord13 left [---] 2. 15 (?), ripe (?).14 You say, magnanimous sir, may you sell from ‘truth and goodness’, 3. two hundred fili15 of gold, if God makes it possible16 (?), God willing, sell

12 For al-khiff in this sense cf. Goitein and Friedman, Joseph Lebdī, prominent India trader. Cairo Geniza documents [India Book I] (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2009), p. 235 n. 10. 13 That is, you. 14 Participle of the verb in the 1st form; cf. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, vol. 2, 2nd edn (Leiden and Paris 1927), p. 76, s.v. t ̣yb, where this verb is defined as “to become ripe, to be cooked”. 15 An Indian coin; cf. Goitein and Friedman, Abraham ben Yijū, India trader and manufacturer. Cairo Geniza documents [India Book III] (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2010), p. 171 n. 15. 16 The letters ʾmy may be an abbreviation. This sequence usually occurs in this document before “If God wills”, and it seems possible that it may be a polite phrase for expressing a request. One can think of ‫אדא מא ימכנה‬, “if it were made possible to him to do”, with the addressee referred to respectfully by the pronoun of the third person, as usual in this document. One would however expect here a verb in the perfect tense. Alternatively, ‫“ אדא מכנה י'י‬if God makes it possible for him [=for you] to do.”

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shaul shaked 4. for two hundred fili17 of pure18 (?) gold. (To) the ship-owner of Almeria, 5. if God makes it possible (?), say19: Take the silk for a hundred and a half,20 6. on account of 21 five by weight.22 This base money, fifty fili, 7. take on account of each house23 (separately). We, our lord, 8. may God give you strength, from the day (we sent) our letter to you, this 9. first day of the month of Shebaṭ, — the letter was (written?) two days before 10. the first of the month — IN THE MARGIN 11. because of 12. the delay in the arrival of the company. 13. If God makes it possible (?), God willing, sell 14. from ‘truth, peace and goodness’ that which God will facilitate (you to do). 15. First, take the merchant of pure (gold?) of Almeria, take two hundred 16. pure (?) fili, take a24 ship owner, (and) take silk. 17. [If] our master has any need,25 let him do us the honour (of bidding us do) it. 18. [---] to us in the matter of our reliance,26 19. [---] with whomever you send. 20. [---] it has become clear27 (?).

The letter is full of unsolved puzzles, and its comprehension is fraught with difficulties. I received a reference to it, with a transcription and 17 Read fili i mišt, with an izāfe marked by an independent word written ʾy. The same orthography is used in line 16 for indicating yā-ye vaḥ dat. 18 mišt is probably a word borrowed from an Indian language in the sense of “washed, pure, unadulterated” or the like. Sanskrit mrishṭa has a range of meanings such as “washed, cleansed, polished, pure” as well as “sweet, pleasant, agreeable” (cf. M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English dictionary (Oxford 1899), p. 829c; In nineteenth-century Urdu and Hindi we find mišt in the sense of “sprinkled, moistened; sweet, pleasant”, no doubt derived from the same Sanskrit word; Cf. J.T. Platts, A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi and English (London 1884), s.v. 19 The word bgw occurs here and in line 2 in contexts which suggest that it may be something other than the imperative of “to say”; it could possibly be another abbreviation. 20 That is, 150. 21 This (and in the next line) is a Persian usage of the word bābat, apparently unattested in Arabic. 22 I cannot interpret this phrase. 23 The word is sarā sarā “house by house”. 24 In nʾkwdh ʾy the second element is yā-ye vaḥ dat (marker of the indefinite). 25 I.e. request. 26 The text seems to read fī amri ittikālinā . . . The orthography, with two taws, is unusual. 27 This seems to be the verb BYN in the 8th form, perf. f.sg.

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notes, from S. D. Goitein many years ago (the date it carries is 1975), and it is clear that Goitein also had difficulties interpreting it. Some of the difficulty in understanding the language stems perhaps from the fact that the type of coin mentioned here is not otherwise familiar from the Genizah documents. The Persian words are mostly marked by dots over them. This indicates that the introduction of this foreign element into the text of the letter is deliberate and it is possible that the recipient was not supposed to expect it, or at any rate that the writer may have been worried that the recipient would be confused and wanted to highlight the foreign words, which seem to have held a special sense. At the same time he clearly assumed that his correspondent would be familiar with both languages. One possible explanation for the unusual bilingualism in this case is that the Persian elements were meant to constitute a secret mode of communication between the writer and his correspondent. Judaeo-Arabic was obviously familiar to the Jewish traders in the Maghreb, but Judaeo-Persian must have been fairly esoteric along this particular trade route. Whatever the precise meaning of the letter, which remains obscure, the writing practice in this letter is quite interesting. Looking at the phrase ‘sell from emet ve-ṭov’, and also, at a similar phrase further down that says ‘sell from emet ve-šalom ve-ṭov’, one may be tempted to understand this as meaning ‘sell by truth, peace and goodness’, that is to say something like ‘conclude (the deal) in a fair and profitable manner’, yet this is hard to reconcile with the preposition min ‘from’ that precedes the words ‘truth, peace and goodness’. A better way of understanding the phrase may therefore be to regard the Hebrew phrase ‘truth, (peace) and goodness’ as a cryptic code-name for a type of goods that the writer did not want to identify explicitly, lest it fall in the hands of competitors. Presumably even the use of Persian could not disguise the nature of the goods involved, hence he seems to have resorted to a previously agreed-upon code in Hebrew, which the intended recipient of the letter could recognise.28

28 This usage is reminiscent of the Jewish Persian jargon known as Loterai, on which see E. Yarshater, ‘The hybrid language of the Jewish communities of Persia’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 97 (1977), pp. 1–7; G. Lazard, ‘Note sur le jargon des Juifs d’Iran’, Journal Asiatique 266 (1978), pp. 251–255; A. Netzer, ‘Studies in the colloquial language of the Persian Jews’ (Hebrew), in Y. Dan (ed.), Tarbut ve-historiya (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 19–44 (22–23). It also contains numerous cryptic allusions and functions often as a cryptic language in the employ of Jewish traders.

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There are a number of other letters from the Genizah that present a different type of hybrid bilingualism. It involves again Arabic and Persian, but here the alternation is between Arabic written in the Arabic alphabet and Persian written in Hebrew characters. We can talk of Standard Arabic and Judaeo-Persian mixed together and alternating in the same document. As an illustration for this procedure, we may have a look at T-S K24.16 (see plate 9), which contains this mixture of Persian in Hebrew characters and Arabic in Arabic characters: — .1

‫ وﺟﺮا ﺑﻨﺎ ﻣﺎ اﺣﺐ ﷲ وان ﻣﺎ ﻟﻘﺎ ﻣﻦ ﷲ وﺑﻌﺪ ﻣﺎ ﲪﻠﻮا ﺷﻴـﺎ‬.2 ‫ﺑﻠﻐﻮا ﺑﺬﻟﮏ ]ﻣﺎ[ ﯾﺘﺤﻤﻠﻮﻧﻪ‬ ‫ ﻻن اﻣﺮﻫﺎ ﻣﻌﻮﻗﻪ ﻧﺸﮑﻴﻬﺎ ואגר ני רסיד אין כאר אסר ני שוד‬.3 ‫ והר צנד אפס אופתיד אין תיסי כואר איסתיד פא נפקא מי שוד‬.4 ‫ ואנגה אז נוי ﻣﺤﺘﺎج הים תמאם קירדן ופאין אפטורי בודן‬.5 ‫اﻟﺸـﻴﺦ اﺑﻮ ﻋﻠﯽ رﺿﯽ اﻟﻠﻪ ﻋﻨﻪ‬ ‫ כס פא דנגי סים אוסתואר מאן ני מי כונינד והרץ יאזמרום אבר‬.6 ‫ כסיאן וצוד אזישאן שוד אנון כאריש מועוק איסתיד ומן אניז‬.7 ‫ ני מי תואנום שודן אצאיי צי זינהאריש פא גרדנום אובסת היסת‬.8 ‫ ופאין סאמאן אבר כטר סנגי הום אנון اﻟﻠﻪ اﻟﻠﻪ اﻟﺮﺣﻤﻪ קו חילת‬.9 ‫כוניד‬ ‫ תאין תיס אבונום חאציל בי בוד תא שאיהיד קו רויש בי‬.10 ‫ גושהיד ומן אניז תואנום שודן אצאיי מעאשי צוסתן واﻟﺴﲅ‬.11 1. — 2. and29 there happened to us whatever God wished. What we got (?), is from God. After they suffered something, they reached the utmost of that which they could bear, 3. for that affair is under an impediment about which we complain. If he (?) does not come, this matter will not come to its end,30 4. and no matter how much occurs afterwards, it will be an insignificant thing, (no more than) living expenses. 5. At that time I am constrained to conclude (the matter) anew (?) and by this means to get rid31 of (? the pressure of ?) al-Shayk̠ Abū ʿAlī, God be pleased with him. 6. No one gives us surety even for a dāng of silver. Everything I had (a claim for) from 7. the people and from other than them, is now impeded,32 and I can

29 30 31 32

Words written in Arabic characters in the original are marked here by bold italics. That is, ‘it will not be solved’. Assuming a Hebraism from the root PTR. Lit. ‘its matter is impeded’.

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8. no more go anywhere, for his letter of safety has fallen from33 my neck. 9. In this region I am in grave danger. Now, by God, by God, mercy, find a way out 10. so that the matter should accrue to my account, so that his face 11. may open up,34 and that I may still be able to go to an(other) place to seek a living. And peace (be upon you).

Here the situation seems to be that the people involved are Persian Jews who have spent enough time in an Arabic-speaking milieu, mostly perhaps among Muslims, to be not only fluent in speaking and writing Arabic, but to feel the need to spice their Persian text with words and phrases expressed in Arabic in the Arabic script, with the effect of livening up their discourse. Thus the Persian that they speak and write is part of their Jewish heritage, and can only be written in Hebrew characters, while the Arabic that they use in speech and writing belongs to the general, non-Jewish, environment. Both languages seem to be native or very natural to them. The tenor of this particular letter is one of great anguish and distress, and it does not seem as if the mixture of languages is a conscious effort at achieving an effect. It looks simply to be an attempt to communicate in the most direct and natural way with the correspondent so as to get help in trouble, hence its importance in documenting a mode of communication that is as close as one would wish to face-to-face conversation. One of the noteworthy features of this text is the use of vowel marks in the Persian words, placed over the letters, in shapes no doubt inspired by the Babylonian system of punctuation. Two dots placed next to each other in a nearly horizontal fashion, with a slight slant downwards towards the left, indicate a simple vowel (or sometimes diphthong?) ē(y) in words and particles such as nē (line 3 and several other occcurrences), hēm (line 5), mē (the durative verbal particle, line 8), -ē (the indicator of the indefinite, yā-ye vaḥ dat) in tis-ē (line 4), dāng-ē (line 6), also kunēd (line 9, impv. 2nd person pl.). An interesting use of this sign is in the word kasēyān (line 7), as a plural of kas. One dot over a letter indicates the vowel i, as in uftīd (line 4), istīd (line 4, 7), tis (line 10). Two dots placed vertically one on top of the other indicate the vowel a, e.g. š(a)vad (lines 3, 4). The same sign occurs also on top of the vav in ʾptw ̣ ry (line 5), a word of uncertain 33 34

Lit. ‘on’. Presumably, ‘that he may be favourably disposed towards me’.

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derivation and meaning; it may have been meant to be a short vertical stroke, as the sign occurring over the vav in rōyaš (line 10), ōbast (although it looks like an elongated dot; line 8). The language of this letter belongs quite definitely to the Khuzistan type of Persian, and the use of the vowel signs is also a feature of the grammatical Karaite tafsīr fragments, which may also be attributed to Khuzistan.35 Another example of this type of hybrid JP-Arabic letter is afforded by T-S Ar.42.176. The letter is written from Basra to Fustat, to Joseph b. Jacob Ibn ʿAwkal. It starts with the traditional Arabic (Muslim) formula bismi llāhi l-raḥ mān al-raḥ īm. ḥ ājat ibni l-ḥ asan bn fasā bn šaʿyā bn isḥ āq inšāllāh. istak̠arnā llāha ʿazza wa-jalla. . . . This is essentially a letter in Standard Arabic, written in the Arabic alphabet, with dispersed words and phrases in JP. It is normally assumed, I believe with a great deal of justice, that bilingualism is much more common than bi-literacy, just as oral articulation is by far more common than the ability to read and write. And yet in certain societies bi-literacy is quite a normal feature. The existence of a group of permanent immigrants from a foreign country with an alien language, who are literate in their own language, creates a situation whereby it is necessary for them to use also the script of the host country. A condition for this is that the relevant society in the host country—in this case a trader community—should also be literate in their own language. We have seen that in the Genizah there are several motives for creating hybrid written documents. One circumstance that makes this happen is when the Persian immigrants are so well assimilated in the Arab-speaking culture, that it comes to them naturally to employ Arabic words and phrases when they speak and write Persian. It is interesting nevertheless that they change script when they utter (in writing) such Arabic phrases, although Muslim Persians have always used similar Arabic words and phrases without feeling the need to change script. A fair number of English expressions are used in modern Hebrew writing, and in most cases they are rendered in the Hebrew script, with all the shortcomings of the Hebrew alphabet in regard to representing the sounds of English. Another aspect of this

35 See Shaked, ‘Two Judaeo-Iranian contributions’, in S. Shaked (ed.), Irano-Judaica (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 292–322 (310–311); G. Khan, Early Karaite grammatical texts (Atlanta, 2000), pp. 250–297 (text 3).

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mixture of scripts is the fact that for this group of people, Persian is apparently a Jewish language, and they would not think of writing it in the Arabic script adopted by most Persian speakers, and perhaps would not be able to do that. Arabic for them does not have the variety that we call Judaeo-Arabic, only the one that is written in the Arabic script. Another form of hybrid writing mentioned is the writing of JudaeoArabic, i.e. Arabic in Hebrew letters, interspersed with Judaeo-Persian phrases, written in the same Hebrew script, but marked as different from the Judaeo-Arabic text by dots over the letters. We have considered the possibility that the inclusion of Judaeo-Persian phrases in a Judaeo-Arabic text may indicate the introduction of a cryptic language. The Karaites are known to have used the Arabic script much more often than the Rabbanites,36 and among the Persian-speaking Jews of Fustat and other Jewish centres we know that there were quite a few Karaites. It is quite possible that the facility of moving between the two scripts was more typical of Persian Karaites, perhaps because they may have studied the Arabic script as part of their education, which the Rabbanites may not have done. It must however be noted that we have no evidence for this assumption. In fact, none of the Judaeo-Persian documents that display a skill in using both Hebrew and Arabic scripts shows any mark of a Karaite affiliation.

Bibliography R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionaries arabes, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1927). T. E. Gindin, ‘Three fragments of an early Judaeo-Persian tafsīr of Ezekiel’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27 (2002), pp. 396–418. ——, ‘The Tafsīr of Ezekiel: four copyists or four authors?’, in L. Paul (ed.), Persian origins—Early Judaeo-Persian and the emergence of New Persian. Collected papers of the symposium, Göttingen 1999 (Wiesbaden, 2003), pp. 15–30. ——, The language of the Tafsīr of Ezekiel, MS Firkowicz I 1682 (Vienna, forthcoming). S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, Joseph Lebdī, prominent India trader. Cairo Geniza documents [India Book I] (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2009). ——, Abraham ben Yijū, India trader and manufacturer. Cairo Geniza documents [India Book III] (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2010).

36 Kitāb al-anwār wa-l-marāqib by Qirqisāni was written largely in the Arabic script.

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E. C. D. Hunter, ‘A Jewish inscription from Jām, Afghanistan’, in W. Sundermann et al. (eds), Exegisti monumenta. Festschrift in honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams (Wiesbaden, 2009), pp. 191–196. ——, ‘Hebrew-script tombstones from Jām, Afghanistan’, Journal of Jewish Studies 61 (2010), pp. 72–87. G. Khan, Early Karaite grammatical texts (Atlanta, 2000). Al-Kirkisānī, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, Kitāb al-anwār wa-l-marāqib: Code of Karaite law, 5 volumes, edited by L. Nemoy (New York, 1939–1943). G. Lazard, ‘La dialectologie du judéo-persan’, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 8 (1968), pp. 77–98 (reprinted in Lazard, 1995, pp. 27–48). ——, ‘Note sur le jargon des Juifs d’Iran’, Journal Asiatique 266 (1978), pp. 251–255. ——, ‘Le judéo-persan ancien entre le pehlevi et le persan’, in P. Gignoux (ed.), Transition periods in Iranian history. Actes du Symposium de Fribourg-en-Brisgau (22–24 mai 1985) (Leuven, 1987), pp. 167–176 (reprinted in Lazard, 1995, pp. 123–132. ——, La formation de la langue persane (Paris, 1995). ——, ‘Du pehlevi au persan: diachronie ou diatopie?’, in L. Paul (ed.), Persian origins— Early Judaeo-Persian and the emergence of New Persian. Collected papers of the symposium, Göttingen 1999 (Wiesbaden, 2003), pp. 95–102. D. N. MacKenzie, ‘An early Jewish-Persian argument’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 31 (1968), pp. 249–269. D. S. Margoliouth ‘A Jewish-Persian law-report’, Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1899), pp. 671–675. ——, ‘An early Judaeo-Persian document from Khotan in the Stein Collection, with other early Persian documents’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1903), pp. 737–760. M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899). A. Netzer, ‘Studies in the colloquial language of the Persian Jews’ (Hebrew), in Y. Dan (ed.), Tarbut ve-historiya (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 19–44. ——, ‘An early Judaeo-Persian fragment from Zefreh. Psalms 44:24–27, 45:1–9 and 55:2–16’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27 (2002), pp. 419–438. J. T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884). A. Ravāqī, Qorʾān-e qods. Kohantarīn bargardān-e qorʾān be fārsī? (Tehran, 1986). C. Salemann, ‘Zum mittelpersischen Passiv’, Izvestija Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk série 5, vol. 13:3 (1900), pp. 269–276. S. Shaked, A Tentative Bibliography of Geniza Documents (Paris, 1964). ——, ‘An early Karaite document in Judaeo-Persian’ (Hebrew), Tarbiz 41 (1972), pp. 49–58. ——, ‘Two Judaeo-Iranian contributions’, in S. Shaked (ed.), Irano-Judaica (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 292–322. ——, ‘An early Geniza fragment in an unknown Iranian dialect’, Acta Iranica 28 (FS Prof. J. P. Asmussen; Leiden, 1988), pp. 219–235. ——, ‘New data on the Jews of Afghanistan in the Middle Ages’ (Hebrew), Peʿamim 79 (1999), pp. 5–14. ——, ‘Classification of linguistic features in Early Judeo-Persian texts’, in W. Sundermann et al. (eds), Exigisti monumenta. Festschrift in honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams (Wiesbaden, 2009), pp. 449–461. E. Yarshater, ‘The hybrid language of the Jewish communities of Persia’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 97 (1977), pp. 1–7.

ORDERS OF PAYMENT, ORDERS OF SUPPLY, INSTRUCTIONS FOR PAYMENT, AND STATEMENTS OF CREDIT IN THE GENIZAH AND OTHER COLLECTIONS AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY ‫ ביקר‬- ‫ ריע משכבר הימים‬- ‫לסטפן‬

Avihai Shivtiel

In his monumental book A Mediterranean Society,1 S. D. Goitein draws our attention to twenty orders of payment2 found in the Cairo Genizah at Cambridge, which were written by a businessman named Abū Zikrī Judah the son of Joseph ha-Kohen Sijilmāsī who lived in Fustat in the twelfth century CE. It seems that Abū Zikrī was born in Sijilmāsa in Morocco, and at a later stage in his life moved to Cairo where he became a reputable banker and the representative of other businessmen, mainly from his homeland, who traded with Egypt and India.3 Moreover, the fact that he was a kohen had no doubt added to his credibility and prestige as a successful and trustworthy entrepreneur. Goitein also discusses twelve other orders of payment in his book, as well as in other publications. 1 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). 2 The Judaeo-Arabic equivalent term for orders of payment is not clear, since a number of different terms are used. See, e.g., W. Diem and H.-P. Radenberg, A Dictionary of the Arabic Material of S. D. Goitein’s Mediterranean Society (Wiesbaden, 1994), where the terms hawāla, ruqʿa, suftaja and sakk all appear. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 460 n. 70, also mentions the Greek-Aramaic dioqne. A. L. Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton, 1970), pp. 273, 275, however, defines suftaja as ‘bill of exchange’, hawāla as ‘transfer of debt’, and salam as ‘form of sale entailing advance payment for future delivery’. Elsewhere he defines ruqʿa and sakk as ‘instructions for payment transfer’—A. L. Udovitch, ‘Reflections on the Institutions of Credit and Banking in Medieval Islamic Near East’, Studia Islamica 41 (1975), pp. 5–17 (11). 3 For details concerning his birthplace, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 192. For the twenty orders of payment, see ibid., p. 241. For the name Abū Zikrī used formally and informally, see ibid., p. 357. For his position, see ibid., p. 380 n. 49 and S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1962), p. 299. See also S. D. Goitein, ‘Religion in Everyday Life as Reflected in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza’, in S. D. Goitein (ed.), Religion in a Religious Age (Cambridge MA, 1974), pp. 3–17 (15).

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E. Ashtor briefly discusses four orders and, in the case of one of them, he suggests a different and more reasonable translation than that of Goitein.4 M. Gil deals with six new orders (five from the TaylorSchechter and one from the Jacques Mosseri Collection), mainly in the context of the trade in oil.5 Other references to various orders are made by Baker and Polliack, Brody, Davis and Outhwaite, Delbes, Reif, and Wigoder, among others.6 However, thanks to my late colleague Dr Friedrich Niessen and to Dr Ben Outhwaite, Head of the Genizah Research Unit, and my own modest contribution, we have up until now discovered seventy-six (!) new orders, that, to the best of my knowledge, have not hitherto been dealt with, bringing the total number to one hundred and thirty-four, including one hundred and nineteen in the T-S Collection, eleven at Westminster College, three in the Mosseri Collection and one in Cambridge University Library’s Michaelides Collection of Arabic papyri. Moreover, as work on all these Collections is still ongoing, the one hundred and thirty-four orders of payment and of goods found up until now may not be the final figure. The physical size of the orders and their style are almost identical: they measure 8×6 cm approximately; they are written on paper (except one papyrus fragment from the Michaelides Collection); each contains on average three to five lines; the majority are completely blank on verso (except T-S AS 151.199) or contain jottings that are not part of the order itself; the handwriting is usually legible, while their condition is generally reasonable, except for very few that are badly damaged or have words missing or are difficult to decipher, mainly owing

4 T-S Ar.30.184 (20). E. Ashtor, Histoire des prix et des salaires dans l’Orient médiéval, p. 184. It seems that here it refers to the house of Amīn al-Dawla and not to his wife, as claimed by Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 241, vol. II, p. 479. 5 See M. Gil, ‘Supplies of Oil in Medieval Egypt, a Genizah Study’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34 (1975), pp. 63–73 (71), and Gil, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Hebrew; 4 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1997), vol. IV, no. 608. 6 C. F. Baker and M. Polliack, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 202, 541; R. A. Brody, A Handlist of Rabbinic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 42, 46; M. C. Davis and B. M. Outhwaite (2003), Hebrew Bible Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 2003), vol. III, p. 299; P. Delbes, Les documents datés de la Geniza du Caire (Cambridge University and Westminster College): liste chronologique des documents dates, repertoire (Paris, 1991–1992), pp. 251–252; S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo (Richmond, Surrey, 2000), pp. 205, 267; G. Wigoder (ed.), Jewish Art and Civilization, vol. I (New York, 1972), p. 86.

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to the fading of the ink. Some carry a date, usually in Hebrew, and in most cases the signature of Abū Zikrī Kohen. The language of all the orders is Judaeo-Arabic, except for three— T-S Ar.54.19 (m), T-S AS 151.132 and T-S AS 161.146 (v)—which are all written in Arabic characters.7 The syntax of the orders usually follows the classical Arabic word order, i.e., VSO, namely, the verb precedes the subject and is followed by the object, e.g., yadfaʿ al-šayk̠ Abū l-Ḥ asan al-Hūd li-muwaṣsị lihā t̠alāt̠at awāqi šarāb tuffāḥ , ‘Sheikh Abū l-Ḥ asan al-Hūd will pay the bearer three pounds of apple syrup potion’ (T-S Ar.54.19 (a)). To a lesser extent we find the word order SVO (i.e. the subject appears before the verb), e.g., al-šayk̠ Abū l-Faraj yadfaʿ li-muwaṣsị lihā, ‘Sheikh Abū l-Faraj will pay to the bearer . . .’ (T-S AS 150.53). Also the bearer’s name or his title or his name and title may be mentioned in apposition, e.g., . . . li-muwaṣsị lihā Abū l-Ṭ ayyib . . . (T-S NS J82); li-muwaṣsị lihā al-šayk̠ Abū l-Barakāt (T-S AS 146.88); li-muwaṣsị lihā mawlāya al-šayk̠ al-rayyis (T-S AS 148.13 (c)). As to their layout, most of the orders have at the top the Hebrew word ‫באמת‬, ‘truly, in truth’, to indicate their authenticity. The letter ‫ב‬ usually has its base extended in a shape of a bowl and includes inside it the word ‫אמת‬. Goitein suggests that the letter ‫ ב‬is a short version of the common opening formula in Aramaic found in correspondence: ‫‘( בשמך רחמנא‬In Your name, O Merciful’), which is the equivalent of the Muslim basmala (= bismi llāhi al-Raḥ mān al-Raḥ īm), while the word ‫ אמת‬is an acronym for the phrase ‫אמת מארץ תצמח‬, taken from Psalms 85:12.8 Goitein’s assumption regarding the letter ‫ ב‬is no doubt correct, bearing in mind that scores of letters written by Jews contain this formula or its shortened versions ‫ב״ר‬, ‫ בשמ׳ רח׳‬or just ‫ב‬. However, his explanation of the word ‫ אמת‬does not seem to be convincing in this context. Instead it seems to me that it is simply a Hebrew translation of the Arabic verb ṣaḥ ḥ a (true, correct; a valid record), which is commonly used in medieval official correspondence in Arabic, mainly in accounts and receipts.9

7 T-S Ar.54.19 (m) has both texts in Arabic and in Hebrew characters. The Arabic version however is crossed out. 8 See Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 241. 9 See, Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1993), e.g., docs 138, 140–159 (8). See, e.g., T-S AS 146.8; T-S AS 147.199.

334

avihai shivtiel

The word ‫ באמת‬is usually followed (but sometimes is written slightly above it), by what appear to be—according to Goitein—Coptic figures, with the Arabic phrase ʿaynan, ‘ready money, cash’, in-between. The rest of the text usually reads as follows: Mr So-and-So will pay the bearer of this (note) [whose name may be mentioned] the sum of such-and-such, which sometimes is followed by the word ʿan (‘for’) after which the product or object is specified (i.e. for candles, for hot oil, etc.). The date (the month and year) appears, in the case of some orders, at the bottom of the document in the left corner, while the name of a third party appears in the middle or on the right. The writers of a number of orders use a more personal and ornamented style typified by the usage of ‘polite expressions’, such as yanʿam or yatafaḍḍal, ‘to be delighted; to have the pleasure; to be honoured’, before the main verb yadfaʿ, ‘will pay or will supply/deliver’, and on rare occasions, the concluding Hebrew phrase ‫שלום‬, ‘in peace’, appears, while the signature at the bottom may be simply al-mamlūk, ‘your (obedient) servant’ (T-S AS 151.245) or al-mamlūk al-aṣġar, literally, ‘your youngest servant’ (T-S AS 147.199) or a combination of the word al-mamlūk followed by a name (T-S AS 148.157). Honorific titles, common in medieval correspondence at large, may also appear in the text.10 However, a large number of orders contain, in addition to names, goods (i.e. commodities, products, etc.) and their quantities, which also begin with the verb yadfaʿ, e.g., yadfaʿ al-šayk̠ K̠alīl li-muwaṣsị lihā t̠alāt̠at awāqi ṣābūn, ‘Sheikh K̠alīl will deliver/supply to the bearer three pounds of soap’ (T-S NS 338.30). Etymologically speaking, the Arabic verb dafaʿa conveys, according to the main Classical Arabic dictionaries, the sense of ‘to thrust, push, impel, drive away or back’. None of these dictionaries (including Lisān al-ʿArab, al-Muḥ it̠, Tāj al-ʿArūs, Jamharat al-Luġa and Lane’s, with the exception of Dozy) denotes the meaning ‘to pay’ or ‘to supply’, a meaning which seems to have been used in Middle Arabic and later entered the standard stratum of the language. For even the Qur’anic

10 Cf., e.g., T-S AS 146.8: yatafaḍḍal al-mawlā al-šayk̠ al-ajall Abu ‘l-[. . . .] ʿazzazahū llah muʿādatahū yadfaʿ li-muwaṣsị lihā al-šayk̠ ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ʿišrīn dirham wa-niṣf . . ., ‘May the Master the prominent Sheikh Abū l-[ . . .]—May God protect him against hostility—pay the bearer twenty dirhams and a half . . .’. In T-S AS 146.315: al-mawlā al-kohen yanʿam yadfaʿ . . ., ‘the master the kohen will kindly pay . . .’.

orders of payment

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verse fa-(i)dfaʿū ilayhim amwālahum (Qur’an 4:6) is rendered as ‘to release, give, deliver them their property’.11 Hence, when no money is mentioned but only goods, or when goods and their quantities and prices are specified, we may assume that the document is not an order of payment but an order for supply of goods. This distinction in usage may clearly be demonstrated by several orders of supply or delivery in our collections. For example: yadfaʿ al-šayk̠ Abū l-Ḥ asan al-Hūd li-muwaṣsị lihā t̠alāt̠at awāqi šarāb tuffāḥ . Abū Zikrī Kohen, ‘Sheikh Abū l-Ḥ asan al-Hūd will supply to the bearer three pounds of apple syrup. Abū Zikrī Kohen’ (T-S Ar.54.19 (a)). A more distinctive example for the different usage of the verb yadfaʿ may be attested by T-S AS 148.157: yā mawlaya al-šayk̠ waliy al-dawla tanʿam bi-faḍlika tadfaʿ li-muwaṣsị liha al-masṭara asṭur bihā al-karārīs wa-usayyiruhā lil-mawlā wa-ḥ aqq dīni mā aʿīquhā ʿanka aṣlan wa-in qaṣadta t̠amanaha ʿarrifnī kam huwa anā usayyiruhu laka wa-allah yuwaffiquka wa-yurziquka rizq min ʿindihi wa-yusāʾiduka ve-šalom, al-mamlūk, Šelomo ha-melammed, ‘My Master, Waliy al-Dawla12 would you be good enough to give/hand over to the bearer (of this note) the book-ruler so that I will be able to rule the booklets and I shall return it to you and I swear by my faith that I will not keep it (lit. ‘confiscate it from you’), and if you wish to name a price for it, please, let me know the price and I will send it to you and may God give you success and provide you with livelihood from what He possesses and support you. And peace, your servant Solomon the teacher’. Similarly, the document T-S AS 147.199 contains the following order: yanʿam al-šayk̠ Ibrahim waffaqahū l-Allah yadfaʿ li-muwaṣsị liha al-ḥ imār allad̠ī waʾada wāliduka bihī munʾaman mutafaḍḍilan, al-mamlūk al-aṣġar Šelomo b’’r Šela (?), nuḥ o ʿEden, ‘Would Sheikh Ibrahim, may God grant him success, be kind enough to deliver/hand over to the bearer the donkey that your father promised me, be blessed with prosperity and be kind. The young servant, Solomon b’’r Šela (?), his rest be in Eden’. On the other hand, we find that the bearer was used by the payer as a courier to transfer funds to the payee in settlement of a debt. 11

Cf. Lane, p. 891 also, dafa`tu lahū qiṭ`atan min al-māl - I gave him a part or a portion of the property. Sny. a`ṭā. 12 An honorific title, meaning ‘The Confidant of the Government’; see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 500.

336

avihai shivtiel

In this case the main verbs used were either yaqbiḍ or simply yak̠ud ‘to receive’. For example, al-šayk̠ Abū l-Makārim dāmat niʿmatuhū yaqbiḍ min muwaṣsị lihā qīrāṭayn nuqra . . ., ‘Sheikh Abū l-Makārim will receive from the bearer two qiraṭs silver coin . . .’ (T-S AS 150.4), or yatafaḍḍal mawlāya al- šayk̠ Abū l-Muna dāma ʿizzuhū yak̠ud min muwaṣsị lihā t̠alāt̠at darāhim al-bāqī ʿindī . . ., ‘May my master Sheikh Abū l-Muna, may his glory last for ever, receive (lit. take) from the bearer the three dirhams that were deposited in my possession . . .’ (T-S AS 145.78). Another type of order of payment, according to Goitein,13 is a note containing instructions for payment issued, for example, by David haNasi to the communal officials Maḥfūẓ and Sālim to pay monies to members of the community entitled to receive them (T-S Ar.52.248; T-S NS 225.24; T-S AS 146.5, 22; T-S AS 148.72; T-S AS 148.132). Or, four documents in which the collectors of revenue (jubā pl. of jābi) are instructed to pay certain people monies (T-S NS 320.27; T-S AS 146.18; T-S AS 147.150; T-S AS 151.199). They begin with the sentence yadfaʿ or yadfaʿu jubā rafʿ al-maqām or simply al-jubā li- followed by a name of a payee who is paid directly and not through a ‘bearer’. Finally, a fourth type are statements of credit which confirm the entitlement of a person to payment of monies. These usually begin with the verb ṣaḥ ḥ a, which normally means ‘true, correct, valid’ but should, in this context, be understood as ‘is due to’. For instance, the documents T-S AS 146.16; T-S AS 152.5 and T-S AS 153.33 (and possibly T-S AS 149.53, signed by someone named Solomon . . .) issued by Abū Zikrī Kohen in favour of Sheikh Abū l-Surūr, e.g., B[eʾemet] ṣaḥ ḥ a lil-šayk̠ Abū l-Surūr k̠amsat ʿašar dirham lā ġayr, ‘15 dirhams are due to Sheikh Abū l-Surūr’, i.e., he is legally entitled to be paid 15 dirhams.14 There are some minor semantic variations in respect of the common formula. For example, the word li-ḥ āmilihā may be used instead of li-muwaṣsị lihā for the bearer, e.g., al-mawlā rabbi Simḥ a (?) šemarahu ṣuro yadfaʿ li-ḥ āmiliha . . ., ‘Master Rabbi Simḥa, may God protect him, will pay the bearer . . .’ (T-S AS 147.32). 13

Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. III, p. 481. In connection with a document Halper (formerly Dropsie) 465, which contains names of people for whom poll tax was to be paid, Goitein translates the word saḥ ḥ as ‘in order, paid’; see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. II, p. 467. 14

orders of payment

337

Also the verb yusallim, ‘pass on’, may be used instead of the more common verb yadfaʿ,15 e.g., yatafaḍḍal mawlāya al-dayyān aḥ yahū llah yusallim li-muwaṣsị lihā sabʿat danānīr illā subʿ, ‘May my Master the judge, may God grant him long life, kindly pass on to the bearer seven dinars less one seventh’ (T-S AS 146.19). Orders of payment or orders of supply of goods may also have—after the sum or the quantity—the phrase lā ġayr, which is the equivalent of the word ‘only’ often used today in cheques (e.g., T-S AS 146.16; T-S AS 153.33 or T-S AS 145.76). One order of payment (T-S AS 146.22) ends with the Arabic phrase, in shallah, ‘God willing’. As far as the contents of the orders of payment are concerned, the formula used suggests that there were in fact three parties involved: the first person was the one who undertook to pay, then the bearer, and finally the third person, named at the bottom of the order, who was, in most cases, the trader Abū Zikrī Kohen. According to Goitein, the first person is ‘the issuing banker’; the second person is ‘the bearer’ and the third person is ‘the issuer’.16 This assumes that there had been in fact two issuing parties, the payer and the banker (mainly Abū Zikrī Kohen who authorized the payment). Though Goitein does not clearly indicate the exact position of the third party, he explains the procedure in another work, stating that: ‘the customer submits the account to his banker’. However, Goitein himself regards it ‘a strange procedure that might have had its origin in the specific relation between the two persons’.17 It seems to me that in the case of orders of payment, the first person was simply the payer. The bearer was the person to whom monies were due, while the third person (e.g. Abū Zikrī) was playing a double role: he was the person who validated the document as a witness (though the common word šāhid (witness) does not appear in the text) and possibly a guarantor, in case the first party should fail to pay. This clear division does not refute or contradict Goitein’s explanation, it only tries to simplify the status of each of the parties. Moreover, the fact that the bearer was the person to whom money was due could be deduced from the names of some of the bearers, who seem to have been important figures in the community, e.g., al-Qāḍī (the Judge) 15

Though the Arabic verb sallama means ‘to hand over’, the equivalent Hebrew root (šillem), meaning ‘to pay’, may have been in the mind of the user. 16 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, p. 241. 17 Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1962), p. 299.

338

avihai shivtiel

Abū l-Makārim (T-S AS 145.125), al-Rayyis (the Head) Abū Saʿd (T-S Ar.30.184 (n)) or al-Ḥ azzan (the Cantor) Abū Saʿid (T-S Ar.54.19 (s)). Furthermore, the bearer may also be referred to by his title only, such as al-Rayyis (T-S NS J178 (c)) or Mawlāy al-Šayk̠ al-Rayyis (T-S AS 148.13 (c)). It seems also that a whole family (or the wife of a person?) acted as a payee. In this case the word dār is used, e.g., dār Rīḥ ān (T-S Ar.30.184 (a; j)); (T-S AS 148.13 (b)); dār Abū l-Makārim (T-S Ar.30.184 (d; k; r)); or dār al-Riyāni (T-S Ar.30.184 (l)). Although one order reads: yadfaʿ al-šayk̠ Abū l-K̠ayr K̠iyār li-muwaṣsị lihā ʿan dār Abū l-Makārim t̠alāt̠īn, Adar Šeni 1451, Abū Zikrī, ‘Sheikh Abū l-K̠ayr K̠iyār will pay the bearer for the house of Abū l-Makārim thirty . . .’ (T-S AS 151.145), thus suggesting that here the transaction involves a house and not a family. On the other hand, in the case of orders of supply it seems that the first party was the wholesaler or the retailer to whom the order was submitted by the bearer, who himself was also the one who delivered the goods to the person who ordered them or the customer. There is not, however, sufficient information to allow us to clarify the position of the third party, namely, whether he was the customer himself or he was an agent acting on behalf of a fourth party, not mentioned in the document. Incidentally, no order of supply contains the name of the bearer, from which we may conclude that he was simply a courier. Various people are mentioned as the payers of the orders: Sheikh Abū l-K̠ayr K̠iyār appears in thirty-four orders; Sheikh K̠alīl, twentyfour; Abū l-Hasan al-Hūd, three; Abū l-Faraj (also al-Qāḍī Abū l-Faraj), three; Abū l-Mūna, two; and about a dozen others appear once only, either by name, e.g., Sheikh Abū l-ʿAlāʿ (T-S NS J8), by title, e.g., al-Dayyān (T-S AS 146.19) or by title and a name e.g. Abū l-Faḍl al-Ḥ azzan (T-S AS 147.31). Although the majority of the orders were issued by Abū Zikrī and very likely were written in his own hand, there are a few that contain the names of other people, who all seem to have been respectable and well-known public figures. For example, the writer of the order T-S NS J8 is Abū l-Faraj, the writer of T-S NS J263 is the ‘son of the Head’ (bin al-rayyis); T-S AS 145.78 was written by the son of Elijah ha-Dayyan, while three orders (T-S NS 225.24 (verso); T-S AS 146.5; and T-S AS 146.22) have at their top the name David ha-Nasi, who orders the payment.

orders of payment

339

The signatories of the various orders (guarantors?) were: Abū Zikrī Kohen, who signs eighty-four times; Samuel b. Seʿadya, three times; and Abū l-Faraj, once. The names of other signatories are either illegible or are missing altogether. The dates of the orders are not always provided. However, those thirty-eight orders to contain a date usually refer, as has been mentioned above, to a month and a year of the Jewish calendar, e.g., seventeen out of the twenty orders under the general classmark of T-S Ar.30.184 were written during the month of Av 1451 (July–August 1140), while the other three were not dated, whereas eighteen out of the twenty orders under the classmark T-S Ar.54.19 were not dated, with only two carrying the dates Kislev (January–February) and Ṭ evet (February–March) of the same year, respectively. Only rarely is the exact day provided, e.g., al-arbaʿ min ḥ odeš iyyar šenat alfa. . . . lišṭarot, ‘The fourth of the month of Iyyar the year one thousand . . . of the Era of Documents (i.e., according to the Seleucid Calendar)’ (T-S AS 130.79), or, the seventh of Nisan 1451 (T-S AS 146.88). The order of payment T-S AS 146.8 refers to the Muslim month of Jumāda. All in all, most of the orders were issued during the year ‫( אתנ״א‬1140–1). However, the years ‫( אתנ״ב‬1141–2), ‫( אתנ״ג‬1142–3) and ‫( אתנ״ד‬1143–4) are also mentioned, while two documents bear the years ‫( אתע״ו‬1165–6) and ‫( אתע״ז‬1166–7), respectively. Bearing in mind that during the Fatimid period (969–1171) the currency, and in particular the exchange rate, were different from time to time and from one place to the other, the amounts of money referred to in the orders of payment fluctuate between half a dirham and twenty-nine dirhams and a quarter of a dinar and in one case one hundred dinars. Most of the amounts, however, were relatively small. The quantities of the commodities mentioned in the orders of supply vary between one quarter and six raṭl (pound).18 As to the commodities themselves, they include: Food: grapes (3); raisins (1); chewing gum (2)19 Syrups: lemon (8); ʿaqid (7); rose (6); sikanjabin (6); apple (2); pomegranete (2) 18

For the various weights, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, pp. 360–

361. 19 For the popularity of chewing gum in medieval Egypt, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. I, pp. 268, 467 n. 8.

340

avihai shivtiel

Jams: rose (2); quince (2); pomegranate (1); apple (1); pear (1); fig (?) (1); lemon (1) Oils: hot oil (16); good quality oil (1) Cleaning products: soap (6) Lighting: candles (1) In addition, two orders deal with transactions concerning property (T-S Ar.30.184 (t), and T-S AS 151.145).

Conclusion The present paper has attempted to provide a brief sketch of four main types of short orders found in the Taylor-Schechter and other collections at Cambridge: orders of payment, orders of supply of goods, instructions of payment and statements of credit, i.e., documents that confirm the entitlement to monies. While not every document to contain the word yadfaʿ is an order of payment, or, as suggested, an order of supply, the four types discussed are certainly one of the commonest methods of financial transanction and money transfer during the periods represented by the Genizah manuscripts. Moreover, the fact that the majority of the orders were issued by Abū Zikrī suggest that they may have been his favourite method of ‘credit and debit’, but the existence of other orders, written by different people and of those written in Arabic characters suggest that it was a widespread and popular method of payment or of ordering goods, legally accepted and practically employed, allowing payees, probably for security reasons, not to carry cash on them. Finally, perhaps the most interesting conclusion is that cheques were not invented in the early modern period in Europe, but were clearly in use much earlier in the Middle East.

Bibliography E. Ashtor, Histoire des prix et des salaires dans l’Orient medieval (Paris, 1969). C. F. Baker and M. Polliack, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 2001). R. A. Brody, A Hand-list of Rabbinic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1998).

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341

M. C. Davis and B. M. Outhwaite (2003), Hebrew Bible Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 2003). P. Delbes, Les documents datés de la Geniza du Caire (Cambridge University and Westminster College): liste chronologique des documents dates, repertoire (Paris, 1991–1992). W. Diem and H.-P. Radenberg, A Dictionary of the Arabic Material of S. D. Goitein’s Mediterranean Society (Wiesbaden, 1994). M. Gil, ‘Supplies of Oil in Medieval Egypt, a Genizah Study’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34 (1975), pp. 63–73. ——, In the Kingdom of Ishmael (Hebrew; 4 vols; Tel-Aviv, 1997). S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1962). ——, A Mediterranean Society, (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). ——, ‘Religion in Everyday Life as Reflected in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza’, in S. D. Goitein (ed.), Religion in a Religious Age (Cambridge MA, 1974), pp. 3–17. G. Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1993). S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo (Richmond, Surrey, 2000). A. L. Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam (Princeton, 1970). ——, ‘Reflections on the Institutions of Credit and Banking in Medieval Islamic Near East’, Studia Islamica 41 (1975), pp. 5–17. G. Wigoder (ed.), Jewish Art and Civilization, vol. I (New York, 1972).

THE WEAKENING OF THE BOURGEOISIE: SOCIAL CHANGES MIRRORED IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE GENIZAH LETTERS Esther-Miriam Wagner

Social changes inevitably lead to changes in language. Sociolinguists such as Bergs have provided an explanation for this well-known phenomenon using Middle English as an example.1 Innovations are usually spread by individuals who are connected to a greater number of people than average. People in these ‘open networks’ are responsible for introducing innovations into the speech of their respective groups where the innovation either catches on and leads to a change in language, or does not take hold and is dismissed within a relatively short period of time. Lesser-connected people with fewer contacts in ‘dense networks’ tend to speak more conservatively, but in times of social change people are often uprooted; their usual way of life is disturbed and their close-knit networks are broken up. These processes occur even more rapidly with certain Jewish languages, because they are by nature sociolects, dialects defined by a particular social environment. For example, it is probably no coincidence that Yiddish took huge steps in its development away from the surrounding Middle German dialects after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), as a result of which Jews became ostracised within the wider Christian society, and after the ghettoisation of Jews in the fourteenth century following the first big waves of the Black Death in Europe. The example of Yiddish, however, also shows us that these changes need not be identical in different geographical regions. In fact, identical processes can lead to completely opposed phenomena. While the emancipation of Jews in Germany and their integration into the German middle class led to the near extinction of the spoken JudaeoGerman variety within Germany, the same historical process, the enlightenment, led to a re-evaluation of the language in the east, in

1 A. Bergs, Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421–1503) (Berlin, 2005), summary on pp. 263–264.

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Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, and eventually to the emergence of Yiddish literature and language as it is known today.2 As can be expected, the Judaeo-Arabic material of the Genizah also reflects social changes within the Mediterranean Jewish community. The language used in documents from the Late Ottoman period, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is fundamentally different to, for instance, the Judaeo-Arabic written in medieval times. Even for the less-initiated observer, the vocabulary, orthography and morphology differ from medieval Judaeo-Arabic and demonstrate many vernacular features. This is not surprising, considering that these documents were written under Ottoman rule, where the social environment was very different to that of medieval times, in which the whole society had been suffused with the ideals of Classical Arabic writing. Changes between, for example, material from the eleventh and thirteenth centuries are not so obvious at first glance. But even within this supposedly relatively-homogenous Classical Judaeo-Arabic period we can detect subtle differences in the use of the Arabic language. In the eleventh century, it is unthinkable for a letter-writer to mention the name of the recipient’s wife (or even any woman’s name), unless they are related. When a writer expresses greetings to a man’s spouse, he speaks about his ahl or his bayt, ‘his people’ or ‘his house’, often even when they are in fact related. In the latter half of the twelfth century, however, wives’ names start to appear in letters, and from the thirteenth century, they are freely mentioned by name. Goitein explains this development, thus: ‘This change cannot be attributed to the weakening of religious discipline, for the Late Middle Ages were characterized by strictness and bigotry rather than by laxing. Nor can it be explained by the immigration of French Jews to Egypt and Palestine (beginning around 1200) . . . Nor do I believe that this change was confined to the Jewish community. I am rather inclined to see in it one of many expressions of a social transformation caused by the generally worsening economic conditions and the subsequent weakening of the bourgeoisie, which had endeavored to keep up standards of dignified behaviour inherited from the ruling classes and the court’.3

2 See D.-B. Kerler, The origins of modern literary Yiddish (Oxford, 1999), in particular pp. 19–20. 3 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993), vol. III, pp. 161–162.

the weakening of the bourgeoisie

345

Linguistically, the emulation of the ruling classes and the court would have resulted in a closer adherence to the rules of Classical Arabic and to the formulaic language of the courts. On the other hand, we would expect that the weakening of the bourgeoisie would lead to the abandonment of Classical Arabic forms in favour of more vernacular forms. There is evidence for this in Muslim Arabic after the Seljuk conquests.4 In the Genizah letters, we can similarly encounter a number of phenomena that show this pattern and support Goitein’s analysis. To demonstrate the differences within the so-called Classical JudaeoArabic material, documents from two time periods are contrasted with each other. The first corpus consists of letters from the Fatimid period at the beginning of the eleventh century; this is then compared to correspondence written during the Ayyubid period at the beginning of the thirteenth century. a) The Epistolary Opening In the eleventh century, we find certain standard formulae employed to open letters, similar to those used in Arabic epistolary practice; compare: ‫כתאבי יאמולאי אלשיך אלגליל אטאל אללה בקאך ואדאם נעמאך ותאידך‬ ‫וסלאמתה וסעאדתה‬ My letter, oh my master and lord, may God prolong your life and make your well-being, your support, your safety and your happiness lasting T-S 8J18.33/1f. (11C Egypt)

This formula, with slight variations, is used in most of the letters in the eleventh century. In Maghrebian letters kitābī can be omitted and the introduction instead begins: ‫אטאל אללה בקאך‬ May God prolong your life T-S 13 J 36.1/1 (11C Maghreb)

The opening formulae are sometimes preceded by the basmala, both in Arabic and Aramaic-Hebrew form:

4 See J. Fück, Arabiyya. Untersuchungen zur arabischen Sprach- und Stilgeschichte (Berlin, 1950), pp. 115–124.

346

esther-miriam wagner ‫בסם אללה עטי֗ בחאבי יאסידי ומולאי אטאל אללה בקאך ואדאם עזך‬ ‫ותאידך‬ In the name of the Mighty Lord, my letter, oh my master and lord, may God prolong your life and make your strength and support lasting T-S 13J15.9 (11C Egypt)

‫בשמך רחמנ֗ כתאבי אטאל אללה בקא מולאי‬ In Your name, O Merciful One, my letter, may God prolong the life of my master T-S Misc.25.62 (11C Egypt)

Only a few letters do not start along these lines; the majority keeps to this very formal, flowery style, clearly inherited from Arabic scribal traditions. A change is apparent towards the end of the eleventh century. This is the period of the Seljuk conquests, when the Turcomans (of which the Seljuks were the most prominent family) conquered Palestine, destroying large parts of the country and killing many of its inhabitants, before launching raids into Egypt. The Palestinian Yeshiva relocated from Jerusalem to Tyre. The Fatimid rulers of Egypt battled the invaders from the East, with the Turks invading Cairo in 1068 before being driven out again in 1074. The Fatimids were finally overthrown by the Ayyubids in the twelfth century.5 Compared to the Fatimids, who had to a certain degree maintained ‘classical’ Arab court manners, and under which a broad bourgeoisie followed a similar social code, the new rulers, a dynasty of Kurdish origin, were not steeped in these traditions. A general worsening of social conditions had a negative impact also on the higher strata of society, who upheld etiquette and social manners. This in turn affected the language in use, as the diglossia of Arabic requires a broad intellectual class to maintain the forms and expressions of the largely artificial ‘high’ variety of Standard (Classical) Arabic. So it is not surprising that in the thirteenth-century letters the Classical Arabic opening has been abandoned. The writers dispense with most of the traditional introductory formulae and instead show in many cases a more pragmatic introduction, with the name of the sender (often with the attribute al-mamlūk ‘the servant’) or the name of the addressee given right at the beginning. The phrase al-mamlūku

5

See M. Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 409–418.

the weakening of the bourgeoisie

347

yuqabbilu l-arḍ bayna yadayi l-mawlā, originally used in petitions to the Fatimid caliph al-Amir (1101–1130), had become a popular phrase in polite letter writing, including letters where both writer and addressee were in fact of the same social rank.6 ‫רחומ מן ענד ממלוכה אבו אלמגד‬ ֗ ‫בשמ‬ ֗ In the name of the Merciful, from his servant Abu ʾl-Majd T-S 13J35.15/1

‫רחמ מן אום דאוד עמתך‬ ֗ ‫בשמ‬ ֗ In the name of the Merciful, from Umm Daʾūd, your paternal aunt T-S 13J34.9/1

‫אלממלוך אלאצגר אברהם בירבי שלמה הרב ז֗ ֗צ ֗ל יוקבל ידיי אלמולי‬ The humblest servant Abraham b. Solomon ha-Rav, of blessed memory, kisses the hands of the master T-S 13J21.5/1f.

‫[ אל רומיה תקבל אלארץ בין ידי‬. . .] ‫רחמ אלממלוכה רחל אל‬ ֗ ‫בשמ‬ ֗ [‫]אלמולי‬ In the name of the Merciful, the servant Rachel [. . .] of Byzantium kisses the ground before [the master] T-S 12.575/1f.

‫חצרה אלמולא אלרייס‬ ֗ ‫אלי‬ To the majesty, the master, the leader T-S 8J23.14/1

Similarly, we can find many Hebrew words and phrases in the beginning of letters otherwise written completely in Judaeo-Arabic. Although Hebrew phrases also appear in a few Judaeo-Arabic letters from the Fatimid period, in particular those written by religious leaders, they are far more widespread in letters of the Ayyubid period. ‫[ אליה הדיין החכם‬. . .] ‫֗ב ֗ר לכבוד גדולת קדושת יקרת צפירת תפארת‬ In the name of the Merciful, (a letter) to the honourable, great, holy, precious, crowned, glorious [. . .] judge Elijah the wise T-S 13J8.28/1

6 See G. Khan, ‘Remarks on the Historical Background of Arabic Documentary Formulae’, Asiatische Studien 62 (2008), pp. 885–906 (893–894).

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There are also a number of letters that start with a biblical quotation: ‫לאו֗ ֗ה ֗בי֗ ֗תו֗ ֗רתך‬ ֗ ‫רח שלו֗ ֗ם רב‬ ֗ ‫בש‬ ֗ In Your name, O Merciful. Great peace have those who love thy law (Psalms 119:165) T-S 13J13.26/1

Occasionally, the letters dispense with any formal opening but proceed directly with phrases that convey information, such as the common formulae that are used to acknowledge receipt of letters or indicate that previous letters had remained unanswered. ‫וצל כתאב אלמולאי‬ 7

The letter of my master arrived CUL Or.1080 J20/1

‫תקדמת כתבי בחמאל‬ My letters preceded with a messenger T-S 10J31.10/1

We can see that the flowery and formulaic openings of eleventh-century letters have been abandoned in favour of more pragmatic introductions by the thirteenth century. There is no standard protocol to adhere to, instead, the writers can introduce their letters with biblical quotations, by giving their names or the name of the addressee first, or by proceeding directly to the main text, stating the reason for the letter. Parallel to what can be observed in the opening formulae, we can also see the move away from Classical Arabic norms in the increasing Hebrew content of thirteenth-century letters. This extends to basic things like the general use of Hebrew šalom instead of Arabic salām: 11C

‫אפצל אלסלאם וכל מן ענדנא יקריכם‬ ֗ ‫וצדקה אחיאה אללה יקריכם אגמעין‬ ‫אלסלאם‬ And Ṣedaqa, may God keep him alive, sends you all the best of greetings, and everyone with us sends you greetings T-S 12.262/25f.

7 The article preceding the noun already made definite by the suffix is incorrect according to the rules of both Classical Arabic and Modern Egyptian Arabic. The author must have re-analysed mawlāya as a noun without suffix.

the weakening of the bourgeoisie

349

13C

‫ואללה יופקך ושלום‬ May God protect you, and greetings T-S 10J7.18/v. 13

‫ושלום ירבה מארבה‬ Many greetings T-S 10J20.11/v. 5

b) The Date In addition to the other stylistic differences, the manner in which letters are dated differs greatly between the two corpora. Eleventhcentury letters use the Classical Arabic style of dating, i.e., beginning with li- and governed by the verbs baqiya ‘remain’ and ḫ alā ‘pass’. In contrast to the Muslim calendar, the units counted seem to be days, however, and not nights.8 The year is rarely given. ‫לעשרה איים בקין מן אלול‬ Ten days are remaining from (the month of) Elul (=20th Elul) T-S 12.171/2 (11C Maghreb)

[‫לה כלת מן סי]ון‬ ֗ Five days have passed from Sivan (5th Sivan) T-S 10J19.19/1 (11C Egypt)

In the thirteenth century, the date is indicated in a much less sophisticated manner. The Classical Arabic system is abandoned and a simpler style, often with ordinal numbers, is used. The date stands in most cases not at the beginning of the letter but at the end. ‫כתב סאבע מן שהר ניסן‬ It was written on the 7th of Nissan T-S 12.69/v.24

‫כתב יום אלארבעא ו֗ מן אדר שני‬ It was written on Wednesday, sixth of Second Adar T-S 13J20.24/margin

8 See W. Wright, A grammar of the Arabic language, 3rd edn (London, 1967), vol. II, pp. 248–249.

350

esther-miriam wagner ‫י֗ ֗ט אדר ֗א ֗ת ֗ק ֗ל ֗ח‬ 19(th night) of Adar 1539 (Seleucid era = 1228 CE) T-S 12.575/v.15

c) Orthography Changes between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries also manifest themselves in orthographical conventions. One of the most obvious differences is the double spelling of y. While it can occasionally be found even in the earlier letters, it becomes a regular feature in the thirteenth-century material. This was most likely influenced by the spelling conventions of Rabbinic Hebrew.9 Not only is geminated y spelled with double ‫יי‬, but also single y. Similarly, there are also many examples of double w. 13C

‫‘ סיّירת‬I sent’ T-S 13J22.5/20 ‫‘ צביّיה‬girl’ T-S 10J30.4/v.11 ‫‘ וצייה‬order’ T-S 12.575/v.12 ‫‘ קווה‬strength’ T-S 10J8.2/20 ‫‘ עוّודה‬he returned it’ T-S 13J22.5/15 ‫‘ ביתזווג‬he is married’ T-S 12.575/9

Examples where doubled y or w occurs for the single consonant are: ‫‘ שיי‬thing’ CUL Or.1080 J235/v. 4 ‫‘ מוופקה‬supporting’ T-S 20.174/v.30

9 B. Hary, ‘The Adaptations of Hebrew Script’, in P. T. Daniels and W. Bright (eds), The World’s Writing Systems, (New York, 1996), in particular pp. 732–734, and B. Hary, Translating Religion: Linguistic Analysis of Judaeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt (Leiden, 2009), pp. 311–327.

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‫‘ יווקף‬he will halt’ T-S 13J13.26/11

d) Morphology In the field of morphology, the occurance of bi-imperfects in the thirteenthcentury letters is the most striking phenomenon. There are no examples of bi-imperfect in eleventh-century letters, but a number of examples of bi-imperfect may be found in the thirteenth-century letters: ‫מא באעלם כיף תבין אלאמור‬ I do not know how you will explain the matters T-S 13J20.24/v.3

‫ודכר אנה ביסיר להא נפקתהא‬ He mentioned that he is (regularly) sending her alimony to her T-S13J20.24/m.

‫וקד בלגנא אנה ביתזווג‬ It reached us that he is marrying T-S 12.575/9

‫ולא באטאלבה בשי‬ I am not claiming anything from him Freer 8

The question arises whether the bi-imperfect was already part of the vernacular in the eleventh century and did not appear because of the influence of Classical Arabic, or whether it actually only emerged in the vernacular in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. This question is difficult to answer. The very occurrence, however, of bi-imperfect forms shows that the ideal of Classical Arabic, which was still emulated to a certain degree in the eleventh-century letters, held less sway over the thirteenth-century letter writers. Similarly, the eleventh-century letters only show the Classical Arabic demonstrative pronouns hād̠ā and d̠ālika and no vernacular forms: ‫ואמא כתבת האדא אלכתאב פדכרת‬ And when I wrote this letter I remembered (11C) T-S 13J29.2/18

‫אעלם מולאי דלך‬ Know, my master, this! (11C Egypt) T-S 13J19.29/25

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The thirteenth-century material, on the other hand, shows a few vernacular demonstratives, like da: ‫פי דא אלזמאן‬ During this time T-S 13J35.15/v. 6

‫פי דא אלזוכות‬ In this privilege T-S 13J35.15/v. 22

e) Syntax On the syntactical level, an interesting phenomenon can be observed in connection with the use of negations. The Classical Arabic negation lam is considered a more elaborate negation that does not occur, at least not as a regular negation, in the vernacular. The form mā is also a Classical Arabic form, but is part of the vernacular as well. This has led to the evaluation of the negation as a ‘less Classical’ form. This can, for instance, be seen in the Modern Standard Arabic used in newspapers, where mā, although undoubtedly Classical Arabic, is hardly used.10 In the letters, the move away from the Classical Arabic norm can be observed in the use of the two negations for negations of the past. Both lam + imperfect and mā + perfect can be used in Classical Arabic; in the vernacular, only mā + perfect is acceptable. In Maghrebian letters, which are more conservative than the Egyptian letters in many regards, lam is used in over 80% of examTable 1. Negations of the Past

11C Maghreb 11C Egypt 13C

lam + imperfect

mā + perfect

lam + perfect

72 83% 41 57% 21 22%

15 17% 31 43% 72 77%

– – 1 1%

10 See H. Wehr, ‘Zur Funktion arabischer Negationen’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 103 (1953), pp. 21–39 (38).

the weakening of the bourgeoisie

353

ples. In the Egyptian letters from the eleventh century, lam and mā are used in roughly similar numbers, although lam is still used more frequently. In the thirteenth-century letters, lam is only used in 22% of the examples, most preferring mā. 11C

‫איצא כבר‬ ֗ ‫ולם נעלם להדה אלעלאוה‬ I also did not know any news about this attachment T-S 16.163/32f. 13C

‫פקאל מא עלמת בשי‬ And he said: I did not know anything T-S 10J10.19/13

Goitein observed that the occurrence of wives’ names in letters in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was not restricted to the Jewish part of the population but was a symptom of a general decline in Egyptian society. This is supported linguistically through the evidence of the types of negation used in Muslim letters. A look at the negations in the eleventh- and thirteenth-century Muslim Arabic letters published by Diem shows that in the eleventh century lam was already less common in private letters than in business letters—a sign of the prestige that attached to lam and its evaluation as elevated style.11 In the thirteenth-century letters, however, lam appears rarely even in business correspondence. Table 2. Negations of the Past in Muslim Letters

11C Business letters 11C Private letters 13C Business letters 13C Private letters

11

lam + imperfect

mā + perfect

12 5 2 –

7 8 23 5

W. Diem, Arabische Geschäftsbriefe des 10.–14. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Wiesbaden, 1995) and W. Diem, Arabische Privatbriefe des 9.–15. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Wiesbaden, 1996).

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This shows that, as in Jewish letters, the Arabic in Muslim letters moved away from what were widely considered the norms of Classical Arabic. In addition to this change in frequency and occurrence of mā and lam, we also find a change in how the negation particle lam is constructed. In Classical Arabic, lam can only be used with the imperfect and always expresses a past action. This rule is obeyed in eleventhcentury letters; in thirteenth-century letters, however, we can find lam + imperfect expressing present action: ‫לם תפעל תסרח להא ראס‬ 12

She does not comb her hair (lit. ‘head’) T-S 13J8.23/3

There are even cases where lam is constructed with the perfect. This is impossible in Classical Arabic, but first occurs in thirteenth-century material from the Cairo Genizah: ‫לם וצל אלי שי‬ Nothing reached me CUL Or.1080 J28/v. 12

These forms, ungrammatical in Classical Arabic, provide very strong evidence for the general change in attitude towards the upkeep of ‘correct’ Classical Arabic and support Goitein’s theory of a weakening bourgeoisie and subsequent change in social etiquette.

Summary The letters from the eleventh and thirteenth centuries differ in many points. The opening formulae and the system of dating used in the eleventh century are derived from the Classical Arabic forms, while the thirteenth-century letters indicate the date in a simpler manner and adopt a completely different style of opening. The later letters also have a higher Hebrew content, and show orthographical, morphological and syntactical features that differ from the earlier material.

12 In this letter, the writer answers the complaints of a husband regarding his lazy wife, the author’s niece. In previous correspondence, the husband had written how his wife neglects herself, and how little housework she does.

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This supports the observations made by Goitein concerning the social changes that occurred between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. In the eleventh century, the social elite of the country upheld the conventions of Classical Arabic as part of their cultural heritage. To a certain degree, this also permeated the Jewish segment of society. The weakening of the bourgeoisie and the general economic impoverishment of Egypt in the thirteenth century led to the abandoning of Classical Arabic ideals by Muslim writers, which then also spread to the Jewish population.

Bibliography A. Bergs, Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421–1503) (Berlin, 2005). W. Diem, Arabische Geschäftsbriefe des 10.-14. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Wiesbaden, 1995). ——, Arabische Privatbriefe des 9.-15. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Wiesbaden, 1996). J. Fück, Arabiyya. Untersuchungen zur arabischen Sprach- und Stilgeschichte (Berlin, 1950). M. Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099 (Cambridge, 1992). S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Genizah (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). B. Hary, ‘The Adaptations of Hebrew Script’, in P. T. Daniels and W. Bright (eds), The World’s Writing Systems (New York, 1996), pp. 727–734. ——, Translating Religion: Linguistic Analysis of Judaeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt (Leiden, 2009). D.-B. Kerler, The origins of modern literary Yiddish (Oxford, 1999). G. Khan, ‘Remarks on the Historical Background of Arabic Documentary Formulae’, Asiatische Studien 62 (2008), pp. 885–906. H. Wehr, ‘Zur Funktion arabischer Negationen’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 103 (1953), pp. 21–39. W. Wright, A grammar of the Arabic language, 3rd edn (London, 1967).

ERETZISRAEL MAḤ ZORIM IN THE GENIZAH: FROM PALAEOGRAPHY TO LITURGY Joseph Yahalom

The study of liturgical fragments from the Genizah is a complex undertaking. Only rarely can one apply the distinction used with other Genizah fragments and differentiate between familiar (usually literary) material, and unfamiliar (usually documentary) material. Literary, biblical, and post-biblical texts are long, but they tend to consist of material that is familiar to us, and we can, for the most part, focus our attention on the evidence that the manuscripts provide about how texts evolved and were transmitted. Documentary material, such as letters and legal deeds, is known for its brevity, but it is entirely original, and, because it is designed to be read only once, it is unpredictable and difficult to decipher. By their very nature, the personal names, toponyms, and dates in documentary material provide the opportunity of reconstructing the social and economic history of the period documented in the Genizah, the first quarter of the second millennium. With regard to the remnants of the maḥ zorim, we have a special interest in the method by which we can reconstruct literary history and poetic culture. The abundant material—as with documentary fragments but unlike their literary counterparts—frequently includes new texts, but even in the cases when single texts can be matched to their parallels in maḥ zorim from later periods in which the ancient traditions have been preserved, it is still worthwhile trying to reconstruct the complete liturgical structures into which the single texts have been incorporated. The process of reconstruction often requires close consideration of the methods used for copying and transmission, and of codicological techniques. The fragmentary texts available to us in around a quarter of a million Genizah items do not easily lend themselves to a reconstruction of the liturgical and lyrical works of those communities that deposited the remnants of their literary efforts in the attic of the Synagogue of the Palestinians in Fustat during the first quarter of the second millennium. The sheer volume of the fragmentary material provides additional frustration: after all, it is generally accepted that over a third of

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the fragments from the Genizah belong to the world of liturgy and liturgical poetry,1 with a simple calculation pointing to approximately one hundred thousand fragments. We have consequently chosen to focus on the oldest vellum pieces, selected according to palaeographic criteria among others, and we have attempted to assemble vellum scraps into entire folios; single folios into quires; and quires into codices. This undertaking has provided us with approximately three hundred folios and incomplete folios belonging to four original codices that we have reconstructed from approximately one hundred and fifty fragments, the contents of which were composed in the third quarter of the first millennium. One need hardly mention that most of the fragments belong to the Taylor-Schechter Collection at Cambridge University Library, where they have, through the efforts of this volume’s honorand, benefited from the most stringent conservation and cataloguing processes. We have tried to piece together these remnants in order to recreate the poetic repertoire of the qerovot that adorned the ʿamida prayer in four ancient communities that were active in Eretz–Israel and its environs. One of the means by which to identify the age of the maḥ zorim is to examine the language of the titles that head each piece of work. The typical title found in early maḥ zorim is written in Aramaic rather than Judaeo-Arabic, which did not enter the arena until the eighth century. What we find here are titles along the lines of ‫מוספה דעצרתה‬ in Aramaic (i.e., qerovot for the seven benedictions of the musaf prayer for Shavuʿot), and no sign of the Judaeo-Arabic ‫מוסף אלענצרה‬.2 The original maḥ zorim consisted of codices of folio-sized vellum, and were over two hundred folios long, thus constituting a significant financial investment on the part of the communities responsible for their creation. They provide an indisputably precise testimony to the liturgical requirements of a community, and include the most substantial compositions of piyyuṭim for the ʿamida—the qerovot—as they were used through the annual cycle of the communities to which they belonged. The early Ashkenazi codices that correspond to our own codices date back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Worms Maḥzor, for example, dates back to 1272. It is preceded by other maḥ zorim from the twelfth century, but no earlier than that. Our

1 2

T. Carmi (ed.), The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 23. See T-S H3.82 and T-S H3.107.

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359

codices, whose palaeographic evidence suggests that they are among the oldest to be found in the Genizah, are at least a few hundred years older. Moreover, while the dated paper documents of the Classical Genizah period belong for the most part to the first quarter of the second millennium, the literary items written on vellum that found their way into the Genizah, probably during approximately the same period, had reached their resting place there only after a protracted period of usage. This is clear from the worn-out condition of the folios of the maḥ zorim, and from later additions written in the margins that doubtless indicate that even a community that was committed to conservatism with regard to its lyrical and liturgical practices faced the challenge of fresh requirements over the course of time. An example of a special case in this connection is the ‘Maḥzor Eretz–Israel: the Genizah Codex’,3 whose surviving vellum folios have been preserved in relatively good condition, free of later marginalia. Such a state of affairs can probably be attributed to the fact that this maḥ zor dates back to a later period than the other codices. It appears to have been deposited in the Genizah not very long after the community that produced it had organised itself sufficiently well to arrange a format that met its own particular requirements. This may not have been very long before the sad events suffered by the communities of Eretz–Israel during the First Crusade that reached Jerusalem in 1099. Fustat was at that time occupied with the process of ransoming Jewish hostages and raising funds for the purchase of communal volumes that were being sold in the markets of Ashkelon port for a pittance.4 From there they were transported to Egypt, where, in no time at all (probably due to the fact that their customised format rendered them useless to other communities), they found their way into the Genizah. The special composition of ‘Maḥzor Eretz–Israel’ undoubtedly reflects the lyrical and liturgical arrangements of the community that created 3 J. Yahalom, Maḥ zor Eretz Israel: the Genizah Codex (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1987). The maḥ zor was thoroughly investigated by E. Fleischer, ‘Piyyuṭ and Prayer in the Maḥ zor Eretz-Israel: the Genizah Codex’, Kiryat Sefer 63 (1990), pp. 207–262. I offered an independent suggestion concerning a new way of assembling the maḥ zor on the basis of new Genizah discoveries in my article ‘Revisiting the Maḥzor Eretz Israel: the Genizah Codex’, ibid., pp. 189–206. Fleischer did not re-examine the subject before he passed away. In any event, it is now clear that the main character represented in the maḥ zor, Solomon al-Sinjari, lived in the tenth century, so the maḥ zor cannot be dated from the end of that century. 4 S. D. Goitein, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in the Light of the Geniza Documents, edited by J. Hacker (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980), p. 235.

360

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it, and special significance attaches to the impressive presence in the ‘Maḥzor’ of contributions by Solomon, also known as Sulaiman alSinjari. His work, which ranges across the ʿamida prayers for the three Pilgrim Festivals of Pesaḥ, Shavuʿot and Sukkot, fills the folios of the ‘Maḥzor’, and, as well as having contributed the most material, he was in any event the latest of the liturgical poets to have contributed to this ‘Maḥzor’. One can only assume that his work was considered a great hit within the community that commissioned the maḥ zor. In trying to establish its original size, we are assisted by the numeration and layout of its quires. These quires were generally made up of five vellum bifolia which together formed the ten-folio quire.5 In order to ensure correct binding, the number of the quire was usually marked at the top right hand corner of the first folio. These markings now help us in our attempt to regroup folios into their original codices. The Eastern quire in its entirety was usually ten folios long, so that a maḥ zor containing twenty quires would have been a stout, twohundred-folio volume. The numbering on a quire can also be used to reconstruct the order of the whole codex. In ‘Maḥzor Eretz-Israel’, quire dalet opens with a passage read on the Sabbath of Ḥ ol ha-Moʿed Pesaḥ, and must have been preceded, as is the case in central European maḥ zorim, by passages to be read on Ḥ anukka and Purim, as well as in connection with the four special portions read during the weeks preceding Pesaḥ. Not all the introductory folios of the quire have of course been preserved, but the fifteenth quire (yod-he), which is the last one to have been preserved, contains the ʿavoda prayer for Yom Kippur. The other passages that followed the ʿavoda and the final passages of the maḥ zor, to be used on Sukkot and Shemini ʿAṣeret, took up at least another five quires, increasing the size of the codex to at least twenty quires in all: two hundred top quality folios. The other three maḥ zorim that we have reconstructed probably date from earlier periods, but are less well preserved than ‘Maḥzor Eretz–Israel’. Early maḥ zorim from Eretz–Israel did not, as a rule, preserve the numbering on the quires, which renders the process of reconstructing the original order of their folios and their position in the codex far more problematic. The earliest maḥ zor we have was vocalised according to the old Eretz–Israel method, which was lost to the world following the spread of Tiberian vocalisation from about the ninth century.

5

M. Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology (Paris, 1976), pp. 61–65.

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361

Only one of the folios that was marked as the beginning of a quire has survived. It is numbered bet, but it already contains passages to be read on Yom Kippur.6 Remarkably, the folio marking appears to be unreliable, since some of the Rosh ha-Shana passages that survived in the folios of this maḥ zor take up more than one quire on their own.7 It seems, therefore, that this maḥ zor has not reached us in its original, limited format, and it should be assumed that it was expanded at some point. Indeed, a closer look reveals evidence of a second hand, which took care to update this vocalised maḥ zor using additional material, which stands out for its lack of vowels.8 The second hand even made sure to maintain the precise textual sequence instituted by his predecessor, so that various passages written by the two different hands proceed in an almost seamless fashion. To bolster our theory, we even found that the second hand would provide the catchword between the end of his work and the beginning of the original scribe’s text, and at the foot of folio 3 there are indications of over-crowded lines written by the second hand, in his attempt to complete his insertion before folio 4, written by the original hand (Bodleian MS. Heb. d. 55). As expected, the transition from the original hand on folio 7 to the second hand on folio 8 is almost invisible, except for the different handwriting and the older Eretz-Israel vocalisation, which was entirely abandoned by the secondary scribe. Apparently, this maḥ zor, like ‘Maḥzor Eretz–Israel’, began in its reconstructed state with the winter festivals, including Ḥ anukka and Purim, and not specifically in the autumn, for Rosh ha-Shana and Yom Kippur. The quire that contains piyyuṭim for Yom Kippur cannot, therefore, have been the second one in the codex. The vocalised section of this maḥ zor was pointed using an early Eretz–Israel system, with supralinear rather than sublinear Hebrew vowels signs, in an undeveloped form that does not differentiate

6

T-S H16.9. We have three bifolia from the Rosh ha-Shana quire. The inner bifolium is T-S NS 272.71. The next bifolium is from the Antonin Collection in St Petersburg, no. 382, and the outermost folio that we have is T-S H8.6. 8 Zulay already drew attention to the difference in handwriting between folios 1–3, 8, and the other folios, and also came to the conclusion that two hands wrote Hebrew manuscript d.55 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; see his article, ‘Studies in Yannai’, Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry 2 (1936), p. 323. For a similar process in Bodleian MS. Heb. d. 41, see S. Elizur (ed.), Be-Toda va-Šir: Šivʿatot le-ʿArba ha-Parašiyyot le-R. Eleazar Birabbi Qilir (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 13–15. 7

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between the ṣere and the segol, both of which are marked with the same symbol. This frugal method of pointing was ultimately forced to compete with the more successful Tiberian method, and it fell out of use at a fairly early stage. The intensive use made of this method by the editors of the earliest maḥ zorim testifies to its early date. The manuscripts vocalised with the full Eretz–Israel system are typical of transcriptions of piyyuṭim composed by the early liturgical poet Yannai to correspond to the weekly pentateuchal readings of the triennial cycle, and, amazingly, the vocalised section of this maḥ zor, which consists of qerovot (piyyuṭim for the ʿamida) for the Festivals, contains nothing written after the time of Yannai. Its repertoire is limited to early anonymous works, and to those of Yose b. Yose, the first liturgical poet known to us by name, and primarily to the works of the liturgical poet Yannai, who lived after Yose b. Yose but still before the Arab conquest. In any event, the vocalised part of the maḥ zor does not contain a single later work. The unvocalised section is already furnished with poems of the qedušta type composed by Eleazar b. Qilir for the musaf prayer of Rosh ha-Shana, including Qilir’s piyyuṭim for the teqiʿot in their original structure,9 as well as qeduštot for the second Sabbath of Ḥ anukka10 and other occasions. The vocalisation used in the vocalised section of the manuscript has received attention in my Palestinian Vocalised Piyyuṭ Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections.11 Because surviving manuscript parts are scattered across the globe, and because of their fragmentary state and scholarly caution, the description of the fragments has been carried out piecemeal, and only now has a meticulous palaeographic and liturgical examination of the various fragments demonstrated how they relate to one another. This process has largely been presided over by Mr Binjamin Löffler, who, following the publication of Palestinian Vocalised Piyyuṭ Manuscripts, investigated the subject at great depth, and we now intend to join forces with him in publishing ‘Early Maḥ zorim from the Genizah: a Facsimile

9 D. Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor la-Yamim ha-Noraʾim, 1: Rosh ha-Shana (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 233 onwards. 10 O. Minz-Manor (ed.), R. Eleazar b. Qilir: Qedushtaʾot le-Shabbatot ha-Ḥ anukka: a Critical Edition (unpubl. diss.; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002), p. 101 onwards. 11 J. Yahalom, Palestinian Vocalised Piyyuṭ Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1997).

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363

Edition’. We will call the fully-vocalised maḥ zor, both in this article and in future publications, ‘Maḥzor Yannai’. ‘Maḥzor Yannai’ is actually composed of the long sections referred to in my catalogue as E–D, and the shorter sections 19, 22, 31–32. These are what remain of the old Eretz–Israel Codex, which is characterised by script that has been flattened down in one way or another, and folios that measure approximately twenty centimetres in breadth and twenty-four centimetres in length. An additional early maḥ zor with Palestinian vocalisation has larger dimensions, with folios twenty-seven centimetres in length. It is characterised by its partial Eretz-Israel vocalisation, and already has its own special sign as the equivalent of the Tiberian ṣere. It employs vocalisation mainly in instances where defective spelling could mislead someone reciting it as a piece of synagogal liturgy into an act of profanation. The scribe’s hand has drawn the letters here in an idiosyncratic fashion, using an elongated style so that each letter appears like a triangle, standing on its point. The ‫אזכיר גבורות‬, which is attributed to Yose b. Yose, is still used here as an ʿavoda prayer for shaḥ arit on Yom Kippur, along with other early anonymous works.12 On the other hand, we find in this maḥ zor the ‫ אזכר סלה‬ʿavoda prayer composed by Yoḥanan ha–Kohen b. Yehoshuaʿ,13 as well as other works composed by him and his father, for the Pilgrim Festivals of Pesaḥ, Shavuʿot, and Sukkot. Yehoshuaʿ is mentioned in R. Saʿadya Gaon’s list of five early liturgical poets, where he appears in fourth place after Yose, Yannai and Eleazar, and before Pinḥas.14 R. Yoḥanan and R. Yehoshuaʿ compete for a place in this maḥ zor with the most prolific of the early liturgical poets, Eleazar b. Qilir, whose long poem for Yom Kippur ‫שושן עמק אוימה‬15 is found here, along with his qedušta for Shemini ʿAṣeret ‫אחות אשר לך כספת‬.16 Although R. Yehoshuaʿ and R. Yoḥanan witnessed the Arab conquest,

12 A. Mirsky (ed.), Piyyuṭe Yose ben Yose (Jerusalem, 1977), p. 127 onwards; see also I. Davidson, S. Assaf and B. I. Yoel (eds), Siddur R. Saadja Gaon. Kitāb Ǵ āmiʿ Aṣ-Ṣalawāt Wat-Tasābīh, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1963), pp. 264–275. 13 N. Weissenstern (ed.), Piyyuṭe R. Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen b. R. Yehoshuaʿ: a Critical Edition (unpubl. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984), p. 132. 14 N. Allony (ed.), Ha-Egron: Kitab Uṣul al-Šiʿr al-ʿIbrani (Jerusalem, 1969), p. 155. 15 D. Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor la-Yamim ha-Noraʾim, 2: Yom Kippur (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 332 onwards. 16 D. Goldschmidt and Y. Frankel (eds), Maḥ zor Sukkot, Shemini ʿAṣeret ve-Simḥ at Torah (Ashkenazi rite) (Jerusalem, 1981), p. 376.

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they certainly did not survive beyond the seventh century, and the maḥ zor in which their work appears could not have been composed any earlier than the eighth century. It must, however, have been written at the beginning of that century, since that century witnessed the ascent of the star of another liturgical poet from Eretz–Israel—none other than R. Pinḥas ha-Kohen from Kifra17—whose piyyuṭim do not make a single solitary appearance in this maḥ zor, which we shall call ‘Maḥzor Yoḥanan’. The special composition of this maḥ zor calls to mind the maḥ zor of the Byzantine Jews, ‘Maḥzor Romania’, which survived until the early period of printing. Although this maḥ zor was also only partially reconstructed, what it does contain indicates its characteristic composition. In any event, it is composed of the sections numbered L 12–14, 16–17, 20–21, 50, 54, 58, and 78 in the catalogue. We are, thanks to conclusions drawn on the basis of palaeographic and liturgical criteria, very fortunate to be in a position to add to it many other Genizah fragments in which not a single Hebrew vowel sign has survived. The maḥ zor of Pinḥas ha-Kohen is similar to it in respect of its partial vocalisation, and there is the opportunity to include in it sections in which not a single Hebrew vowel sign remains. ‘Maḥzor Pinḥas’ is another Eretz–Israel maḥ zor with partial vocalisation. It contains the sections numbered 5–6, 23, 27–28, 30, 38, 44, and 46 in my catalogue, which are piyyuṭim employing Palestinian vocalisation, plus many additional sections in which no vocalisation has survived, but which can be joined to this maḥ zor on the basis of palaeographic and liturgical evidence. The script in this maḥ zor is mostly square, and its folios are twenty centimetres in breadth and twenty-four centimetres in length. ‘Maḥzor Pinḥas’ still uses Yannai’s qedušta for Rosh ha-Shana, ending with the famous ‫ ונתנה תוקף‬piyyuṭ18 alongside Qilir’s ‫את חיל‬,19 just as we find in ‘Maḥzor Yannai’ MS B, but when we look at R. Yoḥanan’s qedušta for musaf on Shavuʿot—

17 S. Elizur, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen: Critical Edition, Introduction and Commentaries (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2004). 18 Z. M. Rabinovitz (ed.), The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1987), vol. II, pp. 201–207; see also J. Yahalom and B. Löffler, ‘ “Who would not fear you, O King?”: a lost Qilirian silluq for Rosh ha-Shana’, in E. Hazan and J. Yahalom (eds), Studies in Hebrew Poetry and Jewish Heritage in Memory of Aharon Mirsky (Ramat Gan, 2006), pp. 127–158. 19 Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor la-Yamim ha-Nora’im, 1: Rosh Hashanah, p. 65 onwards.

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365

‫ארקה הרעיש איום‬20—we find that it is already accompanied by a special qerova composed by R. Pinḥas ha-Kohen for recitation on the Sabbath when the lectionary of weekly pentateuchal readings is concluded with the final section of Deuteronomy, just as we find in ‘Maḥzor Yoḥanan’.21 Needless to say, this maḥ zor does not yet contain a single piece of work by Solomon Sulaiman al-Sinjari, although ‘Maḥzor Eretz–Israel: the Genizah Codex’, which could be known as ‘Maḥzor Sulaiman’, was well furnished with the works of R. Pinḥas. In this maḥ zor the ʿavoda prayer of R. Pinḥas serves for Yom Kippur, and the piyyuṭim for the teqiʿot of Rosh ha-Shana in the ‘Maḥzor Sulaiman’ are also by him.22 There is no mention here of the non-rhyming poetry of Yose b. Yose being used on these occasions; by the tenth century, it was already considered old-fashioned. Similarly, ‘Maḥzor Sulaiman’ contains R. Yoḥanan ha–Kohen’s ‫ ארץ תרעש‬qedušta for Rosh ha-Shana—not known to us from any other source—next to Qilir’s commonly-used ‫ את חיל‬qedušta. It seems that Solomon Sulaiman had a special relationship with R. Yoḥanan and his family, particularly with his son, R. Yehoshuaʿ. In a collection of Geonic responsa discovered in the Genizah, a responsum by R. Solomon is cited, relating to the laws pertaining to ḥ aroset eaten at the Pesaḥ Seder.23 R. Solomon’s responsum includes part of a silluq in a qedušta for Pesaḥ that contradicts the Babylonian halak̠a, according to which it is forbidden to leave the maror in the ḥ aroset for long enough to sweeten its taste (BT Pesaḥ im 115b). It is perhaps not surprising that the words of the piyyuṭ cited by R. Solomon Sulaiman, which were also preserved in ‘Maḥzor Yoḥanan’,

20

Weissenstern, Piyyuṭe R. Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen, p. 20 onwards. S. Elizur, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen, p. 549 onwards. 22 Ibid., pp. 375ff and 406ff. 23 A. Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (2 vols; Oxford, 1906), vol. II, col. 341, no. 7, under the name of R. Solomon al-Sinjari, beginning . . . ‫ראית פי סלוק אלפסח יקול פיה ולמה אכילת מרור‬. See also M. Zulay, Eretz Israel and its Poetry, ed. A. Hazan (Jerusalem, 1995), p. 571. Other researchers have offered a different interpretation, namely, that the silluq was composed by Solomon; see E. Hakohen, The Qedushtaʾot of Rabbi Solomon Suleiman al-Sanjary for the Festivals (unpubl. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003), vol. I, p. 223 and note 8. We have found another example of a liturgical poet’s engagement with earlier poetry in the work of Sahlān b. Abraham, who interprets the poetry of Eleazar b. Qilir and R. Samuel b. Hoshaʿna. Compare J. Mann, ‘Various matters on the study of the Geonic period: a letter of R. Sahlān b. Abraham’, Tarbiz 6 (1936), pp. 66–88 (80–84, 88). 21

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were originally those of R. Yehoshuaʿ, the father of R. Yoḥanan. The words of the piyyuṭ cited by R. Solomon, according to their pattern and logical position, actually belong to one of the silluqim of the qedušta for Pesaḥ, in a place designated for discussions of the customs relating to the Pesaḥ Seder introduced by a standard phraseology which raises halakhic questions with the words: . . . ‫ מה טעם‬or similar, and answers them in the same medley using the introductory words . . . ‫ זכר ל‬or . . . ‫כדי ש‬, or similar formulas.24 In fact, the medley of four stanzas cited by R. Solomon uses the introductory formulas ‫ולמה‬, ‫על ש‬, and ‫לכן נהגו‬. ‫וְ ָל ָמּה ֲא ִכ ַילת ָמרוֹר‬ ‫ַﬠל ֶשׁ ֵמּ ְיררוּ ַחיֵּ ימוֹ ְבּ ָמרוֹר‬ ‫יאת ְדּרוֹר‬ ַ ‫וְ ִה ְמ ַתּ ְק ָתּם ִבּ ְק ִר‬ ‫רוֹסת ְמ ִת ַיקת ָמרוֹר‬ ֶ ‫ָל ֵכן נָ ֲהגוּ ַבּ ֲח‬

The medley apparently originated in R. Yehoshuaʿ’s silluq for Pesaḥ, with the section that was preserved in ‘Maḥzor Yoḥanan’ written in exactly the same format and with the same introductory formulas: ‫יבּוּע כּוֹסוֹת ] ָשׁ[ ָﬠה‬ ַ ‫וְ ָל ָמּה ִר‬ ‫ישׁ ָﬠה‬ ְ ‫כּוֹסי ִר‬ ֵ ‫יבּוּע‬ ַ ‫ַﬠל ֵשׁם ִר‬ ‫שׁוּﬠה‬ ָ ְ‫כּוֹסי י‬ ֵ ‫יבּוּע‬ ַ ‫וּכנֶ גְ דּוֹ ִר‬ ְ 25 ‫יﬠית יַ יִ ן ְל ִה ְשׁ ַתּ ַﬠ ְשׁ ָﬠה‬ ִ ‫ְל ֵכן נָ ֲהגוּ ִבּ ְר ִב‬

Further into R. Solomon’s responsum he shows familiarity with the explanation of R. Hai b. Sherira Gaon (939–1038) concerning a rare Aramaic word (‫)לשון קפ"א‬,26 and it is reasonable to conclude that the responder was an older contemporary of R. Hai Gaon, who was a renowned lexicographer and wrote the famous Kitāb al-Ḥ āwī.27 The 24 E. Fleischer, ‘Azharot le-R. Binyamin (b. Shemuel) Payyet ̣an’, Koveṣ al Yad 11 (21), part 1 (1985), pp. 30–35. 25 T-S NS 119.37 together with T-S AS 63.150. Compare GenR 88:11 (J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (eds), Bereshit Rabba, 2nd edn (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1965), vol. III, pp. 1081–1082): '‫ ר' יהושע בן לוי אמ' כנגד ד‬. . . ‫מאיכן קבעו חכמים ד' כוסות שלפסח‬

‫ וכנגדן הקב"ה משקה את ישראל‬. . . ‫כוסות שלתרעלה שהקב"ה משקה את אומות העולם‬ ‫ד' כוסות שלישועה‬ 26 B. M. Lewin (ed.), Oṣar ha-Geonim on Pesaḥ im (Haifa, 1931), responsa section, no. 88, p. 152. Compare A. Maman, ‘The Remnants of R. Hai Gaon’s Dictionary Kitāb al-Ḥ āwī in the Adler and Taylor-Schechter Geniza Collections’, Leshonenu Laʿam 56 (2006), pp. 23–33. 27 Hakohen, The Qedushta’ot, vol. I, pp. 234–237 is prepared to date the payṭan as late as the first quarter of the tenth century, but, on the basis of the structure of the yoṣer alone, it seems impossible to draw any sound chronological conclusions. The similarity may have arisen out of the common use of an early tradition.

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367

fact that R. Solomon Sulaiman lived during a later period can go some way to explaining his position in the history of piyyuṭ. Neither R. Solomon nor R. Pinḥas had their work included in the poetic and liturgical compositions of the European communities, whether in Byzantium, Italy, Germany, or France. It seems that active contact between these important communities and Eretz-Israel and the Jews who lived there had ceased some years before R. Aḥimaʿaṣ b. Palṭiʾel wrote his famous megilla (1054), which attests to the relationship between the southern Byzantine communities and Eretz–Israel during the ninth century. The Jewish tombstones in Venosa also indicate a major Hebrew revival in southern Italy at the beginning of the ninth century, which is echoed in the piyyuṭim of R. Shefat ̣ya b. Amittai (d. 886) and those of his son R. Amittai b. Shefaṭya.28 However, during the period when R. Pinḥas and R. Solomon’s stars were on the ascent in the realm of Jewish liturgy in Eretz–Israel, the Italians had to some extent already turned their backs on the Holy Land, and were falling increasingly under the influence of the Babylonian Geonim. This explains why the relatively late work of R. Pinḥas and R. Solomon was not adopted in Europe, and thus did not survive until the age of print. The ‘Maḥzor Eretz–Israel’ is different. Its repertoire includes the work of Pinḥas ha-Kohen from Kifra and Solomon al-Sinjari from the last quarter of the first millennium. The earliest maḥ zorim, as reconstructed, do not essentially deviate in their selection of liturgical poets from the third quarter of the first century, from the period between the final editing of the Talmud and the end of the Arab conquest with the establishment of Abbasid rule in Baghdad. The effort and attention invested in treating the parchment and perfecting the transcription of the four codices seem to indicate that the resulting volumes were intended to be used by their communities for a long time, and the piyyuṭim included in them had already been recited by the communities on a regular basis before being given a place of honour in the codices. Every anthology reflects the liturgical reality of a particular place, and provides us with a picture of the customs of a specific time and place, with its inclusion of the long texts that the community’s cantors would recite during the communal ʿamida prayers on special

28 B. Klar (ed.), Megillat Ahimaaz: The Chronicle of Ahimaaz, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1974), p. 59 onwards.

368

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religious occasions through the year. All this occurred during the last quarter of the first millennium, when the popular piyyuṭim were transmitted, and then transcribed into the large liturgical anthologies whose remnants found their way into the Genizah. The age of the large Eastern maḥ zorim actually forms a bridge between the major creativity of the outstanding liturgical poets of the third quarter of the first millennium and the period of consolidation of the European maḥ zorim as expressed in the production of the large parchment maḥ zorim in the first quarter of the second millennium. The ability of Pinḥas and Solomon to penetrate the very heart of a glorious Eretz–Israel tradition at its zenith is truly astonishing, and is surely related to the high standing these two poets enjoyed in their communities. They did not achieve any other great successes, and not a single one of their major works was incorporated into any European tradition.29 They did not achieve the status enjoyed by their predecessors Yose, Yannai and Eleazar, who had appeared on R. Saʿadya Gaon’s list of early liturgical poets. The competition was, of course, fierce. We know that Yose wrote at least two monumental prayers (over two hundred double-column folios) for the ʿavoda of Yom Kippur,30 and we are aware of comparable works by Yannai for the morning ʿamida prayer for Pesaḥ (qerovot),31 while Eleazar excelled himself in composing five qerovot for Tishʿa be-ʾAv, which included over a hundred lamentations,32 and there is much more of the same. At the end of the day, the struggle for survival was fierce. The last large section of surviving material written by Yannai for the Sabbath prayers, ‫אוני פטרי רחמתיים‬, one of at least one hundred and fifty qerovot that he wrote for the triennial lectionary, survived only because the custom was for it to be recited on the special Sabbath, Šabbat ha-Gadol, that falls before Pesaḥ. Originally written by Yannai for the week of the pentateuchal reading ‫( ויהי בחצי הלילה‬Exodus

29 Only the rahiṭ ‫ אם אץ דם מצרי‬by R. Pinḥas from the qedušta for the pentateuchal reading zot ha-berak̠a has been preserved in maḥ zorim of the rites of Italy and Corfu; see Elizur (ed.), Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Pinḥ as, p. 254. 30 Mirsky (ed.), Piyyuṭe Yose ben Yose, p. 122 onwards. 31 Rabinowitz (ed.), Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, vol. II, p. 251 onwards, and J. Yahalom (ed.), Širat Bene Ereṣ Yisraʾel ba-Tequfa ha-Bizanṭit ve-ʿad Kibbuš ha-Ṣalbanim (Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 35–36. 32 E. Fleischer, ‘Qerova Ḥ amišit le-Tišʿa be-ʾAv meʾet R. Eleazar b. Qilir’, Sinai 63 (1968), pp. 32–49, and ‘Kompoziṣiyyot Qaliriyyot le-Tišʿa be-ʾAv’, Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974), pp. 1–40.

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369

12:29) its history included not only a miraculous survival but also a serious threat of extermination. According to an emotional story that apparently circulated in the twelfth century, it was not the custom to recite the piyyuṭ anywhere in Lombardy, since R. Yannai, who was envious of his pupil R. Eleazar b. Qilir, had put a scorpion in his shoe, which stung him to death.33 One may assume that massive struggles took place concerning the acceptance and rejection of the works of the earliest liturgical poets. This and similar stories reveal some measure of the passionate nature of the competition and the struggle. In Germany, for example, they felt the need to link the ‫ ונתנה תוקף‬prayer written by Yannai with the frightful story of martyrdom in Mayence, for the sole purpose of rejecting Qilir’s corresponding prayer, ‫מי לא ייראך מלך‬, which formed an integral part of the long composition to be recited on Rosh ha-Shana.34 Although Yannai himself composed liturgical passages for the weekly Sabbath service following the triennial lectionary, and remnants of eight monumental volumes of ‘Maḥzor Yannai’ reached the Genizah, these works were no longer preserved in their original form once the Babylonian custom of an annual lectionary became prevalent, and the works intended for triennial recitation were edited and updated accordingly. Any evidence we have of the early survival of Yannai’s work in Byzantine southern Italy, which was closely associated with the traditions of Eretz–Israel, is indirect. For example, a composition about human body parts which Yannai wrote for the Sabbath on which Leviticus 12:1 was read, and remnants of which were preserved in the Genizah, was imitated word for word by the southern Italian liturgical poet Amittai b. Shefaṭya, who lived in Oria in the ninth century. He made use of this beautiful piece by Yannai in the comprehensive work he wrote on the occasion of the Šabbat Ḥ atan for his sister Qassia.35 Were it not for the Italian imitation, we would never have imagined that the piyyuṭ was known beyond the Near East, and specifically in Europe. Let us not forget that Amittai lived relatively far away from Germany, and that at least two hundred years

33 State and University Library, Hamburg, manuscript 152 (Hebrew 17), edited by A. Ṣ. Roth (Jerusalem, 1980), f. 32a, and compare E. Hollender, Piyyut Commentary in Medieval Ashkenaz (Berlin, 2008), p. 152. 34 Yahalom and Löffler, ‘ “Who would not fear you, O King?” ’, pp. 127–158. 35 Rabinowitz (ed.), Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, vol. I, pp. 78, 389–390, and in Klar (ed.), Megillat Ahimaaz, p. 90.

370

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separate the lifetime of Amittai b. Shefaṭya from the earliest evidence of a manuscript European maḥ zor (approx. 1100). The development of Jewish liturgical poetry can therefore be divided into three main phases. The first phase was the most productive. It saw the creation of the large maḥ zorim of poems for Festivals and for the Sabbath, centering mainly around the ʿamida prayer. This lively period enjoyed by Eretz–Israel and its environs during the third quarter of the first millennium saw the work of the first three poets in Saʿadya Gaon’s list—Yose, Yannai, and Eleazar—being incorporated into the traditions of Eretz–Israel and the East. The third phase is represented in the lengthy European manuscripts that reflect traditions that had been consolidated, or were in the process of being consolidated—the traditions of Byzantium (Romania), Italy (Rome), France (Asti, Fossano and Moncalvo), and Germany (Mayence). The earliest evidence reflecting the European tradition is found in codices that date from the first quarter of the second millennium until the period of the ‘Worms Maḥzor’ in 1272. Some of the traditions had already disappeared before the invention of printing at the end of the second quarter of the second millennium, meaning that the communal maḥ zorim could not be recorded in print. The large gap in the middle—the last two hundred and fifty years of the first millennium—is filled by the maḥ zorim from the Genizah, of which we have found but remnants. They effectively supply the missing link between the abundantly rich and varied selection of works available to the communities of Eretz– Israel during the Byzantine period, and the period of consolidation and crystallisation of the maḥ zorim in Europe. This middle period was exceptional, among other things, for its attempts to achieve consolidation and standardisation. The efforts invested in creating a large liturgical codex reflect the accepted authority of the established framework of prayer enjoyed by a large community, which would eventually earn itself the role of binding tradition. We find the end result in the folios of the European maḥ zorim, but these had been preceded by maḥ zorim from the East, the remains of which ended up in the Cairo Genizah. After the great burst of creativity in the Byzantine period that reflected a variegated and fluid reality, a basic unity of traditions and customs began to be consolidated, and to enjoy the status of codification in the early maḥ zorim from the second Islamic (Abbasid) period. None of this came to pass without battles and struggles.

eretz–israel maḥ zorim in the genizah

371

The place of honour enjoyed by the ʿavoda prayer on Yom Kippur must have been contested by many liturgical poets, the solitary remnants of whose numerous works found their way into the Genizah. The work of the legendary Yose b. Yose stood firm, in spite of its age and lack of rhyme, and held its own for a long period of time, even achieving a place of honour in the European tradition. The northern French rite preserved his poem ‫ אתה כוננת עולם ברוב חסד‬almost until modern times in the three French communities of Asti, Fossano and Moncalvo, whose members found refuge in northern Italy after their expulsion from France in 1394.36 Earlier work written for the ʿamida prayer for musaf on Yom Kippur, including Yoḥanan ha– Kohen’s non-rhyming piece ‫אזכר סלה‬, appears not only in the early maḥ zorim found in the Genizah, but also in the maḥ zor that reflects the Roman tradition.37 Many renowned poets tried their hand at the epic ʿavoda prayer, but since their work failed to be accepted by any of the traditions, it has been forgotten. Even the great Gaon, R. Saʿadya, who included Yose b. Yose’s ‫ אזכיר גבורות‬ʿavoda poem in his famous prayer-book, admits that he wrote a large number of ʿavoda prayers for Yom Kippur that he had no intention of including therein.38 As for the ʿavoda prayer ‫ באדוני יצדקו ויודוהו‬that he composed and did include in his prayer-book, he offers an apology, saying that ‘he would not have included the piyyuṭ, had it not been so lovely’.39 This piece of work is in fact constructed with complex rhyme and decorative structure, in a style that flew in the face of the early epic format that had been generally accepted until that time. Saʿadya’s work made a great impression on R. Joseph ibn Abitur,40 one of Spain’s earliest liturgical poets, whose ʿavoda prayer was incorporated into the traditions of Aragon and Catalonia. In central Europe, the order of prayer was totally different.

36

S. D. Luzzatto, Mavo Le-Maḥ zor Bene Roma, edited by D. Goldschmidt (Tel Aviv, 1966), pp. 24–25; Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor: Yom Kippur, introduction, p. 23, and text, pp. 465–478. 37 Luzzatto, Mavo Le-Maḥ zor Bene Roma, p. 71. 38 E. Fleischer, ‘An Addition to R. Sa‘adya Gaon’s Second Seder ʿAvoda’, Tarbiz 58 (1989), pp. 191–205. 39 Davidson et al. (eds), Siddur R. Saadja Gaon, pp. 280, 289. 40 J. Rosenberg (ed.), Sefer Qoveṣ Maʿase Yede Geʾonim Qadmonim (Berlin, 1856), p. 18 onwards.

372

joseph yahalom

Meshullam b. Qalonymos made a major impact on the holy day’s prayers in the Ashkenazi maḥ zor. He lived and worked for most of his days in Lucca in northern Italy, and lived out only his final years in Mayence, after moving there around the year 1000. He was one of the Qalonymos family, whose members formed connections and built bridges between the regions of Lombardy and the Jewish centers of the Rhine region which were developing at the beginning of the eleventh century.41 He not only exported the traditions of liturgical poetry from Italy to Germany, but also managed to introduce his own works into the Ashkenzai tradition as it consolidated. In addition to his non-rhyming ʿavoda piece ‫אמיץ כוח‬, which was incorporated into the Ashkenazi rite,42 he also wrote the rhyming ʿavoda poem ‫אשוחח נפלאותיך‬, which was recited in the communities of central Germany during the Middle Ages.43 His qerova ‫( אימצתה עשור‬with the rešut ‫ )אימיך נשאתי‬was included in the Ashkenazi rite for Yom Kippur.44 Apparently, the great traditions of liturgical poetry that R. Meshullam brought with him from Lombardy to Germany and the prestige they enjoyed paved the way for the acceptance of his own work. Not that this process ran entirely smoothly either, and the author of Sefer Ḥ asidim seems to have known all about the tensions in the community regarding the final wording of the maḥ zor. He had every justification for issuing his warning: ‘People can die for changing ancient customs such as piyyuṭim. This happened in the case of someone who recited a different qeroveṣ from that of R. Meshullam: he was dead within thirty days’.45 In addition to the piece ‫ אימיך נשאתי‬of R. Meshullam there was another qeroveṣ with which the Ashkenazi Jews were familiar. This was none other than one of the many Yom Kippur poems from the earliest maḥ zorim that had been adopted in Italy or Byzantium and made their way from there to Germany, namely the composition of R. Eleazar b. Qilir, ‫‘( שושן עמק אוימה‬Maḥzor Yoḥanan’ and the rites of Rome and Romania).46 They may also have known another of the works attributed to R. Eleazar b. Qilir such as ‫‘( אזרחי ידעך מכל אומות‬Maḥzor Yannai’ 41 A. Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: their Lives, Leadership and Works (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1981), p. 56 onwards. 42 Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor: Yom Kippur, pp. 435–446. 43 Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor: Yom Kippur, pp. 447–461. 44 Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor: Yom Kippur, p. 112. 45 R. Margaliot (ed.), Sefer Ḥ asidim (Jerusalem, 1957), p. 402. 46 Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor: Yom Kippur, p. 332 onwards, but here the poem is used for the musaf prayer.

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373

MS B),47 or possibly R. Yoḥanan ha–Kohen’s ‫( אשען במעש אזרח‬Roman rite),48 or a piece attributed to R. Yannai, ‫‘( ארץ בזמר סלסלה‬Maḥzor Yannai’ MS A),49 or maybe Yannai’s ‫אהרן מעם נבחר‬,50 or possibly even a work attributed to Yose b. Yose.51 One could, God forbid, easily have died within thirty days for any of these. As for the murky history of research concerning the discovery of the early Italian maḥ zor entitled ‘Seder Ḥ ibbur Berakhot’ by Solomon Schechter before the library in Turin went up in flames, his achievements were of course by no means exclusively related to the study of Hebrew liturgical poetry in Italy. Thanks to him, a major breakthrough was achieved in modernday academic Jewish studies: the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, and the demonstration of its importance for academic research at the end of the nineteenth century. In this respect, Professor Stefan (Solomon Qalman) Reif has worthily followed in the footsteps of Schechter in Cambridge, not only with regard to liturgical research but also in his success in disseminating the importance of the Cambridge Genizah and arranging its conservation at the end of the twentieth century. We gladly contribute this article in his honour.

Bibliography N. Allony (ed.), Ha-Egron: Kitab Uṣul al-Šiʿr al-ʿIbrani (Jerusalem, 1969). M. Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology (Paris, 1976). T. Carmi (ed.), The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (Harmondsworth, 1981). A. Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (2 vols; Oxford, 1906). I. Davidson, S. Assaf and B. I. Yoel (eds), Siddur R. Saadja Gaon. Kitāb Ǵ āmiʿ AṣṢalawāt Wat-Tasābīh, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1963).

47 A. Scheiber, ‘Piyyut ̣ Qeliri ha-Muva ʿal yede Qirqisani’, in S. Löwinger and A. Scheiber (eds), Genizah Publications in Memory of Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann (Budapest, 1949), pp. 3–35. In ‘Maḥzor Yannai’, manuscript B, the work is actually attributed to R. Ḥ aduta. 48 Weissenstern, Piyyuṭe R. Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen, p. 110. 49 Rabinowitz (ed.), Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, vol. II, pp. 210–226. 50 M. Zulay (ed.), Piyyute Yannai: Liturgical Poems of Yannai, collected from Geniza-manuscripts and other sources (Berlin, 1938), pp. 161–345 (380). The work was consistently preserved in a number of early vellum folios that contained both Palestinian vocalisation and the fragment ‫( אשנן פלאך‬Zulay, p. 331), signed with the name of the poet. 51 E. Fleischer, ‘Maḥzorey Piyyuṭ mi-Tok̠ Qedušta le-Yom Kippur ha-Meyuḥeset le-Yose b. Yose’, Kobeṣ al Yad 7 (17) (1968), pp. 1–79.

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S. Elizur (ed.), Be-Toda va-Šir: Šivʿatot le-ʿArba ha-Parašiyyot le-R. Eleazar Birabbi Qilir (Jerusalem, 1991). ——, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Pinḥ as ha-Kohen: Critical Edition, Introduction and Commentaries (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2004). E. Fleischer, ‘Maḥzore Piyyuṭ mi-Tok̠ Qedušta le-Yom Kippur ha-Meyuḥeset le-Yose b. Yose’, Kobeṣ al Yad 7 (17) (1968), pp. 1–79. ——, ‘Qerova Ḥ amišit le-Tišʿa be-ʾAv meʾet R. Eleazar b. Qilir’, Sinai 63 (1968), pp. 32–49. ——, ‘Kompoziṣiyyot Qaliriyyot le-Tišʿa be-ʾAv’, Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974), pp. 1–40. ——, ‘Azharot le-R. Binyamin (b. Shemuel) Paytạ n’, Koveṣ al Yad 11 (21), part 1 (1985), pp. 30–35. ——, ‘An Addition to R. Saʿadya Gaon’s Second Seder ʿAvoda’, Tarbiz 58 (1989), pp. 191–205. ——, ‘Piyyuṭ and Prayer in the Maḥ zor Eretz-Israel: the Genizah Codex’, Kiryat Sefer 63 (1990), pp. 207–262. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (5 vols plus Index volume by P. Sanders; Berkeley, 1967–1993). ——, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in the Light of the Geniza Documents, edited by J. Hacker (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1980). D. Goldschmidt (ed.), Maḥ zor la-Yamim ha-Noraʾim, 1: Rosh ha-Shana (Jerusalem, 1970). —— (ed.), Maḥ zor la-Yamim ha-Noraʾim, 2: Yom Kippur (Jerusalem, 1970). D. Goldschmidt and Y. Frankel (eds), Maḥ zor Sukkot, Shemini ʿAṣeret ve-Simḥ at Torah (Ashkenazi rite) (Jerusalem, 1981). A. Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: their Lives, Leadership and Works (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1981). E. Hakohen, The Qedushtaʾot of Rabbi Solomon Suleiman al-Sanjary for the Festivals (unpubl. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003). E. Hollender, Piyyut Commentary in Medieval Ashkenaz (Berlin, 2008). B. Klar (ed.), Megillat Ahimaaz: the Chronicle of Ahimaaz, 2nd edn (Jerusalem, 1974). B. M. Lewin (ed.), Oṣar ha-Geonim on Pesaḥ im (Haifa, 1931). S. D. Luzzatto, Mavo Le-Maḥ zor Bene Roma, edited by D. Goldschmidt (Tel Aviv, 1966). A. Maman, ‘The Remnants of R. Hai Gaon’s Dictionary Kitāb al-Ḥ āwī in the Adler and Taylor-Schechter Geniza Collections’ (Hebrew), Leshonenu Laʿam 56 (2006), pp. 23–33. J. Mann, ‘Various matters on the study of the Geonic period: a letter of R. Sahlān b. Abraham’, Tarbiz 6 (1936), pp. 66–88. R. Margaliot (ed.), Sefer Ḥ asidim (Jerusalem, 1957). O. Minz-Manor (ed.), R. Eleazar b. Qilir: Qedushtaʾot le-Shabbatot ha-Ḥ anukka: a Critical Edition (unpubl. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002). A. Mirsky (ed.), Piyyuṭe Yose ben Yose (Jerusalem, 1977). Z. M. Rabinovitz (ed.), The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai (Hebrew; 2 vols; Jerusalem, 1987). J. Rosenberg (ed.), Sefer Qoveṣ Maʿase Yede Geʾonim Qadmonim (Berlin, 1856). A. Scheiber, ‘Piyyuṭ Qeliri ha-Muva ʿal yede Qirqisani’, in S. Löwinger and A. Scheiber (eds), Genizah Publications in Memory of Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann (Budapest, 1949), pp. 3–35. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (eds), Bereshit Rabba, 2nd edn (3 vols; Jerusalem, 1965). N. Weissenstern (ed.), Piyyuṭe R. Yoḥ anan ha-Kohen b. R. Yehoshuaʿ: a Critical Edition (unpubl. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984). J. Yahalom, Maḥ zor Eretz Israel: the Genizah Codex (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1987).

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——, ‘Revisiting the Maḥzor Eretz Israel: the Genizah Codex’, Kiryat Sefer 63 (1990), pp. 189–206. —— (ed.), Širat Bene Ereṣ Yisraʾel ba-Tequfa ha-Bizanṭit ve-ʿad Kibbuš ha-Ṣalbanim (Jerusalem, 1994). ——, Palestinian Vocalised Piyyuṭ Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1997). J. Yahalom and B. Löffler, ‘ “Who would not fear you, O King?”: a lost Qilirian silluq for Rosh ha-Shana’, in E. Hazan and J. Yahalom (eds), Studies in Hebrew Poetry and Jewish Heritage in Memory of Aharon Mirsky (Ramat Gan, 2006), pp. 127–158. M. Zulay, ‘Studies in Yannai’, Studies of the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry 2 (1936), pp. 161–345. —— (ed.), Piyyute Yannai: Liturgical Poems of Yannai, collected from Genizamanuscripts and other sources (Berlin, 1938).

“CONSIGNED TO THE GENIZAH BUT FOR ONLY A THIRD OF A CENTURY” Stefan C. Reif

The following is an edited version of the after-dinner talk given by Professor Stefan Reif during the conference held in his honour. This speech was wide ranging, discussing various parts of Stefan’s career, and included a typically humorous and pointed reminiscence of his three decades at the Unit. The anecdotes were all the more memorable for the manner in which they were presented, and, as Stefan’s thoughts moved from the past to the future, all listened attentively to his expression of confidence that the Unit was in safe and certain hands. With Stefan’s approval, we present below those parts of the address that are most relevant to his work with the Genizah Research Unit, leaving the rest for possible publication in another context. First, let me express my warm thanks to Ben Outhwaite, Rebecca Jefferson and Siam Bhayro in particular but also to the whole team in the Genizah Research Unit for going to such inordinate lengths in making all the arrangements for this conference and ensuring its overall success. I am also greatly indebted to all of you for coming such long distances to participate, for the important, informative and interesting papers that you have given and will be giving, and for all your kind wishes, both written and oral. In sum, I am deeply grateful and not a little moved by the generosity that Shulie and I have experienced from so many colleagues. Apart from functioning as the recipient of so much kindness and thoughtfulness, and offering the thanks that are due to all of you, what precisely is the purpose of this presentation by me here this evening? As with all scholarly initiatives, this topic has been the subject of some variance of opinion among all those involved in planning these proceedings. What would indeed be most appropriate for me to undertake this evening? What immediately occurs is obviously the possibility of another scholarly paper, ideally something utterly dull on the technical, textual variations between one manuscript prayer-book or Genizah fragment and several others. I never seem to be short of something to say

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or lacking in data with which to anaesthetise my colleagues in that respect. I am, however, already committed to four such papers this summer so a fifth is perhaps somewhat de trop and there is, after all, a limit even to my imaginativeness and speculation. I am also conscious of the fact that it would raise some questions if I contributed to my own Festschrift. You can, I am sure, imagine the kind of comment that such a contribution would precipitate: ‘Not only does Reif always ensure that his photograph is in every issue of the Unit’s newsletter even when he has stopped editing it; he also has to be a major contributor to the essays in his own honour’! Perhaps what is called for, then, is a serious analysis of the University of Cambridge, of the University Library, of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and perhaps also of other institutions within the University. I could undertake an assessment of their generosity to staff, their innovation, their intense industry, their social cohesion, their willingness to adjust to all new situations. The slight problem with such an analysis is that a wholly favourable evaluation might lead to questions about integrity and honesty (might, I said, might) while a less than favourable evaluation if, heaven forbid, one could think of anything unfavourable to say, would probably lead to litigation. So it came about that another idea occurred to us all. What about an accurate assessment of scholars and scholarship I have known in almost forty years of active effort? I began as a postgraduate researcher in the 1960s in the University of London (the recipient of the William Lincoln Shelley studentship, its top award in humanities), held a lectureship at the University of Glasgow in 1968, then taught at Dropsie College in Philadelphia in 1972–73, finally arriving in Cambridge in the summer of 1973, with Shulie and two very young children. I remember what the late Ezra Fleischer (with whom I corresponded regularly for many years) wrote to me in February 1974 when I had recently moved to Cambridge. Having looked back at my scholarly peregrinations, he remarked that my movements would shame even the Jewish itinerant scholars of the Middle Ages (‫מפת טלטוליך ממקום‬

‫ מכל מקום קיימבריג' הוא‬.‫למקום הנוודים הגדולים שלנו בימי הביניים‬ ‫ ואם אמנם תקעת מביישת את את אוהלך שם אשריך‬,‫מקום טוב לחוקר‬ ‫)וטוב לך‬. I never really ascertained whether that comment represented Fleischerian humour or Fleischerian sharpness. Perhaps knowing him fairly well, as I later came to do, one may detect a little of each.

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On reflection, details of my relationships with scholars and academic institutions over a period of some forty years should perhaps await dissemination on another occasion. A glance back at my early days in Cambridge may prove interesting and even entertaining, and I shall share with you some of the lessons I learned as I worked. That tale begins in 1973 when I took charge of the Genizah Collection. At the conclusion of my interview in February earlier that year, the chairman of the appointments committee, the Master of Fitzwilliam, had described me as ‘tailor-made for the job’. I had cheekily replied ‘Taylor-Schechter-made, sir’. There were in effect two different notions about this post, that of the University Library as a whole and my own. Most of the Library’s elderly establishment thought of a very junior person doing a simple and unimaginative administrative job with some actual cataloguing of Hebraica and perhaps also Arabica, answering queries, reporting to correspondents about Genizah texts, arranging photography orders, and also cataloguing a few Genizah fragments when time permitted. A career of forty years could thus be gently completed and the high levels of neglect achieved in much of the past could thereby be successfully maintained. My notion of the task before me was not at all at one with this. After personal discussions with Professor Goitein, with my former teacher, Professor Wieder, and with other scholars in Israel, the USA and England, I saw the way ahead as demanding the speedy conservation and microfilming of the Genizah Collection, the preparation of a comprehensive bibliography of items dealing with the Cambridge fragments, the compilation of catalogues of all the different genres of material, proper arrangements for access exclusively via the Manuscripts Reading Room, fund-raising to finance all these plans, the appointment of a team to execute them successfully, and a host of parallel scholarly activities. This seems to have been regarded by many as the over-optimistic arrogance of youth. To understand my first few years at Cambridge University Library you have to understand Eric Ceadel, who was the University Librarian from 1967 until 1979. Ceadel inherited a library that was still in various respects that of Francis Jenkinson who had directed it from 1889 until 1923. Everything was done at a leisurely pace in the atmosphere of an old boys’ club without any serious attempt to promote managerial or professional approaches. The working atmosphere was relaxed, relations were personal if a trifle stiff and old-fashioned, the dress code was fairly formal and there was a system whereby those who joined

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the staff from school could gradually be trained and promoted from junior to senior status, often without any serious academic qualifications. To me as a newcomer, the Department of Rare Books seemed to enjoy the highest status, while those who worked with manuscripts constituted something of a Cinderella section. There were a few scholars of standing who had arrived at such a level as a result of personal interests rather than institutional planning. The overall concern was with the acquisition and cataloguing of books in a tranquil and gentle manner and there was an admirable and long-standing tradition of providing excellent service to readers. At the same time, there was something of a suspicion about the industrious and the expeditious, and a definite animosity to anything that smacked of innovation or even adjustment. Ceadel made determined efforts to bring the University Library into the 20th century and as a result became unpopular with many members of staff. He was a man of outstanding integrity but seemed shy of displaying warmth or humour. His enthusiasm for paperwork, efficiency, reports, evaluation on the basis of results regardless of background and personal connection, and the constant exchange of memoranda were widely regarded with wariness. But he felt strongly that those who worked hard and made admirable progress especially in neglected areas should be encouraged and rewarded. When I came to see him in the summer of 1973 to discuss how I should move matters along, and asked if I could come into my office in August, he pointed out that my salary would be paid only from the beginning of my appointment on 1 September. I assured him I knew this and was still happy to begin tackling the problems and he, somewhat astonished, and maybe even a little impressed, readily agreed. His ideas regarding the future of the Genizah Collection at the University Library, although certainly not entirely identical, were obviously more akin to mine than to those of the staff I was obliged to work with at the outset but I was not senior enough for a little while to be able to access and influence him directly. The Secretary of the Library, Arthur Tillotson, was in some respects the reverse image of Ceadel. He remained determinedly relaxed about his work and the Library’s activities and would not allow Ceadel to disrupt this state of affairs. One recently appointed young man (as he reported many years later) was in Tillotson’s office and, as they spoke, the telephone rang continuously, for a considerable number of min-

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utes, without any attempt on the part of Tillotson either to answer it or to interrupt their conversation. When it finally stopped, Tillotson said to his amazed younger colleague ‘There we are. I knew it was not important.’ Those with whom I began to work made me feel nervous and tense, especially when I spoke of plans to undo the neglect of some 65 years. One of my colleagues was later sent to prison for some sexual offence, another would have blushed at the very mention of the word ‘sex’, while a third was more interested in bibliographically rare and esoteric items than in humdrum work activities. Applications for office supplies were made to the general office which was run as a personal empire and where everything was done to place obstacles in the way of Eric Ceadel and his modernisation plans. Any attempt to obtain paper, envelopes, pencils, even some paper-clips required major skills of diplomacy and persuasion. When I was told that any letters that I wished to have typed would take their place in the queue and would not be ready for at least a few days, I brought in my own typewriter and typed them myself. When I quickly decided to compile a booklet about the Genizah Collection, I needed to know how to access information about the history of such collections in the Library. I approached a senior member of the staff who told me in no uncertain terms that I would have to find the sources and exploit them myself. Such an unwillingness to help puzzled and frustrated me. When I asked for permission to stop work an hour or so before shabbat in the winter months, I had to prepare a list of times and days when I would make up the lost working hours. I soon realised that my notion of the task before me was destined not to appeal to a fair number of fellow staff members. At least a little of the rationale for such animosity became clearer when one of the senior staff and his wife, both of whom were politically and communally active, as well as more kindly disposed to those who might be regarded as different in some respects from the majority of those employed in the Library, invited Shulie and me out to dinner. As we ate, they shared with us some hometruths about the discomfort felt in some parts of the Library—almost a decade before our arrival— when, for the first time ever, a practising Jew had been appointed to a post in the Library. But Eric Ceadel was too fair-minded to be influenced by such narrow-mindedness and, as soon as I received my first two major grants from the Leverhulme Foundation and the Pilgrim

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Trust, greatly encouraged me in my ambitious plans to put things right vis-à-vis the Library’s Genizah and other Hebrew manuscript collections. And so, in February 1974, just six months after my arrival at the Library, the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit was born. It was not an easy pregnancy or delivery and many tried to deny the baby nourishment in its first few months. I cannot recall how many times I was told, directly or by innuendo, to relax and to recall that the Library had many other such collections that still awaited attention, to accept that I could never do more than a small proportion of the work, to spend more time on mundane staff duties, and not to appear different either, on the one hand, by voluntarily working many extra hours or, indeed on the other, by taking time off for shabbat and Jewish festivals. When some traditionally garbed ḥasidim appeared at the entrance hall enquiring whether they could see the signature of Maimonides, I received a telephone call from a porter at the desk informing me that I had better come down since ‘some of your people have arrived’! The climax of this era for me and indeed its end came in the same week in June 1979. Eric Ceadel obtained my permission to put my name forward, without any formal application on my part, to the relevant committee as his suggestion for appointment as Deputy Librarian, i.e. the Library’s no. 2, with an agreement that I could choose whatever areas I wished to work in and leave the others to him. During that Monday meeting he surprisingly shared with me some very personal comments about his own problems and frustrations within the Library but hoped we could successfully tackle them together. On the Thursday he suddenly died of a heart attack at the tragically early age of 58. A senior member of the staff, who was hardly suitable for the post, took over responsibility for the Library and he and I did not have much patience with each other. Needless to say, I heard nothing more from anyone about the Ceadel proposal. The arrival of the new Librarian, Dr Fred Ratcliffe from Manchester, as well as my promotion (my second in six years) to Senior UnderLibrarian and Head of the Oriental Division, seem to have swept away some of the cobwebs and to have brought acceptance of the inevitability of progress being made with the Genizah Collection. Lesson learnt: ‫—כל התחלות קשות‬all beginnings are difficult. So much for internal matters at the University Library, but what of relationships between myself and those outside the library?

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On acquainting myself with the situation regarding the Genizah Collection, I found numerous matters that surprised, disappointed or amazed me. One of the discoveries that shocked me most was reading the names of various scholars on some of the 32 large crates and smaller boxes of unconserved items, indicating that these contents were exclusively for that particular researcher. With Ceadel’s agreement and encouragement, I introduced a new policy. Everything that had been conserved would be available to all researchers; no scholar, other than those working with the Unit on the new projects that I had arranged for the identification of the fragments, would be given access to any unconserved material. One scholar was horrified at this and other self-evident rules about the use of Library material (concerning such topics as permission, acknowledgement and accurate classmarks) and determined to avenge himself on me for disrupting a system that had operated (as he himself claimed in a letter to me) to his personal advantage for almost 40 years. That revenge came in the form of a letter of his about Cambridge University Library in a Hebrew bibliographical periodical. Among the accusations (followed by my responses) were: i.

I, and other librarians at non-Jewish libraries, had pretensions to become the director of the Jewish National and University Library (=JNUL) in Jerusalem. I had by then worked for only six years at Cambridge University Library, was in my early thirties and had just been turned down for the head of the oriental section at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, so directorships of libraries were hardly yet in the offing or in my imagination (although that was to change later on my side and on the JNUL side, though sadly not at the same time). ii. I was hindering instead of assisting the research work of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars. There had been a great expansion of work on the T-S collection from every viewpoint and more research was being conducted and published than ever before. iii. My booklet A Guide was not a definitive and comprehensive treatment of the subject. The booklet was 17 pages long . . . iv. There were only 100,000 fragments at Cambridge University Library and not 140,000 as I claimed.

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When a full and accurate inventory of every classmark was made in 2005, the total arrived at was 137,653, not very different from my estimate of thirty years earlier. v. The New Series binders were too large for convenient use. This was (and is) absolutely true of course and the reason why I had introduced the smaller binders for the Additional Series. Four other equally preposterous claims were made and all of them were disposed of in a detailed reply from me that was published in the periodical late in 1980. Lesson learnt (one already well known to me from my school studies in Edinburgh since it was the motto of the Scottish monarchy): In Latin, nemo me impune lacessit; in Scots, wha daur meddle wi’ me; in paraphrased English, never allow an unfair attack to go undefended. Attempting to behave super-correctly in my new capacity also led to another complaint to Eric Ceadel. A scholar from North America had been working on some fragments and I had assisted him in various ways while he prepared his material for publication. A few months later a European scholar arrived who was working in a similar field and I assisted him too (struggling to converse in French since this was our sole common language). Of course I thought it improper to pass on to him information about the earlier researcher’s work since I regarded this as confidential. When the North American’s work was published the European scholar enlisted a colleague of his who knew English to write a formal complaint, claiming that I had failed in my duties as curator of the collection by not updating him on all aspects of work being done in the University Library in his subject. Needless to say, he received short shrift from Ceadel once I had explained the whole situation. Another very senior scholar whom I had assisted in various ways by checking manuscript readings for him generously thanked me in a published note . . . ‘for having arranged photographs for him’! Others became offended when I declined to take upon myself the responsibility for finding them accommodation in Cambridge while more than one prima donna, when faced with a long queue to obtain a reader’s ticket, telephoned me and asked for ways of circumventing this inconvenience, only to become offended when I responded that I knew of none. Lesson learnt: Offer assistance to fellow scholars if you must and they may occasionally express their gratitude in one form or another.

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During my post-graduate studies in London when I was generously funded through various scholarships and awards and supplemented this by teaching in Hebrew classes, I developed rather left-wing views and a great impatience with capitalist enterprise and wealthy businessmen. Once I appreciated the need for a fund-raising campaign to finance all my plans at the Library, and reluctantly had to meet such people and persuade them to fund the Unit’s work, I soon adjusted my opinions. When I explained matters to academic colleagues or to students, there was often much discussion until everything was fully understood and this could take hours rather than minutes. Great specialists in esoteric subjects are not necessarily the brightest people at the practical level or the quickest to pick up the essence of what is being relayed to them. The busy chairman and managing director of a large public company once gave me his time between an hour’s meeting that finished just before 11.00 a.m. and the next one that started soon after 11.00 a.m. I had therefore to explain myself and my plans very swiftly and I was greatly impressed by the manner in which these were immediately absorbed and the essential points quickly assimilated. There are also other aspects to this part of my story. Having been invited to give a slide lecture at the home of the Chief Rabbi of the day, Lord Jakobovits, I had no sooner expressed the need for my extension cable to be plugged into a socket when he himself was down on his hands and knees crawling under a table to effect the required connection. To me, that was impressive in terms of both hospitality and humility. On the other hand, there was an interesting response from another chairman of a public company to two lectures that he had heard from me and that I thought to be at about the same level. After the first he suggested that I should be a little more general and not so technical. After the second, he asked why I could not be a little more technical and not so general. Lesson learnt: Political evaluations are often glib and individuals should be judged on how they perform and not what or whom they represent. I remember as chairman of the examiners one year going into the office at 7.30 a.m. and finding that one examiner had not yet submitted his marks for a meeting due to take place at 10.00 a.m. Since the relevant papers all still had to be typed and copied, I telephoned the recalcitrant colleague and made myself rather unpopular with such an early call.

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I remember suggesting that the way to ensure progress in many academic research projects was to attract external funding. For my troubles I was dubbed ‘an academic entrepreneur’ but not so many years later many academics who had sneered were following similar policies. I remember approaching a faculty colleague and asking if he could spare me a few minutes to discuss a rather urgent professional matter. ‘Sorry, not today’, he said, ‘I have an important letter to write.’ I remember that I was once told by a colleague that I had absolutely no chance of ever being elected to a college fellowship and then given major support by that same person when being proposed for a college fellowship. I remember that when I was at one stage denied a personal readership by the University, my response (after briefly considering a move into the book business!) was a determination to make every effort to ensure that the case for a full professorship was eventually overwhelming. Lesson learnt: Don’t be discouraged by judgments given by those who might have their own agenda. My own assessment of scholars would always be primarily whether their work has made a significantly quantifiable and identifiable difference to a field of study, to the lives of some of those in that field, and to relevant institutions. If not, then all the degrees, titles, awards and distinctions they might receive are just so much flattery and sycophancy. You will, I hope, recall my earlier reference to the two vastly different notions of what I should do in the University Library. What, then, were some of the more general difficulties of trying to introduce my own notion of the job, tackling a problem in a new way, changing a system, adjusting relationships, combining the scholarly with the bibliographical, with the administrative and with the financial? It has first to be said that if you have academic patronage, i.e. some leading name or body or teacher who has a vested interest in promoting himself or herself or protecting his or her own educational philosophy or scholarly viewpoints by advancing your career, everything is forgiven, including sloth, inaccuracy, dullness and arrogance. On the other hand, if you have made your own way to what you have achieved, few of the senior scholars in your broad fields of activity have a genuine personal interest in recognising that fact. There will therefore always be among them those who will seek to justify their own inadequacies, or defend themselves against having their achievements or those of

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their protégés compared with yours, by seeking to downgrade what you have accomplished. In this respect my experience has been, and indeed to this very day continues to be, that there is reluctance to acknowledge that any serious scholar can also function as a punctilious librarian and bibliographer, an efficient administrator and a competent fund-raiser. I am not sure whether this applies to other professions (I think in many of them there is an admiration of those who can turn their hands to many things) but in the world of academe there is for some reason a great suspicion of those who claim to be able to do more than one thing at a time in their professional lives, especially if they seem to succeed. The result is that those who appear to achieve this are regarded either as not real scholars, not serious librarians, not impressive administrators or not successful fund-raisers. It was Vauvenargues in 1746 who said that men despise great projects when they do not feel themselves capable of great successes. The form of that sentiment may come in jealousy, cynicism, obstruction and even revenge. The wife of the outstanding anthropologist, Sir James Frazer, put it in an interesting way when trying to explain why her husband had never had any recognition from the University of Cambridge, only his fellowship at Trinity College: ‘Dons are people who run in grooves and have no imagination . . . I always tell my husband that such as he, he is—and that suffices . . .’. Shulie often offered me similar advice as well as constant and indispensable professional co-operation. Lesson learnt: One must press on with one’s efforts, believe in one’s projects and be confident that in the end recognition and success will be achieved by worthy schemes. The self-important mediocrities who may have stood in the way will ultimately be identified as disreputable and self-seeking and history will soon dash them aside and forget them. But bountiful supplies of patience, self-confidence and intensive effort and application are required, sometimes beyond this life. I recall how my late lamented colleague, Risa Domb, who enthusiastically taught and successfully promoted modern Hebrew studies in the University of Cambridge for many years, often had to fight very hard to achieve her wholly justifiable ends, not infrequently in the face of petty obstruction. Yet, after her death many were full of praise and support. Some academic colleagues seem to feel that the best motto is de mortuis nil sed bonum. We always give full credit to those who have strained every muscle for us, particularly after their deaths.

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I grant that some of my early vicissitudes were by no means amusing for me at the time but I think that I can now look back with a smile, and even the tiniest hint of satisfaction about how I coped. As Jan Patocka, the Czech philosopher (1907–77) astutely phrased it, ‘the real test of a man is not how well he plays the role that he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him’. And in conclusion—in spite of having on their staffs (as so many other academic bodies do) their share of mediocre people, the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Library are great institutions at the highest international level. Those who truly understand this should make every effort to maintain that standing in the world at large. This becomes progressively more important as other centres lower their standards, sacrifice some of their scholarly interests, and spend their time on politically correct nonsense, and on stupid and ignorant educational gesturing. The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit (carrying the names of two outstanding scholars, Charles Taylor and Solomon Schechter) has a central role to play in the future of sound Semitic and Jewish studies and in medieval manuscript research. It has been a privilege for me to have been associated with it for so many decades and I hope to see its traditions continued, its horizons extended, its successes multiplied and its industry encouraged and rewarded. The omens to date are good and this conference is in itself an indication of the admirable directions in which Ben Outhwaite and the whole team are moving. Best wishes to the Unit and to all Genizah researchers and renewed thanks to you all for the great honour you have done me this week.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Aaron, 147–148 Abbasids, 27, 367, 370 ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, 140–143 Abraham b. Solomon, 347 Abraham Colon, 115–116 Abraham ibn Dāwūd, 300 Abraham ibn Ezra, 63, 75 Abraham Maimonides, 2, 11, 13–14, 18, 22 Abraham Zakut, 75 Abrahams, Israel, 184, 187 Abū ʿAlī, 326 Abu Bakr, see al-Razi Abū ʿImrān Mūsā b. al-Majjānī, 310 Abū l-ʿAlāʿ, 338 Abuʾl-Aʿlāʾ Yisraʾel b. Samuel b. Ḥ ofni, 312 Abū l-Barakāt, 333 Abū l-Faḍl al-Ḥ azzan, 338 Abū l-Faraj, 333, 338–339 Abū l-Faraj Hārūn ibn al-Faraj, 206, 208, 222, 227–228 Abū l-Ḥ asan al-Hūd, 333, 335, 338 Abū l-Ḵayr Ḵiyār, 338 Abū l-Makārim, 336, 338 Abū l-Muna, 336, 338 Abū Naṣr Faḍl Ḥ esed al-Tustarī, 311 Abū l-Šujāʿ, 151–153 Abū l-Surūr, 336 Abū l-Ṭ ayyib, 333 Abu Maʿšar, 75 Abū Saʿd al-Rayyis, 338 Abū Saʿid al-Ḥ azzan, 338 Abū Sulaymān David b. Babšād, 312 Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf ibn Nūḥ, 219–220, 222–223, 225, 227–228 Abū Zikrī Judah b. Joseph ha-Kohen, 331, 333, 335–340 accounts, 333, 337 Adam, 39 Aden, 104 Adler, Elkan Nathan, 176–77, 181–3, 191–3, 195 al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī, 303 Afghanistan, 321 Africa, 110 agriculture, 106, 109

Aḥimaʿaṣ b. Palṭiʾel, 367 Al-Amir, 347 al-Andalus, see Spain Al-Basatin, 176–77 alchemy, 53–79 Aleppo, 29, 104 Alexandria, 83–84, 86, 100, 102–103, 105, 116 Alfonso II, King of Aragon, 112 Alfred Maltby & Son, 190 al-Gamāliyya, 44 Al-Ghazzali, 75 al-Ḥ ākim, 238, 296 al-Ḥ aram al-Šarīf, documents of, 13 Almohads, 92 almonds, 109 Almoravids, 141 al-Muʾayyad Šayḵ, 117 al-Muqaddasī, 28 al-Qalqašandī, 29 Al-Qirqisānī, 206–207, 328 al-Razi, 64, 75 al-Šām, 25, 27–32, 34, 37–40 al-Tāhirtī, 310 al-Tustarī, Tustarīs, 305, 311 al-Ẓ āhir, 300 ʿamida, 358, 360, 362, 367–368, 370–371 Amīn al-Dawla, 332 Amittai b. Shefaṭya, 367, 369–370 amulets, 53–79 Ancona, 103, 110 angels, 56, 58, 60, 71, 73 Antonin Collection, 44 Arabia, 207 Arabic, 63–66, 68–69, 101, 107, 111, 319–330, 333, 337, 340 Arabic, bi-imperfect, 351 Arabic, Classical, 344–346, 348–349, 351–352, 354–355 Arabic, demonstrative pronouns, 351–352 Arabic, Judaeo-Arabic, 4, 13, 45–47, 63–65, 68–69, 71, 201–218, 320, 322, 324, 333, 343–345, 358 Arabic, Medieval, 160, 334 Arabic, Modern Egyptian, 348 Arabic, Modern Standard, 352

390

index of subjects

Arabic, Muslim, 345, 353–354 Arabic, negation, 352–354 Arabic, syntax, 333 Aragon, 371 Aramaic, 4, 63–66, 68–69, 83, 239, 321, 333, 345, 358, 366 Ari, see Isaac Luria asceticism, 47 Ashkelon, 25, 35, 359 Ashkenaz and Ashkenazi Jews, 57, 90, 207, 372 aṣl, 221, 224 Asti, 370–371 astrology, 53–79 autonomy, Jewish, 293–296 ʿavoda prayer, 360, 363, 365, 368, 371–372 ʿaynan, 334 Ayyubids, 29, 345–347 Babylon, see Iraq Babylonian reading tradition, 206–207, 209 Babylonian vocalisation, 208 Badr al-Jamālī, 303 Baghdad, 151, 153, 297, 299–301, 305, 309–312, 367 Banādiqa, 111 Banias, 35 banking, 331–341 Bar Bahlul, 28 basmala, 333, 345–346 Basātīn cemetery, 44 Basra, 327 beads, 111 beans, 109 be-emet, 333–334 Ben Ezra synagogue, 43–52, 62, 172–174, 178, 181, 184–185, 193, 238 Benjamin Castro, 117 Ben Sira, book of, 181, 183, 191–4 Bentwich, Herbert, 188 Berbera, 104 bet din, 146 Bible, exegesis of, 1–2, 14, 46–47, 219–235, 240, 321 Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 45 bilingualism, 319–330 Birkat ha-Minim, 130–131, 157, 167–168 Birkat Modim, 130, 132, 134–136 Black Death, 343 Bodleian Library, 171, 173–174, 178–179, 181–182, 186–191, 193–196, 319, 383; curators, 173, 175, 178,

180, 182, 187, 191, 195; and storage, 190–191 Boethusians, 164–165, 167 Book of Beliefs and Convictions, 46 Boswellia carteri, 109 Bougie (Bijaya), 142, 145 brontologia, 74 Bunduqīya, 111 Bursa, 104 Byzantium and Byzantine Jews, 29, 162, 207, 347, 364, 367, 369–370, 372 calf hide, 243 Cairo, 44–45, 49, 57, 59, 62, 65, 68, 72, 99–102, 113, 115–116, 118, 172, 174–177, 179–180, 182, 184, 189, 194–195, 302–303, 305, 311, 313, 331, 346 Calcutta, 104 calendar, 339 Caliph al-Ḥ ākim, 238 Cambridge University Library, 43, 50, 178, 180, 183, 190, 193–195 camel and camel hair, 33, 39 Candia, see Crete candles, 339–340 canella, 109 Cassia fistula, 109 Catalonia, 371 Cattaui, Moses, 185 Ceadel, Eric (University Librarian), 379–384 cemetery, 147 Central Asia, 103, 111 charity and charitable trusts, 86, 91 cheese, 106 cheques, see orders of payment, Chester, Greville John (Rev.), 172, 174–176, 187 chewing gum, 339 Chief Rabbi (Cairo), 182 childbirth, 56, 70 China, 26, 30–31 Church of St Michael, 174 cinnamon, 109 clothes, 107, 116 coal, 115–116 coins, 108, 111–114 complexity, compositional, 269–270, 274, 276–277, 279 consuls, 105 conversos, 105 copper, 108, 116 Coptic, 63, 72, 334

index of subjects coral, 110, 116 Corfu, 104, 368 coronas, 112, 114 cotton, 25, 28, 31–32, 36–39, 109 courtiers, Jewish, 302–308, 310, 313 Cowley, Arthur Ernest (Sir), 173, 180–182, 186–187, 192, 194–195 Craster, Edmund (Sir), 190 Crete, 100, 104, 106 crocus, 106 Crusaders and crusades, 27, 29, 92–93, 359 cryptic language, 324–325 crypto-Jews, 145 curses, 73 Cyprus, 106 Dalton, 32 Damascus, 27–30, 33, 104 Damascus Document, 47, 49 Damietta, 102 Dandan Uiliq, 319 Daniel b. ʿAzarya, 33, 311 Daniel ha-Nasi b. David, 152 dār, 338 Dār Simḥa synagogue, 43–52 David b. Abraham al-Fāsi, 220, 222, 228 David b. Daniel, 303 David ha- Nasi, 336, 338 David bin Abi Zimra (Radbaz), 102, 111 David Maimonides, 95 debt, 87–89, 91 definite article, 23 De imaginibus, 71 De Lapidibus, 64 demons, 56, 58, 63, 70–71, 73 Derʿa, 141 Deuteronomy, book of, 365 D’Hulst, Laura (wife of Riamo), 190 D’Hulst, Riamo (Count), 171–173, 176, 178–186, 189–196 Dianthus, 109 diglossia, 346 ḏimma, 140, 152 dioqne, 331 divination, 53–79 Ḍ iyāʾ, 5, 14–15, 18–19, 22–23 Domb, Risa, 387 dreams and dream interpretation, 56, 60, 66–67, 70, 73, 75, 147–151 Dropsie College, Philadelphia, 378 Dubrovnik, 104 ducat, 111

391

Dunash b. Tamim, 206 dye, 110 earthquake, 148–149 Edinburgh, 384 Edom, 163 Edwards, Amelia, 172 Egypt, 14–15, 18, 22, 25, 27, 29, 33, 38, 40, 86, 92–93, 166, 210, 215, 291–292, 295–297, 299–301, 303–304, 306, 308–310, 312–313, 331, 344, 352–353, 355, 359 Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF), 172–173, 176, 179, 184 Egypt Exploration Society (EES), 172 Elazar b. Nathan, 91 Eleazar b. Qillir, 249–288, 362–365, 368–370, 372 Eleazar Kohen, 20 ʿEli b. ʿAmram, 33 Elijah, 151–153 Elijah ha-Dayyan, the son of, 338 emancipation, 343 England, 27, 107 Enlightenment, 343 Ephraim b. Shemariah, 300, 306 Eretz-Israel, see Palestine Esther, book of, 149, 152 Evyatar b. Elijah, 303 excommunication, 61, 73 Exodus, book of, 46 exogamy, 306 exorcism, 56, 58 Ezekiel, book of, 319–320 Ezra, 206 Far East, 107, 109, 111 Fatimids, 238, 296–297, 300, 302–305, 339, 345–347 fattore, 103 Ferdinand I, King of Aragon, 112 Fez, 142 fili, 323 fiqh, 12 Firkovich, Abraham, 44–45, 47–48 Firkovich Collection, 46, 48 Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 378 flax, 25–26, 31, 36–38, 109 Fleischer, Ezra, 378 Florence, 99, 103, 105, 107 florin, 111, 113–114, 116–118 formulary, see sefer šeṭarot Fossano, 370–371 Fourth Lateran Council, 343

392

index of subjects

France, 27, 31, 105, 367, 370–371 Francesco Grisolin, 116 frankincense, 109 Frazer, Sir James, 387 funerary inscriptions, 246, 367 Fustat, 18, 22, 33, 43, 140, 291–292, 297, 300, 302, 306, 309–312, 327, 331, 357, 359 Fustat, Palestinian Rabbanite congregation in, 290, 300, 310, 357 galleys, 115–116 gall-nut ink, 243 Gaon, 149–150 Gaster Collection, 44 Gaster, Moses, 192 Gate of Gibraltar, 142, 145 Gate of Judah, 147 Gaza, 104 gemstones, 110 Genizah chamber, 172, 174, 177–179, 181–184, 189, 238 Genizah manuscripts, burial of, 196 Genizah manuscripts, excavation of, 171, 184–187, 191, 193–196 Genizah manuscripts, packing and shipping of, 179–180, 185–186 Genizah manuscripts, physical state of, 189–190 gentiles, 165–166 Geʾonim, 31, 46, 83, 85–87, 89–93, 95–96, 295, 297, 299–301, 307–312 geomancy, 66, 75 Georgian, 239 Germany, 27, 343, 367, 369–370, 372 Giaromo Bivisca, 115 Gibson, Margaret Dunlop, 181 ginger, 109 girdle rhyming, 265, 267 glossary, 240 gold, 108 goralot, 62, 66–67, 72, 75 grammatical thought, 206–207, 219 Granada, 245 grape, 339 Greece, 104 Greek, 239–240 Gubail, 135 Gush Halav, 33, 35 hadutahu, 271–272 Ḥ aduta, 373 hafṭarot, 240, 246 haggadot, 69

Haggahot Maymuniyyot, 89–90 halaḵa, see law, Jewish Ḥ alfon b. Manasseh, 12, 62 Ḥ alfon ha-Levi b. Nethanel, 157, 159, 162, 167 Hama, 29 Ḥ anafī School, 11 Ḥ annuka, 360–362 Ḥ ārat al-Yahūd al-Qarrāʾīn, 44 Ḥ arba de-Moše (The Sword of Moses), 68, 70, 73 ḥ arir, see silk ḥ aroset, 365 hats, 116 Havdala de-Rabbi Akiva, 73 hawāla, 331 Hayya (Hai) b. Sherira, 92–93, 300, 311, 366 Head of the Diaspora, 152–153 Hebrew, 13, 46, 63–64, 66, 68–69, 71, 83, 161, 239–240, 321, 324–325, 333, 345, 347–348, 350, 354, 364, 367, 373 Hebrew, in Arabic script, 208 Hebron, 109 Hekhalot, 60 hemerologia, 56, 60, 74 hemp, 31 Henriques, Reginald Q., 183, 185–186, 191, 194, 196 Henry Johnson & Sons, 186 heretics, 157–169 Hexapla, 239 Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ, 206, 208 Hillel b. Beraḵot, 5, 8–9, 18–20, 22–23 Hillel b. Eli, 12, 62 historiography, documentary sources and, 291–293 Hīt, 48 horologia, 56, 74 Hosea, book of, 219–235 Hula Valley, 26 Hula Sea, 27 Ibn Ḥ anbal, 28 Ibn Ḥ azm, 162–164 Ibn Imām, 30 Ibn Janāḥ, 207 Ibn Sirin, 75 Ibn ʿUmayl, 75 Ifrīqiya, 299, 309, 310 iḥ tiyāt, 14 ijtihād, 167 iḵtilāf, 14

index of subjects India, 95, 99, 104, 110, 140, 157–158, 322, 331 Indian Ocean, 95 indigotin, 110 Iran, 130–132, 135, 207, 219, 322 Iraq, 40, 48, 85, 87, 93, 96, 207, 219, 245, 290, 290, 292, 299–301, 304, 309, 311, 313 Isaac Alfasi, 85 Isaac b. Judah Ibn al-Maššāt, 5–9, 18–20, 22 Isaac Israeli, 206 Isaac Luria, 111 Islam, conversion to, 141, 143, 145–146, 152 ʿisqa, 94–95 Israel, land of, see Palestine Israel b. Nathan, 33 ism, 225 Ismāʿīlism, 162 Istanbul, 104–105 Italy, 27, 207, 246, 304, 367–373 Jacob Albo, 115 Jacob Berab, 111 Jacob Castro, 111 Jacob Levi, 116 jāh (honour or social rank), 309 Jakobovits, Lord Immanuel (Chief Rabbi), 385 jam, 340 Japeth b. Adoniyam, 20 Jawāhir al-ʿUqūd of Asyūṭī, 13 Jenkinson, Francis, 182, 185–186, 190, 193, 379 Jeremiah, 142 Jerusalem, 28–30, 33, 35, 47, 49, 109, 146–147, 177–178, 219, 228, 297, 299–300, 306, 310–311, 346, 359 Jewish National and University Library, 383 Jewish Theological Seminary, 34, 40, 63, 160, 191, 195 jizya, 152 Jordan, 25 Joseph, 1–2 Joseph al-Sijilmāsī, 147, 149, 154 Joseph Ardea, 115–116 Joseph b. Barzel, 159, 162 Joseph b. ʿImran, 141, 144 Joseph b. Jacob ibn ʿAwkal, 327 Joseph ben Noah, see Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf ibn Nūḥ Joseph Caro, 93, 111

393

Joseph ibn Abitur, 371 Joseph ibn Megas, 85 Joseph Naftali, 112–113 jubā (revenue collectors), 336 Judaean Desert, documents from the, 237 Judaeo-Arabic, see Arabic, Judaeo-Arabic Judaeo-Greek, 69 Judaeo-Persian, 63, 69, 72, 319–330 Judaeo-Persian, early, 320 Judeao-Persian, early, Khuzistan dialect, 327 Judaeo-Persian, vocalisation of, 326–327 Judaeo-Spanish, 63, 72, 101 Judah ben Barzilai of Barcelona, 92 Judah b. Tabbai, 167 Judah ha-Levi, 157–169 Judah Castro, 117–118 Judah Masʿūd, 114 jurists, Islamic, 11 Kabbalah, 60, 73 Kadesh, 33 kāḡad, 26, 28–29, 31–32 kāḡadī, 30 Karaites, see Qaraites Karak, 29 Kesef Mišne, 93 Khan al-Khalili market, 44, 102 Khazars, 157 Kifra, 364 Kimia al-Saʿda, 75 Kings, book of, 241–242, 246 Kitāb al-Ḥ āwī, 366 Kitāb al-Šahādāt wa-ʾl-Waṯāʾīq of Saʿadya Gaon, 12 ḵiyār al-ʿayb, 13 ḵiyār al-majlis, 13 knives, 114–115 kohen, 331 Kuzari, 157–169 Ladino, see Judaeo-Spanish Large & Co., 186 Latin, 64, 71, 239 law, Islamic, 13–14, 82, 85, 94–95 law, Jewish, 46–47, 81–98, 365 lead, 108 leadership, Jewish communal, 291–305, 313–314 Lebanon, 25 legal documents, 1–24, 146–150, 238, 243

394

index of subjects

Leghorn, 103, 105 León, 246 letters, letter-writing, 140–146, 154, 238, 343–355 Levi b. Yefet, 30 Leverhulme Foundation, 381 Lévi, Israel, 192–193 Lewis, Agnes Smith, 177, 181, 189–190 linen, 25, 38–39 Lithuania, 344 liturgy, 53, 239–240, 357–375 liturgy, Aleppine rite, 128, 135–136 liturgy, Babylonian rite, 127–128, 131–135, 167 liturgy, Palestinian rite, 127, 132–136, 167–168 loan, 87–89, 94 Lombardy, 369, 372 London, 44 Loterai, 325 Lucca, 372 Lucena, 92, 241–242, 245–246 Ma al-Waraqi, 75 Madan, Falconer, 173 maḏhab, 164 Maghreb, 40, 140–141, 145, 164–165, 207, 241, 324, 345, 352 magic, 53–79 magic, aggressive, 69–70, 72–73 magic, Christian, 58 magic, erotic, 56, 69–70, 72–73 magic, Islamic, 58 magic, medico-, 60, 69, 72 magic, pagan, 58 magic, prayers, 60, 74 magic, recipe books, 56, 58, 60, 69–70, 72 magic, talismanic, 71, 73 maḥ ḍar, 146 Mahmūd ibn ʿUmar Zamaḵšarī, 39 maḥ zorim, 357–375 Maḥzor Eretz-Israel, 359–360, 363, 365 Maḥzor Pinḥas, 364 Maḥzor Romania, 364 Maḥzor Yannai, 363–364, 369, 372–373 Maḥzor Yoḥanan, 364–366, 372 Maimonides, 7–8, 14, 46–47, 81–98, 111, 145, 157, 162, 164–168, 382 Mālikī School, 166 malšin (informer), 294, 313 Mamluks, 29, 44 Manchester, 44 Maqālat al-ḥ adīqa, 47

Marcus, Joseph, 193 Maria the Jewess (alchemist), 65 Marco Cappello, 113–114 maror, 365 Marrakesh, 142 marriage contract, 237, 306 Marseilles, 11 martyrdom, 141–146, 369 Maša Allah, 75 Masoretes, 32, 206–207 Mayence, 369–370, 372 medicine, 53, 61 Meʾir b. Yekutiʾel ha-Kohen of Rothenburg, 89 Meʾir of Rothenberg, 89 Meknes, 141 merchants, 308–310, 313 merubba metre, 266–268, 277–278 Meshullam b. Qalonymos, 372 Messiah, 84 messianism, 151–154 Messina, 104 Methone, 104 Mevorakh b. Saʿadiah, 303 mezuzot, 74 Micah, 144 Middle English, 343 Middle German, 343 midrash, 83 Mishnah, 39, 83–84 Mishneh Torah, 81–89, 92–96, 165 mišt, 323 mnemonics, 222 Mocha, 104 Moncalvo, 370–371 money-orders, see orders of payment Mongols, 321 Morea, 104 Morocco, 27, 92, 140–141, 322, 331 morphology, nominal, 224–226 morphology, verbal, 221–224 Moses, 147–148 Moses b. Abraham ha-Levi, 49 Moses Deleiria, 113 Moses ibn Ezra, 47 Moses Loḥmit, 116 Moses Maimonides, see Maimonides Mosseri, Jacques, 44, 180, 185, 189, 195–196 muʾayyadī, 117–118 Muḥammad ibn Tūmart, 140 Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī, 28, 32 mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera), 30 Munk, Solomon, 45

index of subjects Mūsā b. Yaʿqūb, 33 musaf, 358, 362, 364, 371–372 Muwaḥḥidun, 140 mysticism, 47, 60 Nablus, 29, 109 Naḥshon Gaon, 2 Namer Varioti, 117–118 Naphtali, tribe of, 28 Nāsẹr-e Khosraw, 28 našāʾ (starch), 30, 40 Nathan b. Abraham, 308 National Library of Israel, see Jewish National and University Library National Library of Russia, 45, 48 necromancy, 147–148 Neubauer, Adolf, 175–176, 179–188, 192–195 new Genizah, 196 neyar meḥ aqa, 31 Nicholson, E. W. B., 175–176, 182, 185–186, 190 Nile, 18, 22, 103, 177 Noah, 144 North Africa, see Maghreb Nukat Diqduq, 219–220, 222–223, 227–228 numerology, 148 Obadiah of Bertinoro, 99 Offord, Joseph, 194 oil, 332, 334, 340 olives, 31 onaʾa, 2 oneiromancy, see dreams and dream interpretation onomamancy, 75 orders of payment, 331–341 Oria, 369 Origen, 239 ostrich feathers, 110, 116–118 Ottomans, 210, 215, 344 Oxford, 44, 47 Palestine, 25–29, 32, 34, 39, 92, 102, 104, 107–110, 114, 148–149, 157, 207, 246, 290, 292, 297, 299, 300, 304, 306, 308, 344, 346, 357–375 Palestine, four cubits of land in, 87–89, 91, 93 Palestinian reading tradition, 207, 209–210 Palestinian vocalisation, 208–209, 361–364, 373

395

Palestinian Yeshiva, 147, 206, 346 palimpsest, 237–247 palmomancy (twitch-divinitation), 56, 66, 75 paper and papermaking, 25–42, 332, 359 papyrus, 26–28, 332 parallelism, biblical, 278 parchment, 27, 32, 62, 239, 241–243, 245, 358–360, 367, 373 parnasim, 49 Passover, 30, 360, 363, 365–366, 368 pataḥ , 209–210, 214–215 Patocka, Jan, 388 pearls, 111 pepper, 109, 114 peqid ha-soḥ arim, 103 perfume, see scents persecution, 151–152, 238 Persia, see Iran Pesaḥ, see Passover petitions, 303 philosophy, 46–47 physiognomy, 75 piaster, 114 Pilgrim Festivals, 360, 363 Pilgrim Trust, 381–382 Pinḥas b. Mešullam, 83–86 Pinḥas ha-Kohen, 259–261, 263–265, 267, 270, 363–365, 367–368 Pinḥas Roš ha-Yešiva, 206 Pišra de-Rabbi Ḥ anina ben Dosa, 68, 70, 73 piyyuṭ, 53, 320, 357–375 planets, influence of, 56 Pliny, 28 Pococke Collection, 44 Poland, 344 polite expressions, 334 Poole, R. S., 173 Portugal, 105 power of attorney, 81–96 prayer-books, 69 Princeton Geniza Browser, 3 property, ownership and transactions, 90–93, 340 Pseudo-Aristotle, 56, 64 Pseudo-Teucros, 63, 75 Pumbedita, 300, 309, 311–312 Purim, 360 qafas, 117–118 Qalonymos family, 372 qameṣ, 210, 214–215

396

index of subjects

Qaraites, 1–2, 14, 44–46, 48–49, 147, 149, 162–163, 167–168, 219–235, 292, 300, 302, 304, 305–308, 310–313, 320, 328 Qassia, 369 Qayrawan, 301, 310 qedušta, 271–272, 279, 362–366, 368 qerova, 272–277, 358, 362, 365, 368, 372 qeroveṣ, 372 qinyan, 8, 19–20, 22, 88, 94, 117–118 qirād, 94–95 qirtạ̄s, 28 Qiṣsạ t Ḥ anna, 210 qītōn, 31 Qumran, 47 Qurʾān, 1 Rabbanites, 46, 50, 162, 166, 328 rabbinics, 47, 53, 239–240 rabbit hair, 38–39 Rabib al-Dawlah Abu Mansur al-Husain Ibn Abi Shujaʾa, 152 Raffalovich, W. S., 48, 192–193 Ragusa, 103 rahiṭ, 368 raisins, 107, 339 Ramla, 25, 29, 33–35, 38, 147–149, 306 Ramla, different congregations of, 149 Rashi, 31 Ratcliffe, Fred (University Librarian), 382 raṭl, 113–114, 117 reading cycle, annual, 358, 365, 369 reading cycle, triennial, 362, 368–369 Reif, Shulamit (Shulie), 377–378, 381 responsa, 46, 90, 94, 106, 112, 365 rešut, 372 Rhineland, 304, 372 Rhodes, 104 rice, 109 Romania, 370, 372 Rome, 370, 372 Rosetta, 102–103 Rosh ha-Shana, 361–362, 364–365, 369 R. Simḥa, 31 rubies, 111 Rūm, 162–164 ruqʿa, 331 Saʿadya Gaon, 46–47, 85, 222, 363, 368, 370–371 Sabbath, 240, 367, 369–370 sabr, 94 Sadducees, 164–165, 167

Safed, 29, 104, 107, 110–114 saffron, 106 ṣaḥ ḥ a, 333, 336 šāhid, (witness) 337 Sahlān b. Abraham, 311, 365 sakk, 331 salam, 331 Salonika, 104, 107–108 Samarkand, 26, 29, 31 Samuel, 147–148 Samuel b. Ḥ ofni, 46, 312 Samuel b. Hoshaʿna, 365 Samuel b. Seʿadya, 339 Samuel ha-Nagid Ibn Naghrilla, 163–164 Saphir, Jacob, 177 Sayce, Archibald Henry, 176–184, 186, 188 scammony, 110, 113–114 scents, 109 Schechter, Solomon, 45, 47–48, 181–189, 191–196 Schirmann, Jefim, 194 scorpions, 70 scribal notes, 10 seder pesuqim, 253–265, 267, 269, 272–274, 277 Seder Rav Amram Gaon, 127–128 seder yeṣira, 253–265, 267–269, 272–274, 277 Sefer Berit Menuḥ a, 74 Sefer ha-ʿIṭtụ r of Isaac b. Abba Mari, 11, 13 Sefer ha-Malbuš, 70, 73 Sefer ha-Miṣvot, 30, 320 Sefer ha-Qabbalah, 300 Sefer ha-Qeviṣa, 63, 71, 73 Sefer ha-Razim, 53, 62–63, 68, 70, 73 Sefer Ḥ asidim, 372 Sefer ha-Šeṭarot of Hai b. Sherira Gaon, 2, 11–13 Sefer ha-Šeṭarot of Judah b. Barzillai, 2, 12–13 Sefer ha-Yašar, 63, 70, 73 Seder Ḥ ibbur Berakhot, 373 Sefer Raziʾel, 70–71, 73 sefer šeṭarot, 241–3, 246 segol, 210–211, 214–215 Seljuk conquests, 345–346 Sephardi pronunciation, 207, 209, 215–217 ṣere, 209–211, 214–215 serugin (shorthand), 239 Ševaʿ Maʿalot, 73 šewa, 208–210, 214

index of subjects Shāfiʿī School, 166 Shapira, Moses WIlliam, 48 Shavuʿot, 358, 360, 363–364 sheep hide, 242 Shefaṭya b. Amittai, 367 Shemini ʿAṣeret, 360, 363 Sicily, 99, 104–107, 299, 309–310 Siddur Rabbi Solomon b. Nathan, 127–136 Siddur Rav Saʿadya Gaon, 127–128 Sifra, 83 Sifre, 83 Sijilmāsa, 129, 134, 140–141, 143–144, 331 silk, 32, 39, 107, 110, 114, 116 silluq, 365–366 Simeon b. Shetah, 167 Šimmuš Tehillim, 68, 70, 73 Šimon bar Megas, 271–272 slavery, 1–3, 5, 7–9, 13–15, 22–23 soap and soap-making, 31, 109, 340 Solomon (Sulaiman) al-Sinjari, 359–360, 365–368 Solomon b. Judah, 147, 300, 308 Solomon b. Šela, 335 Solomon b. Ṣemaḥ, 306 Solomon ha-Kohen b. Joseph, 32 Solomon ha-Kohen b. Joseph ha-Sijilmāsī, 140–141, 145 Solomon ha-Kohen b. Yehosef, 308 Somalia, 104 Soviet Union, 50 Spain, 27, 33, 85, 92–93, 105–107, 157–158, 163–164, 166, 168, 207, 241, 245–246, 297, 304, 309, 322, 371 Spain, expulsion from, 105 spices, 109, 114 starch, see našāʾ St Petersburg, 44–45, 47, 50 suftaja, 331 sugar cane, 106–109 Sukkot, 360, 363 sulphur, 108 Sura, 2, 312 Surat, 104 Sutton & Co., 186 swords, 108 Synagogue of the Palestinians (Ramla), 147 Synagogue of the Qaraites (Ramla), 147 Syria, 104, 107, 109–110 syrup, 339

397

Tafsir Ezekiel, 319–320 Ṭ aḥāwī, 14 Talavera, 163 talent, 113–114, 116 Talmud, 11, 39, 81, 83–85, 87–89, 91–93, 96, 165, 240, 367 Tāšfīn, 141 taqqana, 87, 92–93 Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, inception of, 382, 388 tax, 336 Taylor, Charles, 182 teqiʿata, 266–268, 270, 362, 365 textiles and the textile industry, 25–26, 107, 110 Thabit ibn Qurra, 63, 71 The Story of our Master Joseph (Qaraite chronicle), 1–2, 14 Tiberian reading tradition, 206–209, 215–217 Tiberian vocalisation, 206–207, 210, 215–216, 360, 362–363 Tiberias, 28–29, 32–35 Tilimsān, 141, 143 Tillotson, Arthur (Secretary of the Library), 380–381 tin, 108 Tinmilal, 140 Tishʿa be-ʾAv, 368 titles, 334, 337–338 ṭofse de-šeṭare, 14 Toledo, 163 Topeth, 142 Torah scroll, 147–148, 240 Tosefta, 83 Treatise of Shem, 74 Trinity College, Cambridge, 387 Tripoli, 27–29, 33, 104 Tunisia, 245–246 Turcomans, 346 Turin, 373 Turkey, 104–105, 110 Turkestan, 319 Turks, 113, 346 twitch-divinitation, see palmomancy Tyre, 29, 33, 306, 346 Ukraine, 344 University of Glasgow, 378 University of London, 378 Vauvenargues, 387 vellum, see parchment

398

index of subjects

Venetian Republic, 100 Venice, 99, 103–113, 117–118 Venosa, 367 waqf, see charity and charitable trusts wakīl, 7–10, 103 Wallis, Henry, 175 water buffalo, 110 wax, 108 weapons, 108 Wertheimer, Solomon (Rabbi), 177–179, 188 wheat, 106 wine, 106 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 279 wool, 31, 36–37, 107–108 Worms Maḥzor, 358, 370 Yannai, 271, 362, 364, 368–370, 373 yāqūt aḥ mar, see rubies Yefet ben ʿEli, 220, 228

Yemen, 27, 104 yešivot, in Baghdad, 298–299, 301, 305, 307, 309–313 yešiva, in Jerusalem, 300, 303–304, 307, 310–312 Yešuʿa b. Hillel Ibn Zikr, 5–6, 8, 18–20, 22 Yoḥanan ha-Kohen b. Joshua, 259–260, 263–264, 363–366, 371, 373 Yom Kippur, 360–361, 363, 365, 368, 371–372 Yose b. Yose, 266, 362–363, 365, 368, 370–371, 373 Yūsuf ibn ʿAwkal, 309–310, 311 zecchinos, 111 zenzero, 109 ziḵron ʿedut (court record of testimony), 146, 154 Zosimus (alchemist), 64, 75

INDEX OF SOURCES

Hebrew Bible Genesis 7:24 14:20 37:28

144 233 1

Exodus 1–20 12:29 29:18

47 368–369 225

Leviticus 12:1

369

Numbers 10:35

240

Deuteronomy 32:4

141

Joshua 24:19

234

1 Samuel 14:14

233

1 Kings 17:20 19:8–21

230 241

2 Kings 2:9

232

Isaiah 2:11 2:17 28:10 42:4

226, 228–229 226, 228–229 235 229

Jeremiah 2:31 19:4 19:6 49:24

234 141–142 142 234

Hosea 2:3 2:4

222, 228 228

2:7 2:8 2:9 2:12 2:13 2:14 2:15 4:18 5:2 5:13 7:4 7:6 7:7 7:8 7:12 7:13 7:14 8:4 8:6 8:7 8:9 8:12 8:13 9:1 9:7 9:10 9:12 9:14 10:6 10:7 10:9 10:10 11:3 11:4 11:6 11:8 12:1 12:4 12:8 12:12 13:1 13:2 13:3 13:5 13:6 13:8

224–225, 228 221, 228 221, 228 226, 228 225, 229 225, 229, 231 221, 229 229 224, 229 229 224, 229 230 230 230 221, 230 231 224, 230 230, 234 224, 231 226, 231 231 225, 231 226, 230 231 231 232 231 232 226, 232 232 226, 233 223, 233 232 222–223, 233 221, 233 233 234 221, 234 225, 234 226, 234 234 234 221, 234 225, 234 221, 234 234

400 13:14 13:15 14:1 14:4

index of sources 234–235 226, 234 226, 235 235

Proverbs 17:22 25:12 25:20 30:15

229 229 221, 229 226, 229–230

Micah 1:1–7 1:8

144 141

Job 18:5

229

Psalms 61:8 85:12 102:10 119:165 129:3

222 333 224–225, 228 141 233

Ecclesiastes 8:4

141

Daniel 3:22 5:17

224, 231 226, 230

Genesis Rabba (Genr) 20 88:11 94:8

39 366 28 Mishnah

Bava Meṣiʿa 4:3–4

Makkot 3:11

2

163

Babylonian Talmud (Bt) Bava Meṣiʿa 39b Megilla 19a Menaḥ ot 39b

1 31 39

Pesaḥ im 115b Šabbat 116a

365 240

Tosefta Kilayim Šabbat

39 39 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah

ʿAvoda Zara 2:5

164

Mamrim 3:1–3

166

Meḵira 13:11 15:3 15:6

2 2 13

Šeluḥ in ve-Šutafin 1:2 1:9 3:7

7 9 88–89, 93–94

Talmud Torah

3:10

index of sources

401

Maimonides, Mishnah Commentary Giṭtị n 3:2

Ḥ ullin 1:2

14

164

Maḥ zor Viṭ ri §559

3 Sefer Ha-ʿitṭ ụr Of Isaac B. Abba Mari

I:134

2–3 Pliny, Natural History

XIII, 73

28 Qurʾān

4:6 12:19

335 1

12:20

1

British Library Or. 5557 Z 23–24 Or. 10110.23

134 109, 119

Or. 12315 Or. 12378.6

104, 119 130–133

Budapest, Library of The Hungarian Academy of Sciences Kaufmann 36ar Kaufmann 36r

104, 118 104, 108, 109, 118

Kaufmann 36v

104, 107, 108, 118

Cambridge University Library CUL Add.3160.6 CUL Add.3335 CUL Or.1080 3.4 CUL Or.1080 5.6 CUL Or.1080 J20 CUL Or.1080 J28 CUL Or.1080 J107 CUL Or.1080 J133 CUL Or.1080 J134 CUL Or.1080 J174 CUL Or.1080 J235

134 303 104, 121 104, 109–110, 111, 121 348 354 313 110, 121 106, 121 106, 121 350

CUL Or.1080 J273 CUL Or.1081 1.54 CUL Or.1081 1.72 T-S 12.69 T-S 12.171 T-S 12.231 T-S 12.262 T-S 12.575 T-S 12.589 T-S 12.729 T-S 16.20 T-S 16.21

1–24 134 104, 121 349 349 23 348 347, 350–351 109, 119 303 3 3

402 T-S 16.138 T-S 16.163 T-S 16.172 T-S 16.188 T-S 16.260 T-S 16.295 T-S 20.24 T-S 20.174 T-S 24.20 T-S F17.4 T-S H3.82 T-S H3.107 T-S H5.2 T-S H5.119 T-S H8.6 T-S H10.167 T-S K15.82 T-S H16.9 T-S K15.82 T-S K23.3 T-S K23.4 T-S K24.16 T-S 6J1.7 T-S 6J1.32 T-S 6J4.31–32 T-S 8H14 T-S 8H24.5 T-S 8J6.9 T-S 8J6.20 T-S 8J8.11 T-S 8J8.13 T-S 8J8.16 T-S 8J15.32 T-S 8J16.16 T-S 8J18.33 T-S 8J19.28 T-S 8J20.12 T-S 8J23.14 T-S 8J39.9 T-S 10J7.18 T-S 10J8.2 T-S 10J10.19 T-S 10J11.31 T-S 10J16.25 T-S 10J16.32 T-S 10J17.33 T-S 10J19.19 T-S 10J20.11 T-S 10J21.1 T-S 10J24.3 T-S 10J29.13 T-S 10J30.4 T-S 10J31.10

index of sources 3 353 23 3 106, 119 104, 108, 119 245 350 3 240 358 358 134 238 361 238 117, 120 361 120 240 240 325–326 1–24 3 104, 110, 112, 119 134 134 10 106, 119 106, 119 110, 119 23 104, 107, 119 106, 119 345 322–324 219 347 312 349 350 353 3 104, 106, 109–110, 119 104, 109, 119 106, 119 349 349 91 106, 120 306 350 348

T-S 10J31.11 T-S 10K7.1 T-S 13H1.3 T-S 13J4.2 T-S 13J4.5 T-S 13J4.21 T-S 13J5.6 T-S 13J8.14 T-S 13J8.23 T-S 13J8.28 T-S 13J13.13 T-S 13J13.26 T-S 13J14.8 T-S 13J15.9 T-S 13J19.29 T-S 13J20.17 T-S 13J20.24 T-S 13J21.5 T-S 13J22.5 T-S 13J24.25 T-S 13J25.3 T-S 13J27.5 T-S 13J28.10 T-S 13J29.2 T-S 13J34.7 T-S 13J34.9 T-S 13J35.15 T-S 13J36.1 T-S 18J1.16 T-S 18J1.17 T-S 18J1.19 T-S 18J1.30 T-S 18J1.33 T-S 18J3.25 T-S 18J5.7 T-S Ar.3.1 T-S Ar.8.3 T-S Ar.30.184 T-S Ar.30.232 T-S Ar.30.313 T-S Ar.34.132 T-S Ar.42.176 T-S Ar.51.29 T-S Ar.51.86b T-S Ar.52.248 T-S Ar.53.12 T-S Ar.54.11 T-S Ar.54.19 T-S Ar.54.63 T-S Misc.10.80 T-S Misc.10.238 T-S Misc.22.5 T-S Misc.22.6

104, 109–110, 112, 120 303 134 1–24 23 111, 120 111, 120 310 354 347 146–150 348, 351 300 346 351 10 349, 351 347 350 109–110, 120 311 146–150 303 351 104, 120 347 347, 352 345 3 3 3 3 23 104, 108–109, 120 104, 120 203, 205 202–206, 208, 210 332, 338–340 104, 106, 109, 120 203, 205 134 309, 327 205 48 336 204–205, 208–209 206 333, 335, 338–339 210–215 107, 111, 120 108, 121 108, 121 108, 109–110, 121

index of sources T-S Misc.22.191 T-S Misc.25.62 T-S Misc.25.132 T-S Misc.26.21 T-S Misc.28.143 T-S Misc.28.168 T-S Misc.28.258 T-S NS 83.19 T-S NS 91.12 T-S NS 99.25 T-S NS 119.37 T-S NS 150.44 T-S NS 154.11 T-S NS 163.97 T-S NS 172.11 T-S NS 225.24 T-S NS 235.58 T-S NS 235.157a T-S NS 249.6 T-S NS 264.64 T-S NS 272.71 T-S NS 304.1 T-S NS 320.29 T-S NS 320.27 T-S NS 320.29 T-S NS 320.122 T-S NS 320.127 T-S NS 320.137 T-S NS 323.28 T-S NS 324.37 T-S NS 338.30 T-S NS 338.51 T-S NS J8 T-S NS J82 T-S NS J124 T-S NS J178 T-S NS J263 T-S NS J268 T-S NS J505 T-S AS 63.150 T-S AS 83.15 T-S AS 103.104 T-S AS 103.277

117, 121 346 4 106, 121 104, 107, 109, 121 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 121 104, 116, 121 106, 121 204 103, 121 366 134 134 208 239 336, 338 134 134 239 107, 108, 121 361 117, 121 3 336 10 104, 109,121 117, 121 107, 121 107, 111, 121 111, 121 334 106, 121 338 333 111, 121 338 338 10 134 366 109, 120 134 131

T-S AS 105.103 T-S AS 130.79 T-S AS 145.76 T-S AS 145.78 T-S AS 145.85 T-S AS 145.87 T-S AS 145.117 T-S AS 145.125 T-S AS 145.313 T-S AS 146.5 T-S AS 146.8 T-S AS 146.16 T-S AS 146.18 T-S AS 146.19 T-S AS 146.22 T-S AS 146.88 T-S AS 146.315 T-S AS 147.8 T-S AS 147.31 T-S AS 147.32 T-S AS 147.150 T-S AS 147.199 T-S AS 148.13 T-S AS 148.72 T-S AS 148.132 T-S AS 148.157 T-S AS 149.53 T-S AS 150.4 T-S AS 150.53 T-S AS 151.132 T-S AS 151.145 T-S AS 150.154 T-S AS 151.199 T-S AS 151.245 T-S AS 152.5 T-S AS 153.33 T-S AS 153.214 T-S AS 157.50 T-S AS 161.146 T-S AS 209.226 T-S AS 212.55 T-S AS 214.40 T-S AS 305.168

403 131 339 337 336 108, 120 111, 112, 120 104, 110, 120 338 110, 120 336, 338 333–334, 339 336–337 336 337–338 336–338 333, 339 334 3 338 336 336 333–335 333, 338 336 336 334–335 336 336 333 333 338, 340 108, 109, 110, 120 332, 336 334 336 336–337 107, 120 62 333 104, 120 109, 120 102, 204, 106, 109, 110,120 106, 120

Jacques Mosseri Collection, Cambridge University Library Mosseri Ia.5 Mosseri II.188 Mosseri III.231 Mosseri IIIa.9 Mosseri IV.15.1

311 106, 107, 122 109, 110, 111, 122 102, 204, 106, 107, 109, 110, 122 312

Mosseri IV.93 Mosseri V.392 Mosseri Va.13 Mosseri VII.16.2 Mosseri VII.41.2

107, 108, 110, 115, 122 108, 122 111, 122 107, 122 111, 122

404

index of sources Cincinnati

HUC 1034

109–110, 121 Hamburg, State and University Library

Manuscript 152 (Hebrew 17)

369 Jerusalem, The National Library Of Israel

JNUL 40 577/4, 102

104, 106, 110, 122 Manchester, John Rylands University Library

Gaster 1861.8 Gaster A428

104, 109, 123 104, 123

Gaster B2162

109, 123

New York, Jewish Theological Seminary ENA 23 ENA 694.5–6 ENA 1066.1–10 ENA 1178.46 ENA 2567.150 ENA 2722.1 ENA 2727.24a ENA 2727.35 ENA 2727.42 ENA 2727.45 ENA 2738.10 ENA 2738.21 ENA 2804.4 ENA 2804.7 ENA 2804.8 ENA 2804.12 ENA 2804.13 ENA 2804.17 ENA 2804.18 ENA 2804.19 ENA 2806.8 ENA 2808.2 ENA 3191.8 ENA 3307.12 ENA 3617.1–9 ENA 3765.4 ENA 3794.11

130–131 131 108, 122 109–110, 122 35 35 107, 122 35 114, 122 107, 110, 122 309 107, 110, 122 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 106, 109, 117, 122 108–109, 122 104, 106, 108, 122 109, 122 35 103, 122

ENA 3817.4 ENA 4010.8 ENA 4010.32 ENA 4020.6 ENA 4020.42 ENA 4020.48 ENA 4020.65 ENA 4100.53 ENA 4101.6a ENA NS 1.5 ENA NS 1.40 ENA NS 1.56 ENA NS 1.71 ENA NS 17.8 ENA NS 30.10 ENA NS 31.11 ENA NS 31.12 ENA NS 35.6 ENA NS 35.12 ENA NS 35.15 ENA NS 35.25 ENA NS 39.14 ENA NS 41.21 ENA NS 45.16 ENA NS 47.22

111, 122 35 35 35 35 35 300 35 107, 108, 110, 122 157–169 35 111, 122 109, 122 35 103, 122 108, 122 106, 107, 109, 122 104, 122 104, 122 107, 109, 123 104, 123 104, 123 109, 110, 123 106, 109, 117, 123 104, 109, 112, 123

index of sources ENA NS 54.7 ENA NS 61.3

117, 123 111, 123

ENA NS 77.6 JTS Mic. 9160.2

405 111, 123 104, 106, 123

Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodleian MS. Heb. 2821 151–154 Bodleian MS. Heb. a. 2 238 Bodleian MS. Heb. b. 13.45 107, 108, 112, 118 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 13.24 104, 108–109, 111, 118 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 28.11 91 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.10 104, 119 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.11 109, 119 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.12 109, 119

Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.14 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.15 Bodleian MS. Heb. c. 72.18 Bodleian MS. Heb. d. 41 Bodleian MS. Heb. d. 42 Bodleian MS. Heb. d. 55 Bodleian MS. Heb. f. 27 Bodleian MS. Marsh 90 Bodleian MS. Poc. 262

104, 106, 119 109, 119 104, 119 361 209 361 241 132–133 129, 134–136

St Petersburg, National Library Of Russia St Petersburg Antonin 382 St Petersburg Evr. I:243 St Petersburg Evr. II C 001–002 St Petersburg Evr. III B 1005.2–3

361 46 46 132–134

St Petersburg Evr-Arab. I:127 St Petersburg Evr-Arab. I: 129 St Petersburg Evr-Arab. I:1467 St Petersburg Evr-Arab. I:4132

46 46 46 46

Sassoon Library Ms. Sassoon 713

140–146 Smithsonian Institution

Freer 8 Freer 41

351 108, 123

Freer 47

104, 109, 111, 123

University of Pennsylvania Halper 331 Halper 416

237 104, 123

Halper 420 Halper 465

104, 107, 109, 112, 114, 123 336

406

index of sources Vatican Library

MS. Vatican Ebr. 497

129–134 Westminster College, Cambridge

Westminster College Misc. 30

104, 109, 123

PLATES

plates

409

Plate 1. T-S 6J1.7 (Ackerman-Lieberman). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

410

plates

Plate 2. T-S 13J4.2 (Ackerman-Lieberman). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

plates

411

Plate 3. CUL Or.1080 J273 (Ackerman-Lieberman). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

412

plates

Plate 4. T-S 10J31.11 (David). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

plates

413

Plate 5. Mosseri IV.93 (David). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

414

plates

Plate 6. CUL Or.1080 J133 (David). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

plates

415

Plate 7. ENA NS 1.5 (Friedman). Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Plate 8. T-S 8J19.28 (Shaked). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

416 plates

plates

417

Plate 9. T-S K24.16 (Shaked). Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

418

plates

Plate 10. Stefan and Shulamit Reif, Cambridge University Library, in the early years of the Genizah Research Unit’s work. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

Plate 11. Stefan and Shulamit Reif receiving a facsimile of a tenth-century liturgical text commemorating 30 years of the Genizah Research Unit. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

plates 419

From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Opening the Gates of Interpretation (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Translating Religion. Linguistic Analysis of Judeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Etudes sur le combat

Proximity and Distance: Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Poetry (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects in Judeo-Arabic Culture (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

The Secular Poetry of El'azar ben Ya'aqov ha-Bavli (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Bibliographia Karaitica: An Annotated Bibliography of Karaites and Karaism, Karaite Texts and Studies (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Medical Synonym Lists from Medieval Provence: Shem Tov ben Isaak of Tortosa: Sefer ha - Shimmush. Book 29 (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Etudes sur le lexique du Rig-Veda Vol. I

The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics: Essays in Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne

Search Scripture Well: Karaite Exegetes and the Origins of the Jewish Bible Commentary in the Islamic East (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval) (No. 29)

The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben 'Eli the Karaite on the Book of Esther (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval) (v. 1)

Le Monstre sur le seuil

Melanges posthumes: Quartre etudes sur la Chine

Stefan

Stefan

Studies in General and English Phonetics: Essays in Honour of Professor J.D. O'Connor

Mort sur le Nil

Kafka sur le rivage

Ouragan sur le lac

A Professor of Egyptology

Stefan

Stefan

Stefan

Studies in Medieval History

Mort sur le Nil

Kafka sur le rivage

Kafka sur le rivage

Sur Le Vif

From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Opening the Gates of Interpretation (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Translating Religion. Linguistic Analysis of Judeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Etudes sur le combat

Proximity and Distance: Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Poetry (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects in Judeo-Arabic Culture (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

The Secular Poetry of El'azar ben Ya'aqov ha-Bavli (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Bibliographia Karaitica: An Annotated Bibliography of Karaites and Karaism, Karaite Texts and Studies (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Medical Synonym Lists from Medieval Provence: Shem Tov ben Isaak of Tortosa: Sefer ha - Shimmush. Book 29 (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

Etudes sur le lexique du Rig-Veda Vol. I

The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics: Essays in Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne

Search Scripture Well: Karaite Exegetes and the Origins of the Jewish Bible Commentary in the Islamic East (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval) (No. 29)

The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben 'Eli the Karaite on the Book of Esther (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval) (v. 1)

Le Monstre sur le seuil

Melanges posthumes: Quartre etudes sur la Chine

Stefan

Stefan

Studies in General and English Phonetics: Essays in Honour of Professor J.D. O'Connor

Mort sur le Nil

Kafka sur le rivage

Ouragan sur le lac

A Professor of Egyptology

Stefan

Stefan

Stefan

Studies in Medieval History

Mort sur le Nil

Kafka sur le rivage

Kafka sur le rivage

Sur Le Vif

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