Al-Harizi's Tahkemoni in English

Abstract

Al-Ḥarizi's Taḥkemoni in English Jonathan P. Decter Judah Alḥarizi . The Book of Taḥkemoni: Jewish Tales from Medieval Spain. Translated, explicated, and annotated by David Simha Segal. London and Portland, Oreg.: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001, 710 pp. Medieval Hebrew rhymed prose narrative has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance in the past two decades. The form, closely related and indebted to the Arabic maqāma, took root in Muslim Andalusia during the twelfth century and flourished in Christian Spain between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Hebrew narratives (called maqāmāt or maḥbarot) have been the subject of numerous recent editions, secondary studies, and translations into numerous languages.¹ Within this trend, David Segal's translation and commentary on Judah al-Ḥarizi's (1165-1225) Book of Taḥkemoni represents a true tour de force, being the most thorough study of the book as a whole and the first-ever translation of the book into English rhymed prose. In this beautiful edition published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, the Taḥkemoni is presented as the imposing and monumental work that it certainly is. Al-Ḥarizi's Taḥkemoni is the most classical of Hebrew rhymed prose narratives in that it closely emulates the form, style, and structure of the Arabic maqāma collections of al-Hamadhāni (969-1008) and al-Ḥarīrī (1054-1122). As a native of Toledo, a highly Arabized city within Christian Spain, al-Ḥarizi was raised on the Hebrew and Arabic traditions of Andalusia. For reasons that are not altogether clear, al-Ḥarizi abandoned Spain to wander the Muslim East, traveling as far as Iraq and settling in Aleppo, Syria, where he died. He became known as a translator of texts from Arabic into Hebrew, most famously of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and al-Ḥarīrī's maqāmāt, and as an author of original Hebrew and Arabic belletristic compositions. [End Page 110] The Taḥkemoni comes as a direct challenge to the collection of fifty maqāmāt written and compiled by al-Ḥarīrī. For the sake of a Jewish audience, al-Ḥarizi sought to champion the Hebrew language as an eloquent tongue to rival Arabic's claim to unique beauty of expression and holiness. After translating al-Ḥarīrī's maqāmāt into Hebrew, al-Ḥarizi sought to create an original work and invented his own collection of fifty episodes revolving around the encounters, often humorous, of a narrator and a protagonist rogue (in reality, however, al-Ḥarizi borrowed liberally from the plot materials of his Arabic forerunners). Through the discourse of Heman the Ezraḥite and Ḥever the Kenite, al-Ḥarizi created a rollicking text rich in rhetorical play and intertextual allusion that encompasses a cornucopia of themes ranging from devotion, asceticism, and theology to deceit, love, and drunkenness. In each episode, the two characters meet in a city or another setting, have some exchange, and then part, only to meet again in the subsequent episode. The narrator is traveling in search of learning, culture, and rhetorical excellence. The protagonist is a sort of antihero, a mercurial master of eloquence whose disregard for social convention makes him an entertaining, if not exemplary, character. Also a master of disguise and chicanery, he earns a living through petty scams, duping unsuspecting citizens with an eloquent tongue while flouting social mores beneath the surface. Segal's edition is clearly the outcome of many years of painstaking work dealing with many aspects of the Taḥkemoni, from the minute details of its uses of language to the cohesive structural elements of individual episodes and the structure of the work as a whole. The book is divided into two main sections: the translation and a commentary. This review treats each section separately. Translation As Segal states in his introduction (xvi), the method of translation allows for a great deal of liberty, approximating the method that al-Ḥarizi used in his Hebrew rendering of al-Ḥarīrī's Arabic maqāmāt (entitled Maḥberet itiʾel in Hebrew). This method preserves general meaning while giving priority to language, register, tone, style, and humor. Although plot...