Judeo-Arabic Texts Research Articles

Al-Harizi’s Translation of Guide of the Perplexed II,25 and the Philosophical Implications for the Question of Creation

This article focuses on the various translations of an important chapter regarding the question of creation in Maimonides’s Guide II,25. I will try to explain the differences between the original Judeo-Arabic text and the R. Ibn Tibbon translation on the one hand, and the Al-Harizi translation and the Latin translation on the other hand, and account for some of the differences of interpretation. The first part of the article will describe the original meaning of the chapter and the internal tension between the different arguments that Maimonides explores. These internal tensions and contradictions can be interpreted as an indication that Maimonides was hiding his true esoteric eternalist opinion. In the second part of the article, I will analyze Al-Harizi’s translation and show that he made the text more coherent and more supportive of the creationist interpretation of Maimonides.

How Should We Read Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed? Clues From Al-Harizi’s Translation

The objective of this scholarly article is to undertake a comparative analysis of three distinct medieval translations of the introduction to Maimonides’ “Guide of the Perplexed.” Specifically, we will examine the translations provided by Shmuel ibn Tibbon and Yehuda Al-Harizi, as well as the Latin translation. The focus of our analysis will be on two particular passages that play a crucial role in comprehending Maimonides’ intended approach to reading his work. Within the scope of this article, we will demonstrate that Ibn-Tibbon’s translation successfully preserves the essence of the original Judeo-Arabic text, thereby allowing for the interpretation of Maimonides as a radical (naturalist) philosopher. In contrast, Al-Harizi’s translation negates this potential interpretation, thereby excluding the possibility of viewing Maimonides in such a light. Notably, the medieval Latin translation aligns itself with Al-Harizi’s position and translation choices. By critically examining these translations and their respective implications, we aim to shed light on the significant impact that translation choices can have on the interpretation and understanding of philosophical texts. Ultimately, this investigation contributes to a broader understanding of Maimonides’ philosophical outlook and the challenges posed by different translations of his seminal work. The different ways of reading Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is the subject of a very important and impassioned debate which has been raging from the time of the Guide’s publication until today.1 Was Maimonides a naturalist thinker who believed that religion is only needed for social and pedagogical reasons, and who based all his metaphysical opinions on philosophical argumentation? Was he a true believer who affirmed the main monotheistic and biblical positions such as creation,2 and argued for these positions against the philosophers, especially Aristotle?3 Or, perhaps he was a skeptic who doubted the possibility of humans having access to irrefutable truth?4 In seeking to answer these questions, the debate concerning the Guide condenses its focus to two major questions: 1. Is it justified for the philosophical interpreter to assume that Maimonides’ philosophical opinion is actually radical, i.e., naturalist, despite Maimonides’ explicit rejection of naturalism in the Guide (for example II:29)? 2. Does Maimonides think that humans can reach an unassailable knowledge of the secrets of religion and nature?

Part-of-Speech and Morphological Tagging of Algerian Judeo-Arabic

Most linguistic studies of Judeo-Arabic, the ensemble of dialects spoken and written by Jews in Arab lands, are qualitative in nature and rely on laborious manual annotation work, and are therefore limited in scale. In this work, we develop automatic methods for morpho-syntactic tagging of Algerian Judeo-Arabic texts published by Algerian Jews in the 19th--20th centuries, based on a linguistically tagged corpus. First, we describe our semi-automatic approach for preprocessing these texts. Then, we experiment with both an off-the-shelf morphological tagger and several specially designed neural network taggers. Finally, we perform a real-world evaluation of new texts that were never tagged before in comparison with human expert annotators. Our experimental results demonstrate that these methods can dramatically speed up and improve the linguistic research pipeline, enabling linguists to study these dialects on a much greater scale.

TAJA Corpus: Linguistically Tagged Written Algerian Judeo-Arabic Corpus

Abstract The Tagged Algerian Judeo-Arabic (TAJA) corpus is the first linguistically annotated corpus of any Judeo-Arabic dialect regardless of geography and period. The corpus is a genre-diverse collection of written Modern Algerian Judeo-Arabic texts, encompassing translations of the Bible and of liturgical texts, commentaries and original Judeo-Arabic books and journals. The TAJA corpus was manually annotated with parts-of-speech (POS) tags and detailed morphology tags. The goal of the new corpus is twofold. First, it preserves this endangered Judeo-Arabic language, expanding on previous fieldwork and going beyond the study of individual written texts. The corpus has already enabled us to make strides towards a grammar of written Algerian Judeo-Arabic. Second, this tagged corpus serves as a foundation for the development of Judeo-Arabic-specific Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools, which allow automatic POS tagging and morphological annotation of large collections of yet untapped texts in Algerian Judeo-Arabic and other Judeo-Arabic varieties.

Universal Salvation in Christian and Islamic Thought: The Arabic Reception of Isaac of Nineveh

This article examines the interreligious exchange of ideas concerning hell, divine mercy, and universal salvation, as attested in a tenth-century Arabic translation of the writings of Isaac of Nineveh. This translation was produced in Iraq by an East Syrian Christian named Ḥanūn ibn Yūḥannā ibn al-Ṣalt. In the translation’s preface, Ḥanūn tells an anonymous addressee about Isaac’s doctrine of universal salvation. As Alexander Treiger first suggested, Ḥanūn’s addressee was likely Muslim. By analyzing Ḥanūn’s discussion of Isaac’s views in light of contemporary Islamic sources, as well as a Judeo-Arabic text, I argue that Ḥanūn recast Isaac’s teachings in order to speak to a multireligious audience and address conversations in Islamic circles concerning the eternality of hell and the scope of God’s mercy. Ḥanūn’s treatment thus reveals soteriology as a shared field in the ‘Abbasid world, in which Jewish, Christian, and Islamic views intersected and influenced one another.

Splitting Definitives: The Separation of the Definite Article in Medieval and Pre-Modern Written Judeo-Arabic

Abstract This article explores the reasons behind the orthographic practice of representing the definite article in written Judeo-Arabic as an independent entity, a phenomenon which became widespread in Jewish Arabic-speaking communities in the pre-modern era. Commencing with its representation in fifteenth to nineteenth-century Egyptian Judeo-Arabic manuscripts, the orthographic feature is traced back to Judeo-Arabic texts produced in medieval al-Andalus, Sicily, and the Maġrib, and from there, to post-1492 CE Sephardī Jewish refugees, who settled in North Africa and Egypt. The phenomenon is revealed to be the result of a two-stage process: (i) direct language contact between Romance and Judeo-Arabic; and (ii) the influence of Judeo-Spanish writing on Judeo-Arabic spelling practices in diaspora communities after their expulsion from the Spanish Kingdoms.

Linguistic analysis of an algerian judeo-arabic text from the 19th century

L’analyse linguistique du judéo-arabe du livre PeraḥShoshan (1892), du rabbin Shalom Beckache d’Alger, est une illustration de l’adéquation du registre des langues. C’est parce que Beckache souhaitait que l’ouvrage, qui traitait de morale et d’éthique, soit accessible au plus grand nombre qu’il l’a écrit, dit‑il, «en arabe dialectal de notre pays». Ce ne fut pas un mince exploit, car l’auteur n’était pas originaire d’Algérie; sa famille avait immigré de Bagdad en Inde et il avait passé sa jeunesse à Eretz Yisraʿel avant d’arriver en Algérie. Tout en écrivant volontairement dans le registre familier de ses contemporains, il y a des cas où il se trouve dans la nécessité d’employer un registre élevé en rapport avec le développement ou les citations littéraires. On se propose d’exhumer, à partir de ce texte, les caractéristiques du judéo-algérien de la fin du xixe siècle.

Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ, Twenty Chapters: An edition of the Judeo-Arabic text transliterated into Arabic characters, with a parallel English translation, notes, and introduction, ed. and trans. Sarah Stroumsa. (Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature.) Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 370. $79.95 ISBN: 978-0-8425-2996-9.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsDāwūd al-Muqammaṣ, Twenty Chapters: An edition of the Judeo-Arabic text transliterated into Arabic characters, with a parallel English translation, notes, and introduction, ed. and trans. Sarah Stroumsa. (Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature.) Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 370. $79.95 ISBN: 978-0-8425-2996-9.Daniel J. LaskerDaniel J. LaskerBen-Gurion University of the Negev Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 93, Number 4October 2018 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/699400 Views: 45Total views on this site Copyright 2018 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

XML Annotation of Hebrew Elements in Judeo-Arabic Texts

AbstractThe main aim of this study is to introduce a model ofTEI(Text Encoding Initiative) annotation of Hebrew elements in Judeo-Arabic texts, i.e., code switching (CS), borrowing, and Hebrew quotations. This article will provide an introduction to using XML (Extensible Markup Language) to investigate sociolinguistic aspects in medieval Judeo-Arabic texts. Accordingly, it will suggest to what extent using XML is useful for investigating linguistic and sociolinguistic features in the Judeo-Arabic paradigm. To provide an example for how XML annotation could be applied to Judeo-Arabic texts, a corpus of 300 pages selected from three Judeo-Arabic books has been manually annotated using theTEIP5. The annotation covers all instances ofCS, borrowing, and Hebrew quotations in that corpus.

The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ‘Eli on the Book of Proverbs by Ilana Sasson

Reviewed by: The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ‘Eli on the Book of Proverbs by Ilana Sasson Marzena Zawanowska Ilana Sasson. The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ‘Eli on the Book of Proverbs. Volume 1. Edition and Introduction. Karaite Texts and Studies, volume 8 (Études sur le judaïsme médiéval 67). Leiden: Brill, 2016. xviii + 528 pp. One of the most acclaimed Karaite exegetes of the so-called Golden Age of Karaism (mid-tenth to early eleventh century) was Yefet ben ʻEli (Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥasan b. ‘Alī al-Laˉwī al-Baṣrī). He was also one of the most prominent and prolific Bible commentators who ever lived. His Arabic relational suffix (nisba) suggests that he, or his family, originally came from Basra in Iraq, but from the middle of the tenth until his death in the early eleventh century he resided in Jerusalem, where he was active in the famous Karaite “academy of [biblical] studies” (dār li-ʼl-‘ilm), opened there by Yūsuf ibn Nūḥ Yefet’s work is a singular example in the history of Jewish Bible exegesis of a running translation and commentary of all twenty-four books of Scripture. His interpretations are often highly innovative and original. Little wonder, then, that they so impacted later generations of Bible commentators, Karaite and Rabbanite alike, most famously Abraham ibn Ezra. Still, over time Yefet and his significant contribution to the history of scriptural exegesis gradually sank into oblivion. He was prone to generalizing and impressionable views and those who did venture to study his works denied him originality and labeled him a “mere compiler.” Only in the latter part of the twentieth century did [End Page 233] scholars begin to show specific interest in his unparalleled exegetical achievements, and reappraise his texts on the basis of in-depth, comparative analysis. Ilana Sasson’s The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ‘Eli on the Book of Proverbs is part of this trend. By shedding further light on this exceptional exegete and his amazingly diverse, rich, and comprehensive commentaries, this book enhances our understanding and appreciation of the originality of his interpretations. Based on Sasson’s doctoral dissertation (“Methods and Approach in Yefet ben ʻElī al-Baṣrīʼs Translation and Commentary on the Book of Proverbs” [Jewish Theological Seminary, 2010]), and subsequently significantly adapted, this volume consists of two parts, the second of which is entirely new and includes a critical edition of Yefet’s translation and commentary on the whole book of Proverbs (183–528). Reconstructing the oldest existing and most reliable version of the Judeo-Arabic text from numerous manuscripts and making it available to a wider scholarly public through a meticulous and rigorous, noneclectic edition is a great scholarly achievement, a major contribution to the study of Bible exegesis, and to the history of development and reception of medieval Karaite exegesis in particular. The only weakness of the book is that it does not include an English translation of the edited text; this is, however, being currently prepared and expected to be published as a second volume within the same series.1 Although at first glance the content of the first part of the book may seem similar to the dissertation, it was significantly reworked and expanded, the arguments were developed, and the state of the art updated. It includes an introduction, which consists of six chapters, the first five of which are analytical and offer an informative and interesting study of diverse aspects of Yefet’s hermeneutics. The first chapter surveys the exegete’s life and works, as well as previous (fragmentary) scholarly editions of his commentary on Proverbs. It also discusses the relationship between his commentary on this book and those of Saʿadiah Gaon, Jacob b. Reuben, and Abraham ibn Ezra. The section presents Yefet’s work as an invaluable, so far underestimated link in the history of Jewish interpretation of Proverbs (3–22). The second chapter focuses on Yefet’s unique style of Bible commentary, in comparison with the Arabic model of his time, with particular stress on the literary convention of prefacing works with introductions (muaqaddima), the rhetorical form of disputation...

When Jews Speak Arabic: Dialectology and Difference in Colonial Morocco

AbstractThis article explores how Judeo-Arabic and its speaking population were constituted as objects of research and reformation in colonial Morocco. I argue that the colonial project of dialectology, which emphasized the differentiated linguistic terrain of indigenous society, operated at two opposing levels. On one hand, the study of Judeo-Arabic contributed to the idea of homogeneous orality attributed to native languages, which despite their diverse relationships with literate textuality were made to appear divorced from locally established systems of writing. On the other, the historical and affective relationship between Jews and their Arabic dialect was figured in terms that stressed Jewish alienation from their mother tongue and thereby cast native Jews as differentiated objects of francophone linguistic reform. I pay particular attention to the material mechanics of ethnographic methodology, orthographic entextualization, and editorial arrangement through which colonial dialectologists rendered the Jewish dialect as an essentially oral and Arabic dialect, despite the countervailing circulation of Judeo-Arabic texts written in the Hebrew script. This investigation contributes to our understanding of how dialectology operated as a colonial science through which the hierarchical social categories of colonial rule were established, sustained, and manipulated against the backdrop of linguistic practices that never fully conformed to their colonial representation.

Abraham Maimonides on His Leadership, Reforms, and Spiritual Imperfection

The paper begins with a discussion of S. D. Goitein’s assessment of Abraham Maimonides’ place in history (“a perfect man with a tragic fate”). His revolutionary program for revitalizing Judaism in the spirit of Sufism failed to be realized not only because he was overshadowed by his father but because of the time and energy he spent on leadership, presumably undertaken to preserve his father’s heritage. Contrariwise, we present and discuss (1) Abraham Maimonides’ response to criticism that he had neglected the responsibilities of community leader in favor of promoting his religious program and his testimony on (2) the successes of his leadership—especially abolishing deviant Palestinian prayer-rites in Fustat, Egypt, and introducing new (“re-creating forgotten”) modes of worship—and (3) his personal shortcomings in piety. The key to this perspective is found in three passages in his writings, two of which were recently discussed in this journal by Elisha Russ-Fishbane in a different context. These passages had not been available to Goitein because of the state of research at the time. In the process of discussing their relevance to our investigation, certain elusive expressions in the Judeo-Arabic texts are explained and the history of research clarified. After taking note of an additional aberrant practice—an “abominable” wedding custom—abolished by the Nagid, the paper concludes with a summary of the distinction between the historian’s assessment of Abraham Maimonides’ leadership and failed mission and his self-proclaimed perception of these matters.

Formation and Diversity of Jewish Languages and of Judeo-Arabic in North Africa I. Middle Judeo-Arabic and its Forms of Hybridization

AbstractThe article deals with the evolution of Middle Judeo-Arabic in North Africa. The study examines the linguistic processes and the hybridized uses of Judeo-Arabic in a theoretical framework oriented toward the main sociopragmatic features of Jewish languages. These include diglossic functioning, endolectal appropriation of a non-Jewish language, hybridization of grammatical and lexical structures, and discursive and textual diversity. Middle Judeo-Arabic is considered here in three different periods of its formation and use in North Africa. The first period, the classic period, lasted from the tenth to the thirteenth century. It generated religious, philosophical, literary, and epistolary texts that are documented by the archives of the Cairo Genizah and by the seminal works of famous scholars. The second period began after the settlement of the Megorashim in urban centers of North Africa at the end of the fifteenth century and lasted until the nineteenth century. During this period, Jewish poets turned their attention to some remnants of Middle Judeo-Arabic texts, mostly paraliturgical, to heighten the language of their Judeo-Arabic poems. The third period was characterized by a new kind of literary Judeo-Arabic used by journalists and writers in Tunis at the end of the nineteenth century.

Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations Between Judaism and Islam (review)

Reviewed by: Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations Between Judaism and Islam Brannon Wheeler Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations Between Judaism and Islam, by Marc S. Bernstein. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006. 315 pp. $69.95. As Michael McGaha shows in his Coat of Many Cultures ( Jewish Publication Society of America, 1997), the story of Joseph is not only one of the most popular and beautiful tales known, but its ability to transcend and intersect the cultures that claim a share in its heritage demonstrates the deeply historically embedded nature of Judaism and Islam. Marc Bernstein’s recent book makes a significant contribution to the study and appreciation of how the story of Joseph has created new historical contexts for the “cross-cultural patterns evidenced in the Judaic and Islamic scriptural and exegetical traditions surrounding the figure of Joseph son of Jacob.” Bernstein’s work is divided into two parts. The first part consists of a translation of “The Story of Our Master Joseph the Righteous” [Qissah Sayyid-na Yusuf al-Siddiq]. Bernstein provides a readable and careful English translation of a manuscript preserved in a nineteenth-century Judeo-Arabic text found in the Karaite community of Cairo, now housed at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California. This is a remarkable text, integrating midrashic elements and Quran commentaries in a fashion that belies tacit characterizations of the story as being “Jewish” or “Muslim” in nature. Bernstein shows, through careful documentation of his translation, that the text appears to draw equally on rabbinic and Islamic exegesis in crafting a story of Joseph that discloses the concerns of the communities for which it was produced and in which it was reproduced, read, and kept. [End Page 201] The second part of Bernstein’s work is a creative and original analysis of how the translated text reveals the kind of inter-communal conversation that is too often ignored in favor of a broad-brushed approach to interfaith dialogue or inter-religious conflict. Bernstein argues effectively that the text is not simply a Jewish adaption of a Muslim story, that was in turn adopted from the Bible through the lens of the Quran and Jewish exegesis. It is this insight that allows Bernstein’s analysis to go beyond simple historical tracing of “influences” or cataloguing of narrative and manuscript history. Bernstein is able to highlight significant themes and issues that demonstrate how a shared story, such as that of Joseph, can be used by the historian to understand the dense thicket of culture in which Muslims and Jews were immersed and embedded. Bernstein’s treatment of “Between the Pit and Mrs. Potiphar” is particularly helpful in this regard, showing not only the narrative difficulties of the biblical story and how it was treated by exegetes, but how these narrative glitches could be and were used to produce the distinctive features of different “versions” of the tale. Readers interested in the Joseph story and in a comparison of Jewish and Islamic exegesis will find Bernstein’s study to provide valuable insights. Perhaps more significantly, readers interested in texts as cultural artifacts illustrating complex living worlds inhabited by people with equally complex historical and primordial ties, should find Bernstein’s work a model of how historians can “read” a text to disclose culture. The rich world produced by the story of Joseph proves not only the shared but pluralistic character of the “biblical heritage” and the Muslims and Jews who construct and inhabit that world. Brannon Wheeler Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies United States Naval Academy Copyright © 2009 Purdue University

Jewish Philosophy or “Philosophy among the Jews”? Salomon Munk (1803–1867) and the Reception of Judeo-Arabic Texts in the 19th Century

Article Jewish Philosophy or “Philosophy among the Jews”? Salomon Munk (1803–1867) and the Reception of Judeo-Arabic Texts in the 19th Century was published on November 1, 2009 in the journal Naharaim (volume 3, issue 1).

The Rendering of Qur'anic Quotations in Hebrew Translations of Islamic Texts

Beginning in thelate twelfth century, a Jewish intellectual revolution took place in Christian Iberia and in Provence that centered on the translation of Arabic and Judeo-Arabic texts into Hebrew. In the Arabic-speaking world, Jews had been avid readers of Arabic literature and Islamic disciplines and composed works on philosophy, science, grammar, and biblical exegesis in Arabic, usually in Hebrew characters. Outside of the Arabic-speaking environment, Jews made Hebrew translations of texts by Jewish and Muslim authors from philosophical, theological, scientific, ethical, lexicographic, and literary genres.1 Studies by numerous scholars have focused on the development of a Hebrew philosophical and scientific vocabulary by translators such as Judah, Samuel, and Moses Ibn Tibbon, Judah al-Harizi, and Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera, and the merits, from the perspective of accuracy, of the various methods used by these translators.2 Others have noted renderings by Judah al-Harizi [End Page 336] and Jacob Ben El'azar of Arabic belletristic texts in the clear diction of biblical Hebrew and argued that Jews composed these translations in order to establish Hebrew's versatility, eloquence, and superiority over Arabic.3 The complex dynamics of translation have been a central subject of inquiry for literary theorists for over a century.4 These dynamics often involve cultural as well as literary issues and can vary depending on the relationship translators maintain with the cultural group from which the parent text originates. Medieval translations from Arabic into Hebrew provide an interesting case study in that the act of translation posed complex issues on literary and ideological grounds. On a literary level, Hebrew did not possess the vocabulary for capturing Islamic technical terms or Arabic philosophical and scientific concepts; new terminology had to be invented even when rendering an Arabic text by a Jewish author for a non-Arabic-speaking Jewish audience. Belletristic texts also contained culturally specific allusions that were difficult to recreate in a Hebrew version. On an ideological level, translation brought to the fore tensions inherent in the relationship between Judaism and Islam, especially when it came to the revelatory status of the Bible and the Qur'an. The rewriting of classic texts by Muslim authors in Hebrew garb was an enterprise riddled with ambivalences. Because Jews saw their Muslim predecessors simultaneously as intellectual and literary guides and also as religious competitors, Hebrew translations exhibit great tension when rendering statements suggestive of Islamic particularism. When translators [End Page 337] encountered references from Islamic holy books, they had to make choices between translating texts literally and distorting them for the sake of de-Islamicization (and its complement, Judaization). This article focuses on the rendering of quotations from the Qur'an (and to a lesser extent the h adīth) in Hebrew translations of Arabic texts by Muslim authors within the context of the polemical atmosphere of Christian Iberia and Provence. Numerous methods of rendering qur'anic verses—from simple omission, to literal and paraphrastic translation, to the substitution of biblical verses—are observed in ethical, philosophical, and belletristic texts. Translators of belletristic works often replace qur'anic quotations with biblical allusions in order to Judaize texts and to showcase Hebrew's eloquence and capacity. However, qur'anic quotations are also left intact for specific literary effects (such as irony) and for less apparent reasons. In translating philosophical and ethical literatures, in which qur'anic verses are introduced as prooftexts for arguments, translators make efforts to de-Islamicize texts lest the Qur'an appear as a valid source of truth. Even still, qur'anic verses are often preserved in Hebrew garb, though usually with an omission of attribution. Translators sometimes explain their translation choices (especially verse substitution) in polemical terms and even devalue the status of the Qur'an and the prophecy of Muhammad explicitly. However, translations are generally inconsistent in that Islamic materials are downplayed but not completely discarded. Polemical Contexts Jewish polemical writings against Islam during the...

MA KHABARANDQUSSAT HANNAH: A GENDERED READING OF TWO STORIES IN THE CULTURE OF YEMENITE JEWISH WOMEN

In this article, I suggest a new reading of two Yemenite Judeo-Arabic texts translated for and read to women: Ma khabar hadhah al-laylah (What happened on this night?) for the Passover Seder and Qussat annah (The story of Hannah) for the eve of the Ninth of Ab. Both are part of the popular religious literature of Yemenite Jews.1 Although these stories may be examined from linguistic or literary perspectives, I have chosen to interrogate these texts from a gendered perspective. In doing so, I seek both to enrich the discourse about the texts themselves and to shed light on the place of women in Yemenite Jewish society. In order better to understand the roles and the significance of these texts in women's religious lives, I will first situate women within the Jewish religio-cultural context in Yemen. I will then present the two texts and discuss their shared gendered aspects, which arose from their common designation as texts written for women. I will link them to the contents of women's laments over the dead, which they composed and sang. Finally, I will suggest what messages these texts might have held for their women listeners.

אל-מסדה: פנקס בית הדין של קהילת יהודי צנעא במאה ה-18 [ Al-Misawwadeh: Bēth-Dīn (Court) Records of the Sanʿānī Jewish Community in the Eighteenth Century ] (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2003) 593-596 Yehuda Nini, ed. 18-n tìhoi hvm >t??> rt»np pv ?t? n>3 s?3? :mit>n-i>N [Al-Misawwadeh: Bëth-Dîn (Court) Records ofthe San'âni Jewish Community in the Eighteenth Century], vol. 1. Translated into Hebrew by Nissim B. Gamlieli. Tel Aviv: The Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv University, 2001. Pp. 89 + 469 + 2 (English abstract). The Arabic term musawwadah denotes "a draft," "notes," or "a daybook ." The volume under review, titled Al-Misawwadeh, reflects the pronunciation of the San(ânï Arabic dialect. This volume contains 1,372 of the misawwadeh documents, constituting records of judgments passed by the Beth Din ("rabbinical court") of the Jewish Community of Sancä', dating from the early 18th century to the 1860s. They are written in the JudeoArabic dialect that was prevalent among the Jews of Sancä\ Judeo-Arabic, as is well known, is written in the Arabic language using Hebrew characters , a fact which is also true of the misawwadeh texts. The documents are characterized by brevity, registering only the final judgment rendered by the court without any reference to the halakhic basis for these rulings. Despite their economy of expression, they are remarkably lucid. The records contained in this volume are provided both in the original Judeo-Arabic and in Hebrew translation. The arduous task of the translation was undertaken by Nissim B. Gamlieli, a Yemeni scholar well known for his expertise in Yemeni Arabic in general, and Yemeni Judeo-Arabic in particular. He is to be commended for his meticulously accurate translation , which reflects the felicity and beauty of diction of the original JudeoArabic texts. It should be noted that despite the fast growing body of scholarship relating to the history and other aspects of the Jews of Yemen, our knowledge of this community is still relatively sparse. The few chronicles written by the Yemeni Jews themselves cover only the past few hundred years, and even then they do not provide a systematic presentation of the historical events that befell the Jews of Yemen, nor of their customs and socioeconomic conditions. These chronicles are presented as snapshots of selected events that pass before us in a fragmented and incoherent procession, replete with gaps. Several factors account for the scarcity of records relating to the Jews of Yemen. One may be the high cost and rarity of writing materials and the total lack of printing facilities. As late as the beginning of the 20th century, as noted by Ameen Rihani, paper was a very rare commodity in Yemen. The scantiness of writing facilities in Yemen undoubtedly accounts for the marvelous ability of the Yemeni Jews to read a book sideways or upside down and from all possible corners. This ability was developed as a result of the necessity of the Yemeni Jewish children to study the Hebrew Scriptures and other sacred writings seated around one single copy of a book. 594THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW The scarcity of writing materials may also account for the selective attitude which the Yemeni Jews had developed toward their own writings. Manuscripts which had practical value were copied and preserved. Some were used as flyleaves for the binding of sacred books, while others were discarded and subsequently sank into oblivion. Thus, for example, only fragments of the work of Rabbi Yehia Salih (1715-1805), who is known to have written a history of the Jews of Yemen, are extant. Moreover, many of the written records must have been destroyed in the course of the frequent political upheavals that in many cases had a devastating impact upon Sanca\ the Yemeni capital, in general and the Jewish community in particular. Most destructive, however, was the expulsion of the Jews of Sanca' and other locales in Yemen to the remote region of Mawzac in 1679/80, an event which was preceded by the demolition of synagogues. Extant Yemeni Jewish documents relate that scrolls and writings housed in synagogues were torn and trampled upon by the mob, while others were burned; still others were abandoned by the Jews who would not carry them into exile. This state of affairs underscores the...

Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar)'s description of verrucous malignancy of the colon (with an English translation from Arabic and notes on its Hebrew and Latin versions).

Ibn Zuhr (ca. 1091-1161) is the most important physician of Muslim Spain. His Kitâb al-Taysîr, translated into Hebrew and Latin, is principally a manual of therapeutics containing descriptions of clinical cases. His description "On Verrucae (tha'âlîl) that Occur in the Stomach [sic]," which deals with an emaciated Berber who evacuates a tumour the size of an apple in his stools, represents the first detailed report of a cancer of the colon. Latin and Hebrew translations of this report are close to the Arabic, but it is doubtful that the Latin text is based on the Hebrew. The possibility of an intermediate Judeo-Arabic text should be considered.

Samuel ben Hofni Gaon and His Cultural World: Texts and Studies

Samuel ben ?ofni Gaon was head of the Yeshiva of Sura in Baghdad during the cultural renaissance which characterized the Buyid period. His writings reflect the impact of Arabic literature on Jewish intellectuals at this time. The first part of this volume presents the known details of his life and extensive writings and describes the dynamics of contemporary, tenth-century Jewish culture: the decline and temporary restoration of the yeshivot and the intellectual activity outside of them. Additionally, some of the basic concepts of his thought, strongly influenced by Mu'tazilite Kal?m, are explained. The book provides the Judeo-Arabic text and annotated English translation of two of his works on legal theory, his "Treatise on the Commandments" and "Ten Questions," reconstructed from manuscript fragments from the Cairo Geniza.